THE SLAUGHTERMEN'S DISPUTE.

Mataura Ensign, 19 January 1910, Page 2

THE SLAUGHTERMEN'S DISPUTE.

GISBORNE AGREEMENT. PEE UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATION. GISBORNE, Jan. 18. The agreement arrived at in connection with the slaughtermen's dispute is for a term of five years. The employers concede the rate of pay demanded in. the case of sheep and lambs, but the rates for beef are not varied, while in regard to conditions of killing, which vary materially in different factories, these are brought into line. The two most vexed questions dealt with were the provision for learners and preference to unionists. Satisfactory provision was made for learners being taught, and for a rate of pay for instructors, there, to be one learner for ten slaughtermen. As regards preference to lii.ionists, whilst this was conceded the rules of the federation are to give an o'vn door to all workers of good conduct not indebted to any kindred union.

ISLANDS OF IVORY. .— 9 RICHES OF THE POLAR LISAS. Islands of ivory hidden among the Arctic ice lying north of Siberia were described in an extraordinarily interesting paper read before the Victoria Institute recently by the Rev. P. J>. Oath Whitley. These islands were discovered by Russian explorers at the end of the eighteenth century and have Ik'ch exploited by traders in fossil ivi.ry ever since. As recently as 1898 some 80,000 ib. of fossil ivory were offered for sale at the fair at Yakutsk. To thy earlier explorers it seemed.that one islet known as Liakoff's Island was "actually composed of the bones and tusks of elephants cemented together by uy sand. The horns of buffaloes (or rather 01 musk oxen) and rhinoceroses wvro also wonderfully abundant. The sandv shores and slopes were full of mammoths' tusks." In 18S0 a German, Dr. Bunge, visited Liakoff's Island. "Tho sand am! gravel was found to rest in blocks of, ice and the alluvial beds were full of tho bones of mammoths, rhinoceroses and musk oxen"—this after a hundred v.iars 01 visits from, ivory hunters, trawling showed that the bottom of the sea near the islands was strewn with tiuks and bones. These extraordinary discover'es are explained by the lecturer by the following theory—ln prehistoric times, as i;shown by the remains of fossil forest and vegetation, Siberia enjoyed a comparatively mild climate and 11 great tract of country now under ice stoou it a considerable level above t'le sea. Vast herds of mammoths, rhinoceroses and buffaloes roamed over these plains. A great catastrophe at last orertook them. The land subsided, tho fr.a rose, and the animals congregated in enormous numbers oil tho mountain tops Even those were at last submerged and the destruction was complete. After itimo the waters subsided slowly and tlie islands wliich had formed mountain;' m tho land rose above the sea. Whittle climate changed after these upheavals is still a problem to be s'.lved.