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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 127, 29 May 1878, Page 2

The following despatch to the Governor is published :— " Downing-street, 14th February, 1878. My Lord,-— I have not failed to notice with the greatest satisfaction the accounts which have reached me, chiefly from unofficial sources, of tbe munificence which has been displayed in so many of Her Majesty's colonial possessions, in the contributions which hare been made towards the funds of the relief of the sufferers by the famine in India. The liberality which has been shown in the colonies has far exceeded even that eviuced on previous occasions when calls of humanity have made themselves heard throughout the most distaut portions of the British Empire, and have beeu peculiarly gratifying from the spontaneous generosity of all classes of Her Majesty's subjects, and I shall be obliged if you will be so good as to inform me what have beeu the actual amounts contributed by the colony under your government, and to supply me at the same time with auy information on the subject which you may consider to be of interest.— -(Signed) M. E. Hicks Beach."

A Te Aute correspondent of a Napier paper writes :—" The* great chief Hapuka lies in a precarious state. There is a gteat gathering of Maoris at the pah. The opinion is that he cannot last much longer, ysfc, although dying, he is constantly having accounts sent out to those who are indebted to him, clearly showing that tho ruling passion is strong in death." The " Edger girls " (says the Herald) give fair promise of being the most renowned of their sex for scholastic attainments iv New Zealand. Not twelve months ago the degree of B.A. was formally presented to Kate Edger, the daughter of the Rev Samuel Edger, of this city, and now the telegraph tells of her sister Margaret having wou a University Scholarship, and thus makiug a long step towards tlie high honor which her sister secured. The New Zealand Herald says i— » " A company is about to be formed at Nelson, for the purpose of preserving fruits of Various kinds and the preparation of jams aud jellies. The yearly expenditure by New Zealand for imported fruits is about £60,000. This large drain upon our resources ought to be stopped, when the North Island especially is so well adapted for the growth of all kind of fruit, even those Varieties far too tender to be cultivated in tbe Southern provinces The true way to put an end to this annual drain of cash from us, is to plant plenty of really good varieties of fruit trees. Many of the trees planted in former years are of a kind that yield fruit which is anything but a saleable commodity. As much care should be exercised iv the selection of good fruit trees as in tte choice of good sheep and cattle to breed from." The Ashburton Echo writing on the same subject says* — "The prospectus is issued of a jam and Fruit Preserving Company iv Nelson. The provisional directors comprise some of the best names in the city and district of Nelson, and from the splendid fruit growing capabilities of Blind Bay coast, we should say the venture ought to be a profitable one. Should this venture succeed, such au impetus will be given to fruit cultivation in Nelson as will make that pretty littlo city the garden of New Zea'and.'' The annual meeting of the Albion Brewing Company was held at Dunedin on the 4th April. The directors reported a loss on the year's transactions of £ 157 1 . The Chairman (the Hou. W. 11. Reynolds), in moving the adoption of the report, said .-—"Last year, as the mouthpiece of ti,e directors, I spoke very hopefully of the prospects of the Company, and from the then appearance we were justified in doing so. We thought that from that time forward we would be in a position to turn out a first-class beer. We sampled it in this room, and everyone pronounced ifc excellent. We had the assurance of our brewer that the beer would keep, and of our travellers that there would be no difficulty iv eft'ectiug sales to the extent of an average of lOOhhds a week. These results have nofc been realised. The sales for the year of all classes ouly amount to 1397hhds., i being a little under au average of fcwentysevon per week, and out of these we have had returns to the extent of £315 in value, aud our travellers have made allowances for bad beer to the tune of £764 I3s Bd. Thus the returns and the allowances have equalled about 17 per cent, on the gross sales. No oue cau more sincerely regret the results of our past year's transactions than do your directors, but all are large original shareholders, and had every incentive to produce better results. We have devoted to the butiness every attention which ifc was possible for any body of directors to do; hardly a day has passed but what either I or oue of my co-directors have visited these premises, and from time to time we have come under considerable personal pecuniary liabilities, so that if we have not produced better results, our exertions warranted at least our looking .for thorn. A_ftftrmnst.