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Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 18, Issue 1186, 1 December 1871, Page 2

The Chines Guardian, in referring to the Victoria new Licensing Bill, has the following :—This Bill has conferred a somewhat unexpected benefit on the working classes, if but in a small way.. The Act provides that houses to be licensed shall possess walls and partitions of either stone, brick, or lath and plaster, and that moois, too, must be of a certain size. Now, three-fourths, or, we might .say, nineeten-twentieths of the houses for which publicans' licences will be asked on the 31st December do not meet the requirements of the Act, and the consequence is scores of work men are employed in putting these houses in order—carpenters, mason*, bricklayers, and plasterers are as busy as bees in the work, for intending landlords are well aware that the authorities intend on next licensing day to rigidly enforce the objections provided by the Act in cases where houses are unfit for hostel ries.

A suggestion-that mosquito curtains in tropical .countries, besides keeping off these pests, also serve as screens against miasma, has elicited vaiious corroborating statements from travellers and otheis; and we find in a recent number of Nature an endorsement by Mr E. L. Layard, the eminent naturalist of South Africa, as to a beneficial action in this direction. He finds that even so slight an obstruction as the fibre of the net causes a great difference in the tempeiature between the interior and exterior air, this difference amounting in some instances to B°, the increased temperature of the inside tending to dissipate the malaria, and prevent the cold and (Jamp of the tropical night from acting upon the system when re laxed in sleep, and with the pores of the *kin wide open.

Some amusing mistakes are sometimes made by police constables in caling the names of parties concerned in suits at the various courts. The Mount Alexander Mail relates that at Fryerstown, during the sitting oftheCourr, tliere was an unseemly buzzing, and the magistrate, annoyed, called "si lence," adding, t( policeman, vhy don't you call silence ?" The policeman immediately rushed to the door, and three times with a loud voice cried *' Silence," and then returning said, "No appearance, your Worship." The latest improvement in agricultu ml implements is a the teeth of which are made of steel, and slope hack wards. 11 is spoken of in very approving terms by those who have used it. The harrow has eighty-one steel teeth, made of round steel rods half an inch in diameter, set in oak slates 2x 2J inches. Slanting backward at an angle of about twenty-five degrees, these slates, made in form of three gates, are fastened together by hinges made of best horse-shoe iron. By this arrangement, the teeth are always bright and clean, never clog, and always cut through lumps, &c, instead of pushing them aside. If the harrow is used in corn or potato cultivation, soon after planting, and as often as the weeds start, until the crop is six to twelve inches high, all annual weeds will be destroyed, the great breadth of harrow enabling the farmer to go over from eighteen to twenty acres per day, breaking the crust and stirring the soil in about the hill, the slanting teeth passing over the corn or potatoes without injury. " S. W." writes to the Spectator : "When the Queen has nine chikhen, and the Prince of Wales ai the age of twenty nine has five, the thought of providing by additional allowance for all the Princesses of the blood that are, or may be, is likely to distress the imagination of the taxpayer. Even you, L presume, would c|raw the line somewhere—say, on a venture, at cousins, or nephews, or nieces of the Monarch—but the course of providing only for those who have regal duties to perform, if the provision be made in a generous spirit, semis simpler, more logical, and not at all republican." Visitors at Newport, who do not know the parties, speak of James Parton and his Fanny Fern, as " that bouncing woman and her invalid son.''

