LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 389, 14 May 1910, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Monday, being Whit Monday, will bo observed as a bank holiday.

The season for young lambs is some 'way off yet, but about a score of tiny ■Southdown lambs may be seen at Mr. Frank Sahvay's farm. Bell Block. Death of King Edward Vll.—Memorial services will be held, in St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church to-morrow at 11 o'clock and 7 o'clock.—Advt.

Friday, 3rd June, being the inniversary of the birthday of Kin.' Ceovp; V., will be observed as a public holiday in the Government offices throughout the Dominion.

As the Government has proclaimed Friday next —the day of the late Kind's funeral—a public holiday, it will not b>! necessary for shopkeepers to observe the statutory half-holiday on Thursday next.

Mr. Newton King advises that at Mr. E. D. McLennan's sale of Jerseys at Papakura, sold in conjunction wit hthe New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency Company, prices were very high, the top price being 114 guineas for a heifer, the buyer being Mr. Charles Clarke, the well-known Taranaki breeder.

There is (remarks the Trade Review) a good supply of money in the open market, though we .hear that there is some paucity of sums of £SOOO or £IO,OOO or over. Advances on freehold security are readily obtainable for smaller amounts at from ato a l /* per cent. We anticipate that the returns to the end of the season's true year—to 30th September—will yield still more satisfactory results. The Gazette notifies the acceptance of complete specifications of G. H. Lirnlstrom, of Fitzroy, for an improved process of tanning. The improved process of tanning hides, consists in subjecting the hides to an initial unhairing, cleaning, sen ting, and washing treatment, and in then treating them to a solution of alum, common salt, and pyrophosphate of sodium in water, and to the subsequent treatment of a mixture of such solution with a solution of gambier and quebracho in water, substantially as specified. For many years the petition of Mr. Joshua Jones, praying for compensation for dispossession of a large tract of land on the left bank of the Mokau river, Taranaki, has been regularly brought before Parliament. So familiar is the claimant and his claim that he is better known as "Mokau Jones." He took up the land' under a lease which was rendered irregular by fresh legislation, as a consequence of which it passed to other hands. The Government has now decided to appoint a Royal Commission to enquire into the claim. The non-expenditure of various grant? in .'his electorate was a subject ir.on which Mr. Hine; M.P. for Stratford, interviewed the Hon. R. McKenzie (Minister for Public Works) at Wellington on Wednesday. Mr. Hine explained th.it tho local bodies concerned would have undertaken the expenditure of the vote but for the conditions which had been imposed by the Department regarding expenses. It was estimated by the local bodies that tho cost to them if they undertook the works would be at least iy„ per cent. The Hon. Mr. McKenzie promised that the Department would carrv out the works.

■Speaking to a respresentative of the Stratford Post, .Mr. W. T. Jennings, M.P. for Taumarunui, expressed himself very feelingly on the want of school buildings in many portions of his electorate. "Would you believe it," he said, "when riding along the back country a short time ago, I discovered a lady giving instruction to seven children in the open. Entering into conversation, the teacher stated that both she and the children preferred the open :iir; but,'' continued Mr. Jennings, ''the want of a building was imperative on wet and cold days." He instanced other cases in which thfe .settlers themselves had erected slnli whnres in order that their children might have the advantages of education. There are some people living in towns, surrounded by every comfort., ■who consider the Education Department is spending too much on the baekbloeks; but we venture to say that this idea would soon be. dispelled if the positions were reversed.

At a meeting of the Waverley branch of the New Zealand Farmers' Union it. was stated that the organisers of the Shearers' Union had issued a manifesto which claims that all rouseabouts should get £2 per week, pressors £2 10s, and organisers £.5 to £O, while machineshorn: sheep should be paid for at the rate of £1 per .hundred. Then there was a claim to the effect that the men should not m-ork after 12 o'clock on Saturday, and 'another that preference must be given to unionists. Members thought that the demand for £1 mer hundred for machine-shorn sheep should he vigorously resisted. One member opined that preference to unionists meant that young shearers would not be given an opportunity to learn. A motion was jxissed objecting to the de r nvand. and it will he forwarded to the Dominion Conference.

