MISCELLANEOUS.

Inangahua Times, Volume V, Issue 11, 21 December 1877, Page 2

MISCELLANEOUS.

Tt is rumoured thnt the following centleraen nre likely to he randidntea for | Mr Bunny's seat in the House of R»we< nohtatives :— Mr P. A. Bueklev. Mr C. Phnrazyn, Mr B. Barton, and W. Hut* obison. The pussinir of the Bill which increased the price of Crown lands to £1 and £2 per acre on snd after Ist J»naary, IR7B, has been making itself felt in the WeN Kngton Provincial District. During the past week land has been taken up in the Hutt district ; the Akiteo block, Eas* Coast ; the Pahua blook ; the Paraekaretu block ; also in tbe Fitzherbert district, to tbe extent nf £17,000. Much of this is hnd at 7s 6d per acre: The Talbot Leader states that several gentlemen in Talbot are collecting n fund for the purpose of presenting Osman Pasha the heroic defender of Plfvna. with a sword of honor, manufactured of Victorian gold and steel. Mr Keith Ramsay of Dunedin, and who as one of tbe shareholders of the Greymonth Coal Company has said some very hard things respecting its management, has arrived here and will be able to judge for him self and for the Dunedin shareholders whom he represents whether the strictures in dulged in by him and others are deserved. We do not reciprocate tbe wish expressed in. Dunedin that the u directors or any one else should be immured in the mine, but we hope Mr Ratb&ay will venture down the shaft and we are certain his prejudices will all b e*emored. . The London correspondent of the Toronto Globe says : —This year, among the visitors to Goodwood, was a very pretty French actress, whose success on the Parisian stage is due rather to her personal charms than to her talent, and whose reputation does not stand high, even Recording to the very lax code of the French dramatic world. To the surprise of everybody, this lady was seen at Goodwood., walking about the lawn in company with one of the great personages of the realm, the Prince of Wales, and the feeling excited was so strong, that when she was esoorted to a seat by the personage in question, all the ladies seated near her got up and left their places. The London Trnth says : A friend of ours is fortunate enough to be tbe pos« sessor of some meadows on tbe banks of the Thames. The other morning Ins dairymaid brought him a letter which sh'e said was tied to the tail of one of the cows. On opening it he found it contained a threepenny piece and the follow" ing penoilled memorandum : "To the owner of this cow. Sir,— For the last hour we have been trying at various houses to purchase some milk. Having been' unsuccessful, we took tbe liberty of extracting a ftodawater bottle full from the bearer. Please accept our apologies nnd our 3d. Yours respectfully, three Bask Holiday Keeper!." This' shows

