News and Notes.

Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 18, 29 July 1893, Page 7

News and Notes.

A young woman lately died in Melbourne from the effects of tight lacing. An outbreak of. strangles is reported among horses in the Gore district. It is expected that the House of Lords will reject the Home Rule Bill by ten to one. -Three young women —-two at Dipton and one in the Gore district have died from an attack of measles. A man named Wallath, who has gained some notoriety as a highwayman in Hew Plymouth, has been captured. A shoemaker had a card in his wi n * dpw to this effect : “ Any respectable man, woman, or child can have a fit in this store.” Drat those boys ! A number of Wellington youths amused themselves on a recent Sunday by burning down 192 ft of a farmer’s fence. Sir Charles Russell and Sir R. Webster were each paid 20G0 guineas for their six weeks’ attendance on the Behring Fisheries Arbitration. A writer in the Canterbury Times states that he has found drenching lambs with brine a sovereign remedy for scour in lambs. An effoi’t will be made by the Government of Hew South Wales to abolish payment of members in the new parliament. He believed that in nine cases out of ten it was the husband who got into debt, and not the wife. —Mr Meredith on the Small Debts Prevention Bill. The closing prices at the London wool sales, as compared with the previous sales, show merinos fd to lOd, lamb fd, crossbred £d and fine 4d to Id lower. The totalisator had made twentyfive gamblers —and that was putting it very moderately—for every one gambler that existed before. —-Mr Fisher on the totalisator. By an explosion of gas in a cargo of coal on board the German barque Argo, at Sydney, the cheif officer was killed, and several other persons seriously injured. On and after L3th September next 143,950 acres of second-class land in the Anglem, Paterson, Mason, Lord’s River and Pegasus (Stewart Island), will be open for selection. The cash price is 6s to 10s per acre. “ The unspeakable Turk ” has been at it again. Painful details of Turkish tortures perpetrated on Armenian prisoner s have been published at Home. It' is stated that they were beaten to a jelly and seared with hot irons. “ The leader of the jockey clubs of the colony” was the title bestowed by Mr W. C. Smith on the Hon. Captain Russell in the House the other day, during a discussion on the totalisator. The Rev. J. L. Rentoul would not object (says the Glasgow Herald) to the introduction of a cornet and one or two other wind instruments into the service of the sanctuary, but he draws the line at bagpipes. “ I heard an alarm of fire, I think,” he said in the theatre,” and I must go out and see about it.” Returning after 15 minutes, he said—“ It wasn’t a fire.” “ Hor water,” retorted she, still more briefly. .The French Government having made certain demands for territory or an indemnity or the Government of Siam, were dissatisfied with the concessions offered, and have notified the Powers that Siam is blockaded. !• oad beer on the diggings in Vic •; t, and th*- miners there had got ,oir store,- /-v.-m him, and by deg ... they h. -lui up bills for a cons ::-able ai.:- : and he had seen the-a .-Animated e debts, with their swii-r; /.» their oa s, travelling over to au- d:g:.--p, -Mr Hogg on the Small Debts Bili.

