GENERAL NEWS.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXII, Issue 9003, 16 November 1907, Page 4

GENERAL NEWS.

la tlie average man and woman growing more absent-minded? If wo are to draw our conclusions on the point from the British PostmasterGeneral’s report for the past year, o;:r answer will he an unhesitating affirmative. During the last post office year there were posted in Britain 400,000 packets having no address whatever, and, including those from outside Britain, 8,600,000 packets with addresses so insufficient that they were nndeliverable. The combined figures show an increase in absent-mindedness of nine per cent as compared with the previous year. Letters nnaddressed or wrongly addressed contained chiefly cheques, to the value of £680,000. ‘The terrible news comes from the western part of the Cherokee nation that a hoy climbed a cornstalk to see how the corn was getting along, and now the stalk is growing up faster than the boy can come down. The boy is clear out of sight. Three men have undertaken to cut the stalk down with axes and save the boy from starvation, but it grows so fast that they can’t hack tw ice in thesame place. The boy is living on nothing but raw corn, and already lias thrown down over four busbies i of cobs. ” ■

Under the heading, “Now Record,” the Scotsman says:—“The Industrial Arbitration Court of New Zealand lias established a now record. At the instance of the Farm Labourers’ Union, 7300 farmers were summoned to appear before the Court all at the same time. Such a b itch of defendants is probably without precedent in legal history. The Court was soon crowded, and about a thousand of the defendants were lacked out. The point at issue was the application for an award for increased wages and improved conditions of labour.”

A visit of inspection was made by

a number of members of the Auck land Agricultural and Pastoral As

sociataiou to the Government experimental farms in the Waikato last week. Some three years ago the Government adopted a suggestion to experiment in top dressing, and it was with a view to seeing how the experiments had developed that the visit was made. The party were especially pleased with what they saw at Waerouga, and what has been done there is suggested as an object lesson of what top-dressing will do on laud of a poor quality. Basic slag was proved to he the best at Waereuga. In the three years lOcwt. of basic slag has been distributed at a cost of £3 5s per acre, and remarkable results have been achieved. At Ruaknra the soil is much richer, but the results of topdressing there are also instructive. Farmers are urged to visit the stations on all possible occasions. A paragraph appearing some weeks ago in the Otago Daily Times has afforded Professor Sale food for much reflection. It concerned a remark by a certain member of the Drainage Board, who suggested how much better it would have been if the ancient Latin authors, instead of writing stupid old books, had told posterity how to make Roman cement. The professor asked if the public would have expected Tennyson or Browning to tell them about the working of elcctricty. As a matter of fact, ho said, a Latin writer had told posterity how to make Roman cement. It was by mixing lime with such volcanic dust as abounded in Now Zealand. The gentleman in point could have got this information from any of the professor’s class. Probably there are isolated cases in which “children arc worked too hard (says the Hawera Star), and we should not like to say a word which would imply approval of such a thing, hut there is no general tendency of the kind on which a charge can fairly ho made. It seems that what the Chief Justice actually said was that people in buying or leasing laud did so on calculations which failed to take due account of the commercial value of the labour of their families, and therefore paid more than the real economic value of the laud. That, even if it is accurate, is quite a different thing to saying or implying that dairy farmers are enrol to their children. It may mean that such farmers are bad business men, hut not that they are greed}', inhuman parents. “If there is anything that needs to ho footed up with au iron plough, ic is modem society,” said the Rev. W. P. Pairclough, when preaching a sermon on hypocrisy. Ho had noticed with particular interest the conviction of 14 Chinamen for gardening on Sunday. Who was it who had laid the information? Was it the man engaged in building a house in Iris spare time, was it the golf player -who, coming to the top of a small Hill had observed the poor Celestials working with the hoe. or was it a party of politicians travelling in a train to inspect the progress of some public work, that had been appalled at this dreadful spectacle of Sabbath desecration?. It was unfair to convict the Chinaman when the law was so flagrantly broken by Europeans.