LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume L, Issue 12145, 7 November 1907, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

A meeting of the .School Committee will be held at the Technical School at 7.30 on Monday evening next. A Good Templar picnic will be held at 2 p.m. in the Aramoho Tea Gardens on Saturday.. Admission is 6d, 3uveniles 3d. We understand that all the wholesale and retail business premises in Wanganui will observe Saturday (Kings Birthday) as a holiday; therefore the usual Thursday half-holiday, where it applies, will not obtain this week. Iho Government departmental offices observe Monday as the holiday.

The Oastlecliff Railway Company wish to notify that their Sunday morning train service, will b# resumed on and after Sunday next, the 10th inst. Trains leave Castlecliff at 10 a.m. and Wanganui at 10.30 a.m. This, of course, is in addition to the Sunday afternoon trains, which will be run as usual. The New Zealand Postal Department ia now engaged upon the compilation ot statistics for the six yearly report ot the Universal Postal Union. The period to be dealt with is from Ist November to 28th November, the total volume of business for this period will be multiplied by 13, and upon these figures will be based the .charges fo rthe services. Word was received yesterday that 11. Tressider had signed the alticles for tho world's sculling championship match with W. Webb. The race vill tab) place on the Wanganui Itiver about tl:s end of February next. The second deposit of £200 aside is due next 1 uos day, the 12th inst. Death has claimed another of our old colonists, in the person of Mrs. Miza Harper, who arrived in Wellington by the ship Essex in the year 1843. Mrs. Harper was in the Bay of Islands when the Maori chief Heke cut the British flag down. She leaves four sons, two daughters, 57 grandchildren, and di great-grandchildren. The Education Department has issued circulars to the (various Boards with reference to battalion camps of cadets. In future, the Department will, it is stated, grant assistance as follows:— Train fares for a distance not exceeding twenty "miles, allowance of 3s bd per capita for a seven days camp, equipment as far as available. Not less than 200 of all ranks must go into camp, including an adequate number of experienced officers, and, whenever practicable, an instructor of the Dofenco Office will be attached.

At 12.35 p.mv Captain Edwin wired as follows: —Easterly strong winds to gale; glass fall after ten hours, tides moderate, sea moderate, rivers -"high after 20 liours. /

A Blenheim wire says that rain is again threatening, but is apparently failing, and conditions are very similar to those of last year's. Crops, however, are still vigorous owing to good early rain having moistened the sub-soil. •

As indicative of the impetus which the present spell of fine weather has given the dairy industry, it may be stated that the quantity of milk supplied to the Westmere Co-operative Factory has increased from 1500 to 2,2001bs per day.

The following are the weather, obser vations taken at Pipiriki for October, 1907:—Average maximum temperature 65.8deg.; do. minimum, 44.8deg.; highest temperature, 82deg.; lowest do., 35deg. • number of frosts, nil ; rainfall, 8.47 in.; number of days on which rain foil, 21; heaviest fall o rain, 1.35 in. on the 3rd.

A fire fanned by a strong north-west wind, swept the Marshlands flax swamp (neai1 Blenheim) on Tuesday afternoon, burning about 500 tons of flax which was ready. to. cut, and a quantity of other growth. Mr. Chaytor, the owner, estimates the loss at nearly £1000. A large gang of men fought the fire all the afternoon, and succeeded in saving^ a portion of the flax. The fire afterwards crossed the big ditch into araupo swamp at the Maori pah, where a large area was swept, but the damage was unimportant. Some months ago (says the " Post ") Mr. Edward J. Lucy, representing the English firm of ■wholesale chemists, Messrs. -Evans, Sons, Lescher, aiid Webb (Ltd.), in New Zealand, and well known about the city ; went to Australia on a trip, from which he has not yetreturned. He was last seen in. Melbourne on July 3rd, when he left a business bag with a friend, and said he was going to Ballarat for a few days, and would retur nto Melbourne. Oil the previous; day he wrote to his wife in New Zealand, saying that he was suffering from insomnia and heart failure. Nothing has been heard of him since. A complete mystery surrounds the disapearance of Mr. Lucy,' and s6 long art interval has elapsed since that the greatest anxiety is felt on his account.

An old and very popular member of the police force passed away.at his residence, Khyber Pass, Auckland, on Tuesday, in the person of Sergeant Richard* Gamble. The late sergeant was a well-known figure in Auckland during the earlier days, having spent tho greater part of his term of service between the city, Papakura, and Otahuhu. For about fifteen years he was inspector of weights and measures for the city, and later, after returning from Otahuhu, lie was put in charge of the city station, from which, he .■■retired; about eleven years ago to reside upon a farm he had acquired near Huntlj;. Large in frame and in disposition, his jovial good nature made him a general favourite and those who remember him will regret that his tale of years was ended with 68. '