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A carnival held in Timaru in aid of the fund ior the new Roman Catholia Church brought in about £ISOO.

The Tima.ru Borough Council's waterworks loan of £OO,OOO, on which it lias been paying 7 per cent, for the last thirty years, will fall, due in London in July. At a special meeting on Monday evening the Council arranged the loan with the Bank of Xew Zealand at A x /» per cent, for a period of thirty years. In opening his speech at St. James' Hall in Auckland a few nights ago, Mr. C. J. Parr said that any man who spoke for more than five minutes ought to be "Knyvettised"—that is, hanged without trial, the new expression being coined by him for th.» occasion. Mr. Parr so far forgot his own advice, as to speak for fifteen minutes.

The fact tluit the tail of Halley's w'niet is caleulnted to come within close proximity to the earth 011 May 19 ia evidently causing a little uneasiness in the minds of some timid people (says the Auckland Star). In one household the maid asked this week if she could have a holiday on the l!)th, as her mother wished the whole family to b* •together when the dreaded event occurred. Seeing that this dreaded comet i« known to have kept its course without damaging the earth from before the sack of Jerusalem by the Romans, it seems fair to assume that it will miss this world, as it has done in the past, every 70 or 75 years. Lonely Opotiki iin.pres.sed Colonel Knight, of the Salvation Army, with its potentialities during his recent tour of the North Island. "I believe that Opotiki is a coming district," lie remarked

to a Dominion representative. "In some ways it reminds me very much of Gisborne, and in other ways of Eltham. If ever the railway gets to that part of the world, and the back country if thrown open, I believe that it will carry a big population. The district has a superb climate." "So near and yet so far" might be the lamentation of Opotiki. It is 26 miles from Rotorua, and the journey takes a day and a-half by coach, and it is 40 miles, or a day's coach journey, from Tauranga. An interesting experience which befel the diver (Mr. May) at present engaged on salvage operations in connection with the Waikari wreck, who had been inclined to ridicule the statement that the blue cod will attack any moving objects under water, no matter how formidable they may seem, is told by the Bluff correspondent of the Otago Daily Times. While Mr. May was pursuing his submarine -researches, a big cod suddenly hove in sight, and showed unmistakable evidence of a. design to join in the undertaking. The diver made at least three splashboard movements to drive it away, but the fish was not to .be so easily disposed of. He seized the diver by the finger, leaving incised wounds sufficient to testify to the wholeheartedness of the assault. It was not until the diver brought his sheath knife to bear on the subject that the question at issue was finally disposed of and the cod driven off.

The following, interesting paragraph regarding the death of an old woman with two hundred and eighty-three descendants, some of whom are in New Zealand, appears in the Lowestoft Journal of 12th March: "Mrs. Frances Cooke' (late of Southacre) has recently passed away at Oxwich, at the age of ninetyfive. She claimed to have two hundred and eighty-three descendants, four of whom belong to the fifth generation: For the past nineteen years she ha* lived with her daughter, Mrs. Greef, of Oxwiek. She had two other daughters living in Norfolk, one in Lancashire, and one in New Zealand; also three sons living at Saffron Wald'en, in South Wales, and New Zealand'. She was left a widow thirty-five years ago, her husband being gamekeeper for many years in the employ of the late Mr. Andrew Fountaine, of Narford Hall, a daughter of whom kindly allowed the old lady a pension of 5s per week for thirty-four years, until she became entitled to the State old-age pension. She was grandmother to Mrs. West wood, of the •Westward Family' from New Zealand, who visited this country last year with five of their family. One of the sqns, named Wilfred, aged twelve veirs, weighed 21 -t fill), and one of the daughters (Riil-v) weighed ITM-st. An exhibition wns held at King's Lynn. Norwich, and other places last summer."