LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 204, 8 May 1912, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

During the present month 12,885 acres of Crown lands will be opened for selection in New Zealand. The Tukapa Football Club desires to acknowledge with thanks the receipt of the following donations towards its funds: Messrs. G. Tabor £2 2s, J. McKean £1 Is, A. F. Shield ss, J. Kersley ss, J. C. Montefiore 10s 6d, P. J. Flannagan ss, J. C. McLeod ss. The St. Aubyn Town Board has instructed its chairman (Mr. G. E. to object to the Local Government Bill in its present form, at the meeting of local bodies, to be held at New Plymouth on May 14. The board : was of the opinion that the Bill was unworkable. Mr. J. H. Forrest (who superintends the erection of the tower and wireless apparatus at Awanui station) and other wireless experts arrived in Auckland from Sydney on Sunday. The preliminary work has already been completed. ■ Awanui will be the first wireless station of the first-class in the Dominion. The shooting season has so far not been productive of very good bags in the Auckland district. One well-known sportsman, who has been out with the gun during the past 25 years, did not secure a single bird on the opening day. One party was successful in shooting 25 brace, but, taken all round, the bags were very poor. The committee of the Carnegie Library has decided upon the following suggested allocation of the funds (£124) at its disposal during the current year:— Reference books, £24; magazines, £22; works of fiction, £SO; general literature and other works, £2B. In future, eub- , scribers will be allowed to each take out two books instead of one, but not more than one novel. At a meeting of the Agricultural Society on Monday, committees were deputed to allocate space, to arrange for short concerts during the show in the concert hall, and to make arrangements for entertaining his Excellency the Governor, who will open the show, on the , afternoon of June 5. His Excellency will probably arrive at New Plymouth that morning, and leave again the following day. Several articles in the nature of an advertisement about a '•'mountain of greenstone" having 'been found in New Zealand have appeared in various Australian newspapers, and a correspondent in the Sydney Sun humorously suggests that the New South Wales Government should obtain sufficient of it to build a new State Parliament House and Governor's palace. ''lt might be expensive," he admits, "but it would be not only unique, but everlasting, and would score another world's record for us. With such material the Government should establish for themselves a monument of their ability and skill that would last for untold ages." The following new books have been added to the New Plymouth Carnegie Library:—"The Adventures of a Modest Man" (R. W. Chambers), "The Island of Enchantment" (J. M. Forman), "The Reason Why" (Elinor Glyn), "The Wilderness" (Joseph Hocking), "The Quenchless Fire" (Silas K. Hocking), "The Prodigal Judge" (Vaughan Kester), "The Sovereign Power" (Mark Lee Luther), "Carnival" (C. Mackenzie), "Adrian Savage" (Lucas Malet), "Happy Hawkins" (Robert A. Wason), "A Queen of the Stage" (Fred M. White). Replaces: "The Rosary" (Florence L. Barjclay), "The Dop Doctor" (Richard Dchair), "Vendetta" (Marie Corelli). , One of the cases which the grand jury [ had to deal with in the Supreme Court I in Wellington, on Thursday ; was that in | which a young man was charged with opening another person's telegrams. When the list was finally disposed of, the foreman, addressing' Mr. Justice Chapman, said that he had been asked by the grand jury to draw attention to the laxity displayed in allowing tags for sealing postal packets to be obtained by telegraph messengers. The foreman added that they were all business meu, and were liable to have their telegrams opened and resealed by a messenger outside the office. He understood that there was no difficulty whatever in obtaining these tags. His Honor thanked the foreman for his observations, and promised to ask the Minister for Justice to bring them under the notice of the Postmaster-General. He had no doubt that the recommendation would receive attention. A Berlin scientist has discovered a process by which discarded old newspapers can be converted into fine new paper ready to run through the printing presses for another edition. The paper can be used over and over again. An alkaline preparation is used in removing the inks from the old papers. Then the pulp is put through a process, with a little new material added. The Utter process has been tried for a number of years, but when the coloring matter remained in the pulp it was not possible to produce good paper. By this new discoverv (says the Fourth Estate) old papers will become more valuable and a great trade will be established at once in the larger cities, where thousands of tons of refuse material in the shape of unused or discarded printed matter will be collected. The process may in a measure solve the raw product problem which has been confronting paper manufacturers for some time owing to the scarcity of matter from which good pulp can be made. Says the London Daily Mail:—The interesting fight between omnibuse* and electric tramways in London still continues to be waged. Friends of the omni. bus, like Mr. George R. Sims, declare that our tramways are now obsolete, should be torn up, and no longer be permitted to obstruct the roadways. Friends of tho municipal tramways, like Sir John Benn, would evidently impose further heavy taxation on omnibuses, or would municipalise them. The average citi- i zen, who does not care whether ho travels in omnibus or tram so long as he travels quickly and well, watches both sides with amused unconcern. The facti of the matter seem to be these. The progress of the motor-omnibus has amazed and surprised the warmest advocates of electric tramway*. Three or four years ago they laughed at the idea that the motor omnibus could successfully compete with its railed rival. It did I not carry so many people, it did not last so long, and it cost more to drive. What hope was thare for it? But now the enormous improvement that has taken place in engines has transformed matters. The motor omnibus to-day travels twice as fast as the tramway car throughout central districts. It goes on streets where the tram car cannot go. The heart of London is open to it, while the heart of London is closed to the tram car. If it holds fewer people, it certainly is much fuller proportionately during most honrs of the day than tha bigger tramway car.

