LOCAL AND GENERAL

Taranaki Daily News, 11 July 1933, Page 6

LOCAL AND GENERAL

Snow fell above 3000 ft. on Mt. Egmont yesterday and was four inches deep at 4000 ft

Members of the New Plymouth Rotary Club were addressed by Dr. G. Home at yesterday’s luncheon, the subject being “Heredity.”, In moving a vote of thanks, which was carried by acclamation, Dr. R. Brewster remarked on the interesting and lucid style adopted by Dr. Home in the treatment of a complex and difficult subject. The operation of a winter time-table for the New Plymouth 'borough tramways was put into force yesterday. The main changes are that the Breakwater service is reduced from ten minutes to a quarter of an hour, and the trams on the Westown route continue to Fitzroy at the rush hours, so that it is now possible during rush hours to travel from Westown to Fitzroy without changing.

Two sedan cars collided at the comer of the Lepperton and Devon Roads on Sunday afternoon. It was raining heavily when Mr. Hamlin, Ahititi, driving from Waitara to New Plymouth, met a car driven by Mr. Austin, Te Awamutu, as it turned out of the Lepperton Road towards Waitara. There was a collision and both vehicles were badly damaged .in front Both cars had passengers, but no one was seriously hurt. Appreciation of the New Plymouth Rotary Club’s efforts to raise funds for the administration of relief by the Mayor’s Relief Council was expressed in a letter from the chairman (Mr. P. E. Stainton) received at yesterday’s Rotary luncheon. On the motion of Rotarian R. W. D. Robertson a vote of thanks _was accorded those people who had assisted with the entertainment programme during the exhibition of antiques. Another claim to distinction that New Zealand may be said to possess has been discovered by the scientist brought to New Zealand by a company which is to commence the manufacture of wood-pulp and paper. In the course of investigations for a salt supply for the manufacture of chlorine the scientist discovered that the sea water on the east coast of New Zealand is the saltiest in the open seas of the world. The Stratford Plateau road on Mt. Egmont has been properly metalled for over half the distance above the house and the weaker places have been consolidated and strengthened with metal. The road is still open for traffic. The proposed extension of the road over the plateau (4000 ft. has been cleared as far as Curtis Ridge. Skiers thus can run from the ridge down the road as far as the snow permits.

Considerable improvement to the southern approach to Patea will result from the planting of trees in Bedford Street. Sycamore, birch, plane and mountain ash were the varieties chosen by the Patea Borough Council last night after consideration of a Wanganui Horticultural scheme. The work will be done at the same time as the planting of the cemetery avenue.

With first-hand knowledge of mission work gained as a missionary representative in Papua for nearly 18 years, tire Rev. A. H. Scriven, general secretary for foreign mission work for the Methodist Church of New Zealand, spoke on some aspects of the work in the islands of the Pacific at New Plymouth on Sunday. He conducted services at the Fitzroy, Frankleigh Park and Whiteley Memorial churches, and addressed the Whiteley Sunday school. Mr. Scriven was recently appointed to his present position in succession to the Rev. W. A. Sinclair, and this was his first official visit to Taranaki.

The senior boys of the Mangatoki school yesterday had an object lesson in the practical side of ensilage making, an important phase of pasture management The boys spent the day following the ensilage judges with a large party of farmers. In the morning they attended the demonstration given by Mr. J. M. Smith and carefully watched the judging. In the afternoon a judging competition was arranged by the chairman of the school committee (Mr. B. H. Parker). The boys showed they had taken to heart the lesson of the morning as the winner was an average of only one point astray in the six stacks judged, the second boy being about 1 2-3 points out.

Argument upon the legal aspects of the claim for commission on an exchange of farms brought by E. Jackson and Son (Mr. L. E. Sowry) against M. F. Bradley and Thomas W. Cooke (Mr. P. Thomson) was heard by Mr. W. H. Woodward, S.M., at New Plymouth yesterday. Judgment was reserved.

A quaint incident of a wild duck and an octopus 60 years ago in the lower Otago harbour was recalled by a veteran oarsmen at -a jubilee function of the Port Chalmers Rowing Club on Saturday night (says the Dunedin Star). The narrator and three mates were out for a spin on a Sunday morning. Nearing Deborah Bay they noticed the duck acting in a peculiar manner. Pulling over to it, they caught it and found a small sucker attached to its head and neck. When the sucker was removed the duck made off, having evidently sustained no injury from its assailant. “The impression I have received of your country is that there is more money available for spending by the public at present than in most other countries,” said Mr. O. Lawson, of Cape Town, who for the last six months lias been touring New Zealand, says the Press. Though the existence of the depression was quite obvious in New Zealand, the amount of ready money in the hands of the public was large. It was only necessary to look, for example, at the large total of the deposits in the Post Office savings bank. Conditions here compared very favourably with those in South Africa. "An unsound principle that Is still commonly practised is that the punishment is to fit the crime, instead of the principle that the punishment is to fit the person;” said the Archbishop of Canterbury in a recent speech. “The person and not the offence is the primary consideration. The whole of our system of prison administration and the sentences passed by magistrates and justices should, as far as possible, be based on that principle, for it is essentially Christian. Magistrates,” he added, “should go into the health and antecedents, mental and physical, and the home surroundings of young people brought before them. If that were done more consistently, there would be a greater diminution of the alarming total of young people who find themselves for one reason and another in the hands of the law.”

