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Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2510, 22 January 1877, Page 2

Theke will be a meeting of subscribers for shares in the proposed Hape Creek Goldmining and Quartz Crushing Company held this evening in the Oddfellows' Hall, Shovtland, at eight o'clock. The business of the meeting is to amend the prospectus. .

The Kauaeranga School Committee have appointed Mr Herbert Mason to the temporary charge of the Kauaeranga Boys' School, and the school duties were resumed to-day under Mr Mason's direction.

The Australasian, commenting on the speech recently delivered by Sir George Grey to his constituents, says, " it was of tho matter and form of the stump stumpy," and that " there was a fine admixture of impassioned sentiment and Sairey Gampish logic."

At the Resident Magistrate's Court this morniug one female inebriate was punished in the. usual manner. Messrs Lawlor and Goldsmith were on the Bench.

It is rumored, and the rumor if true will be a great boon to the public, that the fares charged by Messrs Holmes for passengers from the Thames to Auckland will be reduced from 7s Gd and ss, the prices at present charged, to 5s and 3s, and that the charge for freight on board the Eotomahana will also be reduced. • What truth there is in these reports time will show.

The billiard match, advertised to bo played at the Shortland Hotel, took place on Saturday evening. Austin, the finger player, gave Mr Tookey, a gentleman amateur, 900 points in 1000. The game is a very pretty specimen of a new style of billiards, and lovers of the game should see it. Mr Tookey went away very rapidly at the start, and at the interval the game stood Tookey 976, Austin 501. Austin then settled down to work, and the game was called, Tookey 996, Austin 997. Tookey then made a couple of cannons, winning the game by 3 points.

We are glad to see that steps are to be taken to secure to the Thames the grant of £4000, which has been voted in aid of school buildings in the Thames district. To any one resident on the Thames it is quite needless to point out how greatly our school buildings and the out offices stand in need of repair. Sometimes the Thames School cannot be reached in wet weather. One master left the Kauaeranga boys' school because of the insufficiency of tlie accommodation. The Waiotahi School is much too small, and with the exception of Parawai, not one has any playground worth speaking of. There are, it is true, a few unused pieces of land around the schools, but these are far too small for boys to indulge in any of the better class of games. The meeting will be held in the offices of Mr H. C. Grillespie to-morrow, at half-past three o'clock, and we hope will result in the defects we have pointed out being remedied.

That sparrows do mischief was infallibly proved last week when a resident at Parawai closely watched the operations of these birds, and noted the havoc they made in his field of oats. He gathered a good-sized bunch of the oats they had been employed on, and also another bundle of about a quarter the size. In the former there was scarcely a grain of corn remaining) while the latter showed a fine head of grain. The weight of the small bundle was about three times that of the larger one. If wholesale operations are to be conducted on this scale the loss will be large indeed.

That the peach season is fairly in is made manifest by the presence of numbers of those who wish to dispose of their baskets of peaches for one shilling. Considering the number of peach groves there are around the Thames, and the small trouble the gathering of the peaches occasions, many people think that sixpence is sufficient, x and refuse to give more. If this plan were universally adopted most likely peaches would be reduced to half their present price; and as far as the Maories are concerned at a ■ " shilling a kit" purchasers will be better served at the fruiterers;

Tbees are protected from Hares, Eabbits, &c, by having virgin cork fastened round them, but any other kind of dead bark, which may be got at any large saw yard, and carefully tied round the stems, is much cheaper, and will answer as well. Larch bark has been found very effectual to protect freshly-planted trees from sheep and ground game. To prevent the treea being rubbed against, drive in short stakes at a suitable distance, with their heads projecting an inch or two abovp ground.—Land and Water. The Customs revenue for the colony for the past year,^a'ys the IS.Z Mail, so far as at present is known, is £1,199,327, as against £1,229,138 for the preceding year. The returns for six small ports have not yet been received, but the general result will not be much affected.

" Zak. MorepobKj" writing from the Te ArohaTrig Station, puts the following inquiry to the editor of the Herald and Cross :—Sik, —May I ask you, suppose a .man, who has managed to secure for himI self, say, one hundred thousand acres of the public land, and is made a member of the Waste Lands Board, what would happen to a man wlio had only secured five hundred acres ? Would he be eligible i as a member? I think the old saw would apply here—to kill.one man is murder ; to kill a thousand makes a hero.

