Notes and Comments.

Feilding Star, Volume IV, Issue 1125, 4 March 1910, Page 2

Notes and Comments.

.I.HKKE arc several new features in connection with the Flower Show to be held at Fcilding on Friday next worthy oi special mention. For instance, there is a cottage garden class lor llowcr growers confined to amatcure who employ no paid assistants, even casually, in their gardens. Then there is a special fruit class for members oi the -Fruitgrowers' Association, and there is a'class for the products of school gardens. The other classes have also been added to, ami the cookery and preserve class is one tor which housekeepers should enter largely.

I'-i , is odd how differently Bunny is treated out here and at Home. This month the farmers of the Iviwitea County will not bo doing their duty to their neighbours if they do not "join 111 the crusado to destroy rab.. .s But m the Old Country the rabbit is preserved for the sport of the lord of tho manor, and woe unto him of commoner clay who seeks to utilise Bunny for breakfast. That such a cry does not belong to tho bad old past is proved by the following clipping from a I?,* V s ®" 0 ° f tlm Courier, Tunbridgo \Vellfi (Kent), which is sent us by ""a m R "'' s T bf V"- It is from a report of the Mark Cross Potty Session, and hero is the text of it: "Samuel Goldsmith and Percy Markwick, labourers ot Orowborough, were summoned for trespassing in search of conies (rabbits) on land at Eridge, in tho occu-* pation of tho Marquis' of Abewivenny, on 13th December. Both pleaded guilty. John Pcnry, a game- | keeper, said he saw defendants' at i p.m. on 13th December at a rabbit warren at Carr's Wood. They were m the act of putting nets down, and they had in their possession nine nets a ferret, and a rabbit. Markwick said ■tunes hail been hard, and he had had great difficulty in getting a bit of tood. Knc-h man was fined 10s and os costs." Petty sessions!

CiirxA has really awakened, and is already well ahead of Britain in clasping and working out the Imperial Idea, and it is generally understood among the "informed" at Pekin that the year 101.0 will see the creation of a Central Parliament. In this Central Parliament the Chinc.-o soat-tero 1 over -the globe- are to he represented' J. lie proposed system fs novel, but- it ha.s a far-reaching significance-. The census returns are now being collected m Australia and Now Zealand, and are expected to be complete, in die cour.se of two months. As soon as possible thereafter they will be dispatched to Pekin. Reprcsentatioa in the Central Legislature is fixed upon a population basis, and it is competent for any reputable and capable Chinese citizen in Australia or New Zealand to be chosen as a representative of his countrymen in the Pekin Congress. This peculiar form of franchise is not to he restricted to the na-tive-born Chinese. The colonial-born sons of Chinese fathers are to he included in the scope of this extended system of "parliamentary representation. This is in pursuance of an edict issued by tho Imperial Government at Pekin to the Chinese Consul-Gene-ral- for the Commonwealth and the Constil for New Zealand. Tho Progressivists in China have for years been clamouring for constitutional reform, and with the advent of a new regime the realisation of this national aspiration appears to he working out Vight., But just fancy Old China getting ahead of Young England in a practical scheme of uniting an empire in the closest bonds.