“If only he had had a combustion engine, Leonardo da Vinci would have produced a flying machine in the fifteenth century,” said Professor Shelley in a lecture at Canterbury College. The plans of a flying machine designed by Leonardo were still to be seen and were quite practicable, except that he lacked & suitable engine, said the lecturer. This remarkable Italian, besides being a great Inventor and engineer, had compiled! works in anatomy and botany, was a great sculptor, perhaps the greatest physicist of his age, and, as he might have put it himself, “incidentally he used to paint.” It was Leonardo who painted the famous Mona Lisa.

The first signs of expansion of Cromwell as a result of the finds of gold were evident on Monday, when a Dunedin legal firm opened a branch office there. There is not the slightest doubt that a tremendous amount of work is now available for solicitors, and this will be increased when the numerous lawsuits which must arise as a result of irregular pegging and breaches of mining law are fought out in court. It is stated, indeed, that one party has already indicated its intention of taking its case to the Court of Appeal should this be necessary. It is understood, also, that an enterprising exhibitor of talking pictures has been making enquiries with a view to opening up a theatre in the town. The work of the clinic was growing steadily, said Dr. Gordon Bell, chief of the Dunedin cancer clinic, in a puolic address at Dunedin. Altogether, he had seen 500 patients during three years, and last year there were 163 new patients work of the clinic had been encouraging in certain directions. The place of radium in the treatment of cancer was becoming more clearly defined, and though far from being a panacea, it was an invaluable aid in certain forms of cancer. He hoped that presently radium would largely replace operation for cancer of the breast. The knowledge that operation was not the only resort would bring some sufferers from that form of the disease to them earlier than was the case at present.

To find what at first appeared to be the body of a dead woman, partly burned, was the startling experience of a member of the Napier Fire Brigade when he was inspecting premises in Clive Square, Napier, which were slightly, damaged by fire. At a second glance the firemen observed that the “corpse was really an artificial statue which had suffered damage through, fire and water. Hastily covering portion of the statue so as to give it a more realistic appearance, he summoned other members of the brigade, each in turn being momentarily completely deceived. The greatest laugh came, however, when a member of the Police Force was brought running at top speed to the scene and there left to take a description of the ‘body. After he had discovered the hoax it would have been difficult to say who ran the faster—the constable or the member .of the brigade who had breathlessly informed him of the grim find. “After my recent trip to England I came back absolutely convinced that the finest things of education are the creative traditions of the English public school we seek to reproduce at Kings, said Rev. H. K. Archdall, headmaster of King’s College, Auckland, at the reunion dinner of King s College Old Boy., at Hamilton recently (states the Waikato Times). “Some people say there is jjq place in New Zealand for such things so wonderfully English,” said Mr. Archdall. “The more we can transplant those old world traditions here the more we can keep this country thoroughly British and not American. It is wrong for modem education to contain individualism on the one hand and meie intellectualism on the other. We cannot split a man’s life into sections and train for mere intellectualism. I hope we will turn out gentlemen and not .snobs, men filled with a sense of duty to Church and State. Ours is an inclusive ideal. It is the heart of the thing. Our ideal is so big, so strong and so sensible that it will outlive all other claims. It is for us to see we are not completely unworthy of our forefathers.”

An old Chinese who has been 40 years in the Dominion, and has reared a family here, is leaving in a couple of weeks for China, says the Auckland Star. He says that when he first came out he made plenty of money, and spent it just as freely, taking two or three trips to his native land. When his first wife died he just went home and married another. Gradually things got worse, and little by little he found his savings going, and the last tiring to be sold was the old horse and cart in which he used to hawk his vegetables. When he was a young man, he used to carry his vegetables in baskets at the end of a long bamboo stick. The young Chinese of to-day were not so hard-working as their fathers, and liked the fast ways of post-war days, when motor-cars carried them sw.ftly from place to place. He would always remember with kindly feelings the people of New Zealand, who were a kindhearted people. Some of his European neighbours had been more thougntful than his own countrymen, and were even now helping him to get away to China, where he hoped in his old ago to live an easier life amongs» his relatives. His wife was of high rank, and would trave in a different class to himself. Her experience of life in New Zealand would be of benefit to her when she got back to China, and she would be able to speak of the freedom of colonial women,