DISTRICT COURT.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 73, 26 March 1878, Page 2

DISTRICT COURT.

[Before His Honor Jodge Broad.] Harley v. Wise. This was an action for ejectment. The evidence occupied the whole of yesterday, and to-day, counsel on both sides having addressed the jury, and His Honor having summed up, the jury retired at 12 30, and returned at one with the following answers to the issues submitted to them : — Are you of opinion that Mr Wise and Mr Harley intended the agreement made on the Bth February, 1867, to he the only terms upon which the new lease was to be issued ? Answer : No. Or was the new lease to be upon the same terms in every respect as the old one, except as to the price of the beer ? Answer : Yes. Was the beer supplied by the Raglan Brewery to Mrs Wise of fair merchautable quality ? Answer : We have not sufficient evidence to prove that the Raglan Brewery supplied the bad beer. His Honor refused to receive this last answer, and directed the jury to again retire, which they did, and returned in half an hour with the following answer to the last issue — Yes. The case was then adjourned until Thursday at tea o'clock, for argument of counsel.

Which is which? — According to the New Zealand Almanac, Good Friday will this year fall on Saturday, 30th March I On the other hand Lucas' Nelson Almanac says it is on the 19th April. We are surprised at nothing that we read iv these latter days. — Buller ISews. The following instance of a community being " lambed down " is given by .jhe Wanganui Chronicle, which says :— " By the sale of the Mangaporau block of land, a portion of the up-river natives Avere placed in possession of hard cash to the tune of a couple of thousand pounds. The result is, that ever since, the Maori village has presented a perfect saturnalia. In the course of a whole week, out of some two or three hundred inhabitants, there were hardly as many units to be found sober within the length and breadth of the settlement. We are informed on the authority of a gentleman who is in a position to know well the facts ef which he speaks, that, almost without exception, in every native settlement up the Wanganui river the sale of intoxicating liquors by the ' natives is an established feature of trade. On the occasion of the late drinking bout of which we have been speaking, at Iruharama, a European settler who visited the village in the expectation of the settlement of some long outstanding accounts, now that the Maoris were flush of funds, received very scant courtesy, especially from the dispensers of liquor, who had evidently laid themselves out to have the greater part of the purchase money of the block transferred to their pockets. A death under Very melancholy circumstances occurred at Maldon, in Victoria, recently. Two hoys who were out rabbit shooting, found a body lying in the hollow of a iarge tree on au opossum rug. An inquest was held, and the medical witness was of opinion that death had occurred about two months ago. The tissues were completely dried up. Deceased had evidently been about sft 6in in height, his hair black and rather long behind. Prom the appearance of his nails and fingers, he thought deceased had not been accustomed to hard work. His dress was— black cloth coat, grey cloth vest (almost new), and moleskin trousers. He appeared to be about 25 years of age. On a sheet of paper was written, in a very neat hand, in pencil — " Great God, be merciful unto me, a poor, weak, aud sinful creature. Pardon all my sins ; cast me not aside, but cleanse me, for the sake of thy dear Son, who died upon the cross, that even the weakest | might seek pardon of Thee." Aud on the 1 other side, quite legible, but not so well written — "Sensible, but dying. Monday 13th February (sic). Soon be in better world ; too weak to work, and have not a loaf for last three mouths. Very patient, but find starvation slow. You ueed not hold inquest, but please carry remains to Castlemaine. No friends, no money." The Dunedin Age mentions as a noteworthy fact that not a single Irishman or Irishwomen was arrested for drunkenness or any other misdemeanour on Sunday last (St Patrick's Day), although we are assured that the police were unusually vigilant on the occasion. Two Scotchmen and two Englishmen were the only persons, apparently, who had drowned the Shamrock so deeply as to become plenus hacchi. Apropos of the news of Lord Roseherry's approaching marriage (writes "Atlas" in the World) I believe I am correct in stating that Miss Hannah de Rothschild's fortune is estimated at three millions, and that it is settled on herself. After the death of her mother, the Baroness Meyer, she withdrew most, if not all, of her money, from the house. An honest farmer once led his two turkeys into his granary and told them to eat, drink, aud be merry. One of these turkeys was wise, and one foolish. The foolish bird at once indulged excessively in the pleasures of the granary, unsuspicious of the future, but the wise fowl, in order that he might not be fattened and slaughtered, fasted continually, mortified his flesh and devoted himself to gloomy reflections upon the brevity of life. When Thanks-giving approached, the farmer killed both turkeys, and by placing a stone in the interior of the prudent turkey made him weigh more than his plumper brother. Moral — Be happy while you may. — Boston paper. The following letter appears m a late issue of the Otago Daily Times, over the signature of Mr. John Hislop :—" Sir,— Permit me to state, in reference to a paragraph which recently appeared in your columns, that I did not draft the Education Bill of last year, and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, Mr. C. C. Bowen is alone entitled to the credit of having drafted the Bill." It is rumored that a runholder, well known in Canterbury as a man of large capital, conceived such a partiality for one of the ballet girls of the Soldene Opera Company as to offer her his hand, which was accepted. It is believed that both are now iv Wanganui. Contrary to expectation (says the Westport Times) Ted Webber appears to have been nowhere in the sports at Reefton. He has been for some time out of training, and iv the handicapping was overweighted against some good peds. At the Royal Colonial Institute Sir Daniel Cooper, than whom no man is better able to give a history of New South Wales, where he had been a resident for nearly fifty years, made the following remarks, which are equally applicable to New Zealand: — " There can be no mistake about it that Australia's greatest want is people. And why on earth people stop in this country to be starved, and in a miserable climate, I cannot understand. Nobody admires the English more than the colonists; they are more British than the Britons; but why the English stop here to starve is beyond my comprehension. You will hear young people say, ' Oh, the days for fortune making are past.' I would go there as a young man to-morrow, and I could live and make money, and grow rich again. It wants prudence, perseverance, and hard work; not people who go to pick up money in the streets without work. No doubt at all that in those colonies there is as flue a day now as ever there was if people would only go out and use their energies, a little tact, judgment, and perseverance, and they would succeed." We clip the following from the Westport Times: — Jack Ryan, an eccentric character, well known in the Lyell and Westport districts, died in the Westport Hospital on Sunday morning. He had been an in-patient there for three weeks previously. True to his proclivities to the last, the day before his death he got from his bed in the temporary absence of the House Steward and danced a hornpipe for the amusement of the other patients. The pupils of Mr Arthur Brown, at Reefton, have presented him with a watch and chain, accompanied with an address expressive of their esteem for him and regret at his departure. The Olagi Daily Times has been trying its hand at prophesying, aud this is the result: — " Looking forward to the time when Farmer Giles' new-horn son and heir shall attain his majority, in the year of grace 1899, and with his M.A degree of the great Otago University, enter on the possession of a magnificent landed estate, we may indulge ia visions of what New Zealand will then be, aud picture it somewhat in this wise. With a population considerably over three millions, of we shall have at least three chief ports and cities with over two hundred thousand inhabitants in each — Auckland, Wellington, and Dunedin — and the greatest of these will be Dunedin, wbich will be the London, if Wellington he the Liverpool, of New Zealand."

