MAGISTRATES' COURT.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XI, Issue 104, 20 April 1876, Page 2

MAGISTRATES' COURT.

[Before J. Symoiss and J. Sclanders, E qs, J.. LP.] A. C. Sheppard was charged with assaulting William stallard on Monday night Mr. Fell appeared for the comp'ainant, and Mr. Acton Adams for the defendant. William Stallard : I am tbe landlord of the Miners' Arms. lam a Volunteer, and was at the review on Monday. Defendant is guard on the Hailway. I had no word* with him on the way. About 1 1 p.m. defend. nt cameto my hbuso with Mr, Barnett. Defendant said the .Volunteers hnd insulted him, and that I. was the worst, i>nd wanted me to fight 1 refused, and he stiuck me, giving me a black eye. He was the worse for drink He then cooled down, and asked me to shake hands with Inn. I refused, and he then t^ok a tumbler and threw it at me, striking ms on the nose. Cross -eximiued : I never gave him any provocation. At the Stoke station some of the Volunteer- chaffed him, but I did not. He conducted himself well wheu on the train; and when he came iv the evening he wus off duty. Henry Birnett : I walked from Disher's to the Miners' Arms with the defendant, who was a Jitt'e tho worse for drink. He accused Stulard of abusing him, wh eh he denied. He struck Stallard twice, and then threw a glass at him be jause he would not shake hands wilh him This concluded the case for the complainant. Mr Acroy Adams said that the fact of defendant's Blriking St-llarJ was luliy ad-' mitted, but it wbb under circumstance* of great provocation, Stallard having abused him shamefully when travelling by the train on Monday. Police-Sergeant Nash : I came back by the evening train on Easter Monday. At the Stoke station I heard St <llard »nd other volunteers chaffing the defendant, and he.rd the woid " pouse" used several times They were hissing him. At Wakefield I was called in to the assistance of the guard ti ask the volunteers to get out of the carriages A. C Shtppaid : When we were returning from Walcfield on Easter Monday, the voluuteers wore chaffing me on the way, and Stallard called me a most ab-jßive name. I then said I will wait on you to-night. I did so aa soou as I w o s off duty. He denied hiving used the term when I struck him. I then called for drinks, and Stallard. served ub with three, when I threw the brandy he had poured out for me in his face. I consider I was under very great provocation. Mr. Joteph Shephard was called to give evidence a,i to the generally courtious mann.-r and bearing of tho defendant. Defendant was fined £3 and all costs except professional, the Bench considering that the assault waa unprovoked.

