The Nelson Evening Mail SATURDAY, APRIL 19, 1873.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 94, 19 April 1873, Page 2

The Nelson Evening Mail SATURDAY, APRIL 19, 1873.

Supreme Court. — The Supreme Court sittings for criminal business will take place on Monday next, at 10 o'clock in the forenoon. Wesleyan Church. — The Rev. T. Buddie -will preach in the Wesleyan Church to-morrow morning at 11, and evening at half-past, six o'clock. South British Insurance Company of New Zealand. — Our readers are reminded that noon, of Monday next is the latest date for receiving applications for shares of the new issue in this Company. Permanent Building Society. — The April meeting of this Society will be held on Monday next, at the Temperance Hall, at 7 o'clock, which will be the commencement of the twenty-third series of shares. Money will be offered at auction at halfpast eight, after which an election will take place t>f three persons to act as auditors for the past year's accounts, and nominations will be received of five persons qualified to serve as directors. The stewards are Messrs. . R. Burn and D. Burns. The Auckland Board of Education has instituted evening classes in connection with the New Zealand University, which are intended for students of both sexes. The subjects it is proposed to give instruction in, are — Mathematics, classics, history, chemistry, and modern languages. Each class ia to meet twice a week, and the charge will be ss. a quarter. Some specimens of the Mosgiel tweed, forwarded to Hobart Town, have been most favorably noticed by the Hobart Town Mercury, which says the cloth in every instance was perfect as regards texture, color, and finish, and fully equal to the best samples of English manufacture; while judging from the prices at which the several patterns are marked, ranging wholesale from 4s 6d to os Bd, the New Zealand cloth is likely to meet with an extensive demand. One specimen of fine black tweed" was in all respects as good a sample of cloth as we have ever seen. What has Judge Johnston to do with politics ? Why is he always pestering grand juries with his remarks about the public works and immigration policy ? A judge on the Bench is supposed to avoid such subjects, yet on two or three occasions, in the Supreme Court House, at Wellington, Mr. Justice Johnston has ventilated his opinions on this topic, and now we find him repeating x the offence at Auckland. The remarks which he made to the Auckland grand jury on this subject were not, it is true, objectionable in themselves, since they consisted of the most harmless platitudes to which any political party might assent, but they were the outcome of a bad and ought never to have been made.— Post. In the year 1872, upwards of 558 millions of eggs were imported into the United Kingdom from abroad. The average exceeds a million and a half a day; and more than £5000 a day was paid for those foreign eggs imported. An Astonishing Dividend. — A dividend at the rate of 66 per cent, per annum has been declared upon the shares in the Norwich Union Fire Insurance Company for the past year. The shares of £30 paid up are worth £250, and the company ha; a reserve fund of about half a million. Its insurances amoubt to one hundred " million. — Peterborough Ad' vertiser, Jan. 25.

prorogation, the General Assembly will be called together, it is certainly not unreasonable to anticipate at least so'meyvery^ stiff breezes, which, even if they $jo|jnofc| attain to the digriity of a storm, will .fl^rveij, to freshen up and put a little life into us. At present the newspapers are not very lively. Throughout the colony it is the same, and no one province or. district seems 'to be better off in this respect than another. I see that a like complant is made in Australia, and. the following short extract from the Melbourne Argus . will not be out of place when referring to this subject, although I am sorry to say that I cannot conscientiously affirm that it is entirely applicable to our case : — "As in politics, so in the social life of the community, the present appears a time of dullness, so far as it is reflected in the columns of the daily journals. Not tbat business is bad, or tbat there is any depression in the mercantile world, any scarcity of employment, or any lack of public amusement. But there is a. deficiency of incident, . an uneventful placidity in the life of the community tbat indicates that it is at the present time sharing in the felicity and. prosperity proverbially eDJoyed by those nations whose annals, are. vacant." Suppose we try to believe that this is descriptive of , our present state, and endeavor to persuade ourselves that the " uneventful placidity * in the life of the community" is indicative of '* felicity and prosperity." It really is a very comforting theory, and the more I think, over it, the better I like it. ; But confound those " buts," they are always intruding themselves and disturbing some delicious little day dream. I will leave them and their sequences to others, they don't suit my present mood. Everybody was looking at the moon and a little star that threatened collision with her the other night, and everybody was brimful of information on the subject, and explained to bis neighbor that it was' the conjunction of Mars with the moon, an event that astronomers were well aware long ago would take place on. that particular evening. But we terrestrials are a long way ahead of our celestial neighbors. Our Mars, I don't mean a commonplace planet, but a real God of W<iir, for such I suppose we may designate our Defence Minister, and our Luna were in conjunction several days before a similar event took place among the heavenly bodies. They did not merely meet and separate again immediately, but they remained on friendly terms for some time, and went cruising about together, and the electric spark was pressed into the service to flash the result of their conjoint proceedings all over the colony. No lightning was necessary to tell us what was going on last Monday night, but we could all see for ourselves, and what we did see was that Mars looked exceedingly small alongside of the moon, which completely took the shine out of him, and herein lies the difference between these little peripatetic freaks of the bodies celestial and the bodies terrestrial. As conveyed to our senses by the lightning, the conjunction of our Mars and our Luua (visible only at Kawbia) resulted in Mars being the principal feature in the tableau, while poor Luna made scarcely any show. Or was this, I wonder, to be attributed to the lightning, through the medium of which we viewed the meeting ? Did it ,not appear to the natives who witnessed "it without any such assistance that the Luna was the more prominent object, and wasn't Mars eclipsed by her superior attractiveness ? I shouldn't wonder if this was the case, and that the lightning dazzled us just sufficiently to mar our perceptions of the true state of the case. I little dreamed when I first saw it notified For remainder of news, see fourth page.

in the almanacks that these two planets were to meet. on the 14th instant that their korero was to lead to such a train of thought, but it has done so, and now that I see it on paper I don't think that the comparison is so very far fetched. See-saw. That friend of our youths, Margery Daw, never saw so many ups and downs as do those who are engaged in the colonies in raising raw materials for the home market. A fortnight ago we were told that wool was falling down, down, down, while flax was going up, up, up. Now we learn fair prices are likely to be realised for wool at the next sales, and at the same time that the serious decline of £4 per ton has taken place in the value of flax. The Albion which, with her ueual regularity, arrived 8t the Bluff on Wednesday last with the Suez mail, brings us the sad tidings of another terrible shipwreck. Before we have forgotten the Northfleet catastrophe, which resulted in the loss of nearly 400 lives, we are told the Atlantic, belonging to the Oceanic Company, has gone down on a dark night, and between five and six hundred souls have been suddenly launched into eternity. Nearly a thousand liveß lost in two catastrophes. Our railway scheme is looking up. The general idea is that the larger scheme' proposed by Mr Vogel should be entered upon, and with this view tne Committee have postponed issuing a prospectus until they have ascertained to what extent Canterbury is likely to assist in the work. The little delay that will thus be occasioned will not prove to be time wasted, as the Committee will thus be enabled to lay before the public the scheme that seems to them most suitable in its entirety. F.