The Akaroa Mail. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 4, Issue 375, 24 February 1880, Page 2

The Akaroa Mail. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24.

Tlie brethren of the Akaroa Lodge of Freemasons are reminded that the usual monthly meeting will take place this evening, at the Lodge-room. A full attendance of members is requested.

In another column appears a notification from the Education Board of North Canterbury to the effect that the householders of Gebbie's Valley, Little Akaloa, and Port Levy having failed to elect school committees at the annual meeting convened for the 26th of January, the Board directs that a public meeting shall be held in each district on the 22nd of March, for the purpose of rectifying the omission.

The Crothers-Browning Opera Troupe, who lately visited Akaroa, have been " doing " Timaru and Temuka lately, and appear to have won golden opinions in that locality.

A contemporary, in criticising the artistic productions of a Mr Merritt, says they are very meritorious, and then adds insult to injury by asserting that he did not mean the pun.

In a late issue we quoted from an exchange what the writer termed "the improved version of the first chapter of Genesis." If any believers in the evolution theory had thought fit to find fault with a not very brilliant Jparody on their doctrine, we should not have been surprised, but the whole thing is so evidently a travesty, not of the Biblical account, but of what is commonly known as Darwinianism, that we are astonished that any believers in the usually accepted view of successive acts of creation should see anything objectionable in the little skit. Nevertheless, we learn that the latter has been the case, and a valued correspondent forwards us a lengthy epistle, which he devotes to breaking a butterfly on the wheel, and proving the absurdity of what, on the face of it, is evidently intended to be absurd. Our correspondent is particularly severe in what the author no doubt thought a piece of crushing sarcasm on Darwin and his friends. Seeing that the matter has been capable of being so misunderstaod, we would remark, what we should hardly have thought necessary, that we would never assist in holding sacred things up to ridicule. But scientific theories are fair game, though even there we readily admit that ridicule is no

argument

A case has just been decided in the District Court, Ashburton, which should act as a warning to officialdom generally how they venture to interfere in arranging matters between debtors and creditors, or between rival creditors, by giving a preference to one over another. The defendant is clerk of the K. M. and District Courts at Ashburton, and in the exercise of what he no doubt thought an illimitable discretion, he had thought fit to pay away £50, which was in his hands, to a judgment creditor of its owner's, notwithstanding that the latter had filed a declaration of his insolvency, and that he knew that there was a prior unsatisfied execution out against the same debtor. He now has to repay the £50 which he thus rashly parted with, and perhaps for the future he will refrain rrom deciding hastily in favor of one creditor as against another, whatever may be the influence brought to bear. In giving judgment, the Judge of the District Court says :—" The blunders of all the officers are somewhat singular. The KM. in his private room, in tead of in Court— before signing- the warrant of distress, instead of after—and without any enquiry whether the debtor had filed his declaration of bankruptcy, made an order in directing the Clerk of his Court to hand over the whole of the debtor's assets to the bailiff on behalf of a single creditor thereby defeating the chief object of the bankruptcy laws, viz., the securing an equal division of the insolvent's property among the creditors, and also depriving a prior execution creditor of his legal right to the £50, if it were to be seized at all. The Clerk of the Court having promised to retain this fund, having been warned that the order given by the R.M. in respect of it is illegal, and knowing it to be so nevertheless gives it up without dispute, and the bailiff pays it over to Orr, having at the time a prior unsatisfied warrant of distress in his hands on behalf of another creditor."