LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 91, 8 April 1914, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

The ninth annual meeting of members of the Taranaki Farmers’ Mutual Fire Insurance Association is to ho hold in the Theatre , Royal, Lltham, on Thursday, April 30th, at 3 p.m. sharp.

For the next sitting of the Court (on April 17th) twenty-one civil cases (one defended) and four judgment summons cases are set down for hearing. Two informations for driving gigs without lights and one for failing to attend drill will also ho dealt with.

A meeting of the Stratford Hockey Club will he held in Messrs C. and E. Jackson’s office on Thursday at 8 o’clock. This club had a very successful season last year, won the Taranaki championship, and deserve every support and encouragement. The club are sending a seven a-side team to Kaponga on the 23rd April, and all sportsmen will, it is anticipated, do all they can to uphold the reputation of this progressive club.

From time to time, practically in every issue, there appear notices in the Gazette signed by the Secretary to the Treasury, who states that he is instructed by the Minister for Finance to acnowlodge the receipt by the Re-ceiver-General of a specified sum of money from some unknown person as conscience money. In most cases the sum is small—sometimes as low as twopence or threepence—hut in the latest Gazette the good sum of £lO7 is acknowledged.

On Good Friday the annual rally of the Taranaki Endeavour'Union will he hold in Stratford. In the morning there will he a devotional jjnd communion service at 10.30 in the Broadway Methodist Church. The afternoon meeting will commence at 2.30 in the same building, when the topic will he: “The Value of Right Thinking.” Addresses will he delivered in the evening by the President of the Union, and by the Rev. E. Randy. This meeting will he hold in the Regan Street Methodist Schoolroom, and will commence at 7.30 p.m. A collection will he taken up at the afternoon and evening sessions. Xo doubt a large number will respond to the invitation to attend.

The recent strike was dealt with as follows by Mr J. B. Laurenson in his presidential address at the annual meeting of the Christchurch Industrial Association:—“. . . It was foredoomed to failure. It was a distressingly ill-advised attempt by a very small minority to establish a precedent which, if successful, would have enslaved every man and woman in the Dominion in a bondage more cruel and unjust than any state in the history of the Empire. Just in proportion as the strike betrayed the weakness of the Labour leaders, it established once and for all the extraordinary unanimity and solidity of the vast majority of the people. Nothing was so cheering and inspiring as the response to the call for law and order.”

On Sunday week last Messrs B. S. F. Craig (Manaia) and Atkinson (Wellington) succeeded after some arduous exploration in locating Dive’s Lake, situated in the recesses of unfrequented and heavily timbered country on Mount Egrnont. Though only about seven miles from the Mountain House, it took about four and a half hours to get to the lake. The country traversed, says the Manaia Witness, was trackless and afforded no indication of the situation of the hike, the explorers being compelled at frequent intervals to climb trees in order to make sure of their direction, while at the same time, blazing a track on both sides as they advanced. The bush was heavy, the country rough and broken, and movement was in consequence laboriously slow. Frequent attempts have been made by parties to reach the lake, but have always been attended with failure, this being the first successful attempt since the Government surveyors were on the ground. The lake is about ten acres in extent and is embowered in a setting of the most beautiful bush. The party succeeded Mistaking some very good snapshots of the lake.

The Court office will be closed from Thursday evening till the following Wednesday morning. Evidence that the Easter railway traffic has set in was supplied by the fact that there were two engines and two luggage, vans on this morning’s mail train. The executive of the Napier Thirty Thousand Club has decided to run another Mardi Gras carnival with a queen election next Christmas (states the Press Association), and has appointed Mr J. Hopkins, who so successfully ran the first one, to organise it. At last night’s meeting of the executive committee of the Stratford Municipal Band, it was decided, for the purpose of raising funds for new uniforms and instruments, to hold a colossal grand carnival this year. An approximate date was placed at about the end of October or early in November.

Occasionally some bright answers are given by pupils during the nature study lesson (states a writer in the Sydney Daily Telegraph), but it would he hard to beat these answers during a lesson on insects. One boy described a butterfly as “a moth with a blob on the end of its whiskers,” while an eight-yea r-old lad described the difference between a spider and an insect thus;—“A spider has two parts joined together; an insect looks like three parts cut in too.”

As the result of a conefrence between tiie Minister of Education and the University Council (states a Press Association wire to-day from Auckland), a recommendation will be made to Cabinet that the whole area of Government House and grounds and metropolitan ground adjoining be utilised for the new University College buildings, and a new residence to he erected for the Governor. For the latter purpose, one suggestion is to acquire Kilbryde property at Parnell recently purchased by the Harbour Board for £IO,OOO, or another property in the Mt. Eden district.

One of the survivors of the St. Paul, Seyd Ali, an Arab, had a thrilling escape. His story, told in his native Arabic, begins (says the Sydney Morning Herald) at the time when he was shovelling coal in the stokehole. He heard a great crash, and, on looking up, saw volumes of water pouring in upon him. Throwing down his shovel, he made towards the ladder leading to safety, hut was swept off his feet. By chance, ho seized a rung, and climbed to the upper deck, to be precipitated into the sea as the ship went down. Later he was picked up by his rescuers from the Llewellyn. He bewailed the loss of a bundle of clothes and 40s in money, but showed little concern at the death of his brother Arabs, eight in all. “Allah he praised!” was his reply, “they have gone to Paradise to join the Prophet.”

Something in the nature of a mystery has occurred at Otakeho (states the Hawera Star correspondent). Mr F. Dorn recently turned a herd of two-year-old heifers on a paddock of white turnips on his farm, and last Tuesday noticed that some of them were suffering considerable pain, and at once sent for a stock inspector. This officer, when informed that Mr Dorn had been spraying weed-destroyer on a few blackberry bushes, concluded that the stock had been poisoned. At the time of writing seventeen of Mr Dorn’s finest heifers have died, and with a probability or « rev? more. To add to the mystery it should he stated that Mr Dorn, when he had the turnips sown, manured the ground with blood and bone manure. Now the questions confronting the farmers here aro (1) Was this serious loss of stock cans-, ed by the eating of turnips ?; (2) was it caused by the weed-destroyer?; or, (3) was it caused by disease contained in the manure? That this matter should be investigated and traced to its source is beyond question, not only in the interest of Mr Dorn, but in the interest of farmers generally, and the cause of this serious loss of stock should be , given publicity in the hope that it will avert a recurrence of it.

The Hon. Jas Allen’s circular to local bodies inviting sitggestions as to tlie employment in temporary service of young fellows exempted from trainig under the Defence Act, on the grounds of conscientious and religions scruples, came before the Clutha County Council at its meeting on Friday (states the Otago Daily Times). Clutha County councillors have evidently not much faith in the “conscientious” objections. The chairman suggested that the objectors to military training should be set apart as cooks’ assistants, “slaveys,” and general rouse-abouts at the territorial encampments. It was also suggested that they could bo employed at rabbitting or stone-breaking. Eventually, it was agreed that the Minister of Defence be informed that the council had no time to worry about finding employment for the exempted young fellows, but would submit the following motion as a recommendation: —

“That the Minister find some means of employing the 69 religious objectors in acting as servants to the territorials in the camps; further, that the Clutha ]ady ritle shooters will fill the places of the so-called religious objectors, who are too cowardly to defend their country.”