GENERAL NEWS.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 18 June 1901, Page 4

GENERAL NEWS.

It is intended that the financial year of the Commonwealth shall close on the 31st of December. The Victorian customs revenue for May was £374,000, an increase of £193,000 oyer May of last year,

Nearly £SOOO was spent on the prcpa rations for the opening of the Federal Parliament and the State concert at night. Of this amount "Victoria pays only one third. Mr W. H. Groom, one of the Queensland members of the House of lleprcicntatives, sat without interruption in the State Legislative Assembly for 39 years. It is believed that no other politician in Australia has such a record. Colonel E. Bull, the first goldfields commissioner in Victoria, died at Goulbourn (N.S.W.) on May 23, at the ago of 94 years. He was in receipt of pensions from the Imperial aud Victorian Governments. His wife, aged '.)2, and six children survive him. The gold output from West Australia for May wag 144 087 oz, the gold being valued at £5-55,730, a decrease compared with the previous lnorth of nearly GOOOoz. The output for the first five months of the year was G96,1440z, showing* as compared with the corresponding perio.-l of last year, an increase of 24 000 -z. The Premier of New South Wales states that for the month of May the balanco of consolidated reveuue over expenditure was £139,346. The [revenue for 11 months shows an increase in gross receipts to the extent of £974,881.

While cutting reeds at tho Connewarro Lakes (Victoria), a man named Woods had a miraculous escapo from death. Several men were oh a shooting expedition, and as Mr Woods raised his htrtd above the reeds it was taken for a bird. One of tho party took aim, and Woods received the charge in the back and side of his head, one of the pellets going dangerously near to tho jugular vein. Although 96 years of ago, a resident of Eketahuna, who died the other day, Mr William Venus, only once boarded a railway train, and that was when being conveyed to the Masterton Hospital lately. h wa3 his first and last rido. During the past five months something like 350,000 bushels of oats have been shipped from Oamaru. The output of coal at Newcastle, N. S. W., last year was 3,926,584 tons, as against 3,259,708 tons in 1899. Owing to the continued and unseason ably dry weather in South Australia there is a very strong demand for fodder in Adeliade.

The shipping returns of Western Australia show an increase in inward and outward tonnage of 593,510 for the past year,- as compared with 1899. Many people will be interested in know ing that a descendant of the farnoua, Reformer, Martin Luther, has died in London at the venerable age of ninety. She was Miss Wilhelm Luning, the last child but one of the late Mr Jacob William Lunning, of Morderi College, Blackheath, and she passed away—where she had lived for many years—at Park lane, Albion road, Stoke Newington. Miss Lunning traced her descent from Martin Luther, and also the great-grandchild of the Bev. Johann Heinrich Praitje, D.D., for fifty years general superintendent of the clergy of the Kingdom of Hanover.

The Wellington Post of Saturday says pickpockets are reaping a good harvest in Wellington at the present time, their operations being greatly facilitated by the large crowds at the railway stations. Passengers and the public generally should keep strict guard over their pockets, and it might be as well if the authorities put into operation the power they possess of excluding the general public from railway stations previous to the arrival and departure of the trains.