LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 140, 16 December 1911, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

At the Police Court yesterday, before Mr. J. S. S. Medley, J.P., a nrst*offender, a stranger to the town, was convicted and discharged lor being drunk. On Tuesday next, the date of the Maori elections, hobclkeepers will be jiable to a, heavy penalty if they supply natives with intoxicating liquors.

About 100 no-license workers were entertained by Mr, and Mrs. 11. Goodacre at a garden party at their residence, Westown, on Thursday afternoon.

Indictating how seriously the unseasonable weather has affected all trades, a local painter and decorator mentions that it has taken him six weeks to finish a job that should take three days in fine weather.

For the Maori election, which takes place on Tuesday next, the natives, for the first time, will have a (roll. There are spaces at the end of the roll for inserting names which are not on, so that they will be there for future elections. It is the intention of the Government to get a complete roll. The polling takes place between the hours of 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., at the Manga one pah, on the other side of the Waiwakaiho.

At yesterday's meeting of the Harbor Board Captain W. ,). Newton, harbormaster, reported that for the four weeks ending December 9, 24 vessels had worked the port, inwards and outwards, of an aggregate tonnage of 21,083 tons. The total imports amounted to 5541 tons, of which. M 24 tons were coal (618 tons for the railway and 1000 for private use). The 'exports amounted to 1307 tons, consisting of produce and sundries. Early an the new year the dredge Paritutu has to go to Wellington to be placed on the patent slip for overhaul. The Harbor Board accordingly wrote to various insurance companies asking for insurance rates to cover the trip, and ascertained that it would cost up to £SOO to insure tho vessel for the sum of £25,000. The Board therefore decided not to effect the insurance, as it was considered that the risk was not great enough to warrant the expenditure.

A correspondent from inland Stratford writes pointing out that a party of men skilled in tunnel work have been shifted to excavating work at reduced pay, and a man who has means placed in charge of the skilled work. He believes this has been done to punish the men because some of them took a live interest in the Liberal candidate. He, however, absolves the Resident Engineer from blame in the matter. Our correspondent further .states that unless the matter is soon .righted a strike of the co-operative workers will be called.

At a country polling booth in Tsiranaki, which happened to be the local school, during the slack time of the day a voter came in, and, after receiving his voting papers and duly depositing them in the ballot box, leaned thereon and commenced to discuss the political situation with the officials present. The returning officer, however, tactfully informed him that as he had recorded his vote he must retire. "All right," was the reply, as he left, "but its jolly hard lines when the chairman of a school committee is turned out of his own 'building;!"

The cost of buildings erected during the past five years in New Plymouth, according to the building permits taken out, was £95,000, viz., to the end of March, 1907, £22,208; 1908, £11,325; 1909, £17.905; 1910, £2:!,5G7; 1911, £20,491. l-'or the eight month sending November 30 permit* for buildings valued at £15,000 liave been taken out. This, of course, only applies to buildings erected in the New Plymouth borough, and as the majority of building has been and is being done in the suburbs, the figures for Greater New Plymouth should be more than doubl*.

Italians never use the number 13 in making up the numbers in their lotteries —the superstition of the people is against it, The Turks are so prejudiced against the word "thirteen" that it has been virtually expunged from their vocabulary. No house in Paris bears the number "13," and persons called "quartorziennes" or "fourteens" are held in reserve there to make a fourteenth guest at dinner parties. The Norwegians never allow 13 persons at table because Loki. the god of malice in the Norse mythology, once made the thirteenth guest at a celestial banquet and occasional confusion.

