GENERAL ITEMS.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume VI, Issue 546, 7 October 1881, Page 2

GENERAL ITEMS.

The shipment of frozen meat to London by the s.s. Orient is reported to have arrived in admirable condition. Telegrams have been received from Tunis reporting that the rebel Arabs have made an attack upon, and have completely destroyed, a station at Ould Sergha. on the Tunis and Algerian railway. They are further reported to have massacred ail the officials at the station. Two clerks out of Tower-buildings, while taking their morning " nip," were boasting of the amount of business done in their respective establishments. One said their pens alone cost £200 a year The other replied that they saved more than that in ink by not dotting their is. Is it a libel to say in a newspaper "he kissed the cook ?" The Bristol magistrates think so, and in a case which was before them raising the question, they refused to allow the prosecution to be withdrawn, although the proprietor of the offending journal had apologised, given up the MS., and given a donation to tne Infirmary. Messrs Oliver and Bathgate are likely to stand for Roslyn, and Mr J. H. Shaw for Te Ara. Mr Catheart Wason, formerly meiiber for Coleridge, has annouueed his intention of being one of the candidates for Wakanui, Mr T. P. Andrews is in the field for Christchmvh North, and Mr John 11. Lee in response to a requisition is conseented to stand for Kaiapoi. An extraordinary outrage has taken place at Lille, an important manafacturing city of France, in the department of the Nord. A large number of the principal citizens of the place received parcels containing (-xplosive material, and on an attempt being made to open them these parcels exploded, in several cases with very disastrous results. Many persons were killed and others injured. The cause of the outivge is at present entirely inexplicable. The novelty or hillsido plough (says the Press) was subjected to a severe trial yesterday, at Cashmere, on a piece of billy land, with a good deal of scrub on it. Very good results were obtained, the work in the gullies being equally good with that on the fair slope. The land has never before been ploughed, so that yesterday's trial may be taken as a fair test of the capabilities of the new plough. It requires no alteration of gear to work, either on the hillside or on flat land, -here was a good gathering of the farm ing interest present, who expressed themselves satisfied with the trial. Briefly, the operations of yesterday were a decided success.