LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 344, 21 March 1910, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Boy Scout patrols are being formed in Eltham. The Veterans' Association is arrayiging for a dinner on the night of the 28th inst. The State Guaranteed Advances Board has declined the Eltham Borough Council's 1 application for a loan for tT ■ erection of a municipally-owned gasworks. The temporary depression under which Wellington is suffering comes as a boon to carrying companies. During the boom-time in the capital city large numbers of country people and Australians exploited the city, and are now retiring whence they came. At present there are more empty houses' in Wellington than for many years, and a vast number of furniture sales' in auction rooms. Thfere is, however, every sign that Wellington wilj regain its stability, the exodus merely representing the departure of people who had no intention of becoming permanent residents.

The speed at which motor care are i driven from the Mountain House formed the subject of comment at the Moa Road Board meeting on Saturday. The fore-1 man on the Egmont' Road in his re-1 port stated that he saw a motor car come down from th e Mountain House driven at a speed very dangerous to' the public, and asked whether mo"soi j cars had not to be driven at a regula- j tion speed. Several members referred j to the fact that motor cars on that | road were a menace to the public, tcje j member said they travelled like i "greased lightning" almost every day,' and went from the Mountain Hous'c to j BeW Block in about three-quarters of j an hour. Members were unanimously of opinion that it was time something was done to check the danger. The chairman undertook to enquire into : e! necessary steps to be taken re making J by-laws to regulate the speed of cars, j

j Questioned at Invercargill as to whe- i | ther the leasehold members expected to | get a big backing in the House, Mr J Hanan, M.P., replied that in his opin-, i ion the Radicals, taken as a whole, practically represented the debating (power ]of the House. The proposed campaign I had to be abandoned because some of j the men could not get awa v from their business, while others' could not ahf -r the time that would be entailed. To cover the ground properly, and imrtieuj larly the country districts, would mean | an expense of something like £4OO or £500.. Though offers of financial assistance had been received, and it j seemed certain that the amount required would be obtained if a fund | were opened for the purpose, yet so i much time would be occupied this that there would not be time left for ; the campaign to be fully carried out, before Parliament assembled. Refer- 1 ring to the real aim of the Radicals, j Mi' Hanan said that there was an im-, pression that their policy was in the ; direction of taking away the small : freehold from every man. That was i Snot so, and in order to make it' plain ! the conference had stated the matter plainly in the following conclusion:—j (e) That it affirms the principle that there shall he' no interference with existing leasehold or freehold titles ex- j cept where, required for settlement or i other public purpose. . j Direct from Stop Island, Dusky Sound, i the freezer craft Gisborne arrived at the 1 Bluff on Thursday evening. Mr Bragg," a passenger, reports (says the Bluff cor- ] respondent of the Otago Daily Times) , having taken soundings around the Waikare wreck, marking from six fathoms and a half up to eight fathoms. The, propeller end of the vessel is resting on j a bank of sand. When ma King observations he could see distinctly one blade ' slink deep down into the sand. Further along there was exposed to view a j savage-looking tear in the bottom—open-! mouthed and ragged at the edges. 'Te | estimates it to lie about 2ft in length. I After skipping some distance along the j bottom the tear^ again makes its appearance in another rent of about IBin. : These rents are estimated to be about | 4ft. from the keel—between it and the 1 rolbng chocks. These two holes are un-' doubtecllv tTie primary cause of the j "atastrophe. Mr Bragg's idea is that if i the . wreck could be warped upon an.' even keel there would not be much diffi-; culty in floating the vessel off. Public j interest in the possibilities of raising the ' Waikare has* been considerably en-! hanced by the fact that the services! of the deep-sea. diving expert, Mr Wil- j liam Ma.v of Afalbournc. have been secured. It will he remembered that Mav i recently accomplished a diving record j of 180 ft, a performance that has never j •been equalled by any other diver in the ! world. It was sfav who removed the sflceie from the ill-fated Catherton in Torres Strait many years a«?o. and still ' more recently performed similar work ! a* the'ivTwk of the Elinsramite on the Three K'nes. 5 competent staff "Will accompany Mr May to the wreck, and it wil] then be seen whether it will be ; a ouestion of salving the earcro or re-, ! floating the Waikare as a whole. i

