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stores its rule for physical examination of food handlers in restaurants and safes. The assistance of the Yakima city commission also may be sought if the state board is not willing to grant the request. With "We Want to Eat" as their informal motto, 35 service station operators of Longview and Kelso met last week and formed a temporary organization looking to maintaining a uniform retail price for gasoline, not only during the present producers' gasoline war, but permanently. W. H. Baldridge, receiver, declares that first payments of claims on the defunct Exchange National bank of Spokane will be made. A first payment of 60 per cent is to be made by the Old National bank and Union Trust company, which purchased 60 per cent of Exchange assets on a dollar for dollar basis. O. Stoehr of Beaseley & Stoehr company, engineers, is superintending the work in surveying and relocating sections of the Bloughton flume which were destroyed by heavy snow. This flume extends from the Bloughton mill at Willard to the Columbia river at Hood, a distance of about 12 miles. A large crew is employed in repairing it. Postmaster Ira G. Allen of Pullman has been appointed custodian of the federal property at Alder and Paradise streets by the treasury department and has been instructed to see that the property is cleared of buildings and debris removed within 60 days. The lots were recently purchased as a site for the new federal building, to cost $19,500. Centralia's dream of a municipally-owned hydro-electric plant was started on the road to realization at a special election last week, when a revenue bond issue of $650,000 for construction of such a plant on the Nisqually river near Yelm was approved by a vote of 1460 to 838. The bond issue carried in every one of the 14 voting precincts. The house has passed a bill to authorize acceptance of land in Benton and Walla Walla counties, Washington, for inclusion in the Columbia bird refuge. The bill now goes to the president. The Northern Pacific railway has already executed deeds transferring the land to the government, and the act as passed would permit the secretary of agriculture to accept them. Because of the decrease in the assessed valuation of property in the district due to the closing of logging camps, Yacolt high school will be closed permanently at the end of the present school year. The school was opened about 15 years ago and has rated high in athletics and scholarship, but this year there are less than 20 students, with only one teacher. Four teachers are the minimum for an accredited high school. Motorists are advised by the state district engineer to avoid traveling over the North Bank highway, if possible, until the roadbed, which was softened by the thaw, has settled. The highway is closed at Beacon Rock until plank can be laid on a stretch 250 feet in length which is impassable. Dirt roads in Clark county are in the worst condition they have been in for years and travel to remote districts is limited to the lightest vehicles. The two shipments of infant oysters ordered from Japan will arrive this month, according to word received in Aberdeen. They are to be planted in beds of the Bay Point farms near Tokeland, on the north arm of Willapa harbor. The first shipment will arrive March 11 on the President Madison, and will be trucked from Seattle to Tokeland. The second shipment of ten truck loads will be taken to Tokeland March 25. In all about 8,500,000 oysters will be planted this spring, under supervision of Dr. Trevor Kincaid, shellfish expert of the University of Washington. Fire of undetermined origin destroyed the plant of the Yakima Fruit & Cold Storage company at Buena, 15 miles south of Yakima. The loss of $200,000 was insured, as were 75,000 boxes of apples stored in the warehouse by 40 growers. Volunteers from the Toppenish fire department, unable to save the Yakima company's plant, worked until late in the night to prevent the flames from spreading. Chief Harry Hawkins of the Yakima fire department said that the Buena fire brought the loss of Yakima valley green fruit storages outside of the city of Yakima by fire during the last three years to $1,320,000. Owners of the Buena plant announced that they would rebuild at once. The Colfax State bank was closed recently and its cashier, R. F. Bigelow, was in jail charged with pecula-