The City Council of Wellington proposes to appoint permanently a City i Engineer at a salary of £700 per annum. It was elicited during the hearing of a rate appeal case in Dunedin the other day that the erections and fittings of Messrs Sargood, Son, and E wen's warehouse in that city had cost £21,000. At tho first crushing by the first crushing machine at the Palmer, three lots 6f stone -varying from 20 to 90 tons yielded at the following rates per ton: — 6oz 15dwt, 4oz sdwt, 3oz 16dwt. Larrikinism is " coming to the front " at Oamaru. The local journal says that a few days ago the manes of "some 17 or 18 horses, running in Messrs Fleming and Hedley's paddocks, were cut off, and no less than 35 panes of glass were smashed by stones in the windows of a house which the tenant had quitted only a few hours previously. The Dunedin Evening Star says : — Notwithstanding the brilliant success of the Pub|ic Works Policy, there is a growing apprehension -.that a time of difficulty is near Tradesmen complain that trade is dull, working men cannot so easily find work, and the Provincial Government has set the example ,'of reducing the wages. To say that there is no cause for this uneasiness would be absurd, for every fresh fact is tbe consequence of a series that have preceded it. This fact cannot be denied — work is not so plentiful as it was twelve months ago. The Dunedin Evening Star of the sth instant reports a new local industry as follows: — The ketch Jane Campbell is now at the Taieri mouth waiting a favorable wind to proceed to load the first cargo of the kind known of in Otago, being neither more nor less than a cargo 'of guano from Green Island for Dunedin. The Bruce Herald states that a sample of the guano has been tested, and reported to be equal to Peruvian. Two ketch loads are reported to be in readiness tor shipment. The island is opposite the entrance to Abbott's Creek, and is that which haa given the municipal .township of Green Island its name. .... During the hearing of a criminal case at Christchurch the Grand Jury asked his Honor's direction in a case where a prisoner was charged with obtaining money by means of false | pretences, and where the name *of the I bank was erroneously inserted in the indictment. , . His Honor directed the t Grand Jury to throw out the bill, which they accordingly did. MrJJuncan then proposed to send a fresh bill to the grand jury. His Honor declined to allow the Crown Prosecutor to adopt this course, holding that it was not the practice to prefer a second bill, with the same evidence, described in the same way, at the same sitting of the Court The following paragraph, copied from the Town and Country Journal, reveals a sad state of destitution as existing in the city of Sydney:~-During last month meals were given to 6262 destitute persons, and 3568 others were offered shelter in the City Night Refuge and S jup Kitchen. If only a tithe of the* c were cases of undeserved distress, the institution must be accomplishing a noble work. Besides this distribution of food and affording of shelter, the officials relieve distress in many other ways, and actively endeavor to alleviate the sufferings of those who apply to them. If telegrams and newspaper reports are to be at all trusted, buj little doubt can exist that Fiji is to lose its present Governor, and that he is to be replaced by Mr Birch, Colonial Secretary at Ceylon. We are informed that no official intimation of the contemplated change has reached Sir Arthur Gordon, but it is spoken of so confidently, both by the Australian Press and that of Ceylon, that very little, if any doubt can rest upon the subject. — Fiji Times. The reception of the Colima into the Dunedin Dry Dock will cause many of our readers to be curious on the subject of the sfze of the deck. We therefore give the dimensions. The length of the dock is 328 ft, wjdtbV at dock gates 50ft, depth of water on the sill at springs 21ft, at ordinary tides 19£ ft, at neap tides 17ft 6in. The Colima is 296 ft long, and her breadth of beam is 40ft. A gentleman has just shown us a capital specimen of the extreme of redtapeism which prevails' in the English postal system. It is in the shape of an official note he has received from Saint Martins Le Grand stating that a sample packet has been pested for him in England upon which there is a deficient postage of — one penny, The note intimates that if the gentleman forwards this sum in " British money " accompanied by an additional rate of 4d (for correspondence, we presume) the packet will be forwarded. As it is rather • inconvenient to send 4£d in British money, our friend is compelled to send 6d to get his package, and it is pretty certain that when it arrives the use for ifc will have passed away. We should suggest that he accompanies his remittance with a friendly hint to the clerk to "refresh himself with half a pint of porter with the odd three halfpence, or he may be informed back that ifc is necessary to forward the exact amount. Is this not humbug. —Star. The Jewish Tirpes says :— The first Masonic Lodge of Jerusalem is a beautiful illustration of the cosmopolitan nature of the principles of brotherly love in practical operation. TheJVlaster is an American, the Past Master an Englishman, the Senior Warden a German, the Junior Warden a native, , the Treasurer a Turk, the Secretary a Frenchman, the Senior Deacon a Persian, and the Junior Deacon a Turk. There are Christians, Mahommedans, and Jews in the Lodge. j

