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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IX, Issue 103, 1 May 1874, Page 2

The new premises at Reofton for the Bank of New Zealand are completed; nnd the new premises for the National Bank will be ready in the course of a few days. The Dunedin City Council have accepted the offer of the National Insurance Company for £10,000 of Corporation debentures. At a sale of bush land in Canterbury recently by public auction, many of the sections fetched from £50 to £60 an acre. Ifc is stated that the celebrated warm lake on White Island is rapidly filling up by the subsidence of the surrounding hills. If this he true, New Zealand will thus lose one of her greatest natural wondere. At Wood's Point, in Victoria, a Justice of the Peace recently committed a prisoner accused of la/ceny by addressing him in the following extraordinary terms :-— " You must remember that if you break the moral laws of God you will be punished in all eternity ; but if you brenk the moral laws of the realm, you will be punished at once. We live under a mercantile dispensation, a dispensation of insolvent acts and fraud summonses. You may steal, rob, plunder, defraud, or poisoD, by proper machinery, provided by the State for the purpose, but when you attempt to Steal without a storekeeper's licence and a set of books, or if you Attempt to poison without a publican's license, it is our duty i^ make you feel the full weight of the arm of the law." The North Wales Chronicle has the following : — "On the first night of the present year a poor woman, the wife of a laborer in the village of Abor, near Bangor, was delivered of twins. The first was born during the closing hour of the old year, and the second an hour or so after the opening of the present year. The peculiarity of this little interesting and double event, therefore, is, that the twins were not born in the same year, the same month, nor the stune day — an enigma which would pose a good many cute people to satisfactorily solve. We wish the twins many happy returns of their somewhat singular birthdays." , L.V^J'-'.!] 0 ; '

Public Works in Peru.— -We fake i he following from the Evening Post of April 23:— Very few people indeed have any idea of the mpid strides which Peru is making, or of (he admirable muntier in whilih its resources ore being developed. Our "great" scheme of public woiks, sinks iuto complete insignificance compared wiih the public woiks executed and in course of execution in P<-ru. That coundy, it is irue, bns an area nearly five limes as large as New Zealand, and its popula- ; tion is3,l99,ooo,asßgainstour 300,000; but 57 per ctnt of the population are IndiuDß, aoJ 23 per cent mixed races, known as " Cholos " aud ••Zombos," and the remaining 20 per cent is made up of the deaceuunols of Spaniards, uegroes, Chinese, and Europeaup, the latter forming barely 2 per cent of the tjtal population, nud being chiefly Italians aud Germans. Its exports in 1871 were £3,271,968, against our £5,282 084; and its imports £2,159,770, against our £4,078,193. Its ordinary revenue for 1871-2 was £11,796,570, and its ordinary expenditure £11,582,753. Although its revenue is thus teu limes as large as ours, it is evident that for its public works it has lo depend on borrowed capital, and it has in addition internal liabilities to the extent ot £2,500,000, besides a floating debt to an unknown extent. Its public woiks debt, due on loans raised in England, already amounts to £38, 220,000. For this it has 1007 miles of railroad, which had cost £25,200,000, or £25,035 per mile, the whole of the work having been constructed by nn Americnu contractor nBmed Henry Mei«gs. Fiona the last number of Engineering, wo find that 488^- miles more are now under construction at an estimated cost of £4,810,312, and are to be completed in 1876, while 1,529 miles more, estimated to cost, £39,375,000, are to be at once commenced. There are also 55 miles of railway owned by a private, company, and which cost £1,125,000, and other private railways of a total length of IJS, the cost of which is not known, Thus, in all, Peru has lines traced to an aggregate length of 2,976 English miles, representing a value of £71,571,875. There ie, therefore, a mile of railway lo every 10 square miles of territory, and to every 1000 inhabitants. This is exclusive of the Huts for which Mr Meiggs has contracted at a cost of about £23,437,500. In addition to railway works, no less a sum that £16,087,500 has been spent in water and sewerage worka in Callao since 1872. Caltup also boasts of a splendid floating dock 300 feet in length and 75 feet in breadth internally, and capible of lifting 5000 tons dead weight. A mole and dock, with an area of 984 feet by 820 feet aro also being coustructed under a concession, and are to finished by June next. Concrete is the material used iv this work, and the machinery in uso turns out from 240 to 285 blocks per week; the machinery in situ being capable of putting down 2,500 tons of materiul per day. Corapured witli the public works policy of Peru, ours seems rather dwarfed in its proportion. A New York paper says. — At an English breakfast party at Dalmoncio's, a few days ago, given in honor of a gentleman on the eve of sailing for Europe, the central iloral ornament of

the table was a full baique-rigged steamer compiled, entirely ot rosebuds with the exception of (he sails, which were of white sutin, and the funnel, which was of red pasteboard, in imitation of the Cuna"d line. As the dinner terminated, a tiny bell sounded on deck and a flag was run up to tbe masthead, upon which was written bon voyage.