LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Dunstan Times, Issue 441, 30 September 1870, Page 2

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Just before going to press we received a letter touching the re-election of a Superintendent. This we are compelled to bold over. We have often and often reminded our correspondents tqutit is necessary that time should be given for tlie production of their effusions, and that it is a physical impossibility for us to produce them at the short notice they think necessary.

For the first time during the last four months Cobh's mail coach from Dunedin arrived here in the two days late on Saturday night, and on Tuesday a still greater improvement was visib'e,the mails having been delivered at the Clyde Post-office about eight o’clock. This is a great improvement, and we hope it will l o permanent. The improved state of the roads is such that, with ordinarily good horses and no unnecessary delay, the mail might to arrive here at its appointed time, namely, six o’clock. The proceeds of about one hundred and eighty tons of stone, taken from all parts of the Cromwell Company’s reet, was somewhere about three hundred and forty ounces. This shows a very handsome return, and we hope it may continue, so that the party who inaugurated quaitz-mining in the district may reap an ample reward for their energy and perseverance. Clyde was well represented at the Cromwell Spring Race Meeting, held on Friday and Saturday last. Among the horses belonging to this district were Madam, who canned off two prizes, Roderick (a similar number), Te Kooti, Fuugh-a-Ballagh, Kate, and Tonic Mining matters at Alexandra are about the same as reported in our last, the following are the only items to notice. The dredgers are in full work, the one belonging to Beattie and party have removed further up the river, somewhere near where the Alexandra got so much gold some three years since. The Mannherikia Company have got their tramway started, ami it works MitisfaccoiPy. The whole of the sluicing claims are in full work, some of them with great success. Complaints are frequency bei i g made by squatters and otheiS regarding the losses sustained by them by dogs worrying their sheep ; but we have not heard of anyestiimte having been made of the total loss sustained in the colony from this cause. In the United States the Department of agriculture collects statistics on this point, and a recent report issued by it states that (he returns from 117 counties of that country show that 90,389 sheep were killed by dogs in the course of last year. It is estimated that full returns would prove th it the number in fact reached half a million, and the money loss two millions of dollars. The latest instanceof“ unauthorised expenditure” is rather a novel one. Free passages were granted by the Government to the wives and families of honorable members of the General Assembly on their return from Wellington. Tlii.s is something more than paternal Government. We trust that the gentlemen who make it their busi ness to telegraph to Wellington for an explanation of every anti Ministerial fact which appears in our columns, will not neglect to obtain some information on this point, and to give the public the benefit of it. The following remarkable phenomenon in connexion with the boy William Moore, who was killed by lightening, at Sandhurst, is related by the Bendigo Independent ; —While the medical man. Dr. Keiran, was making the post mortem examination of the body he observed on the chest what appeared to he a resemblance of the foliage of a tree. On examining more closely, both Dr. Keiran and Dr. Pounds (the coroner) found on the hoy’s chest the distinct tracing of a small tree, with trunk, blanches, and leaves complete ; the most singular thing being thut the ;ree was inverted os it appeared on the chest, the trunk being uppermost ami the branches extending downwards. Believing that the phenomena which attracted their curiosity had some connexion with the circumstances of the boy’s death, Dr. Pounds took on a piece ot daper a pencil sketch of the tree as appeared on the body, and proceeded to the place where the boy had been killed by the lightning on the previous day, which was a slightly rising ground behind the Catherine Reef Hotel. The spot of ground being pointed out to him, Dr. Pounds perceived quite contiguous, a young tree growing at the side of the pathway, which, on comparin;' with the sketch he had made of the photographed tree on the dead body, was found to be perfectly alike.” Mr. Hallenstein, Mayor of Queenstown has been re-appointed to the Commission of the.Pence.

A meeting of the Cromwell Jockey Club Avill be held this evening, when the date of the annua[ races will probably be fixed and a committee elected to draw up a programme. We hear that Mr. Joseph Mackay of the Bruce Herald has concluded arrangements to start a newspaper at Queenstown, under the title of the Lake Herald. The new journal will make its appearance in about six weeks.

We have received a letter from Mr M. W. Stack, late Schoolmaster of Blacks’ School, in which, the writer lays claim to all the credit for the efficiency of that educational establishment. It is, however of so personal a nature that it is unsuitable to our co usins.

