HARVEST.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 354, 27 March 1889, Page 3

HARVEST.

With throbbing heart and tearful eye. 1 watched "the springtime fleeting by, T saw the snowdrop at its birth Felled, by spears of rain, to earth ; The iris burst her emerald sheath, And show the amethyst beneath ; v The.painted .tulips fade and close Before the glory of pho rose ; 'And now down field* of sunburnt grass 1 see the withering rose leaves pass : And night by night, and day by day, The life of Summer ebbs away. I sco the granaries overflow, , The mellowing orchards bending low, ' 0 God ! my heart in awe and fear Looks back xipon Thy perfect year. Thy bounty covers all the lands, 1 lift in praj er my empty hands. Of till the Summer of my life My harvest is but sin and strife. Oil ! could these tears, like April rain. Make moist my heart's hard soil agaiu, And stir the seeds which Thou didst sow, Oh! never would 1 they cease to flow. Could prayer but melt this ice away, Oh ! never would 1 cease to pray ' Till Thou in morcy. Lord, didst bring Into lny soul a second Spring. Oil ! what a rich reward and sweet To lay its harvest at Thy feet. 4 Boston Transcript,'

Inventors at Work.— The rate al which , the inventive genius of the mother country appears, to be at, work is quite startling. In the first number of the Illustrated Official Journal {Patents) a list is set out ot applications' which were made for patents from the Ist *to"the sth of January, and they mount to no fewer than 251; They come in at the rate of fifty a day, and deal with almost every pha&e of our life.- Machinery has of course, a prominent place, butwe havcalso inventions for such domestic purposes as preventing accidents to the hands of persons ( engaged in cutting bread, the simultaneous opening of envelopes and extracting of letters therefrom, and for preventing children looking at' their hands in'playing the piano. An impi'oved toothpick, a new cut of gloves, a combined whip and walking stick, a new receiver for catching grease from candlestickf?, a sanitary ink, and a medicated pillow for inducing sleep, are a few more samples of the little aids to ' civilisation which our' inventors are always supplying us with. It would be difficult ,to say how 'many or how few in the whole list will hit the public taste ; but sometimes ,an inventor of one, of these apparently insignificant! but commonly used ■ articles finds that he ljas " struck ile." ' As evidence of the revival of the native ■ flax industry, the Lyttelton Times notes that ,a local firm have seven or eight separate ; orders for machinery for the preparation of the fibre of the Phornimvi tenax on hand. The increase in .fche demand for the fibre is considered to be due to the fact that [ most of the Sisal fibre in the market is now f employed in the manufacture of binder twine, and Phqrmimn tenax is used for the . purposes for which Sisal was formerly required.