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Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 16, Issue 873, 22 November 1870, Page 2

The Inspector of Militia and Volunteers has been authorised to frank and receive letters on public service, free of postage. His clerk is also authorised to frank letters. The Registrars of the Supreme Court in each of the judicial districts of the Colony are in future to be required to give security, by a guarantee policy in the Australian Alliance Assurance Co. for £SOO, for the due performance of their duties under the Lunatic's Act. Mr. H. C. Wilmer has been appointed Se cretary to Mr Justice Johnston, in the room of Mr E. H. Ingpeu, who goes into the Supreme Court office. There are eighteen candidates for the office of clerk to the Mayor's Court, Dunedin, and the Times says that a considerable number more would doubtless have applied had not security and a "considerableknowledge of the law " been required. Legal knowledge must be at a discount in Dunedin. The Evening Post, of a late date, says i Acting upon the resolutions relative to New Zealand flax, which were passed by the House of Representative's on the 10th of September, the Governor has i-eued a commission, under the seal of the Colony, addressed to Dr Hector, Col. Haultain, and John JCebble, Esq., appointing them Commissioners, with power to appoint two agents in England to be in correspondence with them, and to carry out their instructions. The duties of the Commissioners are defined at great length, and are of great importance. Amongst other matters they are to personally visit the chief manufacturing districts of the Colony, and to institute and assist in mechanical experiments, calculated to cheapen and improve the manufacture. They are to collect and compare samples prepare by the various processes, and also obtain full particulars as to the varieties of the flax itself These samples are then to be sent home to the agents to be reported on by competent authorities as to the microscopic structure and chemical composition of the leaf and fibre, as compared with Irish flax and Jiussinn and Manilla hemp. If possible, they are alio to try and discover why Manilla hemp rope resists the action of Boa-water better than rope made of the phormium tenax, and they are to ascertain tne relative tar absorbing qualifies of the flux and Russian hemp. They are further to classify samples of flax into first, second, and third classes, in the same way that foreign hemp is classified, and are to furnish standard samples of the various classes to the chief officers of Customs at such ports as they think proper. Amongst their other duties, they are to ascertain the reasons for the variations in price, and to place supplies of the raw material in the hands of manufactures, in order that experiments may be made as to the purposes for which it can be most profitably employed. Eor the guidance of New Zealand flax-dressers, they are also to obtain samples in bulk of the various rival fibres, skch as Russian hemp, Manilla, Jute, Irish flax, &c, so that our dressers may have something to guide them as to the quality of fibre it is desirable for them to produce. Samples of the New Zealand fibre are also to be submitted to makers of flax mills at home, in order that they may make suggestions as to the improvement of the machines which are now employed for cleaning our flax. As a last general duty, they are to ascertain what can be done to extend the use and increase the value of our flax fibre, and they are from time to time to report to the Governor what steps they have taken, and to make such recommendation as they may deem desirable. If the Commissioners set earnestly to work to carry out the important functions entrusted to them, their labors may prove of much practical utility to the Colony, and may hare the efl'ect of reviving a now almost paralysed industry. We sincereJy trust that such may be the result. Without finding any fault with the construction of the Commission, we may, however, remark on the fact that 1 the Middle Jstemd is totally unrepresented on it, and we venture to think that if the name of the Hon John Hall had been included, its efficiency would have been increased. Mr Hall has for so long occupied a prominent position in regard to the development of native industries, and flaxdressing in particular, that it is impossible not to regret his exclusion from the present Commission.

The inhabitants of Masterton have sub* scribed the sura of £ls to purchase a harmonium for the English Church. Mr Benthaui, of Wellington, is the manufacturer. The London Echo says :—A ghastly incident happened lately in the Westminster-bridge-road. G-e.jrge Lancaster, s carpenter, 46 years old, was in company with a young man at a public-house, and they began to. quarrel about the war, the dispute was as to the number of killed and wounded on both sides, and as might have been expected, where neither party had any means of proving his case, the discussion waxed very warm. Outside the house it came to blows, and the young man knocked Q-eorge Lancaster down. Falling he struck the back of his head heavily against the pavement. He was taken up in? sensible, and died almost immediately from concussion of the brain. An inquest was commenced last night, at which one of the jurors naively remarked that " it was a strange thing that such an affair should take place in a thoroughfare like Westminster-road without the police seeing something of it." Csesar'a attendants thought it a prodigy that rats, should eat his sword belt, but Casar replied that it would have been a real wonder if the sword-belt had eaten the rats. So in this case the juryman expends his astonishment on a'inost familiar fact.

