LOCAL AND GENERAL

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 6, 19 October 1935, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL

A furrow approximately 29 mile, long will bo necessary to enable a poisoning of the Tangimoana affectation area, of -rabbits to be carried out by th. 3 Manawatu Rabbit Board.

Tennis teams from the Ashburton, Timaru, and Christchurch Girls High Schools met in a triangular contest in Ashburton to-day. The visiting teams arrived this morning, and will return this evening.

The winner of the fii'st prize ot £'2u(jy in the “Better Prizes Art Union” is Mr A. G~ Arnold, a married man, who lives at 39, Limbnck Street, Palmerston North. Mr and Mrs Arnold have a family of two small daughters and an infant child. Mr Arnold is employed as a carpenter.

A Press Association telegram from Westport states that a poll taken yesterday on a proposal to, raise £15,000 for street improvements in the way of tar-sealing, was carried by 454 votes to. 55. The number of ratepayers on the roll is 1461.

H.M.S. Diomede entered the Calliope dry dock at 11.30 yesterday morning for an emergency overhaul (says a Press Association telegram from Auckland). More than 50 civilian dock workers are assisting the crew in scraping and painting the hull, which will be completed in two days, the fastest overhaul ever carried out at Devonport. It is learned from a reliable source that the cruiser will sail on Monday.

The coastal and air defence scheme undertaken some time ago has been advanced by the Public Works Department in acquiring 212 acres of land, four miles from Blenheim, for the establishment of an air force station (says a Wellington Press Association message). The area was recommended by Air-Marshal Sir John Salmoiul when in New Zealand in 1928, and is the same site as that from which Sir Charles Kingsford Smith took the Southern Cross to Australia in the same year.

An increase in the incidental allowances made to school committees was advocated by the North Canterbury branch of the New Zealand Educational Institute in a resolution received by the monthly meeting of the Canterbury Education Board yesterday. The resolution said the institute considered that the incidental allowances made to school committees were grossly inadequate, and that the Government should be called on to make adequate provision especially for heating and cleaning. Several members of the board explained that the board had advocated increased allowances over a period of several years, and the board decided to tell the institute this and thank it for its resolution.

The water-wheel in the Ashburton Domain has been removed for renovation purposes. It is receiving a coat of tar to preserve the woodwork.

'“Vour remarkable scenery and the innate courtesy of your people are two impressions which I will always have about New Zealand,” Mr Arthur R. Maas, an American business man, who has been touring New Zealand.

Explaining the advantages of irrigation at the conference held in Ashburton yesterday afternoon, Dr. I. W. Weston (farm economist, Lincoln College) said that farmers thereby reaped the benefit of rain without experiencing any cloudy days.

When he fell on the steps of the Ashburton Post Office yesterday, Mr Alexander Urquhart, an elderly man recently. employed by the Canterbury Frozen Meat Company, at Fairton, injured his left hip and left shoulder. He was admitted to the Ashburton Public Hospital, where his condition is reported to be satisfactory.

A move is shortly to be made by the Wellington Manufacturers’ Association to sound the Government as to ‘its attitude toward the portfolio of Industries and Commerce. At a meeting of the association held this week ii was decided to ask the Government to agree to the principle that the Minister of Industries and Commerce in future should be a member of the House of Representatives.

Twelve steel girders, each about 34 feet long and weighing nearly eight tons, have arrived in Ashburton for use in connection with the new railway bridge over the Ashburton River. They will be taken to the site on Monday, and a start will be made almost immediately placing them in position on the concrete piles. Another consignment of girders has yet to arrive from the Addington Workshops, where they were constructed.

“We made a good start with the season, and were assisted by the in* crease in prices, but if rain does not come soon we will lose what we gained,” said a County dairy farmer this morning. “The growth of grass has slowed down again, and it is already going to seed. If there is no rain soon, the grass will go off, and the supply of milk will be decreased. 'Hie sooner we have irrigation and so be independent of frivolous weather, the better it will be for every farmer.”

“Now is our opportunity to use the plentiful supply of water available in Canterbury for irrigation purposes,” said Mr G. H. Holford, of Christchurch, at the conference hel<) in 1 Asliurton yesterday. “There are two* and a-half million acres of land in the Canterbury plains,” he continued, “and of that area two million acres is in grass. To use a football term, Canterbury has the ball at her feet if only the available water is utilised.”