The first auction sale of grain was held by the South Canterbury Farmers’ Co-operative Association oh the 22nd, when 2000 sacks of ? wheat and 3000 of oats,were disposed of. Milling wheat brought 2s s|d ; to 2s 7d, and oats 2s to 2s 4d. The local Telegraph says that Mr Willcocks, local manager of the Hew Zealand Shipping 1 Company, and formerly of Invercargill, has been replaced on the Hapier Harbour Board by a photographer of very pronounced “ colour.” E. S. Willard, the popular actor, declares that American and English audiences differ enormously. He says that hissing is quite unknown in the United States. If they don’t like the piece, they simply slip quietly out of the theatre, and say nothing. Mr Joseph Macdonald, whose jubilee gift of £25,000 to the funds ot the Free Church of Scotland was announced recently, is a Highlander from Sutherland, who early in life went out to Hew South Wales. His fortune was made as a grazier. 1 At the last meeting of the Land Board it was resolved to recommend the Government to open up the State forest at the back of Otautau for settlement. It consists of 8000 or 10,000 acres, and is near a railway, school, and settlement. A disgusted depositor suggested that in view of recent developments the offices of reconstructed banks be opened every morning with prayer. What (asks a contemporary) does he think of a counter-suggestion to open one or two of them every night with a crowbar ? The devotion of the dog is proverbial, and the latest instance has been furnished at Nathalie, Victoria, where a man who had been engaged in ’possum hunting was found dead in his tent. He had evidently died three weeks before, and his dog remained beside the corpse and starved to death The Sydney prisons are so well tenanted just now owing to the incarceration of a number of marine strikers that when two men came before a magistrate the other day he remarked that there were enough men in gaol at present,' and gave them a chance to leave the town, A man was tried for theft at the Oxford assizes. The foreman of the jury when giving the verdict made a mistake, and said Hot guilty ” instead of “ Guilty.” Though he wished to rectify the mistake he could not do so, and the man was released from custody. At the Taieri Poultry Society’s show last week Mr A. H. Lindsay, of Invercargill, secured first prize for Wyandottes (any variety over twelve months), for white Leghorns over twelve months, and for light Brahmas. He also pulled off several second prizes. The mention of the closing of the North Star Hotel reminded a speaker at the Alliance meeting the other night that it had since been converted into a capital boarding-house, “ and yet,” he added, “ some people talk of compensation when a public house is closed.” From private letters which have reached Sydney from Hew Zealand, it appears that a movement is afoot to organise a sealing expedition to the Antarctic on the lines of the recent trip made by the steamers from Dundee, Scotland. The proposal is to fit out two steamers, and run across to Graham’s Land, which lies about 700 miles to southward of Cape Horn. “ Bystander ” (a regular contributor to the Worker) says that in his wanderings and note-takings amongst the unemployed in Brisbane, he has seen several ’cases of gaunt, ravenous men stealthily creeping up to and snatching pieces of meat—-dirty and foul and altogether unfit for human consumption—from the offal carts, as they collect the refuse from the butchers’ shops in Brisbane.

It is not every day that royalty has , a chance of itself hy “running in ” a drunk.,.. The King of Portugal has, however, earned the distinction. He interfered in a drunken street brawl, and was violently assaulted, but managed to capture his assailant and hand him over to the police. Poe’s line, “ Whom disaster follows. fast and follows faster,” would appear to apply to the doings of the Royal Navy. We now learn that during the naval manoeuvres on the Irish coast, a torpedo boat collided with and nearly sank a schooner. Other casualties of a less serious nature occurred..

California fruitgrowers are using dynamite to make the holes for setting their fruit trees. Being put down about six feet, and exploded, it not only makes a hole for setting the trees, but it loosens the earth for several feet in each direction, so that' the roots find a mellow soil into which they easily penetrate. The agent of Fitzgerald’s circus, which is due in New Zealand is Mr Harry Lyons, who believes he is, with perhaps one exception, the oldest Australian ageut living. Early in his career he was engaged by the inimitable Barlow, of “ Blue-tail fly ” fame, and subsequently he joined Charles Thatcher, the poet laureate of the goldfields. The navies of great powers : —Great Britain: 22 ironclads, 7 ironclad cruisers, 5 ircnclad coastguard ships, 67 cruisers, 10 torpedo cruisers, 19 counter torpedo, and 97 torpedoboats. France: 19 ironclads, 1 ironclad cruiser, 7 ironclad coastguard ships, 8 ironclad gunboats, 29 cruisers, 5 torpedo cruisers, 10' counter torpedo, and 171 torpedo boats. In the recent long-distance walk or run from Berlin to Vienna, it is stated that of the sixteen competitors who started, only four succeeded in making good the run, and of these the two coming first to the winning-post had not only been regaled on the way by vegetable substances, but had been in principle and practice vegetarians. We have to lay to heart (says an exchange) the fact that the unemployed problem is to us the most vital of all questions, beyond which, bank smashes, floods, losses of ironclads, and other things vanish into harmless specks. As Joseph Cowen so philosophically observed seven years ago : “If society can’t settle it, it will settle society.” And that is what all who pretend to govern men have got to consider and overcome. The guardians’ schools at Sutton face the high road to the Derby racecourse Every Derby and Oaks day a number of children belonging to the schools stand on the wall, and many of the passers-by throw them money. The money is banked and devoted to the purpose of giving the children y day’s treat at tba Crystal Palace. This year the total money collected came to £144 12s 2d, all of which was in coppers. An excited military-looking gentleman entered an editorial sanctum one after-noon, exclaiming : —“ That notiee of my death is a lie, sir. I’ll horsewhip you within an inch of your life, sir, if you don’t apologise in your next issue.” The editor inserted this apology on the following day : —“ We extremely regret to announce that the paragraph which stated that Major Blazer was dead is without foundation.” At the Invercargill Police Court the other day Helen McKenzie, licensee of the Strath earn Hotel, was charged with having failed to admit the police without unnecessary delay at 12.30 a.m. on the 9th inst. It appeared that the mother of the defendant had answered the constable’s second knock, and that after he was admitted she said in loud tones “ Look out; here’s the police coming in.” He found in the bar parlour eight young men, four of whom were playing cards. He did not see any drink. After hearing the evidence, from which it appeared that three of the party were boarders, the defendant was fined 10s.

