The Kumara Times. Published Every Evening. SATURDAY, JANUARY 31, 1880.

Kumara Times, Issue 1041, 31 January 1880, Page 2

The Kumara Times. Published Every Evening. SATURDAY, JANUARY 31, 1880.

The annual installation banquet of the Lazar Masonic Lodge, E.C., was held at the Public Hall last evening, and was very largely attended. An extended report is unavoidably held over until our next issue. The Christchurch coach may be expected at the usual hour this afternoon, as it passed the Bfealey early this morning, with five bags of mails and two passengers for Kumara. The special four horsC-doach laid on by Mr Rugg for the Tereraakau Plains, weekly, will make its first trip to-morrow morning, calling en route at a number of picturesque places on the road. At the Resident Magistrate’s Coiitt yesterday, at Greymouth, J. Hunn was charged with perjury, and remanded to this town, where the case will be heard on Tuesday next. As showing the sympathy which the distress in Ireland has evoked among all classes, irrespective of sect or creed, we (Lyttelton Times) may mention that at the Masonic Hall on Thursday (the 22nd January), on the occasion of the installation of Bro. Hobday as W.M. of the St. Augustine Lodge, the D.D.G.M. of the Province of Canterbury, the Right Worshipful Bro. H. Thomson, made °an eloquent appeal to the brethren present to use their utmost endeavours to make the benefit to be given at the Theatre Royal on February 2nd a grand financial success. In the annual report of the Nelson Inspector of Schools the following sentences occur :—Several schools that have succeeded in passing less than GO per cent, of those presented, are notoriously better taught than some that show 96 to 100 per cent. For this result I do not hold myself in the least responsible. If the shoe frequently pinches, I did not manufacture it, my duty now being simply to apply it to all alike. The docility with which the bulk of our teachers have adapted their style of instruction to the requirements of the standards should gratify the most ardent admirer of uniformity. The paring down process is already almost completed, and the few teachers, who have been imprudent enough to impart any instruction that does not tell directly on the standard work, are not likely to repeat such an irregularity. The Wanganui Herald predicts that Sir George Grey will never again occupy the position of leading a great party. He may assist to pull down, but his chance of building up is gone. His Liberalism consists in grasping at every popular cry, false or true, but Greyism is not Liberalism, as freedom and equality are not built upon a spirit of autocracy and a jealousy of equals. A tricycle, the first implement of the kind we believe that has been imported to New Zealand, has arrived in Timaru. It has been consigned to Dr Hammond, from the manufactory of W. Hosier, Coventry, England. It is light yet strong, easily handled, and will enable the doctor, at the cost of a little muscular exertion, to scamper among his patients at the rate of 14 miles an hour. Of course (says the Times) being an innovation, collisions with cabs and livery stablekeepers will have to be avoided. The story of a lost son restored is thus told by a Home paper:—“Among those who perished in the foundering of H.M.SEurydice was a lad named Marchant, and a lad of the same name having left his home in Brighton a long time previously in order to join that ship, his parents, whe had not heard from him since he left home mourned for him as dead, believing, as the name and initial were the same, and as the description.corresponded, that it was their son who Was lost. Nearly twenty months have elapsed since the disaster, when the other day the lad who was regarded as dead long since, walked into his home alive and well. It appeared that, instead of joining the Eurydice, he had joined another ship, and finally had reached England in the Shah, after having travelled6s,ooo miles.” A Parliamentary Paper just issued shows that the total amount of the national debt on March 31st last was £777,548,493, and deducting £12,460,000 for loans recoverable, and £3,866,300 for Suez Canal shares, the net amount of debt was £761,222,195. The total funded debt amounted to £709,430,593. Qf the unfunded debt £37,664,359 represented terminable annuities. A project, similar to the schemes for admitting the waters of the Atlantic and of the Mediterranean into the north-

■western part of Africa, has been set on foot in the United States by the Governor of the State of Arizona, who suggests the formation of a short canal to let the water of the Pacific Ocean into a large low-lying area between that state and Southern California. The cost of the work is estimated at £200,000. It is believed that the scheme could be completed in six months.