LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 354, 4 April 1910, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

♦ It is stated that at least three volunteers who attended the Kitchener encampment at Johnsonville are at present suffering from fever in New Plymouth. Mr. W. A. Collis, chairman of the North Egmont Mountain House Committee, is informed that the telephone wire to the house was broken in at least a score of places by falling limbs /during the gale.

The Whiteley Sunday School anniversary services yesterday were well attended. The scholars sang special hymns from specially prepared hymn-sheets, and sang right heartily. The Rev. J. d. Chapman was the officiating minister. In the Police Court on Saturday morning, before Mr. T. C. List, J.P., a young man named Fred Lindsay Backhouse was further remanded till the 11th inst. on a charge of having forged the signature of A. Cameron to a receipt for £2. The Fourth Wellington (Taranaki) Battalion will be concentrated at Sentry Hill on the afternoon of Thursday, 14th instant, for inspection by the' officer commanding the district, LieutenantColonel Bauehop, C.M.O. Field manoeuvres will take place, and a meetimr of the Officers' Club will be held at »\v Plymouth in the evening. The men who were engaged in forming tracks on the mountain recently are not anxious for a further spell of the work. One hears stories of men lost on the mountain for a couple of nights without food, and of two men, with lees swollen and almost useless on account of the heavy and unaccustomed travelling on foot from Tnglewood to the Mountain House and thence to Bell's Falls, giving up the struggle: whilst their mate, a man who onlv recentlv arrived in Xew Zealand from the Old Country, went on until he got some food from the house and returned with it to the famished mei.

The local Justices will meet this mora- i ing for the purpose of revising tie Jury j List. I

The buildings for the ueiv freezing works at Waingawa (Wairaiapa) are to cost £18,070; the machinery contracts are not yet let. The total liabilities of the company are estimated tu run into £37,000, and the capital available is £38,000.

Chicken-pox and whooping cough have been making their preseneee felt in some of the country schools in the Wellington district. The two ailments named have reduced attendances at many schools in the Manawatu and Wairara'pa, and Pahiatua children have been the latest sufferers.

Just now there are 2500 boxes of butter and 4300 cases of cheese stored with the West Coast Refrigerating Co., Patea, awaiting Home shipment, in addition to about 1000 boxes of butter retained in store to'supply the demand of local markets. The supplies are falling notticeably, the daily income of cheese now being 420 cases." A start has been made with the work of refloating the dredge "Tommy King,'' which broke from her moorings at the harbor during the recent gale, and sank in the eastern berth. The little vessel has now been placed on an even keel, but little can be done in raising her until strong wire hawsers are secured. The Taranaki Petroleum Company will be asked to lend theirs for the 'work. The diver was down yesterday, and he reports that half the" hull is "embedded in the sand. The work will be resumed to-day.

The .Rev. J. G. Chapman, preaching last night at the Whiteley Sunday School anniversary services, took for his text the well-known command, ''Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." The tenor of his remarks was the value of training as compared to coercion. He laid great stress upon the need .for care in dealing with a stronsj-willed yhild. He had often, he said, heard a father declare his intention of breaking a boy's will. "Better," he remarked, ''to break his neck than to break his will." A novel horse race, a 50-mile walkine match, for £SO a-side, between Mr. C. It Elisor's Spider and Mr. C. O. T. Rutherford's Deceived, took place in Canterbury recently. The journey was over a .pack track from Mr. Rutherford's homestead at the Peaks to the Lakes Station and back, an hour being allowed before the return. Mr. Elisor's horse covered the 50 miles in 6 hours 37 minutes, winning by 58 minutes. This is believed to be a record. Both horses ■are noted journey horses, and the match excited considerable interest in the district.

A piece of senseless .blackguardism was enacted in Vivian-street during the early hours of Sunday morning. An iron gate, weighing about a couple of hundredweights, was lifted from Dr. McCleland's, a double wooden gate from Mrs. Bayly's, and a wicket gate from the private hospital. The mere lifting of a gate is not a very serious piece of mischief, for the larrikin usuallv "plants" it close by. But the actors in this nocturnal escapade went a bit too far when they heaved the whole of the gates over the parapet of the bridge into the Huatoki. A joke is n joke, but this is going much too far. There's a lively time in store for somebody when the secret leaks out.

