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Manawatu Standard, Volume XI, Issue 1644, 25 February 1886, Page 4

A residentof Masterton who is m the habit of going out shooting occasionally, received a sharp reminder the other day, says the Wairarapa Star, about the dangerous practice of hanging a loaded , f owlinar piece over the mantelpiece. On Friday last his son, twelve years of age, I was lifting ,the gun down, and .examining it, when it went off, tho charge passing through the wooden partition into the adjoining room, where his mother and therest of, the family were at the time. The escape was a narrow one, as on measuring it was found that some of the pellets had passed only a few inches above the heads of the children, and the mother received a portion of the shot m her -breast, but being partly spent it pierced her clothing without penetrating the flesh. •• Tom Touchstone " m the Ballarat Courier, says : — "When we took posjesBi'on (of tho country) 'the blacks numbered at -least 7500. Borty years of civilisation reduced them, according to R. B. Smythe, to no more than 500, including quadroons and octoroons ; and Captain Page, the secretary and inspector of the Board of Aborigines, told us sis months ago that m Ins personal investigation he found m a dintanoe of 200 miles there were only 144 aborigines, and of those only ten wore under the age of 15. Twenty deaths had occurred during the eighteen months, and he could hear of no births amongst them." I Thus the natives are dying out m alj the colonies.