NEWS OF THE DAY.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2492, 16 March 1881, Page 2

NEWS OF THE DAY.

The Chinese have been forbidden on the new Gold fields of New South Wales. Forty children of the Moon are now en mite per Hero for Greymouth.

The discomfited Auckland shootists who attended the late matches at Nelson, are disgusted. They have been fleeced by the Nelson publicans and handicapped with old pot-metal carbines.

The Kaiapoi Woollen Factory is about to erect a large premises for the manufacture of clothing. They will employ no less than 400 operatives.

A petition to the General Assembly is being largely signed in North Canterbury, praying for the repeal of the tax on shepherd’s dogs, and if necessary to increase the duty on sporting dogs.

The property tax payment throughout the colony up to last night amounted to £00,735. Respectively the receipts arc as follows;--Canterbury, £26,018; Wellington, £19,351; Auckland, £17,004; Otago, £10,910 ; Hawke’s Bay, £OIOB ; Nelson, £3898; Southland, £3430; Waitaki, £3050

Yesterday His Honor Judge Jonnstone granted a rule nisi calling on the Lyttelton gaoler to show cause why a writ of Habeas Corpus should not issue calling on him to produce the body of John Murphy, now doing four years for forgery.

The Wellington Asylum enquiry will probably extend over another week. The Wellington Supreme Court has granted an order restraining the sale of mortgaged freehold property under a foreclosure in the estate of Mr E. W. Mills, advertised for to-day. At Gisbourne yesterday the Native Land Court awarded 88S acres to the dissentient from the sale, and the balance, 18,364 acres to the remaining owners, who had sold 12,000 acres for the purposes of Mr G. M. Reed’s special settlement. The Judges have consented to pass a deed of conveyance of these 12,000 acres on being satisfied as to the surrender of the original lease. The existing certificate of title is to be cancelled, and now certificates are to be issued for the separate portions.

A laborer named John Maher has worked himself to death at the Balclutha bridge. About ten days ago he suffered considerably and had partial paralysis of the lower pari of his body He was advised by his medical adviser upon no account to continue cylinder work, but yesterday he insisted upon going in, feeling quite strong and equal to the work. At the conclusion of a four hours’ shift in the air-lock, he came out, exclaimed “I am done for,” gave a few gasps and expired.

Insurance agents in their anxiety to “ do business ” are generally eager to trumpet how promptly their office meets liablities. This phase of the competition is much caricatured in the following, from the “Australasian Insurance and Banking Record” of a recent date:—“A Card.—l take pleasure in announcing that the Ready Insurance Company of Manoeuvretown has settled and paid its loss in full (without deducting interest or accrued assessment) on my mill now burning. I take satisfaction in recommending this company and its agile adjuster to public patronage. The adjuster of the other companies did not arrive until the roof fell in, and owing to some failure in his baggage and a sore finger did not get his cheque sicned until the fire was nearly out. I am assured by gentlemen of respectability that these companies mean well, but greater promotitude must be observed if public confidence is to be sustained.” Herr Bandmann has had a fall-put with a section of the Christchurch Press, and refused admission to the critics of the offending paper, which said that his Othello was an uneven performance, and accused him of a disposition to rant in some places. In the course of a very abusive letter, in which he attacks the critic in unmeasured terms, he says : “May I ask why—for what reason or on what authority your wiseacre uses his rusty and malicious cheese-knife to try and malm insertions upon a well established reputation of twenty-five years’ standing, backed by half the civilised world, and such men like my late friends Lord Lytton, John Forster, Tom Taylor, John Oxenford, Charles Dickens, the present Ralph Waldo Emerson, Longfellow, Lord Fouthcsk, and numbers of other eminent men ? Am Ito come to Christchurch under heavy expense and outlay, and instead of having the hand of hospitality and fairness offered to mo, as was the case in every town in the colonics, to be received with cowardly meanness and ii/tilicr jnrpn/xr ? ” The editor appends a foot-note to the fiery epistle, stating merely that there is not the slightest foundation for the charges made in it.

Mrs Walter Hill, supported by a number of well-known artistes, including the Misses May and Mr J. J. Kennedy, the inimitable Irish Comedian, open to-night at the Theatre Royal, for a season of three nights in the always popular “ East Lynne,” in which Mrs Hill will sustain the dual role of Lady Isabel and Madame Vine.