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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume V, Issue 308, 30 December 1870, Page 4

'- I X/OCAL Industry. — We ( Welliugton JPost) have been shown specimens of various articles manufactured from New 3£ealand flax by the Richmond Flax Comfwsoy, in the Nelson Province. These «ocsist of mate, matting: for floor?, rope, Sags, and wool-pocks, all excellent of their Mod, and quite equal to any imported articles of a similar class. The matting is much superior to the ordinary coir matting so common use, and the bags and woolsacks are, to say the least of them, quite as good. It is really a pity that we should {go on sending money out of the country for articles which we can manufacture «aßselves, and of the raw material of ■which we possess a super-abundance. The Freemasons. — The Paris Opinion Rationale of the 26th contains a -etnaniODß addressed to King William and JPrioce Frederick Charles, to appear gwreonally or by prosy before the tribunal ■«f Freemasons in Paris to answer to a •dbarge of perjury. " Their case to be adJauJged by default should they not appear. The document is duly signed by the •officers of the Grand Lodge of Paris. The latest American telegrams say that "•"the Rappeluovr Victor Hugo's organ at Paris, makes an absurd statement that IDag William, having been expelled from Jj&e Grand Lodge of Freemasons all brothers are; empowered to kill him; At the capitulation of Soissons tbe ©eiTßians took 99 officers, 4,633 men gwisoners, and captured 128 guns, 70,000 •^greisades, 3,000 cwt. of gunpowder, nud a military money chest containing «2,000fr. ■■■.:: The construction of a railway five German miles long, in the space of five weeks, ran event perhaps unprecedented in the •a&OHals of engineering, has been successfully completed in the present campaign. This is the new line from Remilly to IPout-a-Moussou, by means of which Metz <i£s avoided. Great Fike at Cronstadt. — A fearful misfortune has desolated Cronstadt ; ■®2 Louses have been reduced to ashes in •the course of a few hours ; more than :SOOO people belonging to the poorer classes Ssave been left without shelter. The «tr|»lion asylum of the town,the presbytery *»f the Church of the Epiphany, and a •*naaU -building belonging to the State, in which was a depot of naval models, were B.»praed. Three streets have beeu entirely <Bfes£royed. How they Get the War News in .JLherica. — A New York contemporary csays the press despatches from Europe to JKfo'w York during the last, four weeks aipaibered about 100,000 words. Here is sa man sitting in a darkened room at .Heart's Content. The ocean cable terminates here. A fine wire attached thereto •as cnade to surround two small cores of soft iron. As the electric wave, produced a few pieces of copper and zinc at

I Valentia, passes through the wire, these cores become maguetic enough to move the slightest object. A looking-glass, half an inch in diameter, is fixed on a bar of iron one-tenth of nn inch square, and half an inch long. On. this tiny glass a tamp is made to glare so that its light is reflected ou a tablet on the wall. The language of the cable is denoted by the shifiiug of this reflected light from side to side. Letter by letter is thus expressed in this fitting idiom in utter silence on the wall. There is no record made by the machine except as the patient watcher calls out to a comrade the translated flashes as they come and which he records. It seems a miracle of patience. There is something of awe creeps over us as we see the evidence of a human touch 2,000 miles away swaying that line of light, by such a delicate process as this.