A Masonic wedding was recently solemnised at Waimate, in Canterbury. It wafc the fourth of its kind held'in New Zealand. A special camp for Territorials who were absent from the recent camp at Hawera is to bo held at Waverley from the 24th to 31st Inst. The Waverley correspondent of the Wanganui Herald states that the executors of the late Mr. Isaac Lupton have disposed of 300 acres at £SO per acre to Mr. Morrison, ol Hawera. The Prime Minister yesterday received a cablegram from the High Commissioner, which read as follows:—"Apparently funds in hand are sufficient to meet acute demands in consequence of the eoal strike. The unnecessary excitement that has existed over the supposed shortage of petrol was caused by a Christchurch Press reporter, who grew wildly hysterical over the matter. Hie excitement has proved very expensive for some people. On a recent Sunday night, at Rangiora, Mrs. Bevington, a widow. 72 years of age, fell when carrying a lamp" and a piece of the lamp glass penetrated one • A" eyM » the sight. The sight of 'her other eve being defective blind Stated that S,l ° Will " 0W be (,uite A meeting of the parishioners of St Peter's Church, Palmerston North' pledged itself to proceed with the scheme for the erection of a new ehuwh at a cost of £BOOO. A sum of £4OOO is at present in hand. An active canvass is to be made to raise the balance. It is hoped to have the necessary funds to commence the work in a eo'urde of years. ' A rara avis, a bittern, was captured on the road near Omata last evening and brought into New Plymouth. The bird, which is a fine specimen of ite species, was subsequently handed over to Mr. W._W. Smith, curator of the Park. Mr. Smith received another bittern a short time ago, but it .escaped from the grounds. Bitterns do not thrive in cap. tivity. An angler of some experience (states the Auckland Star) gives it as his opinion that there is no danger of Lake Taupo becoming overstocked with fish. He instances Lake Rotorua, in which the majority of the. trout now caught are in no way comparable to the fish caught there seven or eight years ago. His logic is this: When von are fishing yon can rest assured that it is not the miserable weaklings of the flock that you are catching. Tt is the robust and virile fish that hustles the weakling out of the way to grab the minnow. °And when the fishing became such a craze at Rotorua each fisher contributed to this inverse system of culling, taking the robust and leaving Uip weak. Just imagine a flock-owner culling in tho same way. What a flock he would possess in a few years! Austria's national tobacco bill last year (states the Vienna correspondent of _ a London journal) amounted to 287,380,000 crowns (about twelve millions sterling). Considerably more than half of thi5—185,490,000 crowns (about 7% millions sterling)—was clear profit of the Austrian Imperial Tobacco Monopoly. The total receipts were half a million sterling more than in 1909. The increase in smoking is chiefly in cigarettes, of which no fewer than 5452 millions were sold last year, nearly 400 millions more than in the previous year. Compared with these figures, cigar-sinok-ing is almost stationary. 1212 millions being consumed dn 1910* an increase of only eight millions over 1909. The tobacco monopoly employs over 40,000 workers, five-sixths of whom are women. The. average weekly wage of the best class of male employees Is about 19s, and of the women 14s.

In speaking of Sir Edward Grey's action in connection with 'Persian affairs in a recent interview with a representative of Printer's Ink. the late Mr. W. T. Stead said: "If a man has married a woman ami finds she is unclear, coarse, with uncombed hair and uncut finger nails, what is he to do? Kill her, and be done with her? Yea, if he can do so safely. Divorce her? By all means, if it be possible. But, if not"? In that case he must make the best of her; and that's what England must do with Russia and Russia with England. Asia is our marriage bed. England and Russia are there together. They must make the best of it and each other. That is the doctrine I have been preaching for forty years." And again, in expressing his views on the trouble in South Africa, Mr. Stead asked, "Do you know who was the one man in all England who foresaw the disasters of the South African war? King Edward. The King said: 'I have just been seeing Buller off. I am uneasy; I don't like it. lam very much afraid poor old Buller has got a bigger job than he will be able to carry out!'"