ODDMENTS OF NEWS.

Feilding Star, Volume IV, Issue 1128, 8 March 1910, Page 1

ODDMENTS OF NEWS.

ITEMS GARNERED FROM OIIU EXCHANGES. New Zealand Dairy Union suppliers are loud in the praises of pasteurised skimmed milk and whey. iMr Ernest Short is leaving for j Monte Video by the lonic next month, in company with Mr J. McMenamin. \ and Mr Spain, to attend the Argen- j tine Exhibition. I The best results with manures at j Lincoln College are stated to have I been obtained from 2cwt of basic slag x for the grain crops. From July 1 last up to February 26 about 12,230 tons of Victorian butter, valued at £1,408.000, were shipped to ports beyond tho Commonwealth. Sir Robert Stout says he looks to West Australia as having a great future before it—-much greater than people in New Zealand imagined. The number of applicants for instruction at Lincoln College is stated this year to have been much in excese of the accommodation. It is stated that nowadays in the Wairaraya even the smallest men are manuring with excellent results. A few years ago it was only the well-to-do farmer who felt safe in going to this expense. Mr W. P. Harre, of Rata, Taranaki, has a dozen cows which last season averaged £18 per head, and their butter per week ran at lOJlb per cow. Mr George Chirnside, of Victoria, dio has been trowfc-fishing for nearly i month at Tokaanu, and who has ust left for Sydney again, is more ;han delighted with the sport he has injoyed, having caught npwards of ;wo tons of fish. "It seems to me," remarked the Commissioner of Crown Lands, Mr J. Mackenzie, at the Wellington Land ] 3oard meeting, "that we have alotl )f people taking up land, doing just .he bare improvements and then lookUS round for someone to dispose or t to. It is a thing which must bo stopped." The Inspector of Stock at Tauranga •ecently made an investigation conjerning the loss of four healtny-look-ii2 nigs at Waimana, and found that. he animals had died from eating hay Yhich had been put into the ety to seep them dry, and which had started ;o ferment. Though, the season's oat crops iround Masterton have not been conspicuous for their heavy yields, some iceptions have to be recorded, ihe Age reports that a crop of Algerian jats, grown at Llandaff Upper Plaui was threshed the other clay, and yielded 880 bushels from an ace* of 11 acres, being at the rate ot 6U bushels per acre. A To Araroa correspondent, writing to an Auckland paper, states: "Dr Lleekie, resident local medical omcer in charge of this part of the district, lias left, after being with us for the best part of last year. His reason for leaving, I understand, was tne want of a suitable house to live in, for during liis sojourn here he, with his wife and family, were forced to live m tents." Tlio simple life with a vengeance I Dr. William H. Prescott, of Boston, has returned home after an unsuccesful search in England for manuscripts proving that Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays. Dr. Orville Owens, of Detroit, who has discovered what he believes to be a Baconian cypher, accompanied Dr. Prescott in the search. They are understood to have had information that documents proving Bacon's authorship of the Shakespeare plays were buried in a cave in tho cliff on which Shepstow Castle stands, in Monmouthshire. They could not, however, find any trace of a cave. '' When one speaks of a ' Chinese quarter' in our country," writes an American from Germany '' he has districts like those of San Francisco or New York in mind, where houses are crowded with ' oniiike' in the dross of thoir country where there are queer-looking and bad-smelling shops, and where the strange people, the red signs, and the un-American- atmosphere make one uncomfortable. In Berlin the small Chinese quarter near the Eehrter railway station is made up of young men who, with few exceptions, dress like their German neighbours. They have a cluß, learn German more readily than our Chinese learn English, and are not laundrymen, but are mostly stonecutters." The Rajah K/umar Namaib Shyama Kumar Togore, an Indian prince, has made another presentation to the Melbourne Museum, through. Sir John Tavorner, the Victorian AgentGeneral, in London. His last gift consists of three antiojue brass idols, and some rare Buddhist manuscripts, and three volumes of books on Hindu Ayurdics Sastras. Sir John Taverner says the rajah has informed him that the three idols were found in tihe ruins of Chandra Mera, in Bengal. One is the image of the Hindu god Sri Krishna; the second is a representation of Badha Sri Krishna's consort; and the third is a figure of Chaitannya, the great religious reformer of Bengal.

Crickets are exceedingly annoying just now (writes the Dargaville correspondent of the Auckland Star), and never in the history of the place have they been so plentiful. Passengers on the steamer Awaroa oad rather a unique experience with them when passing down the river. It seemed as if millions of these little black pests were waiting for the steamer. Suddenly, as at a signal, they all hopped on board, down into saloon they swarmed, and it was found there wore .so many that the quickest way of extermination was by the use of jcalding water. A number of the insiots, however, managed to escape, and while an Austrian passenger was. asleep in his bunk they destroyed His coat by eating their way through it.