COUNTY COUNCIL ELECTION.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XII, Issue 76, 29 March 1877, Page 2

COUNTY COUNCIL ELECTION.

The election of a representative of the Motueka Riding in the Waimea County Council took place yesterday, and gave rise to a good deal of excitement, considerable interest being taken in the contest by the personal friends of the opposing candidates. The following are the numbers of votes recorded at the various polling places:—

The tidewaiter at Wanganui is in sore grief and .tribulation because his "screw" has been docked £8 to pay for his uniform, all except the brass buttons and the badge on his cap. Carlyle has written to a friend:—" A good sort of man is this Darwin, and well-meaning, but with very little intellect. Ah, it's a sad, a terrible thing to see a whole generation of men and women professing to be cultivated, looking round in a purblind fashion, and finding no God in the universe. I suppose it is reaction from the reign of cant and hollow pretence, professing to believe what, in fact, they do not believe. And this ia what we have got to do. AU things from frog spawn; the gospel of dirt the order of the day. The older I grow— and now I stand upon the brink of eternity— the more comes back to me the sentence in the Catechism which I learned when a child, and the fuller and deeper its meaning becomes, < What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy Him for ever.' No gospel of dirt, teaching that men have decended from frogs through monkeys, can ever set that aside." ' A biography of the Davenport Brothers, published some time ago by Saunders, Otley, and Co., of London, states that they were born in Buffalo, State of New York. In 1850 the western part of New York was disturbed by the " Rochdale Knockings," in which the elder Davenport was a believer. His family held sittings. The result was that they had loud knockings. On the third evening they had writing, and on the fifth some extraordinary spectral performances. The next sitting was a memorable one. The boys Ira and William, and their sister, were floated in the air over the heads of a large number of people who had collected to witness the seance. It is alleged that on. one occasion' the brothers were carried sixty miles, in a brief space of time by some inextricable agency. They then began their extraordinary rope-tying performances. It is always a matter of surprise, after the smoking of a vessel, -where so many rats spring from. It will seem incredible that iv a craft of the size of the schooner Coronet, now lying iv harbor, close upon four hundred of these vermin should have lived in the hold, aud not have damaged the cargo to any great extent. Such, however, is the fact, for a few nights ago the schooner was smoked, and on the day following the Kanakas were successful in sending on deck no fewer than 360 dead rats. Fruit and copra where the principal diet which these animals lived upon, and although no great deficiency in weight was apparent when the bulk was lauded, yet we think that so many vermin living upon the cargo must have considerably reduced it. and the vessel will feel the benefit of having fewer mouths to feed.— Auckland Herald. An esteemed missionary friend supplies us (Taranaki Mws) with the following information respecting the Maoris residing south of this country:— l, with another missionary was anxious to establish a school at a certain native village, and in order to do so, called upon the chief to obtain his advice aud assistance in the matter. Judge of my surprise, when I mentioned the subject to the ranga-th-a, he replied by asking me for half-a-crowu in order ' that , he might go over to tbe public-house and get something to drink before proceeding to business! In travelling up the coast, I was informed that a piece of fencing alone marked the site of the Wesleyan Mission premises at Waimate; at Warea all that remains of poor Riemenschnider's garden, is a heap of stones arid a few straw- | berries. Carl Volkner's garden at Hawera lias been the most enduring. I there saw an apple tree and numbers of peach trees which had been planted by the martyr's own hands.

