The sanitary inspection of the Dunedin City area should be completed in about a fortnight.
Up to the present over 8000 private and business premises have been visited, and on the completion of the inspection a second visit will be paid to premises where defects were found to exist in the first instance, and the necessary improvement insisted upon if the injunction has not already been given effect to.
Since the inspection was commenced some months ago there has been a very considerable increase in the amount of refuse deposited in the corporation tips, a fact which points to the urgent necessity for the erection of a municipal destructor.
When the inspection of the city area is completed a start will be made by the Health Department's permanent inspectors on the inspection of the suburbs, and this will be carried on as time permits.
• Quite a genuine land hunger has set in around the Alexandra district, and during the past few days several prominent investors have (says the Alexandra Herald) made some tempting offers to owners of land suitable for fruit cultivation. It is currently reported that the sum of 15,000 was offered by an Alexandra resident for the property of Mr A. C.
Iversen, at Earnscleugh. As this property comprises an area of about 250 acres of first-class land and 350 acres of somewhat inferior quality, making a total area of about 600 acres, the offer represents a value of about 25 an acre. When it is remembered that the greater part of this land was purchased some 25 years ago for 15s per acre, some indication of the productivity of the land from the standpoint of fruit culture may be gained from the offer made and refused last week.
This offer has since been eclipsed, for a few days later a Dunedin resident offered to purchase 16 acres of the same land at 100 an acre. Both offers are said to have been genuine, and these facts serve to illustrate the demand that at present exists for land suitably adapted for fruit culture. Many other areas in the district have been sought and deals made at prices ranging from 5 to 20 an acre.
The sole reason for such activity in land in the district is the fact that there is every probability of a permanency of water for irrigation purposes becoming available within the next 12 months.
• News about wireless telegraphy is reported in the Marconigraph, a new monthly devoted to wireless telegraphy. It is stated that the New Zealand Shipping Company's steamers Ruahine, Ruapehu, Rotorua, Turakina and Remuera are to be fitted with wireless telegraphic equipment.
Wireless has also been used with good results in the Arctic icefield by sealers.
- ODT, 12.8.1911.
