DISTRICT PRIZE FIRING.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XII, Issue 63, 14 March 1877, Page 2

DISTRICT PRIZE FIRING.

Tha firing for the .district prizes by the City Cadets took place this morning at the Maitai Butts, when average. scores were made. The- firing \was\under.,.- the .supervision of Captain Finney ahd.riaeufc: Kitching. The following are the scores above 30:—

A man -was severely bitten by a black snake at Brisbane on Feb. 16th. Ammonia and other remedies were applied, and he recovered: ■ •■•--■ Bailey and Cooper's menagerie took £10,000 during their three months stay in Melbourne. The river Yarra at Melbourne is so polluted with lime from the fellmongeries that the fish died iii it by thousands on February 14th and 15thJ **.; - j A woollen !manufacturing company • has been formed in Queensland, with a capital of £10,000. The machinery is now on its way to the colony from Britain, and the buildings in Ipiwich are 1 fast being erected. They are expected to be finjshed-about the middle of the present month, _ about which time -the machinery is expected. In six months time it is expected that everything will be in full working order. Tha following cheerful little episode in sea life, on board a German man-of-war.(says an Auckland paper) _ may be interesting to some of our readers:— About a fortnight ago a seaman on board, the Hertha feloniously abstracted a£s note from the pocket of one of his comrades, and when charged with the theft he stoutly denied! ifc. A search was instituted, and the missing note found in his chest. Tried ;bef ore a board of officers, he was sentenced, to four peeks' cells; his real punishment, however, [ *was to come. -A second .secret trial by a! jury and court of (his comrades, resulted in hls;,beingi sentenced to the "Backslums," an --old-fashioned species of castigation; still in use; amongst the Germans. - ;On leaving the Icell to go on deck, a signal i.was passed among) his comrades to be in readiness for his return. In a few minutes he descended the ladder to the gun deck, when he was seized by four strong seamen, pulled over a mess table, aud severely belabored and beaten wifch brass-tipped cutlass scabbards by. eight more sailors, who continued the belting till tho unfortunate thief sank senseless on the deck. During the flagellation the three hundred and odd men comprising the. crew crowded round and roared out a song, precludiug the cries of the victim from reaching the ear3 of the officers. A mass of 90,000,00f) tons of pure, solid, compact rock salt, located on an island 185 feet high, which rises from a miserable sea marsh oh the route from Brasnear to New Iberia, up the river Teche, in Louisiana, is one of the wonders of the world. How this island, containing over 300 acres of excellent land, ever came into existence in such a locality is a matter of conjecture. Vegetation is prolific, and the scenery is beautiful and varied. A good many people (says the Herald) were surprised when Chinamen advertised here for the fungus which grows about the roota of decaying trees in the hush, giving somewhere about 3Jd per lb for the article, for the purpose of exportation to China, to make soup for Chinese grandees. There is another curious branch of trade which the Chinese pursue in the Pacific Islands, and afc which the captors of the big shark now on exhibition might make some money if they understood the process. Ifc seems that shark's fins are one of the greatest delicacies in creation. On catching a shark— fche bigger he is the better— the Chinamen in the trade make a cut with a long-bladed knife on each side of the fin, and draw it out of the body, having attached to it a mass of tendons and filaments. The whole is then beaten and macerated with salt water. After it is properly prepared and dried it will keep for any length of time, and the long filaments attached to fche fin are clear and crisp, ; like isinglass. Sharks' fin, dressed, is sold at 6 dols per lb; and the weight which could be got from the big fellow caught near the Wynyard Pier would be something considerable. Chinamen are truly ingenious, finding their delicacies in what we should never have thought of— birds' nests, sharks fins, and fungus. The Watckis responsible for the following snake story:— Mr W. Carter, a mail-driver in the service of Messrs Smith and Stewart, states that he wa3 once witness to a fight between a snake and an iguana in fche Tatiara. Eventually, the snake bit the iguana in the throat. The latter then gave up the fight, and searched about till it found a small bulbous plant, of which ifc ate a little. After a while it turned over on its back as if dead, but soon recovering got up and walked away as if nothing were the matter. Mr Carter says the plant. which the iguana ate is common in the district, and he has seen boys dig up its roots, from which they expressed a reddish dye which makes a very good ink. After the encounter referred fco be tried the effect of the juice of the -root" oh cats and rabbits bitten, by 'snakes, and in every instance ho harm ensued to the bitten animal. Report has ifc that a river of genuine ink has been discovered in Algeria. It is formed by the union of two streams, one coming from a region of ferruginous soil, the other draining a peat swamp. . The water, of the former is strongly impregnated with iron, and that of the latter with gallic acid.' When the two waters mingle, the acid of the one unites with the iron of the other, forming a true ink. The Auckland Hei aid says : — There appears to be a very great difference in the skill of telegraph operators, and if Ave may judge from the' following, the officers in New Zealand are not nearly up to the European mark. When correspondents went to Servia to chronicle the progress of the war between Turkey and Sorvia, Priuce Milan informed them that their telegrams could not be sent without being submitted to the Government, and that restrictions would be placed on the transmission of news. The correspondents, however, were not to bc beaten, and sent their despatches _to Semlin, which is in Austro-Hungary, "and can be reached by steamer from Belgrade in a quarter of an hour. In referring to the subject the Times says: -■"> Semlin itself is a very small town, but its telegraph office is of European reputation. Great was the call made on it throughout the war; but never in any one instance did it fail to keep pace with the requirements. Every evening for nearly five months it had to deal with telegrams written in English, French,German, Italian, Russian, Polish, and Serbish languages, and the rapidity and accuracy with which those messages were transmitted was simply marvellous. There was not an operator in the office who understood & word of English, and yet the account of the battle of Alexinatz, which appeared in the Timts of September 4, and extended to nearly four colemns, was transmitted from Semlin without the mistake of a single word. Long telegrams handed in at the Semlin office so late as 11 o'clock at night were received by our correspondent afc Vienna before midnight, and, by our special wires from Vienna -to Paris, and from Paris to London, reached' the Time* office in time for publication ih bur earliest - editions of the following "morning.-" -'•- • •' -•

