LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 228, 9 January 1911, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Seventeen years ago yesterday the eight-hour system of labor was inaugurated iu England. "Aotea" was very largely visited during the holidays, a fact which was highly gratifying to Messrs. Sole Bros., the owners of this beauty spot. In order to repair a leakage in the pipes at Tc Henui bridge, the water supply was cut off from Fitzroy from an euriy hour yesterday morning until last evening.

During the month of December the visitors to Dawson Falls Mountain House numbered 332, which is far more than for the corresponding month in previous years.

As showing the popularity of the New Plymouth beach, there are now between eighteen and twenty families encamped there. Nearly all the inland towns of Taranaki arc represented.

There must have been between 250 and 300 people on the beach at the East End yesterday afternoon. There were also large numbers at the West End and other parts of the beach. Under the new Gaming Act, which increases the amount payable per cent, on the totalisator returns, the Stratford Racing Club had to pay no less than £395 totalisator tax, as against £lB5 the previous year. The personnel of the Prison Board, which is to De set up under the Crimes Amendment Act of last session, will be considered by Cabinet during the present month. The board is to consist of not fewer than three or more than seven members.

The figures relating to the holiday trallic from the local railway station are not as yet available for the press. Wc notice that some of our exchanges, which take two days to arrive from the ends of the islands, already contain these statistics as affecting their own localities. A singular lawsuit has just been tried in New York. The case was one in whicn two doctors were sued for having performed an unauthorised post mortem examination upon the body of a Mrs. Boyd. The defendants were ordered to pay the children of deceased £IOOO.

Saturday afternoon proved unsuitable for the presentation ceremony in honor of Mr. Chew Cliong, and the gentlemen who attended at the Town Hall at the appointed hour unanimously decided to postpone the presentation until Saturday, the 21st inst., when all in sympathy with the movement are requested to attend.

Mr. 0. J. Herrick, of Waitara West, who goes in extensively for honey production, has had a successful year. He recently showed us a sample of the honey, which is the purest looking we have seen for mam- a day. Mr. Herrick met with much success with his honey last season at the different shows he exhibited at.

A {rood season lias been experienced at the Hawera Acclimatisation Society's fish ponds. There is a large number of fry on hand, and the young fish arc doing very well by reason of the water supply having held out splendidly this season. If the present water How keeps up, most of the fry will be retained until next season, to be liberated as yearlings. The check system in regard to passengers' luggage on the railways was given a thorough test during the holiday rush. About 5000 lots of luggage were checked at the Wellington stations at Christmas and New Year, these figures being practically double the figures for the corresponding period last year. A total of 2900 packages were checked for the ferry steamers to the south.

The croquet lawns of the Park Club are to lie open for play every afternoon from one o'clock. This week tennis players are limited to Thursday and Saturday afternoons, but members arc asked to visit the lawns by appointment with any member of the committee, to take a hand in the rolling, which is so necessary in order that play may be prolonged. A meeting of the committee will be held this week to consider the arrangement of dull matches, and other business. The Waitara Club has written, asking for a Saturday afternoon inter-club matt'li.

It is alleged that the fascinating pastime of "two-np" has taken deep root in the (laxmills of Manawatu. Spielers, it is said, obtain employment in the mills for the sole purpose of organising "schools" where the "double header" penny and the "kip'' are the chief means of instruction. As the mill hands are said to strip flax all day and be stripped by spielers all night, it is curious that employers do not take a hand. When some tired gambler, after a long night of "two-up," endeavours to "seufeli" and is himself "scutched," somebody will add a rider to the Coroner's verdict at the inquest.

As indicating the phenomenal growth of the Boy Scout movement in New Zealand, Lieut.-Colonel Cossgrove, Dominion Chief Scout, mentioned to a Press reporter that it was only two and a half years ago—on 3rd July. 1008, to be correst—that the first troop of Scouts was formed, thoir headquarters being at Kaiunoi. Soon afterwards a Christehureh troop was established, and now the number of Boy Scouts in the Dominion is between 0000 and 10,000, with 500 officers. The Girl Peace Scouts, he said, was established in New Zealand in September, II>OS, and its ranks now numbered 1500, and were rapidly increasing. This evening a representative meetin« of residents will be held in the Town Hall for the purpose of arranging the programme for the visit of His Excellency the Governor on the 26th inst. He had just come from church. "Say," he ejaculated, "I want you to write something protesting against the practice of women attending ehureh and blocking the. view of people t at their back with the huge headgear "they are aftVetinir this season. Upon my word, iny vision was completely blocked by the (lower gardens in front of me to-night. With the ordinary ladies' hat you had a chance of getting a peep at the preacher occasionally, but now—well, it's hopeless. Make the protest pretty strong." lie left. But what is the use of protesting against anything the ladies choose to do? Our visitor must have been uumarried!

The codlin moth lias attacked many of the New Plymouth orchards previously immune from its ravages this season. The Taranaki County Council hold their monthly meeting to-day in their new ollices at the corner of Robe and l'owderliam streets.

