LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XII, Issue 1742, 24 June 1886, Page 2

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Madame Elise, m the. New Zealand Mail, ? •pggestslthat women ihould ride like men, - viz, r crosg-l«g. If Madame "Elite will give an exhibition :n Palmerston iv propria persona of her proposed innovation, we have got a high stepping nag that we should be most happy to place at the service for the purpose. ' ' *A. very old Wellington Bettler, Mr John M'Laggan, died there a few days ago, aged 83. Mr M'liaggan, whose i occupatiou-.waYthit of. a builder and contractor,; sailed from QJasgow m the ship British Merchant, iv October, 1839, apd landed iv Wellington about February, .1840. At one time Mr M'Laggaa was m tho Provincial Council. Mr Matthew Burnett, the well-known temperance lecturer, is expected iv Wellington von Friday next. ' The direct steamer Doric is to sail fer London from Lyttleton at 11 a.m. on* Saturday. Writes the Woodville correspondent of the Napier Telegraph : — The new English Church is almost completed and is to be opened iv the course of a month or so. There it to be a great day on that occasion, as Bishop Stuart and pretty. nearly /all the clergymen of the -diocese are to be present, with, I hear, the Rev Coppinger and his choir boys from Palmer*ton. It is the opinion of some that the sudden rise m the value of wool it due to a large extent to the threatening 1 aspect which European politics are beginning to assume. This belief is strengthened by the fact that foreign buyers have evinced a swddeu desire to purchase wool. Warß have often been predicted before, and vainly, but w« can never tell the day when a terrible outbreak of hostilities with Unssia, into which others would be dragged, might take place.— Exchange. - Tiiis is bow the Maori does it, as told m the Wanganui Herald:-— A meeting of Piki Te Huuga's creditors was called for Saturday morning, but only the debtor .was present. He stated to the ■ D.O. A. that he had filed m consequence of some of the creditors wanting to put him iv gaol. He had no money coining for rents, and had tried to get work to pay his debts but could not earn more than would support himself v and his family. He could not say what his share ought to be from rents, as there was. bo many m the grant. Having married a second wife all the stock that belonged to the first wife had been taken by the tribe for her children, m accordance .with the. usual custom of the natives. He was now not living with his children by his first wife and could not say how mauy sheep and horses they had. He got his living now from relatives of his present wife, aud liis mother's relatives, and worked when he could. He could not make Any offer to his creditors. Professor Judd lays it down, from a critical examination of the records m connection with Vesuvius— (l). That a long period of quiescence is generally followed by an eruption which is either of long duration or of great violence ; (2) that a long continued or very violent eruption is usually followed by a prolonged period of repose; (3) that, as: a general rule, the violence of a great eruption is inversely proportional to its duration. These conclusions, says a contemporary, indicate that the terrifying outburst recently means thai we may, look for a long t petjgd .of ,freedom from,, such disturbances in 'the f uturefand that before long the tourist public will re cover from the scare which' the outbreak will, no doubt, produce. ■ The Nationalist takos the editor of an Auckland paper severely to task for his rabid denunciation of the captain and officers of the American whaler Petrel, before their guilt had been judicially demonstrated. It remarks :—" The conduct of the Editor of the Bell is another exajpple— if. any be needed— of the utjt«r incapacity of "the average clerical mind to grasp the ordinary affairs of life logioally, reasonably,' and calmly. These good peonle are always m extremes ; either torpid under and indifferent to the wrongs inflicted on humanity, or, if moved . to . action, hysterically and vindictively and childishly violent. Their sole theory of righting one wrong is by the commission of another, and their cruel ecclesiastical training leads them to the shedding of blood as a universal panacea." News has reached Melbourne that the auxiliary screw transport Magellan had arrived at Noumea on May 7th, trom France, on her first voyage. She brings 325 convicts. These iricliidej a doctor, who tried to get rid of a rival medico by sending him a present of thrushes carefully seasoned with strychnine,, and the notorious criminal 4 ' Pel," who poisoned several members of his household ' and burned their bodies m the kitchen stove. There are also 100 criminals for the New Hobrides. Advices from Noumea state that the local Government had wired to France that they would welcome 1,000 recidivistes, and have everything prepared for their arrrival.