OUR WELLINGTON LETTER.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3791, 22 April 1891, Page 2

OUR WELLINGTON LETTER.

(Our Own Correspondent).

Wellington, Tuesday. The Chrysanthemum Show in the Skating Eink on Thursday and Friday is the present coming event, and a highly successful exhibition it seems likely to be, judging by the more than usual amount of interest which is being taken in it botli by those who are going to exhibit and those who are content merely to look on and admire. There was some talk of the Show remaining open a third day at j reduced prices, that is on Saturday, and such a would have been extremely popular. Most of the English shows last three days, and on the half price day the takings at the door are, without exception, the highest of all, indicating a correspondingly larger attendance. On Saturday, aud with a low price, ihe public would attend in shoals, and that is just what is wanted. When there is something worth seeing, every possible step to get people there to see it should be taken and the concern be made a commercial as well as a horticultural achievement. At this oresent Wellington Chrysanthemum Show, it is expected that there will be quite three hundred separate exhibits, making a total of nearly three thousand blooms and about three hundred pot plants. Mr W. Jay (gardener for Mr Levin) is sending one hundred and eighty pots. Mr John Earland (Mr H. D; Bell's gardener) is also a very largo exhibitor in pots, including Chrysanthemums raised from his own seeds. Mr Earland is the only grower of whom I have heard who has tried seedlings and been successful. Mr J. J. Kerslake, last year's champion amateur, will again be a large exhibitor. A wonderful enthusiast is Mr Kersluke. During a recent gale he was up prettywell all night with his plauts. At one o'clock in the morning he had them all laid flat and covered with sheets, and then, as later on the day calmed, the shelter was removed and the plants raised their uudamaged heads once more. The largest professional exhibitor in cut blooms, Mr Fred Cooper, the well-known Wellington seedsman, will probably surpass himself if bis health permits him to exhibit tbis season. Thus, taking one way and another, the Chrysanthemum Show of 1891 is likely to be the best up to date and so will adequately repay the exertions and spirited management of Mr Herbert Pileher, the excellent secretary (who by the way is shortly leaving Wellington) and his confederates in action.

I went to visit Wilkins and Field's to-day to see and hear the latest novelty—the phonogiaph doll. The doll is about two feet high and of ordinary appearance, except that its limbs are adjustable and it can be made to adopt an animated attitude. ]>s dress is rather scanty and consists only of one robe, but that is of a sufficiently comprehensive character to completely drape it. The doll, it is almost unnecessary to say, is feminine, like most t'lkingmachines. Thero were really three dolls on view, and each spoke a verse of a nursery rhyme. The first recited "Old Mother Hubbard," tli3 next chanted forth •• Ba! Ba! Black Sheep," while the last I heard gavo some information about "Two Little' Black Birds, which sat upon a Hill. 1 The words were intelligible a yard or two away, and had much the same sound as the tones which are produced by the ordinary phonograph, except that the voices are more shrill; somewhat "thin," and of course of i loss volume. The mechanism is that of the phonograph on a small seal e, and it is contained in the "chest" of the figure. There is concealed th e small wax cylinder and the

diaphragm, and the motion is supplied by the turning of a crank at tl.e back as the doll speaks. The invention is the property of the E>liaoji Phonographic Toy Company of IJew York, and it embodies no less than seven patents, dating from 1888 to 1891. Messrs Wilklus and Field have al-> ready sold several of these dolls, one of which has gone up to a station beyond Masterton, towards Hawke's Bay district. Mr H. M. Feild, who kindly exhibited the doll to me, also took uie through the firm's shop, show- roonjs, ancj warehouse, and I was surprised at the extent of the building and the proportions o the Urgp stock of bulk gpoda and manufactured articles of every kind kept qn hand. Messrs* Wilkins and Field make rather a speciality of novelties, and several were brought under my notice. One was a new plate for picnic parties made of a thin section of wood, and which, as it costs only a few pence a dozen, can be thrown away after use. Another object of interest was the Lee Speedy Kifle, the quick-bring' uiagaistue rifle now being introduced into the British Army aud of which those j ijaw to-cjlay were about the first to arrive in New Zealand, exco.pt a sample specially sent to I/ord Onslow. The rifle is sighted up to about two miles, and the cartridges, (seven I think), are contained in a chamber under the barrel, and immediately before the trigger guard. The weight of the rifle is very little if anything in excess of the ordinary service fire-arm, this being due to the fact that the' reeepticle for the spare cartridges is a box and not a tube, aud so does not increase the weight Ly extending the whole length of the rifle. One compound movement much like opening and closing the breach of the present weapon ejects the used cartridge and brings the new one into position, The hpre of the Jjee rjfle is very proall ; only about half of that of the ordinary volunteer rifle. Mr Henry Snodgrass, formerly of the Bank of New Zealand at Carter, ton, is now on the accountant's staff in the Genr Company's cilice in Wellington.

