NEWS AND NOTES.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume VII, Issue 1152, 25 February 1886, Page 2

NEWS AND NOTES.

The Wanganui Herald asserts that there is no truth whatever in the statement that the contractor for the supplies in connection with the Stratford Belief Fund has received any concessions from the Railway Department in the matter of freight.

Two crops of oats were threshed out close to St. Andrews on Wednesday (says the Timaru Herald), which, for h.eavine:->s of yield, arc an excellent criterion of what tlu> grain-growing lands in that part of South Canterbury are capable of bearing. A seven teeu- acre paddock on the farm of Mr. D. Stowell on being threshed gave the remarkably heavy return of 1.978 bushels, or something over 116 bushels to the acre. This is the largest yield we have heard of this season. The first crop put down on tliis paddock was Avhcat, which gave fifty bushels to the acre ; and the second crop was also wheat, which gave five bushels less. This crop of oats is the third one grown, and speaks well for the quality of the land. 2iext to Mr. Stowell's farm Mr. S. Caqeu has a thirtynine and a half-acre paddock of wheat, which is giving tlie splendid average of eighty-six bushels to tne acre.

It is now (says the Pall Mall Budget) at length possible to state the precise effect— quantitatively, as the mathematicians say — of the extension of the franchise. The common idea has been that it would add tiro millions of new voters, but this was mere guess work. The actual numbers are now for the first time tabulated in the " Guide to the JNW House of Commons," and they show that the current guess was very much \>t'\ow the mark. The numbers of registers in tlu* United Kingdom was in 1880 3.038.7'2ti: it is now 5,711,920—au increase, it will be seen, much nearer tliree millions than two. This interesting fact is another instance of the advantage that is so often found in politics that the thickness of the other end of a wedge is not always visible at the time. Mr Groschen and others were terribly nervous, as it Was, at the prospect of adding two million'new voters to the rolls; they might hare caught their death, of right had they known that the '[number would be three millions. Even now, however,, after all our talk of the Xew Democracy, we are by no means the most democratic country in Europe. The extension of the fran» chise has only raised us from the fifth to the fourth place in this respect. The percentage of electors to population is in France 268, in Switzerland 225. in Germany 20.09, and in England 163. We have now beaten Denmark where the percentage is 15/16. The other European countries are nowhere.