General Items.

Waikato Argus, Volume XXIV, Issue 3785, 19 May 1908, Page 3

General Items.

James McEnearney, who fractured his skull as the result of a fall from a train near Dunedin on May 9th., has succumbed to his injuries.

A Californian judge has decided that a foot passenger is not legally required to get out of the way of the motorcar. It is nice to know this, but it isn't much use, after all. If you happen to be in the middle of the roadway when one of the auto-know-better juggernauts comes tearing 'along straight at you on his top gear, it would be pedantic to insist too - much on your rights. Much better it would be to move swiftly to the safety of the sidewalk, or to leap high into the air, postponing your descent until the 'pouf-pouf has passed beneath you. No matter what all the judges who ever shed the light of their legal learning on the murky ignorance of the common herd may say to the contrary, there is only one rule of the road where the motorist is concerned. That rule is "Skedaddle!"

"To be exact, the length of the Otira tunnel will be 5 miles 25 chains 12 feet. It will be 17ft-high and 15ft broad. It will be quite straight, with a dip from east to west. The eastern portal will be 2435 ft above sea level, and the western portal 1585 ft, ..giving an incline in the five miles of 850 ft, or Ift in 33. Messrs John McLean and Sons have contracted to make the tunnel for £599,794. Extras will probably bring the total up to £600,0Q0. It has been calculated, says the Lyttelton Times by a person fond of figures that the tunnel will be £332,640 inches long, and it will cost nearly £2 an inch along its whole length. The workmen inside the tunnel will be, on the average 700 ft below the mountains but at one spot, beneath Warnock's Knob, they will burrow at a depth of 1100 ft." Some caustic remarks about the manner in which the Agricultural Department is carrying out its inspection were made to a Gisborne Times reporter by a Poverty Bay orchardist. Said he: "The inspectors seem to be very active in some respects and very dilatory in others. The man who grows the Lawton berry is hauled up to Court—that is, if he is known to be an Opposition supporter —whilst the man who allows the common blackbrery to spread over the land are not interfered with. Then the codlin moth has taken charge of our orchards, but nothing is being done to cope with the pest. During the season just closed I sprayed seven times and had a splendid crop of apples, but none of my neighbours did, and the result was that, sitting on my verandah at sundown, I could see hundreds of moths coming over the fences to my orchard, thus undoing all the work I had done. If tie department does not take steps to deal with the various pests, we shall soon have no fruit at all."

Some years ago a gentleman who was strolling on the sands at Broughton Ferry, Scotland, with a young lady got surrounded by the tide, and there was a considerable scramble to get to dry land, the gentleman having to carry the lady ashore. In the operation he lost a gold chain and pendant in the flood. Years rolled past without the chain being seen, but about a year ago a fisherman found the chain. He promptly handed it to the police, but the owner's address is unknown, and no claim has been made for the chain by the owner since its recovery. The fisherman has now claimed it as his, but the police decline to give it up because the owner's name is known, and the fisherman has threatened to report the matter to the Receiver of Wrecks. The matter rests there at present. The owner at the time of the loss gave the name of Macfarlane, and stated that he resided in the neighbourhood of Glasgow. It is said that he subsequently went to New Zealand. A party of public men assembled at the Woburn Dairy/at Lower Hutt, to witness the starting of a scheme which aims to give milk straight from the cow, without disease. The Woburn Dairy is the property of a syndicate of local men, and its chief claim to distinction is based on the excellent character of the farm, the sanitary premises, the standard of cleanliness, the cooling and bottling process, and particularly the fact that the herd of cows was selected under the tuberculin test, and it is promi:ed that it will be subject to the test every month, in order to er.sme that the milk will be safe from the germs of consumption, the most dangerous of all the injuries of ordinary milk. The cows are milked by machines in sheds, which have concreted floors and iron sides devised to facilitate the frequent syringings which the floors require. The milk is instantly cooled to about 50 degrees, and conveyed afterwards to the cold room, where the temperature is further reduced to 40 degrees, to arrest the development of bacteria. Here also it is bottled automatically. The bottles are used in sizes of a quart downwards, and are provided with a single flat paper cover, which is dustproof. Since the makers provide increasing length of chassis year by year, there is no reason why sleeping accommodation, at least, should not be incorporated in the design of the body of a present-day touring motor-car, for in out-of-the-way places it would often be preferable to spend the night in one's own car than to put up at an unknown hostelry of meagre resources L— Onlooker.