LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 163, 23 April 1935, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

The white butterfly lias made its appearance in the Methven district. A resident of the. township caugh one on Good Friday.

. Retail shops, which had been closed since Thursday evening, reopened m Ashburton this morning, but with t le mercantile firms still closed there was little activity in the town. With another holiday on Thursday ior Anzac Day business will lie considerably disturbed this week. Mercantile firms will open to-morrow morning.

“You are a brither Scot and can wear the kilt,” said Mr J. J. McG. Watson, *in welcoming Dr Gordon (“Ralph Connor”) to Invercargill. 'ln fact you can preach in the kilt, for there is one lady present in the gathering who heard yon preach in one, and she said it added to your eloquence,” he concluded. ; -

A suggestion that an organists’ committee should be set up to take over the question of recitals was made by Mi* W. Duncan, a Wellington. City Council candidate. For the last two years, he said, the organ had lam idle, and recently the council had engaged the services of one of the best organists in Australia and New Zealand,. Mr Maughan Barnett. When he had gone to a recital recently there had been 500 present, instead of a- full hall. lam disgusted with the people of Wellington,” said Mr Duncan. “A threepenny bit for an organ recital like that!”

Now that more tourist traffic between Christchurch and southern points is going via the Rakaia Gorge, so as to take in the scenic beauties along the foothills of Ashburton County, an effort is to be made to establish a camping ground for motorists near the Black Bridge, between Methven and Staveley. An area of land, 10 chains long, is to be planted, as the locality is said, to be an excellent one for motorists to make a stop. The Automobile Association of Canterbury is to be asked to assist in the making of the camping site.

Though many farmers in Ashburton County despaired of their root crops during the early part of the season, when the rainfall was considerably below the average, the rains which have been experienced in the past several weeks have given the crops a good growth. Tops were good most of the season, but the bulbs were small and of little account. They have grown a good deal lately, and it is considered that when they are taken up the crops will not be far short of average yields. There are some excellent fields of turnips in most districts at the present time. Green feed, generally, is also making good headwas".

Twenty, members o£ T tbe Star of tlie East Temperance Lodge, Sumner, held a picnic in the Ashburton Domain yesterday. A tea meeting was held in; the Mission Hall, followed by a confer-) ence, ayd the. .■ visitors returned to 1 Sumner later in the evening.

The condition of Mr Horatio AHenderson, aged 39 years, of Alford Forest Road, who was admitted to the Ashburton Public Hospital on Sunday evening with a broken leg, sustained when he was knocked off Ins bicycle by a: motor-car, is reported to be satisfactory.

An experiment in a lecture for young artists and senior pupils of Auckland secondary schools was tried recently by the Auckland Society of Ax,ts. In an endeavour to give young people an idea of the general principles of art and its aims and development without stressing the technical side, Mr A. Pascoe, Redwood, of the Elam School of Art, addressed a large audience of young people in the society’s clubroom. The lecture proved successful, and the society intends to arrange further lectures of a similar nature.

Championship ribbons are a thing of the past with the Mackenzie County Agricultural and Pastoral Association, which has replaced them with tartan scarves, six feet long and nine inches wide, made of .New*. Zealand wool and woven in Dunedin. An Ashburton County exhibitor this morning showed one of the scarves to a “Guardian” reporter. The first issue of the scarves was made yesterday, and the innovation created much interest among exhibitors and patrons of the show, which was held at Fairlie.

Mr B. B. Creagh at a meeting of the Hawke’s Bay Electric Power Board expressed the view that there were too many power boards in New Zealand, and their personnel was greater than necessary. He suggested that some move should he made towards amalgamation to reduce overhead charges and consequently the charges to consumers. The chairman, (Mr E. T. Crosse), pointed out that there were at present 38 power boards constituted m New Zealand, and that of these 34 were receiving supply. The smaller boards were paying £lO per K.V.A. and the bigger boards £B. That fact alone justified Mr Creagh’s statement.

About 30 members of the Ashburton Salvation Army Band, under Bandmaster G. E, Argyle, .visited Christchurch during the week-end and were entertained by the Christchurch City Corps. They visited the Christchurch Hospital on Saturday afternoon and gave, a concert in the evening. Services on Sunday were conducted by Commissioner F. Adams and the Ashburton Band assisted with the musical programme. An outing at Mount Pleasant was held yesterday and the bandsmen contributed, another concert programme. last evening before returning to Ashburtoin a thoroughly enjoyable visit!

Since the tar-sealing of the main 'roads, traction, engine ..drivers., have experienced considerable -difficulty ill keeping their engines and trailers level, because they are not permitted to travel on the sealed portion of the road and the sides of the road haye a slope which has given anxiety when heavy loads were carried, there being a danger of the trailers capsizing. Work on the road between. Chertsey and Rakaia is being carried out by the County Engineer at the present time with the object of levelling the ground on either side of the sealed area, so that heavy steam traffic may proceed with safety.

During the year 1933-34 factory production and. employment in New Zealand increased over the previous year. During the year. 1932-33 the added value ' amounted ’to £23,508,965, whereas in the following year it advanced to £24,851;679,"'an increase of £1,342,714. This increase in output and l value-has been accompanied by some satisfactory features in other respects, namely, an increase in the number of persons engaged, and increased wages paid and materials and horse-power used. The increase in the use of materials amounts to 10.1 per cent. An interesting feature of the employment situation is that it has become more steady; while salaries and wages paid have. been increased by so small a: percentage as 0.5. overtime has advanced by 6.8 per cent, in hours, while short time was reduced by no less than 16.5 per cent, in hours.

