LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVII, Issue 56, 6 July 1915, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

The Zealandie lias arrived at London and the Maknra at Vancouver. The Natal has arrived at Panama.

There is on view at Mr Lamason’s Mart a splendid sample of onions grown hy Mr A l . ,1. Walters, Opunake Hoad. The display reflects credit on the grower and on the seedsman.

In reply to a question in the, Australian Commonwealth House of Representatives, Mr Jensen, Assistant Minister lor Defence said that it was the policy of the Government to replace as early as possible the submarines AEI and AES that had been lost, and the Imperial Government had been advised to that effect.

The claims that certain strains of potatoes are “frost proof" have not been substantiated so far in this State (states the Sydney Daily Telegdaph). However, a Cobargo farmer has exhibited samples of frost-proof potatoes. grown on his farm. The seed was introduced to the district from the Mmmitabel experimental plots. The potato ol nts are growing luxuriantly, flowering and cropping well. The extra heavy frosts this month have not effected the plants in the slightest, plowing their genuine frostresisting properties.

A dance will he hold in the Midhirst Town Hall to-morrow evening. Thirty-three out of the 50 men who left Fiji have been ki I led or wounded. So far as is known, however,

only 14 arrived at the front—43 in Franee and one (killed) at the Dardanelles. * .

Hamburg is dead. From September 1. 1914, to January 1, 1915, four months, only 104 ships entered the port, and 92 left. The daily average for the corresponding period in 1913 was 11! entering, and 100 leaving; with an importation for the four months of more than 5,000.000 tons. Now the factories have put out their fires, the warehouses are shut, the

mills are working no longer, and the docks and sheds are absolutely empty. Offices are closed, misery is evident on all sides, the result of the disaster that has overtaken the shipowners, upon whom nearly everyone in the port depends for his living. But the Germans still remember how to smile, though underneath the smile is hatred —hatred against England.

Writes the Fiji correspondent of the Sydney Daily Telegraph: Wallis Island is a fertile spot, at present under no one’s rule. It is understood that it will go to the French,-, but up to the present there has been no de-

finite annexation. Lately the natives have been giving a good deal of trouble-, and only recently one of the Englishmen living on the island, Mr A. S. Glen, had to leave for Sydney to recuperate after a serious assault by four of the Wallis Islanders. The punishment for offences in the island is a farce. There is no prison there, and the only punishment means that the delinquents have to report themselves three times a week to the French President.

Much has been said of the dearth of some varieties of vegetable and flower seeds owing to the cutting off of supplies from Germany. In this connection the Queensland Government has received through the Agent-General in London a letter- from a British firm, complaining of the deeply-rooted idea that good seeds necessarily came from Germany. The writers declare that a large proportion of the allegedly German seeds, which were supposed to carry extra merit because of their origin, had actually been first imported into Germany, attd then exported as German grown. Some of the seeds had been grown in Great Britain, and were then sent to British colonies as the true German article.

In referring to munitions and the question of big guns, the military correspondent of the New Zealand Times writes as follows:—“What the future will bring forth remains, of course, to be seen. There is one indication. It is that a gun has been invented, able to throw with safety shells of turpinite, the deadly gas which, on being liberated, is said to kill everything within a hundred yards. The danger hitherto has been from vibration, which in the ordinary gun is said to be able to burst the turpinite shell before the gun can deliver it. But we see hy the “Popular Science Monthly” that a gun has been invented and is being largely made in France and England which can throw this class of shell with perfect safety. It is possible that when Lord Kitchener told the House of Lords, some weeks ago, that the Allies must retaliate in the matter of asphyxiating gas, he had his eye on this invention. When the great effort of the Allies in the West is made, wo mav hear more of the matter.”