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Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 18, Issue 1162, 3 November 1871, Page 2

An English telegram by the last Suez mail states that wool is from Id to IJd higher than the last closing rates. It is determined to lengthen the Alfred Graving Dock in Sydney. We find the change in the colors of the postage stamps generally condemned by the press. The Taranaki News says ; —Had it been confined to substituting entirely new colors for those already in use, people might have wondered what it was done for, and there the matter would have dropped, but when they find, as soon they will to their cost, that all the old hues have been retained, and ha 1 e merely been transferred from one stamp to another, they will heap blessings without number ipon the heads oi the authorities who have instituted so senseless a change. The only result of this new move that we can foresee will be to chive the post office clerks distracted, to create for a time no end of confusion amongst letterwriters, and to swell to ungainly proportions the list of letters detained in the office as being insufficiently stamped An amusing circumstance (says the Nelson Colonist) occurred in one of our schools the other day, alarmingly illustrative of the educational smartness of some of our hopeful juveniles. The teacher, who had only just taken charge of the school, was examining the boys of one of the lower classes, with the view of ascertaining how far they were versed in English grammar. Having, after a little stumbling, got at the names of various parts of speech given in grammar, the teacher next asked for the definition of an adjective. This question seerned to be somewhat of a puzzler, and had passed some distance down the class, when a little teliow nearly at the bottom, and who had looked particularly sharp on this occasion, with no doiibt an eye to the top of the class, joyfully exclaimed, "If you please, sir, I know—it's the man who drills the volunteers." An AJjutenjb! In one of the latter days of Fox, the conversation turned pn the comparative wisdom of the French and English character. " The Frenchman," it was observed " delights himself with the present; the Englishman makes himself anxious about the future. Ts not the Frenchman the wiser?" He may be the merrier," said Fox; "but did you ever hear of a savage who did not buy a mirror in preference to a telescope " The Melbourne Argus, Oct. 16, says : —The clearance of gold effected at the Customs duriug the past week amounted fco 114,702 ounces. The total quantity exportecf since the beginning of the year lias been J,379,332 ounces, of which 202,498 ounces was transhipped from New Zealancf. T ae total exports during the corresponding period of last year amounted to 1,252,q68 ounces, of which 215,077 ounces was the produce of New Zealand gold-fields.