LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 253, 25 April 1912, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Eight million pounds is given away in charity every year in' England. Germany possesses 1500 moving-picture shows, of which there are 360 in Berlin. A Sydney cablegram states that the steamer Pakeha has arrived with over a thousand immigrants.

The New Zealand Times describes the Wairarapa trains "like wounded snakes, crawling across the landscape." Wonder how it would describe the Taranaki trains ?

"It is a popular delusion," remarked an authority in the Wairarapa recently, "that calves and pigs cannot be reared on whey. Why," he said, "a bull that took a first prize at the Carterton show was reared on nothing but whey." The Board of Education decided yesterda.y that in future the following holidays shall be observed by schools throughout the education districts: Six weeks at Christmas, one week at midwinter, Good Friday, and the following week, Anniversary Day, Arbor Day and King's Birthday.

Patea in a \jost decisive manner yesterday decided "to take a big step 'forward, a proposal to borrow the sum of £SOOO for the purpose of erecting a Town Hall municipal building and furnishing it being carried by an overwhelming majority, the figures being: For the proposal 125, against 31, informal 1.

Politics run high on the West Coast. "The present pusillanimous member," is the way in which one of its M.P.'s is spoken of by a correspondent who writes to one of the oldest newspapers on the Coast. _ The writer attributes the fall-ing-oil in population and other dire results to the lethargy of the member for the district.

There is money as well as milk in the cocoanut. Captain Svensen, of Brisbane, who has large interests in the Solomon Islands and visited Svdney recently, stated that copra, the flesh of the cocoanut, was steadily advancing in price, and was to-day three times as' high as it was when he started planting in the islands twenty years ago.

A meeting of the Opunake Railway League, attended by about 40 members, was held in the Opunake Town Hall on Monday, April 22', when it was resolved to support the original route before the Commission, which is shortly to sit to decide which route the railway shall take. It is to be hoped that something definite will result, as Opunake has been waiting 30 years for this line, and the land was sold with this line thrown in as an inducement to lease.

A high-spirited girl recently played a cruel joke on her mother, and this is how it happened. She actually found a loveletter that her father had written to her mother, substituting' her own name and that of her lover. The mother raved with anger and stamped her foot in disgust, forbidding her daughter to have anything to do with a man who could write such nonsensjcal stuff to a girl. The girl then gave the letter to her mother to read, and the house then became so quiet that she could hear the cat winking in the backyard.

The Education Department notifies the Taranaki Education Board that the Government desired that Empire Day should be observed in conjunction with the King's Birthday, on June 3rd, and also expressed the hope that education boards would, as hitherto, arrange that the occasion should he used to draw the attention of school children to their privileges and responsibilities as citizens of the Empire. The Education Department notified that the Minister had approved of the proposed extension for a fifth year of the junior national scholarship held at Stratford District High School by Laurence Carrington Meul.

.For five, .shillings given to a stranger eight years ago, Joseph Clair, a chemist, will receive £25,000 (says a Home paper). Eight years ago a man who was evidently suffering from the effects of the "cold grey dawn of the morning after," came into Clair's shop and told him a pitiful story, declaring that he had not a copper to get a crust, and he begged for a shilling. After a few moments' talk Clair gave the man five shillings, and the stranger departed with the remark, "You'll never forget this, young man. It will be richly repaid to you." Clair promptly forgot the incident until about five years ago, when a man again came into the shop, and, recalling the loan, made the druggist a present of a handsome gold-headed cano. Clair did not forget the matter so quickly then, but he was thoroughly surprised a few days ago when he received a letter from Meilleir and Meillier, lawyers, of Kockvale, saying that Joseph Waters, a wealthy farmer near that town, had left his entire property, an estate valued *t over £25,000, to him.

"Reforms by revolution in the poor law," said Mr. John Burns the other day, "had been denied to ua from many reasons and for many causes. But if reform by revolution has been denied us, revolution by Teform has been most surely and efficiently secured. In London there has been a decline in the general death-rate of 19 per cent., tubercular disease has diminished by from 25 to 33 per cent., in the last six years infant mortality has declined 30 per cent., the total pauperism has been diminished 15 per cent., the total pauperism over 70 by 50 per cent., and old-age pauperism over 70 (outdoor) by 94 per cent. I might be asked whether London is getting its grip on the problems of the under-world. Here, also, we have some reason for encouragement. London, which has 28,000 lodging-house beds, has only 21,000 lodgers to occupy them. Better still is the fact that the homeless persons in London are 34 per cent, less than two years ago, and I will be disappointed if the census just taken does not make that decline 60 per cent, lower than it was three years ago. With these things to encourage us, we have no reason to despair of grappling with what remains of this tremendous problem."

