LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 301, 17 June 1912, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

The Royal Commission on the Opunake railway route completed its report last week, and it has been forwarded to His Excellency the Governor in the ordinary course. No information regarding its contents will be available until it is presented to Parliament. The next Taranaki Hunt Club meet will take place on Thursday next on Mr. Harris' property, Waihi, instead of Oakura. This property is in the vicinity of Mr. Topliss' farm, and there is a possibility of the hounds running in that direction, and therefore a good day's sport can be looked forward to by the huntsmen. The attention of persons summoned for the Grand Jury ~at the sittings of the Supreme Court, commencing on Tuesday morning, is directed to a notification which appears in this issue discharging them from attendance. Common jurors will be required to serve, and must therefore attend as directed by their summonses. A profit of £67 Is 7d was realised from the Fire Brigade's annual ball. This includes a donation of one guinea from the Rev. Dean McKenna. Much credit is due to Mrs. Dockrill and iher energetic band of assistants for this highly satisfactory state of affairs, the' proceeds constituting a record. The expenses totalled £l9 16s 7d. Mr. R. H. Bligh, of the White Cross League, addressed three well-attended meetings in the Empire Theatre yesterday. Considerable interest was displayed in the literature of the league. The collections at the . three meetings amounted to £3 lis 6d, the expenses to £4. At the evening meeting a hearty vote of thanks was passed to Mr. Bligh, on the motion of the Rev. J. W. Burton.

Mr. H. C. Collier is in receipt of the syllabus for the second annual festival of the New Zealand Competitions' Society, which is to open at Wellington on November 13. Cash prizes and trophies to the value of £flso are being offered for competition. For the champion piano solo the first prize is a horizontal grand piano made by Chappell and Co., Ltd., and presented by Mr. F. J. Pinny, of Wellington. Full' particulars of the competitions are obtainable fronv Mr. Collier. Here is a. story from ancient China: A gang of men were found guilty of murder, but none would tell or confess who really struck the fatal blow. The .judge ordered them all, clothed in black, to be taken to a large barn and stood with their faces to the wall. An angel would come and put a mark on the back of the guilty one. When they were led out again there was a white mark on the back of one man. He did not know the walls of the barn were newly whitewashed, and put his back against it to prevent the angel marking him.

In a few years firemen will be a thing of the past/said Mr. T. M. Wilford, M.P., at Wellington, last Friday. Go to Seattle and Victoria and see the oilships there, with their mechanical devices to take the place of firemen. Go through the United States and see how' the telephone girl has been wiped out by the automatic exchanges. Go through the streets of Paris and see the electris machines for scavenging and watering the streets. See in New York the trams and other means of traction for quickly killing distance. Go to France and see the town-planning, where you have beautiful cities with gardens and squares. See the magnificent Prado in Madrid, with its 42-feet wide footpaths and five-chain wide streets. New towns in Western Canada could show lessons in wood-blocking, sewer construction and gas mains. Concrete was being used instead of cast-iron for these mains; it was a concrete age. The Rating Act of 1910 enables local bodies to :ecover rates from occupiers of native land, be they pakehas or Maoris. At Opunake last week, Mr. A. Crooke, S.M., gave judgment to plaintiffs in a case brought by the Egmont County Council against some natives occupying land known as Patiki pa, the amount involved being £43, rates for 1909-10 and 1910-11. Counsel for the Maoris applied for a non-suit on the ground* that other natives were also occupying the land, but the magistrate held that proving there were additional occupiers to themselves did not help defendants. Section 6of the Rating Act gives local bodies considerable powers in respect to the occupiers of native lands. It reads:—"ln the case of native land, notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the principal Act, if there is no occupier thereof within the meaning of that Act other than the owner, then the person who is in actual occupation thereof shall be deemed to be the occupier for all the purposes of the principal Act and of this Act, whether he occupies the land by virtue of a tenancy for any fixed period, or at will or otherwise howsoever, and whether his occupation thereof is lawful or unlawful." There was a very good attendance at the meeting of the New Plymouth Brotherhood yesterday afternoon. Mr. S. G. Smith was in the chair and made a few very appropriate and well chosen remarks on the importance of the subject set down for the address. Mr. Johnson gave a most enjoyable rendering of the song "Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind," after which Dr. Home delivered an address on "Education in Sexual Physiology and Hygiene," which the audience followed with intense interest. The subject naturally required handling with great tact anil careful phrasing. The speaker emphasised the growing necessity for educating the young people of the community in this most important subject, and the still greater necessity of educating the parents into a rightminded way of regarding it. Dr. Home remarked in conclusion: "1 fully realise that I am ahead of the times in advocating this teaching—twenty, perhaps thirty years ahead. Even if we start teaching the children now the best part of a generation must go before there is sufficient knowledge diffused to make a majority of adults who will regard the whole question in a right-minded, frank, and natural way." A full account of Dr. Home's remarks will be published in our columns to-morrow.

Members of the Equitable Building Society of New Plymouth (First and Second Groups) are notified that subscriptions will be due and parable today (Monday), nt the secretary's office, Currie street, from f) a.m. to 12.30, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., and 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.—Advt.

Palmerston is taking a poll on a proposal to borrow £60,00 for tramways,

The Potonc Chronicle states that the cruel and shameless poisoning of dogs still goes on at Lower Hutt and vicinity.

"The survival of the fattest" is the war-cry of the supporters of Taft, the twenty-stone candidate for the American Presidency.