The Dally Times says :—“ So great, was the excitement among the German population in M elbourne to learn the news of the war, that many of them sat up all night in cafes and other places, awaiting the earliest ap pearance of the morning papers.” Some time since repairs were going on at the Ararat Lunatic Asylum, Victoria, and a man who was employed on the work left his kit of tools on a tab'e in a vacant room, little dreaming that this apartment was the dead house. A patient died, it seems, during the day, and, as a matter of course, "was removed to the table in the room referred to, the tools being placed on one side. After knocking off work at night, the workman proceeded to gather up his tools, and with this object in view he managed to make his way in the dark to the apart men: where he had deposited his bag. He groped his way till he came to the table, where Ids outstretched hands came in contact with the cliy-cold face of the corpse. He didn’t scream, hut the cold perspiration arose in heads on his forehead as with trembling limbs he scrambled out of the morgue. He states that no inducement will ever tempt him again to look for his tools in the dark

We fa e the following from the Daily Times: —Although Mr. Hclhr has now left Dunedin for some time, the following ehiumcteristic letter written by him to Mr. Coppin, and published in the Age, is worth reading, though he is rather hard on Dunedin: —“ Dunedin, N. Z., sth August, 1870. We are here. We generally are. But I am not quite here myself, inasmuch as having arrived on Wednesday morning, it is now I* 1 rid iy and my baggage (freight) is not to handyet; there fore as without my fixings I am nothing, I can’t consider myself perfectly here until they turn up. The steamer empties us at a place c died something port, about nine miles away from Dunedin, and the journey is finished in a waller boat The freight comes from the steamer in a lighter, which lighter up to the present time is non est. The M isonic Hall is a fair gam pie of a healthy A meric in barn, with a hay rack fir a stage. If the animals will only turn in every evening for a feed, I shan’t complain. It is raining. It always rains her . so it .(out m itter much, except in a bill-posting point of view. We can’t put any bills up because they would wash off again ; not only that we havn’tany bills to pimp, so that either way it don’t make much difference until that precious lighter shows up. Now, don’t say I don’t write, —Ever yours, -Robert HELLER.” The well and favorably known stud horse Roebuck is this season a .min at the service of breeders Roebuck has in his veins blood of some of the best horses that ever performed on the English turf, including Touchstone, Melbourne. Sir Hercules, ac. Further particulars will be seen on reference to our advertising columns. We take the following from the Ararat Advertiser,'. —“ A peculiar instance of presence of mind, or natural sagacity, cull io what you will, came under our notice the other day. We were in conversation with an elderly dame at her door, not far from the township, she being at the time engaged in the rural occupation of feeding a number of remarkably line ducks; when all of a sudden the wedding ring slipped from her finger, and in a twinkling was gobbled up by a large and peculiarly handsome drake, who apparently none the worse for his golden mouthful quacked out his demand for an additional supply. The poor old woman was in a terrible state at this catastrophe, and with tears in her eykS, assured us that the dropping of her ring predicted all manner of misfortune. It had never, she said, been off her linger since it had been placed there by her husband,seven and thirty years befoi-e, and although it had lately become loose, her lingers having been attenuated through illness, she never dreamt of it finding its way into a duck’s stomach An idea all at once seemed to strike the old woman, and she disappeared into her cottage, a id, returning in a few min. utes witha pair of scissors ind aneedle and thread, it did not take long to decoy the greedy duck, nor to catch him by the neck. In an instant the dame made an incision with the scissors into bis distended crop, and from a mass of half masticated crumbs and potatoes, triumphantly pulled nut the golden token ot her early bridal. With expert hands the old lady sewed up the cut she had so dexterously made, and the gluttinous drake commenced gobbling up a fresh supply of provisions as if nothing had happened,"

A hermit or “ wild man” has been discovered on Ben Lomond, in Northern Tasmania, by a Government surveying party. The following are the particulars:—“ The dogs belonging to the party were suddenly attacked by s mie very wild dogs, and while the animals were fighting, there came to the rescue of the strange dogs a still stranger being, in the shape of a hermitlike old man, with grizzly beard hanging down to the midcl'e of his body, long curved toe and finger nails, and clad in badger’s skins. They succeeded in gleaning from him that he had been living for twelve years under Ben Lomond, that it was fully six years since he had seen a white man, but he gave them no account of who ho was, or why he had taken up his solitary abode in that unfrequented locality. Before leaving they presented him with a quantity of flour, and on returning to Fingal they communicated the circurasta ce of their strange encounter with the hermit loth Superintendent of the Fingal Police Force, who at once sent some members of the force to make further inquiries respecting the unknown individual, whohadso strangely withdrawn from the society of his fellow men.”