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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume X, Issue 149, 21 June 1875, Page 2

T^e Auckland correspondent of a Queensland paper refers thus facetiously to the prosperous state of New Zealand :— The Colony is very healthy aud sound, and will stand any financial stethoscope tbat may be applied to it. Look .what a Colony this is for Government billets, wool, gold, peaches, coal, spring lamb, timber, iron, gales of wind, pkormium tenax, tomatoes, trotting horses, aiid a fiscal policy, and aek yourself if we are not to be envied. I^ook out ypur returns and compare them with ours, when you will see that among married women oar women bring three children into the world ;for your two, and for plumpness and the easy cutting of teeth, and the blessings they are to their mammas, your babies won't be found a patch upon ours, The following news from the Palmer, under date May 28, appears in tbe Melbourne Argui :— " The latest news from the Palmer is very good. All the white men are doing fairly, and the Chinese are making a very good thing of the abandoned ground. In some cases the Chinese are making from half an ounce to an ounoe per day in ground l left by the whites. The Chinese now f occupy the whole of the \s\\ bjanoh. \ Many of them Qoipe, }o_ heavy gold, \

and intend leaving for China by tbe next mail steamer. Provisions' have "sen in price on tho field, but are not excessively, high. The Leichardt lakes oyer 20,000. )z of gold, which is the >rgest shipment, evur made from, this port. 20, 0000z are at Edwards s Camp, awaiting n«xt escort. Carriage to the Palmer ia £50 per 16p. No new rushes are reported. Sluicing « going on at O^key Creek aud Sandy , Creek with fair results, The steamer Killarney has just arrived from Hong Kong, with 500 passengers. She announces that the Aratoon will arrive in ttboufc eight days, and that the ruab is somewhat slackened through fear of hostile legislation. It fo, however, likely to he resumed if favorable intelligence of the action of the.Government be ascertained." The G. R, Argus says:— lt did not occur to us afc the time that ifc was rumored that the Premier had placed hia colleagues in the position to give in his resignation that ifc was incumbent upon him, under the circumstances, to have done so. , If in his absence, a hostile vote should be carried against the Ministry, the members of ifc in the colony could nofc as a Ministry resign without leaving the House in tbe unpleasant position of having to ask the Governor to dismiss the Premier. Mr Yogel, with his usual forethought, has placed his colleagues iv a position to resign as a Government in the event of a vote of no confidence being carried against them. A novel expedient, at least so far as it applies to tho district, has been resorted to by one of the Reefton bonifaces for the purpose of collecting old debts: He announces that tenders wiil be invited for all scores remaining unpaid after the 30fch instant. The statistics of the famine in Persia are trully appalling. In a town near Teheran only 290 families remain out of 1000 and in Teheran itself. 200 persons died weekly of starvation and disease. In six districts the deaths are reported at 1 70,000, (.For remainder of News see fourth page.)

The Westport Times says: — There is need ior occasional police supervision at the Mokihinui. The prospect of increased population has led already to the development of that curse of goldfield's life — shanty keeping— and it is reported that lambing down is too frequent there. The illicit trade in itself ib a wrong to old residents, who for years past have held a sort of lingering existence there, offering licensed accommodation to travellers, and waiting the coming of better times for increased trade. The following paragraph contains an account of the death of a man wellknown in the good old days as the proprietor of hotels at Hokitika and Stafford Town. The Sydney Evening Mail says: — The man whose sudden demise we noted yesterday, but whose name we were unable to learn at the time, was named Thomas Smith, a cabinetmaker by trade. He. was well known on all new rushes as the proprietor of several places of amusement, which he always called the " Shakespeare." During the busy times on the early rushes in New Zealand, Smith was a prosperous man, and owned a large property at Dunedin, and afterwards on the West Coast. , He subsequently went to Fiji, and lately has been in very reduced circumstances. The Cooktown Herald says : — The largest snake we have seen for a long time was exhibited outside Williams' butchery lately. This monster of the caryet species was killed at the Twomile. Gerard Kreft, the curator of the Sydney Museum, once asserted that snakes over twelve 'feet long were unknown in Australia. If the learned naturalist had only seen the specimen "we allude to, he would have qualified Lis statement, as it measured thirteen feet seven inches. Dr. Carr, the mesmerist, is at present performing .to large audiences in Wellington. In the course of a recent lecture on 'Congregational Psalmody/ the Rev. Dr. Allen noticed some of the incon-' gruities that used to occur by the awkward division in repetition lines. For instance, 'Love thee better than before' was divided, t'Love the bet-; •My poor polluted heart,' becomes, 'My poor poi-;' « We'll catch the fleeting hour' Was sung, ' We'll catch the flee-;' ' And take, thy pilgrim home' became 'And take thy pii-;' 'Andin the pious he delights', was 'And in the pi-;' ' Send down salvation irom on high' became • Bend down Sal- ;' A soprano in one case sang 'Oh for a man-;' and the chorus responded 'Oh for a mansion in the skies.' In one case the soprano modestly sang ' Teach me to kiss;' the alto took up the strain 'Teach me to kisß,' while the bass rendered, it quite prosaic by singing ' Teach me to kiss the rod.' The Sydney Evening News, of the 16th ult., gives the following account of a trigbfful death in a newspaper office. Our contemporary says : — "This morning, between 4 and 5 o'clock, as Mr Garret Maidenway, employed in the muchine-room of the Sydney Morning Herald office, was standing near one of the printing machines, he was caught by the belt, instantly carried round the shaft, and finally thrown upon the board of the machiue a corpse. One of the poor fellows legs and several of bis ribs were broken, and his neck dislocated, so that death must have prevented protracted suffering. He had been 28 years in the employ, and was greatly respected. The evidence showed that Mr Maidenway was an engineer by profession, but was employed at the Herald office as a fireman, part of his duty being to oil the bearings of tbe machinery. At eight minutes past four o'clock he was all right, and answered a question from the foreman of the engine-room respecting the time. Shortly afterwards, the foreman was disturbed by a peculiar noise in the machinery, and he ran to the engine, and shutting off the steam, stopped the machinery. He then weut to ascertain the oause of tbe noise, and goiDg to one of the machines he saw banging over the feeding-board one of the legs of deceased. ' On the shaft above there was deceased's clothing, which had been torn from his body. Every part of the clothing, but one leg of the trowsers, had been torn off by the machinery, and there was ho life in the body. The poor fellow leaves a widow and three grown up children, The former, as long as she lives, will be cared for by the proprietors of the Herald:' A Model Wife.-— Mr. Wilson, who lives somewhere in the Ballarat district, is blessed with n strong-minded and strong-handed wife. Shortly after the honeymoon was over, she commenced keeping pigs, and butchered them herBeif, killing as many as 14 in one day, filling up the time by shiDgling and rebuilding the house, enlarging the garden, and planting trees. .Besides this, she makes her own dresses and her husband's shirts and stockings, keeps a public-house, serves in the bar, and doctors all the neighbours. The only question is — What can her husband And to. dp ? — Leader.