LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 298, 13 June 1912, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

At an extraordinary meeting of the Opunake Dairy Co., to further discuss the question of the manufacture of casein it was ultimately decided to "remain as we are" and continue to manufacture butter. The question of cheese and casein has, says the local Times, been dropped for this season. For the month of May at the port of New Plymouth 180 boxes of butter, valued at- £lOls, and 2881 cases of cheese, valued at £7023, were passed through the Customs for export. At Waitara 2SSS carcases of frozen beef, valued at £4002, 4400 carcases of mutton, valued at £3557, and 6002 carcases of lamb, valued at £3574, were similarly handled.

"If a woman takes a glass of beer with her husband at dinner there is absolutely no wrong whatever in it," remarked his Honor, Mr Justice Edwards, recently, "but when a woman begins taking a single glass while her husband is away she is apt to take a glass, a glass and a-half, then two glasses until the -habit gets a hold of her, A hushand is quite right in objecting to his wife drinking in this way." Mr W. Ambury (president of the Taranaki Agricultural Society) has received the following letter from the private secretary to his Excellency the Governor.—"l laid your letter of 2nd inst, -before the Governor, and his Excellency desires me to thank you for your kind expressions of sympathy, and to say that as his indisposition obliged him to forego the pleasure of opening the new hall and the Agricultural and Pastoral exhibition he hopes to be able to attend the spring ,show. if you will he good enough to let him know the date of the same."

Mr. Gladstone, it may be remembered, was wont to declare that the best way to see London was from the top of the old horse omnibus. Were he alive now he would surely transfer his affection to the top of the fine new motor omnibuses that are running everywhere. These take you not merely through the centre but to the very outer suburbs, to the places beyond the outer radius, where city and country meet. They are so swift, so comfortable, and so reliable, that I'know no better way of surveying our great city than atop of one of them. —London Daily Mail. In the course of a lawsuit relating to patents which came before the Supreme Court at Wellington, the Chief Justice said that by far the best method was the American system, which would not allow a patent to be registered unless it was a good one. Here anything could be patented, and parties were left to fight it out afterwards, as occurred in this case. Sir John Findlay, K.C. (counsel for plaintiff company), remarked that the German system was even more strict. At the last Imperial Conference it was urged that the Imperial patent law should follow the lines suggested. There was an excellent attendance at the Brougham Street Hall last night at the first of a series of euchre and bridge parties held in aid of the Technical School funds. The euchre prizes were won by Mesdames J. Haivey and C. Steffenson and Messrs. A. Wylie and Simcock. The bridge prizes were won by Mrs. Paul and Mr. White and Mrs. R. White and Miss Wood. A tasty supper supplied by the technical scholars was provided, and dancing was kept up till an early hour. The music was supplied by Mrs. George's orchestra, and i Mr. C. T. Mills acted as M.C. It is to be hoped that the next of these entertainments will be as well patronised as the ons held last night. If Mr. Wyatt, the London manager of an Australian co-operative butter company, is right, high prices for New Zealand butter are not an unmixed blessing to the producing country, for they encourage the consumption of margarine. And that commodity needs no encouragement, from our point of view. Its use has assumed such large proportions as to frighten those who have the real article to sell, and its advanae from the tables of only the poorer classes to those of the butterman's "best customers" is due to the high price of butter. This year, says Mr. Wyatt, people wanted a cheaper material, with the result that the best shops were circularising their customers that they had "something equal to the best Australian butter at a lower price." There are now people in London who are doing nothing but breeding bacteria for the propagation of cultures to impart the proper flavor to margarine. One factov that he had the opportunity of inspecting was turning out 250 tons of margarine per week, and the imports last March were close upon 3000 tons heavier than in the same month in the previous year. The position seems to be that when butter is quoted at 104s to 110s per cwt people will buy it; then it soars to 125s or 130s, and we are all thinking what a fine thing it is for New Zealand, the English customer is doing a little thinking on his own account, and too often his thoughts induce hiin to pocket his pride and buy margarine.—Press.

Oli Woods, in comfort and at ease We laugh at pain, ignore disease; Tint when the cutting winter winds Make throat feel raw, and red eves blind You medicine send, no matter how, A ministering angel, thou! N T o chest disorders I'll endure, While T can buy your Peppermint Cure.

