BREVITES.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2520, 19 April 1881, Page 3

BREVITES.

Hamilton Borough, Waikato, commenced the year with a £43 overdraft, received £9O and expended £6l, closing with a debit of only £l4. The Melbourne teetotallers have n new drink called “ vigorine,” It is done up in champagne bottles, gold topped, etc, and, when opened, has a head and sparkle that cannot be distinguished from the fashionable wine. To show how profitable walnut growing may be made, we hear that a gentleman in Akaroa gathered over 20.000 off one tree, which sold at 15s per thousand, or £ls for the crop. A few trees of this sort are quite equal to a Government billet under the Hall Ministry.—“ Akaroa Mail.” Lottie Wilmot retaliates re her expulsion from the Auckland Criminal Court by suggesting that prurient men should be excluded from such proceedings and decent women substituted for “ grinning boys ” in the reporters box. De Lesseps says : —“ The Panama Canal will certainly be finished by 1888 at an estimated cost of 512,000,000 fr. The work will not require more than 8.000 to 10,000 workmen in the most busy time, who will he recruited from the colored population of Columbia and the-West Indies.” In an indecent assault case heard at the Auckland sessions it transpired that the prosecutrix, the prisoner (a halfcaste) and some gum diggers went to a store at Waiwawa (Mercury Bay) at a very advanced hour of the night and knocked up the proprietor, who unblushingly received them in his nightshirt, and served the men with oysters: The storekeeper-, when qncstioncd on the point in Conrf, said ho did not observe whether the prosecutrix blushed or not.

Baron Alphonse Rothschild, the head of the French brancii of the house is \ the chief financier of the family, and the director of its dealings with the markets of Europe. He is an untiringworker, and usually reaches his bank in the morning before his subordinate. His ' habits are simple, one of his greatest pleasures being a tour on foot through the streets of Paris both before and after dinner. One result of the severe weather in London has been the adoption of Canadian methods of locomotion. Sleighs were to be seen frequently gliding easily along the snow encumbered streets. They were drawn by horses, carrying the appropriate harness with tinkling bells, and their occupants cosily wrapped up in great robes of fur. The Prince of Wales has set the example.

Mrs Walter Hill, with her two daughters, Lily and Arethusa May, is about to re-visit Sydney. The New South Wales Legislature is so satisfied with the “ boardingont ” system for the maintenance of destitute children, that they have passed a bill bringing the system into force in that Colony.