It is announced in Country Life that a very interesting experiment is to be tried in the Blagdon reservoir, near Bristol—the introduction into it of a targe number of trout from New Zealand. It is pointed out (writes a London correspondent) that this is a reversal of the earlier policy of sending out 'English trout to the Antipodes, where tliev have grown to such gre-at size in pome of the large rivers and lakes. Tt will bo curious to watch whether the race of New Zealand rriants will hn'-e th" effect of lwrnnjincr the size of the native 'took. Doubt is expressed as to whether this will hanpen—or for more than a generation ahead—'because the growth of fish is largely dependent on the food sunplv. But should it ever so far succeed, an interesting result will have been arrived at. The Blagdon reservoir is already ft well-stocked water. The editor of the New Idea has discovered the secret that the up-to-date magazine must not merely be kept up to high standard of literary excellence, but must be constantly changed in form of presentation. Consequently, the current issue of the New Idea—the popular woman's magazine—for April is completely reorganised from the cover, which carries an extra color, and a daring design of a pair of quaint babies, to the free patterns which are given away with every issue. The re-arrangement makes the magazine more artistic and more coherent—in a word, more readable. Departments that have been conducted for years we seem to notice for the first time, and great pains have been taken | to present the special illustrated fea- j turos in the most attractive manner possible. Add to this that the quality of the paper is to be improved throughout, and that the advertisements are now separated from the reading matter.

The Carterton railway station presented a remarkable scene last evening (says the News of Tuesday). The train as usual was late, this time nearly an hour and a-half behind time, and a number of passengers for Masterton \rere on the platform, most of them young men. A News reporter counted sixteen or seventeen who were more or less unUer the influence of liquor, and most of them had a bottle of beer in eacn pocket of their coats. Several were carrying handbags, and judging from the sounds of breaking glass when one • was dropped accidentally, those also contained liquor. There was no rowdyism, and nothing that the police could take cognisance of, except, before a policeman made his appearance on the scene, some very lurid language—not used in anger, but merely tn ordinary friendly conversation. The sight of so many young men, apparently of respectable character, shamelesslv strolling! about with beer bottles sticking out of their pockets, and acting in the semiidiotic way peculiar to half-intoxicated i persons, was truly a deplorable one, and most unusual in this town. We noticed i that there were several others in a simi-' lar condition in the train when it arrived, also bound for Masterton, and wnen the train reached there and emptied its human freight on to the Masterton platform, the spectacle must have been one to make the angels weep. ,

For Influenza take Woods' Great Peppermint Cure. Never fails. 1/6, 2/6. People who hare once u*ed Chamberlain's Colic, Cholera and Diarrhoco Remedy always keep a bottle in the house. It is the most successful remedy in the world for the cure of pains in the stomach, oolie. cholera and dysentry. This remedy has cured more pain and suffering than any other medicine ever manufactured. 4

Before ill* Paris Courts last month Mr. Clayton Straw bridge, a 'Philadelphia millionaire, was awarded £OOOO damage against a local automobile company. Last year Mr. Straw bridge, accompanied. by his wife and his stop-daughter, hired an automobile from the defendants, with, the ina-mion oi taking a trip to Biarritz. He was to pay £7 a day. Oa tho way thither a portion of the steeringgear gave way. The ear, becoming uncontrollable, ran into u ditch and capsized. The millionaire had both hi« legs broken, and his wife and stepdaughter received severe injuries. The defendants sought to shirk responsibility, pleading that if there w ere a defect in the car it was due to carelessness on the part of the manufacturer. Tho Court refused to admit the plea, and held that tiie chaulleur, who was a servant of the defending company, should have satisfied himself that everything ■was in order previous to setting out on his journey.

Professor White, speaking at the annual meeting of the Duncdin Technical Classes' Association, said that while it might be a wise thing to launch forth in this Dominion into compulsory military training, it was more important for the life of our youth, and for their progress and advancement, that our lads should have more intellectual and industrial training. Ho would like to see the Education Department taking steps to make it compulsory for all youths to kave a certain definite training in physical exercise and gymnastics one night e week. That, he though, was an essential step in the life of our young people. But physical training was not everything, and he would like to see it made compulsory that youths should go to the technical classes and take one class. Tt might he made compulsory for all youths between the ages of 15 and 18 years to spend two hours a week, to be. taken out of their leisure time, 1n getting a sound training at the school. We was sure that it would tend to the improvement and elevation of our social and industrial life more than military training would. That there are any amount of false impressions about the Commonwealth may be seen from the following extract from a French text-book on Australia: "What strikes tho European traveller most on arriving in this antipodal country is to see the order of nature to which he has been accustomed completely reversed, thus, the seasons arc inverted: January marks the middle of summer, and July the middle of winter. Midnight here is noon there. When it is fine in Australia the barometer falls; it rises to announce bad weather. Our longest day is in June; with the Australians it is in December. The heat blows from the north, the cold from' the south; it is on the summits that the atmosphere is warmest. The same contradiction exists in everything. The swans are black in New South Wales, and the eagles white; the bees have no sting, the birds no song. The wolf appears in the day, and the cuckoo is heard only at night. There are some quadrapeds that have a beak and lay eggs, whilst others are provided with a sack to carry their young. The cherries have no stones. The pears that here are mellow seem there to have been carved in oak. The trees for the most part give no «ha.ie. because their leaves are turned <vl2*'.visc to the light, instead of being flat.