RESTLESSNESS OF NEW ZEALANDERS.

ALWAYS ON THE MOVE. According to the late Attorney-General, one out of every three New Zealanders removes each year. The frequency of these removals is no doubt largely due to the splendid facilities the New" Zealand Express Company afford to persons shifting. Their equipment and method* save people trouble, keep down expense, and make shifting ratber a pleasure.

New Ycrk City has a Jewish population of 905,000, one-thirteenth of the .entire race.

The secretary «f the Post and Telegraph Department (Mr. D. Robertson) has been officially informed that the statement that the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company proposes to remove its landing place in New Zealand from Wakapuaka to Wellington, is unfounded.

A farmer and orchardist in the Moutere district (Nelson) had an unprofitable experience on his farm recently. It appears he had been annoyed by deer trespassing in his orchard, so he set a loaded gun where he considered they came in, with a wire attached to the trigger, so that an animal walking over the wire would explode the gun. That night the gun went off, and the occupants of the house rushed out to find a deer; but they saw nothing till the next morning, when about forty yards away they found one of the farm horses lying dead. Most people do not realise the strength they possess in their jaws and the pressure they are capable of exerting with them. At a lecture on the care of the teeth, given by Dr. S. A. Patersoa At Christchurch, it was stated that the pressure exerted by the average person was 250 pounds, while a really strong man could exert a pressure of 450 pounds, or about four hundredweight. The lecturer stated that it took ninety pounds of pressure to masticate tender rump steak, but the utmost pressure that could be exerted by false teeth was only about forty-seven pounds. Hence, in the ease of people with false teeth, the digestive organs were overtaxed and illness was common.

The demand for dry casein as a buttermilk by-product is likely to prove of great value to the New Zealand dairy industry, where butter factories are installed. At the present time casein, owing to its excellent solidifying and adamantine qualities, is rapidly superseding bone for knife-handles, pencilholders, and numerous other things of similar make, and somewhere in the Auckland district an enterprising farmer proudly shows a casein billiard ball, apparently as hard as ivory. The demand for casein is great in Germany, where the stuff is largely used for the manufacture of various cheap goods, and one North Island butter company has sold its output for five years to a Hamburg firm. Dry casein is quoted at Hamburg f.o.b. at 4d per lb, and as 1242 lb of casein is the by-product from a ton of butter, it will be seen that it is worth £2O 14s, in addition to what the butter fetches. Butter is, therefore, worth £2O 14s per ton more than what it is quoted on the London market, but it is a question whether the dairv farmer will be able to afford to lose the protein utilised in the skim milk for feeding calves and pigs. Some curious letters reach the Department of Labor from people who contemplate settling in New Zealand. The following from North Dakota is an instance:—"l am much interested in wanner climate country which some fruit also grows, as I was born in such countrj-, and here is so cold that no fruit grows at all, and I am almost sick of the climate, stomach out of order on account of the hard alkilic waters. So I wish you would send me some books so >I might find out something about your country, the soil, also the climate, your homestead law. I will be much thankful to you for it, for I want to move to warmer country, not to very wild country, but good for general farming and ranching whore there is some white people already. Is there any wild people to bother farmers or ranchers, and have you got good markets for products out there?" Another correspondent, from London, wants to know what wages are paid here to a photographer's assistant. In a postscript he says: "Is there any demand for bakers?" "Another correspondent is enquiring about, taking up 200 acres of land on which to start a sawmill. A woman wrote as to her chances of establishing a dressmaking business, preferably at New Plymouth! She was told there would be no difficulty, as a prosperous business in that town had just bem closed. Says the Auckland Observer:—The tremendous respectability of the TaraJiaki Oil Company's London board of •directors will relieve the feelings of many colonial shareholders, and it is unlikely our well-beloved cousin, Uchter John Mark. Earl of Ranfurly, is "guinea-pio-. ging." If Earl Ranfurly hadn't been •born m the purple, he would have been a sure thing for colonial pioneering, and, as it is, he has a real and not assumed "coloniability" (as the late Omar Khayyam would have said). Earl Ranfurly took a great pride in being mathematically correct. He personally worked like a chartered accountant and a correspondence clerk mixed. In his office at Government House he had a regiment of scrap books and records that contained details of every event of importance or otherwise taking place during his governorship, and no mere private secretary or aide-de-camp was allowed to touch these records Before he entered his pyjamas at night Lord Ranfurly plied a busv pen bringing his records up to date, and'there is no question that he is one of the bestinformed men on colonial matters in London. It will be remembered that his commercial inclination led liim to take up fruit-farming in Victoria before he was Governor here, and he grew the festive orange in large quantities. In Mildura he might have been seen in earlier days driving loads of fruit through the streets of the torrid town