ANGLO-COLONIAL TOPICS.

Kumara Times, Issue 2605, 12 January 1885, Page 2

ANGLO-COLONIAL TOPICS.

We have received the Anglo-New-Zealander and Australian Times, dated Friday, November 21. From it we extract the following items of general interest:—

The Order in Council recently approved by the New Zealand House of Representatives, imposing a Is rate per half-ounce on letters forwarded to New Zealand by way of Brindisi also imposes a rate of 2d per lb. on book packets, and 2d each on all newspapers sent by that route. The contract which is being arranged with the conductors of the “direct service” to New Zealand, contemplates the despatch of a first-class boat once a month, so as to alternate with the San Francisco line, and thus supply a direct fortnightly mail to the colony. It is proposed that the outward passage should be performed in 45 days and the homeward in 40 days.. We understand that Mr H. Ogg Forbes, F.R.G.S., who is about to undertake the scientific exploration of the Owen Stanley Range in New Guinea, will sail about Christmas. He will land at Redscar Bay. The Special Commissioner of the New Protectorate has promised to facilitate his objects as much as possible. Two hew boats specially built for Edward Hanlau will arrive in London on November 26, from Boston, and will be reshipped immediately for Australia.

It may interest some of our Victorian lady readers to learn that Lord Charles Scott, R.N., who last year married Miss Ada Mary Ryan, a Melbourne belle, has inherited <£40,000 under the will of his father, the late Duke of Buccleuch. The personal estate in England amounted to £475,050, and in Scotland to £435,318. The present Duke has succeeded to all the large settled family estates in both countries.

The celebrated jockey Fred Archer, who has recently sustained a sad bereavement by the death of his young wife, sailed for America on the 16th inst. He intends to proceed overland to San Francisco, and visit Australia before returning to England. He will will be absent from home for some months.

Mr W. Court nay was extremely fortunate in securing a Cabinet Minister of the popularity of Sir Charles Dilke, as Chairman of the first lecture he has delivered in the Metropolis on “ Taranaki." The explanation, we believe, is that he is a friend of a son of a once intimate friend of Sir Charles Dilke’s father. At any rate, the President of the Local Government Board attended at Exeter Hall, and not only presided over the meeting, but delighted the audience with an interesting speech, recalling the favourable impressions he bad formed of New Zealand when visiting it some ten or twelve years since. Mr Courtnay is not a born orator, but his frank a genial style of add ress secured him an attentive hearing, whilst affording the audience some good-humoured amusement. On one occasion the lecturer, while dwelling on the manifold perfections of the Taranaki maiden’s, slightly confused as to his facts, and sotto voce admitted as much to the chairman. The audience roared with laughter, which was not decreased when the lecturer exclaimed, “What I tell you is true. The chair, man knows a friend of mine who married a Taranaki girl, and a finer pair of twins than he has now you never saw.”

On Septemper 25th next year there will be a total eclipse of the son, the central line of which passes over New Zealand j ost above Cook’s Straits, and this is the only land on which it will he visible as a total eclipse. The duration of totality will he small—about two minutes and a I. i f only. It nevertheless affords for a lew precious

moments a view of the circum solar regions divested of its usual dazzling light, which will be of inestimable value to astronomers, and which they will probably be content to travel half round the world to secure, for adding farther to their knowledge of the solar surface and surroundings, and to search for any planetry bodies that may exist within the orbit of Mercury. It is not unlikely that the Victorian Observotory will send .a small observing party to Wellington, or to the neighbourhood of Cook’s Straits, to undertake some part of the requisite physical observations; and probably several European and American astronomers will visit New Zealand on this occasion.