LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Thames Star, Volume LIX, Issue 16800, 31 May 1926, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

The Auckland tramways show a loss on the year’s workings of £2386. The death has occurred at Peking', of Sir Callchick Paul Charter, a member of the Hongkong Executive Coun- , cil, aged 80. “Elocution trains people how to : speak, but, unfortunately, not when to speak,” said Mr Farquhar Young at the Palmerston : North competitions. A lorry driver of Hamilton, Martin Pavalak, was ordered to pay costs 7/at the Hamilton Police Court the other day, for driving a motor vehicle across the bridge when a mob of cattle were crossing in the opposite direction. “You can go into any railroad refreshment room in New Zealand,” said Mr J. H. Stevens, at a meeting of the Manawatu Chamber of Commerce, “and find all the teaspoons branded N.Z.R.—made in U.S.A.” The East Town (Wanganui) branch of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants at a meeting on Wednesday, requested its executive to cable a substantial sum to alleviate the distress among dependants of British miners. A representative of the Agricultural Department has been ,in South Canterbury lately, inspecting potato crops with a view to ascertaining whether there is any sign of powdry scab in them. Potatoes from any crop so affected will not be accepted for export, to Australia. Because he broke his promise to marry a girl after writing her passionate love-fetters during a sixweeks’ courtship, Thomas Allen Williams, a grazier of Orange, New South Wales, said to be worth £50,000, has been ordered by a jury of four to pay his former sweetheart, Miss Martha Matilda Williams, £3OOO damages, the full amount claimed. With the end of the dairying season in sight the primary producers of the province can regard the season’s operations as being fairly satisfactory. Butter production has diminished slightly, compared with the record figures of last season. The cheese output shows a fairly substantial increase, although it does not entirely compensate for the butter shrinkage. Speaking in regard to the benefits of electric energy at the Thames Valley Power Board at Te Aroha on Thursday, the chairman, Mr F. H. Claxton, pointed out that in one instance it was quoted that a man who milked 100 cows, with an average return of 3001 b butter-fat, stated that on only one occasion since he had installed electric energy had his product been graded other than superfine, and in that instance it was not due to the electric plant. On the other hand, it had often been his experience to suffer the brand of second grade when milking by old-time methods. This, said Mr Claxton, was a great tribute to the great energy, they were prosecuting.