Page 4 Advertisements Column 1

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIV, Issue 110, 9 May 1879, Page 4

A very favorable view of the Bey. James Buller's book called " Forty Tears in New Zealand : including a Personal Narrative, an Account of Marridom, and of Christianisation and Colonisation of the Country," appears in the Sydney Mail, which says ':— •" Mr Buller cannot be charged with having produced a book which it will ' be ' a weariness to the flesh to wade through. The large personal element by which it is characterised will effectually prevent it from taking a permanent place amongst books on colonial themes. For the author appears to have had a double object. In the first place he had evidently tried — and successfully, be it said— to produce a book which should give pleasure fco his large circle of friends and acquaintances." . . . For the most part the book is a light, crisp, graphic narrative. Jf we were disposed to be hypercritical it would be." easy to point out crudeness of style and errors in grammar, but the author disarms criticism of that sort by his transparent purpose to simply diffuse the information from his lengthy and varied experiences. Mr Buller is representative of a small class of men who are fast passing away— the old missionaries, explorers, traders, and other colonists, who played their parts in the early days of British colonisation in the South Seas. It is not a pleasant thought that such veterans should die without packing their hardly earned knowledge into books for the future historians. The charm of such a work as the one before us lies in the fact that the author has something to say. He has seen and heard things which feY coloniafcd now-a-days see and hear, a'tidhence thereis a freshrless in His unpretending pages which no mere bookmaker/ could simulate. To write 'another book of equal interest would bean impossibility to hiinja'nd no doubt his literary ambition Has completely fulfiled itself in giving to the world a transcript of the most notable incidents of his forty years in New Zealand." The amount of counterfeit coin in circulation in the United States (according to the " New York Sun,") is said to be 2,000,000d015., besides the great □ amber of genuine pieces made fraudulent by the removal of part of tho metal. Wholly epurious coins are almost always lighter than the good once, but a deception described by the " Scientific American," is a five-dollar piece made of gold an! silver, and rarely costing the counterfeiter more than three dollars forty cents, each. Various ingenious modes are uaed in stealing gold from coins. The most common is (< sweating," which is done by using the coin as an anode in an electro.plating bath, the gold being abstracted from it and deposited on another surface. As much as^wodoliara" wdrth of gold can be taken in that way from a double eagle without making a difference that is rarely detected, except by weight. A les3;BeienV!fip>)lan is to file the smooth parts of the surface, and re-buruiah the apots. The moat extensive fraud is '♦splitting." The operator saws the ooin through neatly, gouges out the centre abtil only a thin shell ia left, | substitutes a base metal, and joins the parts again. The ring of the coin is destroyed^ and the weight lessened. Sometimes holes are bored into the edge, and pltigs of lead pot in. We have beard a great deal lately, (says the " Bradford Chronicle, ') about reforming the Coroners' Court. Reforms are certainly necessary. The verdict of felo de-se requires reforming out of existence. It refers to the old barbarian, and yet legal idea of a man who commits felony on himself. "Murder is felony,- arid if a man murders himself be is a felon of hia- own life." Such ideas may have been tolerated a hundred years ago, but io these days of science tbey are simply nonsense. We used to bang a boy for stealing a fourpenny piece, but a bircb, rod to-day