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Kumara Times, Issue 1518, 9 August 1881, Page 2

The gale which has been blowing for the last twenty-four hours has proved very severe, causing a large amount of damage about Kuuwra and neighborhood. First of all, between four and five o'clock last evening, a tree fell across the telegraph wires just beyond Mr Horneman's house in the Greenstone or Main road, cutting off communication with Hokitika and the East Coast. But the heaviest squall or storm seems to have occurred between two and three o'clock this morning. Chimneys were blown down and the fragments scattered hither and thither, glass windows were forced in and shattered, fragments of buildings were strewn about, and one or-two substantial structures are canted over out of the perpendicular. But the greater damage is to the fluming by which several claims on the Lead are supplied with water. One party at Larrikins have several chains of their fluming blown down. The Westland end of the Teremakau bridge, too, has also sustained considerable injury by an immense tree falling on to it. Since daylight, however, the storm may be said to have somewhat subsided, though there have been pretty frequent showers of hail, with sometimes snow and sleet. Commander Edwin wired again yesterday afternoon as follows:—"Very heavy gales continue between west and south ; glass rising within eight hours, and sea continue very heavy fully 24 hours." At a meeting of the Local School Com. mittee this afternoon, the following appointments were made :—Mr Just to be head-teacher of Kumara State School; and Mrs Roberts to be care-taker of the school buildings, at a salary of £2 per month. To-morrow is the day appointed for the election of a Borough Councillor, vice MiGeorge Simmons. There ai-e three candidates—George Robert Rudkin, Duncan M'Lennan, and Joseph Dove. The poll, which will be taken at the Town Hall, opens at 9 a. in. and closes at G p. ia.

During the hearing of the charge of indecent assault at the District Court yesterday, his Honor Judge Broad observed that it had come under his notice judicially, on the face of the depositions, that several children had been examined at midnight and even later, at the Resident Magistrate's Court, Kumaru. He held that the examination of children at that hour was highly improper. To give evidence in the middle of the night was

fatiguing, especially to the young. There was a certain injustice to the prisoner in the course pursued. He thought it his duty to express this opinion. His Excellency the Governor has appointed Marcus Furlong South, Esq., to be Deputy-Sheriff of Westhuid. We remind contractors that tenders for works for the Westland County Council close at noon to-morrow. These are— Widening section 2 (1 mile) Dillman'sChristchurch road track, and track from Hatter's track to Liverpool Bill's Gully (29£ chains). Six hundred children were present at a fancy dreßS ball given lately by the Mayor of Brisbane. It was altogether a brilliant aftair. No less than 44,000 persons died in England of small-pox during the three years 1870-72. A writer to the Modern Review recently quoted these figures as a proof that vaccination was an inefficient preventive, but he was replied to by a reviewer in the Spectator as follows : " He (of the Modern, Review) is clearly ignorant of the fact that a hundred years ago the stnall-pox mortality of London alone (with its then population of under a million) was often greater in a six months' epidemic than that of the 200,000,000 of England and Wales is now in any whole year ; that the average number of deaths by small-pox wa3 estimated at eight per cent, of the total mortality of the country; that of the then enormous mortality of children under 10 years of age the mortality by small-pox constituted onehalf."