The Marlborough Express, November 25, says:—All the vessels in harbor displayed the ensign at half-masij yesterday as a m.irk of respect to tha memory of one of our oldest, most enterprising, and most respected coasting traders, Captain Sedcole, late of tho schooners Shepherdess and Enterprise, whose death we have to chronicle today. A« the result of prudence, thrift, and rigid business habits, Captain SedGole was surely, thongh by slow steps, providing for himself and family a comfortable provision for the icquirements of advanced age. After many years trading to and from the coast ports, he had, by gaining the confidence of those with whom business had brought him into contact, so far increased his business that the old Shepherdess was no longer sufficiently capacious for the re* quireinents of the trade carried on by himself and his partner, Capt. Mowlenv. About a year ago the two. left for Sydney on the look out for a more suitable vessel, and after an inspection of the coasting craft of the neighboring colonies, the result was the purchase of iho Enterprise, which vessel Capt. Sedcole.. sailed to the time of her last trip, when he was suddenly laid up by illness. Captain Mowlem took charge of the vessel during the next voyage to. the Kaikouras, it being thought or hoped that Capt. Sedcole would be sufficiently l-ecovered to assume the command on her return. These hopes did not re,ceive verification, his illness having assumed a more serious phase, culmiu--ating yesterday in death. During his ; long connection the deceased gentleman had made many warm friends in many of our coast towns, as well as in Wellington. The inhabitants generally of the latter place shared deeply in the feeling expressed in the circumstance noted in the opening sentence of this, paragraph, A man named Dennis Quinlan has been arresled in the Marlboiough Province on a charge of illegally escaping from custody, It appeals that Quinlan was convicted of some rowdy offence in the Grey district and immediately on his case being decided, he rushed from the Court, and had noi since been heard of until connected with rowdyism in the Province of Marlborough some two or three months ago. On his night from the magisterial presence a constable started in hot pursuit, but the latter's. progress was ignominiously anested by a clothes line, which caught him under the chin, and he was immediately placed hors de combat. Quinlan, it would appear, cleared out to Marlborough, and a tew months back attempted to forcibly enter a public-house. The landlord, who possessed firearms, threatened to fire unless Quinlan desisted, and, the latter refusing to do so, eventually wounded him. The wound had thecontrary effecct to what might reasonably have been expected, as it tended to aggravate Quintans violence, who for the space of two hours battered at the house, threatening to demolish everythmgandeverybody. Subsequently se*. eral men attacked the invader, who was overpowered and badly beaten; and he thereupon laid an information for wounding and assault, which resulted in one of his assailants being committed for trial. Tn theinterim it transpired that Quinlan was wanted by the police, and he was arrested. A constable has proceeded from the Grey district for the purpose of prosecuting a charge of illegally escaping from custody.

The mohquitos of Burmah (says the Madras Mail) have a terrible reputation, but we never imagined that they were such formidable wretches that they could compel even a sailor to commit suicide. Yet that is the character a local paper ghes them, It would appear that some years ago a sailor walking as seutry on the gangway of her Majesty's frigate Fox, when that vessel was lying at anchor on the Irrawady, was dreadfully teased and excited by the swarms oi mosquifcos which kept worrying him, No amount of fighting had the least effect on them. Finally he gave up in despair, and calling to his comrade Bob, " I say Bob,"' he inquired, " do you ihing hell is worse than this place " ? (u>*"g some dreadful expressions in reference to his tormentors." He said he did not know, but nodoubt. Quoth Bob, "It ia pretty bad here, and unless we get the skin of an elephant, these burning

stinging beasts will eat us up alive." The sufferer remarked, "Good-bye, Bob, J'm going to see if it's not cooler than it is here." With that he walked up -the steps and gave one jump and away overboard he went, to sink to rise no more. The watch was roused with the cry "a wan overboard." Boats were lowered and every search made to recover the infatuated man. who wanted to get away from the pestering worrying mosqi,itos., and could not. He committed sulfide in the frenzy produced by them. A court of enquiry was held ne*t day, and their verdict was " drowned himself when mad from the stings of swarms of mosquito*,." The Commodore sent ashore and bought bookinuslin enough in town to supply each man with a set of mosquito nets or curtains,, when the misery of ■these poor men was brought to a happy -close. A rustic serenader, who mournfully warbled, " I'm lonely to night, love, without thee," had his loneliness alleviated by a number of dogs, who made it lively enough for him for the rest of the night.