LONDON.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), 9 March 1881, Page 3

LONDON.

March 7,

At the wool sale to-day 8000 bales were catalogued. There was a fair demand.

The Board of Trade returns for the past month were published to-day. The imports amounted to £36,625,000, being an increase of £3,375,000 compared with the corresponding month of last year, and their exports reached a total of £16,812,500, showing an increase of £312,500 under the same comparison. In the House of Commons to-day the Premier was questioned regarding the statement in the Daily News that a week's armistice had been proclaimed in the Transvaal. Mr Gladstone, in reply, confirmed the announcement, and idded that the armistice had been agreed to to enable Kruger, the Boer President, to reply to the conditions of peace. Mr Gladstone further stated that during the time of the armistice Sir Evelyn Wood woHld be allowed to revictual the British garrison in the Transvaal. March 8. Very severe hurricanes, accompanied by heavy falls of snow, have been experienced over the greater part of Scotland during the past twenty-four hours, and great damage haa been done to property. Terrific gales have raged on the coast, and numerous shipwrecks, resulting in great loss af life, have been caused. So far as can be at present ascertained, fully one hundred persons are known to have been drowned in vessels which have foundered at ports and off the coast.

The Irish Judges of Assize, in their charges to the Grand Juries at the Courts which opened yesterday in the Irish provinces, agiin took occasion to refer to the alarming state of the country and deplored in forcible terms the continued occurrence of an enormous amount of undetected crime.