the advantage of a strictly honest commercial education. Rev Er Kmcaid tells a " fish story " in the ChrUtain Advocate which, if true, discounts the Bible story of Jonah heavily, .^He.says, in brief, that a earpen* ter on sbdardv a vessel sea was talcen sick, njnd; suffered such an acute pain that ihe swooned. IJ&s he was supposed to be |dead, with a fgrindsfo|fe arched to sink the body. Soon after Ins son, dospondent over the loss of his father, jumped overboard, and was lost. The next clay the sailors har* pooned a whale and on cutting it up, they heard a grinding sound inside, that they .could , not account for. Going on with their' work, however, the mystery was i soon solved, . The, whale ..was found to have swallowed both the father and the son, and the former, having recovered from his swoon, and feeling refreshed by liia saltwator bath, had^ rigged up the grind" stone. a¥d with his son to turn it, was sharpening an axe, to cut his way out. As already intimated, if the Rev Doctors's story can be established, the doub's a:.d slurs which Paine, Inge^soll, and other critics have thrown upon the Testament narrative, will prove to be unreasonable. TTpon the second reading nf the Lotteries Pill in the Legislative Council one honorable gentleman thus delivered himself, although, strange to say, the '" Hansard " reporters have made a sad hash of it. He said he rose with great pleasure to support this Bill, or any other Bill calculated to prevent the frightful indulgence in lotteries, sweeps games o' chance, and in fact games of all sorts. He could speak from personal observation, and he might also add from personal experience, of the fearful demoralised condition of some parts of the Colony in regard to these matters, especially on the West Coast. In order that he might be better able to trace the mischievous tendency of i gambling, and to study its physiological effects, he had endeavored to make him* self proficient. He might be pardoned for having wooed Missy in the enticing game of Loo. Care they to know that he ever knew the grief of being euchrpd with the two bowers and a queen in his hand? Yet s> it was, while in. the Egyptian game of pyramids he had watched the pang which overeast his opponent's face as ball after ball had dropped into the pockets, and vis : ons nf halficrowns rose before him. He haft witnessed the loss of many useful and valuable lived caused by that fatal game of pool, and had often been on the verge of losing his own, but managed generally to come off a conqueror. What was to be expected of a community, except narrow 7 mindedness, which wns always playing crib, or quarreling over whist ? Sir, gambling perVades the whole place — cards, dicp, billiard-balls, are everywhere. You e«t dice, you drinfc dice, and mo ofF curds ! And then, sir, the sweeps ! Sir I tremble when I think of the times I have nearly won the best horse ; I coul I wepp even now when I think of foolish sales of doubtful animals which afterwards turned up trumps, and 1 have known what it is to get up at daylight and im-» plore a lucky purchaser to cry off or let me go halves. Sir, I could draw you a piciureof misery occasioned by the practices I have referred to, but I will spare the feelings of the Council. (Hear, hear.) I have learned all I want to know, and having given the Council the benefit of my experience, I can only say that I hope the -Bill will bo carried. (A.pplause.) Rumour hath it that two hours later the eloquent orator was overhead remarking: "Who's my player P' And subsequently " I'll go you one better." If you send out invitations for a fancy dress ball, don't ask a lunatic ; at least that is the advice Lady would give you. Her ball was a great success, but it was by the merest chance that there was not an awful coutretemps. The guests were arriving in shoals— jlowns, harlequins, courtiers of evpry period. Hamlets, kings, queens, Juliets, fl.iwer girls, and red Indiuns. were all, more or less jostling each other in the crowd, when a fine,' tall handsome man clothed from head to fait in an Ulster, and considerably muffled up, walked into the entrance hall. One of the man servants at once showed him into the gentleman's room, and proceeded to assist him in taking off his great coat, but what was his horror to ; find that— well, that the mysterious visitor had very little elothing on. I prefer to put it in that way, 4 Good gracious, sir ! ' said the astonished servant ; ' button up v.-mr onntj sir, at once ; I implore you ! You c«n't go upstairs like that.' ' Man,' replie d tb j mysterious 'guest, ' lam in oharaete r » an< * I insist on being shown to the ball-]' 0 ') 111 * Her? is my card of invitation.' 'Yes, sir.' said the nnhnppy servant, ' you ma Y be in character, sir — in the character °f Adam, sir ; but you mnst'nt leave this room, sir, till ymi have buttoned up vonr coat/ ' Pamperpd menial,' exclaimed the mysterious one; 'is not this ft fancy dress ball?' *A. fancy dress ball, yes. sir !' (considerate emphasis on dress.) • Was I not reqnesfed to come in character?' 'You w»«. sir.' 'I ask you, am I nnfc in charact'-r P 1 ' What character, Rir ?' ' Why in the character of a fa^eign bondholder — »' Hoped of everything. The master of tlw house here appeared on the scene, and the madman was returned to his friends.— Beadigo Advertiser. Df Hec'or, in reporting on the water supply for Wellington? writes, regarding rain water caught on galvanised iron or shingle roofs, and preserved" in plain or zinc coated iron tanks or in woodnn barrels : — None of these can over afford absolutely pure water, as even ram water, when freshly fallen, contain? a minute quantity of foreign matters dissolved in it, and these are largely added to by the absorption of the impurities that settle on the roofs, or find their way accidentally into the tanks. It requires^ to be noted that when the rain water is caught on zine or corrugated iron-roofs* OR-colleoted and allowed to stand in tanks of those material I',1 ', there is always found, besides the substances, above enumerated, a minute but variable quantity of ainc. When the collecting tank is ainc or zinc iron, the proportion of zinc to the gallon of water wilt necessarily vary veryhnuob, and when such tanks have been low^ for a long time in a dry season, the water re* maining in them may become so charged with'alno as to acquire very^ active medicinal properties, wjiieh are in the first instance tonic',: but with after effects that are injurious'to the nervous system. In rain water collected in tanks, however, the organic matter is very uncertain in its origin, for there is no conceivable sub« stance— animal or regetabl*— which may

not, after a lonsc continunnoo of drv weatlier, be raised as dus 1 , and lodged nn tlifl house tops. The results obtains! disclose this fiillv, and show that no water collected within the crowded parts of ihe city, either from well or house tops, is Bafe or proppr for hiimun consnra* tion. There it one branch of the subject which is beyond the province of chemistry, but which is even more important thnn a»y of the foregoing, and this is the misery nnd suffering entailed, especially on the children in a cUy that is badly supphel with water, from tbe prevalpnce of intestinal worms. The nonnection bptwoen a defeotirp wi'ar aunplv nnd the prevalence of this dis*>n«p. noh be established as cans* >»n<l ofT-o*. but their constant association is undniihtprt, *nd there wns no meons found to bp «o pflf'C tual in Wellington os au ample supply of wholesome water." Provision has be^n made by the Vic* torian Legislature for an international exhibition to be held in Melbourne in 1879, A commission is to be appointed, which will have the control of a site of 20 acres in tbe Carlton Gardens, and a sum of money on acponnt has bpen voted by the Assembly. Efforts are also being made to have a satisfactory representation of the Colony at the Paris Exhibition. The mining department will send specimens of auriferous quartz and earth, models of the large nusrgets wh ich have been found on the qoldfields, together with n collection of rocks, minerals, and fossils, illustrative of their geology, mineralogy, Tninin<> rescources of the colouy. A large and comprehensive collection of woods, ' fibres, extracts of bark, gum, <&"•• have I been made by the director of the Bo'anic I Gardens, and the major portion of the exhibits has already been despnehed. The s.s, Durham, which left on November 8, took altogether 24 cases of exhibits.