CITY AND SUBURBAN

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 104, 27 January 1930, Page 12

CITY AND SUBURBAN

HAPPENINGS IN AND ABOUT TOWN

In the Wellington district alone the State Forest Service in the last year has paid 1/- a snout for 22,000 wild pigs killed, which has absorbed £llOO out of £4OOO received as the share of the Service in the opossum skin royalty.

“He was found in suspicious circumstances in an upstairs bedroom of the Windsor Hotel yesterday afternoon," said Senior-Sergeant Ward of Francis Halligan, aged 32, who was charged in the Magistrate’s Court on Saturday with being unlawfully in the room mentioned. An application for a remand was granted.

About 200 people availed themselves of the week-end excursion trip run by the Railway Department at special rates to Wanganui, New Plymouth, and intermediate stations. The train, on which more than a hundred seats had been reserved, left Thorndon Station at 12.55 p.m. on Saturday, and returned last night at 10.40. ”,

Some people certainly have a queer sense of the beautiful. During the screening of a film in a city picture theatre on Saturday night, the heroine, a lady of undoubted charms but of doubtful virtue, entered in a clinging negligee which left little to the imagination. As she swayed her way to the nervous hero, a woman in the audience was heard to heave a heavy sigh and to remark to her companion, “Oh, isn’t she be-e-e-autiful; just like a spider!”

Jupiter is at present the only planet in a position favourable for the casual observer and can be seen fairly low down in the sky, due north, at half-past 8 in the evening. Slightly above the planet, and to the right, the fixed star Aldebaran can be seen. Jupiter is considerably brighter than Sirius —the brightest star—and is a conspicuous object in the northern sky. The remaining planets are all fairly close to the sun. Meteorites, or shooting stars, are expected in the north or north-eastern sky on the evenings of February 10, 11, 12, and 13.

Deer are not allowed to be shot in the watershed reserves presented by the Government to the Wellington City and Suburban Water Board a year or two ago, unless the shooters remove the carcasses in their entirety from the reserve. This is compulsory in order to guard the water supply against pollution. One who has shot hundreds of deer states that at this period of the year, and until the end of March, ■ within three minutes of a deer being shot it will attract innumerable flies, which co’me up op the wind, and unless the carcass is dealt with at once it is totally unfit to eat in 24 hours.

The old clock in Courtenay Place in front of the post office, on which tram conductors timed themselves through, has been removed and replaced by an electric clock veranda high on the line pole a few feet further east

“Picket fences are all very well as a mid-Victorian protection to the front of a home” (writes “The Leaner”) “but it is time they were dispensed with at the Basin Reserve. The fence which divides the play area from the space in front of the pavilion is an oldtime picket fence, and whenever there are attractions in ‘ progress on the reserve a large proportion of the spectators throng about and lean upon this fence. It is not a comfortable fence to lean upon. It is suggested that the points should be cut off as low as the top scantling, and a six-inch board run along the top. It would then be a most desirable fence to lean upon, and no one would be the worse off. Some day the City Council will bestir itself to finish the Basin Reserve. The Council has been at it now for about eighty years, and it is still one of the worst appointed public grounds in New Zealand. Why not place benches on the asphalt spaces in front of the pavilion? I noticed that the rust is beginning to assert itself already in the steel-work of the new pavilion—a fact which calls for the spreading out of a couple of hundredweight of paint.”

Thar deer, of which there are specimens in the Newtown Zoo, were first re- * leased at Mount Cook. They are Himalayan mountain sheep, and have since spread tremendously in the mountalnoua districts of the South Island. Quite recently some specimens were mustered with some sheep off the hills in Marlborough, showing how they have spread themselves over the country.

Found by a constable walking the streets at 2.45 a.m. on Saturday, Robert Down, aged 57, appeared in the Magistrate’s Court later to answer a charge of being a rogue and vagabond in that he had insufficient lawful means of support. Accused, it was stated, had replied to the constable that he was going nowhere, and, having no money for a bed, would have to sleep out. He had been sleeping out for some time past, as he was without work. Sentence of twelve months’ imprisonment with hard labour was imposed.

■ “About how many deer are there in New Zealand?” was a question put to a responsible officer of the Forest Service in Wellington a day or two ago. His reply was that in two provinces alone in the South Island there were over two million deer, but the. total in New Zealand was beyond his conception. They had multiplied ten times in less than as many years, to hazard something like an estimate.

Motorists generally may not be aware ' that in overtaking another car on an intersection they! are breaking the law. Doing so was the cause of a bad collision at the Taranaki Street-Wakefield Street intersection early in the week, and the same offence was committed . twice within three minutes at the Courtenay Place junction yesterday morning.

The Tory Street extension is still In the making. This work has been under construction for several months, but it now looks as though it will be ready for paving in the near future. A solid foundation has been laid and the blinding has been well rolled in by heavy rollers. The new extension will connect Wakefield Street with Cable Street. A rather nasty depression has been left in Wakefield Street, which every motorist seeks to avoid, as the result of the cutting up of the bitumen surface of that street in connection with underground work.

The value of the new Mount Victoria tunnel, now in the making, was borne in upon those who attended the cricket match on Saturday afternoon. ' The entrance to the tunnel on the western side is directly opposite the pavilion, which means that the people of Hataitai and Kilbirnie are going to ba brought within- five minutes of the Basin Reserve, within a period of eighteen months. This is going to add immensely to the value of the reserve as a central ground for all planner of sport, as there are those residing on the eastern side of the range who hesitate about making the journey into town at present owing to the round-about route for cars, but who will then be able to run through the hill in two or three minutes.

If there is such a thing as a society for the prevention of cruelty to motor-cycles and side-cars, it ought to have been in action yesterday, when a motor-cycle nearly broke down on the Mangaroa Hill under the weight of its human cargo. Six people did it carry —and a side-car, and some luggage, too. Behind the driver sat two adults, while another perched herself between the pilion seat and the edge of the sidecar. , How she did it was a mystery. In the side-car were a woman and a small child, the latter holding a bottle of milk, from which it drank from time to time. The luggage looked like the last straw on the camel’s back, and was packed on the back of the side-car. The progress of the whole outfit was certainly slow, but by no stretch of the imagination could it have been dedescribed as sure.