NEWS OF THE DAY.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2455, 31 January 1881, Page 2

NEWS OF THE DAY.

An adjourned ordinary meeting of the Borough Council will take place to-night at the usual hour.

A Maori and a lad have been arrested on suspicion of firing the haystacks of Mr Wright, East Taranaki.

• A laboring man named Timothy Fitzgerald, was drowned yesterday while bathing in the Waiho river, about 8 miles from Waimate. The body was recovered and conveyed to the Criterion Hotel where it awaits an inquest,

A Southland telegram states that on Saturday, while some boys were bathing in the Aparima, a son of Mr Hugh Molloy, aged ten years, was carried out by the current and drowned.

A Parnell correspondent writes as follows to the “Auckland Star’’ of Jan *2l: “ While I was riding home the other night I saw what one might call a woman chase. There were two boys and one woman chasing a girl about eighteen, and she was running for her life, and well she might, as they wanted to practice haircutting on her which they did, and cut both the skin as well as the hair in places. They then performed another thing and that was to scald her feet with boiling water to prevent her from moving about. After this they promised her that she was to receive another punishment in the course of three days. The police should enquire into this.

The Eoyal Engineer photographers have recently performed a clever feat. It was determined lately by the military authorities to endeavor to “ stalk” a ballon in the air, with a view to discover how far an enemy’s tiro would be dangerous to the aeronaut. With this view one of the war ballons was sent up near Dungeness some weeks ago, of course with no occupant in the car, an I a military photographer was instructed to depict the result of the experiment in his camera. The latter was so far successful that heat any rate managed to get an impression of the bursting shell and collapsing balloon upon his plate. The balloon was premitted to rise to a height of 800 ft, and the photographer was stationed with the cannon— or rather, howitzer —at a range of no less than 2000 yards. A shell was burst soclcvcrcly in front of the balloon that it sank, as grievously wounded almost as Cesar, with twcntly five wounds in its body. The photograph shows the wounded balloon still in mid-air, and the shell burst about 200 yards on its left.