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New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5323, 18 April 1878, Page 2

To-morrow being Good Friday the New Zealand Times will not bo published on that day.'

Notice is given .that the Corporation offices will be closed for the Faster holidays from Good Friday to Easter Monday inclusive. There will he a sitting in bankruptcy at the Supreme Court this morning at half-past 10 o’clock, and in banco at noon. At the Supreme Court yesterday, before the Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Richmond, an appeal was heard la the matter of Valentine v. Desmond, oh a case stated from the decision of the dissident Magistrate’s Court at Wellington. Mr. Hart and Mr. Ollivier appeared for the respective parties. Their Honors referred the case back to the Court below, as it did not appear to have been stated to them with sufficient clearness.

We understand that Mr. P. A. Buckley has. purchased,'through Messrs. Bethune and Hunter, the.property known as theLyella Bay Station, belonging to the 1 estate of the late Mr. Alexander Sutherland, containing 500 acres freehold land, being sections Nos. 1,2, 3,4, and 6; each lOOhcres. The exact price given has not transpired,' hut we have 'good reason to believe that the sum to be paid is considerably under £15,000. ■ ■

; The ordinary meeting of the City Council '.will be held this..,evening, when business of considerable importance will be brought forward. The following notices of motion have been given By Councillor 'Fisher, —That the various banking institutions be invited to tender for the city banking account ■ for the next, three years.” By Councillor Allan, —- That the Council do appoint an officer to hold the .joint offices of water-rate collector and water inspector, and that all water used 101stables, &c., or for washing outside of buildings, or for watering gardens, be classed under the regulatidus for the 1 use- of water for machinery, &c.” By Councillor Allan,—“That all documentary evidence brought, before the Te Aro Reclamation Committee; and bearing on the question of the present'actual value of the sea frontages to the owners of Te Aro foreshore acres, be laid before the Council, together with any documents establishing any prohibitory power vested in the said owners as against the city extension.” Mr. C. Hausmann, the late landlord of the Criterion Hotel, Hamilton-quay, died somewhat suddenly yesterday morning at the Melbourne Hotel, Willis-etreet.: : The deceased had been unwell for some time past, and was under medical treatment; therefore, we understand, it will not.be thought necessary by the authorities that a coroner’s inquest should be held.

A'cricket match -will' be played on Easter Monday iu Whitehead’s paddock, Ingestrestreet, between elevens chosen from the grocers and drapers of the city. The teams chosen are as follows Grocers—“ Messrs. H. Hollis, A. Brown, A. Wilson, ,W. Dobson, W. Deveuport, H. Dodd, W. Marshall, T. Eusar, C. Mitchell, W. Acher, and F. W. Cato. Drapers—Messrs. A. Berry, E. Hare, Hare, F. Muir, A. Murray, H. Bennett, W. Broadbent, W. Simpson, Brown, F. Mayhew, Bossiter ; emergency . Gumming.

A cricket match between the Thorndon and United’Clubs will beplayed : on the Basin Keserve on Good Friday. 'L’he following are the names of the United O.'O. : —McGirr, E. Nation, F. Nation, Drydeni Keefe, Chatwin, Brown, Hunt, Howe, Iggulden, Wylie ; emergency, Emeny scorer, G. Gamble ; umpire, G. B. Kelly. Wickets will be pitched at 10 o’clock sharp. 'A special train will run on Saturday between Wellington and No. 3.'.platform,' Upper Hutt, for the convenience of persons desiring to {inspect, the. suburban sections at Wallaceville, which will be offered for sale ; on the 25th hist, by Mr. Wallace, from whom cards can be obtained entitling them to a railway ticket;: The train will leave Wellington at ,11.10 a.m., returning from No. 3 platform at 3.45 p.m‘. The Nelson and Wellington- cricket match was celebrated by a dinner at the Metropolitan Hotel’last evening. Mr. G. E.; Barton occupied the chair, and Mr. Mace the vice-chair. Aii excellent spread was laid by . Host Beattie, and the’ usual loyal arid patriotic toasts were done justice to., The Chairman proposed the toast ,of .** The Nelson; Team,” .which was responded to hy Dr. Canney; anrlDr, Oanney proposed the toast of “The Wellington Team,’ which was. responded to by. Mr.- J. A. Salmon. A- very pleasant evening was spent, and the IS elson team were seen away by the Wellingtou men at midnight,; •> ’ .

