Cantabrians stricken by deadly earth hunger, Office intervenes

Members of the Otago Chamber of Commerce and the Otago Central Railway League stopped at Lowburn on their recent tour. Here, Messrs C. E. Statham, M.P., J. Hore and W. Fraser, M.P., were shown this fine sample of locally grown oats. - Otago Witness, 21.2.1912

This week a day technical school was opened in Invercargill, provision being made for an attendance of 40 or 50 pupils.

The attendance, however, has far exceeded this number, there being at present, we understand, somewhere about 130 boys and girls enrolled.

It is a significant fact that out of this total only some 14 or 15 girls are seeking domestic instruction, and in conversation yesterday with a Times representative, the head of a large city educational institution stated that the greater the practical work given in the domestic course the less favour it meets with from pupils and their parents alike.

As showing the demand for technical education which at present exists right throughout the Dominion, we learn that the Dunedin Technical School authorities have inquiries from as far as Invercargill in the south, and up to Palmerston in the north, from pupils desiring to be prepared for the City and Guilds of London Institute examinations in engineering, cookery, dressmaking, and needlework.

In the last three mentioned subjects the London certificate is regarded as indicating the holder's ability to act as an instructor in his or her particular subject.

It need hardly be added that those who are thus desirous to secure certificates are the pupils who do the practical work which the average student as a rule shuns.

• A meeting of the Retail Section of the Employers' Association is to be held next Thursday to reopen the question as to whether Easter Saturday should be observed as a holiday in place of Anniversary Day.

It will be remembered that at a meeting last week the association agreed to observe Anniversary Day as a holiday, and that it be left to individual members to close on Easter Saturday or not, as they thought fit.

Should the association therefore decide to rescind its former decision, and hold a holiday on Easter Saturday, shop assistants will have a continuous break from Thursday evening to the Tuesday morning following Easter.

• On Tuesday morning of last week (says the Westport Times) a camping party on the North Beach, Westport, secured what must be a local record of fish for one haul. With a single operation of their trawl net they landed 635 kawhai.

Four hours were occupied in clearing the net. The fish were caught at the junction of the Orawaiti River with the sea.

• The work that the Canterbury Lands Office has in hand at present in connection with the throwing open of estates for closer settlement should do something towards satisfying the "earth hunger".

The Sherwood Downs Estate, of 57,640 acres, near Fairlie, South Canterbury, will be open for selection on March 20, and the ballot will be held at Timaru on March 22.

There are 26 sections on Sherwood Downs, some of which include a good deal of pastoral lands. About a week later the Mount Peel Estate, of 50,000 acres, will be ready for selectors, and following on these two, during the next few months, land will be thrown open at Cheviot, where 12 sections ranging from 25 acres to 62 acres, near the railway station, will be available; and at Wakanui (Leadley's). Four Peaks, near Geraldine (15,000 to 16,000 acres), Morelands (near Mitcham), Aitken's (near Winchester), M'Kenzie's, and M'Lennon's, both the latter farms being on the Pareora Estate. - ODT, 16.2.1912.