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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XII, Issue 196, 20 August 1877, Page 2

The return respecting the cost of the Hinemoa, moved for by Mr Macfarlane shows thafc the contract price of fche vessel for building was £23,500 ; tbe amount paid for extras in Great Britain was £1838 18s 2d. The total cost ot the ship on arrival in Wellington was £29,587 15s ld. She is nofc insured. A party of five settlers afc Jackson's Bay lately captured 140 seals iv five days. Two more boats are being fitted oufc. In Melbourne, a child named Westler, was killed by four drops of chlorodyne, administered by its mother, to prevent ifc crying. In the interchange of population between Victoria and New Zealand during the year 1876, the former colony gained from the latter 467 persons. The expenditure upon railways in Victoria up to the end of 1876 was as follows— Construction, £13,239,404 ; maintenance, £957,662; total, £14,197,067. The public debt is now nearly seventeen millions. In Victoria, ifc is proposed to transfer fche country post-offices now in charge of persons carrying on business on their own account to the teachers of State Schools, or other persons employed exclusively by the Government. Commenting on the Charitable Institutions Bill, the Lyttelton Times regards fche measure as a most unsatisfactory production Our contemporary says:— lt is wretchedly drafted, and some of its clauses are scarcely intelligible, and if read' by the dim light of their own words absolutely unworkable. It is evident thafc Ministers know very little about their own measures or the subject to which it relates. They gladly jumped at Mr -box s suggestion, made in pifcv to them, that a Commission should enquire into the subject during the recess, and that the present Bill should be merely tentative. Auckland and Dunedin dearly love one another. Under the heading of " Newspaper Bosh," the Star publishes the following telegram from its Dunedin correspondent— The Star, commenting on the railway pass debate says:— '-It would be a very good thing if Dr Wallis and a few other Auckland gentlemen' who consider Auckland to be New Zealand' would use their passes freely; and possibly the narrow minded ideas which distinguished the old identities of thafc provincial district might be a little expanded by communication with more liberal sections of the community and have a little of the « bounce » taken out of them by seeing cities, compared with which Auckland, except as to the extent of the ground ifc straggles over, is but a mere village." The Guardian i relates that during fche hearing of abaction for trespass in the Resident Magistrate's Court, Dunedin, a witness expressed himself as positive that a certain horse was not wande ring at large on a particular day. When asked to give his reasons, he stated that had the animal not been in the stable it would have made its way back to lapanm, where it was bred. Mr Bathgate said thafc the witness must nofc give what was merely his opinion. 'Well,' was the reply '1 can befc a ten-pound note on ifc anyhow.' ' _ A correspondent writing to a Southern journal respecting the Lake Taupo district S _ y £ :—r £ he attracti °n3 of the lake districts of New Zealand to the tourist, whether hailing from fche colonies, India, or Europe, are (it is asserted by all tourists themselves) unequalled anywhere in the world, and the attention of hotel-keepers with capital is accordingly being turned in this direction, laupo, from its central position in the lake country, its clear, bracing climate, its wide moorlands one day to team with game, its great inland sea, and curative thermal springs offers, perhaps, the best site for a complete sanatorium, combined with a first-class hotel and no doubt this will be taken advantage of as the colony grows in wealth and population. c * The 'Loafer' in the Canturbury Press writes:-' Three 'friends of mine went out shooting, and nofc finding much game afoot adjourned to anaccomadafcion house for lunch Ihey agreed to pay ifc down on the landlord" One of the sports, according to agreement, beforehand, shortly retired awhile. During his absence his friends suggested to the host what a rare lark it would be to draw the shot from his gun and befc him £1 he couldn't hit a barndoor ;fowl at thirty yards. The host thought this would be a high old game, drew the charge, and on the return of the absent sport, lost no time in getting the wager on. 1 hen they all went outside, and the landlord choockled about seventy, fine fowls around some wheat he threw down to give, as he said with a jocund smile, the snort every chance. Presently two barrels of a Purdy gun went off, and that back yard was a scene of carnage Fowls were dead and dying all about and feathers darkened the air. When the landlord had exhausted all the poetry of language he knew, or had ever heard, he paid a pound over, and wondered why it never struck him to make sure there were not double charges of shot in each barrel. 1 m told the Boniface hasn'c got hold of the nghfc side of the joke yet. The favorite tree with schoolmasters— the birch ; with sailors -the 'elm ; with frequenters of the turf— the oaks; with cooks —•the 'ash ; with cricketers— the willow The population of British India as given in Lord Lytton's last despatch is 75,000 British subjects, forty million Mahomniedaus, and one hundred and forty-one million Hindoos.