The following advertisement, from a contemporary, deserves wider publicity: —''Wanted: By a lady, suitabla engagements for several daughters; useful and ornamental."

While one of the tenuis championship games was in progress at lilenheim, a dog ran on to the court. A spectator gave chase, caught the dog, took it up to the top of the grandstand, and threw it over the fence. In its fall the animal sustained a broken leg. One of the doctors who was present set tlie leg as liest he could, and took the dog to hia owner's residence.

There seems to be a wave of prosperity throughout Australia and New Zealand. .says the Hon. J. Drysdalc Drown, Attor-ncy-fJcneral of Victoria, who is visiting Auckland. The cause he ascribed wag a succession of good seasons. The railway revenue was a pretty accurate test of prosperity in Australasian States, he remarKcd, and last year the revenue from this source in Victoria was a record, nearly four and a-hnlf millions. Thin year it promised to be higher. Quite a sportsmanliko attitude wan exhibited by a number of competitors in. the hop, step ariir'junip event at the Mangatu sports, says the (iisbome Times. A young fellow named Roy Patterson broke a small bone in one of his feet,. which absolutely precluded him from-fur-ther contesting the event. The other competitors immediately withdrew, and allowed Patterson to win the event. The public also subscribed the sum of £4, which will go towards defraying his expenses at the hospital. A sea lion gave two young fellows u scare when they were walking along the Anderson Bay "road (says the Dunedin Star). They heard a queer roar from the side of the road. They gathered together their scattered senses and made a search for something tragic. On the roadside nearest land lay a large-sized sea lion wallowing in helplessness. The young men felt sorry for the helpless lion, and assisted him to reach the waters of the. harbor. Once there he swam briskly for the freedom of the deep, apparently quite pleased.

That clothes don't always make theman was instanced in Devon street on Saturday evening by two well-dressed youths. They were indulging in horseplay, chasing one another from the road on to the footpath, when the pursued tripped over a perambulator and landed on all fours on the footpath. It was only by remarkable presence of mind on the part of the lady in charge that the perambulator and its freight were saved a nasty spill, The uncouth youth at once jumped up and made oft at top speed, without wniting to, apologise, which was the least that common courtesv demanded.

We are a lot of gamblers after all (says a writer in a London journal). Westminster Bridge was built on the proceeds of a lottery. So solemn an institution as the British Museum wan founded upon a basis of gambling in 1753. A sum of £300,000 was raised by a lottery authorised by a special Act of Parliament. The money was spent principally in buying the museum and collection of Sir Hans Sloane, the Harleian collector of manuscripts, and Montagu House, Bloomsbury, then the mansion or t'ho Earl of Halifax. And the gamble bought a house big enough to contain the British Museum for many years.

Pakehas arc sometimes puzzled by the railway rates, so (observes the Feilding Star) it is no wonder that Maoris occasionally get dissatisfied with the charges levied. On a recent occasion a Maori took a return tioket from a station on the Main Trunk line in the Auckland district to Cambridge. He had the ball fortune to die there, but when his Maori relatives wanted to take him back by the train on the return half of the ticket, the authorities objected and demanded tl for the carriage of the remains. The anger of the Maoris was extreme at finding that a dead man was of more value to the railway than a live one, for the re-

A visitor, enthusiastically commenting on the unrivalled advantages New Plymouth possesses as a pleasure resort, sadly remarked that New Plymouth people themselves did not seem to be aware nf them. Among other matters, he referred to the utility of the huge umbrellas which are so common a feature of the beaches on the Continent and in England. The bather, in fact, takes his dressing tent with him in the shape of a more or less gorgeous umbrella. The "handle' - * is shod with a long spike easily pushed into the sand, a curtain is hooked to the frame of the erected umbrella, and the bather obtains privacy for robing or disrobing. It is suggested that enterprising local tradesmen might do a good trade in these beach umbrellas, which can be bought for a few shillings m Britain or France.

Says the Manawatu Evening Standard of Friday:—"A severe sentence was imposed at the Magistrate's Court (Palmerston) this morning. D. Donnelly was charged with drunkenness and vagrancy. To the former charge he pleaded guilty, and not guilty to the latter. The polite said he had been in town for about a month past, and had been more or less intoxicated during the whole of that time. His wife had also been intoxicated with him. Accused, on the contrary, produced a court receipt showing that he had only arrived in Palmerston about December J7, and had paid £7 into court on that dav, and was then in possession, he said, of £:W, the proceeds of bushfelling work up the Wangamii river. His wife, who had been living with him in Palmerston, also had money, and still bad some. He had been working, he said, regularly for three months before coming to'"Palmerston, and could go back to the same place. His wife left Palmerston yesterday for Waitara, and he intended to follow her by the evening train, but cot. drunk and was arrested. The presiding Justice, Mr. W. .1. Culver, said there was no doubt accused had been on the spree, anil had made no effort to get work. After consulting Donnelly's record, a sentence of three months' imprisonment was imposed. Donnelly informed the bench that he was a married man with three children to support." YOU SHOULD BEAR IN MHTO

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