LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 90, 25 July 1910, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Mr. J. R. Corrigan, of Hawera, is] going out of sheep into dairy cattle, and intends milking five hundred cows next year. Mr. Grant, of Taiporowhenui, Hawera, on Friday shipped to Sydney seven stallions and twelve brood mares. They are to be sold after the Sydney horse parade. The fine bracing weather of yesterday came as a glorious change. The streets dried wonderfully, as only Taranaki streets can after it has rained and rained! as only Taranaki can. After a series of trials the Patea Bor-! ough Council has demonstrated beyond doubt that there is a large supply of water available at the bore put down in accordance with the directions of the! Rev. 'Mr. Mason. Mr. G. T. Murray, District Road En-i gineer, who has been appointed a commissioner to enquire into matters concerning the control of the Waipuku bridge on the Mountain road, will conduct the enquiry at Inglewood on 2nd August, at 10 a.m . During the past few weeks large numbers of liares have been shot in the Up- j per Ashburton district, and last week over 700 were railed into Ashburton for export purposes. It is stated that hares! are so plentiful in the hill districts that those engaged in shooting them are making high rates of wages. Glebe Farm, Walkern, Herts, England, was the scene of a disastrous fire, when a spark from a passing traction; engine set the thatch ablaze. The flames, spread rapidly, the entire farmstead, outbuildings and several cattages were completely destroyed, and damage was done to the amount of £IO,OOO. At the Police Court on Saturday morn-j ing a young man named William Munro,! who had been arrested on warrant on; the previous day by Detective Boddam and Constable Mclvor, was remanded to } appear at Shannon on a charge of forgery! there. The accused, it is understood, will be charged with a series of forgeries other than that for which this warrant was issued. The building trade continues to be very I active in Eltham. It is estimated that j by the end of the present year new buildings to the value of £25,000 will have; ' been erected or be in course of erection 1 during the year within the borough. I The latest additions to buildings to be I erected are a large skating rink for Mr. . C. A. Wilkinson and club rooms for the, I newly-formed Eltham Club. I

A striking tribute to the value and accuracy of the weather forecasts of the Government meterologist (Rev. D. C. Bates) was paid at the Farmers' Union Conference at Wellington by Mr. H. A. Nevins, of Tenui, himself an enthusiastic, observer. He said he knew of stock having been removed to avoid floods that were foretold by Mr. Bates, and the floods came all right. Farmers had thus escaped serious losses.

The cake-guessing at the poultry show was won by Mrs. Cudbv, who guessed the | exact weight, 39 ] /jlb. There were several guesses of 391b and two of 3Dy 3 lb. The ( goat weighed 501b exactly, Mr. J. Jans,; of New Plymouth, putting in the exact weight. Several guessed 55's and 57's. Mr. H. J. Moverley won the judging competition, judging two birds out of three.' Accounts against the society should be rendered to the secretary at once, as he is anxious to square up matters as soon as possible. Prize-money will be avail-! able in a few days. In the course of an encouraging ad-' dress to members of the Wellington Boys' Institute the other evening, his Excellency the Governor urged that lads : should strive to improve themselves and become expert—whether at work or play. It was not possible for all boys to become experts, but by learning to do things thoroughly tbev could attain to a sufficient standard to bring credit to themselves and to give themselves in-' terest in their doings. The modern tendency was for people to become fond of! looking on at experts instead of doing something themselves. j

The Taranaki of the future will be assuredly a land flowing with milk and honey (says the Wellington Times). Al-, ready it gives every promise of producing more milk to the acre than any equal stretch of territory in the world, and if proper advantage be taken of its great suitability for bee-keeping it will yet become as noted for its honey as it now is for its butter. At the recent Dominion Dairy Show at. Hawera there was displayed an exhibition of Taranaki honey j by the South Taranaki Bee-keepers' As-| sociation, which demonstrated that the small band of enthusiastic apiarists which', is advancing the merits of the little busy, beo in the district —in many ways an ideal environment —are live and progres-' sive apiarists. Though bee-keeping as an industry is but in its infancy in Tara-, naki, the association was able to bring' together a display which proved that it is already being conducted on a sound basis, and this bv men some of whom are setting a high standard of work in the business.

Tt is within the bounds of possibility that a iglaeiariuin (a real ice rink) will bo established in Wellington in time for next season, lee-skating is extremely popular in Sydney.

Mr. George Sellars, who has retired after fifty years' service with the Gre:it Western llailway Company, travelled 3,370,01)0 miles during the forty-one years he acted as guard. A* showing the difference between concert and music-hall salaries, a writer quotes the ease of a Welsh contralto who appeared at Leeds concerts at 30s or t'-J a week, and now commands £2O a week in the halls.