The Boston Lyceum bureau some time since, commissioned a gentleman to find out Kos« suth, and as he was reported poor, to offer him a series of lucrative engagements to lecture in, America. The gentleman found the great Magyar in a retired quarter in a room over & humble tavern in Turin. He refused all the offers made him, saying he w as no longer the man he was. " I have had heavy domestic afflictions," he explained, when pressed fur* ther; " I want nerve, and as for addressing a number of people, I hare almost forgotten what public speaking is. I am, in truth, a changeling." A Melbourne paper says that the laßt but one of the once numerous tribe of Q-eelong blacks, King Jerry, «iied in the Geelong Hospital recently. The poor fellow ws« a general favorite in the town, especially with the boya and girls, and his death will be regretted by many. He had been laid UP i» the hospital for some months, suffering from consumption, and when near his end, exprossed a strong wish to Mr Johnstone, M.L.A., (who was unremitting in his attentions during Jerry's, illness) to be taken out of the hospital to the bush, to die there. On January 12,1870, at Knockgraffan, Ireland, the wife of Mr John Myers was delivered of twin sons. At the sarnie time and in the immediate vicinity, the wife of Mr William Myers presented him with a brae© of daughters. The Messrs Myers are brothers,, their farms adjoin, and their wives are sisters. Mr Carttar, the coroner for Kent, ha 3 held, four inquests in one day at Blackheath upon children found in the streets murdered. At the fourth inquest he expressed his belief that there was a baby-farming house in the neighborhood from which place the murdered ins fants were brought. While an Irish steamer wa9 on, the way to Belfast the other day, some of the steerage passengers engaged in a dance on deck. Among the passengers were a man and his wife, the latter carrying a young child in her arms. The husband remarked to his wife that the dancing was of an inferior description, and that he would give them a step in good style. The wife said she did not wish him to dance on board, and threatened that if he at*, tempted such a thing in her presence she would drown herself. The husband, commenced to dance, whereupon the woman, putting her child upon a seat, actually jumped into the sea. A boat was lowered, and Bhe was rescued in an exhausted condition. Under the heading " A Rise in Life," the New York World mentions that Mr James Duwspii, who began life in the humble capacity of Speaker in the Mississippi House of Representatives, has risen to be police reporter for a New Orleans newspaper. We learn from the Evening Post that Messrs. Shepperd and Young, the welU known Wanganui mail contractors, have just imported from Boston, U.S., three splendid American coaches of th ; far famed Cobb pat*, tern, from the establishment of Messrs. Aboot and Co. Messrs. Shepperd and Young have also imported lour genuine American buggiea from the same establishment. The whole of the above were shipped from Boston to Melbourne hy the Oneco, and from Melbourne here by the Tararua on her last trip. A resolution in favor of holding a volunteer camp in January next, was passed at a meeting of No. 1 Co., Wellington Rifle Volunteers, lieid on the lith inst. Annual volunteer camps have become a regular institution iu Canterbury and Otago. A fearful affair ia recorded by the Gazette, de France. M. de Munier, a young man of about 30, living at the Chateau de ±Jretange, near Matenil, not many miles iroin Periguad, went with a few frieuds, to the fair at the neighboring village of Haute Faye. Some of the rutnana who are to be found, it seems, in French villages as well as in large French towns, began by taunting them with being " flue gentlemen," abie to buy substitutes and by deputy. M de Mo..ier foolishly stopped to argue, and disclaimed any intention of not joining the army, holding that those who did uot do their duty just now belonged to the class who shouted " Vive la Prusse." The words were hardly out of his moutn when the leader of the roughs exclaimeJ, ''Hear him 1 he is shouiing ' Vive la Prusse!' " The unfortunate young man was immediately set upon, kicked, cuffed, and beaten—dragged to a dried up pond iu the mictuie of the lair—straw and brushwood were piled over him s and he was burnt alive I

Twenty five tons of ooal from Coalbrook Dale, near Westport, has been shipped to Melbourne, for the purpose of having the quality of the coal tested. The intimation by the French consul in Waterford that no brigade was being raised in Ireland to assist the Emperor was (says a Dublin correspondent) a great damper on the bellicose youth in that part of the country. Mr G-eorge William De La Poer Beresford, clerk of the Legislative Assembly of South Australia, has declared himself insolvent. The London correspondent of the Melbourne Argui, under date 9th Sept, says that the greater portion of the British-Indian Extension Telegraph Company's cable, for submersion between Madras and Penang, was despatched from the Thames on the 21st, and that it was anticipated that complete electrical communication between England and Australia and China would be effected by the summer of next year.

A writer in the Leader says:—They tell me a curious story of a well known public man in Sydney. Like some other public men, this gentleman is needy, but when asked for payment of any debit he gives a cheque with promptitude. The cheque is presented, but the bank won't pay—refers to drawer. The holder duns the legislator, and when the dunning becomes annoyingly urgent the legislator puts a private mark upon the cheque, which is then paid. He has an arrangement with his banker only to pay the cheques which bear the cabalistic ma:k. We are ever hearing more of the mysteries of finance.

As to the terms upon which Pru3sia will insist, wo find a very remarkable statement in the Fall Mall Gazette. A correspondent of that journal had a conversation on the subject with Count Bismark a day or two ago. The Federal Chancellor said " he did not see the use, far less the probability," of Germany annexing Alsace and Lorraine. "We should have a discontented people to govern," he remarked, "and, besides, mere increase of territory has no attractions for Germany" Still some security must be bad against attacks on the part of France; and ''Strasbourg, therefore, and Metz probably, we Bhall take and hold permanently, if our arms are ultimately yictoriou?." He Vas questioned .about Holland, and declared that no German dreamt of annexing that country. "The Dutch," he said, " are not Germans, and German unity is what we want." If (says the London Times) our battalions of infantry muster barely more than a third of their full strength, if oar cavalry regiments siand at half the force of Continental regiments, if thirty-four batteries nominally avail able would furnish a meagre fourteen at war strength, it we are destitute of any means of fi!!ing up cadres from the militia until the alarm of war is actually upon us, it becotm s .the Government at once to consider how the army may at least be rendered capable of recovering its efficiency at brief notice. It is of no avail to recount, with Lord North brook, the number of battalions, troops, and batteries we have at home, unless we can be assured that they are ready for. prompt action, and capable of becoming effective parts of an organized force. Mr Levien, who is the largest peach grower in the immediate vicinity of Geelong, states that on hundreds of trees there will be scarcely suy fruit this season. The crcp of apricots jind other fruit in the same neighborhood is also said to be a total failure.