Theyacht Minnehaha was disposed of by art union at Wellington on Saturday evening. There were sixty members at £1 each, and the lucky winner wag Mr A. P. Morris. t The Lyttelton Times has an article on the judgment of Mr Justice Gillies in the case of Raynes, from which we quote :— "His Honor gives- a definition of the bona fide .traveller, which o'nght t to : satisfy the most', eager votary of Sunday 'beer. ' If,' he says, * the person be travelling for business, for pleasure, for recreation, or for any other lawful purpose, and the obtaining liquor is merely ancillary to that purpose, then he is a bona fide traveller- within the, meaning of the Act.' Most people will find it very satis- ,' factory to learn, on such good authority, tbat recreation aud pleasure are among the things which entitle a man to obtain refreshment during his Sunday walks abroad: -Ingenious people, who also frequently happen to be dry, , will likewiaebe thankful for a judgment which, by the "use of the words ' other lawful purposes,' opens up a large field for the exercise of their talents. The judgment is altogether most important, and deserves the attention of all. The application of the rule laid down to the particular case does not seem _ quite so clearly satisfactory, People who go ; ;>broadpn Sundays for pleasure, whileigratefulfor,the definition of -what* a. Ma fide .traveller really isi ought toT be careful if they * refresh -at a wayside inn, to-gb beyond that :' inn sqtae little .way before turning back. The law does not compel them" to do so, but those \yho administer the law arfe apt to draw - awkward inferences if they do. 'not." A ". The .writer of,au article iti the,- Waikato ': Times, entitled "A trio from Hamilton through Pipko and the Thames Valley and back," -refers thus to hislvisit-to-Mr Motrin's farm on the" Piako:---?' Mr Ticklepenhy showed me round to look at Mr. .Morrin's cattle and farm. 1 ; It was worth looking at. There is something, over two thousand. acres in grass and clover. Although there were . above a thousand head of cattle and sheep, . ; the feed was— much of it— fully a: foot deep. . ..There'were some pedigree^ cattle well worth. - looking at. The proprietor, of this vaat estate — some sixteen thousand -aeries— j is --spending a large amount of money, yand is . . fast transforming this wilderness into a kind of paradise. y y A "' The Wellington Borough Council must be one of the sights of the Empire City. Ona recent occasion there was a difference of opinion on some question, and , we quote the following from the Argus report of the proceedings as to ttie consequences i—« Here a tremendous scene of confusion followed. The Mayor left the ohair, and took his seat amongst the numerous audience present in the hall. The Councilors, utterly oblivious of the fact that they had no chairman, continued the discussion with the utmost imaginable vehemence, never fewer than three, and generally all nine, speaking at the same time, he who could pitch his voice the loudest being the one in possession of the house so far as the listening public and press were concerned. Sometimes Councillor Dransfieid's sonorous voice rose iike a trumpet over those of his conf teres, then, as he became fatigued with his exertions, Cr Cleland's more penetrating tones would soar above him and claim audience untii crowned by the vigorous declamation of Cr Greenfield, these three decidedly carrying off the palm for stentorian vocal power. Occasionally in the comparative lulls, the milder vociferations of the other Councillors became audible for a few moments. Hence only a fragmentary report of the debate can be given." The chairman of the Union Bank of Australia, at the general meeting of shareholders held in London on the Bth January, thus referred to this colony:—" New Zealand has a debt of £10,000,000, but her unfinished railways returned about 3 per cent of their cost, and were worth about half the debt, while her unsold Crown lands were" worth double her debt, besides which she had expended large sums of money in roads and bridges. In this country (England) the railways, and such works as roads and bridges, were made by companies and corporations, which had expended on them a sum larger by one-half than that of the entire national debt— say I,loo,ooo.ooo— and in England there were no Crown lands to sell." The Oswego Palladium mentions James Clark and wife, who were " born, died, and were buried on the same day." Jimmy and his wife must have been awfully young. Captain M'Leod, of the schooner Ethel, which arrived at Melbourne from Timaru on March 12, reports that in latitude 40 South, and longitude 15623 East, he saw the wreck of a topmast, and, wanting firewood, picked it up. The rigging had been cut by the eyes, and the spars consisted of a topmast, broken off about 30 feet from the cap, and a portion of an upper topsail yard, which have been about 40 feet long when whole. The wreckage had been about a month in they water. The wood part was painted Iflesh color, and the trestletrees and outriggers were made of blue gum. In the- course of the recent work at Pompeii, in the corner of a street a common inn has been excavated. There is the bar with the vessels ,of clay let into it, and a small back room. In wall paintings are to be seen men drinking and gambling, clad in the people's costume. Various inscriptions are added to it, to copy which permission has not been given yet. A barmaid is also represented in the painting, bring a flask and a glass to two guests, one of-\vhom, according to the inscription, says, "That's not mine," the barmaid replying, "He who likes will take it." A scuffle and scrimmage between two men, grasping each other's hair is the subject of a further painting. A third man pulling one of the two others out by tha tunic exclaims, "Out with youl Better quarrel before the door! " In another house, built and decorated in a beautiful style, an inscription had. been scrawled on the wall of one of the rooms running thus thus.-— " Thyrsa! take care not to love Fortunatus. Farewell 1 " In short these fresh excavations have the effect of placing the spectator most vividly in presence of Roman life— of human life as it has been in antiquity, as it always has beeen, and as it is now. The gold yield of Calefornia if 1876, was • about twenty million dollars, or as much as it was in 1875. A new play, " Les Danicheff," by Dumas the younger, has met with goodjsuccess in Melbourne. The following is an extract from one of the dialogues: — " I divide womenor rather woman into two classes: one that of grace and beauty or the true woman, the other that of everyday life or the half of the human race. The first makes us great men or great criminals, the second is indispensibly necessary to our well-being in the ordinary - affairs of life— to wash our children, or sew buttons on our shirts. One is called Cleopatra, Semiratnis, Elizabeth or Katherine the Great among Queens; Joan of Arc or Charlotte Corday among patriots; Sevigud or Stael among authors; among artists, public enthusiasm shouts the names of Malibran, Mars, Rachel, or Siddons. The other is called my aunt, my cousin, my mother-in-law, my cook, or even my sweetheart. And man is so made that he seeks to, and believes he can, give to her whom he loves one of those brilliant names I have just mentioned, but, alas, the day wiil come when his ideal fades to the vulgar level of Mrs Whafc's-her-name or Miss So-and-So." The Princess of Wales is one of the principal heirs of the late Queen-Dowager Josephine of Sweden, who left a fortune of £1,000,000. Mr R. B. Leefe, a planter in the Nananu Islands, is attempting to introduce sericulture. He expects to realise a considerable sum by the sale of his raw silk this year. :

The Tuapeka Times, an Otago paper, states that the Waipori Sludge Channel, rendered useless by the late .floods, coa^st £ll,00d! of - public money; The engineering displayed is/ ■ said to bfear the statap of incompejtencei. •) X A little boy twelve years, old living! in Alexander, Me., was: lately; shot-dead inlthe afccJinach ; by his sister, who was carelessly ■■rhandling-ia revolver. V Vy--^... V=y\ \. A Scotchman,-' being examined by His : minister, was asked, " What kind of a man was Adam? " « Oh, just like other folk." The minister insisted on having a more special description of the first man, and .pressed for more explanation.- ." Weel," said- • the catechumen, " he was just likdvToe Simp- - son, thehorse-couper." •* flow-so?-*' -asked* the minister. " Weel, naebody got onything by him, and many lost."

(For continuation of Newt see fourth page)

Bird. White. Foxhill 19 n Wakefield 38 19 Spring Grove ... 30 . 44 Dovedale 23 4 , . HO 68 Majority for Bird, 42.