LOCAL AND GENERAL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18532, 14 July 1922, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL

John Bitchener, the sitting member, will contest the Waitaki seat as ■ a straightout supporter of Reform, j At a meeting on Wednesday night [ the Wanganui licensed victuallers i voted £lOO towards the local un- [ employment funds. Arrangements have born entered ! into by the Manawatu-Oroua Power! Board for the purchase of a build- , ing at Palmerston North at a cost ■ of £5OOO. | At the Calcutta tea. sales good liquoring tippy qualities were in strong demand, ami prices lower by one quarter anna to 11 annas. Dust sold freely, but tannings were- slow of sale. In the amateur billiard championship (played at Auckland), 1-.. V Roberts defeated A- Bowie jn tlio final game of 2000 up by 355 points. Roberts’ best average was 10.5 and Bowie S.ti Mr Cecil Wray, the New Zealand Rugby Union’s representative at Home, has cabled that the English team will not come out next year, but he will try to arrange a return visit if New Zealand is visiting England in 102-1. “The shoes which women are wearing nowadays are radically - wrong from every point of view,” said Dr. Truby King at Timaru. “The high heels are preposterous and make exercise impossible, and they also crimp up the toes.” j Mr Galbraith, who was recently | fined for sedituus langauge, is not Ito be selected as the Labour candi(date for Napier. Mr L. Mellvride jis the candidate chosen by the party, | and Mr Galbraith is not recognised I by it. [ Mr Geo. A. Green, organiser for I the N.Z. Association of Nurserymen, [who is in Wanganui on business [connected with the nursery industry, | having just returned from a visit [io Canterbury, Wellington, and Hawke’s Bay. He leaves for Auckland by the Main Trunk train today. The advocacy of comunity singing is finding much expression in the Sydney press. It has already got a strong hold in the leading centres in South Australia and West Australia, and is proving most popular. The success of the movement in New Zealand and its inspiring effect upon public life there is widely quoted in support of its adoption here. Mr G. A. Green, organiser of the New Zealand Association of Nurserymen, who is at present visting Wanganui, has had a strenuous year in organising the industry. During the past year he covered 20,008 miles in railway travelling, and although the organiser has not kept a record of other means of tran- ! sit, the mileage he has covered is . an equally large amount.

.Ten mensstarted work on the Rec. yesterday morning on relief improvement works. Their first job will be the prepaarlion of the ground between the two playing areas for the building of concrete walls of the terraces. Later on. between the seasons, the Union hopes to lift the present grandstand, form terraces along the front of No. 1 ground, and also to carry out improvements and additions to the stands. Lloyd’s Register states:- —Quarterly ship-building returns, deducting 481,000 tons on which work was suspended, amounts to 1,4*89,000 tons, which is 316,000 below the March quarter, and 451.000 below the prewar average tonnage. Building abroad, excluding approximately 545,000 tons in Germany, is 125,[OOO tons below the last quarter. The chief decreases are in Italy, France and Holland. The trait in the Maori character of fixing events by other events was exemplified in the Waitara Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday, when a Native witness was asked through the interpreter how long she had had rt [disputed threshing machine in her possession She answered: “After the raid on Parihaka.” In spite of a searching cross-examination the witness, who said she made no note of dates, could not fix the date any-

more ijlefinitely It transpired in evidence subsequently that the machine had been bought about forty years ago for the exceedingly reasonable sum of thirty shillings!

A retired sugar planter from Fiji recently spread broadcast through the columns of the Star that a sure cure for curl leaf on poach trees, which was very prevalent in the Auckland province, was to plant nasturtium right at the foot of the trees, and let it grow about a foot up the trunk. The paragraph was copied into quite a number of newspapers in both islands, and man} - people commenced to act upon the advice given. Nasturtium iu many districts became a much-sought-out plant, and high hopes were raised that such a simple remedy had at last been found for one of the worst pests that affect peach trees. Now. after a lapse of time, sufficient evid. ence has been secured that in orchards where nasturtium has become quite a pest, curl leaf is as bad as in any other spot. One North Shore orohardist who has a large orchard of fruit trees, who has spent many weary hours trying to get fils orchard clear of nasturtium, and lias lost a pound or two iu weight in the process, says that he would ten times sooner try to cure curl leaf than he | won’jd the almost) hopeless yest which is supposed to cure it