COUNTRY NEWS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XV, Issue 5336, 23 December 1878, Page 3

COUNTRY NEWS.

TIC AWAMDTCT.

This district is now looking well. Grass is plentiful, and good crops of hay are being got in. The fine warm, growing weather of the last two or three weeks has had a very marked effect on the appearance ot Waikato generally. Previous to that, for several weeks, cold westerly winds prevailed, greatly retarding spring-growth. These wiuds were very injurious to the young fruit. Notwithstanding the wet and somewhat Bevere winter we experienced, fat stock are being sent to market unusually early this season. This is in a measure attributable to the winter provision made in the shape of hay. A draft of very superior beef forwarded to Auckland for the Christmas market from the well-known farm of the Messrs. Goodfellow. Part of this draft was sold on Tuesday by Messrs. Hunter and Nolan, and part on Thursday by Air. Buckland. These cattle, though not large, excited general admiration, and, in point of . quality, far eclipsed anything brought forward during the week. The prize ox belonging to the Messrs. Taylor, which was at the same market, and for which £23 was offered, was also brad and fattened on their Te Awamutu farm. It is highly satisfactory to know that the produce of this district can hold its own, and sometimes surpass that of any other in this part of the colony. In a few months more, tho extension of the railway to Te Avramutu will be an lO'.'Timplished fact. Greater facilities will then oc afforded fc.r the development of the vast f.gricnltvsral J.-.'l pastor-it this distric.: •mdoubteciiy i'.eTorzi.ag to the railway, it is aot likely tfout any alteration will be cade in sta' .en sho. Of course, sensible mfen have seen tiiic, af! aloug. The colony cannot afford to speud several thousand pounds for tho special benefit of a few individuals, aud lengthen trunk lines by miles to gratify the wishes of only a small sectiou of a community. The Government has implicit confidence iu its disinterested engineers, and to al!o"V their careful decisions to be set aside without adequate reason would be both absurd and unjust. Several parties ara desirous of obtaining building allotments near the station, and a more beautiful or healthy locality could not be selected. The Messrs. Goodfellow, who are the owners of the land, will doubtless comply with the msh3s of the public, and it i 3 exceedingly fortunate for those who are in wawt of building sections, that they have fallen into the hands of gentlemen who possess both the means and the will to act toward tlis m with a spirit of liberality. Tenders hive beep called for by Mr. L. B. Harris, late of the Delta Hotel, Ngaruawahia, for the erection of a new hotel, adjacent to the station, and a second hotel his been quite recently licensed, so that, with threo hotels within a few chains of each other, the wants of the residents and travelling public should be well supplied, but it is to bo hoped that in a place where with only one hotel drunkenness has been conspicuous by its absence, with three it will not become notorious by the absence of sobriety.— A Correspondent.]