Compressed air on being released from pressure can be cooled down to a very low temperature by . throwing''it into .a jet of ' cold water. Advantage has- been taken of this fact in contriving a new refrigerator or freezing chamber, and-we'are'informed that at a trial-which' took place with' a view to commercial purposes, “ in half an hour after commencing' tO’Work the machine, the thermometer within: the freezing chamber stood at twenty degrees below zero j the interior of the chamber was covered with hoarfrost half an inch thick, bottles of .water* were frozen solid, and the general temperature of the room in which the freezing chamber stands was 'reduced to thirty degrees Fahrenheit.*’ It is clear that'by this invention a very cheap way of- producing ice and maintaining coolness has become available; and that it should have been. adopted by a company for use on‘board ship to keep meat fresh during the voyage- froni Canada is what might be expected. - Bearing in mind that in April of tho present - year the United States sent to England more than eight million pounds of meat, the importance of the new cooling method will be appreciated. Moreover, it may be ; applied to many other purposes which require a low temperature. i. . ?■ A , ‘sah' 2 'Mtaiifcr ;£ dccWed'i , hc®atly. ' A’man' named Michael ‘if Wgap ? - years, a resident of Lothiau-street, Hothara, was work- , ingj at -a .store in .Queen,-stredtd wheir he saw »a bottle, rWhich s die _ supposed itp! jcontain wine. .Without' staying to aacortoln-if such were the case,; ho; puk tho’. 'bottle to ibis .inputh a small quantity. The bottle 'proved to con tain■. carbolic acid y ;and: the : cor-' erosive poison took immediate-.effect. He was at once taken to tho .Melbourne,: Hospital, where every endeavor was made to save life, .but 1 without avail,, died hi ,groat agony in about thirty minutes. 1

Messrs. Barton and Fitzberbert, solicitors, have dissolved partnership. . % ‘ Tenders are invited up to the IXth May fertile supply and delivery of printed railwaystationery. A meeting of creditors in the estate of .T. T. Love, plumber, was /held yesterday, at which Mr. Berry was appointed trustee. Mr. E. W. Mills guaranteed 7s 6d in the £. The time-table of the .trains running on Easter Monday on the Wellington and Masterton line is published in another column.-' An extra train will also be put on on Good Friday, between Wellington and the Lower Hutt.

Many people have wondered that in their despair the Tmksdid not unfurl the Standard; of the Brophet. Their forbearance was a.necessity. According to the' Gazettcdc V Aliening ne du Nord, it is no longer in the possession of the Porte. An Italian traveller is declared to have stolen it, unobserved by the keepers of the Mosque, and the relic is now in the Turin Museum. The 'i'hanrd Herald thus refers to the recent speech of Sir Cracroft Wilson :—“Sir Cracroft Wilson's speech to the Cheviot electors at Waikari, is one of the most comical political addresses that we ever read. , The gallant knight must either be totally indifferent to public opinion, or else he must be so blinded by self-conceit that he does not know when he is making himself a laughing-stock. A great part of his speech is taken up by abuse of the House of Representatives, and attempts to show that it has never been fit for a gentleman to be in it, since he, Sir Cracroft, left it. So long as he was in it, he says, lie was the policeman of the House, and when his eye caught the Speaker’s not a tongue dared to wag in a rowdy or improper manner. After indulging in a vast amount of this kind of silly, egotistical, bombast, he. seems suddenly to have remembered that though decrying the House he yet was a candidate for election to it. He therefore proceeded to explain why he was anxious to enter an Assembly, which, is not fit for gentlemen. His reason is an odd one truly. It is that Lord Normauby lias been attached, and that it is the, duty of every man of family and education to come forward to assist him. He goes further. He is prepared to ‘ tight for Lord Normauby, if necessary.’ What a pugnacious old fire-eater he is, to be sure. On a former occasion he wanted to ‘go into the field with a halter round his neck,’ and fight for the provinces. Now ho wants to fight for Lord Normauby—who, by-the-bye, only needs assistance on account of his connection with the abolition Ministry. We are told that Sir Cracroft Wilson is a gentleman by birth and education; but certainly no one would suppose so from bis public behavior. The veriest vulyairc riche, the merest ‘counter-jumper’ in the country could not conduct himself more like a cad than he does. Fancy any man pretending gentle breeding bawling out- to a public meetiugof twelve electors that he is a gentleman, a man of good family and position, aud that nothing but the necessity for fighting for Lord Normauby would induce such a swell to mix with the low, common fellows in the House of. Representatives ! If that is how gentlemen conduct themselves, we should very much prefer to be a cad. There is a slory told of a bumptious snob telling a person with whom he had a difference that lie was ‘no gentleman.’ ‘lndeed,’ remarked-the other, ‘ are you a gentleman ?’ ‘ Certainly,’ was the answer, ‘lam every inch a gentleman. ‘Oh, then, I am glad I am not one,’ was the quiet rejoinder. A gentleman who forgets his gentility is infinitely more caddish than the greatest cad.” A delicious piece of “ pie” was nearly being served up to the readers of a Liverpool paper the other day. The previous evening; its reporter had to attend a meeting at a Wesleyan chapel for the conversion of the Hebrews to Christianity, after which he reported the addresses given by General H. Y. D. Scott to the Polytechnic Society on the conversion of sewage into lime and cement. In the printer's hands the folios got mixed up, and the report read :—“ The chairman, after the meeting had been opened with prayer, explained that the conversion of the Jews was one of the greatest works that could engage the attention of our sanitary authorities. Filtration was the most perfect method that could be adopted for purification, but a filter bad its limits. There was a .popular, notion that the ■ sewage contained a vast amount of wealth, but the sludge must.be taken out of it for purposes of irrigation, as it otherwise choked the pores of the land, and they were a wandering face spread oyer the whole face of the habitable globe. They were denied the inimitable blessings of Christianity, which might be counted by thousands of tons per annum allowed to run to waste,, when by a judicious admixture of lime aud clay, the benighted Hebrews who sat in darkness might easily be converted into lime aud cement for building purposes, and if thus deodorised, after being first dried and burned in a kiln, this ancient race would once more take its proud position among the nations of the world.”