The Borough Council election at WaJ nganui yesterday resulted in the return of Messrs. Williams, Liffiton and Knuckey. The proposal to raise a loan of £7OOO for a reservoir was carried. Mr H. D. Mcintosh, the Australian promoter of prize-fights, and Mr Frank Musgrovo, cricketer and theatrical manager, are promoting a £IOOO tug-of-war, which promises to be the biggest tiling of its kind ever held in Australasia. The teams are to.be genuine representatives of the various nations, and must be certified to by consuls or other responsible persons. The scheme makes provision for a trades, a "United Service" (army, police, fireman, railway employees, etc.), and an all footballers tug-of- war. Mr W. H. Russell, of the Hansard staff, writing from Winnipeg under date May 9, to a friend in Wellington, remarks: Of the two countries Canada is at present offering stronger evidences of prosperity than the States. Immigrants are pouring into Canada. But the winters are severe. Lake Superior, for the first time in 25 years, has been frozen over, and at Minneapolis (U.S.A.) 2Sdeg. of frost for three weeks in succession was registered. At Winnipeg (Canada) they have had the the same degree of severity. At a dairying function at Havelock, Marlborough, a speaker said that a short time previously he witnessed the Ministerial guest, the Hon. J. Colvin, sign the largest cheque that the speaker had ever seen. It was a cheque for £1,170,000, and Mr Colvin turned not a single hair as he attached his signature. The Minister for Mines was acting for the Minister of Finance, whose authorisation was not just then available. He j dealt with several other big cheques on the same occasion, and altogether signed away between three or four millions —with quite impressive serenity. The amazing situations that the labor laws can bring about were well illustrated in Christchurch this week. A lady came down from the country bringing a little child with her. She took a room at one of the leading hotels, and asked that a cot should be prepared for the child, who was cold and very sleepy. A porter put the cot into the room, and then there ensued a long delay. Then the proprietor came, full of apologies. He explained that all the women who did bedmaking and such work were under the provisions of an award limiting their hours of employment to a certain number each week. At the moment all were off duty, and if one of them made the cot before 5 o'clock both he and she would he under penalties, which the Department of Labor would not hesitate to demand. The lady bowed to the inevitable, and for about two hours the little one slept, probably as comfortable as it would have been in its own cot, in her bed. Punctually at five the housemaids resumed their duties, and the blankets and sheets were duly arranged. Mr Harold Begbie, in his latest book, "The Ordinary Mind, the Extraordinary Thing," savs that in the present time tho pressure of the soul has increased among mankind. "Stand at the corner of London Bridge ot Blackfriars Bridge or in the streets of Oldham when the > workers are going- home," writes Mr Begbie, "Look in their faces. It is not 1 poverty or coarseness or vulgarity or j wickedness which appals you. . . but I hardness and absence of joy. Can a peo!ple so hard and dispirited, so joyless and divided, so little conscious either of immortality or brotherhood, support the j strain of its own Godless materialism? ! Can they ever work out those high and I splendid destinies of Empire for which enthusiasm and faith are the first essentials? It is my hope that those of my j readers who are either in despair about j the future or careless as to the fate of 1 humanity may realise that there exists among the multitudes of their fellow > creatures a great hope and a 'pressure of the soul' which is one of the strange signs of this troubled age, and to guide which .is one of the first duties of those who very really and very earnestly have their affiance in Christ. Everywhere, when we penetrate beneath the surface of society, we find this pressure of the soul, this dissatisfaction with earthly things, this hunger after satisfaction and peace." An incident which occurred at a meeting addressed by the Minister for Defence (Hon. A. M. Myers) at Auckland one night last week afforded an instance of the general approval with which the community has accepted the compulsory 1 military training scheme. During the j earlier part of his speech, Mr. Myers j was interrupted by a youth who wanted the Minister to discuss military training. Later on, Mr. Myers proceeded to review the subject of defence and commented on the inconsistency of the man who refused to discharge his responsibilities to the State, but still claimed all the rights of citizenship. Immediately the youth revealed himself by jumping to his feet and holding up his'aim. He stood pale and secure while the audience rose to its feet, climbed on chairs, and shouted for his removal by the police. "Passive resister," resisting violently, was ejected. Mr. Myers said he was so«y such an incident had occurred, but he was delighted to find that everyone else had received his remarks with so much approval. Military training would do much good in inculcating discipline that was so lacking in New Zealand. While he was Minister for Defence, he was going to carry out the law. 'and those gentlemen who claimed that they were supported by a majority in their opposition to the scheme were welcome to put up a candidate against him at the next election. The Government was not anxious to prosecute if it could be avoided. Recommendations were now before the Solicitor-General for his opinion, and if they were carried out thev would end the present feeling in connection with the prosecution and punish-

