The Nelson Evening Mail. TUESDAY, MARCH 31,1874.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IX, Issue 77, 31 March 1874, Page 2

The Nelson Evening Mail. TUESDAY, MARCH 31, 1874.

Provincial Council.— We understand that the Council will be Bummoned to meet on Tuesday, the sth of May. Aetizans' Association. — A meeting- of members for electing officers will be held to-morrow evening. Harmonic Society. — A special practice, at which a full attendance is requested, will be held this evening. Volunteer Representatives. — The representatives of Nelson, Taranaki, and Auckland, returned from Napier by the Wellington this morniog. A rumor got abroad on the arrival of the steamer that fears were entertained for the safety of Captain Hamlin, the winner of the Champion Belt, as he was seen on board a few minutes before the Wellington left the Picton wharf, and was missed some time after she had proceeded down the Sound, and it was feared that he bad fallen overboard. However, the wires were resorted to on arriving here, and it was found that be had missed the steamer, and started overland this morning in the hope of catching her in Nelson. Whether he will succeed remains yet to be seen. San Francisco Mail. — The mail was due at Auckland on Friday last, but up to the the time of our going to press there was no news of its arrival. The outward mail leaves here for Auckland on the 9th met. Nelson and Foxhill Rail-way.-— The following are the tenders for the Nelson contract of this line, shillings and pence omitted : — Bray Brothers, Nelson (accepted), £11,125; C. M'Kirdy Wellington, £11,572; W. Strachan, Wellington, £11,584 ; Walton Pell, Westport, £12,053 j Saunders and O'Malley, Wellington, £13,826; John Scott, Nelson, £16,120. The Champion Belt. — It may be interesting to give the winners of the Champion Belt during the years it has been competed for. In 1861 it was won by Ensign Brighton, Auckland Kifles; in 1862 by Vol. Samuel Holt, Nelson Province ; in 1863, by Vol. Nathaniel Morse, Nelson Province ; in 1864 by Lieut. W. T. Owen, Wanganui Cavalry, who was tied by Ensign Humphries, Otago; in 1866 by ColorSergt. D. L. Christie, Otago; in 1867 by Corpl. John Chisbolm, Otago; in 1868 by Coior-Sergt. Wm. Taylor, Otago; in 1869 by Lieut. W. Goldie, Otago; in 1870, owing to the disturbances in the North, there was no competition for the Belt; in 1871 and 1872 by Captain Wales, Otago; in 1873 by Lieut. Hoskins, Auckland; and in 1874 by Captain Hamlin, Auckland. A Company is now being started to work the iron and coal deposits at Para Para, near Nelson. We trust we may see it brought to a successful issue, as it is of the highest importance, not

