LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 226, 18 June 1915, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

The Scddon statue which has been erected in the Parliamentary ground? will be unveiled on the opening day of Parliament, June 24. When the . reclaimed Eangitaiki Swamp, in the Bay of Plenty, is put down in grass, it will provide anything between 70,000 and 80,000 dairy cattle. The area embraces over 90,000.

The secretary of the Plunket Society acknowledges with thanks three singlets and two pairs of bootees from Mrs. Arthur Wakeman for the distress fund for the wives and widows of soldiers and sailors at the front.

The many friends of Mr. and Mrs. E. Healey will be soxTy to learn that their infant son is at present in Br. Boyd's private hospital suffering from acute pneumonia. Mrs. Healey only recently suffered the loss of her mother, and the deepest sympathy will be extended to her in her present trouble.

During the past week Mellish's comet remained within 25deg. of the South Pols of the heavens, so the simplest directions for finding it at any time of th e night are that the observer should look southward, and about midway between horizon and zenith, just between the Magellanic clouds. The comet was clear to the naked eye.

; A meeting of ladies, in connection with the great Queen Carnival that has been, decided upon, is called by Mrs Arrowsmith for Saturday afternoon at 3 o'clock, in the supper room at thcTown Hall. The chief business, of the meeting,is to elect a committee to work in conunctlon with tho general committee that was appointed at the public meeting on Wednesday evening.

In a sermon at Knox Church, Dunedin, Professor Dickie spoke of "the complacent sentimentalists among ourselves, who sit at ease in their Morris :hairs and say, 'Thor e must be no talk of asphyxiating gases on o-air side,' ■•nd all the time condemn the bravest Mid the most chivalrous of our.choice v*oung men to die a cruel and lingering "oath, such as wa do not willingly inflict Qven upon vermin." "Bill" Coe, the ex-champion shot-put-ter of the world, has returned to New York from.a nine months'' trip to England. He stated that it .would be years before the athletic world would recov. er from the loss of athletes in the awful war. The best athletes of all the countries engaged in hostilities were, Coe said, laying down their lives and if the war lasted much longer there would be no athletes left.

The Aurora Austral is was visible from Taihape last night, just before 10 o'clock, in the southern sky. The heavens were of a brilliant-fiery crimson, shading down to lovely brownish shades just over the hills. Tongues of light, resembling streams of flame, intermittently shot through from the horizon into the brilliant colouring above. This meteoric phenomenon lasted for some time.

A commercial traveller entered a shop in a certain North of England town the other day, and asked for the senior partner. "Colonel is not her e to-day," came the reply. He then asked for the junior partner." "Major is at the front," was the firm response. "Then can I see Mr is undergoing military training at the moment," chanted the responded The traveller rubbed his eyes wearily. "Tell me," he mummured, "am I in a drapei-'s shop or the War Office?" —London Opinion.

] The information forwarded by cable last -week that the French are throwing hot metal on the enemy, as a reply to th« use .of gas, recalled to a resident of Auckland the fact that when he worked at Woolwich 25 years ago a man came from Carlisle one day and laid before the authorities an invention which enabled molten lead to be fired at an enemy. The invention was tried successfully on an 'imitation si&e of a ship, erected for the purpose. In a time the whol-e eraft wag a mass of flames, but the mrtherities would ha' f fi nohing to do with* (the idea, holdink tMiat it-was too barbarous for use in civilisod warfare. .It has remained for •the allebted niost cultured'nation. in EuTliv '■ ' ~■•u - \ -' ■ '■ *"■ • - : " ■' -■...'■' \ ■«". --,■- op& to develop a^d-utilieeran even more horrible of ilJ^s force-fig opponents .t 0 resort to :i*Mps similarly barbarous methods.'; -'.*..-.- .."■

The wholesale -price of butter at Auckland has been advanced from Is 4£d to Is s|d. The retail price is now Is 7d per lb.

"I have received advice from England," says a country correspondent of the "Taranaki Herald," "that the Kaiser's motor car is numbered 2L, that of the Crown Prince being: 2L2."

At a London Court recently the Crown Prosecutor called as a witness John Joseph Peter Paul James Redding. A youth stepped into the witness box, and the Magistrate congratulated him on embracing nearly the whole of the Apostles in his name.

Thanks to modern surgical skill, and the immense improvement in the facilities for quick removal, only 8 per cent, more or less permanently disabled, crippled, or paralysed; the rest, or about* 80 per cent., soon return to the firing line.

In a political contest quaint things ahppen. On Friday a male resident was distributing handbills announcing Sir Joseph Ward's meeting, and seeing Mr tSeadman, the Mayor, talking to two gentlemen in the street, he put one of the "Dodgers" in his hand, saying at the same time, "Come along, and hear Sir Joseph, and bring your two friends." The "two friends" were the Hon W. H. Herries and Mr D. H.

Unless men register promptly, their chances of getting to the front' early are apparently a long way off. According to the programme laid down for reinforcements, it is understood that drafts will go into camp thus:—Eighth, August, 1915'; ninth, October, 1915; tenth, December, 1915; eleventh, February, 19KT. The ardent recruit who joins now has prospects of reaching the firing-line by the spring of 1916', while those waiting till the eleventh draft will probably not go to Trentham camp this year.

In one respect the various politicians who have been making a political canvass of the Taumarunui electorate have had a valuable experience. They have seen this large backblock district in its .natural winter state, i.e., with its roads feet deep in almost unnegotiable mud. Various tales are being told of the feelings of the politicals, and of their execrations of such a condition of things, which had seriously interfered with the extensive programmes they had mapped out. Similar valuable experience befell another lot of politicians, of both sides of the House, in the North Auckland district, during the Bay of Islands campaign.