South Canterbury Times, TUESDAY, MARCH 7, 1882. NEWS OF THE DAY.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2793, 7 March 1882, Page 2

South Canterbury Times, TUESDAY, MARCH 7, 1882. NEWS OF THE DAY.

An emergency meeting of St. John's Lodge is called for 7.30 to-morrow evening

The Timaru School Committee meeting, , called for last evening stands adjourned till to-morrow, Wednesday. Dr Rogers of Bombay has been found dead. , The Rev. McKenzie Fraser was admitted to the M.A. degree ad eundeni.

Sergeant Pardy of Auckland has been made Seargant Major in consideration of his services in connection with the arrest of Plummer.

A little girl of seven, Fanny Naughton, was drowned by falling into a well in Auckland. She had been playing on the windlass.

Mrs Pitt presented the Rifle Association prizes yesterday at Nelson, and a very successful ball followed, in honor of the representatives. '

A debtor’s estate in Dunedin has paid 20s in the £ and left a surplus of £IOO. This sort of bankruptcy is as rare as the Megatherium.

The Defence Minister refuses to incur any expense in connection with the proposed Volunteer Encampment so that the project will very likely he abandoned. F., Butler, alias Denis Me Qrath has been committed. at Lawrence for unlawful assault with intent to commit rape on a girl 4£ years old. Is the law ever going to vindicate itself ?

There will be a stampede to Pegasus Bay shortly. Professor Ulrich from Ballarat reports thousands of acres of highly auriferous ground on the S.W. portion of Stewart Island.

A mail bag fell overboard from the Albion in Lyttelton harbor yesterday; but some persons in a boat perceiving this picked it up just as it was sinking. Wie understand now how it is some of us don’t get our remittances regularly. Henare Kaihare kas been to Thwhaio to enquire = whether he, wishes to see Mr Bryce. Tawhiao replied that he did not but stated that Mr Bryce or any other European might attend the native meeting if they chose.

There ate some rich pickings in store for the ’lawyers. Judge Gillies has fixed the 22'nd for hearing Messrs Brogdens’ claim s against, the Government. , Nearly aR t’ne eminent counsel of both islands are engaged in the' case, there will in fact be the largest'Bar ever seen in the colony on this occasion.

The Bower i prize has been won by Mr Joseph Burfr ird ; the second essayist, Miss Edith Searle i, being so close in merit that the examine is recommend a certificate to that effect. t;o be granted her. The Bowen Essays e;xjf miner for 1882 will he the Bev. W. J. ’Habtms,

A 1 oout £200,000 property tax has now be ''an paid. It is intended to enforce the 7 7th clause of the Property Assessment Act, by which persons in arrears are liable to a 10 per cent penalty. Charles Louisson (Crown Brewery, Christchurch), has been fined. £lB, and £2 4s costs for not affixing the stamp to a beer cask. The case was one of negligence on the part of a servant, not fraud, and this was stated by the Collector of Customs. We pity that servant. ( :

Dr Mays, of South Australia, has invented a sparrow trap, by which 600 were caught in five weeks. Our farmers ought to lose no time in placing themselves in communication with the doctor.

It is said that petroleum is an excellent preservative of exposed wood work and tools. •It is cheap and penetrates the pores* Try it on gates, farm waggons, rakes, and all rustic work exposed to the weather.

It is stated that the Wolverine, lately given to the Government of New South Wales by the Imperial Government, is a gift of more than doubtful value, as the vessel appears likely to break up, and will therefore be of very little, service for defence purposes.

At Invercargill, Mr M'Cullock, E.M. has ruled that card-playing in a hotel is not an “ unlawful game.” His Worship noticed that in none of the three Acts now in force was . what were unlawful games defined. In these circumstances they had to fall back on the old statutes, dating as far back as the time of Henry VIII., and two leading statutes passed in the reign of George IV., but none of these said that cards or playing with them was an unlawful game. 2.hey made certain games with cards which were enumerated, unlawful, but cardplaying in itself was not unlawful. Inspector Balcy suggested that in these circumstances the present Colonial Act required amendment,

Lyon’s Tourists, who drew such excellent houses here a short time ago, intend playing in Timaru for a short season, commencing on Friday next. Sir George Grey has taken a house in Auckland, where he will remain for a short time before proceeding to Wellington on Parliamentary business.

The Austrian Minister of Education has ordered that every schoolhouse shall have a small garden patch attached to it in which the pupils are required to work to gain a practical knowledge of horticulture and agriculture. The Bev. S. Macfarlane, founder of the New Guinea Mission, will lecture this evening in the Congregational Church. A collection will be made in aid of the Mission. Chair to be taken at 7.30.