only to Nelson, but to New Zealand that it should be so.— -Hawke'a Bay Herald A fatal accident, the result of excessive drinking, happened recently at, Blenheim to a young man named ,«7bbn Powicki The. accident was thus .described at the inquest by an eye-witness: I was going into Blenheim when I met deceased riding towards mo at racing pace. He was sitting -quite upright until just as he passed me, when he fell off and was dragged by the stirrup . for a few yards. He fell on the back of his head, and I felt sure at' the time that he was killed. Medicalrevidehce. showed that the skull was fractured. . i It is estimated that Timaru will ' be in a position this year to export 300,000 bushels of wheat. . , The Ex,celsior claim at the Lyell was sold on Thursday last for £660, to Mr Woods, the buyer for the Maruia Company. At the Barewood etatioD, Upper Taieri (Otag6), 15,000 merino sheep have this season given 250 bales of wool, each bale containing 360 pouuds. During a recent hurricane at Tortugas, it is said .that., a solid bar of iron, Weighing. 1800lbs. .was carried 200 yards over the purapQt of, the , fort. In the Provincial Council of Westland a resolution was carried, on the motion of Mr Houlahan,. that the ttew. Licensing Act was entirely unsuited to the Province, and requesting the Superintendent to forward a copy of the resolution to the Colonial Secretary. There is an announcement in the Auckland papers of the. /death of Thomas Hanson, Russell, Bay of Islands, in his 89th year. In the announcement of his death the following facts are stated, on authority, or assumption : — He Wa3 the oldest inhabitant in New Zealand, he having arrived here with the first Mission in Ihe 28th year .of his age. He leaves over ninety descendants. Operations at the West Clive, . Hawke's Bay, boiling-down establishment are now fairly commenced. The first lot of sheep — from Mr Nelson's floek — were , boiled down last week. The yield from the first hundred of them averaged something enormous; between 70 and 80 lbs of tallow per head. They were, of course, picked sheep, weighing about 150 lbs each all round. There can be no doubt that for animals of this class boiling-down pays considerably better than selling to the butcher.— Herald. A recent telegram stated that coal had been found in Shakespeare Bay near Picton. The Press says: — There is now no doubt that a seam of coal has been discovered, but whether it is of sufficient importance to be workedj further search alone can prove. Should a payable seam be opened, it will be one of the most important discoveries yet made in the colony, for, apart from its local benefit, it will assist in a very material degree in keepiog foreign coal out of the market. A very short length of tramway could connect with a jetty at which vessels of 2000 tons could lie for loading, and as they would be perfectly secure in any weather, and be able to go in and out of Picton harbor without having to wait foi tides, the importance of such a discovery can hardly be over, estimated. The Mar thorough Express says ; : — Much disappointment has been expressed here by Bporting men at the resolution come to the other evening by the Nelson Jockey Club to havß no two-year-old race (or weights) at the coming meeting. It appears that there was an understanding that there would be races of the kind named, and consequently Guy Faux has been kept in training since his return from the Hutt races, and others have been still longer in preparation. A few days ago a telegram from one of the stewards of the Nelson races was received here enquiring whether there would be any entries of the kind named above, to which a reply was made that there would be six. On the same evening the resolution was come to by the Jockey Club, which has caused no little vexation, and motives of a personal nature are ascribed as the reason. It is very certain that the large interest which would have been taken in the' event will cease, while many people will now stay at home who would otherwise have visited Nelson. The WaJia Maori of the 24th of February says : — *' We have been requested to publish the following letter : Whakatanenuiarangi, October 4tb, 1873. To Mr M'Lean, — Friend, greeting. This is the desire of your loving friends which is now made known to you respecting the carved house belonging to Apanui, Tararaangi, Rangitukehu, and Kaperiere — that is to say of the whole tribe of Tauranga, Whakatane and Tikirau.— The month in which the house was erected wsb i erected was March, 1873. The desire of the people above mentioned is that this carved house should be for Queen Victoria. But it rests with you. If you approve of the proposal, you can make it known to the Queen in England. This is a very earnest desire oa the part of your Maori friends, that their house should be presented to the Queen. . They also invite the son of the Queen to come here to visit them that they may see him face lo face. However, as the love of Christ has been spread abroad throughout the world, and the love of the Queen also, let it be a source of rejoicing for the heart. Do you send your answer to this letter, that your loving friends at Whakatane may receive it. Sufficient. From Wepiha ArANti and Patara Toihau,

The illustrious native family of Pofae we heer has lately been blessed with an addition— no less on addition than a male lieir to all its estates and honors. The new comer is a grandson of the present chief, our distinguished friend Henare. He has determined that the occasion shall not be allowed to pass without befittingly celebrating it, so .the Maoris, we hear, are assembling from all quarters at hiß kainga. Guns will be fired, '.rum will be consumed, and Maori oratory by the bushel given utterance to.- -Poverty Bay Herald. An Ofago paper slates that when the butcher who supplied his Excellency the Governor with meat during hie -residence at Fernhill sent in his bill he applied for the appointment of. " butcher to his Excellency the Governor of New Zealand," &c. The major doaio however objected to the prices charged, and the butcher was informed that the coveted appointment would be conferred upon him only on condition that he reduced • his bill. .So the mntter, we are informed, stands at present. •• ■ • The Canterbury correspondent of the Ota go Daily Times writes : — Mr Trent, who carries on a large wholesale coffee and chicory establishment in town, has a chicory farm in connection therewith at Templeton, and he has been giving the Lincoln Farmers' Club the result of his experience in subsoil ploughing. He instances a paddock of bis which wnß.sown in. Chevalier barley in November, which was estimated to yield sixty bushels to the acre; but the caterpillars destroyed twenty bushels per acre, and yet the paddork, boing twenty-five acres in extent, yielded one thousand bushels. Next year he subsoiled again, and got in a good crop of chicory. Next year he sowed down in Canadian oats and grass, and though a dry season he got fifty five bushels to the acre; and from that paddock he has succeeded in taking off the following crops, without laying down to grass : — First year, chicory; second year, chicory, subsoiled; third year, barley; fourth year, chicory, subsoiled; fifth year, oats and grass; five and a half years, rape; sixth year, chicory, subsoiled ■ The proposed cultivation of beetroot is occupying some attention in Otago at the present time, and the Times states that, according to a Mincing Lane correspondent of the Times, ■France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, and Russia produced last season (1872 3) over 1,000,000 tons of beet sugar, worth fully £25,000,000. In France alone the crop amounted to 409,000 tons, which was produced by 520 factories. The Melbourne journals state, on the authority of their London correspondent, that the immigration offices of New Zealand aud Queensland there are " crowded daily by applicants desirous of settling in the south." The emigration in 1873, from British ports to the United States, South America and the Colonies, included 89,00,0 Englishmen; 3203 Scotchmen; 26,688 Irishmen; and 60,564 foreigners. Share-holding does not appear to be a very rosy game on the other side of the water. In the last published list of Victorian bankrupts we see that two of the fraternity have sought the shelter of the Insolvency Court. One of them stated his liabilities at £3665 and his assets at one pound sterling! A nice estate for the assignee! The other owes £1193 16s Bd, and has exactly £40 to pay his creditors. The list affords another curiosity — that of a lady bankrupt. Her debts are over £300, her assets £25, and she attributes her pecuniary misfortunes to having entered on a whaling speculation in Fiji! There is a mine at Stawell, Victoria, from which in four years there have been taken 76,413 tons of quartz, which have yielded 118,000 ounces of gold, giving to the shareholders no less than £329,242 in dividends. The Legality of Betting. — An important and interesting case was recently tried at Melbourne before bis Honor Mr Justice Fellowes. It is needless to give the details beyond stating that the defendant in the action had bet £700 to £100 against a certain horse at the Melbourne Spring Meeting, that the horse won, and thereupon the defendant had stopped payment of the cheque, but the summing up of the Judge is of interest as showing the law on the subject of cheques given in payment of bets, and we make the following extract from it : — The law of the matter was this, that a man who draws a cheque must pay it unless he caD prove to the reasonable satisfaction of a jury the existeuce of facts sufficient to excuse payment. The holder of a cheque had the right to treat it as good until it was shown to be bad. And it did not lie on the plaintiff to show that the cheque was good; it waß for the defendant to prove it was bad. A good deal of evidence had been given that was not for their consideration. They had nothing to do with the morality of the transaction; if they had it would be a i nice question whether there was greater immorality in receiving the cheque than in stopping payment of it after it had been given. The circumstances under which a person who resisted payment of a cheque was called upon to defend the non-payment depended upon the facts of each case. If a cheque wore obtained by misrepresentation or fraud, or if a cheque were given in the course of an illegal transaction, and if the person to whom it was given parted

