LOCAL AND GENERAL NEWS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19032, 1 June 1925, Page 8

LOCAL AND GENERAL NEWS.

The members of the All lllack Rugby football team that is to visit New South Wales this month will assemble in Wellington to-morrow. The four local players, Matson, Wright, Righton and Knight, wiil leave by express this evening. The tea ( m plays a Wellington fifteen on Wednesday, leaves for Auckland the same evening, and sails by tho Moeraki for Sydney on Friday. Final figures for the city and suburban street collection last Friday in aid of the St. John Ambulance Association are not yet to hand. The sum of £856 has been handed in. however, and only the Devonport and Mount Eden returns have yet to be added. The appoal was organised by Lady Gunson. It was hoped that £2OOO would be raised. Abrasions to tho left ankle were sustained by a shunter, Mr. Edward J. Stacey, aged 25, who had his foot caught in the cowcatcher of an engine when he was working in the yards at the Auckland railway station on Saturday morning. Mr. Stacey, who is a married man, residing at 9, Rostrevor Avenue, Epsom, was ial>en to tho Auckland Hospital hi the Waterside ambulance. Applications for employment at the Auckland office of the Labour Department totalled 183 last week, an increase of eight over the figures for the previous week. Those classed as fit for heavy work numbered 138. Labourers as usual headed the list with 55 applications. Next in point of numbers were motor drivers 18, gardeners and handymen 13, and cooks and hotel workers 11. During the week 20 men, including 12 labourers, were placed in private employment. Since two cases of infantile paralysis were reported to tho Auckland Health Office on May 19 only one further notification has been made. This case occurred in the South Auckland district and was reported on May 26. The schedule of assets and liabilities in the bankrupt estate of John Stephen Oliver, chef, shows debts owing to unsecured creditors amounting to £421. Book debts are estimated to produce £174, the deficiency being £247. Bankrupt states he is at present working at his trade and earning £8 per week. A meeting of creditors has been convened for to-day. A board has been appointed to control the Mata-a-vai Domain at Russell. The board consists of Messrs. G. Ellis, R. S. Florance, J. Graham, G. Y. Hooper, W. S. Handley, A. W. Steele and L. Warne. Among the appointments as returning officers announced by the Public Service Commissioner are those of Mr. D. Smith and Mr. J. W. Harvey, who become returning officers for the electoral districts of Manukau and Grey Lynn respectively. During an Association football game at Cooks Gardens, Wanganui, on Saturday, a certain spectator caused so much annoyance that the referee proceeded to the grandstand and asked him to refrain from further offensive remarks. The police then took up a stand near , the offender and the game proceeded without further heckling.A youth named Frank Remitis had the third finger of his left hand severed by a circular saw while working at the New Zealand Co,-operative Dairy Company's box factory at Frankton on Friday. Ho was admitted to the Waikato Hospital. The danger to motorists and others of stray dogs on the roads was illustrated in Grey Street, Hamilton, when a motorcyclist, Mr. R. A. Carter, in attempting to avoid two dogs which dashed in front of him, lost control of his machine, and •was thrown to tho ground. Fortunately he sustained no injury beyond bruises and a shaking. The parents of some Christohurch schoolchildren found the optional attendance of children at school, under the infantile paralysis epidemic regulations, too good an opportunity in the way of adding a little to the family income to miss. Children liava been found in various jobs, such as riding about on the tops of tradesmen's carts. The Canterbury . Education Board has received advice from the Director of Education that attendance at school will again become compulsory as from June 1. The truant officer will have a busy time, says a Christchurcli papor, and will be the means of despoiling many tradesmen of their assistants if the advice is not observed. After giving reserved judgment in a licensing case at the Palmerston North Magistrate's Court on Monday, Mr. J. L. Stout, S.M., referred to a remark which had been made at the hearing of the case by Mr. L. Cohen, of Wanganui. Mr. Cohen had said that a man who was found on licensed premises and gave an immediate excuse to tho polico was a fool, for the reason that he was never believed and the excuse was used against him when the case came to Court. The Magistrate held that if a man found on licensed premises had a reasonable excuse to proffer, he would be a greater fool to withhold it than to advance it at the time. A defendant in a civil action heard in the Magistrate's Court at Wanganui met his match in Mr. Barton, S.M., when he came to decide the authorship of a signature. The action was tho outcome of tho delivery of half a ton of coal, the signature to the receipt of which was denied by defendant. At the request of tho bench defendant attached his signature to a slip of paper, and this was adjudged by tho magistrate to be identical with the one iu dispute. The defendant, however, went further, and stated that at tho time the original signature was made ho was in Auckland. The magistrate, on hearing this statement, took a. note of tho place where the defendant said he had lodged in Auckland and the dales of his residence there. Mr. Barton intimated to defendant that ho would cause inquiries to bo made, and, should the statement by defendant transpire to be incorrect, the question would be a far more serious one for him than that of a mere half-ton of coal. "Could I refuse to make a statement on oath?" inquired defendant. "You have already given tho statement on oath," significantly, observed the bench. Reference to the increasing danger of motor accidents occurring in the Manawatu Gorge as a result of motorists travelling at an excessive speed, now that they have a substantial wall to prevent them from going over the bank, has been nude by a local resident. He stated that h.e understood there had been more accidents in the gorge in recent months than there had been for years. In his opinion the speed limit for the highway should be made widely known.