A charge of dynamite was laid yesterday morning for the purpose of detaching the rock which projects from the bottom near the wharf, but the fuse went out and the charge was lifted—to be put down again this morning. In the afternoon the Priestman dredger was tried on the sandbank near the same spot, and some halfdozen lifts made. The dredger otherwise worked well, but owing to the compactness of the deposit the buckets failed to sink sufficiently into it to fill. Some alteration in the formation of the jaws will be necessary to enable the machine to work well in such a compact material.

A sum of 200 guineas, has been all but made up for presentation to Murdoch, the successful batsman of the Australian team.' At the same time £77 has with great, difficulty been collected for the widow and children of a Captain Murray, who was! massacred in the Solomon Islands. " '

The Otago teachers intend placing in the library of the University a memorial portrait of Mr John Hislop, Secretary for the Department of Education. It is fitting that one who has so long and with such eminent success labored in the cause of education, should be thus borne in mind by the teachers to whom Mr Hislop has always been a friend.

We learn that Messrs A. and T. Burt, the well-know brass founders of Dunedin, will be unable to compete at the forthcoming Christchurch Exhibition, owing to. pressure of work and their former exhibits having since been sold. Those who take an interest in the progress of our manufacturing industries-and mechanical work, will regret this, as the. Messrs Burt have secured .a pre-eminence in their special line.

, Sterne, weeping over a dead donkey, .would have made an admirable courtier in Siam where the nation has recently been plunged into mourning by the death of the court and body elephant of the king. One morning, after a hearty breakfast, he went mad quite unexpectedly, and trampled five of his attendants to death. An attempt to tranquilise his perturbed spirit by encircling him with a huge ring of holy bamboo, specially blessed bj the high Priest of his own particular temple, proved worse than ineffectual, for he broke through the ring, and all but terminated the High Priest’s career upon the spot. He was then with great difficulty driven into a close court of the palace, where after several furious endeavours to batter down the walls with his tusks, he suddenly toppled over on his side, uttered a cry of rage, and gave up the ghost.

The Alpine tourists are wrapt in the mist, slowly making their ascent. By latest accounts they were beginning to out the many hundreds of steps in the ice necessary to enable them to reach the summit. As this is extremely dangerous work as well as difficult, we hope soon to have news from the mountain.

An Edinburgh paper speaks of 1881 as “ a year without a summer, a year spent in goloshes and under umbrellas, a year of heavy winds and steady downpours, of black skies and muddy streets,” and proceeds, “ twelvemonth by twelvemonth we hope, and hope in va,in, that the cycle of rainy seasons and bad seasons is at an end, and that the time Is at last at hand when we may look forward to,a spring which is worth singing about, and a summer which is something more than a long November day.” We learn from a contemporary that a case of considerable importance to the licensed victuallers’ interest was heard in Wellington lately. The licensee of the New Zealander Hotel was summoned for a breach of the 155th section of the Act for permitting a game of billiards to be played on his licensed premises, after the time at which such licensed premises are directed to be closed. The facts disclosed, by the evidence were, that at 20 minutes past 1 o’clock on the morning of the Bth, the billiard room was found lit up and a number of men playing “ mock pool.” For the defence,, it was explained that the persons engaged in the game consisted wholly of lodgers at the hotel, and the defendant was under the impression that as lodgers possessed the privilege of keeping the barman going all night long, he could not interfere if they took it into their heads to play billiards after midnight. If, however, that impression was erroneous, the mere notification of the fact on the part of the Court would be sufficient to deter him from offending again. Mr Hardoastle R.M., decided that it was certainly illegal to play billiards after hours, and fined the defendant £l.

A letter appeared in the Dunedin “ Star” of Saturday last from a female who, whilst bathing at the Ocean Beach on Thursday, was quizzed by two men—one a son of a Dunedin merchant, and “another specimen of the genus man ” —who as soon as the latter got into the water, swooped down upon her on horseback. She expected they would leave when they realised the position. But no. She went out among the breakers as far as she could consistent ■with safety, and they got as near to her as they could, and remained for nearly an hour. The writer says she “invoked every shade of chivalry, from Bayard downwards, to inspire them with one spark of manliness, or at least pity, as my teeth were chattering through standing so long in the water ; but there they might have stopped till the Day of Judgment but for some people coming in sight, and then they slunk oil Ob,

your clever Evolutionists of Dunedin, will you solve me a problem in proportion 1 If it has taken as many thousand years for the human species to arrive at its present state of men aud women as Mr Denton asserts, how many more thousands of years will elapse before the descendants of these two men will be classed as nature’s noblemen ?” It will be a pity i ; ..use two transgressors of common decency cannot be identified and suitably punished.

So saturated is the Melbourne Hospital with erysipelas,, that the Coroner recommends the managers to erect tents in the grounds for the reception of casualty cases. He condemned as cruel the taking of such eases to the wards while these are in their present condition. Another death from erysipelas, contracted in the building, occurred on February 16th, the victim being admitted for treatment of a broken collar bone.