At the A.M.C. meeting of the Manchester Unity Independent Ox*der of Oddfellows, held at Southampton •on May ;24th,’ the • GM. reported the membership of the order to be 709,403, and the accumulated capital, over £8,000,000. The Order is now the largest and richest in the world. Amongst other rules passed was one which makes it legal for lodges -to admit female members on equal footing with males. 1 I hold that imprisonment for debt should be abolished, except where there has been fraud. The extended credit system causes more misery in this country than anything else except the liquor traffic. By it people are taught to be thriftless and wasteful. We see, for instance, young people marrying without even sufficient saved to buy their furniture : They thus enter on a life of distress.—MrDuthie on the Imprisonment for Debt Abolition Bill. The Otago Daily Times is “ full up ” of the so-called financial debate in the Houfee of Representatives, and it remarks ; —-The Treasurer, says that there was a surplus for the year of £283,000 : Sir John Hall says it was only £38,000, Which is right P, We venture to say that not a single member of the House knows, or whether there was any surplus at all. And yet this weary clatter about things in general is called a-financial debate ! He presumed that be knew a good deal of what was going on amongst the farmers in the country, and particularly the small farmers, and he had frequent opportunity of conversing with them, and ascertaining what their views were as to the existing system of taxation, and he unhesitatingly said the bulk of them were perfectly satisfied with the existing sytem of taxation-—-more particularly in comparison with the property tax. —The Colonial Treasurer in the debate re mortgaged small farmers. In appearance (according to the London correspondent of the Sydney Mail) the future King of Britain has the strong family resemblance that marks the Guelphs. Not quite so tall, and of course much slighter than his father, the Duke of York still shows in h;s face the tanned colour gained by his sea life. He is much more livelier in manner than any of his uncles or the general run of his cousins, in this respect resembling his father. His manner is excellent, being absolutely free from anything like hauteur or restraint. Mr Valentine, the member for Tuapeka, is evidently not regarded as a second Gladstone in the matter of tree felling. In the discussion- on Mr T. McKenzie’s motion re the preservation of forests and ' native birds, Mr V. remarked that he had on one occasion landed from a steamer in the Lake district, and cut wood to fuel the vessel. Mr W. Hutchison observed that all the timber his honourable friend would cut was harmless. In the course of a debate in the House of Representatives, Mr T. McKenzie suggested the appointment of rangers to see that our natural scenery is conserved, and remarked that there were boatmen and other men about the lakes —reliable men like Mr R. Henry, and Captain Brodrick of the Royal Navy—who were anxious to conserve the natural beauties of Te Anau, but had no power to restrain tourists who ruthlessly set fire to the bush. “ To what base uses may we come, Horatio P” Dancy the House of Representatives and their official record (Hansard) being made the means of advertising the merits of certain kinds of reapers and binders. Mr Buchanan taxed the Minister of Lands and Agriculture the other day with giving a testimonial in favour of a particular machine, and signing it Minister of Agriculture, and all the “ Shepherd from the hills ” could say in reply was that Mr Buchanan had done the same for another machine. This Mr Buchanan admitted, but stated that he had done so as a private individual.