The Levin Daily Chronicle THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1932. LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 4 February 1932, Page 4

The Levin Daily Chronicle THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1932. LOCAL AND GENERAL.

The ingenuity and skill that women can employ in making use of any materials at 'their disposal was exemplified at Ahititi (Taranaki) on Saturday, At a meeting held to form a branch of the Women’s Division of the Farmers’ Union a small child w r as weara dainty hat apparently made of beautiful fancy straw but actually fashioned by the child’s mother from lace bark, a tree that grows in the bush. It was stated that the child had even a prettier one at home, fashioned from the same material and dyed.

Some Gisborne farmers are said to lie branching out in side lines to supplement their scanty incomes, says an exchange. Many of the •sheepfanners are non' running small herds of dairy coivs, ias even with the low price of butter-fat there is more profit in that line of industry than depending almost entirely on wool. Others are selling fruit from their orchards. This year uo less than 3650 acres of ryegrass have been shut up in the Gisborne district under the Department of Agriculture’s certification scheme, over five times as much as two years ago.

Mr A. M. Mowlem, S.M., Napier, is not a believer in memorial services in connection with the earthquake. When a suggestion was made that a sitting of the court should not be held on Wednesday, Mr Mowlem said: “I don’t want a memorial service, and certainly would not go to one. I hope they get some people to go. If they do, they will be stranger people than I. I have had enough—more than enough—and I suggest that you gentlemen have, too. If any of you gentlemen desire to go to the memorial service you will have to make arrangements for someone else to take your case, as the court will sit as usual.”

The rain of Saturday was worth exactly £IOO,OOO to the Wairarapa.— Greytown Standard.

No building permits were issued by the Masterton County Council last month.

The price of export stock has again receded, and the best offers in Hawke’s Bay do not exceed 4Jd per lb for lamb.

The establishment of the sardine industry in Auckland by preserving the fish in salt is proposed by a company in process of formation.

At Bideford on Saturday, hailstones as big as bird’s egg fell, and the ground was covered to a depth of two inches. —Daily Times.

Almost two inches of rain fell on Saturday in the Wairarapa, and did a tremendous amount of good to the parched pastures.

A candle made in memory of Caruso, will last 18 centuries. Standing 16ft high, it is burned for one day each year in a little chapel at his birthplace near Naples, in Italy.

There was a slight frost on Saturday ni<dit, which nipped most of the local pumpkin crops and the more delicate varieties of vegetables. There has boon no extensive damage to the crops. —Carterton News.

A London cable says Mr Ramsay MacDonald’s eye trouble is glaucoma. Glaucoma is caused by increased tension! in the eyeball, affecting the retina and causing the person affected to see coloured rings or halos round lights, it is treated by surgical operation.

The nest outing of the Levin-Waio-pehu Tramping Club will ibe to Kapiti Island on Sunday, February 14th. Cars will leave Morteinsen’s Corner at 6.40 a.m. sharp. As launch accommodation is limited by Government regulation those who intend to make the trip should notify the secretary at once. Members who intend to fish should also provide themselves with lines. •

The Wellington Centre decided to inform the Levin Cycling Club that after ’s meeting cyclists would not be permitted to ride at the club’s meetings until it had been affiliated to the Wellington centre. The centre decided also that in future only cyclists who were members of clubs affiliated to the IST.Z.A.A. and C.A. would be allowed to compete at the various sports meetings.

Charged by a ,swordfish several miles south of Cape Rodney, an Aucklandowned launch, a vessel of 40ft., was struck so heavily 'that the impact caused some alarm. The sword of the fish, which was a striped marlin, penetrated the thick planking of the hull on the port side of the bow about the waterline, and protruded Bin. through the foredeck, the fish breaking its sword.

“Many of the typists in the Government .are” shivering in their shoes just now,” said a typist employed in a Government office in Christchurch to a Sun reporter, “as there .are persistent rumours of dismissal in the air. In some of the offices there is not enough work to keep typists fully employed, and it is possible that the men in the offices will be given the typing to do, just as is done in the Railways Department. ’ 7

Blenheim’s 27flb. cabbage, grown by Mr L. Smith, of Eernham, will have to be content with a New Zealand record and not tlhe world record which it claimed, for it is a long way below the world’s championship class. Mr Fred Bullen has forwarded to the Marlborough Express a photograph of a cabbage exhibited at Stoke-on-Trent, which weighed no less than 53-Jlb ! t By comparison, Blenheim’s champion seems to be a mere Brussels sprout!

The opinion was expressed by several breeders of Romney rams at the Hawke’s Bay Ram Fair on Thursday that present prices would force them to abandon ram breeding. When rams are sold as low as a guinea and a guinea and a half, the net returns to the breeder are only 10s and 15s. This return would have been received if they had been consigned to the works as lambs without the expense of wintering them.

A swimmer at New Brighton, Christchurch, last week discovered when he was several hundred yards from the shore that he was in the company of a seven-foot porpoise, which gambolled about as plavfully as its bulk would allow. As the bather started to swim ■to the shore the porpoise accompanied him, and rode the waves with an obvious relish. Schools of porpoises are fairly common along this part of ti*. coast, but it is not often that a solitary visitor is seen, and it is still moic uncommon for a porpoise to come close *to a human being—it usually departs at the first sight of a bather.