LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XI, Issue 1695, 29 April 1886, Page 2

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Diptheria isjjpreading m Bulls. Half a dozen fresh v 'cases are reported, and another 'death has occurred) the 'youffg^ eßt. girl of Mr- J. Stephonson' having; succumbed to the complaint on Good Friday. The school has been closed, till t Monday, May 3. A Wellington paper has tho following: — A well-known Wellington musician, Mr J. 0. R. Isherwood, lifts taken over the Club Hotel, Palmerston North. Mr N. J. Isaacs, auctioneer, negotiated the sale. Pigeons are scarce this year, writes a Wellington paper, though them ia a profusion* of the tawa, miro, and supplejack berries. A party who had been out shooting at Waikanao, and also at | Mr Riddiford's Orongorong Btation, beyond the lighthouse, met with very .little success, though last year big bags -were brought m from the same localities Similar accounts come to us from Pahautanui and other favourite resorts 'of the pigeons. The Maoris say that the " kai " has boen bo plentiful this year that the pigeons can get as much as they require on the ranges, without coming on to the valleys. The Maoris advise sportsmen to wait till the Queen's Birthday, when the pigeons are likely to be more within gun-shot range. The "Lyceum" altered advertisement will be found m another column ; and on Sunday next, Mr Thomas P. Beattie will deliver a lecture, on " Byron and, his Terse." The Rev Mr Oliver, preaching at.Wellington on the faiaroa disaster said : — Some subtle forces m Nature affecting magnetic laws were supposed by some persons to have occasioned the calamity ; some, attain, laid it at the threshold of a mysterious Providence. Others would, find m it a special judgement for Sabbath desecration. However much they might deploro the undue desecration of the day of rest, remarked the preacher, such a theory had the fatal objection against it of being utterly indiscriminate —judgement not really overtaking the culpable parties who made the arrangements, but those who were comparatively innocent. A curious instance of ignorance as to the signification of the symbolic use of the letters I.H.S. (Jesus, hominum salvator, Jesus, the Saviour of men) occurred m I860; when some thief managed to cut out the gold embroidered letters from. the altar-cloth of Marylebone Church. The vestry were m full couclave on the qusetion of the sacrilege, when a sage churchwarden observed that he did not approve of the vicar (John Henry Spry) putting his initials on the cloth. Niue cowboys rode into Burlington, Texas, recently, and spent the night m carousing. At daylight they assembled m the public square, and began an indiscriminate fusilade, frightening the townsfolk. Finally, the officials, supported by the citizons, attempted to capture them. This attempt was misted, and after four of the cowboys I and five horses had been killed, the others escaped. A Taranaki paper supplies the following : — A Lepperton " sport" had rather an unhappy experience the oth«r day. He went out with the object of shooting something for his dinner, and had not gone far when he " spotted " a bird, which he brought to the ground. Be picked up his victim, when he found that he had shoot his own game rooster. He thought the best thing be could do was to bring his knife across its neck, which he did, and left the bird with the intention of carrying it home after he had something more, but, on returning empty handed, he found his bird had gone. After a night of dreams of shooiing, Ks arose, and what was his surprise, on looking out, to see his rooster inarching about as usual. The bird is all right again, after, an eventual escape from gun and knife. The popular belief among rabbit owners that ferrets will not attack children has been upset by an occurrence that hapencd on Thursday last m the vicinity of Mr Everden's sawmill at Opaki. Mrs Dew was attending to her household duties when one of her children astonished her* by running up and exclaiming " There's a cat biting baby, mamma,!" Her horror may be imagined on going to the door and finding a huge ferret clinging to the throat of a child about a year old which ia just beginning to toddle. Mrs Dew had some difficulty m getting the bloodsucker to relax its grip, but when, she did it is needless to say she put a finisher on Mr Ferret's operations. — Wairarapa Star. D. M. Blake, the astronomer, of Bellows Falls, Vermont, says that ia the year 945 a bright star appeared, and m course of time was lost to sight. Again m 1264 aud 1572 as well, that star, or another celestial object, came within ken. Last winter Mr Blake happened to note that the star m question might be due again m 1885, 314 years having passed. So he swept the slcy with hi* glass, aud m August found the new comer m Andromeda. Mr Blake seems to be quite within the hounds of reason m asserting that . this is the Star of Bethlehem. .He foretells that during the next twelve months it will grow so bright as to rival Jupiter, and then it will disappear not to be seen again until another period of 314 years shall have passed. A terrific effaet of lightning is reeerded m the Suva Times of Fiji, as having occurred at Mr Good's plantation at Yiti. During one of the thunderstorms that have lately been of almost daily occurrence m that neighbourhood, four men, two coolies and two Fijians wore killed by one flash. The Fijians were selling taro and other vegetables to the coolies ; and were standing m the vorandah of the coolie lines at thel ime. Several others standing near were knocked down, and one of these was marked down the breast and across ono arm where the electric fluid appeared to have passed, while one of the verandah posts was shattered to pieces and another post carried away. . Thomas Stevens the bioyeler, m : the story of his rido through the Balkan Mountains, gives the description of a' grim monument to Turkish valour m the shape of a square stone structure erected some 40 yea r 8 ago near Nisch . The whole exterio- was faced with grinning rows of Servian skulls partially embedded m mortar. The Servians have since removed the skulls of their dead comrades and buried them, but the rows of indentations m the mortared surface yet remain to tell the story.