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Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1319, 24 November 1880, Page 2

From all parts of the county we hear that water is very much required by the young crops. Until lately the farmers had little to complain of, but the continued drought is likely to have a serious effect upon the crops, unless' the ground is soon moistened by friendly showers. In some places feed is becoming rather scarce, the hot sun having scorched up the fine fresh grass of a few weeks since.

The statement made by the Chairman at the annual meeting of the Waitaki County Council to-day was one of a highly satisfactory nature, as showing the large amount of work that the Council has performed since it was called into existence, and the care with which its funds are disbursed. The statement is published in extmso elsewhere, and it will be seen that. the Council is in equally as good a position as it was twelve months ago, and that in this respect it is in striking contrast to the remainder of the Otago counties—and indeed the majority of the counties in the Colony. The usual practice of the Philharmonic Society will take place this evening in the Volunteer Hall. A full attendance is requested, as there will be only one more practice before the concert which is tq be held on the - Ist December. We have to remind owners of horses that the acceptances for the Oamaru Handicap, Hurdle Handicap, and Publicans' Handicap, to be run at the forthcoming race meeting, close with the Secretary at the Empire Hotel on Saturday next, the 27tli inst., at 0 p.m. Captain Edwin says that had weather is approaching from any direction between west and south and south-east. The glass will rise fast, and there will be considerable sea within 12 hours. Mails for the Australian Colonies close at the Bluff on Friday, 26th inst., ■ at 11.30 a.m. Telegrams will be accepted at the Oamaru office accordingly. The writer under the head of "Scraps " in the Waimate Times says I suppqse it is on the principle of compensation that musical people are proverbially the most socially inharmonious, and it is possibly but another illustration of the working of some law whose result is a sort of general average, that is ail'orded by the conduct of the North Otago Benevolent S .ciety in the matter of the Rev. John Foster. The cleric in question hag doubtless been guilty of excessively bad taste in running down tne Colony as he has done—not to say that he has (doubtless unintentionally) travelled out of the region of fact in penning his vituperations—and under these circumstances a feeling of indignation on the part of colonists is but a natural thing, but for a Benevolent (?) Society to take upon iisblf to give formal expression to the public seflse of wrong, nay, more, to undertake the punishment of the offender, is scarcely the thing which might have been expeoted, but for the fact, or at anyrate the alleged fact, that "it is the unexpected which always happens." If benevolence and charity are interchangeableterms, the apostolic definition found in the 13th chap, of Ist Corinthians must purely need revision, or else there is a difference of opinion between St. Paul and the N. 0.8.5., for the former speaks of charity as being "not easily provoked; bearing all things, and enduring all things." It doesn't seem then quite the thing for a Benevo : ent Society to be the instrument of Mr. Fogter's punishment, does it? and query, setting the question of propriety on one side, whether the Society has not paid the offender ! too great a compliment by taking so much notice of hiiji. ! The Citizen Cadets are notified to meet for drill every Wednesday evening, at halfpast seven o'clock, in the Artillery gunshed. A singular relic of the poet Burns was sold recently at a London auction .room. It is a poem entitled "The Friar's Curse," written on two panes of glass that once formed part of a summci'-house in the grounds of Friar's Curse, near Dumfries, the seat of Mr. Robert Riddel}, of Glen Eiddell. The poem, which is published in C'urrie's edition of Burns, begins—w 4 Stranger, go ; Heaven be thy !' Quoth the Bedesman of Niilside. The origiual glass has been inserted between two pieces of plate-glass, and placed in a strong oak frame. President Hayes,. speaking at a soldiers' meeting at Columbus, congratulated his hearers upon the measure of prosperity which was bringing over such a tide of immigration as never before kuown in the United States, the only country of the globe which constantly gained population from every other. The .President dwelt at length upon the necessity of fostering education, and said that the Federal Government should supplement local measures, wherever deficient, by donations of lands, and even by direot ap* propriations from the Federal Treasury. Report says that Mr. George Cowie, general manager of the Colonial Bank, Dunedin, has lately purchased " Caijore," the property of Mrs. Muir, Sydney, for LSOOO.