“The question of recruiting is one that still occasions a certain amount of concern to the executive,” states the fourth annual report of the New Zealand Territorial Association (Northern Command). The executive is now endeavouring to get the authorities in Wellington to sanction the issuing of posters throughout the Dominion, outlining the emoluments and reward to trainees for service, the report adds. It is proposed that the posters should be displayed in every public' building, in ai manner similar to that adopted during the period of compulsory military training.

A petition aimed at the abolition of the Coldstream Board, one of the earliest local bodies in, the County, has been in circulation for some time, and over 100 of the 166 ratepayers on the roll have signed it. . The capita! value represented by the petitioners is net known but it is said to be very much greater than half the value of the Board’s district, which is the proportion required. The petition is to be presented to the Ashburton County Council at an early date. It is understood that the Board is very much opposed to abolition.

The presence of a sea lion at St. Clair has undoubtedly proved a boon to the Dunedin Tramway Department, for last week-end hundreds of people travelled by tram to the seaside, thenprincipal object being to see the visitor from the sea. Fortunately he was ashore both days, lying at full length on the grass at the rear of the band pavilion, and was constantly surrounded by an interested crowd in which youngsters predominated. Late on both afternoons he waddled down to the esplanade, and proceeded along the footpath to the steps leading to the sand at the end of Beach Street. His method of negotiating the steps caused great amusement, his movements comprising a roll this way and then that v.n\, with his rear flappers used as a rudder. Once in the water he was in his element, and swam away gracefully to disappear within a very short time, no doubt in search of fish for a meal.

Thursday was the ninety-fourth anniversary of the consecration of George Augustus ISelwyn as first Bishop of New Zealand (states the “New Zealand Herald”). On the establishment of British sovereignty in 1840 the Church of England was represented in New Zealand by missionaries of the Church Missionary Society and one or two clergy brought out by the New Zealand Company. Through the efforts of a society formed by the Earl of Devon, in co-operation witlx the company and two Church societies, Sehvyn was chosen Bishop and consecrated under Royal letters patent. He arrived at Auckland in May, 1842. His episcopate lasted twenty-six years, and when he lerb to take up his duties as Bishop of Lichfield, in which office he had been instituted about a year before, the Church in New Zealand was an autonomous province of seven dioceses, including the missionary diocese of Melanesia. The sixty-seventh anniversary of his departure falls to-morrow.

By its judgment delivered yesterday in the action of the Auckland City Council v. St. John’s College Trust Board, argued before it on September 30, the Court of Appeal dismissed the contention of the Trust Board that St. John’s College was exempt from rating by virtue of sub-section_ G or the exemptions to the definition of rateable property contained in section 2 of the Rating Act, 1925, in that its lands and buildings were used for a school not carried on exclusively for pecuniary gain or profit. 'I lie court held that the term school was used m the act in its usual meaning, as contrasting with special schools lor special purposes. Taking the test of the character of the education alone, the court was of opinion that the scope oi the curriculum was clearly particular and not general, and in view of the decided cases the college was not a “school so as to obtain the benefit of the exemption.

At a public meeting held at Tinwald last evening members of the Tinwald Domain Board were re-elected unopposed for the ensuing term.

Two cases of tuberculosis, one in Allenton and one in Lagmhor, were reported to the Ashburton County health inspector this week. No notifications of infectious disease v\eie made in the Borough,

“It was good to see how well New Zealand produce was advertised in Great Britain,” observed Mr E. Moss, who has just returned to Wellington. “This particularly applies to cheese, butter and fruit, which could be obtained in most localities and was always easily identifiable by placards.”

In conversation with a “Manawatu Evening Standard” representative, the managing director oi a large plumbing and hardware business in Palmerston North remarked on the splendid upwaid trend in his trade. Not only did his firm have a number of contracts in hand unequalled for several years but it had become necessary last week to engage extra hands.

A New Zealander, who has been on a visit to Scotland recently, comments on a lack of steady advertising of New Zealand butter in Glasgow papers. Butters from the Continent, he said, were prominently brought before . the public by regular advertising, and m consequence had a steady sale. Were the same procedure followed with respect to New Zealand’s butter, lie said, he was sure the people of Glasgow would soon be confirmed buyers of the “best butter in the world.” Having lived in Glasgow (where most butters are retailed) before coming to New Zealand 1 , lie could say that nothing equalled the produce of this country.