-liinf.urp rnnci/lprtltion we have to come the unanimous conclusion that the business cannot be! profitably carried ou, and therefore ought to be discontinued. John Smith, a young fellow about twenty years of ago, was brought up at the Wellington Police Court on remand, charged with breaking and entering the house of Mis 3 Greenwood, on the Terrace. Miss Ellen S. Greenwood said that she and her sister had a school at Te Aro, but lived on the Terrace. On the night of Sunday last the household retired to rest about 10 or 1030 o'clock, there being two female servants iv the house, besides witness and her sister. Witness slept in the same room as her sister, on the groundfloor of the house. About ten minutes to 2 o'clock on Monday morning witness was aroused by her sister, who said she was sure that some mau was in the house. Witness then rose and lit a candle, and went into she lobby at the foot of ihe stairs, and called out " Who is upstairs ?" She received no reply, but returned to the bedroom, where she put on her dressing-gown and got her revolver. She then walked back to the lobby, holding the revolver before her, and carrying the candle in her other hand. A man was standing at the foot of the stairs, and he cried out in a startled voice, "Don't shoot, lam not going to hurt you." Witness replied, *' You scoundrel, what are you doing here ?" when he answered, " I have been drinking," and then muttered somethiug about having made a mistake. She theu said, " You have been trying to rob the house," to which he replied that he had not. In reply to a question, he said he had entered by one of the windows. She told him to follow her, and preceded him to the front door, walking sideways, saying "You will know better than to come here again." Miss Annia Greenwood theu came out of the bedroom, and followed them. Witness noticed the man particularly. He was short lika the prisoner, but had on a pilot coat, which made him appear stouter ; otherwise his hat and clothes were the same now as then. His boots were on the door-mat. He picked them up, and put them on when he got outside. He asked if he might take a book which he said belonged to him, but j witness replied " Certaiuly not; you may be | thankful that you have not a bullet through 1 your head." The book did nofc belong to i witness. It had the name of Moss inside, | and there were six or eight photographs in it. To the best of her belief the prisoner was the man who was in the house. This was the second attempt to rob the house within a fortnight. A photograph in a frame had disappeared, as well as some plum cake which was on the drawing-room table.— Miss Annie Greenwood said she was^awakened by some one walking about in the room above. From the stealthy tread she concluded that it was a robber, and woke her sister. From this point her evidence was corroborative of that of the last witness. — Prisoner was further remanded until Tuesday. To show the wild speculation now going on, we may quote the following extract from a private letter from a gentleman in Christchurch to a friend in Auckland. He writes: — " The farmers have dove splendidly this year, and so we are all safe for the present, and speculation is still at fever heat. Fancy 6000 acres of land at Makikihi being sold at £9 per acre, iv one line, by Mr G. Parker to Rhodes and Hassell, and re-sold in farms, at an average of £14 immediately, or a profit of £30,000 for a fortnight's work! The surveyors are kept busy everywhere, and any kind of unimproved land seems safe afc £3 or £4 per acre. The same racket is going on with town lands. Lots miles out of townsome adjoiniug the Papanui parsonage— sold lately at £400 per aero, which were bought a year ago at £80. This sort of thing I do not believe in. No failures of any consequence have yet happened, but we all believe this high pressure cannot last."

