LOCAL AND GENERAL

Evening Star, Issue 17791, 13 October 1921, Page 2

LOCAL AND GENERAL

An estimated saving to tho Auckland Education Board of £2.755 per annum will bo effected by tlio carrying out of suggestions made in a report furnished by a special committee appointed to consider the reorganisation of t-ho board's staff and nil matters temping to promote a more efficient financial administration of its affairs. The report' has been adopted by (he hoard, and a committee of two members is to ho appointed annually to supervise matters of finance and office management. The work of assembling the parts of 150 12-Hon railway trucks which have arrived from England is being carried out at the Newmarket Workshops, Auckland. The trucks, wheih are the first of 2,600 ordered by the department—l.ooo being allocated to the Auckland district—arc frmr-wheoled steel waggons of ihe Ti.A. class. They were put in I'-ng-landi, but were knocked down for pawing, and consequently a certain amount of riveting is necessary. _ To facilitate this work an air-compressing plant for pneumatic riveters is being erected, and it is hoped tp turn out the vehicles ready for use at the rate of fifteen a week. An interesting addition to the Auckland Museum has just been made in the form of a carved bone pendant, probably made by the same rare that carved the lintel found at Kaitaia recently. 'While many noteworthy additions have been made to the museum during the last six months, it fs doubtful whether any single article r> more interesting in its singularity of shape and delicacy of carving than this pendant, which has been proseutcl by Mrs Bushington, of Mahnrangi 1 fends {says the 'Herald'). The pendant, which possesses many distinctive characters, was picked up nearly twenty-live years ago during a yachting' voyage made by the late Mr Lushington 'and some friends along the coast of the North Auckland Peninsula. Leaving the yacht in Whangamumu Harbor. tho party crossed the narrow neck of land which separates it from the bay to (he southward, at . tho head of which stretched a long lino of sandhills.' On reaching those- it was found that easterly gales had removed a large part of _the " B nd. revealing the existence of ancient Maori kitchen middens and cooking places, and also exposing numerous human bones, almost perfect skeletons being laid _ out with the bones in their natural positions. Tt was while crossing this ridge that one of tho party picked ilji the pendant, which apparently'had only just been uncovered. The article is of small size—barely more (ban 61 nin length—hut the excellence of its carving and its ornamental character generally ''are at once apparent. Few "people can examine it without wondering what, tools and other appliances were used to carve it from the solid bone of which it is made.

The judgment of Mr Justice llenlrnan on Thursday last, in which His Honor allowed the appeal of tho inspector under Ihe Sale of Foods and Drugs Act against tho dismissal by Mr K. Gotten, S.M., of the information against Waller Buchanan, Limited, bakers, of soiling bread of less weigh; than represented, was the subject of comment at Auckland by Mr J. IT. Barker, secretary of the New Zealand Bakers’ Association. He said the decision of the judge, reversing as it did that of the magistrate, placed the bakers in a very awkward position, in that it was impossible for them to observe the ruling. Mr Barker explained that tho Act stated that “ every ‘person who sells any loaf weighing at the time of sale loss than 2!b but more than 11b shall bo deemed (o represent that it weighs 21b, unless he states its true weight to tho buyer at the time of sale." In the ease covered by the judgment, when the loaf was sold attention was drawn to the fact that it was guaranteed to weigh 11b 14oz. Air Justice jjerdman held thnh the “ true weight” meant the exact a'i'.'J precise weight. To ascertain this, it would bo readily recognised, was an absolute impossibility with ordinary scales. During (he hearing of tho case in the lower court Mr Cut-ten had pointed out that to ascertain the true weight of a loaf in that sense would necessitate each ’loaf going to the department to bo weighed, because drams would necessarily have to be used for such a purpose.

Even tho burst of patriotism which flamed .up dining the war. with its slogan of 11 Buy within #ie Empire,” is likely to receive a damper if the difference in price is too pronounced. A firm in Auckland lias lust had a severe lest, it imported two lots of bolts, one from America and the other from England, The articles were identical, hut the price of the American worked out- at 7s 6d as against 18s 6d for the same quantity of English make. On the deal tho firm’s patriotism cost it £SB, If England _ wants to hold trade it is obvious her prices must come down considerably. What might have been a costly and disastrous firs was extinguished in its early stages in the ‘Southland Times’ office on Monday night. Members of the night staff observed smoko Issuing from the jobbing room, which ia used only during the day, shortly after they came on duty at 8 o'clock. 'The fire brigade was communicated with, and tho members were on the scene literally within a few seconds,_ and the play of water from tho hose for a few minutes extinguished the fire, •.which had broken ont in a stack of waste paper baled up for despatch to the mills. As there was no Sro or light in the jobbing room, tho origin oi the fire is n,_ mystery. Both fire and water were kept within narrow limits, and the total damage will not *rnn into figures of any size.

“ You gay that thieving is rife in Palmerston North 1” exclaimed one ol the town’s oldest inhabitants to a ‘Manawatu Times ’ representative, “bub you ought to go to Wellington. I wenb to one of the beat hotels there, and, feeling tired, went to bed early, leaving my good now boots outside the door to be cleaned. Following morning they were gone. Another man a few doors away left his gold watch on the dressing table while ho went to his bath. That went, too. Herve him right, of course, for being such a fool. But (confidentially) next time I go to Wellington I’ll keep my bools on when I go to bed!’’ The ‘ Ranjdtikoi Advocate ’ learns that as a result ol the shearers’ award a sheep owner in the district whoso flocks number over 10,000 will tills year employ only two shearers. The greater portion of the shearing will bo done by the employer 'himself and the permanent station'hands. "Why did you knock Inepctor Bales down?" asked Senior-sergeant Rawlo in tbe Auckland Police Court, when S. Tnrkington, a justice of the peace, was charged before Mr J. W. Boynton, S.M., with having driven dangerously. into Queen street from Fort street. “To avoid some other pedestrians,’’ replied the defendant. “So that to ‘get one on’ to llio nolice you 'deliberately crossed from the left side to the wroncr side of the road and ran clown the inspector,” rejoined the senior-sor-

geant, with a smile. At another stage oi the case, when Inspector Kales was giving evidence that the defendant’s motor car ■knocked him down and pushed him along for •several yards, he said; “It must have been a poor climber not to get over jno. It tried hard enough, but failed. It was a poor sample of a car.” “ And a good sample of. an inspector I” returned Mr Dickson, while the court glanced at the inspector’s sturdy physique and smiled. 'A fine of £5 was imposed. A list of unpaid accounts totalling £3,067 ’was presented to the Ashburton Hospital Board the other day to be written off. Mr F. W. Watt, who had prepared the Hat, said that he had gone very fully into the matter, and the list lie had drawn up dated back to 1916. Mr Watt pointed out that of the total sura the half-payment in the friendly society cases, which the board was not entitled to regard as a debt, was included In many instances. In

friendly society cases in which the accounts had not been paid the whole amount of • the charge had been shown. _ Included in the list wore many in which he considered that it the people bad shown anything like the proper spirit the accounts would have been paid, They were cases in which bo thought that the people could at least have paid something off their account. On the other hand there were

several obi age pensioners who had come olontr with their Bs a month to help to ■pay their accounts.