Untitled

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 13, 10 June 1873, Page 4

Wanganui is surely an asylum for military gentlemen. The Herald eays : — - In the list of subscriptions to the Colonial Steeplechase, we notice the formidable array of 12 majors and 14 captains. A Melboubne Landlobd was recently summoned for allowing ,{ Yankee grab " to be played in his houee. The defence was that he was not present when the game was being played, and that it was not an illegal game. Case dismissed. The fourth cake of retorted gold, weightng 341b troy, from the Gabriel's Gully- Quarlz-mining Company, Otago, was exhibited in the window of Mr Mendershausen, Dunedin, the other day. It is the result of six weeks' crushing by ten heads of stamps ; 600 tons of stone having been passed under the stampers. The value of the coke is £1530, and the estimated cost of production £400. A Caution to Sol-disant M. D's.'^— From an exchange we learn that Dacre Bruce Barclay, who Bome time since was remanded from the Resident Magistrate's Court Hokitika, to Akaroa, charged with a breach of the Medical Practitioner's Act, succeeded in obtaining a dismissal of the information under which he was arrested. In a subsequent case, however, he was not so fortunate, as we learn that on the llth instant, he was charged with having obtained by false and fradulent representation several sums of money frora the Rev. W. Aylmer and others, and being found guilty, was sentenced to nine months imprisonment with hard labour. — Wanganui Chronicle A Correspondent of the Otago Daily Times grows funny over the deaths of two trout that have recently been caused in different parts of the colony. He says: — ■ Ac certain seasons of the year at home (silly season ?) we used to read of gooseberries, sea serpents, &c, &c. Out here we have recurring periods of live"' moas and horse-trodden trouta. It is the prevalence of the latter imaginative creation at the present time that has led me to note the symptoms of the gooseberry disease. Twice within a very few months we have been informed that Mr Z.'s horse has trodden upon a fine specimen of the common trout, measuring y quantity from his tip to his tail, and x from his tail to his tip, and weighing n number of pounds. I believe that story. When lam told that Captain Fitz- Clarence, of H.M.S. SpitGre, reports that he saw a serpent in lat. 42, long, 153, I always think he saw seaweed. When I hear of a moa walking along the ridge of the Peninsula at noonday, I always think whisky has something to say to it. When I hear that Mr Z.'s horse has happened to tread upon one of our very few trout, I believe that at once. It seems natural. Trout always do get between a horse's legs. I believe that if there was a trout within a mile, and it heard a horse coming, it would swim its hardest to be in time, and would lie down on its side, until the moment came when it could purchase a cheap immortality in the pages of "our weakly contemporary. " Trout like it. The only difficulty I used to find when I went a- fishing on horseback was to prevent them getting into the saddle. Trout would die for it. They

all tbink that that sort of kari kari — that painless disembowelraent— -makes them as notable as Jonan's whale. Mining Monomaniacs.— A correspondent of the Ovens and Murray Advertiser writes, under date April 28th: — " In your issue of to-day you speak of a monomaniac who has been driving for a rich lead at Doctor's Gully for Bix years. I can assure you that the case is not a singular one, and that a parallel for it can be found at Bright, where a Hungarian has been driving for the Pioneer reef through hard stone for twelve years. He has never used an ounce of powder, and he has carried out the' whole of the dirt and stone from the tunnel in his apron. He has driven 600 feet, and still drives on in hopes of finding his hidden El Dorado. Had he driven in a straight line he could probably have reached the reef in about 250 feet, but whenever he has reached a bar of hard stone he has turned to the right or left, following the softest ground, and then making again for the line from which he had diverged. In this way it is estimated that at times he has made almost a half circle, and broken into his own tunnel again. He lives on bread and coffee, and when he cannot procure these from sympathising friends, he goes out gardening, or doiDg such work as will bring in a few shillings, and then renews the task he bas set himself. He is a man like the one at Daylesford, of irreproachable character, and a total abstainer. I could not help feeling an interest in the man, as he spoke so confidently in broken English of his one day reaching the reef, and then of visiting his own dear native land." Befcse op Tanneries. — At a late meeting of the Farmers' Club of Little Falls, New York, the subject of using the refuse of tanneries (hair, fleshings, lime, &c), for agricultural purposes, was discussed, and one member stated tbat he had used hair on grain and grass with the most perfect effect. He had spread it thinly and harrowed it io with the spring wheat, and produced the best crop he had ever raised or seen in the neighbourhood. Upon grass its effect is very distinct and lasting. Applied upon the top of an unproductive, dry piece of land, it had produced a very luxuriant growth, and without any other application the dark green complexion of the sward had scarcely abated in ten years. — Scientific American.

According to n late issue of the Japan Herald, the Japanese Government haissued a number of notifications of alters ations in the domestic habits of the people. The calendar is to be altered, aud the Japanese New Year is to be made to come on the first of January instead of the 9th of February. The Japanese holidays are also to be abolished and the European Sunday observed instead, workmen having to labor six days in the week, rain or shine, the old custom of dropping work on rainy days being abrogated. Female hair-dressers are to lose their occupation, and in future every woman is lo dress her own bair. And the soft mats so common in Japanese houses are to be done away with, because they conduce to laziness. An order enjojoing all natives to dress their hair in foreign fashion had caused some dissatisfaction, but had nevertheless, it is said, been generally complied with.