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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 57, 7 March 1878, Page 2

Colonel Scratchley and Colonel Richardson hare condemned the present volunteer system of N«w South Wale*. They recommend the adoption of a standard for the Naval Brigade. A very big financial operation will °take' place early in 1879, and already the Indian offices are preparing for it. The largest, and, on the whole, most profitable railway in the world— the East Indian—from Calcutta to Jubbulpore in Central, and Delhi in Northern, India, will be for sale. That is the first twenty-five years of its existence' will have expired, when the Secretary of State has the option of taking it over at cost price. The capital is £30,500,000, and, thanks to George Turnbull, who made it and th« Marquis of Dalhousie, who planned it, the annual dividend has reached nearly 7 per ce.it, while the working expenses are lower than on any other line. Colonial children are wonderful creatures (says the Timaru Herald). It they do not grow up into a race of giants, mental and physical, it will not be the fault of their digestive organs. Some philosopher^ said that a good reliable stomach is worth all the braina in the world; and, inasmuch as dyspepsia interferes more with one's comfort than stupidity, we believe him. On the theory that the aummum bmum is more a gastric than a moral essence, and that the seat of happiness lies somewhere near the middle button of his waiscoat, the youth of New Zealand ought certainly to have a blissful time of it. The statistics of St. Mary's parish festival lately show what the Anglo-Saxon can do when tan -planted to a favourable clime. Besides bread, meat, and milk, the babes and sucklings disposed of 900 buns, 40 libs, of cake 400 gallons of tea, 20 dozen of lemonade, a barrel of gingerbeer and a hogshead of ras'bberry syrup. Think of that, ye pampered Sybarites ! and then long for the lungs which after all could give three cheers for the Archdeacon, which were heard nearly to the Washdyke! The Caucasian is. not played out in these parts yet. Referriug to the value of the land on the West Coast, Sir George Grey, at the banquet iu Hokitika, spoke as follows :—" Differing from some persons whom I have heard speak on the subject, I am satisfied that here on the West Coast you will have grazing land of the very finest quality. I believe that the enn produce of grass here will be such that you hardly conceive. The nature of your climate is peculiarly fitted for the growth of grass, ami I must say that the nature of your soil is also well adapted to grass. By the clearing away of the forest, I do not mean the cutting down of trees and taking out stumps, which I believe to be a perfectly useless proceeding, but I mean the felling of the tr.es>, and clearing away the undergrowth, I say that under such circumstances, grass of the very best quality can be raised, and I have seen in the Grey Valley grasses equal to whut I have seen in any part of the world. That is really a subject with which I am well acquainted; I have paid great attention to it, and can therefore speak with authority.' The cause of the recent fire on the roof of the Canterbury spinning and woollen works is said to have been traced to a sparrow's nest between two gables, into which a spark had probably fallen from a chimney; An American " wrlterist " wishes to know why people always spell Jinis without the h,

A late Melbourne telegram says: — Three large failures hare lately taken place. Berghofr and Touzel were followed by E. Lander and Co., tobacconists, with liabilities £28,612; assets, £24,640. Both estates will be wound j up in the Insolvency Court. Yesterday , Salmon and Co., furniture dealers, filed their schedule; liabilities showing £38,950, and assets £31,050. At the close of his farewell address to the electors of Timaru Mr Stafford says:— At the termination of a somewhat extended public career— during which an amount of generous confidence and support has been given to me for which I shall ever be grateful— l can, though cousciousof many mistakes, honestly claim that whatever may have seemed amiss in my political action should be deemed an error of judgment, and that, as an old settler warmly attached to New Zealand, I tare throughout been influenced by a singleminded consideration for that which I believed at the time to be for the public advantage. A correspondent writes to the Press: —In one passenger carriage on the Northern Railway a few days ago, out of exactly a score of persons, were one man with one leg, another on crutches, another blind in an eye, x fourth who squinted, a fifth deaf and dumb, and a sixth so near sighted as to pronounce a race horse standing atill a rery fine bull. For the information of outsiders it may be well to say that that carriage load was not a fair sample of Canterbury settlers. Tb,e Spectator says :— We are assured on competent authority that the telephone has been mads to write its own messages, to communicate to a pin a motion which interprets th« Tibration on aand or paper, and tne application which, as we hare said, is already made, would if completely successful, upset avery calculation as to speed in the transmission of messages. It would do much more than this. A telephone which could writs would be a phonograph, registering every sonnd by sign3 independent of man, and always in the same way, and would furnish us at once with a natural system of short-hand, a universal character, a stenograph applicable to all languages and every Tariety of sound, and devised, go to speak, by Nature or its Ruler, and not by man— a bewildering thought, which, nevertheless, we repeat, on much better authority than our own, may be found literally true. The Launctston Examiner reports the occurrence of a melancholy accident at Park, on the Meander River, which resulted in the death of a small farmer naned William Norman. Norman went out alone to fell a large ! tree. His wife heard the tree fall, and some i time afterwards, finding her husband di 1 not return to dinner as usual, she went in search of him. On arriving at the fallen tree a shocking sight presented itself to the poor woman. Her husband was lying on the ground, dead, his skull split right in two, and his brains scattered all over the ground. His dog was sitting by his master's dead body, howling most piteously. All the appearances indicated that the large tree,-" 1 in falling, had knocked off the branch of another tree, which had come -with such force as to cleave the unfortunate man's head in two down the rery centre of the face. A correspondent writes to a Melbourne paper :— The ironclads in the the Mediterranean which will bear the first brunt of any collision with Russia consist of— The Alexandra, 12 guns, Captain R. 0. B. Eitzroy, (flagship of Vice-Admiral Phipps Hornby, commander-in-chief) ; the Agincourfc, 17 ; the Rupert, 4, armour-plated ram; the Swiftsure, 14; the Hotspur, 3, armour-plated ram ; the Achilles, 16 ; the Pallas, 8 ; the Raleigh, 22 ; the Devastation, 4, double-turret ship ; the Sultan, 12, commanded by H.R 11. the Duke of Edinburgh ; and ere this the Temeraire, 8, will have joined the fleet. There are also a number of unarmoured vessels with the commauder-in-chief, the most important of, which are :— The Ruby. \2; the Rapid, 2; the Torch, 5; the Research, 4, armour plated; the Condor, 3; the Flamingo, 3; and the Salamis, 2, despatch vessel. The ironclads Invincible, 14 (which ba3 lately been thoroughly repaired, at a cost of upwards of £50,000), and the Northampton, 12, are also ordered to join Admiral Hornby. It is very satisfactory to know that the combined fleets of Russia, Germauv, and Italy would be no match for the British fleet in the Mediterranean, which, in the event of war, could easily be doubled in point of numbers and strength without affecting other squadrons or the defences along the English coasts. The number of seamen in the fleet is about 5000 men. There are beautiful warm soda springs in ! Colorado, and people who go bathing in them I at once exclaim ; " Oh, but this is sodaUcious J "