Shannon News TUESDAY, MAY 23, 1922.

Shannon News, 23 May 1922, Page 2

Shannon News TUESDAY, MAY 23, 1922.

There is a good deal of sickness in Shannon at present, influenza being the-complaint- in most cases.

Mr Murphy, manager oi the Bank of New. Zealand, who has been visiting the Auckland district, is expected home this week.

A plan of the proposed Soldiers’ Memorial is to be seen in Mr Roach's window. A meeting to consider the same is to be held on Thursday.

A public meeting will be held in the Borough Chambers on Thursday evening, when the plan of the proposed Soldiers’ Memorial will be sudmitted, and the site will be fixed. A lull attendance is requested of the public.

The fourth annual meeting of the North Wellington branch of the New Zealand Society of Civil Engineers was held at Palmerston on Friday, aad was attended by engineers from cJI parts of The district. Mr A. Dinnie, Engineer-in-charge at Mangahao, was elected president for the ensuing terra, and the next meeting was fixed for October, the place being Shannon.

Mr G. Parkhouse left for Westport to attend the funeral of his mother, Mrs G. Parkhouse, on Saturday. It. is only a few months since the death occurred of Mr Parkhouse’s father. Much sympathy is felt for him in his sad bereavement.

A considerable amount of heavy machinery has been taken over the hill of late for the Public Works Department. A lorry containing part of on electric crane broke through the siuface of the road on Saturday at a very narrow part and blocked ai traffic for about three and a-half hours while it washing hauled out.

At about 6 p.m. last evening a buibling owned by Mr G. G. Franks, situated in Ballance Street and used as a garage for his three motor lorries, was noticed to be on fire. The hour being early and many people about, they set to work and extinguished the outbreak, but not before 1 part of the wail and some sides belonging to the lorries were destroyed. Had the fire got a good start nothing could have saved the adjoining building, and our business area would have been again depleted. A clearing sale was held on Monday at Mr Hunt’s farm, Kingston Road. A large number of buyers .were present from all par-ts of the district. Bidding was spirited, especially for dairy cows, which were a fairly good lot, prices ranging from £9 to £l7 10/, the average being about £l2 10/ for the herd. Ewes and wethers were withdrawn, the highest bid being 28/. Springing heifers sold up to £ls and farm horses to £4O. Altogether the sale was a t iccessful one.

We had been on Gallipoli for a fortnight (says a writer in the Bulletin) when four mates of my regiment decided that the chances of a man weing Australia again was one in four So they arranged that none of them was to touch his deferred pay and that the- survivor on reaching Australia. was to receive the lot. Two days later a Jacko bomb claimed the first. In the following month two of the others were wounded; but they played the game, and were back in the line before their wounds were ft oroughly healed. The fourth was then badly gashed by a shell splinter. He was sent away to hospital, but was returned to Anzac Cove two days before the general evacuation, and had hardly set foot on the beach before a shell from Beachy I-lill sent him west. Later a spray of machine-gun bullet's registered for the third man beneath the date palms of El Quatia, That •left only one, who was now entitled to collect. Fate gave him his chance, for a bomb-dropping Taube woundedhim again at Bir el Abd, and on coating out of hospital he was offered a cushy guard job. But he refused to take it, and fell at last within sight of Jerusalem, sniped by a miserable Arab. So Death won the .wager thumbs down.

Tlio balance-sheet of the Canterbury Jockey Club shows a debit balance for the year of £746 4s sd.

Kapiti Island has been declared an area in which opossums may be taken or killed without license.

John Joseph Donovan, a Mastcrton fanner, has been lined £2O for failing' to destroy the rabbits on his property. The Wellington City Council, which was faced with raising the rates or cutting the expenditure down by £58,000 has decided on the latter course.

The Prime Minister stated at Pukekolie on Wednesday that so far only about 20,000 tons of Nauru phosphates had been disposed of in the Dominion.

A feature of the railway traffic just now is the enormous numbers of very large hard-wood poles, for hydroelectric work, being carried, curiously enough, in both directions.

“Some of our experiences in, our work in Central Europe,” said Miss Thorpe in an address at Cambridge, “would be most humorous, if they were less tragic.” This lady reland how they had had great difficulty in persuading a Polish peasant to gree not to keep his cow in one compartment- of the two-roomed cottage erect ed for the man and his wife and family. The Pole was astonished Hi-*-1 there should be opposition to his keeping the cow in one bedroom, and when asked why he did not house it in the old dug-out near by, replied that he had lost three children through lining in that hovel and why should he risk the life of the cow? Miss Thorp explained that q cow was the most valuable possession a Polish peasant could have, and it was a common thing to find a cow hitched up to a bed-post in the bedroom. The tour of Mr Clutha Macken.T?, M.P., in furtherance of the Arthur Pearson memorial fund campaign met with considerable success in the South Island. Timaru has got £SOO of its quota of £BOO through the newspaper columns alone. Geraldine promoted £l5O, £BO of which has been already subscribed. Temuka is arranging to raise £2OO. Latest- report- is that £BOOO lias been promised in Canterbury. Dunedin, Gore and Invercargill have also had successful meetings, and committees are at work endeavouring to raise their quota. The proposal is to z’aise a sum of £45,000 in the Dominion as a memorial to the late Sir Arthur Pearson, the annual income of which will be used to extend the worn of the Jubilee Institute for the Blind, by help and encouragement to the blind in all parts of New Zealanl. The proportion of the fund for Auckland city and province will be about £14,000.

A minor plague of mice is being experienced in Poverty Bay. The rodents have not yet nearly, reached the Rage described by one farmer, who jocularly declared that they were “pulling down--the old and feeble ewes,” but they are doing a good deal- of harm to the crops’, especially among the pumpkins. They have burrowed into a large number of pumpkins, in various paddocks, and allowed the air f o decompose -the vegetables, and rotting pumpkins are to be observed all over the flats. In cases where harvesting has gradually reduced the standing crops, the last remaining patches have been found to be literally alive with field mice and rats, and the only prospect of relief appears to be in a wet winter.

Quite recently a young woman holding a responsible position in an office, left her home in the North Island to spend an extended holiday whli friends on a farm not one hundred miles from Ashburton. Shortly after her arrival the husband of her friend was taken seriously ill, and died after a short illness. During the trouble the young woman in question, with the assistance of -two of the soldier settlers, milked 35 cows night and miming, and during harvest copked P r the men.

“It is likely that tawa, a New Zealand timber, will very shortly replan all imported oak for furniture making purposes,” said Mr Arthur Slid of the New Zealand Sawmillers’ Feu : eration. “It is eminently suitable for this purpose, for it is hard, and has a grain very similar to oak.”

Speaking at Pukekohe on Wednesday afternoon the Prime Minister said: — The burden of taxation was a heavy one, and lie quite realised that such was the case, but the Government could not go back, on the promises made to the soldiers. It was not going to abandon them to the extent of a single shilling. Farmers must realise that one of the principal reasons for increased taxation was the increased value of their land. Ho had much sympathy for the small man with the mortgage, and assured those present that this settler would not be forgotten; if Parliamentarians could do anything to assist him to carry his burden they would do so. A recent return had shown him that no fewer than 10,100 settlers had benefitted by the amendment of last session which gave relief to small mortgagees. The small man had not been forgotten,