GENERAL ITEMS.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XIV, Issue 3310, 1 May 1909, Page 7

GENERAL ITEMS.

A contemporary says : Evidence of the bountiful harvests this year is afforded by the fact that the Lyttelton Harbour Board's stores at port are now full of grain awaiting shipment, and space is at a premium. We have laundries for the washing and ironing <of our “raiment” ; private hospitals for our sick, sanatorium® for our convalescents, high-class creclies for our importunate babies. But the question of the daily dinner stands just where it always has stood.-—Ex-change. It may not be generally known, says the Wairarapa Daily Times, that New Zealand potatoes are still absolutely prohibited in the Australian Commonwealth. The restriction was made when the potato blight attacked the tubers in the Dominion, and has never been removed. The embargo is not viewed by merchants with complacency, for the reason that while there are a number of crops in which blight is prevalent, there are others which aro clean and free from disease, and it is considered that these might, under a grader’s supervision, be safely shipped to- Australia to meet the require- ; ments of the market there.

A resident of Roxburgh (Otago) found a weasel at his back door the other day (says the Mount Benger Mail). Last Wednesday night a young lady was awakened by something running over her bed, and a sharp pain in her face. Upon getting up she found a weasel had climbed up the wall of the house, and entered at the window, the bottom sash of which had been accidentally left open. Blood streamed from the young lady’s face, and it was discovered that the weasel had two bites. Steps were at once taken to prevent any evil results, and the wounds have now healed up, though the marks are still plainly to be seen.

Apparently England is getting more like New Zealand every year. A writer in a recent number of the Saturday Review professes to view with alarm what he terms the "Scotchifieation of England. In nearly every profession in England, he says, a Scotchman now rules the roost. He points to “an almost unbroken sequence” of Scotch Prime Ministers since the time of Gladstone, and the active part taken in the present Government by Mr Haldane, Mr Sinclair. Lord Elgin, Lord Tweed mouth, and Mr Bryoe, and complains, more in sorrow than in anger, that the handful of Englishmen in the present Cabinet mostly sit for Scottish constituencies, and are therefore “tied down to present the whisky and oatmeal ideais of their country of adoption.”

An iustance of the user unices 01 tnt biograph as a means of education was presented in one of the city school* last week. The children were to write essays on the processes of rice-growing and culture, and one boy surprised the teacher by describing in an accurate manner the whole of the work from the preparing of the ground to the gathering of the harvest. The teacher was certain that the boy could not have assimilated so much information from the lessons that had been given on the subject, and inquired rather indignantly who had helped the scholar in the production of the essay, which was easily the best of the class. The boy assured that teacher that he had been help'd by no one. but had seen a film at a biograph entertainment that had shown the process just as he had described it.

From six to eight square inches of skin from the back o 1 a little white pig were grafted on'the left side of Elizabeth Adams, five years old, of Hubhardstown. Massachusetts, on February 28. This is the first instance of pigskin grafting known to the medical fraternity in this section. The girl was scalded on February 3. so severely that the skin came off from a space estimated at from twelve to fifteen inches. In the process of healing the patient had reached a stage when skin-grafting was considered practicable. The pig. which was ten days old, was chloroformed for the operation, which lasted three hours. The physicians say they are pleased with the result of the operation, and are confident that the outcome will be most successful.

jAn Ann'rican writer shows liow much is required of a farm labourer in the United States in return for such wages as £3 per month, with hoard and lodging :—‘‘He must he down by 4 a.m., land work until (i a.m,, when he has twenty minutes for breakfast : then work till noon ; thirty-five to forty minutes for dinner, then work until six or seven. What does he get in return? Tlie wages of 20dols. a month and his hoard, which equals .‘idols, per week, a hare room with an old bod. one chair, perhaps a bureau and no heat. He washes down in the kitchen. His breakfast consists of boiled or fried potatoes, tough steak, bread, pour butter, and worse coffee. The dinner is the same, except that the kind ol meat may vary ; another vegetable and a pie. A rest of fifteen minutes is the rule. Supper is as breakfast, with the possible addition of cake and stewed I fruit.” The employment in many I 1 eases is only for the busy periods of the year, and the majority of farm labourers have to get work, if they ! can, apart from the farm, during the winter.

The Government of New Zealand ' have secured space at the Imperial International Exhibition, which will be held at the “White City,” Shepherd's Bush, during the forthcoming summer months. The existing New Zealand building at the White City will be utilised again, and the exhibit will be on much the same lines as in the recent Franco-British Exhibition. It is understood that Canada and Australia will not exhibit this year at Shepherd’s Bush, so that New Zealand will have the colonial field to itself. Last year it was decidedly overshadowed by its larger neighbours at the White City.