After eighty-four consecutive years of existence the Dukes County Agricultural fair will be discontinued, for this year at least. State premiums have been cut to a minimum, and the receipts normally expected from the gate and other sources of revenue are not expected to be sufficient to cover expenses. Such was the announcement made by George G. Gifford, secretary of the association, yesterday. Charles G. Norton is the president of the association.

Statistics released last night by Arthur B. Lord, superintendent of schools, who was in charge of the sugar rationing registration for the Island, show little evidence of hoarding, with one town, Gay Head, issuing books to every person who applied, and also reveal some interesting facts about the Island population as compared with the census figures for 1940. They show no such great drop in population as had been rumored and even believed, and one town, West Tisbury, has grown ten per cent since 1940.

A Vineyard wild flower sanctuary, where native plants, flowers and shrubs will be planted and protected, under conditions which will allow the general public to see and enjoy them, is in the process of becoming a reality at Christiantown. Mrs. Wilfrid O. White of Vineyard Haven, president of the Martha’s Vineyard Garden Club, has been given permission, and some financial aid, by the county board, with which to pit her plan into operation on the county-owned land adjacent to the Indian burying ground on this historic spot, and the initial survey has been made by Will C.

Rev. Oscar E. Denniston, founder of the Bradley Memorial Church, Oak Bluffs, and pastor for the past forty years died at Martha's Vineyard Hospital early Tuesday morning, following a brief confinement which came at the end of some nine years of gradually failing health. He would have been 67 years of age on April 5. He had devoted his life to religious teaching.

The Civilian Defense organization of Oak Bluffs, headed by Dr. Francis C. Buckley reports that the partial blackout held in that town Sunday night, during the bitter cold and with traveling conditions for air raid wardens anything but ideal, was markedly successful. The degree of cooperation shown was gratifying to the officials and the committee feels that the town should be congratulated upon its first effort. Only in five households was it found that the residents had failed to understand the requirements, or were unaware that a test was to be made.