PROVINCIAL AND COLONIAL.

Cromwell Argus, Volume IV, Issue 185, 27 May 1873, Page 6

PROVINCIAL AND COLONIAL.

♦ Hokitika is agitating for a railway to Canterbury. _ Two gas companies are in process of formation at Hokitika.

An Auckland barber advertises himself as a " professor of the striped pole." In Auckland, according to the Herald, men and women are dying of starvation. The Auckland Star calls the Stock Exchange in that city a " sink of iniquity." In New South Wales, postage stamps may be used as duty stamps, under a new Act.

The banks in Greymoutli have had to use postage and receipt stamps as small change. The Timarn Herald says it is quite on the cards that Te Kooti may yet sit in Parliament.

The attempt to amalgamate Blue Spur claims, made on behalf of Dimcdin capitalists, has failed. In Christchurch, an infant a year old has died from some scalding cocoa falling on its face and breast.

Numerous and serious cases of scarlatina have occurred in Hokitika, both among children and adults.

The people of Otago are declared by one of the Auckland papers to be "far-sighted" and "education-loving." Miss Aitken, it is likely, will make a tour of the Province at the conclusion of her present engagement in Dunedin.

The Canterbury Acclimatisation Society propose to acclimatise Australian magpies and intend to obtain 500 of them.

The first section of the railway line from Winton to Kingston has been let to a Toko mairiro contracting firm for £13,000. Agricultural labourers have been so scarce lately at the Taieri that farmers have been compelled to raise wages £lO a year. The Wellington Provincial Council offer £2OOO for the discovery of a gold-field, and £SOO for a coal-field, within that Province.

Mr Hunt, the well remembered pioneer of the Thames <;old-field, has returned from Europe to Auckland, where he intends to settle.

For the year ending March 31, the Lyell reefs yielded 99360z of gold from 484 tons of stone ; and the Inangahua reefs C44Goz from 5990 tons.

In the Abaura district, on the West Coast the dams and races have already been frozen over. The weather-wise prophesy a very severe winter in that quarter,

Mr Wiltshire, at Christchurch, is now engaged in his self-imposed task of walking 1000 miles in 1000 hours. He is reported to make each successive mile in good time.

The Hawke's Bay Boiling Down Company have sold their premises and plant for the sum of £12;150. It is probable that the premises will be converted into a beetroot sucar manufactory.

The,' Provincial Council of Canterbury lias nassed a resolution in favour of reserving 100,950 acres of land in the southern portion of the Province for the purpose of an endowment for a School of Agriculture. The following appears in ait cent issue of the Melbourne Age: —" Liardet.— At her residence, Syraiiga Lodge, Richmond, the wife of Mr Frederick Evelyn Liardet, of twin daughters. Father delighted." We should think so.

Mr Vincent Pyke is about to publish a story of Colonial life and adventure, the incidents of which are connected chiefly with New Zealand. Report says that the descriptions and delineations of character are drawn in a masterlv style, and will v'e favourably with the works of the best English authors. The German Lutheran Church in Christchurch is to have a peal of bells made from the cannon captured from the French during the late war. The metal has been promised by Prince Bismarck, on condition that the members of the church pay the cost of casting and the carriage, and these conditions have been accepted. Referring to Mr James Smith (the Spiritualist) and his wave of the theory, the (Ivlm<j Advertiser says :—" This gentleman believes that 1874 will see the termination of the world, and has given proof of the strength of his conviction by allowing to lapse two of his insurance policies, which he had maintained for many years." At the Kawoi Pass races, in Canterbury, the other day, an amusing thing was done by one of Murray's Circus horses. He was tied up to a fence, and a box of feed placed on the other side ; when the knowing animal put his fore-feet on the rail, took the box in liis mouth, lifted it over the fence, and proceeded to devour the contents. An Education Pill lately introduced into the Taranaki Provincial Council, but the consideration of which is postponed until after the Provincial elections, provided for the appointment of an itinerant schoolmaster, whose duty it would bo to travel the country and give instruction to children in settlements

where schools were too far off for them to attend. For these services it was proposed he should be pi d £1 a week.