LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 260, 9 December 1909, Page 2

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

I i\Ve acknowledge the receipt of a handsome calendar for 1910 and a handy l notebook from .Messrs. Tlios. Borthwick I and Sons, of the Waitara Freezing j; Works. | The Waimate Witness reports that a £ serious crack has been discovered in the i> concrete work 01 the Waingougon [♦ bridge, between Mawera and Maiiaia, and £ erected a little over a year ago at a f. cost of £llOO. f> During the course of s'ome remarks at p Cheviot the Hon. T. Mackenzie stated S* tha,t the. -population of the estate had j- grown fjom 110 in 1893 (when the csi 'tatezwas acquired) to 1805 at the pre- & .sent'time. '«®ks , tirte l (l that the special tram . to Foxton for the I had a guarantee of | Messrs. Me&scne and Kaaton. |j jpussengers travelled by the | (Messrs. Messene ' )e lieav,> ' losers Monteflorc has sold his wellgeluing Aristocrat to Gillies, of Palmerston North. was recognised as one of the show-ring horses in TarunaUi, been exhibited by Mr. Monrofewer than 32 times, gaining 2 seconds and 1 third, and 1)93 nPjHpnce been unplaced—a rema'kq able record .—Haw era Star. [j The body of Joseph Maddocks, a married man, aged about 40, who had (1 been living with the Maoris at Pcrinui, m was found in the Waitotara river there ■m' a -Maori named George Tauri, on Sunday last. The deceased was in Wai- • oiara l'i-'l Tuesday, and left for home! on Wednesday, and is supposed to have been drowned whilst crossing the Wal. totara river on his way home. A curious cricket accident occurred In the Hutt ■ Wellington Central junior match at the Hutt Recreation Ground on Saturday. It appears, from the re- „ port of an onlooker, that Gourlay, a ' bowler for Central, sent down a fast ball, which struck Robertson, the Hutt batsman, in tlie face, driving one of his i teeth right through his cheek. Then, as if to add insult to injury, the ball fell and struck the wicket.

"Never trust appearances" is evidently the lesson to be learned from the story of misadventure told by the Hastings Standard. A passenger from that town arrived at a station a few minutes before the departure of his train, and. laving left something behind, handed the parcel he was carrying to a stranger to hold while he went back to his 'hotel for his forgotten property. Returning to the station, he found the obliging stranger missing, and with him the parcel. The only description he could give of the man was that he was about (15 years of age and of average height. Our own aeroplane men, though not Bleriots or Wrights, are moving—a little. At the Palmerston Showgrounds on Tuesday afternoon. Messrs. Barnard Brothers, formerly of Auckland and Dunedin, made three attempts to ascend in their aeroplane. At the third attempt the machine rose ten feet from the ground and progressed about thirty yards, when something went wrong with one of the wings', and the trial had to cease. A horse was used to give the aeroplane a start, but it was found' that sufficient speed could not be got up in that way. The inventors (says The Dominion's Palmerston correspondent) nevertheless expressed themselves' as satisfied with the trial" as far as it went.

[ A piece of siimrt work was performed l'.v Constable O'Xiell late on Tuesday night. The local police had been supplied with particulars of a person "wanted" in connection with alleged jewellery thefts. Constable O'Neill saw some men walking along Brougham street at eleven o'clock and coming closer observed that 'one of them answered to the description of the party "wanted." He immediately took him in charge. Yesterday morning the mail, who is named Diaz de Silva, was charged at' the Police Court wtth the theft of five ladies' rings valued at ,£2O, Ihe property of Noah Cohen, of Wellington on the 15th inst. There are several othor charges pending de Silva, who was employed by Cohen as a canvasser.

A strawberry-grower on the Frankton Road has adopted an ingenious contrivance wherewith to combat the smallbird nuisance (says the Wakatipu Mail). He has made a small wooden wheel which is attached to a shaft, and by means of a jot of water continually revolves. One or more of the spokes of the wheel which are apparently longer than the rest come regularly in contact with a piece of tin, making a noise Similar to that of a person hitting a kerosene tin. To make the contrivance all the more effective a sham man is rigged up alongside. It is keeping the birds away splendidly from a strawberry patch just now, but Mr. H. Angelo, who is the inventor, says that the birds arc so "cheeky" that they may drop down to the little game.