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Marlborough Express, Volume XLIII, Issue 267, 12 November 1909, Page 8

At the Magistrate's Court this afternoon, before Mr T. Scott-Smith, S.M.,' George Register, for riding a bicycle, without a light on the evening of the 23rd ult., was fined 2s 6d and costs (7<s6d). ' ■•■■■ /■ A Dannevirke resident complains to, the Advocate that he has been called upon to pay freight from London to Wellington* amounting to £5 8s sd, while the railway freight from Wellington to Dannevirke was just £5 6s 7d! - . • ■..■ :- v ■■ ' ■■ Each week witnesses an increase in the number of flaxmilis working in Otagjo and" Southland, arid the total is now between.,.4o ans Lasttyear the industry was reduced to a rather parlous state in consequence of the, heavy drop in prices.

, The l^ovember* number of- Life (Fitchefo Bros., Proprietary, Ltd.,) contains a .Se cond instalment of 'The Story of the Eellys," and "I (iunboat Affair." Complete stories are '"A Summer in the City," "The Chase of Toppy McGee," and "The Wonder ol It. Mx Other articles are "The Picturesque Aspects of Radium," (being a revie^ of the book of the month, by the editor) "When Peary Came Back," "Cost of the Naval Defence of the Empire," "Some Glimpses of Adam Lindsay Gordon," "Our Gravest National Peril," "What the World is Thinking," "Our New Puzzle Contest," four sonnets by George Meredith, "Books and their vv'riters," "Up-to-Dato Business," etc.

While a stack of oat sheaves was being cut into chaff in the Wakanui district recently the workmen found fifty young stoats among the sheaves (says the Ashburton Guardian). Stoats are reported'to be increasing very rapidly in this country, and it is said that they destroy quite a large number of rabbits. Chaffcutting workmen. state that rats and mice have been very destructive to the oat stacks this.year, and a number of farmers who had intended to hold stacks of oats over till next season have been obliged to cut them into chaff to avert further loss by vermin.

A totara stump, which has remained intact while seven generations of men have perished, has been secured for the Dominion Museum in Wellington, and may be seen there. It is a stump with a history, which is thrilling enough, but the chief interest lies in the well-denned impress of the stone axe which was used for the felling some two hundred years ago. The surface shows plainly the bruising I cuts made by the stone implement. Notwithstanding the long exposure and the decay which has set in, the marks are still distinct in many parts of the timber. So far as Mr Hamilton, the curator of the Museum, is aware, this stump is the only specimen of its kind, showing the impress ot the ancient stone axe. The only thing resembling it in the museum is the end of a post from a pa, placed in *be Museum at the close of the New Exhibition in! I#67< <; The totara from which the- stump has <jpme *«^ s; a "giant, nearly,, fiire, feet, *«■/■ Ammeter. It was laboriously hackeS in the ppottki^ribtj Bay of Plenty, and he hoped to make himself a great canoe from the huge bole; but a%mmon distraction of those days, a battle with a hostile tribe, drew him awayrrom his canoe-making, and he was slam. • His totara became tapu, and ' was. known as "the tree of Kai-wha-karuaki." Long afterwards a Maori did nave a notion to turn, the,timber «?me^acqotmt,;and began cutting at .it, but bad luck, attributed to the angry sgmt of the dead cliief, visited him. Ine dfcotara was then allowed to lie in state, untouched by man. The fact that the upper scarf had not been removed from the trunk, and the nncfer scarf had been canted off the ground, assisted in the preservation.