The " Loafer in the Street" — the humorous contributor to the Christchurch Press— quotes from the Napier Telegraph a paragraph, and makes some jocose deductions therefrom. This is tho paragraph :— !'A man named Fergus Cleary, a bootmaker, was struck the other evening during an altercation with a hammer on the forehead by a man named Shaunahan. He is now suffering from brain fever, and lies in a dangerous state. His depositions as to the nature of the quarrel were taken by a magistrate." " The Loafer " remarks, " There are a variety of deductions to be got from the above. Of these, two rise prominently before the reader. One, that local writers should be, however regardless of truth, a little observant of grammar; the other, to avoid altercations with a hammer. From the time of Sisera downwards, the most high-toucd historians all agree that hammering a fellowman, ahd probably a free elector, is a mistake. They also tell us that being hammered is a still greater error." France, feeling that she is not nearly so well fnrnisb.d with railway communication in the interior of the Country as in Britain, has resolved to supply the want. A graud scheme of public works has been introduced in the Chamber of Deputies by M. de Freycinet, the Minister for that department. It is contemplated by M. de Freycinefc's bill that the State shall construct 9000 miles of new railways, at an average cost of £13,500 per mile, or £120,000,000 in all, together wilh a further expenditure of £40,000,000 iv makiug hew canals, deepening rivers so as to extend the navigable part of the them to their source, improving harbors, and constructing new ones where required, for the ready shipment of the produce and other merchandise of the districts. Some of the proposed railways are for purely local purposes, while others are primarily military lines for the defence of the couutry. The railways are proposed to be constructed before the harbors and the deepening of the rivers, &c. The money required is to be raised by an internal loan upou the security of fche new railways, in addition to that of the State itself. Ifc is to bo raised by instalments extending over ' the next ten years, by the end of which period ifc is expected that the new railways will be fully constructed. The repayment of the loan is to be paid by instalments. M. Freycinet estimates that the French peoplo save £60,000,000 per annum, and thinks they will have no difficulty in lending the State £120,000,000, for railway construction, out of ten years' savings. The Portland Guardian has now on show afc 1 the office three remarkable white potatoes j taken from about an acre of white and red. They were grown by Mr John Gorry, Condah. The three potatoes together weigh 151bs; the largest weighs 6lbs; the second 51bs; and the third 4lbs. The North British Agriculturist says :— " We have reason to believe that the Earl of Dunmore has lately been offered 10,000 guineas for his handsome two-year-old daughter of the celebrated Duchess 97 and 6th Duke of Geneva. The heifer is nearly eight months gone in calf to the beautiful young Oxford Duchess bull now in'service afc Dunmore, and the only condition accompanying the above extraordinary offer (made by a well-known English breeder) is, that the animal should produce a live heifer calf." Walker, the trauce medium, whose impositions were exposed at Auckland and Wellington, is now performing at Hamilton, a Victorian up-country town, and the local paper is full of letters discussing its merits or demerits, the imposition or genuineness of his profusion, &c. The " trance medium " was invited to lecture at Hamilton and in obedience to the request he journeyed thither, aud took up his abode under the roof of Dr Rohner, a noted spiritualist of the district. On the evening following his arrival a private seance was held, and Walker was introduced to the ladies and gentlemen present by his host with the "following- significant words:— "l have thoroughly gauged the depths of Mr Walker's mind, and can assure you that he displays the most lamentable ignorance, on subjects that every schoolboy ought to be acquainted with." During one of the trance discourses Walker used the words " supralapsarianism "" and " infralapsarianism," and thereupon the astute Doctor asked for their meauings. The Rev Mr Stuart, whose medium Walker professed to be, evaded the question, and failed to answer it. Dr Rohner, after putting further tests to Walker, wrote to the Press, asserting that; he was nofc a trance medium, but " a designing swindler and impostor of the deepest dye." The human vehicle for the expression of the Rev Mr Stewart's post mortem views on things mundane and subjects metaphysical has shaken the dust of- Hamilton from off the soles of bis feefc, and taken his departure for " fresh fields and pastures new." Glass-ball shooting (says an English paper) which has hitherto been regarded as a purely American substitute for pigeon - shooi ing, will possibly obtain a footing in this country, for we gather that an order from Messrs Williams and Powell, of Liverpool, for thirty traps and several thousand of Paine's patent feather-filled balls, has been received by the latter, a well-known American pigeon shot, and inventor of these appliances. Captain Bogardus, too, another well-known American pigeon shot, inventor of glass ball trains, has received an order from England for 10,000 glass halls and twenty-four traps. The gallant captain, ifc may be mentioned, has rather a large " shoot " on hand this week, as he has matched himself to break 5000 glass balls iv 500 miuutes at Gilmore's Gardens, New York. His capabilities at glass-ball shooting are undoubted. Afc an exhibition of his skill in thia line, given by him at Philadelphia recently, he broke 300 glass balls in 2 1 J- minutes, and v/ith a pistol, springing his own traps, broke 17 out of 28 glass balls.