LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLVII, Issue 2742, 7 September 1923, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Tom Heeney, of Gisborne, and Jim O'Sullivan, of Auckland will contest the heavy-weight boxing championship at Auckland on September 26. The Plunket Society will conduct a stall in the Square to-day and donations of produce or flowers will be thankfully received from 9 o'clock. The Palmerston North sitting of the Supreme Court concluded yesterday, when Mr Justice Hosking granted Joseph Hannah, labourer, of Kumeroa, a discharge from bankruptcy. At Dargaville yesterday a number of small boys were reprimanded and their parents ordered to pay costs for thebreaking of 240 telegraph insulalators, states a Press Association message. The visit of the Dannevirke borough councillors to Palmerston North, arranged for yesterday, had to bo postponed owing to the borough engineer of the latter town having been called away to Wellington. The switch gear for the Power Board's sub-station at Bunnythorpe has arrived at Wellington, and will arrive in Palmerston North this week. The apparatus is packed in 107 cases and weighs 17 tons, A slight earthquake shock in Christchurch and Lyttolton was recorded at 9.4 yesterday morn ng. The magnetic observatory reports that it was a, purely local shake, small in origin, and probably centred in North Canterbury. The Palmerston North Y.M.C.A. has fixed October 24 as the date for the '. annual gymnastic display. This will be conduoted an a larger scale I than the last display, being staged in | the Opera House, and should prove a b;g attraction. "And what is enr; o'hor storekeeper doing?" was the question put to a witness by the Judge of the Arbitration Court at Wellington. The reply was somewhat unexpected. "Closing the front door and selling at the back," replied the lady in the box. (Laughter). The Boys' Work Committee of the Palmerston North Y.M.C.A. is making preliminary arrangements for their big evei.t of the year in the boys' division activities, the '-Father and Son" banquet, which will be held during October. This year's banquet will be the the third event of its kind held .n Palmerston North, and is expected to be a great success. Electrical connections made during August by the Thames Valley Power Board constituted a record since its inception, according to the report of the manager, Mr R. Sprague. One hundred milking motors alone were connected, making a total of 572 milking motors to date. Consumers now total 2305. It is estimated that a further 50 milking' motors will be connected during September. A dairy farmer recently said that the mistake of his life had been tha,t he had not travelled more and seen how the best men in the business managed their farms. "I lost ten times the money it would have cost me," he said, "in blunders and unwise efforts that I need rot have made." He was right. There cannot be too much' interchange of opinions and experiences amongst farmers. Two hundred and fifty thousand trout, from eight days to one month old, and the biggest of them one inch from tip to tall, arc frolicking in their concrete races at the Prospect dam, New-South Wales, says a Sydney paper. As cold-storage eggs, they came from Rotorua, in the custody of the ship's butcher. They have grown fat on dried liver, and as full-grown fish they will provide lively sport for fishermen in all parts of the State. Good progress Is now toeing made by the new gang erecting the Power Board's poles. The engineer informed a "Times" representative last night that tho cost of erecting the poles is down to half of what obtained last week, and this will be further reduced as the men become more proficient at the work. Yesterday's tally was 21 poles, each of them being the heavypole 35 feet long. Approximately two route mile? of poles have been put up since the new gang- started on Monday morning l . The rigour of an unusually long and severe winter appears to be vanishing, says the Dunedin "Star." There has been a sudden change to spring-like conditions ajid a northerly gale has been raging, and there are signs of an occasional shower of rain in rtie back country. The changed conditions must have the effect of clearing the pasto*"\i country, which, after coming through a, hard winter, is very backward in growth. Rain and a period of warm weather are badly needed. "There arc two methods I have known to be successful in ridd ng lawns of the destructive grey grubs," a gardener observed to a Dunedin "Star" reporter, when commenting on the fine spring weather at present prevailing and its favourite relation to gardening activities. The fir.se method of getting rid of the grubs was to roll the lawn well before it dried in the spring, and to keep on rolling. This closed the grubs* outlet holes and kept them closed. Thus the grubs were unable t*o get out of the ground when they reached the moth stage, and, therefore died without being able to escape and deposit eggs on tne grass for next season's crop of grubs. The othor successful method oft dealing with lawn grubs was to freely sprinkle the lawn with soot from steam boiler furnaces, the soo.t serving to prevent the moths from depositing their eggs on the grass. Both methods had been proved by experimenting, and both had been 'proved effective. I