NEWS ITEMS.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12496, 24 March 1909, Page 4

NEWS ITEMS.

The telephone has been installed in the palace of the Ameer of Af ganistan, but as it is a criminal offence to uso any article used by that potentate, the precise utility of the instrument seems just a trifle doubtful. Costing considerably over £1000, and weighing aboxit 2000 . ounces, a set of 15 silver drums has been despatched to Quetta to the first battalion of the South Wales Borderers. iVo other battalion in" the British Army can lay claim to the possession of a full set. - Mr Thomas Wilkinson, the octogenarian magistrate of Bolton, who recently presented his mansion, White Hill, Sharpies, to the town as a sanatorium for Bolton consumptives and endowed it with £45,000; has increased the endowment to £50 3 000. Workers' homes are in great demand in Auckland, for there are already plenty of applications for the 12 new houses which are partly biult at Ellerslie. When these- are completed there will be 31 houses in the La wry Settlement, as it is called — after Mr Frank Lawry, M.P., the member for. the district. The Ellerslie homes have always been popular, being right alongside the station, and in a very pretty suburb. „ At Otahuhu there are several homes, but for the present there is no intention of supplementing them.