MEETINGS AND ENTERTAINMENTS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLII, Issue 10121, 31 October 1917, Page 5

MEETINGS AND ENTERTAINMENTS.

A meeting of the N.Z. Wool-growers Committee will be held at the A. and P. olticcs to-morrow at 2 p.m., for the purpose of electing a representative on the Hoard of the Controller, Department of Imperial Government Supplies. A final reminder is given of the “Olde Time Dance” to bo hold to-night. A farewell social will bo tendered to departing soldiers at Kairanga on Friday evening. The annual mooting of the N.Z. Milking Shorthorn Association will take place tomorrow morning. The Railway Vaudeville Company, assisted by leading local artists, will give a benefit performance at the Empire Hall on Friday evening. The proceeds will bo in aid of the widow and family of the late Shunter Smith, who was accidentally killed while doing his duty, and it is hoped there will bo a crowded house.

A bright and pretty little girl, who made her appearance before the Juvenile Court at Auckland as a child not under proper control, has had a somewhat chequered career (stages the. Herald). The child’s mother is a single woman who recently went to work on a farm near To Kuiti, but became mentally deranged, and ran away with the child into the bush. After two days a search party found the mother and child in a. very exhausted condition. The mother had to bo sent to a mental hospital, while the little girl was housed at the district hospital. Hero the child captivated the heart of one of the nurses, and also of the nurse’s family. The result was that whoa the police proceeded with the usual course of having the girl committed to an industrial school, they were able to recommend that she bo licensed out to the family, where she would have all tbo affection and kindness of a real home. “I have been agreeably surprised by the •sympathetic attitude of the present Minister for Lands towards scenio reserves,” said Mr G. IT. Ell in the course of his annual plea in the House of Representatives for the preservation of the forest. The Prime, Minister, Mr Ell added, had saved several pieces of fine native forest, and had lately agreed to setting aside an area of 2000 acres in the Waipu Gorge, North Auckland, as a national park. The speaker urged the Prime Minister to visit South Westland at the first opportunity, and see the land set aside as a scenic reserve by the lute Commissioner of Lands in (ho district. It was the forest extending right down from Ro*> to the glaciers, and clothing the sides of the South Westland lakes. It was one of the most glorious scenic assets in Now Zealand, or, indeed, in the world, as visitors had told him, and ho hoped that the Prime Minister would continue the work commenced by the late Commissioner.