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Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2050, 10 April 1907, Page 4

Some amusement was caused at the Ha warden Licensing Sessions by tlie following letter from a dog owner, claiming exemption from the license duty:—‘‘We have only a little toy dog, a Yorkshire terrier, which belongs to my sister. The dog is neither used for sheep nor rabbits, and is positively harmless. We shall bo glad if you can arrange to ■send us an exemption certificate.” Tho consideration of tho case was adjourned.

A member of tlie Society of Friends has received a circular giving alarming information of the impending famine in European Russia. The Society of Friends is endeavoring to raise a fund that may do something to mitigate the suffering impending, through the failure of the harvest. In hundreds of villages (the correspondent states) thousands of peasants are eating nothing but bread made of acorn flour and grass-seeds mixed with a litfle rye flour, and many families oat even that bitter bread only once a day. “There is no work to he had oven if the workmen had strength to work—instead the breadwinners lie on their backs in tlioir, dark and miserable huts, experience having taught them that every motion increases the sharp pangs of hunger. The usual companions of famine, typhus and scurvy, are already at work amongst the poor peasants, and two months hence we shall certainly see whole villages decimated by these diseases.” In the province of Samara it is estimated that 2,000,000 require support during the ensuing seven months. The writer speaks of • Tartars selling their girls for bread and of Christian peasant women praying God to take their children, as they had no food to give them, and the cries of the starving babies wore beyond human endurance. It is pointed out that the cost of supporting a life through tlie famine period will be not more than 255, and that one shilling will keep a child fed for a fortnight. The Russian Relief Committee of the Society of Friends will undertake to see that adequate measures are taken for the appropriate unofficial distribution of all moneys collected. Contributions may be sent to tho secretary of the Society, Mr. Isaac Sharp. 12 Bisliopsgate street Without, London, E.C.