LOCAL AND GENERAL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 November 1938, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL

Late President of Turkey. Flags on Government buildings in Masterton and elsewhere were flown al half-mast yesterday on the occasion of the funeral of the late President of Turkey, Kamal Ataturk.

Sudden Death at Whippet Meeting. Mr Alfred James Marshment, aged 53, of 291 Taranaki Street, Wellington, collapsed at the Petone Whippet Racing Club’s meeting at Hutt Park on Saturday, and died shortly afterward. One of his dogs had just won a race and he was preparing another of his entries for the next event.

Town v Country Cricket. Mr W. Hoar, senior Wairarapa cricket selector, has nominated the following players for the Country team which is to play Town on November 30 and December 1 at Wellington:—W. Peterson, (Red Star), B. Patrick (Wairarapa College), and R. Clarke (Lansdowne). Ten Thousand Members.

Rapid increase in the membership of the Automobile Association (Canterbury) was shown, in a return presented by the secretary, Mr J. S. Hawkes, to the council of the association at its meeting in Christchurch recently. For the month, 232 new members were elected, and 658 for the year to date. “Total membership is now about 10,000,” said Mr Hawkes, ‘but I would not like to say definitely that that is the figure until I have had time to check the totals.”

Rice-growing in Australia. Though it was only a few years since the first rice was grown on the Murrumbidgee irrigated area in Australia, that country now supplied all the rice for Australia and New Zealand, said Mr C. J. Fineran, Christchurch, in an address to the Canterbury Fruitgrowers’ Association. Unlike the Chinese and Japanese, the Australians used modern methods in rice-growing, he said. The fields were ploughed by tractors, the rice was drilled like wheat, and manures were also used. The water was then turned back on the field, and was turned off just before the harvest. Header harvesters bagged and graded the rice.

Seventeen Meals in a Day. It was stated at a recent meeting of the Taumarunui Hospital Board that a Maori who had been sent to Auckland to be fitted’ with a wooden leg sent in an account for 17 meals consumed in one day. The Maori, in detailing the account, said he had seven teas and pies on the way to Auckland and three teas and pies when he arrived there, including two at one place. On his way back to Taumarunui the same day he had seven more teas and pies. A member of the board suggested that next time they sent a Maori patient to Auckland they should call tenders for supplying him with food or the trip. Native Plants.

Writing from Lydney Park, Gloucestershire, under date September 30, the honorary secretary (Mi’ L. D. Haggett) of the New Zealand Native Plant Preservation Society, says that Lord Bledisloe has accepted the office of patron of the society, and adds: “I accept the office with much pleasure and gratitude, although conscious of my inability, at so great.,a distance, to render the society any practical help in its useful and patriotic activities. I am afraid that I cannot claim to merit your eulogistic references to my past services in your letter, but I can at any rate claim to be an enthusiastic lover of the New Zealand native bush, convinced that it has no parallel in the world, and delighted that the Native Plant Preservation Society, under the able presidency of Mr Hope Gibbons, and supported by such ardent enthusiasts as my old friend, Mr W. H. Field, is doing such invaluable work in maintaining and developing an interest in, and a wider knowledge of, the natural plant life of the Dominion.”