Fruit-bearing spurs

Apples and pears bear their fruits on spurs which arise on the old wood. They are arrested branches which are specially developed for the production of flowers and fruit, and the buds which they bear are larger, rounder, and plumper than the wood buds. We, therefore, desire the development of fruiting spurs, and as a rule the top three buds grow out into shoots, and those further down remain dormant or only develop a little way, and then form spurs bearing flower buds. When pruning we therefore shorten back the laterals to about an inch, and the leading shoots to about 6 inch, cutting as usual to an outward bud. Should the trees show too great a tendency to produce wood buds instead of shoot buds, root pruning may be necessary to arrest growth and bring about a development of flowering spurs.

Duties bring ruin to makers

The necessity for the greater protection of the interests of manufacturers has been the subject of much discussion among manufacturers and industrial associations.

The position in regard to foreign competition as affecting Otago and Southland is said to be particularly acute — so acute that one large engineering firm in the city, which has for some time been specialising in the manufacture of dairying machinery, states it is about to close down. Speaking to a Daily Times reporter yesterday, the manager of this firm explained the position that not only his firm, but others as well, find it difficult to compete on anything approaching an equal selling basis with some of their foreign competitors.

It was admitted, he continued, by the managers of some of the Dominion’s largest dairy factories, that dairying machinery manufactured in New Zealand was in every way equal to that made in foreign countries, yet the quite inadequate duty imposed on the imported article had made it impossible for his firm to continue the manufacture and sale of such machinery with any hope of competing with that imported from overseas.

An instance given the reporter was that of milk coolers. The maker stated that to construct his cooler it was necessary to import his copper tubing from America. This he did, paying on it a 25 percent duty. The anomaly is that the cooler, imported as a finished article, with all the work done in America is admitted to this country free of duty.  

Freudian approach to children

Mr J.R. Bartholomew SM tells us that in his view the Children's Court should for most cases be held in the court building and not, as now, in the Land Board’s offices or the magistrate’s room.

On that point I give him my vote. The court house for moral effect, and uniformed constables in evidence.

It had been seriously proposed that every child brought before the court should he dealt with by methods of psycho-analysis. Gracious! — psychoanalysis! 

Mr Bartholomew considered that this “would not only be wrong, but mischievous and purposeless,” — and he “was not lacking in comprehension.” Decidedly not.   

His experience was mostly with boy problems, for girls of the school age were almost unknown as delinquents, and he had found that on the whole they were not bad boys.  — by ‘Civis’ — ODT, 5.6.1926