NEWS OF THE DAY

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 79, 4 April 1938, Page 6

NEWS OF THE DAY

“There is a lot of talk about th 3 farmer being the backbone of this country—l say that is all piffle,” commented the Hon. P. C. Webb, Minister of Mines, in an address at Huntly. Mr. Webb said he regarded the service reudered by the farmer to be of ~o greater importance than that contributed by other branches of industry.

A substantial increase in the number of fires attended by the Palmerston North Fire Brigade during March as compared with the corresponding period of last year, is shown in the files of the brigade. There were 17 calls as against nine. Four were to property fires, oue a false alarm, one to a chimney, one to a motor-car, nine grass and rubbish fires and one to a case of chemicals.

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” says the old proverb. One ingenious country school teacher proven IhL when, unable to find a pool in which to teach the children to swim, he interviewed the local dairy factory manager, and with his permission used a cheese vat for the purpose. This fact was reported by Mr. T. N. Watt at a recent meeting of the Taranaki bwimming Centre executive.

“Wince we did away with compulsory military training it lias been hard tor the mine foremen to discipline the young men,” asserted Mr. A. Howey Walker, ony of the employers’ representatives, during a discussion at Huntly when the miners and mineowners met the Minister of Mines, the Hon. P. C. Webb. Mr. Walker made the remark in endorsing the vie / expressed by another delegate that there was a certain section of the men at the mines who did not want to work.

The first kinkajou to Uo exfiiiuted ai the Auckland Zoo arrived on Thursday by tne steamer Romney, having boc.. obtained from the Wan -uiego Zoological Garden and shipped at Wan j/edro. a young male, it made the voyage in good condition and appeared peixccltnealthy on arrival. Tms animal, Whien is about the size of a cat, has its habitat in Central America, it is related to the raccoon family and has a tail longer than its body. The noruivi food of a kinkajou includes honey, fruit and small birds, but its staple diet on the voyage across the Pacino comprised two green bananas daily. “We are tending to superficialities when we try to reiorm our conditions; even this society is the ambulance at the foot of the cliff rather than the barrier at the top,” said Miss P. M. P. Clark, principal of the Christchurch Girls’ High School, speaking on the decay of home life in New Zealand at the annual meeting of the Canterbury branch of the Society for the Protection of Women and Children. “The first need is spiritual health. I do not feel that we can get at the root of things without a very definite system of re-construction and help from those who are specially trained to give that help.”