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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume X, Issue 80, 3 April 1875, Page 4

The " Loafer in the Street," writing to the Canterbury Press from Hokitika, discourses as follows on the subject of hats : —" Hokitika is great on hats. Ladies' hats, I mean, I'm not sure that the ladies' hats would not strike a Btranger more than anything else. I reckon two, or say three, would give a Horticultural Society a fair start; such flowers I never saw before. One hat was laid down in barley. The crop would go, I should say, 75 bushels to the acre... I feel a hnttist would do well on the Coast." An American contemporary mentions that a near-sighted hen which mistook sawdust for Indian meal, and ate heartily thereof, laid a nestful of wooden knobs, and in three weeks hatched out a set of parlor furniture. A motion proposing to give a bonus of £100 to the Mayor of Wanganui, during the present large expenditure on public works, was so warmly opposed at the last meeting of the Council that Mr Duthie, its mover, withdrew it. At a recent Bale at Arrowtowo, a pair of boxing-glove 3 wn>, amongst other things, brought to the hammer, and on a member of the local Municipal Council shouting out, " I'll give ten bob for them; I want them for the Council," opposition was disarmed, and they were at once knocked down to him. . According to the Westport Times Addison's flat should be re-named and called Arcadia, - The reporter of that journal' says : —There ia an air of

homeliness and comfort about the houses by the wayside. Trim gardens, bright windows, glimpses of cosy furnishings, heaps of children. Addisouians are evidently much married. They thrive and are peaceful. Ocular proof of the laßfc quality strikes a stranger. The lock-up is used as a lumber-room. There is no local member of (he force. Each man is guardian of the peace at his own threshold. If he goes off duty now and then, if there are chances of a slight ruffling in the social atmosphere or figurative trailing of a coat in the dirt and temptation to tread thereon, no one is any the worse or wiser. It is understood, says the G. JR. Argus, that Mr Justice Johnston is engaged in a codification of the new Zealand Statutes in pursuance of a motion carried in the Assembly of Mr D. M. Luckie, M.H.R. It is reported that at the Acheron, Canterbury, where a bush fire has been burning during the past fortnight, the thick impenetrable scrub has been cleared away, and in one place has disclosed a rich reef, with lots of specimens lying on the surface. The ground has been pegged off and registered. Mr Peter Dungan, M.P.C., has been good enough to place at our disposal a letter he has received from a friend of his who with others recently left the West Coast for the Ohinemuri, Auckland. The letter is dated the 15th March, and reads as follows: — " This will inform yon that this is the greatest duffer of a rußh I was ever at. Up to the present time there is not one pennyweight of gold got, and I think a very poor appearance. There are plenty of reefs, but no gold in the stone has been found as yet, and I do not think any alluvial, for there is no wash except in one creek which is called the Waite Kauri. We have been there and hundreds besides; we can get the color, but nothing payable. I fully expect we will leave here in a few days, and most of the men have left and the remainder going every hour. I will tell you what is the cause of all this rush. For the last thirty years plenty of white men have been stopping with the Maoris, or rather loafing on them, and since the Thames goldfield opened they have been showing specimens and blowing in order to get the business men at the Thames to back them, and plenty of them have been getting both money and tucker. Now, when the field is opened they can show neither gold or nor specimens. I will mention one case: — Last week one of the survey men broke a piece of quartz off a reef up in the ranges and took it to Mackay Town. All the old reefers pronounced it a fine specimen, and would go sOozs to the ton. The specimen was sent to the Bank assayer, who, after testing it with acidß, declared there was no gold in it. [The ' old reefers ' would not believe this, and got it crushed and amalgamated, but not a single trace of gold was discovered. On Friday last five men came here from Westport, but they left next morning." — G. B.Argus. The New York Tribune has just introduced a striking novelty in newspapers. In a critique on Verdi's " Requiem Mass," it illustrates its remarks — which extend over two columns — by introducing snatches of the music, neatly scored, as in a music sheet ; the advantage of this to persons who have not by them a copy of the music criticised is obvious, and lends a new and vastly extended interest to musical criticism. In an Indian census in Allahabad, 374 peraons described themselves as low blackguards, 35 as men who beg with threats, 25 as hereditary robbers, 47,915 as beggars, 29 bs howlers at funerals, and 6372 as poets. But little attention is paid to the cultivation of the mulberry in these islands (says a Honolulu paper), yet it is well known to be one of the handsomest and most long-lived trees. It is said that some two hundred and fifty years ago — say in 1642 — the poet John Milton, then a boy of sixteen, planted some mulberry trees at a vicarage in England. They were cared for by the vicar, and in course of time grew to be fine trees. They are all dead from age but one, and that, though bearing, is in a falling condition. Two centuries and a half may be taken as the extreme age of this tree in England. It is related that the secretary of an insurance company, being in command of a platoon during the late unpleasantness in Arkansas, struck up the gun of one of his men who was about to fire at a staff officer, with the explanation, "Don't fire, we've got a policy on him.