BREVITIES.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2653, 21 September 1881, Page 3

BREVITIES.

A short time ago (says the “Schoolmaster”) one of the New Zealand Education Boards sent Home for a book. The volume arrived safely by post, but the name bad been cut from the order and pasted on the book, the sender being utterly unable to decipher it. When it arrived at the town where the Inspector lived the Post Office authorities did better, because they had seen the puzzle on envelopes franked by the Inspector. London “ Truth” says that a good deal of indignation is wasted over the matter-of-fact way in which people about Sheffield sometimes sell their wives. Stamped and signed agreements are occasionally given. The Channel tunnel works are being pushed ahead vigorously. We shall hear of trains running through before we get time to believe a hole can be made so long.

The famous farm, Tiptree Hall, Kelvedon, Essex, owned by the late Mr Mechi, has just been offered for sale at the Mart, London. The highest hid for the 132 acres was £3750, or £2B 9s per acre, a very low price for a “model farm,” The property was withdrawn from sale. The oldest Maori chief in the Wairarapa died the other day. He professed to remember the visit of Captain Cook to New Zealand.

The larrikins of Sydney are accused of exercising an evil influence over the Chinese of that city. In the Lyceum of Aix one of the masters took out a pistol in the dining hall and shot one of his fellow masters dead. That very afternoon he had pawned his watch in order to buy the pistol.

A verdict of wilful murder was on Monday, July 11, returned against a servant girl, aged 14, named Margaret Messenger, for having smothered in a bog the child of her employer, Mr Pallister, farmer, of Sprunston, near Carlisle. Only five days before another child had been drowned in a well close to the bog. At Hanley, England, on July 8, Samuel Webb, a cattle dealer and jobber, was sentenced to five years’ penal servitude for maliciously maiming a horse. Prisoner took a-butchers’ knife, and, out of spite to a rival in trade, cut the animal’s throat in a field where it was grazing.

A whole boat-load of persons out for a picnic partook of lemonade at Warrenburg (Missouri), and were poisoned with the acid. Eight of them are dead, and 100 are in a critical condition. The vendor of the lemonade has been arrested. Some French statisticians are afraid their nation is declining. The total number of births is diminishing at an alarming rate ; the number of marriages is decreasing, and the number of children born to each has also decreased the average eighty years ago was four, now it is only three. The statistics collected in April give the stock in N.S.W. as follows : 395,984 horses' 2,580,040 horned cattle, 32,399, 557 sheep, 308,205 pigs.