An interesting meeting took place at Chief Paul's settlement,: between the = : members of the Ngaiterangi tribe from Tauranga who have been in Auckland for the last few Iweeks, and Paul's tribe,;-' Ngatiwhatua. The visitors had beeri^. expected for some days, aud every preparation mado for their proper reception, but owing to the non-arrival of Tareha, a chief of very high standing, the Ngaiterangi did not like to pay , their visit till he accompanied them. ; Many of the principal chiefs from Kaipara met the strangers on their arrival, and the usual dance, &c, was gone through. It was, very effective, the women especially in their red Garibaldi jackets and feathers in their hair presenting a very interesting sight. After the visitors had taken their seats and the usual complimentary speeches had been made/ the food consisting of baked ■ pigs, kumeras, fish, &c, was presented by the whole Ngatiwhatua tribe, who with a haku and a dance laid the food at the feet of their guests, the hosts themselves politely waiting until they had been fed before they partook of any themselves. The natives did not seem inclined to move for some time after their : meal, until < Wiremu Reweti, Paul's nephew, darted from his houri in dancing costume and threw a stick at Ngaiterangi. It was not long after this that a pukaua (dance) ; took place, in. which Ngatiwhatua danced before Ngaiterangi. The Ngaiterangi although few in number, returned the ! dance, and a few more followed, the last dance being to the beating of a tin can by Tia, the wife of Hare Reiheua, to which' the Ngatiwhatua danced, keeping exact time. This was the end j of the meeting. — Star. I . The San Francisco News Letter has the following :— A startling statement comes to us in a private letter from Europe. A short time ago the scientific world was startled by the announcement that Professor John Liebig, of Copenhagen, had discovered a process by which life and animation could be indefinitely suspended and restored at will. The full details of the process are not published, but it is known that insensibility is first produced by the application of a new anaesthetic, somewhat, similar in its effect to chloroform, when the subject is placed in snow aud ice, where it remains to . all 'intents and purposes dead; until the operator sees fit to restore it to life.- Professor Liebig^ has hitherto experimented -solely iipondogs, cats, and monkeys, but he has now received permission, from the Government to subject several condemned criminals to his process/ and the : re suit is looked forward to with the greatest possible interest. Close upon this announcement comes ithe report from Paris that the celebrated French naturalist and chemist, J. De Cordova, has discovered another process by which the same object is accomplished. The full details of M. Cordova's treatment are published in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and no doubt as to tbe results can be entertained. The viscera of the abdomen are fully injected with the refined oils distilled from coal tar and asphaltum, the whole having been first purified by chemical combinations, with liquids, the properties of which are thoroughly explained m the article referred to. M. De Cordova expresses the opinion that many of the so-called Egyptian mummies have been treated by a process similar to his own, and he even hints at the possibility of restoring some of them to life. It has long been remarked that there is a radical difference in the appearance of mummies, some of them retaining in perfection all the organs of the body, ready apparently at a moment's notice to resume their various functions, while others present unmistakeable evidences of death and decay. In the former, -M. De Cordova has detected nearly all the elements of his preparation, a single ingredient only having thus far baffled his skill. He suggests the theory that during some great political convulsion in Egypt the secret was lost, and the unfortunate victims of the experiment j have continued their sleep .through all these countless ages. After recapitulating the accidents which have befallen . the present San Francisco Mail Service^ the Lyttelton. 1 Times concludes : " But the truth 'off the matter would appear to be that our; American cousins have never acquired.;.' the knack of success with ocean steamers. Their strong point seema to con-; sißt in building steamers fit for their' large rivers, where. little else but pace ■ is required, ond where there are no, adverse waves to contend with. But they have never been enabled to take any share in the enormous steamer, traffic between their own country and" Europe j nor, as far as we have had any experience with American steamers, have they been able to do their work m the Pacific with that regularity and certainty which has been achieved by others. Last year, when the mails' between San Francisco and Auckland were carried by an Australian Company, time was kept, and punctuality was the order of the day, so that a returning confidence was beginning to. be felt in the trustworthiness, of that route. But the experiences which we, have lately endured will, if we mistake" not, go far to prove that at any rate under (he present management it ,, is hardly deserved. No doubt the two splendid steamers — the Zealandia and the Australia — which were built on the Clyde, are quite powerful enough to cover the distance within tbe contract time. Their rapid voyages to Australia prove that they are capable of great things if they are properly handled, so that when they are going to bring our mails in we may look with something like confidence that tbey will not be late."

f\. Tlie Argus mentions the fact that a passenger by a mail Bteamer recently out some grapes from Almeria, ,in Spain, and. that they had retained their. fresh Less .and jflavor to. the end. of the ;; voyage^-' having beeh\ packed in dust obtained from a cork-cutting establishment. This experiment leads the Argus to suggest that a large trade in table grapes might be established between Victoria and England, especial lyf as 'the supplies 1 from 'Victoria would reach the English market at the close of the season for Continental fruit. It is singular that the New Zaaland; market should not have b<ea thought of in conntction with tbis project. We are comparatively a fruitless people, and although we are close to one of the largest fruit markets in the world, we eeera lo be aa far removed from it as England , itself; — Mercantile Gazette. '<'• ' '■ The Police-court reporter of the Dunedin Evening News indulges in poetry. This is the style in which he recently reported a." drunk :'' — There wbb one Alexander, thought he was I Leander, And straightway jumped into the tide, But he fouhd< it. was cold, and hot being 1 V;bold,.. ,■".'. He declared that the bay was too wide. Alexander Malcolm was charged with having been, drunk on Jetty-street wharf yißierday. luspector Mallard said. that iv a drunken freak Alick had jumped off the jtty into the water. He was fined ss.

_. — — . — --——j- a I QFor continuation of Newt see fourth page.~)