LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LVI, Issue LVI, 29 January 1909, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

The rain still comes freely. For the 24 hours ended 8 o'clock this morning the register showed a fall of 1.67 inches; and showers are again falling this morning. Last January there was a drought ; this January promises to show a rainfall approximating five inches.

The Court approved the withdrawal of the North Dunedin election petition.

For milk supplied during December month Kaupokonui Dairy Company have paid out this month £12,218 11s, compared with £10,779 5s for the same monthjast year. The amount of cheese manufactured for the month was 312 tons.

The milking machine has improved considerably at the hands of Mr J. Blake, of Otakeho. His '"Simplex" machine is gradually becoming recognised as possessing many advantages over others, and by noxt season it is expected to be the leading machine. The many orders entrusted to Mr Blake for fitting up machines of other makes with special parts of the "Simplex" plant speaks very highly in its favor. Mr Blake installed twenty machines last season, and has not been called back to one of them. Xo complaints have yet been received as to quality of the milk after iisiug the '"Simplex," as the rubber parts are easily cleaned. Orders have been booked for 35 machines to be installed before next milking season, and enquiries are being received from all parts of the Dominion. If half the people who have visited Mr Blake's place send in their orders, as they stated they would, the number of machines required this next season -will be .some hundreds..

The luck of ti little boy of five served him well at Malvern, in Canterbury, the other day. He was visiting with his parents some relatives, and shortly after his arrival succeeded in tumbling down a well sixty feet deep. The average person would certainly have come in contact with the cross-bars at various levels, or, escaping them, the pump at the bottom. Not so this child; he missed everything, and was found unconcernedly standing in water, which again fortunately reached to his chest. When extricated and examined the extent of the damage sustained was found to be a wetting, a lost button, and a slight scratch.

If the interpretation of slang words into legal procedure ' progresses at the rate it has been doing lately a slang dictionary will require to be, compiled under judicial authority. For instance, the other day a witness told Judge Grantham that "up the pole"' was synonymous for partial intoxication, while a police court witness described a prisoner as being as drunk "as David's sow" ; and an- aged couple confessed to Mr Plowden at the Maryleboue Police Court that they had been "just a little toddly," but the arresting constable brutally characterised it as "blind drunk."

. General Booth, after conducting a most successful campaign in several German cities, brought his visit to a conclusion at Hamburg,* where he met a large audience of business men. Here the General took the opportunity of asking to be allowed to take back to England a .message of peace and goodwill from the German nation, saying, as he did so, that it was time Germany and England laid aside all suspicion of one another as friendly competitors in the woild of commerce. The sentiments thus warmly advocated were cheered by the vast audience again and again.

The Government labor agent at Masterton, writing to the Department with reference to disappointed immigrants, says: "A day or two ago I had a young fallow in here who said he had walked from New Plymouth looking for work. He was 'down on his uppers,' and told a pitiful story. He v said he came out to New Zealand a short time ago as an assisted immigrant. On arrival at Wellington he was told that he would find plenty of work in the dairying districts. He went to Taranaki, but he was unable to milk, and the only offer of employment he got was 3s 6d a week and board to leg-rope cows, wash cans, and do other odd jobs. It is not to be wondered at that he heaped maledictions on the head of the New Zealand Government and those who had misled him. He was a stranger in a strange land, without friends and without money, and she longed vainly to get back to England." Plenty of mon with ''grit" would have considered it not unworthy of them to- start work even on these terms, for a few months' experience would have set them up and put them in the way of earning a good living.