YDFNTfi A'EW PLYMOUTH.—Xow is TfWr chnvc to sppurp n snmr looking tai'or-flii='h»d. hnyod «uif f nv Ymir<v!f. Most_ of Oi? wll-drxsrerl ron pe" in Nm* Plymouth n-pt f],pi r - suit® TV KVti Wn'™ Inst, finisliH a lot of youths' suits in nlnjr, , kmVkrrs. tmeklp and strap knHvPrs. and i bntton-knpprt Kniekcr. madp from fi lP TOOS* fasWonnMp «Wlv *ivt finial„wl in j tin-ton stv'p. irifh "-nll-fift;,,,, shoiil<l/>rs nnd rrnO'l-fiftiTinr Slits wp hnvp "Ihem from 29s h. <nlo fid —THE KASa

An important British expedition, which is being organised privately, will leave England at the end of this month ior Western and Xortu-Western Mongolia, a region concerning which practically nothing has been written in tile English lamruage. The expedition will consist of Mr. M. P. Price, Mr. J. H. Miller, and Mr. D. Carruthers. The following information received 'oy a person at Te Kuiti will convey an idea of the possibilities of a township subsequent to the extension of the railway:—''Te Kuiti is progressing rapidly. There are two banks here, two dentists, two doctors, plenty of lawyers, land agents, surveyors, etc. Quarter-acre sections in the main street are selling at £IOOO each." Te Kuiti is on the Main Trunk line, and was at one time the terminus of the railway from Auckland." lo call a man "Amy Bock" may be regarded as insulting." At Wellington last week one waterside worker charged another with using insulting words to him, apd it appeared from the evidence that defendant was in the ha'oit of calling complainant "Amy Bock," which complaint resented. The Magistrate held that to persistently call a person a name associated with u woman now undergoing a long term of imprisonment would constitute an insult. He fined defendant £l, with £2 costs.

It is not every man who has the distinction of reading a notice of his own death in the newspaper, says the Timaru Post. Such was the distinction of a man, who was fined 5s or 24 hours' imprisonment ford runkenuess in the Magistrate s Court last week. Some two months ago, this man, who had been harvesting, disappeared suddenly from Banks Peninsula, and his disappearance was enshrouded in mystery. Enquiries were made, but the solution of the mystery could not be found and the man, having been seen wandering near the brink oi some dangerous cliffs, it was concluded that the sea had claimed his body. Sis loss was mourned and the death recorded in a Christchurch paper but-ft Timaru the man re-appeared. He was arrested lor drunkenness, and said to a police officer that his death notice was the first he liad heard of having been lost.

Sixty years ago one Moses Rees made a will in the Old Country leaving his property, now valued at about £7OO, to his relatives. He had two brothers in New Zealand, one of whom (George) leit his property to the Wanganui Education Board (£3000) for secondary education purposes. Recently Messrs Gifford, Moore and Beale, solicitors, of Palmerston North, were (says the Feilding Star) instructed by the'heirs of the other brother (Joseph) to endeavor to recover the value of the estate. They asked the Board to share half the costs, but the Board declined to embark on a '"fishing expedition," and subsequently consented to pay half the costs out of what property was recovered. It now turns out that owing* to tlu; peculiar '•> '■ iu force in England at the 'time bequests of real estate for charitable purposes are void, so Joseph Rees' heirs will get the lot. "Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Sellars!" The named looked quite commonplace on the Mokoia's outward list of passengers for Tahiti and San Francisco. It did not invite introspective analysis as to the personality it shaded, and yet the shipping people chuckled audibly throughout oil Wednesday as they picked menames out of a local paper, and rubbed their Bands gleefully as the Mokoia imparted without fuss or flurry on her long ocean voyage. It transpired that '"Mr. and Mrs. Sellars" were in reality Field-Marshal Lord Kitchener and his suite, Homeward-bound. He had given strict Instructions that *his movements must not be divulged for the reason that he wanted to take his departure without any demonstration on the part of the warm-hearted Wellington public; so all who knew were sworn to secrecy, and others only knew that "Mr. and Mrs. Sellaxs" were off on a trans-Paciiic journey. There was a small crowd to see the Mokoia off, and these discovered at the eleventh hour that Lord Kitchener was to be a passenger (and was not going south as reported), but it was too late to spread the news, and the FieldMarshal obtained that respite he so keenly desired.—Dominion.