defendant must prove the fraud or the illegality. That was all that was required of him. For the presumption was that if a cheque was fraudulently or illegally obtained, the man who first got it would part with it to enable him to bring an action on it. But that only arose whera a cheque was obtained by fraud, or in the course of an illegal transaction. In the present case there was neither ' fraud nor illegality. It was perfectly legal and lawful for a man to bet; a man could not be punished for either making or paying a bet, just ns it was lawful for a man to make a present of a cheque. The South Australian papers give details of Major Warburton's expedition across from Alico Springs to the De Grey River.. The Advertiser saye, Major Warbur ton " has traversed the continent from the MacDonnell Ranges to the coast of Nickol Bay, passing over 800 or 900 miles of ground never before trodden by the foot of a white mon. We are sorry to find that the expedition has only boen useful in a scientific point of view; the country for the whole distance is utterly worthless Barren, scrubby, and in the last degree • wretched, the explorers had the utmost difficulty in forcing their way through. With poor feed for the greater portion of the dreary journey, with water often scarce, and little game, the brave band were reduced to the utmost extremities, for three months they bad nothing to live on but dried camels' flash, aud such roots and bulbs as they were able to gather. On th"c 13st December they were within 130 miles from the De Grey River, with only three camels left, and the men starving, worn out, their clothes banging about them in rags, and themselves looking like gaunt spectres, the very pictures of famine. Here they found themselves in beautiful country, and the leader knowing he was not very far from squatting stations, resolved to send for relief." A Working-men's Political Association has been formed in Melbourne, and the following programme has been issued and adopted : — Reform ot the Upper House, protection, eight hours to be a day's work, no assisted immigration, a land and absentee tax, mining on private property, the abolition ,of newspaper postage. Oce speaker said he believed iv the abolition of newspaper postage, and would go ip for £20,000 being annually expended by the Government in obtaining a couple of columns of telegraphic information daily, copies of which should be sent to the press throughout the colony. Rather than place a tax on knowledge, he would advocate a free university education for everyone. He looked upon the newspaper postage as an incalculable injury done to the not too well educated adult population of the colony. Our Australian telegrams have of late contained frequent references to the "Buckley will case," but beyond being told that the document had been proved a forgery, we have heard little about it. The facts, as related by the Australasian, are briefly these: — "In June, 1872, Patrick Coady Buckley, a squatter, of Gipps Land, died, so far as was then believed, intestate, and towards the close of the year the administration to his estate was granted to Messrs Huon and Mitchell, creditors. Buckley left no kindred who were entitled to his property. About the middle of the year 1873 Thomas Maher, a former friend of Buckley's, produced a will, which purported to have been made so far back as March, 1843, by which Buckley bequeathed all his property to Maher and his wife. The genuineness of this document was contested by the Attorney-General, on behalf of the Crown, and by the administrators, and a great deal of evidence was taken, both viva voce and by commission in New South Wales. The Crown boldly took up the position that not merely was the will a forgery, but that it was actually forged by Maher himself. His Honor, in an elaborate judgment, in which ha reviewed the facts at great length, agreed with the view put forward by the Crown, pointing out that Maher's story was improbable in sevearl particulars, that the handwriting and spelling of the will resembled in many particulars the writing and spelling of Maher, and not that of the person who, as Maher said, wrote the will. He therefore refused the application for probate, with costs. How the Lawyers came by their Patron Saint.-— Going with a Roman to see some of the antiquities of Rome he showed me a chapel dedicated to St. Evona, a lawyer of Brittany, who came to Rome to entreat the Pope to give the lawyers a patron, to which the Pope replied that he knew of no saint but what was disposed of to other professions; at which Evona was very sad, and bogged of the Pope to think of ODe for him. At last the Pope proposed to him that he should go round the Church of St John de Latera blindfolded, and after he had said so many Aye Marias, that the first saint he laid hold of should be his patron, which the good old lawyer willingly undertook; and at the end of his Aye Marias, he stopped at St. Michael's altar, where he laid of the devil under St. Michael's feet and cried out:, " This is our saint; iet him be our patron." On finding out what a patron he had chosen he went to his lodgings so dejected that in a few months he died. — Notes and Queries. Out of the dreary waste of evidence in the Tichborne case wo extract one little episode. It will be remembered that the judge who was presiding at the trial is Lord Chief Justice Cockburn,

