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Poverty Bay Standard, Volume III, Issue 270, 8 May 1875, Page 2

Sir Donald M'Lean is engaged in initiating the purchase of a stretch of country lying between the Upper Wairoa and the Patutahi Block. Picnic, one of Count Lagrange’s racehorses now in training at Newmarket, England, some months ago had a broken leg set by a veterinary surgeon. The horse is now perfectly sound, and will probably figure upon the racecourse during the coming season. So perfect a cure is said to be unprecedented.

Tn the Wellington Bankruptcy Court, in the case of some bankrupts who were contractors, His Honor Judge Johnston said he wished it to be generally understood, it being a matter of much public importance just now, that if people without capital took contracts at too low a rate, and thus kept other men with capital and more experience from taking such contracts, hence causing much public loss and inconvenience, they must not consider it at all relieve them of liabilities so incurred. The Court had power to inflict a substantial punishment for such conduct when proven, and it was very necessary for the protection of the public that it should exercise that power when tho case was a bad one. New Pastime. —The latest Parisian parlour pastime is the “ lottery alphabet," which it is said for downright fun cannot be excelled. The mode of playing it is thus described :—The letters of a dozen alphabets, printed on little squares of ivory or other material, are placed in a basket and shaken up. They are then distributed in equal numbers to the players, who are bound under pains and penal ties as rigorously applied as the laws of the Medes and Persians, to compose at least one sentence, often a droll question, and a happy’ reply; if unable to do so, if a rule of syntax or prosody be violated or no attention paid to the right placing of P's and Q's, as far as the Academy has published. its orthodox . dictionary at least, after centuries of labour, tbe law must, take its course. Some of the blunders, we are told, provide laughter fora month.