LOCAL AND GENERAL

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 304, 22 December 1903, Page 2 (Supplement)

LOCAL AND GENERAL

Judge Yon Stunner is a passenger to Sydney to-night.

Mr. Gilbert Carson, ex-M.H.R. for Wanganui, has accepted the presidential chair of the N.Z. Baptist Unicin and Missionary Society.

The new manager of the Waiwera Hotel, Mr H. Kerrigan, is making himself very popular by his courtesy and ability. He was formerly manager of the well-known City Hotel in Dunedin, one of the most popular of the Southern houses. At the meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, Dr. Mason. Chief Health Officer, will commence an anti-consumption lecturing tour through the colony. He contemplates forming an association such as exiats in the Old Country, and of which King Edward is president, with the object of organising an anti-tuber-cular crusade.

In the prize presentation in connection with St. John's Collegiate School, two special prizes were awarded to boys who had excelled most in school-room education, athletics, and character (the Rhodes' scholarship requirements). These were won by M. Stewart (Ist), and R. Hesketh (2nd). The positions were inadvertently reversed in our report of the proceedings.

Our Wellington correspondent wires that Sir A. Cadman and Messrs. Farmer King and D. Berry, of the Colonial Iron Company and Coallields Construction Co.. arrived from the North on Friday night, and had an interview with the Minister for Mines this morning regarding the Taranaki ironsand deposits. On Monday the party left for Parapara to inspect the properties there, which the Company proposes to work.

The demand for the new song, "Two Veterans," at the Veterans' Home Bazaar was so great that the whole of the first edition of 500 copies was sold, and none were procurable late on Saturday evening. The song was sung on the lawn by Mr Horace Stebbing to an audience of about 2000 people, and was received with loud applause. Arrangements have been made for the sale of additional copies of the song at the music stores.

A thrilling experience is reported to a West Coast paper from Coal Creek. Two men sleeping in a tent were awakened by a peculiar grinding noise. After a pause, one yelled, "Come on, Jack," and made a dash for the door. However, his mate did not follow, and next moment a birch tree some. 3ft. 6in. in diameter crashed across the tent, just missing the man inside, but burying him beneath the torn tent and fly. Luckily both men escaped injury.

At Huntly on December 15th, before Mr H. W. Northcroft, S.M., Patrick O'Regan was fined £1 and costs 9/ for refusing to quit the Huntly Hotel after being warned to do so by the licensee. Peter Guthrie, licensee of the Waipa Hotel, Kgaruawahia, for permitting one James Ready to be on his licensed premises while in a state of intoxication, was fined £5 and costs £3 2/. In the case Friar Davies and Co. (Mr Dyer) v. J. Devery, claim £3 for goods supplied, judgment was entered for the plaintiff.

Prof. M. T. Brigham, director of the Bishop Museum, lionoluJu, is now in Wellington. He was (our correspondent states) vividly impressed -with the thermal wonders of remaikable Eotorua district, and he afterwards journeyed over tlie tourist route to Pipiriki, and thence the Wanganui Kiver, a (rip with which he was enraptured, lie echoes the sentiments of others that we have a wonderful asset in our tourist resources, >md commends iheir development and the dissemina--1 ion of information for the benefit of oversea visitors. The outward expresses on the Rotorua line this morning were fairly well loaded. On the nine oYlu.k special there were about 100 passengers for all stations alon? 'he line, and the ordinary express at 10 carried about 200. The enrly morning train will probably be better patronised ,»hen people come to know that it will land them in Kotorua at 4.45 p.m.. and so srive them time to look about them before dinner. The rNpress now on its way to Auckland is : erarying a v"y heavy load, and fully J 300 are expected to bo discharged into Auckland by it this evening:.

To the Editor: Sir, —A well-meaning person signing himself "U.S." writes in your prper of. the 10th in prai?e of my work in modelling a statue of Sir John Logan Cuinpbe.ll, and suggesting that money be raised by public subscription for the purpose of sc-nding mc to Europe to study. Whilst sincerely thanking your correspondent for his enthusiasm concerning my ciTort. and also for his evident good intentions on my behalf, I wish to state 1 could not for a moment consider permitting myself to be made the obiect of a public subscription.—l am, etc., ALFRED B. CABLSE*.

\ Wellington and Mr.rlborough Company . with a capital of £10,000.. has been formed for the manufacture of cement at works a few miles out of Blenheim. Mr John Smith has just returned from Auckland, where he purchased some machinery for the work. It was thought that it'would be necessary to import the machinery from Germany or America, but as the Auckland prices were much lower than was expected the plait was purchased there. The work mil be commenced in two or three months. Manufacture of cement is expected to grow into a great industry in the colony. Several companies have been formed, and others are in course of formation.

Farmers In the Poverty Bay district hay. inaugurated what they consider is the most popular system of telephones in the colony. There are twentythree private bureaux in that province, and nearly twj hundred farms are connected. These private lines are usually carried on manuka poles, which arc lashed to the fencing posts with wire. In some cases the top wire of the fence has been utilised, and when a gateway is met with a couple of high polos carry the wire over it. and so tho conn cob on is continued. The fences, nowever, no not make pood telephone cirniirs, a? they are too liable to interruption. Ihe most elective way has be?-! on the manuka ljqles. These lines cost about £3 per luile. Several settUv* will join in the er-ctioo cf a wire, with a branch wire to each homestead. The main wire is then carried to a telephone bureau, nnd the local sub-master connects oiler bureaus or e nbscriber3, through tilt! Gi*borae exchange. A subscriber ran rrrfg up a country bureau within fwr-nty-flvr miles for 3d. :>o pxtrr charge is made for connecting the country bureau with the back block settler

The Government contribution to the cost of the surveys of the coastline and harbours of New Zealand made by H.M.S. • Penguin was £2500. Simultaneously with the work done by the surveying ship, the chief surveyors of the colony have been making land surveys for the purpose of computing the latitudes and longitudes of the coastal trig stations as derived from the new determination of Mount Cook, Wellington. These have been plotted on the Admiralty charts, and maps have been prepared showing by comparison with the Admiralty charts the coastline a» derived from the land surveys. The work, as applied to the whole colony, involved the computation and checking of 754 stations, and the readjustment of the coastline on fifty-one charts.

In connection with the Matthews incandescent burner, ordered by the Marine Department from a Birmingham firm for experimental purposes on the New Zealand lighthouses, it may be • pointed out that Trinity House, which controls the English lighthouses, has adopted the Matthews burner on the Kit son system in two of its lighthouses, and it proposes to instal it as opportunities occur at other suitable statiens. This burner consists of an oil container, from which oil is forced up by air pressure to the vapourising chamber above the burner. The gas formed in the vapouriser is conveyed to the burner, and on its way thereto is mixed with air, and is ultimately directed on to a mantle surrounding the burner, which is thereby rendered incandescent. With a No. 7 Welshbach sperial mantle a working intensity of 1100 candles is obtained, the consumption of oil being one pint per hour. The incamJescent mantle being only two inches in diameter lessens the divergence and increases the intensity of the beam as compared with the existing oil burners. In substituting this burner for an ordinary oil burner of 330 candle power at Lowestoft lighthouse, Trinity House found that the increase in the intensity of the beam was from (53,000 to 241,000 candles. After lighting y.p, the burner requires very little attention from the keeper during the night. A gentleman, in Wellington who is famiiiav with qualities of burners predicts that its experimental success will almost certainly -warrant the Marine Department in deciding npon its adoption on the colonial lighthouses.