Not many New Zealanders, perhaps, have ever heard that seventy years ago the whole of the South is,and was sold to an Australian for less than £4OO. The story is told in a Sydney paper in an article on William' Charles Wentworth, one of the New South Wales pioneers who was responsible for carrying the Constitute Bill through the British Parliament. That was in 1855, and it was fifteen years earlier that for the paltry sum mentioned, and some prospective annuities to certain New Zealand chiefs, Mr. Wentworth secured the whole of the Middle Island ox New Zealand and 200,000 acres in the North Island. Sir George Gipps disallowed the bargain, and the claimant was heard at the Bar of the Legislative Council. A Court of Claims held that, in 1539, the British Government had made New Zealand a dependency of New South Wales, consequently the alleged purchase was too late to be valid. An Act was passed ousting the claimants and forbidding persons to form colonies without the consent of the Crown. Had Mr. Wentworth's claim remained good, he would have held the worms record as a landlord, having in possession more of the earth's surface than any other private individual.

| At a recent meeting of the Japanese I Peace Society, Count Okuma delivered i some noteworthy utterances. He said j (as imported in the Japan Times) that I in the past those who had advocated : peace had proved the very destroyers or ! P ea ?e. Napoleon 111. convoked the Peace Conference, and three years later Europe was .plunged into a war for which he was blameable. The Czar promoted the first Peace Conference at The Hague, and nine years later the RussoJapanese war took place. Since IS7O the armament of the Powers had yeen steadily increasing in strength, and now, after the Russo-Japanese war, the naval preparations of the Powers were on an unparalleled scale. The most peace-lov-ing nation in the world, America, was being forced by others into making a large expansion in her armaments. ?Another strange fact," Count Okuma continued, in dealing with wiEit he described as obstacles to peace, "was, candidly speaking, the position of the Japanese, or, rather. Asiatics, in the world. The racial prejudice against the people, even after their nation's attaining to the rank of a first-class Power, was." the Count feared, "a cause of future disturbance of peace." If the Japanese were treated persistently with tTie prevailing antipathy, and the pressure of other Powers were continually bearing on them as at the present, the Japanese may be obliged to apDeal to actual force, and claim the riglft position due to them. "It was English oppression," he concluded, "that cause American independence."

The telephone to Dawson's Fall is now an accomplished fact. Mr. Wilkie received the first message from the caretaker last week.

Classes in wool - classing arc to be established in the Hawera district. The Education Board has appointed a second instructor to meet the demand for these classes.

Diseases among root crops are par# ticularly pronounced this year throughout Hawera district. The'potato blight wrought much mischief, a blight also attacked the tomato plants und shrivelled them up long before they ordinarily should have ceased bearing, and lately turnip crops have come under a disease that rots thpm away wherever it puts in an appearance.—Star. A young man named William Bell, who come* n-om Xormanby (Hawera), and was employed at the Freezing Works, was knocked down .by a sheep in the race the other day, and on Monday he developed serious symptoms, so much so that he was ordered to be removed to the hospital. Yesterday m condition was reported to be critical, his spine having been injured. Since the above was put in type word has reached us that the unfortunate young man died in the hos.pital last night. 1' riday's Waitara Mail.

"It is certainly ratfier a one-sided arrangement,' said Mr. Marfell at Thursdays meeting of the Tarana.ci Exeeutive of the Farmers' Union. He referred to the price paid for lambs bv a local firm in his district. This he said, .mil t.n '- n J ,riee . per lb ft ' T lambs 3fii) wc >Sht, while for lambs over 361b and up to 401b the firm paid a Sfl P ,"w lb - The was that the lighter lambs, though of simitl „ qUa ' ,t - V > the iarmer more money than the heavier ones. Mr. MarStar C ° nSldenHl th ' S harsh treatment ~

Discussing the utility of wireless installations on vessels, Sir James Mills managing director of the Union Steam .P Com puny, observed to an interviewer at Auckland that the insti turn placed on the Makura to the order t the company was proving of good vei e LrS me H employed in the Vaneounf „r! I ' • e I UI P ment found f e reat use m communicating with the Hawaiian Islands and the Jas" of fowards' U - WRS h T d to makft a move towards equipping the intercolonial V e s . p at an early date, as soon as the Governments concerned took steps to esteblish coastal stations.

