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Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 18, Issue 1068, 14 July 1871, Page 2

A seiicultural company has been formed in Adelaide.

The Auckland Evening Star, July 11, says : —We learn on good authority that the paragraph going the round of the papers, taken from the Nelson Colonist, that " it is reported " that Mr Chatles O'Neill, M.H.R, had resigned his seat for the Thames in the General Assembly, is without the slightest foundation. The New Zealand Herald, of Bth inst., says : —A meeting of gentlemen interested in the formation of a Whaling Company in Auckland, was yesterday held at the office of Captain Clayton, J. M. Dargaville, Esq., in the chair. It was resolved that the capital of the proposed company should be £20,000, in 1,000 shares at £2O each. Captain Clayton was appointed secretary, and Messrs Whitaker and Russell, solicitors to the company, pro tern. A prospectus will be at once issued, and we trust that it will not be long before the first vessel is dispatched from our port. The Bathurst Times says that a man named Cubis, in the employ of Mr C. M'Phillamy, of Orton Park, received an embrace from an " old man " kangaroo that proved more close than welcome. Cubis, it appears, went into a paddock to catch a sheep, but he had not proceeded far before the kangaroo, which was kept in the enclosure, hopped up to him and caught him round the neck. After taking a firm grip, the animal raised its hind legs to the man's face, and then, in the usual manner, drew them down again, inflicting two or three deep wounds. When Cubis escaped he found that one of his cheeks had been laid open, and that his under lip had been cut from the mouth to the chin. Ips clothes were also torn, but fortunately for him the kangaroo's claws did not touch the lower portion of his body. Mr John Ruskin, in his Fors Clavigera, comparing modern with ancient warfare, writes ; —We fight inelegantly as well as expensively, with machines instead of bow and spear ; we kill about a thousand now to the score then, in settling any quarrel-r(Agincourt was won with the loss of less than a hundred men; only 25,000 English altogether were engaged at Cressy; and 12,000, some say only 8,000, at Poictiers); we kill with far ghastilier wounds, crashing bones and flesh together; we leave our wounded

necessarily for days and nights in heap s on the fields of battle; we pillage districts twenty times as large, and with completer destruction of more valuable property; and with a destruction as irreparable as it is complete; for if the French or English burnt a church one day they could build a prettier one the nest; but the modern Prussians couldn't even build so much as an imitation one ; we. rob on credit, by requisition, with ingenious mercantile prolongations of claim; and we improve contention of arms with con* tention of tongues, and we are able to. multiply the rancour of cowardice, and mischief of lying, in universal and permanent print; and so we lose our tern* pers as well as our money, and become indecent in behavior as in raggedness; for whereas, in old times, two nations separated by a little pebbly stream like the Tweed, or even the two halves of one nation, separated by thirty fathoms' depth of salt water (for most of the English knights and all the English kings were French by race, and the best of them by birth go on pillaging and killing each other century after century, without the slightest ill-feeling towards or disrespect for one another-^-we can neither give anybody a beating courte-> ously, nor take one in good part, or without screaming and lying about it. The Greytown correspondent of the Wellington Independent writes as follows j —lt is with deep regret I have to record a fatal accident which took place at Car* terton on Tuesday, 27th June. Early on that morning Mr R. Kemble, of the Pioneer Hotel, who went to bed about 11 o'clock the preceding evening, was. awoke from a sound sleep by screama which proceeded from the kitchen. He jumped out of bed and ran to the place from whence the cries proceeded ; when he found Mrs Kemble enveloped in flames. He immediately threw a blanket over her, and succeeded in putting out the fire; but the poor woman was sa shockingly burnt that no hopes from the first were entertained of her recovery* Medical assistance was immediately sent for, which unfortunately proved un* availing. She lingered until Tuesday afternoon, when she expired. An inquest was held on Wednesday, before Dr Spratfe and a respectable jury, who, after hear* ing the evideace, returned a verdict of accidental death. The deceased leaves a large and young family to mourn their loss. A singular question has arisen in Lon* don with respect to the secrecy to be observed by telegraphists, A man had telegraphed to his wife saying that "by the time she received the message he should be no more. The head of the department caused the man to be arrested t and stopped the message. The explanation of the man was that he had a private understanding with his wife. She would know what he when the message arrived, he would be no more —* in debt. The telegraphist and the manager were exonerated from blame, although it was held that the message should have been forwarded, In a letter dated 21st April, to an Ediuburgb relative, a banker, resident at Foochow, China, one of the five ports thrown open to the British by treaty, and the population of which amounts to nearly one million persons, tells the following incident illustrative of the terrible cruelty of the native Government: —" A poor man is being starved to death in a cage—• his neck through a hole in the top and his toes just tipping the ground. In this inhuman position, with his arms tightly tied to his back, he is exposed to the gaze of tens of thousands of his countrymen in a public thoroughfare, within a hundred yards of where I am tenderhearted brethren laughing and jeering as they passed the miserable wretch, as if the spectacle were the most amusing in the universe. The poor man's crime is theft, and he is the third who has suffered within the last few months in tha same refined fashion. The length of time they live is from four to six days, And this is the people a foolish Government would treat on an equality with Western nations. We foreigners would be all served in the same way if they dared. Perhaps some day we shall, if the Tientsin massacre be uot speedily avenged." What sort of a day would be good for running for a cup ?—A muggy day, The nicest thing in boots—a pretty foot,