LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 177, 5 November 1910, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

The Christchurch Acclimatisation Society has already received £550 in fishing license fees this season. ' Among the attractions at the "Aotea" function on Thursday afternoon next will be a series of races for children. The resident Chinese of Palmerston -North have donated £26 15s 6d to the local hospital. Every Chinese is represented. Xobodv wants to borrow the money the Wellington City Council has to lend and it has plenty. The Council is anxious to set the plethora of money to work at easy rates, but there are no applications. The local branch of the New Zealand Express Company has forwarded to the order of (Belgium) firm two hundredweight of Taranaki ironsand, which will be used for experimental purposes. There will be one mass only in St. Joseph's Church to-morrow, commencing (it 7.30 a.m. ,

"The small stipends we pay clergy in the country are something to be ashanml of," declared Mr. A. S, Holmes at the Auckland Synod. Big lambing averages have been obtained along the Main Trunk line in tinWaimarino County. The general average was from 105 to 110 per cent.

The number of motor-cars and motorbicycles which have been registered for the Christchurch district up to date total 1100. There are 441 motor-cars and Co!) motor cycles. A Masterton poultry-keeper lias a hen which crows vigorously with as much assurance as a rooster. Our forefathers used to say: "A whistling wife and a crowing hen, are neither good to God nor men."

A man who reeeni'y served a month's imprisonment in Wanganui gaol for failure to maintain his wife and children, on his release promptly repeated the offence, and described his incarcera-i tion as the "time of his life." To enable him to have a further experience of the joys of prison, Mr. Kerr, S.M., on Wednesday sentenced him to three months, with hard labor. An electioneering story by Mr. Buchanan, M.P.: There was a stiff contest, and both candidates were out after votes. One came to a homestead and found the farmer busy endeavoring to bail up a fractious heifer, and he did not want to talk polities. On the contrary, he said, "If you are' any good, you'll give us a hand to bail up this cow." The candidate whipped off his coat, and soon the heifer was in her place. "There" he said, "that's mpre than the other fejlow would do." '"I don't know," said the farmer; "he's round the corner sitting on the calf!"

The moving picture theatre, although it is a comparatively recent importation amongst us, may already be numbered by tens in London alone. In New York there are 250 "shows," against 76 regular theatres. Such vast proportions has the enterprise reached in America that •last year an average of 2,250,000 people a day paid for admission to the picture theatres, producing a revenue to the showman of nearly £12,000,000. The chief combination of manufacturers produces 20,000 feet of new films every week, and Mr. Edison's royalty, begun only recently, amounts from this source to an income of £I6OO a week.

In his address to the boys of Christ's College, Christchurch, recently, Lord Islington said that his visit to Christchurch was ostensibly to enable him to attend the races and' the agricultural show, and in order to fortify himself against the insidious and dangerous pursuits of those occupations he was doing all he could to imbibe scholastic and disciplinary experience by visiting as many of the schools in the city as was possible in the period that intervened. His Excellency explained: that by visiting the educational institutions he hoped to attain one of the chief objects of his stay in the province, that of becoming acquainted and he hoped intimate with the younger generation.

A meeting of proprietors and directors of dairy companies in Wellington province was held at Palmerston on Wednesday evenings to consider the Arbitration Court award in connection with dairy factory work, and in order to protect themselves against the demands of the employees. It was contended that formerly dairy companies and dairy factory proprietors gave hi'gher wages in mamy cases to capable men than stipulated in the award, and also kept their men on in the off season. But as the men have been to the court, and obtained an award against the wishes of the employers, it was held by some speakers that employers would be justified in bringing all their men down to the award rate of pay, and discharging any men when their services were not required. Owing, however, to the attitude of one firm, the object of the meeting was frustrated, and it looks as if the present conditions will continue to prevail.