A visitor to the thermal district says that the predominant colour in feminine apparel in Rotorua just now is turkey red. The Maori guides at Whakarewarewa wear garments of this hue as a sort of uniform, and the vogue has spread. Maori matrons and maidens everywhere have incorporated in their colour some flash of this bright material, with the result that visitors see red wherever they go. The clothes lines at Ohinemutu and Whaka, on washing day, remind the spectator of a fire brigade pageant or a. pillar-box parade, and a group of Maori wahines on a street corner is a danger sign that would stop anything. “It looks cheerful, cosy and warm,” concluded! the critics. “Nothing the Maori could v r ear would look better, and the dusky belles are to be complimented on doing their bit to bring about brighter days.”

“The pakeha has no soul,” declared Mr Taiapa, of the Maori Arts and Crafts School at Ohinemutu, in a recent interview. Mr Taiapa was talking of his beloved art of wood carving, and his life’s avocation is the restoration of Maori arts and crafts. In justification of his somewhat sweeping assertion, he instanced the vast difference between the public oratory of the Maori and the pakeha. “The white public speaker seeks to repress his emotions and to present a plain, matter-of-fact statement to his audience in an ordinary conversational tone. The Maori orator, however, becomes on fire with his topic; he pulses with anger., thrills with sorrow, gesticulates in derision, woos with persuasion, and his udiole body moves in unison with his torrent of words.” “This,” said Mr Taiapa, “is soul, the expression of racial psycnology.” Mr Taiapa amplified his contention by an indictment against the pakeha of glorification of commercialisnn as opposed to a support of . the aesthetics of life, in which he claimed the Maori was the superior of the white race. “There are no Nature lovers like the Maori race,” he declared. “The poetic names given by them to every mountain, river, and natural feature in their own land demonstrates this, and proves my contention that the Maori has a-superior ■•soul, for aftei’ all what is soul-possession but being in tune with Mother Nature and the Infinite ■ through the mighty manifestations of creation on the earth?”

Some species of bluegum trees in Ashburton County have been killed this summer as a result of attacks made upon the leaves and bark by small beetles, and on many farms the trees are being cut down for use as firewood. It is stated that the trouble is extensive.

The example of the Ashburton Borough Council in deciding to decorate the council offices with electric lights during the King’s jubilee celebrations, from May 6 to May 11, is to be followed by the Ashburton County Council. The scheme of decoration has been left to the chairman.

. “I regret to report that stealing of magazines and mutilation of papers is still practised by unscrupulous people,” reported the public librarian to the Palmerston North City Council recently. “The Physical Culture Magazine and cover have disappeared. This is an impertinent theft, as the cover is quite large, and one wonders how it could be taken unseen. As several copies of this magazine have been stolen, 1 conclude one person is responsible, and when this person is caught I ask that my committee should prosecute.”

A bountiful autumn is being experienced in the Waikato, and the production in many districts is now considerably in advance of that of the corresponding period last year. Cows which showed a 25 per cent, drop during January and February are now yielding 15 per cent, more than they did in" April of last year. The prospects are that with a continuance of the present favourable weather conditions, the returns for the season will not fall far short of those for last season, in spite of the serious setback received during the long dry spell in midsummer.

Price difficulties which handicap the English beef producers are emphasised in a letter received! in Auckland yesterday from an established farmer resident in one of the eastern countries. “Please eat more beef,” he asks his Auckland correspondent. “Do not send the stuff here. We are having a dreadful time with fat cattle.” The farmer states that stock which would have sold for 51s per cwt. live weight in 1929, was now selling at 30s per cwt. He received a Government subsidy of os per cwt., but the cost of production now was*higher.

For over 40 years many residents of Wellington have been in the habit of timing their actions and setting their watches by Freeman’s three-faced clock in Manners Street, but whether they will be able to do so in the future depends on circumstances. The o|d clock, which projects out over the footpath on ornamental iron brackets, has faces 3ft. in diameter and is surmounted by a golden time ball which at one period used to descend at the hour or noon., Mr H. J. Frieeman has disposed of his interest in ‘ the property to Mr G. E. Cox, and has vacated the old premises, which are now in process of demolition. The late Mr Henry J. Freeman, father of the recent owner, established himself in business in Wellington as a watchmaker and jeweller in 1865, and the next year lie .Built the premises which are now to give place to a more modern structure. The section lias a frontage of 19ft. to Manners Street and a depth of 110'ft. The clock mentioned is still the property of Mr Freeman, but up to the present he has. made no arrangement for its re-erection over his new premises in Cuba Street.

How the kumara first came to New Zealand was related to. an interviewer by Mr Taiapa, of the Maori Arts and Crafts . School at Ohinemutu. The topic under discussion was the ancestral canoes of the East Coast Maoris in the historic migration from Hawaiki. These two canoes were named respectively. : Tgkitimu and Hprouta. Takatirnu was tapu, consecrated to the transport of warriors only, and being thus sacred could not be used for the conveyance of food. As a journey of thousands of miles across the Pacific could not be sustained without provendor, the voyagers carried a “ruakapunga/’- a huge bird, that was dispatched daily with a warrior on its back to and from Hawaiki and the canoe as it sailed toward Aotearoa. Thus food was regularly supplied to the migrants, and by the agency of the ruakapunga fresh seed kumaras were first planted on the East Coast of New Zealand, whence this nutritious tuber has been planted everywhere. The ruakapunga may well have been the feathered counterpart of the giant roc, that great bird whose fabled powers of flight and strength occasioned such terror in the story of Sinbad the Sailor.