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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume X, Issue 62, 13 March 1875, Page 4

We (Post) learn that Mrs J Richards, of this city, has collected the sum of £30 for the widow of the late Captain Scott, who was loot in his schooner, the Kaituna. Captain Wheeler, late of the Taranaki, before his departure for England, collected £80 for the same object. Mr. and Mrs Hoskine, now in Auckland, are, says a contemporary, at pre- ■ sent engaged organising a really good theatrical company- to make the tour of New Zealand. It is Mr Hoskins' intention to remain permanently in New Zealand, giving seasons of two or three months' duration in the course of the year in the principal cities of the colony. The facts of a long-continued system of robbery by a confidential employe have just been brought to light in Paris. A certain Teschemacher, German by birth, has long enjoyed the entire confidence of a great AngloFrench firm, Messrs Poisset) of Bradford and Faria. Though but twentyeight years old, and boyish of appearance, Teschemacher occupied the position of chief cashier, and was even trusted with authority to sign for the firm. Just before the war, in some public place, he made the acquaintance of Marguerite Chauvin, a young person of some attractions, and of superior education. Led for her sake into an extravagant life and large expenses, he

bogan to gamble on the turf, with such luck as to win nearly £4000 in a very short time. Thereupon he bought two ponies, a basket carriage, and other knicknacks of this sort, and hired a charming- little house in the Avenue Bourdon, a neighborhood very retired. There he set up a staff of servants, passing under the name of Baron Alphonse. Speaking English excellently he wa3 supposed, in the Avenue Bourdon, to be a wealthy and eccentric milord, whose ruinous expenses were a subject of gossip. Going out early in clothes of the latest fashion, he passed the day at his desk in a coat almost too ancient for respectability, dined for a franc and a half, and returned home late, fashionably clad ag he had sefe out. His bachelor chamber, modest beyond what his position authorised, was known to all in the office at 80, Boulevard Magentn. But fortune changed. Cards and horses turned against the cashier. He began to falsify his books. But for three years the double life was led without discovery, though the servants of Baron Alphonse are wonderfully suspicious after the fact. A fortnight since came the warning of a catastrophe inevitable, though so long deferred. M. Poisset arrived from Bradford, and proposed to go over the books. Teschemucher saw his game was up, opened the safe, took out £12,000 in notes, and caught the night mail for London. Having taken care to balance the books, he still left no suspicion behind, until his non-appear-ance caused alarm. Before the telegraph overtook him, he had taken ship for Quebec on board the Pruasiana. His companion was even too late to catch him, having delayed too long over her trunks. She came back to Paris, and was arrested with 20,000 f. upon her. Of course the Atlantic cable has been brought into requisition, and it is to be hoped that when the runaway lands at Quebec he will find certain persons with arms wide open ready to receive him. Thr Grape Vine.— l have not been very successful, says Max Adeler in the Danbury News, with my experiments in grape culture. I bought a vine some time ago, and the man who sold the cutting to me enjoined me to be careful to water it thoroughly every day. I did so, but it didn't seem to thrive. One day I asked my neighbor, Pitman, what he thought was the matter with it, end when I mentioned that I watered it daily, he said — " Be gracious, Adeler, that'd kill any one ! A grapevine don't want no artificial walerin'." Then he advised me to discontinue the process, and to wash the vine with soap suds in order to kill the bugs. My anxiety to know why it still didn't thrive was relieved some time afterwards by over-hearing a man in the cars remark that " some men kill their grape-vines by their durned foolery in puttin' soap-suds on 'em." He said all a grape-vine wanted was to have the earth around it loosened now and then with a spade. Then I began to dig around my vine every morning, but one day, while engaged in the exercise, Cooley came and leaned over the fence and said— " Adeler, you'll kill that ere vine if you don't stop diggin' at it. Nothin' hurts a wine wuaa than dieturbin' the sod around the roots, now mind me. That vine don't want nothin' but to be trained up on a trellis, and fastened with wire." I ordered a trellis that afternoon, and tied tender shoots of the vine to the cross pieces. The job cost me 34 dols. On the following Tuesday I read in my agricultural paper that if a man wants to ruin a grape-vine the quickest way is to tie it up with wire, as the oxydisation destroys the wire. So I took off the wire, and replaced it with string. I was talking about it to the man who came over to bleed my horse for the blind staggers, and he assured me that there was only one sure way to make a grape-vine utterly worthless, and that was to run it up on a trellis. In France, he told me, the vineyard owners trained their vines on poles, and that was the right way. So I got the axe and knocked the trellis to pieces, and then fixed the vine to a bean-pole. Still it didn't thrive very well, and I asked a nurseryman near me to come and look at it. He said he couldn't come, but he knew what was the matter with the vine 88 well as if he saw if. It wanted pruning. I ought to cut it down to within ten feet of the roots, and then manure it well. I did cut it down, aud emptied a bag of guano over it; but as it seemed sort of slow, I insisted on the nurseryman coming over to examine it. He said that hie fee was 10 dols in advance. I paid him, and he came. He looked at the vine a moment; then he smiled; and then he said, " By gosh Adeler, that isn't a grape-vine at" all! It's a Virginia creeper." So I have kind of knocked off on grape-culture, and am paying attention to my cabbage.