The Hon. T. Kennedy Macdonald, M.L.C., a prominent citizen of .Wellington, is not (says the ". Lyttelton Times") satisfied with the operation of the system o| .rating on unimproved calves in the northern city. Chatting with a " Times.-!!;->reporter on Friday, he said that ho hjad been a strong advocate of the syste } iti, because he believed that it would break up a monopoly that existed amongst-certain large landowners. It had 4 d.one that, but it had called into being a very much-worse evil. It was destructive of the amenities which helped to mako a city beautiful, such as gardens and other pleasant surroundings. Some men in Wellington found that the rates they paid on their gardens were equal to the rent of ■a large dwellingrhouse. The tendency was towards a-subdivision of lands laid out in gardens. ...He felt bound to say that in the city of Wellington proper the unimp_roved~ value system had proved a curse instead of a blessing. Yesterday morning, before Mi\ Stanford, S.M., T.Barnes and T. King were each fined £1 and 9s costs under sec. 51 and sub-section 2 of the Slaughtering and Inspection Act, 1900. The offence was the' feeding of pigs on the carcase of a dead cow, the latter being in a raw state. A heavy penalty was not pressed for by the Department of Agriculture owing to the fact that it was 'the-first offence on the part of the defendants, and they were to a great extent ignorant of the provisions of the Act in question. The main object m bringing forward this case was to create an object lesson and set an example to others engaged in rearing and feeding pigs for human consumption. It may, be mentioned that the S.M.. in giving his decision, informed the defendants that they had rendered themselTes liable to a penalty of £50. The case was brought bef<?re the Court by Mr. W. R. Rutherford. Inspector of Stock for the Wanganui district, and the information obtainable was through Mr. Sergeant, Health Officer. A serious accident, if not a fatality, was averted in Wellesley Street Webt (Auckland), on Saturday night. Tho time was exactly 9 o'clock, and patrons of the Opera House were outside enjoying a smoke when someone shouted, " Hi! Look out!1' A Ponsonby car was

coming down the hill with the motorman sounding his gong furiously. All eyes were instantly turned to the tramway track, and there, about ten yards in front of the car, was an aged.man painfully wending his way across the track, obviously oblivious to his impending peril. The motorman, however, saw the danger, and putting on the emergency brake brought the car- to a standstill; a fraction of an inch from the man, who then made one spring and got clear. Had the car not been so promptly pulled up, or the. motonnan lost his presence of mind, there-is little doubt that a mangled corpse would have been picked up off the track. There was a very large number of people in the street at the time, arid they Accorded the motorman an ovation, cheering him wildly for his timely action.

The Union Company's new turbine steamer Maori, w;hich has arrived in Australia on her way to New Zealand, is 350 feet in length and 3000 tons register. She was built by Messrs. William Denny Bros., of Dumbarton. The vessel's speed is stipulated to be 21 knots, her engines developing 6500 horse-power. Lady Ward performed the christening ceremony at the launching on May 11th last. The Maori is intended for the Wellington-Lyttelton ferry service, and if her speed of 21 knots is maintained throughout she will be" enabled to make the passage from Wellington to Lyttelton, or vice versa, in eight hours and a half, but she will hardly be forced constantly to full speed, and so a passage of nine hours in favourable weather to ten houi's under less propitious conditions may ordinarily be looked 'for. The accommodation on the new boat will be superior to anything; hitherto seen even in the Union Company's boats, which have no equal in this respect in any coastal steamers to be seen on the coasts of Britain or the European Continent.

A meeting of the Wanganui Ladies' Swimming Club will be held this evening.

Miss Jessie Campbell wishes us to contradict a rumour that it was sho who entered a protest against Miss Abbott at the recent Palmerston Show.

At the Polieo Oourt yesterday mornina: a man named Smith was fined 10s and costs, in default 'IS hours, for drunkenness. A man named Olliver was fined 10s and costs for assaulting a man named Adams.

As the result of a blasting accident in the Ahu Ahu Block, up the Wangauui River, on Tuesday, a young man named Reginald Walker was considerably knocked about and bruised on the face, arms, and chest. He was carried by "his mates over five miles of very .rough track to the ■ river, and thence brought by canoe to town. He was yesterday morning admitted to the \Hospital, where he is progressing satisfactorily.

A member of the " Chronicle " literary staff observed a light in one of the windows of Dalgety and Co.'s office last night, and on investigation found that the blind had caught fire. He rang up the Fire Brigade station, and the sta-tion-keeper (Mr. McCullough) immediately went to the office, forced the door open, and removed the burning blind. The rom was full of smoke, and in a very short time would have been on ■fire, as the wall in the vicinity of the window was quite hot.

Depositors of over three months' standing in the Bfest Office Savings Bank may now have their accounts transferred to any of rale Government savings banks' in the United Kingdom, or to the Government savings banks of any British possessiorJMbor foreign country with -W%ich a TSffprocal arrangement has been made to that effect. Under this new arrangement, a man in, say, Inverness, may transfer his savings from the postal savings bank there to any. savings batnk office in New Zealand, and vice versa; also, if Austria be. one of the reciprocating countries, a Dalmatian gum-digger may remit his savings home by transferring his account from say Dargaville to Pola, or any other place in the Austrian Empire, or vice versa.