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Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 366, 10 March 1876, Page 3

We clip the following from the • New Zealand Herald' :—" As we are nowin almost daily receipt of telegrams from Europe, it may not be uninteresting to show the apparent effect which the difference of the mean time observed at London and Auckland have upon the transmission of telegraphic messages by cable. Auckland is situated 174 deg. odd east of Loudon, and our noon is 11 hours 39 minutes in advance of Greenwich time, but tbe mean time observed throughout New Zealand is exactly 11 hours 30 minutes in advance of Greenwich time. The apparent effect of this is readily seen, and its cause understood. If a message were sent from London at noon, and its transmission to Auckland were instantaneous, we should receive it at 11.30 p.m., or near midnight of the same day, so that nearly 12 hours would appear to have been occupied on its journey. "When messages are spoken of as being two days old, they are therefore really a day and a-half, or 35 hours 30 minutes old. On the other hand, messages from New Zealand to London, by direct communica tion, would be sent in considerably less than our . time. A telegram from .Auckland, if not delayed in the transmitting stations, wo'uld appear to reach London IL| hours before it was" actually wa-itten. This seems very much like annihilating time as well as space. The cost of the permanent way and buildings of the Belgium State railwnys amounted to £lB 280 per mile. The law ob ligp.s the State railway to redeem itself with its own capital, or to purchase itself with its own surplus revenue, and it is expected that this will have taken" place about the year 1884. As each conceded railway lapses gratuitously to the State in ninety years from the period of its "instruction, the entire system will in time become national property. The Suez Canal was constructed by a French company at a cost of £ 16,000,000, upon capital raised as follows : Original shares (holders principally French) £4,000,000 Shares of Khedive (no interest for 30 years) ... 4,000,000 Nine per cent preference shares 4,000,000 Arbitrators'award paid Khedive (no interest for 30 years) ... 3,500,000 Lottery shares ... 1,000,000 £16,500,000 TheCanalreceiptsforlß72were£732,ool, and total expenses £650,148. Since then the trade has increased considerably'.. The ' Star ' states that the remarks recently made by Judge Ward as to .the unsuitableness of a certain kind of sheep for human food, and the evil effects caused by indulging therein, are beginning to bear fruit. The other evening a lover of mutton went to a butcher's shop in luvorcargill and asked for so many puunds of Judge Ward's chops—not Leicester. On being told that they wore not in stock just then, he showed the sincerity of his opinion by puivhaHiiig steaks instead-