GENERAL NEWS.

Bush Advocate, Volume XXII, Issue 61, 14 March 1910, Page 6

GENERAL NEWS.

A party ofSamoans, eight men, fifteen women and three children, axe en route for' Germany with the intention of giving entertainments such as the Maoris gave who recently went to England and America. The Samoan dances are slow things compared to the Maori liakas and will quickly tire spectators. In Germany, in iall probability, the Sanioan performers will find 'it necessary to wear more clothing than tliey require in their own sunny isles, and that does away witli a good deal of the spectacular effect of t'heir performances. The largest farm in New Zealand, Longbeach, is now reduced to six thousand acres. Speaking of average crops the manager says': —"The best average yield Ave had here was ill 1901, when the wheat went fifty bushels to the acre all oyer, and the worst was in 1908, which was the second of two very dry seasons, and th-%11 the average yield went down to about twenty-two bushels to^ the aore, a tremendous drop. The biggest total of wheat taken off the farm was in 1899, when the yield was 300,000 bushels. Our record for oats was in 1901, when they averaged 99 bushels per acre." "Will you swear off liquor for twelve months," asked Mr Kettle of a "drunk" a.t Auckland. "Yes," replied the man, somewhat dubiously. "Very well, take the Bible in your right lia.nd, and repeat these words after me: "1 solemnly swear to abstain from taking any alcoholic or iiitoxicating liquor for the period of twelve months." The prisoner repeated these words, but at the end added the further words "except medicinally!" "Oh, very well," thundered the magistrate ; "I am not going to allow a man of your stamp to waste my time. You are prohibited for twelve months." With characteristic enthusiasm Dr Truby King, lecturing in Burns Hall at Dunedin last week, exclaimed:—"Every gentleman should take off his hat to the Right Hon. John Burns, and every lady curtsey to liim." He had just read an extract from the speech made by that gentleman at the tuberculosis exhibition in London. Much of the extract, and especially that portion of it referring to "bestfront parlors," has as distinct application in the colonies as at Home, wherefore it is given here: "You find the register a.t the back of the grate always shut. It ought to be always open. You find the window never down. . . . But there is

another reason, and I suffered from it when 1 was a boy; I mean the fetish of the workman's 'best front pari or.' It was a museum sacred to the landlord, and the doctor; where children dared .not enter, and where even father was a trespasser; and the chief function it discharges is to overcrowd the other portions of the dwelling. If the fetish of. the front parlor were broken np it would add 25 per cent, to the breathing space of every workman's home."

The Auckland Education Board finds itself in a predicament. It has some sixty or seventy vacancies for assistants., mostly at low salaries, and it can find no teachers to fill them. Meantime, parents, who find that the schools at which their children attend are not fully staffed, are making more or less strenuous protests, and the only body that they can reach with their protests is the Education Board. The board, through its committee, which takes special charge of the work of selecting teachers, has been doing all in its power to fill the vacancies, but has at last come to the conclusion that the teachers are not available in Auckland. It has now decided to adopt a rather unusual course of action by advertising the vacancies in Southern newspapers. The dearth of teachers has been brought about by the new scale of staffs set up by the last Act, which creates a greatly increased number of positions for certificated teachers.