POLITICAL GOSSIP.

Patea Mail, 23 June 1882, Page 3

POLITICAL GOSSIP.

The electric light is to be used instead of gas, but the change cannot be made till next session.

The House has voted £60,000 as votes in supply, and the cheeseparers saved £SO on the lot.

A new party is forming, called the “ clean sheet party,” It is said the partisans on both sides contradict each other so often that the safest way now is to heed neither, but begin with a “ clean sheet.”

A comet is visible in the western sky soon after sunset. The tail is very dim,

Passengers arriving by the Wakatu on Thursday were Mr J. and Miss Black, Messrs Odgers, Batten, M’Carthy and Palmer.

A flax-grower from Canterbury, named Waddell, has leased 10 acres of harbor reserve from Mr F. O’S McCarthy at back of the Green Island Fellmongery, and intends patting in flax and some oats for next season. Several farmers in the district intend to try flax as an experiment. We hear also that additional shares are being taken, in the Patea Oil and Fibre Manufacturing Company, whose prospectus is advertised in the Mail.

sent without someone in charge, it would be necessary for the settlers on the Plains to club together and get up a subscription so as to be able to send for two or three thousand. Mr Johnson would then send up a man in charge. His fare and about ten shillings a day expenses would have to be paid and some small charge for the use of the cans. A much better and safer plan is to do as I do, and send for the ova. This can be got for about three pounds per thousand and there is nothing like the same risk in transit. In the case of young fish a very warm night or a little delay on the road will kill half of them, even when the greatest care is taken. An objection may be raised to this by saying that the sender was not in a position to hatch ova. My answer to this is that any settler possessing a clear spring giving sufficient 'water to run through an inch or. even half inch pipe could make a hatching place at a very trifling cost. I will give an instance of this.- Some time ago I was at a settler’s place in my own neighborhood. I noticed he had a small but clear spring. He was asking me to get him some young fisli, and I suggested that instead of doing this he should put down a box and hatch some ova himself, promising to give him every assistance. He set to work immediately, and in half a day had the box made ; next day the slides and gravel were put in and everything completed; the total cost being about eighteen shillings. I got him a thousand ova for which he paid £3, and from this ova he hatched out over nine hundred healthy young trout.

I again repeat that any settler can do this without loss of valuable time as his wife or children can give the ova any little attention which it requires. It would in fact be providing for them a pleasant and profitable amusement. I shall be very happy to give full instructions as to the mode of procedure to anyone who will call upon me in town, I will not however promise to answer written communications. To explain the process of watching would require a very voluminous correspondence which 1 am not prepared to undertake, while half an hours’ conversation by the side of my hatching, trough would make everything clear.

While on this subject I may say that on the Tawbiti stream near Hawera, where there is a smalt fall, there is one of the finest natural hatching places in New Zealand. It only requires the side of the hill to he scarped, some boxes put down, and a small floodgate. The local society could hatch 50,000 trout there with very little trouble, and they ought by this time to have stocked every stream on the Plains. One more remark and I will trespass no further on your space. Instead of the English brown trout, I am this year sending for the American brook trout (Samo Fmtinalis ). These are a particularly game little fish, are perfect little bull dogs when hooked, and are gutlons at flies. Qne of these fish of a pound or even half ..pound weight will,give more sport than a brown trout weighing four of five pounds. They are peculiarly suitable for streams on the Plains, as they delightin' dear cold water. I should strongly advise settlers to pay the extra cost and send for them. The only man I know of in New Zealand who has them is Mr Johnson. The price is £lO a thousand for the ova, and two pounds ten per hundred for the young fish. To show the vitality of the ova, I may mention that as an experiment I had 25 ova sent mo through the post. They were enclosed in a common match: box surrounded with saw dust. The weather was hot and sultry and there was; some delay, but in spite of all this I sue-, ceeded in hatching out ten of them. Trusting these remarks will be of benefit to your readers. —I am, &c., U. M. Bbeweb, Hon. Sec. Wanganui Acdirnatisation Society.