LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1398, 4 November 1886, Page 2

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Messrs Miles and 00. will hold an important sale of live and dead stock, on account of Messrs Dudley and Nor they £ttd other owners, at Tinwald to-morrow. In consequence of Tuesday next being a public holiday, the ordinary fortnightly sale at the Tinwald Yards to have been held on bat day has been postponed fo a week.

The County Counoil meets to-morrow. j It will be remembered that the Borough Council at its meeting on Monday night decided to apply tor a loan of £2500, under the provisions of the Local Bodies Loans Act, to extinguish the present liabilities of the Council and effect a saving in the amount ol interest paid. It now appears there is no power in the Act under which the Council aan borrow for any suoh purpose, and the proposal will accordingly have to be dropped. At the R.M. Court this morning, before Mr D. Williamson, J.P., George Robinson was charged under section 157 sub-section 4 of the Public Works Act with having been drunk on the railway line. A fine of 20s and coats was inflicted, with the alternative ol three day’s imprisonment. The rainfall during October, 1886, was at Alford Station, 5 - 45 in ; Alford Forest, 10.25 in. The corresponding week for October, 1885, was—Alford Station, 3-25 in; Alford Forest, 4-60 in. Mr Miscall, of the Telegraph Department, who has been stationed at Ashburton for some time, left for Dunedin yesterday, to which office he has been transferred. His many friends will regret his departure, as he was a most obliging officer. Mr Daniel, of Dunedin, succeeds Mr Miscall. In the prize list of the Show, as published in our issue of Saturday, an omission occurs. Messrs Clark Bros, were the winners of the first prize for best three-year-old draught filly, and were also the winners?of Mr Grigg’s special prize of 5 guineas for the largest prizetaker in draught stock. A lecture which promises to be of great interest, intituled “ Then and Now, or Fifty Years of Queen Victoria’sßeign,’’ is announced to be delivered by the Rev Joseph Berry, in the Wesleyan Ohurob, to-morrow evening at 7.30 o’clock.J The usual weekly meeting of the Star ol the East Lodge, 1.0.G.T., was held in the Arcade Chambers last evening. There was a good attendance of members. After the usual business had been gone through, and two members bad been admitted by clearance card, the following officers were installed by Brother Mullaney, L.D., assisted by Bros. A. Cooke, Q.M., and Bro. Galloway, Q.S. : Bro J. Sawle, P.0.T.; Bro T. Dalton, C.T.; V.T., Bro H. Westgate; Secretary, Bro T. Kingston; F.S„ W. Norrish; T„ Bro J. Mullaney; Chaplain, Sister Wildsmith ; M., Sister E. Manbire ; D.M., Bro J. Mullaney; 1.G., Sister Kingston; 0.G., Bro Clark; R.H.S., Bro Cook; L.H.S., Bro Galloway; A.S., Sister A. Sawle. The ceremony ol installation was very impressive in character. The reports of the officers disclosed the fact that the Lodge was in a very flourishing condition financially and in number of members. The Governor ol Algeria has discovered a use for standing armies in times of peace. The greater part of the grain crop, ha reports, has just been saved by turning the military loose on the locusts and crickets. No less than 27G cubic meters of locusts’ eggs and 9500 cubic meters ol crickets were destroyed. The forced labor employed for this purpose, adds the report, represents a day’s work of 1,700,000 natives—a sad commentary on the son of the desert’s capacity for work. The Wesleyan Bazaar seems to have been a great success. We are informed the accounts are not yet complete, but it is known that the Church Trustees will receive £2GO after paying all expenses. An advertisement, conveying the thanks of the Trustees to those who have worked so well for the Bazaar, will be found in another part of the paper. It is asserted in the Morning Herald (an American paper that is published is Paris) that the engagement between Lord Cairns and Miss Grant was broken oil because My Lord insisted on Mr and Mrs Grant settling an income of £2OOO a year on their daugMer from the day ol the wedding; and further, that they were required to purchase and furnish a London home for the couple. The same journal states that when the rapture took place Lord Cairns intimated his intention ol sending in the bills to her parents for all the jewelry he had given Miss Grant, whereupon the young lady at once packed up everything she had received from him and despatched the parcel to his rooms. Commodore Vanderbilt used to travel in special trains at the rate ol one mile per minute; but this rate of locomotion is far exceeded by the canoes which ply on the rapid streams of the Sierra Nevada down which the timber is floated. A correspondent of a German paper gives an account of such a lightning passage in a flat canoe with two other travellers. The boat performed the distance of 1G miles in exactly Bmin 40seos, being impelled solely by the force ol !the water. He described his sensations as follows! _>• I could distinguish nothing (but a wild, confused image of rocks, trees, and landscape, like the shapeless blotches of color on a painter’s palette. It seemed to me as though we werejbeing shot into the air out of a cannon.”