The abrupt change from bright sunlight to the intense darkness of a mine often causes a temporary blindness where the journey from the top to the bottom of the mine is made quickly. To allo.w the miners to recover their sight, it is the custom in some mines to have a well-lighted whitewashed room at the foot of the shaft, where the miners can sit while recovering the use of their eyes. To obviate this delay it is suggested that if one eye is closed for a moment or two before entering the pit, and kept closed until the bottom of the shaft is reached, on opening the eye the miner will be able to see distinctly the moment the lower darkness is reached. This custom is already carried out by miners iu Mexico, who come to the daylight and then return at once, keeping one eye closed during their brief excursion into the sunlight, and thus find no inconvenience in the change from dark to light or from light to dark. , An important advance has been made towards solving the problem of illumination, at sea by an adaptation of what is known as the Holmes’ distress signal, in the form of a shot, for illuminating purposes, to he fired from mortars at ranges varying from five hundred to two’ thousand five hundred yards. These signals possess the remarkable property of emitting a very powerful white light the moment they come into contact with the water, and when once ignited are absolutely inextinguishable by either wind or water, and burn with a persistency that is almost incredible, thirty or forty minutes being an average duration. The shot containing this light is constructed so as to be buoyant upon the water, and, at the same time, with sufficient rigidity of form to withstand the concussion of, the powder. Upon striking the water at the required rauge, the shot, floating up to the surface, immediately bursts into a brilliant flame with great illuminating power. Half-a-dozen of these shots f red from an ironclad or gunboat would effectually surround her with an impassable cordon of light at any required range, and by such a device the enemy’s movements of attahk would become plainly discernible, and any attempt to break through the illuminated zone of light be at once detected, however dark the night.

Tho American public libraries bid fair at no distant day to equal all but those of first rank in Europe ; they are year by year increasing in number, magnitude, and value. Mr. Horner, tho librarian of the State Library at Albany, in a recent report, gives some valuable information respecting* the increase of libraries iu the country generally, which he represents as being truly astonishing.- In ,the year 1800 there were but 49 libraries in the.. United 'States,’’ containing in the aggregate ! 80,000 volumes. There are now in the.country 3682 libraries, , and of these 2240 have been organised since 3850. All the libraries contain 13,000,000 volumes, not counting those in common and Sunday schools. The public libraries okthe State’ 'of ■ New ‘York—627 in number, of, more than 300 volutties : each—contain in , all more than 2,000,000 r volumes, pf which 1,000,00 p volumes are to lie ’found in Hew Yoik alone, , A correspondent’'of -the-New York Post that the wages of hovisehold servants increase from year to ; ycar, while wages of all other kinds of labor decline.

i “Au amusing and highly successful telephone experiment was made at Wishaw lately. Mr. Mitchell, draper, has a theory that “ all the . talk' about magnetism and electricity hr connection with the telephone is merely to hoodwink the public.” All that is required to conduct sound, he says, is. merely a connection of.“ any kind ” between the bells. 'Jo illustrate this, he supplied himself with a ,couple of old tin coffee-canisters aud a twopenny .ball., of- twine, arid, along v.-ith a-number of friends, went to the Public Park to experiment. L A hole was bored iu the bottom of each of the coffee-canisters, and the twine being opened out (about 200 yards), a canister was fixed to each end, with; a. common shirt button to prevent the cord from slipping. Mr. Mitchell now announced the : telephone to be in working order, and applying bis mouth to oue of the canisters, a newspaper reporter put his ear to the other, and was immediately greeted, .iu clear aud distinct tones, with “Howdo you do ?” A regular conversation was then carried on for about a quarter'of an hour. Several songs were sung, and in such as'“ Aide! Langsyne ” the words were clear and distinct ; while in songs with rollicking" airs, such as “ Paddy, says she, hut yon bother me,” the words, from the rapid succession in which they followed each other, were not so easily made out. In the evening the same “instrument” was tested iu houses on opposite aides of the street, aud the result was equally successful. It may be stated,, for the benefit of those who wish to try the experiment, that the canisters used were a little larger than an imperial pint measure ; but any size will d», and the thinner the tin the better the effect. Cord of any description is suitable for a connection, aud a few knots here and there have no injurious effects.