Z sprun o u P On tbe mem- , hers of .lie Eltham Drainage Board on Saturday, when the clerk (Mr. W. J. Tristram) put forward an unusual suggestion, namely, that his salary should be reduced (says the Argus). The position was that when a lot of extra work was caused connection with loans raised by the Board, the clerk's salary •was increased firom £25 to £4O a year * that loan moneys have been expended and there is comparatively little work to do the clerk thought that fits salary snould be reduced to the old figure. The chairman said it was something unique for anvone to ask for ft reduction of salary. He had never heard or such a thing before; it was probably a record for New Zealand. He recognised that there was less work to do now but he had thought of luting the clerk s present salary go on to the end of the year, as Mr. Tristram had done work m connection with the loans for . wh;ch ho had not been paid. The Board ajrteed to accept the clerk's -"uggestion and reduce the salary to £25 as from Ist April, whteh is the the next financial voar. °

! Writing to the Rangitikei Advocate, Mr W._ A. Ellis says:—"The turnip j blight is what is engaging the attention* of and puzzling most farmers just at present. I think no one seems to know : the cause of it, or whether the recent i rain will cheek or favour it. Now it 1 has occurred to me that possibly I nave ! a c ' ue - I have 15 acres consisting of i V/ 2 acres eacli of Imperial Green GSobe j and White Pomeranian. Both have had the same amount of manure and cultii vation, and were drilled within a day I of one another, January 7 and 8. I far the latter are not affected by the j blight, and the doing well 1 , while th« ; former have it, though not very bid. My idea is that the Imperial Gre,>n Globes, being a winter turnip, •ft-erfe sown a bit too early, and could not stand the two little spells oi aTy ; weather we liad. This theory may, of course, be quite upset by some other person's experience. I may say that I have had good crops of the I.G.G. when drilled very late up to April 4 last year. The White Pomeranian is a quick grower of better quality than the Mammoth purple top, and suitable for early sowing." Mr. J. Duncan, one of Marlborough's M.P. s, is pushing local industries in his district. He is now moving in the mat. ter of sugar beet, and as the result of a conference with the committee of the Marlborough A. and P. Association a resolution has been sent to the Government asking them to establish an experimental sugar beet station at the Seddon Nursery; to supply the seed and manure for the experiments, and to send over an officer to supervise the experiments and ta-ke charge or supplies, etc., for testing. At the conference referred to a reference was made to a statement by the Victorian Minister for Agriculture that an officer of his department has already secured guarantees from 300 farmers who are now preparing their land, and will next September plant out a total of from 1000 to llO&acres oj .beets, in areas from two to five acres each. The rate to be paid for the beet is 16s per ton, in addition to the return of the farmer's share of the beet pulp. The cost of iMsing an acre of sugar beet is estimated at €5 15s. The gross returns for a ten-ton crop of beet at lfis per ton amount to £8; while in addition there has to be reckoned five tons of pulp at 2s, equalling 10s, and three tons of tops and leaves at Is. or 3s; giving a total or £8 13s, or £2 lfis net profit per acre. This, as stated above, is on (he basisof a ten-ton crop, while in the district in question yields of 15, 20, and 25 tons have been obtained, and in one exceptional instance as much as 35 tons. A test parcel, Read advertisement on front page, top right-hand corner, of this issue. The biggest, brightest and best 10s worth you ever bought.—A' lv K

15s IN THE POUND, and this in the face of the recent advance in leather! Don't fail to securebargains like these: Youths' strong shooters 6s 1 Id, men's shooters 7s fid, •women's two-strap chrome shoes 5b lid, girls' lace chome boots 5s lid, voutfis'' school boots (very stron? chrome with steel-sluffged' soles) 10s Ad, men's sewnfoalmorals lis Cd, men's chrome balmorals (riveted soles) 10s 6d. men's heavy watertights 14s 6d; men's splendid chrome shooters 13s 6d; men'* genuine -welted and standard screwed" boots in box calf, glace kid, and willow calf, some with extra strong double? soles, 10s 9d pair, worth 25a,