During at period of ten weeks the' Wairairapa Egg Circle has consigned to I Wellington 1372 dozen eggs, for which! the jgross return was £l2l 5s 7d—an average of Is oy,d per dozen. The expenses connected with marketing were below 3d per dozen eggs. A record cargo of fresh fish from Halfmoon Bay, Stewart Island, was brought to the Bluff last week by the auxiliary cutter Gannett. The shipment consisted of 3(58 cases of blue cod and trumpeter, and 428 cases of groper. This is said to be the finest freight of fish ever brought to the Bluff for one day's fishing. What would appear to be a case of deliberate suicide on the part of a horse occurred at Avonside, Canterbury, last I week. The animal first endeavored to throw itself into the river. It was unharnessed with some difficulty, and immediately broke away and rushed at a fence, crashing its way through that structure. It then charged at a bay window, striking the framework with its •head with terrific force and dying immediately.

The Adelaide 'Advertiser reports that the Boning Shire inspector (Mr. J. Ladden) has lost three valuable horses during the past few weeks, including his racehorse Glen 'Mavis. A well-known veterinary surgeon says the cause is a disease due to the prevalence of mice. The horses had been feeding from a stack infested with mice. When there was a plague of mice in the district three years ago the deaths of animals were traced to the same cause.

During last oyster season the Marine Department picked and sold 79,345 sacks of rock oysters from the beds in the Hauraki Gulf, on Great Barrier Island, in the Bay of Islands. The proceeus 01 the sales amounted to £4775 10s Gd, and the cost of picking and selling £4205 9s 9d, giving a profit of £5707 Is Id. The profit made on the sale enables the Department, says the report, to plant oysters on parts of the foreshore where the beds were ruined by pickers before the Department undertook the picking. •It is perhaps one of the inexplicable phases of human nature that the more that is done for some people the more they grumble. We might quote several instances, but the one that is most iu evidence at the moment is that of the people of Rotorua. The Government has made Rotorua so far as its present state of efficient municipal government and development is concerned and has-spent large sums upon the place in every direction. Yet the more that is spent the more the Rotorua folk grumble—thev are nearly as bad as the State-fed Wellingtonians.—Manawatu Times. Tho wonderful pearl necklace which belonged to Mme. Thiers, wife of the distinguished French diplomat, and which was left to the French nation by her and placed in the Louvre, is dying from the mysterious, obscure disease whicn attacks these gems. The necklace is composed of three strands, made up of one hundred and fifty of the finest pearls ever brought up from the depths. When Mme. Thiers gave the necklace to the French people it was worth fifty thousand pounds. There are few jewellers who would give £SOOO for it now, so far has the malady progressed. Asked whether the fear of labor troubles and of further legislation had anv; thing to do with the feeling of insecurity prevalent, Mr. Harold Beauehamp said: "I am speaking as a supporter of the Liberal Party, and my sympathies have been with the cause of Labor for some vears past. Nevertheless, I. recognise that the pendulum must not swing too far in this direction, and I think the time has arrived for a policy of moderation. One of course has to recognise that capital is entitled to as much consideration as labor, and that the two as far as possible should go hand i,i hand."

The returns just made available show that the people of New Zealand pay heavily for their luxuries. Last year —thev drank spirits to the amount of 719,138 gallons, or -2.26 gallons per lie.u! of the male population; they smoked 2,278,03511)3 of tobacco, equivalent to 7.17 o/. per head; besides which each aduft has to be credited with consuming cigar;, cigarettes and snuff to the value of 10s 3%d. Turning to drink, it appears that the quantity of wine consumed was 138,000 gallons, equal to 0:20 per head of the a'clult population; tea brewed reach.'! the enormous total of 7,302,3101b5, or an average per adult of 7.081b per heul. The average consumption of sugar foi ■werv man, woman and child was ovtr lMlbs.

A member of the Parihaka Koad Board said at the Board's last meeting that a petition was being taken round by Mr. Wright in favor of forming a new county—to be called the Kailake County—and he believed it was th- intention of the promoters to include th:> area from Stony river to Ngariki road. He believed the petition was being numerously signed. If the petitioners met with much support it would mean taking area from Egmont County Council, and merging the Parihaka Road Board into the Kaitake County Council. The members did not seem to view the proposal with any a'.arm. The chairman said there was nothing before them about it. Another member s?.id he did unit think the petition would be numerously signed around Warea ov Pungnrehii. Mr. Dueker paid a compliment to the Egmont County Council. He said the road in bis end of the district was in better order than that of the Taranaki County Council.—Times. -It is announced that Mr. T. A. Edison, the wizard' of electricity, has succeeded in making a machine to photograph ami reproduce moving pictures in their natural colors; but the great inventor, while admitting that he is experimenting in that line, and is honeful of success, snvs that he is still battling with some difficulties, more especially the seeming impossibility of reprnducing re.ls. With other colors he is tolerably successful. Mr. Edison speaks with much enthusiasm of the talking and moving-picture machine he has just completed. "You know." he said, "they've claimed to have a talking machine for some time to go with moving pictures, but it was a false claim—the talking was done bv a man at the back of the curtain. But we've got a machine now that produces a perfect illusion. A whole drama can be reproduced by it vocally. The voices are so perfect that they seem like ordinary stage voices. A band can also be reproduced. The music has no phonographic sound; it is 'the real thing. When we can produce colors perfectly, then you'll have a whole drama by machineryspeech, gesture, life and colors."