WELLINGTON NOTES.

Evening Star, Issue 12872, 23 July 1906, Page 2

WELLINGTON NOTES.

[SHW343E. <K> TH» StjU^} July 23. Much is being made of the fact that numbers of clerks are being paid off in the big braiding. The explanation is that these were engaged on temporary work for the Valuation Department, which recurs at intervals, and had got through. They retire as they have retired many times before, and'there is no wholesale retrenchment either for saving money which is wanted elsewhere or for reducing the frills of the past. Most of the relieved men, I understand, are going to the Census Department, which is fufl of calculators, etc, just now, and will be for twelve months and more to come. Mention was made of certain other changes in my hearing, but on inquiry I found them all ancient history. The world of the entomologists gets no light from here at the Australian Conference this time. Cabinet had decided that Mr T. W. Kirk, the Government Biologist, should attend the Conference, but owing to other engagements which he had made he found he would not be abie to reach Sydney in time. His trip has therefore been abandoned. The Conference is to open on Monday week. Butter i 6 getting to be dearer and dearer, adding to the cost of Irving. It is notified to-day that a further rise has taken place. Certain brands from Monday will only be sold at Is 3d per lb to consumers, an advance of Id per lb. Three weeks ago the price was Is Id per Your readers w3l be interested to learn that Mr H. P. Von Haast writes to the 'Post' in reference to the state-ol-611™11?"10 in ***** ol »tuary of the late Sir Walter Buller that "in 1886 he returned to England as New Zealand Commissioner at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition " as follows : " The title of Executive Commissioner at that Exhibition was bestowed upon the late Sir Dillon Bell by virtue of his official position as Agent-Genenu, but the recognised and accredited representative of the colony at the Exhibition who collected the 'exhibits hero and had sole charge of the New Zealand court in London was my father, the late Sir Julius Von Haast who was termed 'Commissioner m charge o exhibits. Sir Walter Buller was one of twenty-eight members of the Commission in London who acted as an Advisory Committee The ethnological collection, representative of Maori life collected and exhibited by him, was one of the most prominent and popular exhibits of the New Zealand Court."