-We (Ovens Spectator) have often heard of the wonderful exploits of the snake species,' but we always thoughfc they led a moral life/ although they waged open war with mans from the epoch of the Garden of Eden down to the present day. But these impressions have been dispelled by being'informed, o*o, , fche most reliable authority, that a 'certian^ snake got on the spree at Mr Vonarx's wine cellar, North Wangaratta, on Sunday last. A cask of wine leaked, and the snake, even forgetful of the sanctity of the day, put himself iuto such a state that he became, a very easy prey to the household cat. . - ■ % There were two narrow escapes from death by lightning in Ballarat on fche evening of February 14 (observes the Star). Dr Nicholson was walking down Sturt-street from the * hospital, in company with Dr Kerr, who carried an umbrella, when there came a dazzling flash of lightning, apparently close to them, which knocked the umbrella out of Dr Kerr's hand and struck one of Dr Nicholson's arms. The doctor states that he could feel the electric fluid pass down his arm through his body, and down his legs, and it produced a numbing, paralysed sensation. He went to the house of . a patient close at hand, whither he was going at-the* time, and there was found to be suffering a great deal. There was a very painful sensation in the feet, and when his boots were taken off a distinct sulphurous smell was perceived by everybody in the room. Dr Nicholson felt the effects of the shock during fche night, and even somewhat during the following day. It is certain that he had a most narrow escape from instant death, for it appears that the lightning struck only a few iuches from ! him, so that had he been a little further in its direction he would have received the full force of the shock. The agreeable way in which divorces are obtained in Germany is illustrated by the following anecdote:— ln the family of the writer a great uncle seemed to have reached the acme of skilled practice in the matter of the dissolution of matrimony. •He sat down every evening of his life to play a rubber of whist with his three divorced wives. They "cut for partners, shuffled, and talked of tricks and honors" with all the^gay philosophy of folks for whom words had no meaning and facts no moral. No one bore animosity to anybody else; the three ladies had all tried their hand 'at ifc, but they held bad cards; the luck was against them, and they each successively threw up the game and awoke to the conviction thai their terrible old general (he was a Waterloo man) was much more practicable as a partner at the card table than as a companion for life. It was merely a matter of mutual accommodation; there was no ill-will and no resentment; the arrangement was couducted in the most business-like and least emotional manner imaginable, and the result proved to be eminently satisfactory to all parties;— From German Home Life, reprinted by Longman and Co. from Fraser's Magazine. The police of San Francisco have lately . made a raid upon a number of underground ; drinking dens in San Francisco, which are known as "dives" or" melodeons." These were practically dance houses built below the street level, but some of them had degenerated iuto brothels and hot-beds of vice. In three of them it was found that there were secret chambers, which could be shut off by sliding panels, and there were apartments in which an abominable traffic was carried on at night, in spite of the utmost vigilance of the police. In some of the chambers there were sliding panels, communicating with other adjoining chambers. Into these horrible dens men were inveigled by women, then stupified by drugs, and at a given signal the sliding panels would admit confederates who would rob the helpless victims of their money aud valuables, and throw them into the street. Any resistance was promptly stifled by powerful bullies, and murders were not unfrequenfc. The dens were often owned bv wealthy persons, living iu luxury, and occupying influential positions, iu fact some of them were regular attendants at church,"and were admired for their seeming piety and philanthropy. The number of murders suicides, robberies, and miscellaneous crimes which Svere traced to these dens, afc length aroused the apathetic authorities. , The police had been in the pay of the proprietors of these "dives," and winked at their abominations, but afc length the popular outcry forced them into action.

Oriental travellers say that aChiuese gentleman thinks it beneath his dignity .to manufacture wit. He is fond of tea, bufc would as soon grow his own tea as make his own jokes. When he goes into society he 'carries in his pocket a package of prepared witticisms and repartees, which he has purchased afc the nearest joke shop. When conversation flags, and' he perceives an opportunity' of saying something brilliant, he draws a humorous remark from the top of his package and gravely hands ifc to his neighbor. The latter as gravely reads it and selecting frOm his bundle of repartees the one which is ap-' propriate, returns it with a bow to the original joker. The two then solemnly' smile in an undemonstrative way,* and resume their conversation, feeling that they acquitted themselves with conspicuous brilliancy. •'_]■'' (For continuation of Newt see, fourth page).

„ , 100yds. 200yds 300yds. Tl. Color-Sergt. Jessop 26 24 4 54 Private Young ... 20 18 9 47 „ Sullivan. ... 24 8 13 45 » Perrin ,„-... 21 .16, 3 40 „ Edwards ... *2l ; 14 4 39 „ Lipscomhe 21 6 9 36 „ Edmunson 20 12 4 36