LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 296, 9 May 1911, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

The borough council will visit the electric power station and waterworks on Thursday. Yesterday morning, in the Magistrate's Court, before Mr. H. S. Fitzherbert, S.M., a first offending inebriate was convicted and discharged. The matter of New Plymouth's civic celebrations in connection with the coronation has been referred by the borough coimcil to the Finance Committee to report at next meeting of the council.

Mr. W. Kilpatrick, manager of the Tikorangi Dairy Co., who topped the list this season for the best average' grade of butter, points out to us that the figures were 94.09, not 91.D, as previously printed. A penumbral eclipse of the moon will occur on Saturday evening. The first contact of the moon with the earth's penumbra shadow will take place at 3.10 p.m. on the afternoon of the 13th, central at 5.2 C p.m., and last contact at 7.37 p.m.

In refusing an application to move the site of Mosgiel railway station nearer to Dunedin and for the stoppage of expresses at Mosgiel, Mr. Millar made an interesting statement as to the cost of the railway duplication works. The Dunedin-Taieri section had cost up to date about half-a-million sterling. Captain W. J. Newton, harbormaster, reported to the Harbor Board yesterday for the three weeks ending May oth that 24 steamers of an aggregate tonnage of 22,791 tons had worked the port inwards and outwards. The total imports amounted to 3888 tons, of which 1355 tons were coal. The exports of produce and general merchandise amounted to 947 to»s.

Nature, a London weekly paper, deals somewhat severely with the New Zealand Government's action in granting the sum of £SO or €IOO towards the cost qf explosives for rain-making experiments near Onmaru. The London scientific journal says it has been shown that such experiments are a useless expenditure of money, and have been condemned by the best meteorologists in Europe and America.

The election of four members of the Moa Road Board held on Saturday resulted as follows:—A. Corkill 157, A. Chard 128, J. A. Bridgeman 120, J. W. Collingwood 115, F. J. Virgin 110, W. P. Bishop 98, A. H. Clarke 54, ana informal 4. Messrs. Corkill, Chard, Bridgeman and Collingwood were declared elected. Messrs. Corkill and Collingwood were retiring members of, the board. Messrs. Virgin and Bishop, the other two retiring members, were defeated.

A large and enthusiastic meeting ol the young people of the Whiteley Church was held in the schoolroom last night for the purpose of considering proposals put before, them by the minister for a series of entertainments and concerts to be held during the winter months. Six committees were appointed to arrange for six separate entertainments, and the convenors of the committees were elected an executive. The series will be opened by a concert in the Whiteley Hall on Thursday, May

The East End bathing reserve committee is lip to time. Thinking, and the wish being the father to the thought, that the Government will .subsidise municipal expenditure on Coronation memorials as was done at the time of King Edward's Coronation, the committee last night applied for a borough subsidy of £IOO towards the amount of £304 which, it was estimated, would suffice to make a fresh-water swimming place in the IFenui liver at its mouth for the convenience of children. The Council wasn't sure that, it would get a Coronation .subsidy, and the committee hadn't definite plans, etc., so they were referred to the finance committee, to whom they must produce plans and estimates. A fanner in the North Otago district, who was summoned in a maintenance ease in the Duncdin Magistrate's Court last week, gave some of his experiences as a result of the drought. It had been the worst season, he said, ever experienced in the district. Not one thing, but everything had been a failure. He had had to sell cows which were worth £7 or £8 a. head at the beginning of the season, for 10s a head, which was just the price of the hide. He had been working sixteen hours a day, and was then unable to make ends meet, wede thousands of fanners with families in New Zealand at the present time who would have to live oil £1 a week. For, the last two years he had been unable to pay wages to his son and daughter, ■who worked for him. No farmer had made money in the Oamaru distrist this year; many had been ruined; in fact, they had only enough rain there lately to lay the dust Bathers will be pleased to learn that there is a movement afoot in the borough council to provide the salt water baths with some degree of comfort during the winter months. A motion tabled by the Mayor v/ns carried after some discussion, all being favorable to the idea, ' That tile Baths Committee be re quested to make enquiries and report upon the best method of providing tepid water at the salt water baths." In the course of his remarks he suggested that it might be possible to erect a small destructor and heat the baths by means of this. The refuse cost something to bury—not a satisfactory method at any time—and could thus be utilised to some slight purpose. Cr. Clarke, in seconding, remarked that he was in favor of anything that would popularise the bath's. People, he thought, could pay too dearly for their conveniences, and iie instanced the fact that the baths had averaged a loss of £235 per annum during the six years they had been erected. The Mayor interjected that on the other hand they had been the means of over 1000 boys and girls learning to swim. They were very fortunate in having baths. Cr. Anibury considered the baths a good investment for the town, eveti if they cost £3OO per annum. The tepid water scheme should be en-, cou raged.