NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12834, 6 April 1905, Page 6

NEWS IN BRIEF.

•'Frisco mail arrived. Sierra loft for Sydney. Pakeha due from London. Hauroto left for the Islands. Langton Grange due from Sydney. Talune from the South this morning. Kumars, left for London, via the South. ' 'Jibe Zealandia left Sydney for Auckland yesterday. A poll is to be taken sllortl y in Timaru bn the question of rating on unimproved lvalues. A crop of ryegrass in the Flemington district, Canterbury, has threshed out 60 bushels to the acre. • A country paper states that there is quite tin exodus of young settlers from Hawera to fry their luck in the Argentine. There are now 171 members of the Wellington Chamber of Commerce. Nineteen ? rere added to the roll during the past year. It has been definitely decided to hold technical classes in Oamaru, commencing as soon as the necessary arrangements can be mad©. ' Very little linseed has been grown at Drummond, Southland, this year. At present two fine paddocks are about ready for harvesting. Crops on the Edendale and Waimumu land, in the Mataura district, are reported to be turning out beyond all expectations, heavy returns being the rule. There were no fresh grants of the old acre pensions in Wellington during the month of March. There were, however, 12 renewals and two refusals. A resident in the Eltham district, Taranaki, has taken out a patent fo\ a new method of leg-roping cows. It is said to be cleanly and very simply worked. A 200-acre lease in perpetuity section in the Waia.u district, Southland, recently changed hands at £1000, equal to £5 an acre for improvements and interest in the lease. Since the beginning of the year only four bankruptcies have been filed in Wellington. Of this number two carried on business in the city, one in Johnsonville, and the other at Taihape. A numbei of sheep, which arrived at Lyttelton recently, and were being consigned to Hornby, were found on arrival at Addington to be in a dying condition. The sheep were removed from the trucks anil destroyed. It is estimated that 12,000 sheep have "one into Canterbury within the hist, two or three months from Northern Marlborough, while nearly 20,000 have gone from the Wellington district since the beginning of Decemoer. The potato blight is making sad havoc amongst the crops in the Kokatahi district, West Coast. potatoes, which were looking nice and green, are turning completely black, so it will mean a serious loss to farmers throughout the district. _ Reports from Banks' Peninsula state that .the grass seed crops are very poor, and only realise about two-thirds of what had been anticipated. Owing to men having left the work, hundreds of bags are lying on the ground and will not be harvested. ° The M.C.A. movement is making rapid progress in the North Island. Active steps are now being taken to form a branch in Dannevirke. This will be the fourth branch inaugurated in the Wellington and t Hawlw'a Bay districts since New. >car. ;