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Poverty Bay Standard, Volume III, Issue 410, 16 September 1876, Page 2

One hundred pounds of good hay is equal in value, as horse feed, to 591bs. of oats, 541bs. of barley, 1051bs. of wheat bran, 275 lbs. of carrots, and 57 lbs. of maize. Beware of “ Smashers.” The London correspondent of the Otago Witness writes : —lf any of your readers have offered to them a sovereign purporting to have been coined at the Royal Mint iu 1875, let them refuse to take it, for it must bo spurious, no sovereignshaving been coined in London during last year. The Sydney Mint, however, issued no less than 2,122,000 sovereigns, and tho Melbourne Mint 1,888,000 more. The London Mint, on the other hand, was the only one whtch coined half-sovereigns, of which it issued 516,240. Mr Hugh Brown, of the N. E. Valley, Dunedin, with his wife and daughter, arrived at Balmoral on the evening of June 6th. They were conveyed to the Castle from the station at Ballater in a waggonette specially sent for them by the Queen. They arrived just i n time for the Queen’s birthday ball at Balmoral, which took place that night, having been postponed on account of the death of the Princess Christian’s infant, Her Majesty, the Princess Beatrice, and the Court officials at Balmoral were present, and special mention was made in many of the leading papers of England, as well as Scotland, of the fact of the New Zealand Browns joining in the festivities. Such is fame. The dancing was kept up till long after daylight had re-appeared, and noble patrons of the ball had disappeared.

Total Eclipse of the Sun. —Mr TheophilusHaleinarecent lecture says Theeclipse, which will takeplaceou the 18t September, willbe total over a long oblique line from about 58 south latitude to 145 east. The line of the totality of the eclipse will be very narrow, varying from about fifteen miles where the moon is near the horizon, to about fifty'-five miles in width where the moon is vertical, and her shadow is consequently widest. The time during which the total eclipse will last will vary from 29 seconds to 1 minute and 48 seconds. Here (in Auckland) about one-half of the sun’s disc will be covered. The first contact will be a few minutes after 8 o’clock in the morning (Telegraph time), the greatest phase will be reached at nearly 9 minutes past nine, and the last contact will be at 1011. 17m. 24 sec. At the East Cape the eclipse will be considerably larger, nearly two-thirds of the sun’s diameter will be covered. Although solar eclipses are very numerous, averaging one or two a year, of which nearly one-third are total or annular, they are very’ rare at a particular place. It had been calculated from the year 1715, no total eclipse had passed over London for 575 years, and only- one had been seen there since (1836). In all the twentieth century, that only two total eclipses of the sun would bo seen in England, one in January, 1927, which would cross the North of England.

Miss Harriet Martineau died at Ambleside on June29tb, aged 74. She was the descendant of a Protestant family driven from France by the revocation of tho Edict of Nantes. She wrotemany novels, talcs for young people, and a “ History of England during the Thirty Years Peace." She was one of the eight proprietors of the Times. Highlanders have a habit, when talking their English, such as it is, of interjecting the personal pronoun “ he” where not required, such as “The King he has come," instead of “ The King has come." Often, in consequence, a sentence or an expression is rendered sufficiently ludictona, as the sequel will show. A gentleman says he has had the pleasure of listening to a clever man, the Rev. Mr (let his locality be a secret), and he recently began his discourse thus : —“ My’ friends you will find tho subject of discourse this afternoon in the First Epistle General of the Apostle Peter, fifth chapter and eighth verse, in the words, ‘ The devil he goeth about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. 1 Now my friends, with your leave, we will divide the subject of our text to-day into four heads. Firstly, we shall endeavour to ascertain, Who the devil he was. Secondly, we shall inquire into his geographical position, namely, Where the devil he was, Where the devil he was going. Thirdly—and this of a personal character—Who the devil he was seeking. And fourthly and lastly, we shall endeavour to solvo a question which has never been solved yet, What the devil he was roaring about."