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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 42, 18 February 1878, Page 4

The largest crop of wheat ever raised in Southern Eussia is useless for want of transferation, Government having rnonopKsed all the railways and rolling stock. A. recent Dunedin telegram says :— Father Hennebery and Charles Bright gave lectures last night to crowded houses. Father Henuebery hinted that Mr Bright said there was a person lecturing that night telling people there was no moral obligation except to keep out of the iron grasp of the law. He (Father Heunebery) wondered why the devil did not run away straight to hell with such a man. lie had no doubt the devil would, and ought to, have him. The Sau Francisco Bulletin [states that an action has been filed in the United States District Court against the steamship Zealandia, by Marco Vulicevicu, a merchant of that city, to recover £195, the value of 225 bunches of bananas and other fruit shipped at Honolulu on the sth instant. The plaintiff declared that the fruit was stored near the engines and covered with tarpaulins, which caused it to heat and cook. The Kumara Times thus chronicles the marriage of a well-known coach driver : — That well-known and highly popular little Jehu, Tommy Maher, is now running in double harness. Yesterday morning he found a mate, and was cleverly hitched up by the Her. Father M'Caughey. Those who were present at the interesting ceremony say that Tommy stood perfectly quiet, and that when the traces were fairly on, the two went away at au easy hand-gallop, evidently on the best of terms. Both are well-known to the public as being sound in wind and limb, good stayers, and without the slightest approach to vice. Their numerous friends will wish them a comfortable journey through life and a well laid down paudock in which to graze when their coaching days are over. Electricity in some new application upsets the old order of things daily. Henceforth the mysterious figure of the lamplighter will no more huallo from his path the walkers hi the .streets at dusk His vocation will bi ;i ihinij of tiio past, and his duties abolished. For ail the lamps in London, and in due time in all large cities, will shortly be simultaneously lighted and extinguished by the electric current. A line of lamps in one or more streets will bn connected by ;m underground wire, and with a single inotiou every lamp will be at once lighted; with another motion, a sudden shock will instantaneously extinguish them. The Amerieaus appear to have improved — if they think it an improvement— upon the idea that the forfeiture of life is a sufficient punishment for the blackest crime. In the stale of Vermont, Asa Magoon, for wife-mur-der, was sentenced to lie hauged in 1879, eighto-an months of the interim to be passed at hard labor, and six mouths in solitary confinement. What crime could merit such a punishment as this? The mind almost shriuks from the contemplation of the wretched criminal condemned to await cleat h for two years, j