A good story is told of a party of j Southland shoutists who went out after the wily duck just before the close of the season. Sport, had been slow, when one of the party who had got some distance ahead of his comrades saw four line looking birds swimming quietly in a bend of the stream. With visions of a fair bag he fired ten shots at them before he was joined by the remainder of the party, who immediately sent in a. perfect volley at the still visible ducks. The dog was then sent in and successfully landed what proved to be four stray decoys. The dearth of female labor which has long been a troublesome problem in New Zealand was a subject incidentally touched upon by Mr Justice Edwards while summing up in a divorce case at the Auckland Supreme Court. "An excellent cook, and even an indifferent cook," said his Honor, "has very little diffculty in obtaining a situation in Auckland or its vicinity." At a later period his Honor remarked: "There never has been any time within the last ten years when a mother or her daughter could not obtain a good situation at a respectable place." A number of particularly mean theftß are reported from Addington (Christchurch). Meat safes, cupboards, clothes ! lines, and out-door sheds have been stripped, and in some eases the thief or thieves have made substantial hauls. One ' lady had all her season's jams and preserves taken, an amount which, she states, was so large that the thief must have taken them away on a hand-cart or wheel-barrow. The houses robbed are mostly situated in the same block, and from the fact that good watch-dogs have failed to betray the thief it would seem that he is well acquainted with the habits of the residents and also with their dogs. ■ In a recent lecture at Dunedin Dr Chamtaloup discussed some disease bacteria Which flies carry and the diseases they give rise to. Among these were tuberculosis and various parasitic diseases. One authority stated that in the United States of America there died annually 4!),000 babies under two years of age as a result of intestinal affections due to flies. In many of the large towns of Great Britain the' infantile mortality per annum was from 100 to 150 or-more per 1000 babies born, and infantile diarrhoea played a large part in this enormous waste of child life. On comparing the figures for New Zealand during the last 10 years we find that the average proportion of deaths of infants under one year of age to every 1000 births was 71.9, while in England and Wales it was 109.

!The jerry-building evil is no longer to be tolerated in Grey Lynn. A fort- * night ago the Council discussed the inatJ ter and decided that the committee j should draw up by-laws with the object j of providing a minimum specification for I wood-buildings erected iin the borough. !The committee has drafted the by-lawa, and these have been submitted to the Health Department, and have been approved by the Health Department. "1 think the Grey Lynn Council," the health officer says, "is to be congratulated on being the first local authority in the Auckland province to adopt such a > specification. The need of it is evident j from the instances of jerry-built houses 1 which are being run up in and around Auckland, the only remedy being the aj doption of by-laws specifically requiring certain strengths and measurements," The Queensland Railway Commissioners have placed an order with the , M'Keon Motor Car Company, Omaha, U.S.A., for the supply of five cars, delivered at Brisbane, for £22,025. The cars will be used on the branch lines in Queensland, and the order for five is only a samplo order, as it is anticipated they will bo adopted for the entire Queensland railway system if these live are satisfactory, but they will also be tried in the suburban railway service. Mr Denh»m (the Premier) stated "that the inauguration of a service of auto cars, which would arrive in November, was the first step in the direction of electrifying the whole of the suburban railways." Each car is similar to the Victorian motors, except in gauge, which is 3ft 6in. They will be operated on rails weighing not more than 401b to. the yard, the weight on any axle not being more than eight tons.

It was recently reported by cable that duriag the voyage.to San Francisco from Newcastle of the American four-masted schooner Americana a fracas occurred and, as a result, Captain Benson lost his life. A private message received at Sydney from San Francisco gives full particulars, as supplied by the (chief officer, who, after the death of the captain assumed command. On January 87, in latitude 0.52 north, longitude 1GG.33 west, at 0.50 a.m, Captain Benson went to the forecastle to speak to tho cook, and was in the galley for several minutes, when five shots were heard, and when investigation was made it was found that the Japanese cook, S. Okulo, had shot the captain five times. Three of the shots were in the chest, one m the shoulder, and one in the forehead. The captain fell out on t*e deck, and died close to the main hatch in 20 minutes. The cook stated that the Captain insulted him and knocked him down in the galley, when he reached for his pistol and shot him. Okulo was immediately placed in irons and handed over to the police on the vessel's arrival.

HOW KHEUMO CUBED CAPTMN JOHN GIBBS. RHEUMO affords permanent relief from rheumatism, gout, sciatica or lumbago. It has cured hundreds of others, and if you suffer from these complaints will just aa surely cure you. RHEUMO neutralises and expels from the blood the cause of the excruciating agony—the excess of uric acid. Read the experience of Captain John Gibbs, the popular •kipper, lately of Auckland. He writes: "I was incapacitated for eight months and could not go to sea. In fact, I was bent douMe with pain. I tried Rotorua tor three months, and came back to Auckland not having received any benefit. Nothing seemed to do me good until a friend of mine, who had also taken RHEUMO, asked me to give it a trial. I did so, and after taking four bottles the result surprised both myself and friends who knew how I had suffered I always recommend RHEUMO to anyone who suffers from rheumatism or gout." RHEUMO is sold by all chemists and storekeepers at 2/6 and 4/(5. The Commission appointed to enquire into the cost of living cannot be said to be making much headway. The evidence given is purely parochial, and does not affect the main question—the cause of the increase. Milk, butter, cheese, fish, meat and most of the necessaries of life have advanced in price, but such is not the case with tea. In the centres of production tea has advanced, but no change has been made in either the prices or the quality of Crescent Tea. There are throe grades, sold at 1/8, 1/10 and 2/per lb. —Advt.