4 new thing in books is now ou sale in Wellington. Mr J. B. Innes, ot Willis Street, showed mesonie copiqs the other day. Thoy are editions ofl arch works as '•' Hood's Poems, "f " Ingoldsby Legends," " Liu£ Days of Pompeii" and so fosfth, and their speciality is that the ljftves are of very thin Japanese paper/ with the printed reading matter «n one side pnjy. ££r Innes also gj4ve uie the first copy of a new which is now to come yout every Saturday evening. It is dijtitied " On the Ball," and devotes itifeejf to football. TUfi paper is pHfrlJshedl under the auspices of the W/llington Rugby Union and amongst /ther information in connection witjft the game, contains a record of/he matches played during the day union which it is printed. It comes out «06out eight o'clock in the evening ajhd should prove interesting and Ufteful ,to footballers. We weroTtaiking of funny advertisoments/u the Occidental 'smoking room 'bog other evening. The following extracted from the Eutiping led ujf to it: —"Wanted, a young Man, wbjfcan play the piano and make

himself generally useful. Apply at the Nag's Head Hotel after 0 this evening." Then a gentler* an present produced a Hobart paper in which appeared this singular announcement, "Wanced, by two women a lady to do their house work. Apply etc, etc." Finally, I myse:f quoted an example of the strange and almost startling things one sees in the papers. It appeared in the New Zealand Times about three years ago, and was a paragraph in the "wanted" :olumn. It ran "Wanted a lady to milk." A gentleman who was a fellow passenger in the VVairarapa train on the day it appeared banded the I'imns across to me and asked what it meant. Had I not been more familiar with the eccentric perversions of printers I might have been as mystified and as wondering as he. As it was I merely suggested that someone required a lad who could milk, and that careless or jocular type-setter had been too free in the use of a "y," thus by i reckless disregard of consequences peculiar to his species, converting "lad " into "lady" with embarrassing results. The thirst of the blood-seeking mosquito is proverbial. It is an interesting idea to provo its pertinacity by the following little experiment: —The next time a mosquito settles on an exposed portion of your body, say on your hand, wait patiently for him to bury his proboscis in the flesh and commence his engorgement by the suction of your fluid of life. Then calmly cut him in two with a small pair of scissors. For fully half a minute he will, if he is an ordinary able-bodied member of his race, continue to suck your precious blond, and it will flow in a scarlet gush from the section of his body exposed by the cut you have made.

Retrenchment in the Government service still continues, ind Civil Servants go about with bated breath and anxious mien. The latest example of capricious injustice which bis come under my notice is the refusal of several men compensation or retiring allowance on the grounds that they are only on the " casual staff" and therefore are not entitled to such consideration. These officers have,been in the service continuously for various extended periods ranging from four or five years up to nine years, and now they are informed with extraordinary inconsistency that they ere " only temporary hands who have never been properly appointed," and so they are cruelly deprived of the only soothing feature of a very hard fate. Two cases have come tinder my notice during this past week of men who in former hard times succumbed to bad fortune, going round with open cheque book and honestly paying their old accounts in full, less the proportion already discharged at the time of their original "compromise," Surely times are improving, gr else the honest man of commerce is not the myth which some peoplo would hurshlv have us to be believe him to be. There is a chance- of Messrs MacMahon Bros, bringing round a comic

opera company in about two months, with " Paul Jones," " Chilperic," and other popular productions, There is a sawmiller living up Bay way who has ut family of twenty-one children, and when a friend of mine last saw them there were seventeen members of it dining at the same table. The youngest child was then only about five months old, and father and mother had by oo means tho traces of care about them'. Their responsibilities seemed to sit as tightly upon them as their years, for thoir appearance was but that of middle age. A paragraph in last week's Catholic Times about tomb-stones over the graves of horses, makes rne think of the dog's cemetery at Edinburgh Castle, I daresay some of your readers have seen it. In a small enp'osure just below the embrasures is a collection of mounds surmounted by little headstones. They are the graves of the dogs of various officers of regiments which have been quartered in the castle. On one may be read the inscription—" Here lies Punch, who faithfully followed the —th Kegiment for sixteen years and who departed this life midst general regret on 18—." On another stone is to be seen the appropriate quotation—" Let sleeping dogs lie |" and so qn may be read the tributes paid to tfje memory of about a dozen canine friends, dating in one or two case 3 many years back. A now phonograph has just been landed in Melbourne larger and more powerful than that now being exhibited in New Zealand.

"Zephyr."