BY ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.

Evening Star, Issue 3889, 11 August 1875, Page 3

BY ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.

Auckland, August 11. All hopes are abandoned by the owner of the schooner riauntless, which left Moeraki for Wellington on the 10th ult. She was insured in the New Zealand Office for LI,OOO. Captain Toalson leaves a wife and family in Auckland. A mate, steward, and three seamen weie also aboard. An accident occurred on the railway to-day. The Mercer down train came into collision with a truck which had been blown on to the lino. The concussion knocked the truck over the embankment, smashing it, and slightly injuring the locomotive ; but the passenger carriages and passengers were unhurt. Gisbobne,? August 10. A strong north-west gale blew last night, and a smart shock of earthquake was felt at seven in the evening. The tide is unusually low.

Christchurch, August 11. The ‘Lyttelton Times’ this morning publishes a table showing the effect the Abolition Bill will have on the finances of the Canterbury Road Boards. The_ aggregate resolt shown is that while the thirty-seven existing Road Boards during the past year received from ordinary Provincial grants, special Provincial grants, and General Government grants, the sum of 1.137,780, they would only receive under the Abolition !Bill L 6.515 from license fees, dog taxes, ko., and L 25.401 from the pound for pound endowment if the same rates were struck as last year, making a total of 1.30,016 ; but if a shilling rate were levied in every district then the Road Boards would receive L 00,505 from the pound for pound endowment, raising the total to 1.56,020. The table, when dissected, shows that four Road Boards in i he vicinity of Christchurch will gain slightly from the Abolition Bill, but all the others will be large losers. The Waimato Road Board is tho most extreme proof of the latter. Last year this Board received L 35.784 from the Provincial and Colopial grants, ' and struck no rate; under the Abolition Bill

the Board would only receive L2OO from license fees, and if a shilling rate wre struck, only L6.C82 from the pound for pound endowment. Thirteen of the Road Boards bad such liberal grants last yr-r that they did not find it necesary to strike a rate at all, and some of them have never struck a rate since they were established.