NEWS OF THE DAY.

Colonist, Volume LIV, Issue 13497, 17 August 1912, Page 4

NEWS OF THE DAY.

A Te Kuiti Press wire states that W. McGarvey was yesterday fined £25 or threo months' imprisonment for keeping liquor for sale iv a prohibited area.

Subscriptions to the Permanent Building Society will bo payable ou Monday and Tuesday next.

The Savage Club's orclmstra will meet at tho School of Music this evening to practice for tho forthcoming ladies' night.

Tho wooden lire bell 'tower in Hardy street was overthrown yesterday afternoon to make room for the new galvanised steel structure imported from America by the City Council, which will be put in position on the old site.

A start was made yesterday with the work of re-erectin«; the Church steps in Tonga Bay granite, the gift of Mr. Thomas Cawthron, of this city.

In a paragraph which appeared in the "Lyttloton Times" of 9th August, 1862'(fifty .years ago), it is stated that the frost had been so severe down South that winter that bullock drays had been enabled to cross tho Waitaki River, about 50 miles ircin the east coast, with perfect .safety. Although four bullocks fell at one time out of a team, of eight, the ice did not give way. Skating was a common pastime.

The wood-borer is playing liayoc with the Canterbury .m us earn building says. the "Lytelton Times." So mo of the floors have been completely riddled by the destructive insect, the timber being simply a mass of soft pulp, paid there is hardly a board which a blow from a hammer would not send into dust. Tho joists are in tho same condition, and the borer has even worked its \fg,y into the framework of the. cases used for exhibits, besides getting into the laths in the walls. In the work of renovation it will be necessary to move several thousand specimens, .some of which will have to be treated with extreme care.

Haying been informed by his officers that it would cost many thousands per annum to introduce tiiq system of carrying children up to five years of age free and those between the ages of fivo and fourteen at quarter-rates oil the railways of the Dominion, the Minister for Railways has decided not to make any concession in the direction indicated.

Thp Minister for Defence (the Hon. James Allen), replying to a question addressed to him by Mr. Escott (Pahi■atua) in the House of Repersentatives on Thursday, said the Government had decided to grant free railway passes up to 100 miles to competitors at riiie meetings, a.s formerly.

In....discussing the disease which is •affecting rabbits in the Wairarapa, v Masterotn settler told an "Age" reporter the other day that he was' of opinion thai the 'disease was hydatids, as lie .had found cysts on the /liver of several rabbits he had opened.

At t the acclimatisation -.Conference at Wellington on Wednesday a resolution was passed, "that the fees for oversea sportsmen should bo £5 each for game and.fishing licenses, and £10 for deerstalking licenses," One member stated that many tourists to whom lie had spoken had commented upon the .ridiculously low fees charged for their licenses, and declared that they would b'i quite- prepared to pay ten times as much. H e knew, of one gentleman who had just given up a fishing lease in the Old Country, which had cost him £1000 < a year, and considered that at £50 his few weeks' sport in New Zealand would be- remarkably cheap.