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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 13, 16 January 1871, Page 4

At the close of the last trip of the s.s. Tararua to Melbourne, the passengers expressed their thanks for the kindness shown to them on the voyage, by presenting the commander of the vessel, Captain Hagley, with a valuable silver tea service. According to the Opunake correspondent of tho Taranaki Herald the natives in that district are somewhat unsettled in their views relative to the law of meum et tuum. They say, that if the Government do not before the end of January, pay them for the loss of the sheep taken by Titoko Waru's people in October last, or send them protection, that they intend taking the law into their own hands, and seizing any property of Tito's that may come in their way. Would it not be well if Mr. Parr is or someone else possessing influence over them would incite them to seize Titoko Waru himself and hold him as uiu for the sheep ? If they even made mutton of him it would not be a matter calculated to cause deep regret. — Post. A very curious instance of what cupidity will make men do is recorded in a recent number of the Lancet. In the early days of the Australian goldfields there was a fire which consumed a building, and some days afterwards, a person " fossicking " amongst the ruius, came upon what was instantly pronounced to be a human bone much charred. Dr. O. S — , the District Coroner, no sooner heard of the affair than he immediately summoned a jury. It must be premised that the Coroner's fee was two guineas for an inquest, and three additional guiueas for a post mortem examination, besides other allowances. However the jury met. The finder of the bone gave evidence. Another -witness declared that Jones slept. in the deserted hut, whilst other witnesses declared he had not been seen since the fire. The Coroner then administered to himself the oath, and deposed that he had made a careful post mortem examination of the charred bone produced by the first witness ; that it was the scapula of an adult male of the age and size of a man answering the description of Jones ; in fact, that he verily believed it to be the scapula of Jones. A verdict was therefore recorded that Jones had been accidentally burned to death. The Coroner sent in his bill for five guineas in addition to £5 for the funeral, the bone being buried with due ceremouy. Everyone thought it was an end of the matter ; when lo ! one fine morning the inevitable Jonas appeared on the scene alive and well, and highly indignant at being set down amongst the defunct. The bone was exhumed, examined by the Government at Melbourne, and pronounced to be a burnt ham-boae. The Coroner's fate was sealed, the next Gazette containing a notice of hia dismissal ; and curiously enough, very shortly afterwards an inquest sat on him.

On the 30th of- June last year, Mr. Stafford moved in the House of Representatives for " a return of the names of all persons who have been drowned in each year from the Ist January, 1840, to the present dute, in any river or stream in New Zealand, giving the name of such river or stream and of the Province in which it is situated." The return to the order of the House made iv consequence of this motion has been prepared, and the roll is a sufficiently ghastly one, although a memorandum by Mr. Cooper, the Under Secretary, which is prefixed to it, allows that from the imperfect state of the old records, it is tar from being an accurate statement of persons drowned in New Zealand rivers. Names of persons ascertained to have been drowned in harbors, wells, water holes, swamps, and the sea, have Won excluded from the report. The number of persons drowned in the various Provinces, and the tot-U are as follows : — Auckland 227 ; Taranaki, 17 ; Hawke's Buy, 40 ; Wellington, 165 ; Nelson, 102 ;^ Msiriborouoh, 48 ; Canterbury, 135 Oiiijro, 170 ; Southland, 37; Westland, 174 ; giving a total of 1,115. The publication of the secret papers of Napoleon has gone bravely on. What a flood of light they throw on the infamy and corruption of the past eighteen years. The Chauvinist, deputies appear to have been simply hirelings of the ex-dynasty. It was an infamous police plot who set Beaurvy to assassinate the Saviour of Society. The riots of La Vilette were plauued by the same agents, which resulted in condemnation to death of four of the dupe?, who would have been shot, only the revolution saved them. Nay, more, Gambetta has given the proofs that in May and July last the prefects forwarded confidential reports that the country was altogether averse to the German ivar. Surely this Tact ought to weigh with Bismarck in fixiug the responsibility of the unholy attack on Fatherland on Napoleon alone, who made demi-mondism one of the Fine Arts, and steeped the jeimesse of France iv immoral literature and theatricals. Patriotic. — " Under the Verandah" tells the following story : — I have heard a good story about a certain French merchant resident in Melbourne: — One of the officers of the Belliqueuse had some notes of the Bank of France, worth altogether about £30, which he was desirous to con| vert into sovereigns. Accompanied by a mercantile compatriot he went to one of the banks and asked to be accommodated. The manager consented, provided the merchant, who was a customer, would guarantee the notes. "Yes, sir, I shall with pleasure," was the reply ; " and I shall hand down to my children that in the hour of France's danger I was asked to guarantee the notes of the richest bank in the world, which six months ago had onethird more bullion in its possession than the Bank of England itself, and ten times as much specie as is in the whole of Australia. For all that, the Bank of France notes are not at a premium just at present.