"Blumentag." or flower-day, has just been held in Vienna, followed by "Blumentag" in the Prater and some of the suburbs, and for forty-eight hours every one has been "seeing yellow," at all events when he looked at a ihuman being. For the flower this year is a yellow narcissus, with pheasant's eye centre, artificial, and, perhaps, not very true to life, but very effective. Flowerday is the equivalent of Hospital Saturday and Sunday in London, only here the pretty girls with the collection boxes give a quid pro quo in the shape of a flower for every penny, and sometimes for twopence and for a frankly adI miring look will put it into one's but- | tonhole themselves (writes the correspondent of the London Standard). Several thousands of women in their best frocks waylaid all pedestrians, entered cafes, restaurants, banks and public offices; two young girls even braved the terrors of the "Gray House," the Old Bailey of Vienna, and by the evening two million flowers had been sold, and about £IO,OOO collected in small change, which was carried in a hundred sacks to the bank. Towards evening the difficulty was to find anyone who was not already decorated with the symbol of the day. Cabmen wore it in their hats, carters on their whips, la'borqrs in the tops of their high boots, and babies in their mouths—until taken away. Care has been taken this year to include some Jewish charities among the list of institutions which divided the proceeds, and thus a grievance of a large and wealthy section of the community which was much ventilated on previous occasions has been removed. "Roslyn football jerseys are the best.--Advt

"It lias lit;en <a great pleasure to me to see in what happy relations you stand to the aborigines of this country," said the Right Hon. J. Bryee at the Wellington civic reception. He could remember as a small boy what great interest was taken in the Maoris by the people of the Old Countiy. The care and sympathy with which remains of .Maori life vev'e preserved, and the kindly feedings shown towards the .Maoris themselves, were sources of unfeigned satisfaction to him. This was one •.•ouiitry at least where the white people hud shown sympathy and kindness toward* the aborigines. lie had seen .so much friction in other parts of the world that he ventured to say there was nothing move to the credit of the people of New Zealand than the way they had behaved to the Maoris. He was sure the same sympathy would be extended to the people of the Cook and other Pacific islands under the tutelage of New Zealand.

Speaking at the Huddcrsfield Technical College on the use and abuse of examinations, Professor E. M. Sadler observed that to denounce them root and branch was as unpardonable as to deem them the solo criterion of educational excellence. Examinations, he said, were an indispensable help to the teacher, a common measure of attainment in a large number of schools and a convenient audit of a school's intellectual accounts. But English education had long suffered from a plethora of external examinations, and especially from those which interrupted the earlier years of secondary school life. It was more than fifty years since the examination weed was introduced into England from France, and it had spread rapidly through the secondary schools. He did not advocate the wholesale abolition of examinations, but he thought the best solution of the problem would be found in a reform of the methods of examination, and in a gradual change of public opinion which at present was wont to attach undue importance to the winning of certificates as a proof of a school's educational value.

"L'Armee Moderne" (Paris) tells of some ingenious experiments which are now being carried out by officers of the military aviation corps at Nice, with a view to finding means of destroying aeroplanes. In spite of the special guns invented for the purpose, it is generally considered impossible to fight against aeroplanes, or even dirigible balloons, which have only to take the precaution of getting out of range; but the Nice officers have found an adversary which can reach as high, or even higher, than the air craft can possible rise—nothing less than the eagle. They have trained six eagles for their experiments, first accustoming them to the noise of the propellers and gun shots, then by placing templing bait on mi>del balloons and teaching them to rush furiously at tlio machines and tear them up as they would tear up their prey. ''There is no aeroplane," says the periodical in question, "and above all no dirigible, which can withstand such an attack. Given the rapidity of an eagle's flight and the strength of its beak and claws, there can be no doubt that a company of properly trained eagles could annihilate, in a few instajits, the most powerfully equipped aerial fleet."