LOCAL AND GENERAL.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXII, Issue 2409, 9 April 1927, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

The Official Assignee at Auckland has announced that nobody having an income of under £SOO a year can afford his own motor car, and it appears that 79,430 New Zealanders run cars who cannot afford the luxury. Income tax figures show that there are 25,011 people having an' income of £SOO or over, but excluding cycles and trucks there are 104,491 cars used in the Dominion.

The army of rabbits has been decimated in at least one part of New South Wales. In the brief space of six nights, a family at Turondale, in the Mudgee district, destroyed by means of porison no fewer than 15,000 rabbits. One night alone, the deadly preparation took toll of 7000 rabbits. The clearing up of the carcases was a task in itself. * Pastoralists will, no doubt, be wondering what precise poison it is that has worked wonders at Turondale.

The following is vouched for by a resident of Rangitikei (says an exchange) : On a recent Friday morning a cat was given to a lorry driver who conveyed it- in a closed hencoop from Onepuhi to Feilding. The cat was kept in the hencoop and fed on Tuesday morning at 4 o’clock. At a quarter to six the same morning the cat was badk at its old home. The distance by road is abotut 50 miles, with a river to cross, and as the cat was dry when it arrived home it evidently crossed the bridge.

“The show has lost the standing that it once had, and is rapidly sinking into a'side-show, where the public go to see half-dressed women and sights of that type. The annual show once had an educational value, but now it has .boiled itself down to a side-show.” This statement was made by Mr H. O. Smith at the annual meeting of the Canterbury Agricultural and Pastoral Association. A member said that the Association could not afford to forego the revenue obtained from the sideshows. The chairman, Mr J. O. Coop, said that) ths side-shows were under police supervision, and if there were any of an objectionable type the police would handle them.

“At the present time New Zealand is living on its capital; there is hardly a farmer in the country who is not existing on his capital. It will be many years before they will find their feet, and there is going to be great unrest during the- winter months.” This view was expressed by Mr F. B. Logan at a meeting of the Napier Hospital Board. The same gentleman at a later stage, when financial matters were being considered, stated: “Going round the country you can see it is gradually going back into manuka; there are no cereals rto sow, as all the farmers’ money has gone into the towns in buildings and motor cars.”

The Maori lawn, tennis tournament to be held at Easter time is attracting gjreat attention. In the first place, the Prime Minister, the Right Hon. J. G. Coates, is scheduled to'i open the courts, and in the second place there is to be an important conference of some political nature bearing on matters affecting the Native race. The Young Maori Party is endeavouring to promote certain things helpful to the rising generation, and it is hoped that Sir Maui Pomare, the Hon. A. T Ngata, and Dr Buck will take part- in the discussion. Several big demonstrations are to take place during the tourney.

Referring to the increase in motor

traffic in New Zealand in the course of a speech at the Clutha County Council jubilee banquet on Tuesday night, Sir Thomas Mackenzie said that the motorists qf the Dominion had the reputation of killing more people in proportion to the size of the population than any other motorists in the world. From his ofwn experience he would say that crossing a street in Dunedin was more dangerous than crossing a main thoroughfare in London. The motorists in Dunedin did not seem to sound their horns or give notice to the public in any way of their approach, but just pushed ahead, seemingly almost regardless of the consequences.

The remainder of the present year should be a busy one so far as meteorological happenings are concerned. On June there will be a totaFwjfapse of the s at, A fortnight prior tffthis (June lft j a total eclipse of the moon will take place, commencing at 5.4 p.ru., and reaching totality at 7.45 p.m. /'There will be a partial-eclipse of the sun on December 24. The planet Mercury will pass across the face, of the sun on November 10, but as the period of transit will commence at 5 p.m., it will not be visible to the naked, eye.

“Which part of America do you represent—Canada or Mexico?” This was a question that United States citizens, who liked to be called “Americans,” invariably disliked, said Mir F. W. Furkert at Wellington. “They do not like to be called ‘Yariks,’ ” he explained, “but they are certainly not representatives of both continents, or even the North American continent. The naming of the United States was unfortunate, because it is an awkward mouthful by which, to designate a nation.”

A delightful compound of commercial morality, filial duty, proficiency in grammar, and politeness may be found (or may not) in a letter do an Otago storekeeper, thus transcribed: “I have received your letter to-day about the money owing to Mr . I must say to you that I ant going to pay my mother’s bill. If she will get things off let —— get the money oiff her. I am not going to pay her bill. I do not owe any money, so I don’t know what he means by putting it in your hands to sue me, so now I am writing to tell you that I do not owe any money. Yon can also tell him that I ant going to pay him mother’s bill. Let him get rthe money from mother, and you can tell him I ant going! to pay her bill, so I do not awe any money.” Verse 26 of the 19th chapter of Proverbs seeps to fit this case, comments the Dunedin Star.

Mr Charles T. P. Luckman, in a letter to The Post, claims that Thomas A. Edison is not (as stated in The Past recently) the inventor of the cinematograph. William Friese-Greena gave the first moving picture show at a shop in. Piccadilly in 1889, and in the same year applied for and obtained his complete patent for camera and projecting machine. Mr Edison’s kinetoscope (a device giving the illusion of animation to one person at a time) was patented by him on the 30th September, 1902. Lt- is correct that Greene and several other investigators' did valuable experimental work, and Greene and Evans took out the first patents for chrono-photogra-pliic apparatus; but authorities agree that it was the work of Edison that made the cinematograph practicable.

“After a tour of the United States I cannot see any reasons for copying them in anything,” said Mr F. W. Furkert, Engineer-in-Chief of the Public Works Department, to a Post- reporter. “Neither in their public nor private life is there anything we need envy. As far as their roads are concerned, there is no reason why we should not take our lessons frdsjiifeigland. I was all over land and Wales, and there are no better roads in any part of the world. There are no bad roads in England, they are all good, or better. From what I have seen, the citizens of the United States get a better hearing just now in England than anywhere else in Europe. They are courteously treated there at any rate. It is very different on the Continent, where the war settlement and the plainly, staled American claim to have won the war, has creaked a real antagonism. Parties of American tourists are hissed in the streets in Paris, and there is a bitter feeling against -them, heightened by their manner whenever they congregate as Americans. I noticed it in several of the shops, where they are made to pay more than anyone else. A tourist was pricing an article in a shop when there entered a party of American, tourists. The lady had been endeavouring to beat the price of an article down from £8 toi £7, but directly the Americans entered the price to them for the same thing was a rigid £13."