The challenge cup presented by Messrs Hawkins and Smith to the Tara'naki Agricultural Society for annual competition in the hunters' champion jumping event at the spring show, has arrived from England. It is a very dainty specimen of the silversmith's art, and is in the form of a bowl 'standing 11 %inches high ami 14 inches across. The design is very neat, the ornamentation not being too profuse. As soon as it is engraved with the name of the donors and also with that of last show's winner, viz., Mr. N. M. Patterson's Haere, it will 'be placed on exhibition in Messrs. Hawkins and Smith's tea depot, New Plymouth. At a largely attended and enthusiastic meeting of the officials of the Whiteley Memorial Church held this week, at was decided to employ a trained deaconess to assist in the work of the church. She will commence her duties in January next, and will specially devote herself to efforts among the women and Sunday School children. This is a department of church life that has not always received the atttention .it should, and there is a, splendid sphere for activity. It was decided also to inaugurate a special movement for men, and a strong committee was set up to consider details of tlie scheme and to take necessary steps to carry them out. As showing the amount of mental and physical strain involved in the duties of a country candidate who woos the suffrages of the electors, Mr W. T. Jennings' diary is interesting. Starting on October SO at Wa.ita.ra, where he delivered the first address, he finished at Lepperton on December 6th, and during that time travelled by train 426 miles, by sawmill engines 46 miles, motor-cars 153 miles, steam launches 23 miles, coaches la miles, traps 226 miles., and horseback 452 miles. He spoke on 63 occasions, five addresses being given on one day, the places differing from a theatre to school, sawmills, and bush dining-rooms. The worst road travelled was between Waimihia and Tangitu, and the hardest day's travelling was from Ohura to Wadtaanga, Kotare, and Okau. The candidate's horse got bogged on the Wiaitaanga road (?), which, in some places, is merely swamp holes. The weathar conditions during the campaign were atrocious, a succession of thunder, lightning, hail, rain, and wind storms being encountered. WHO'S TO BLAME IF YOUR BAGGAGE G3TS LOST? Decidedly yourself, if you U n-n't taken the precaution te check il. \ ...i'v< : > no remedy either, for the I!ii!\'n Department accepts no Tc<i>oii-.;->.iii i \-. Check it through us, and sav.' :;-■!!' all bother. We collect, cheek, -ml .},- liver at other end imincdiaic!;.- .u'kr brain arrives, charging cost c.t'.,<.■:■.■ <x only. —The K.Z. Express Coy,, ; ;,;. Advt. We reoommend Roslyn suits for :il;,-je and lasting wear; from 32s fid All clothiers.—Advt I

People in the vicinity of the borough offices* yesterday might have imagined that an election was on, and thai local burgesses had evinced a sudden interest In local affairs judging by the constant stream of ratepayers that wemd*d their way into the Town Hall yesterday. The sudden activity was explaineod by the fast that it was the last day for payment of rates in order to save the 10 per cent, penalty. The borough coffers must have been well filled last night. The Press in the Philippine Islands describes the way the natives catch monkeys in the interior of that country, it appears that these creatures are very fond of the meat of the cocoanut, but are too lazy to gnaw the outer shell, unless desperate from hunger. So the natives cut a small hole in the shell, just large enough to admit the small, slender hand of the monkey. When the hand is thrust inside and* filled with the cocoamit meat it cannot be withdrawn. It never occurs to the monkey to relax his grasp and release the handful of meat. So he chatters and scolds, and shows his indignation at being entrapped until the native who set the snare comes and takes him prisoner. In San Francisco, on October 6, the wireless operators there exchanged for the first time messages with Japan, over 00(H) miles of wean. The San Francisco operator received instructions to listen f(-r calls from the Japanese operator on the island of Hokesu, the most northerly wireless station in Japan, and tests showed the new. equipment recently installed there to be to a large extent, if not completely, successful. The Pacific is regarded by American wireless experts as specially favorable for long-distance communications, whereas the atmospheric conditions of the Atlantic still offer difficulties which must be solved before wireless telegraphy can compete successfully with the submarine cable.

The Japanese police have a much easier time than their confreres in Europe. Crime in the land of the chrysanthemum is limited almost to theft and tragedies, or serious cases of bodily harm resulting from street brawls. It is next to impossible, the Chief of Police of Tokio says, for a murder to be committed without someone hearing of it at the moment. This is due to the fact that the houses are composed of paper and bamboo, so that any noise in a house occasioned by robbers or assassins would not fail to attract the attention of neighbors. The police forces of nearly all the larger Japanese cities are quite small when compared to those of the cities of European countries. > Some idea of the magnitude of the task undertaken by the Canadian Pacific Railway, and other Western roads in handling the grain crop of the wheat provinces can be formed from an estimate of the number of ears required for this traflie. A few years ago it was found that Canadian-Pacific cars sufficient to handle the wheat for the season would fill the main line from Elkhorn, near the western boundary of the province of Manitoba, to Winnipeg, 200 miles. Applying the same methods in disposing of the 144,000,000 bushels of wheat farmed in Kill!), it is- found that loaded into standard thousand-bushsl cars, the trackage covered would be 933 miles, practically ;the distance between Winnipeg and Banff. Reckoning for the total crop of the Canadian West, as reported by the Dominion Government, the number of cars required would be 354,000. which, if put on the C.P.R. track at the same time, would bloek the line from Montreal to North Bend, British Columbia—nearly across the continent.

The services in the Whiteley Memorial Church to-morrow will be conducted in the morning by the Rev. F. P. Kellow, and in the evening by the Rev. J. W. Burton. The evening subject will be, "Doubt and Belief."