LOCAL AND GENERAL

Taranaki Daily News, 2 September 1933, Page 6

LOCAL AND GENERAL

The profit from the recent dance and euchre party in aid of the Inglewood Mayor’s relief fund was £l4 Bs. Stray dogs have been worrying sheep and lambs on the New Plymouth racecourse. The caretaker yesterday discovered two dogs in tire act and shot one but not before one lamb had been killed. The dog that escaped was an Alsatian. Fire broke out in the timber yards of T. W. Wall, Waverley, at about 12.30 p.m. yesterday. The brigade was quickly on the spot and only a little damage was done to the boiler room. There was a good attendance at the Taranaki Alpine Club’s room last night when Mr. K. P. Tompkins gave a talk on skiing. He dealt in a very interesting manner with his subject, giving many valuable hints on the sport. “I have been farming for 40 years and I have never seen so many twin lambs,” said a Wanganui farmer recently. “Everything is right with the farmer but prices,” he added. “It has been a good winter, there is plenty of feed, the stock is in the best of condition, but the prices of wool are missing,” An Order-in-Council was issued yesterday vesting in the New Plymouth Borough Council a small strip of land for the purpose of providing access to the East End Reserve from Baring Terrace. The land, which is described as a part of section 200 of the Fitzroy district of the borough of New Plymouth is 26.12 perches in area. Tire achievement of a group of modern novelists was highly praised by Mr. L. F. de Berry, at Christchurch, on Saturday night in an address on modern novels to the Society for Imperial Culture. Mr. de Berry said there were some writers to-day who explored the life and watched the development of the little child, and then turned their knowledge into novels. Their research had given them an understanding of the modem boy, and he was the most difficult thing in the world to understand. Mr. J. C. Crawford, Patea, who joins the Taranaki Rugby representative touring team at Wellington in order to fill the responsible role of first five-eighths, is a man of many parts. During the past fortnight he has been in Wellington, where he took part in the competitions with distinct success, scoring firsts in the baritone solo and also in the sacred solo for men (any voice). Commenting on the latter the adjudicator, Dr. Cyril Jenkins, oi Sydney, said that Mr. Crawford had a fine resonant voice with great possibilities. He had not heard one with such possibilities for quite a long time. There was a good attendance at the last debate of the New Plymouth Debating Society in the Hygienic room last night. Mr. R. J. Brokenshire presided and the Rev. J. McL. Wilson was the judge. The proposition was “That morally, intellectually and socially woman has no claim to equality with man.” The affirmative side was supported by Messrs. H. L. Gamer (leader), R. G. Howell and C. Fookes, and the negative by Messrs. L. Hughes (leader), G. Macallan and G. Wells, each’ of whom had a time limit of 10 minutes. After a general discussion the motion was put to the vote and lost. Mr. Wilson then gave his judgment on the debate and offered some general advice on the art of public speaking. A keen Auckland philatelist has received a letter from Hell, and the stamp on it he has added to his treasures. There is a post office at Hell, and he wrote there in order to get another stamp for his collection. Hell is in the northern part of Norway, just below the Arctic Circle. It is a small hamlet, and its principal claim to notoriety is its unusual name. The people there are doscribed as happy and good-natured, and the surrounding country is typically Norwegian, being hilly and wooded. But most fame has come to it through its post office and cancellation mark on stamps. The Auckland philatelist threw out the suggestion that the Norwegian hamlet with the strange name would be an ideal place for a philatelic congress. Dealing with the suggested quota on New Zealand’s produce for the London market, Mr. J. O’Brien, M.P. for Westland, in an address to electors, stated that if the export of butter, cheese, beef, and mutton from these shores were restricted with the object of raising prices In Great Britain, it would have the effect of reducing the consumption of these commodities, and thereby lessening the demand for them. The quota idea suggested that farmers were now to be asked to produce less, whereas a few years ago they were asked to produce more! He held that there had never been an over-production of our principal products, but there had always been, and was at the present time, an underconsumption of the necessaries of life which created the present astonishing anomaly of an age of plenty side by side with an age of poverty. That flood damage should be a charge on the general county fund and not on the riding in which the damage occurred was the opinion expressed by Cr. C. H. Barnitt at the meeting of the Clifton County Council yesterday. He said the ratepayers usually had sufficient to do to repair the damage on their own properties and they were being unduly penalised in being asked to make good as a riding road damage that had occurred through no fault of their own. It was particularly hard since there was now no Government fund for the purpose. The chairman (Cr. H. A. Foreman) said the council had no power to make such damage a charge on the county funds. He recognised the hardship but pointed out the difficulty in deciding what constituted flood damage, as every slip could be placed to flood damage, and they were numerous. In the event of serious damage being done the council could make application to the Government for a special grant. Before the Stanley Bay Park, Auckland, was reclaimed it was noted during spring tides for the number of large eels, or tunas, which used to feed there, especially in a creek which used to flow down from a marshy place below Glen Road. How far eels can remember their old feeding grounds it would be hard to say, but the morning after the heavy hailstorm which battered the waters of the harbour on Sunday several large eels were seen in the drain which the council has dug at the eastern side of the park to carry the water from the marshy place, which was formerly quite open to the tide. The eels had clearly, unless they had been in the marshy place after the park had been reclaimed 14 years ago, wriggled over the park wall to get to their old feeding grounds. Instances can be cited where eels have gone across country for long distances from lake to lake, and in one case many years ago hundreds of eels in a Taranaki area travelled from the Kaihihi River at Okato to the Stony River, a distance of about a mile or so, with no other object, it was thought, than to reach a place where they could get a better and less disturbed food supply. The Urenui sale on Monday has drawn a splendid entry of dairy cattle included in which is a choice line of 3-year Ayrshire Jersey cross heifers at profit. Full details of the fixture are displayed in the advertising columns in this issue. The destruction by fire of one of Alexander Harvey and Sons’ Auckland factories will not interfere with the company’s Taranaki business in dairy requisites. These are manufactured at another factory in Auckland. Orders will be attended to with the company’s usual promptness.