TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIX, Issue 8140, 15 May 1906, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

During the past few days (says the Taranaki News) excitement has prevailed amongst some of the people at Inglewood. As in many other parts of the province the oil indications in this locality are very enoouraging, so much so that it ia reported that an Australian syndicate has made an offer, to purchase a settler's farm of 200 acres, with the idea of exploiting it. The price reputed to have been offered for the land, which belongs to Mr B. H. Nicbolls, is no less than £20,000. The offer was refused. At another spot, situate not many miles from the town, oil is freely flowing into a small stream. In this latter locality the petroleum is so plentiful that the whole face of the creek oan be ingited with a match, and the flame has been known to burn for over a quarter of an hour. All round the immediate district oil gas is frequently met with.

A new lesson was introduced into the Opunake Suhool one day last week, when it was too wet for drilling the boys, and it is one (says the Times) which should meet with the approval of all farmers. The headmaster, recognising that milktesting is an important factor in dairying, produced a Babcock milktester, with the view of giving the boys instruction. He explained the theory of the machine, and the force used in testing. Mr U.Looney, a practical farmer, and a keen Chairman of the School Committee, worked the tester, and tested the samples of milk whioh the children brought, whioh varied from 3 4 to 5.5. It was the first occasion on whioh a demonstration has been given in a public sohool, and it is certainly one which should be encouraged.

At the last monthly meeting of the Master Guilders' Association of New South Wales a letter was read from the Wellington (New Z aland) Builders and Contractors' Association. It stated that in New Zealand the builders were hardly ever clear of the courts. This was due to all the varied brances of trades connected with their workings all wanting—the letter stated—more than they generally succeeded in getting. After praotioally three years' hard work, the New Zealand builders bad forced the architects of the colony to meet them, and they were now wording on equal uonditious throughout the whole of New Zealand. Trade, it was stated, was very brisk, and builders, as a whole, were very busy, and likely to be for some time.

A correspondent of the Patea Press says:—Owing largely, it is presumed, to the Government's reluctance to disturb its present dußky oooupants, but probably owing still more largely to the Government's supineness, thousands of acres of laud within easy reaoh of Waiotara, in the Rangitatau block, have year after year been allowed to lie unimproved and in an almost totally unproductive state whilst settlement has extended beyond its boundaries inland for many miles. . According to authoritative information reueived by Mr Q. D. MoKenzie* a couple of weeks ago, the Lands Department hasatlastdeoided to throw the block, which comprises something over 30,000 acres, on the market. The land lies only some twelve miles back, and there is a good road to within four or five miles of its boundary. The land was confiscated in the sixties, but its original ououpiera have continued to "squat" on it.

In his lecture at Dunedin on Thursday evening, Dr. Truby King said that the highest form of education was practically submerged with the fall of the Roman Empire and the irruption of the barbarous hordes. How far in these days we had fallen from the great ideal he could show most simply by an exhibit. (Dr. King beie displayed a tpyioal ladyte shoe of 1906). Nothing more than that was necessary. He was speaking quite earnestly, and from the bottom of his convictions. He did not think that a being created in the £image of its Creator could possibly show more contempt for its Creator than it did when it tried to jam its foot into a thing like that. This shoe was surely *a negation of practical religion. In China they actually out some bones from women's feet in order that they might be bound up and oompr«s9ed. We did quite as bad. Jia to a great many of the feet'he saw, he would suggest that bones should be cut out;*it would be far better before attempting to put feet into shoes like this. as to boots he was informed that the men were nearly as vain and as bad as the women. We should never get a better standard of education until we got rifcht back to the Greek standard.

Referring to the recent telegram concerning labourers on the Main Trunk Line, Mr Seddon, in an interview with a Lyttelton Times reporter, said those who decry the cooperative system say the men are earning too much, and in the next breath turn round and adversely criticise the Government for uot paying the workers sufßcient. A fair wage was a right and properthing to give, and this the Government had always done from the inauguration of the system to the present, and he intended to continue this practice, The colony was not getting the work done too cheaply, but paying a reasonable prioe, Some or the colony's railways have been made through the most difficult country in the two islands by co-operative labour, at a lower prioe than any contractor could have touched Moreover, the quality of the work was infinitely superior to what it would have been under oontraot. This applied to both roads and railways. Under the co-oper-ative system work was found for men whom contractors would not employ, and who would otherwise be a burden on the State or relatives. Contractors would not employ these men, though they could no a fair day's work. If the Government stopped co-operative works to-morrow, in less than a month the outcry would oompel them to resume them. The Government had no intention of stopping the co-oper-ative system.

Mr Meeking, the Victorian Government inspeotor under the Vegetation Diseases Act, has drawn attention to the fact that fruit-growers by Bending apples lnfeoted by codlin'moth to thejjam factories, were* in addition to evading the law, doing themselves an injustice. If the factories were unable to procure the cheap infected fruit for jam, they would have to buy sound fruit, and thus, by relieving the market of many thousands of oases annually, materially inorettße the prices obtained. Fruit-erowers living nearer Melbourne, he said, were able to cart loads of moth -infected apples direct to the factories, and, through the oumbersomeness of the working of the Vegetarian Diseases Act, fruit inspectors were powerless to» take action against them. This was a sore point with the inspectors, but the Sulicitor-General's opinion was that fruit inspection could not be enforced at the factories, as under the reading of the Act, they could not be constituted markets.