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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XII, Issue 130, 4 June 1877, Page 2

The Mount Ida Pastoral Investment ;Society (Otago)— an institution for encouraging small investments in sheep and stock farming — has just declared a dividend of 284 per cent. We (G. R. Argus) yesterday were shown a capital bag, the result of the first open day's pheasant shooting on the Totara plain. The birds are in splendid condition. We understand, however, that they are not easily to be got at, preferring to keep to the bush rather than in the open. Sportsmen are j greatly indebted to the efforts made by the ; Grey Valley Acclimatisation Society to naturalise the pheasants in this district. The Christchurch Press says.-— Several cases of the first bacon and hams cured in this district this season were shipped from the Northern store for the West Coast last week. During last season nearly a thousand carcases of pork were cured at this establishment, and extensive preparations are being made this season to meet the demand for the i bacon and hams bearing the Northern Store brand on the West Coast and other parts of New Zealand, where it has obtained a high reputation for good meat and superior curing. How dearly the people of Picton and Blenheim love each other is shown by the following paragraph from the Marlborough Expresi, a. Blenheim paper:— We stated a few weeks ago that an action was about to be brought by Sergeant Scanlan against Mr Smith, tinsmith, of Blenheim, to recover damages in consequence of the late fire at the Government Buildings in Picton. This week a summons has been served, claiming £91 10s for damages, and £2 5s costs. It is said, but how far it ia true we know not, that the case is being got up by a sort of town subscription, and there are people in Picton silly enough to say— they .cannot really believe such a piece of folly— that Smith's man was sent down by somebody in Blenheim to set the place on fire! The thing is too ridiculous, for more notice than this. A few ,'weeks ago (says the Marlborough Express) we noticed an account of a Picton man, known as Willy M'lntosh, who had been committing some extraordinary vagaries in the Wairarapa. A few days later he was spirited to Wellington, and thence to Blenheim. From here, after threatening 'the lives of two or more persons, he succeeded in escaping to Picton, wkere he wa3 arrested on a charge of lunacy, duly examined, and committed by the Resident Magistrate to the Wellington Lunatic Asylum. A fortnight later he turns up again at Mahakipawa, where it is suspected that he fired two stacks which were burnt on Saturday evening last. Being followed he was arrested at the Presbyterian Church on Sunday evening, and on Monday being brought before Dr Muller, he was again remanded to Picton. The case' is most scandalous, and ought to be enquired into by the Government at once. A correspondent of the Melbourne Argus writes :~A few evenings ago an election meeting was held in a certain public hall not quite seven miles from the General Postoffice, Melbourne. After the meeting was over, and the free and independent electors had emerged into the open air, one of them, a very old resident of |the locality, suddenly appeared to be seized with a fit of the i cacoethes loquendi, and proceeded to \" let off j sLeam" at the expense of the candidate to whom he wa3 opposed. In -he course of his harangue the venerable elector 'allowed his zeal to outrun his discretion, and made use of language of a very peculiar nature in reference to the candidate in question. The following day the elector received a missive in the shape of an attorney's letter, and it is probable that before long the matter will come before a Judge and jury in the Supreme Court, It is said that the damages will be laid at something like <£5000,j

There was a count oufc at the Westnorfc Council meeting on Wednesday evening. The Mayor (says the Times) commenced one o" his interminable gabble-gabbles, and the councillors, one by one, lef 6 him to .talk to the walls. \ We learn from the Taranaki Herald that the engineers now surveying the. site for the i harbor at New Plymouth state that the only inconvenience they experience in their work is inhaling the strong sickening odour that arises from the constant and copious flow of petroleum around where they are engaged at Mihotahi. The total rainfall recorded at the Wellington Observatory during the month of May, 1877, has been no less than 9.58 inches, rain falling on no fewer than twenty days in the month. As the returns are made up at the morning observation of the last day of the month, the rain which has fallen since 9 a.m. to-day has to be added to the above, probably quite half-an-inch, which would make" the month's total rainfall upwards of 10.00 inches, as compared with 2.90 inches last year, and aa average of 4.19 inches during thirteen previous years. — Post, May 31. The Hdkitika Evening Star, in an article upon the special settlement at Jackson's Bay, makes the following comment:—" Will anyone be bold enough to say that there is even middling agricultural land at Jackaon's Bay? What, we again ask, is to support it? Sawmills might keep it going, but, as we have before stated, thers are no fit tree 3 to saw. The £20,000 is gone, on uselessa roads, now almost undiscoverable. The money might just as well have been taken and thrown into the sea— better; for the worst thing, jand the ] main evil in connection with Jackson's Bay is this, that 300 or 400 human beings and their lives and fortunes are at stake; andthia £2b,000 has helped but to delude them onward on the road to the utter ruin which must ' overtake them." I Amongst the debris collected on the scene of the recent railway accident at Arlesley was a Bible containing the following inscription on the fly-leaf :— " Should Iby accident be killed to-morrow, I wish this Bible to be given to. my mother." This book proved to be the property of a gallant officer who penned those lines on the eve of the battle of Inkerman, and who happily escaped all but scatheless from the accident on the Great Northern. The volume has been his faithful companion for upwards of 30 years. Mr Ritchie, the purchaser of the wreck of the Ocean Mail, is said by a Wellington paper not to have been such a gainer by his transaction as he might have been. He apparently thought that with so many sailors on the island he could get cheap labor, and offered a number of the Ocean Mail men £1 per week to get off goods from the wreck. This the men declined to take ; but the purchaser did not feel disposed to give more. Negotiations went on for some eight or nine days, when squally weather set in, and then the men were enabled to make their own terras, namely, £2 8s per week, work or no work. Owing to the delay caused by haggling over the rate of pay, many hundred pounds' worth of property was irretrievably lost. The Bishop of Chester has been taking vigorous action with respect to rinking. He regards this amusement as vicious in the extreme, and even before the disease penetrated to Chester, he had been much exercised by its growth. At last a company started in Chester for the purpose of starting a building and laying down a rink, and the Bishop's horror reached a crisis. He brought every pressure to bear upou the company, in order to induce shareholders to refrain from their desecration, but without arail. Then he resolved to make a pecuniary sacrifice, and offered to buy up the rink in order to close it. The directors asked .'£4,000 for the property, and the Bishop at once handed them a cheque for the amount. He will probably find his mistake, and the effect will be similar to that produced by giving an organ-grinder a penny to go away, hundreds coming shortly afterwards for similar payment. The New York Sun says .-—The morbid curiosity of Paris women stands unrivalled. They are crowding now to the Morgue to see the wax figure of a girl whose body has been found in the Seine, and who cannot be identified, notwithstanding all detective efforts. The Chef of the Secret Department is overwhelmed with suggestions. A spiritualist offers, for a consideration, to summon the spirit of Vidocq and to obtain a clue for him ; another says it can only be done through Divine charity, and offers to reveal the crime in thirteen years, a pension being meanwhile settled on himself and family ; and a woman proposes to make all suspected persons drunk, when the guilty is sure to blab. When the Judge of the Criminal Court one day ordered all "respectable" females to withdraw, not one of the host of the elegantly-dressed women moved, nor did they when, after a pause, he ordered the officers to turnout « all the others."