A correspondent of the Westport Times states that the New Sunderland Coal Company have laid bare one seam of hard, bright coal 7ft in thickness, at an elevation of 400 ft above the level of the Waimangavoa bridge, and at a further height of 63ft another seam has just been struck, 14ft in thickness, and which from present appearances indicates an inexhaustible supply of magnificent coal. No additional length of railway line being required, the company are in great hopes of being able to ship their first cargo by the beginning of July next. Never was a man more out of his place, as the ruler of the half-civilised hordes on the Danube, than Prince Milan, or Servia. He was brought up as a private person, in Paris. He is a big, heavy youth. His idea of happiness is to dine at a French restaurant, and then to stroll on the Boulevards, very correctly dressed, with a cigar in his mouth and a light paletot on his arm. Summer and winter he always, when residing iv Paris, had this paletot on his arm. In summer he never had sufficient energy to leave it at home, and in winter never sufficient energy to put it on. Mr Severn (says the Dunedin Times), whose popular lectures on scientific subjects attracted such large audieuces here about nine months ago, has been lecturing at Brisbane on "Galvanism, Electricity, and the Telephone." In the course of his remarks upon the telephone, Mr Severn observed that the brain was in itself a small galvanic battery of some kind or other, in proof of which he said that by means of half-a-dozen sheep's head, freshly decapitated, a Morse's instrument would send a message to Sydney. It ought not to be supposed that the telephone has been invented all of a suddenpicked up, as it were, with a pitchfork. Professor Graham Bell and his father had been for years investigating the human voice and the organisation of the human ear. The lecturer then exhibited a model he had caused to be made, and the instruments of his own manufacture; and explained, as on previous occasions, the method of construction and the principle involved. The sounds which were sent by means of one instrument, he explained, could be multiplied and heard at any number of instruments at the other end; and ordinary fence wires being sufficiently isolated for the purpose, it would be possible for orders to be sent from the head station on a run to any of the out-stations situated near the fence by the use of the telephone. He also stated that by means of the telephone the electric wire could he " tapped " at any part, and messages in transmission read.