The Temuka Leader. THURSDAY, JANUARY 6. 1881. LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Temuka Leader, Issue 337, 6 January 1881, Page 2

The Temuka Leader. THURSDAY, JANUARY 6. 1881. LOCAL AND GENERAL.

—o— We would draw attention to the annual soiree and concert in connection with the Presbyterian Church, to take place in the Volunteer Hall, this evening.

Kerrison, who was shot at Prebbleton on Christmas Day, died at the Christchurch Hospital on Tuesday. A verdict of wilful murder has been returned against Gibson. Mr K. F. Gray will sell, to-morrow, at 2 o’clock sharp, at his rooms, Temuka, 20 acres first class land, with house and other improvements thereon, and situated on the Waitohi Downs.

That pest, American Blight (says the Southland News), has spread amazingly since warm and showery weather set in. The trees in some orchards are white with the nasty, cottony, mildewy fluff that the insects surround themselves with as a protection from the rain, frost, or any ordinary insecticides. At the same time the trees are, raano of them, bearing heavy crops of apples, so that by next year they won’t have much vitality left. Under these circumstances, great interest attaches to the question of whether it is possible to defeat the enemy by growing only blight proof varieties—at all events for main crops. The result of some experiments made during the past few years by Mr W. Russell, at his place, Hay road, appears to prove conclusively that it is possible to set the pest at defiance. He took scions of Winter Majetin and Irish Peach, and grafted them on a badly blighted French Crab stock, whose days of usefulness as a bearing tree were therefore at an end. The grafts took, and grew vigorously, and although the blight was thick at the point of junction, the shoots were perfectly healthy, and remained so. Another test was to graft the varieties named on some of the branches of a blighted tree, leaving the rest of the head to grow. In this case the result was equally good. The grafts remained clean, while the tree's own branches are eaten up with the blight. To those interested in the subject Mr Russell will permit an inspection of the trees, which are curiosities of nature and art, the gnarled and blighted excrescences on one part contrasting strongly with the clean, smooth, and healthy bark of the other.

The Wairoa correspondent of the Napier Daily Telegraph says “ There is an uneasy fechng gaining ground amongst the few loyal Native* in this district at the rapid manner in which Te Kooti’s new religion is spreading. Peace and goodwill

to all meu, mi 1 especially to women, are said to be leading features in this new form of worship. This is supposed to be merely superficial. There is something underneath that may mean a repetition of what has been done at Poverty Bly and Mohaka. I: these days of retrenchment it must not be forgotten that it was by reducing the Chatham Island guard to half-a-dozen men that the prisoners were able to escape. The A.O. in this district number about ten . strong, a.id barring these ten rifles and a few shot guns there is not another firearm in the place.”