GENERAL NEWS.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXI, Issue 8734, 7 February 1907, Page 4

GENERAL NEWS.

An offer of £130,000 for a vacant piece of ground in Fifth Avenue, New York, has been ifSused by its owner, Miss Josephine Wendel, an elderly lady, who is related to the Astors. The reason given is that the spot at present serves as a playground for her pet dog Trixie, and if it were sold the dog would have no open space where it could take its exercise.

'• Married people's handwriting often grows to be so much alike that you cannot tell the husband’s from the wife’s,” said a woman at the Southwark County Court in trying to explain the similarity between an order which she said was written by her husband and a receipt written by herself. The judge refused to accept her theory.

It has been figured out that in 1866 it required 250 hours of hard labor to grow 500 bushels of potatoes. Now machinery has reduced the hours to 85. Similarly the hours of work to produce 50 bushels of shelled corn and cut the fodder have been reduced from 235 hours in 1855 to 31 hours now, and to grow 50 bushels of wheat the labor has been reduced from 160 hours in 1830 to about eight hours now. Great is the machine.

11 The prehistoric horse did not inhabit America, Australia, or the islands of i tke Pacific. He was an inhabitant of S the eastern continent, and is known to | hare existed in Western Europe and | the British Isles. Fossil remains of [ this horse have been discovered in the | caves of England, mingled with the I bones of the elephant, rhinoceros, ox, S and tiger. That was at a time when j the vegetation of Northern Europe | was of a tropical character.. I The number of brick, stone and co n I crete dwelling houses in the colony inj creased between the two last censuses {from 7517 to 8359, a rate of 11 per cent. Houses built of wood or iron increased from 153,945 to 178,551, the rate, 10 per cent, being somewhat higher than that which obtained for brick and stone dwellings. These figures do not include huts. As the population only increased 15 per cent it would seem as if the lack of houses were being rapidly made up. Landowners in the northern part of Taranaki, says the News, do not seem to be concerned about tke growth of that noxious weed ragwort, judging by the crops one secs in many places. If farmers don’t take steps to eradicate the weed, or tho Departmental officers don’t get a hustle on, there will be little elec hut ragwort on a portion of the country before long. The Gladstone correspondent of tho Wairarapa News states that tho Tupurupuru estate, owned by Mr W. C. Buchanan, has been brought within the £50,000 limit, by the disposal of a section at one end to Mr Archibald Clark, late manager of Tupurupum station and a piece at the other end to Messrs Buchanan Bros., nephews of the owner. The last-named are building a 14roomed residence and a woolshed, and Mr Clark will also erect a residence. When the San Francisco Board of Education issued the order expelling Japanese from the ordinary public schools and providing a separate " school for Orientals ” under 109 .Japanese were receiving their education in San Francisco schools. The county of San Francisco covers 43 square miles. The Japanese are scattered all over this area, and it is a physical impossibility for the greater number of the Japanese children to go to school in the single wooden shanty which the Board of Education provided.