TE AROHA LOCAL MATTERS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2247, 2 December 1886, Page 3

TE AROHA LOCAL MATTERS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, — Having read with great interest the letter iv your columns from Mr J. Mills re the borough v. town district for this place, will you allow me space for a few pertinent questions for the benefit of tho&e whom they uiay concern. I ask this favour of you, as your paper has a large circulation here. Was it not well known by those who are now so disinterestedly (?) scheming for a, town district at the time they signed the borough petition that the goldfield revenue had been reduced months before ? Is it not a conclusive proof of the fallacy of the assertions of those who favour a town district that the goldtield would be a loss? That the county council are willing to grant the town district, and keep the goldfield ? If rejected now, allowing it would be a loss, is it likely they would allow themselves to be incorporated when the field has become a success ? Were those persons who have taken such an intense interest in having a town district formed ever known to exert themselves in any public matter, except when they had an axe to grind ? Is it one of the pecuniary advantages of a town district that the revenue would be £G0 per annum less for publicans' licenses than under a borough for Te Aroha alone ? Is it not true that there was not 30 names on the town district petition of those who attended the public meetings when the matter was thoroughly discussed ? Can it be denied that a majority of the improvement committee are now in favour of a borough, together with a very large proportion of the working class ? Lastly, can the town district canvassers deny that misrepresentation secured several names, such as asserting that both the borough petition and town district petition were on the same footing, viz., to be granted immediately or lost altogether ? I cannot close without expressing a hope that those in authority in Wellington will not grant a petition so clearly in opposition to the interests of this district as the town district petition undoubtedly is, especially noticing the class of bignatures and the means used to obtain them ? Hoping you will insert thi*, — I am, yours obediently, One who Wishes this Place to Prosper. [We have been compelled to omit some portions of this letter.— Ed.]

The twenty- two rooms of 13 Liucoln's Inn Fields, London, which have been for many years sealed up in accordance with the will of Sir John Sloane will soon be opened. Their contents have naturally been much speculated upon, and it is believed by some that valuable art treasures will be found, while others believe that the opening of the sealed rooms will reveal a family secret, perhaps no longer closely affecting the descendants now living, but interesting to them to know. A paper on the value of ensilage was read at the Derrington Chamber of Agriculture meeting lately by Mr T. Easdale, agent to Mr Stobart, of Pepper Arden. He said that their experience on the estate he managed had now extended over four years, and that Mr Stobart continued to hold the same favourable opinion of the system as at first. Since the enlargement of his silos he had made 200 tons of silage iti 1884, and the same quantity la ISN i J[n th« two past winters he had forty fattening beasts, from sixteen to twenty milking cows, and upward of sixty store cattle, but not entirely fed on it. He specially alluded to the advantage of feeding milch cows on silage in winter, and maintained that of about six hundred persons whase opinions had been obtained, 98 per cent, were favourable to silage an food for cattle. Strange to say, there appeared to hare been no allusion in the paper to the great extension the system is likely to have owing to the high success of the stacking process. The Belgian Gazette gives its readers particulars of a really remarkable coalscuttle recently invented by a gentleman in Brussels. Thanks to the coal-scuttle,-we shall be enable to entirely do away with thos* grate encumbrances, fire irons. Its appearance at first sight presents nothing unusual. A close, inspection ■hows however, that it stands higher than is customary. When you wish to put coal on the fire you touch a pedal-spring with your foot. The spring is so powerful that it not only detaches a lump of coal from the rest, but slides the lump bodily down an invisible hole and shoots it out and upwards into the fire ; all this is done in an inconceivably short time. Tie spring can, of course, be regulated, and there is never the slightest risk of the coal flying out at other than the required