NEWS AND NOTES.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume IX, Issue 1772, 4 November 1887, Page 2

NEWS AND NOTES.

Several of the judges asked to act at the Egmont Show on November 80. have signified their willingness to do so.

The number of passengers carried by the 777 omnibuses of the London General Omnibus Company during the fortnight ending June 26tu was 4,476,414.

The settlers on the Auroa and Skeet roads are endeavoring to arrange for the clearing of the school site near the corner of those roads. There are about twenty-five children of school age wnbin a short distance of the spot indicated.

It was remarked at the Palraerston Show that there was not a single brood draught mare exhibited. Sheep were a strong class, but shorthorns (except Mr. Ross's exhibits), and many classes of horses were weak.

11 Puff " tells the following good election story : — A candidate who doesn't stick at a trifle went to an elector and said, " May I count upon your vote ?" The elector answered, " You may count upon my vote. I've voted for an honest man for many years, and he never did us any good, so now I'm goiug to vote for a rogue, for a change 1"

There is a large factory in Bridgeport, near Chicago, employing about 100 men, boys, and girls, in which waste animal blood is converted into buttons. Not only are buttons made from blood, but tons of earings, breastpins, belt-clasps, combs, and trinkets, are made annually there from blood. It is queer, odoriferous business, but a paying one.

The Feilding Star complains that there is one law for the Maori and another lor the European at the Feilding railway station in the matter of smoking. It says : — Yesterday we saw the cigarette extinguished of no less a man than Scobie Mackenzie, be who extinguished the great Sir Robert Stout, while a native lady was calmly dispensing fames from an old clay utensil, strong enough to chokG anybody, with an air dignified as the Queen of Sheba, if her garments did fall a little short of that famed lady's.

It might have been expected, says the Lytteiton Times, that among tbe many who now make use of the parcel post, someone would be found dishonest enough to try to defraud tbe Government by sending as a " parcel " something or other which could not lawlully be considered as such. A story is told of bow an attempt of this sort was defeated in Christchurch recently. A parcel of sugar was sent " through the post." One of the clerks, on handling it, suspected that, m it felt soft and yielding to the touch, it contained sausages, which are " contraband." He opened it, and found that liis suspicions were groundless, but tbftfc J» tbe paw>eJ was concealed a htbec. The postal authorities have, it is said, decided to charge postage on the parcel at letter rates, which will amount to something over a guinea.

A London paper, dated September 9th, says : — Trade seems really to be improving in London. Tbe Jubilee came in June to cause a decrease — the Jubilee and Easter holidays combined. But the recovery has been sharp find quick. There is a sudden spring. Last month Bhowed an increase of exports amounting to There was a decrease in only one single item. In articles of food and drink we exported nearly less, but in everything else there was an increase. Tbe increase in manufactures exported amounts to nearly £600,000 upon the month. Mr. Goschen is altogether in lack upon his exports. During the seven months of the year just finished there is an improvement in export goods amounting to £1,635,149. Our imports, however, do not keep up. Customs fell behind last month, but Mr. Goschen will hardly be made unhappy by that circumstance, for he had an increase of nearly £8,000,000 in imports as a margiu.

The Waikato Times haß had a special correspondent along the proposed Central Railway Line, who says :— '• I paid particular attention* to the nature of the country, soil, etc. It will do for cheep and cattle runs very well, but it is utterly unfit for small settlements. It is very rough and broken, many of the hills being so steep that we had to rest our horses half way up, though none of them were by any means high. Of course we had to lead, as' riding was ont of the question even for the guide, The soil is infinitely superior to that on the lower land, but it could be that, and still far from good. Such land for rung would be worth about four shillings an acre at the outside; it might pay at that if held in large blocks, though it is more than I should care to give. If taken with the low lands, it would scarcely be worth Is 6d an acre ; something could be done with the bill county, but nothing whatever can be done with the low lands unless some valuable properties were found to exist in pumice, sand, and wi grass. Taken on the whole, the country from Kuiti to the Wanganai river is utterly unfit for settlement, and is about as useless a district as any in New Zealand ; and through it runs the railway ! The traffic returns for fifty miles of this land will not, to use a common saying, pay for oil for the wheels."

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