and that Mr Hawkins, Q.C, was prosecuting for the Crown. Well, on the Bih December,a witness wna being examined as to the identity of the notorious Luie's wife, when . the following conr versaiion occurred. — "Does she paes fts Mrs LundgrenP-r-No, Bhe goes by the name of Mrs Hawkins. (Much laughter). Mr Hawkins: What was her maiden name?— Witness: Sarah Cockburn. (Great laughter). The Lord Chief Justice: We must consider ourselves highly honored. Mr Hawkins bowed assent." Says the London Spectator: — la this old? If not, it is near. It is told by the Melbourne Herald, of two members of the New South Wales Legislature: — These wiseacres wore arguing in the Parliamentary refreshment room, when the following colloquy ensued : — lst Mem. : You blow about edication! Why, I don't believe as how you ever had two-penn'orlh of schoolin' in your life! — 2nd Mem : I knows more about it nor you do, any wuy. Why, I don't believe you can repeat the Lord's Prayer ! — let Mem. : I'm game to bet you a fiver I can, come now. — 2nd Mem.: Done; stake the money. The cash being duly posted on either side, the second member remarked, "Now, then, begin." — Ist Mem.: "I believe," &c. — 2nd Mem. :. That'll do, you've won the money; but Tm blest if I thought you knew it. The gross product of wine and brandy from the California grape crop of 1872 was 4,000,000 gallons. Loss by evaporation, deposit of leep, distillation, &c, 1,000,000 gallons. Merchantable wine and brandy, 3,000,000 gallons. For this our authority is the last report of the San Francisco Chamber of Cora- ; merce, wbich also gives the exports of wine and brandy, for the year ending June the 30th, 1873. Total export 967,067 gallons, of which 857,067 gallons were wine, and 110,000 gallons brandy. Mrs. Fry's Rules op Conduct. — 1. Never lose time ; I do not think that lost which is spent in amusements or recreation some time every day j but always he in the habit of being employed. 2 Never err the least in truth. 3 Never say an ill thing of a person when I can say a good thing, — not only speak charitably, but feel so. 4 Never indulge in luxuries that are not necessary. SDo all things with consideration ; and when my path to act right is most difficult, feel confidence in that Power alone which is able to assist me, and exert my own powers as far as they will go. Guano. — The anchors of ships moored in the vicinity of the Chincha Islands frequently bring up guano from tho bottom of the ocean, which is rather contrary to the docirine that these marvellous deposits are the excreta of birds. The recent researches of Dr Habel go far to corroborate Professor Edward's view that guano is really a stratified deposit. When the portions of guano which are insoluble in aoids are examined, they are found to consist entirely of skeletons of Diatomacte, Polycystina, and sponge?, all of which are invariably of marine origin, and sometimes identical with those, still living in the adjacent ocean. These forms are also found in patches exactly as they occur in nature. From these

and other facts recently obtained by chemical and nuicroscropical investigation, there appearsV to be but little doubt that guano is an accumulation of the bodies -of animals and plants; which, either by bent, by chemical action, or both combined, has bad its organic matter converted into bitumen, while the mineral constituents have been preserved in those beautiful forms which make up the infusorial strata in various parts of the world.