LOCAL AND GENERAL

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1666, 3 February 1904, Page 50

LOCAL AND GENERAL

The fallowing are the export returns for Wellington for the month of January:—Butter, 14,062 cwt., value £66,204; cheese, 3789 cwt., value £10,540; frozen beef, 2303 cwt., value £2150; mutton-, 46,904 carcases (24,523 cwt.), value £33,834; mutton pieces, 2016 cwt., value £2815; lamb, 26,242 carcases (7680 cwt,.), value £13,156. The profit of the Westport Coal Company for the year, after providing for bad and doubtful debts, depreciation, and all charges, amounts, the annual reports states, to £57,011 4s 4d, t-o which must be added the sum of £9147 6s lOd, brought forward from last year, making a total of £66,158 11s 2d; an interim dividend of 3s 6d per share was paid for the half-year ending 30th’June, 1903, amounting to £14,000; leaving a balance to be dealt with of £52,158 11s 2d. Out of this the directors now propose—To pay a dividend of 3s 6d per share, absorbing £14,000; to give a bonus of 3s 6d per share, which will absorb £14,000; to carry to reserve fund £15,000; and to carry forward to next year’s account, £9158 11s 2d. It has long been customary through undue exaggeration on the part- of anglers to discount all fish stories by at least 50 per cent., and even then the hearer of such stories has been known to be led astray. The Tourist Department is, however, determined to prove its words so far as trout caught at Rotorua are concerned, and with this intention most of the best specimens secured are being cured for exhibition at home and abroad as tangible evidence of the sport to be obtained in the north. The head office of the department has been advised that on ,January 23rd a sixteen-pounder was secured, on the 26th a fifteen-pounder and on January 29 th and February Ist two fourteen-pounders, • each of which hos-; ’been sent ■ to. Auckland to be preserved for exhibition purposes. The magnitude of the 29Jlb brown trout taken at Blenheim, and now on exhibition c at ' the Wellington office of the Tourist; Department, has'staggered many a visiting English fisherman, ■■■ --V : \ - V.;

During the last quarter of 1903 £641,982 was collected in Customs duties in the colony. Auckland was highest with £172,381, Wellington second with £161,845, and Dunedin third with £100,493. For the corresponding quarter of 1902 the amount collected wao £593,030.

The Master ton Chamber of Commerce having written to the Wellington Education Board suggesting that the metric system of weights and measures should be introduced into the schools, tho Board has remitted the question to be considered at the coming conference of inspectors, though members appeared to be of opinion that there would be- no room in the syllabus for the metric system, until, at any rate, this system had been adopted by the commercial community. The East Coast Native Land Trust Board, set up recently to administer large areas of native land extending from Wairoa to Poverty Bay, in the interests of the numerous Maori owners, held its first sale of properties on Saturday last at Gisborne. The Paremata b.ock, comprising 4269 acres, was sold for £22,932, less 400 acres reserved for the Maoris and the Titirangi portion of the block, which will be leased. The Te Puru block, of 4000 acres, brought £16,000.