" Some excitement has been occasioned in South Wales by the production at the Baptist Chapel, Britton Ferry, of what may fairly be termed a dramatic performance, entitled " Joseph and his Brethren." The Western Mail' having obtained a printed copy of the work, publishes extracts from it, showing a regular dialogue for several, persons, stage directions, and the familiar "enter" and " exit" used precisely as in the acting editions of theatrical literature. The author of " Joseph and his Brethren " remarks, in a /prefatory note :—" The difficulty and objection to presenting or performing such a Sunday-school dialogue as 'Joseph and his Brethren' is its great length. To avoid this objection and prevent tediousness, the dialogue has been arranged in six parts, in order that the singing, recitations, &c ; , on the general programme, may be introduced between the parts. The effect wi'l be very fine." There is also a caution that the recitation is " to be performed without change of apparel of costume," qualified by the statement, however, that " Joseph may be designated by a coat of mauy colors." A correspondent of the Western Mail thus describes someoftheobservations of the Sunday audience in the chapel:— "A. grown-up woman packed in the crowd exclaimed in one breath, ' Don't shove there—and where's his coat of many colors ? and where's the sacks ?' Another replies, 'Don't I want to see Joseph as well as you? 1 A youngster close by, after the sentence was passed on the baker to be hanged, called out to those near him, ' Look there, how quiet that chap is taking it what's going to be hung.'"

The Creswick Advertiser has this amusing paragraph : —A country resident bought a shirt one day during the past week, which was the first white one he ever possessed. On Sunday last he was to bo married, and that was the importaut occasion that had incited him to the purchase. The shirt had a nice starched bosom, and was open at the back—a style that was new to its possessor. After careful study he put it on with the open^ ing in front, concluding that the still 1 bosom was intended as a kind of shoulder

brace to make him stand erect. Thus dressed ho met his bride at the church door; But her knowledge was greater than his about shirts, and she made him go Lome und reverse the garmeut before she would allow the ceremony to proceed.

The common schools in the Educational Districts of Tararu, Waiotahi, Kauaeranga and Parawai were opened to-day after the midsummer vacation. As far as we have been able to ascertain the numbers were as follows :—Thames School, Mr 11. J. Moore in charge, 5 teachers and 187 pupils; Waiotahi Creek, Mrs Skene in charge, 4 teachers and 146 pupils; Shellback, Mr T. llalliwell in charge, 4 teachers and 144 scholars; Kauaeranga .Boys' School, Mr Mason in temporary charge, 5 teachers and 130 scholars; Kauaeranga Girls' School, Miss Hazelden in charge, 4 teachers and 200 scholars ; Punga Plat, 1 teacher and 15 scholar?; Eureka, 1 teacher and 15 scholars; Parawai, Mr Compton in charge, .2 teachers and 70 (about) scholars. We have no information regarding the- Tararu District School.

Messes Mennie, W. Souter, and A. Price notify to the electors that they are candidates for seats at the Harbor Board, the polling for' which takes place tomorrow.

The term Advertiser will soon be taken as a synonym for " cribbing" if those papers who go by that name persist in the course they follow at present. It may be that evil communications corrupt good manners, or that bad examples are contagious like other diseases, but certain it is that since one Advertiser has set a bad example, another has been found ready to follow it. Allusion is made to the Saturday Advertiser, of Dunedin, which, in its poetical columns has published verses which appeared in this journal six year 3 and a half ago, without acknowledgement although said verses, "In Memoriam," were written for and published in this journal, and are the copyright of the proprietors.

These was a very funny scene (says a Dunedin paper) on the stage of the Princess Theatre the first night during the performance of "Fritz." In the last scene Mr Hooper, as Cadge, has lo be hurled down into the mill stream through a trap by Fritz (Mr Emmet). When the time arrived, Hooper got upon the trap, but the carpenter in charge was away lamenting over the abolition of Provincialism in the Provincial bar. Emmet thrust vigorously, but Hooper cried under his breath. " The trap is fast ? " " Well," said Fritz in the same tone, "you must go through the stage." "Oh, cried the unhappy victim to the laches of a political stage carpenter, " You'll break my back." "Never mind," whispered Jos. K. pleasantly, "you remember the stage directions are, " thrown down the trap by Fritz, 1. c. 3, groove, ghost; biz is biz," and he bent with all his weight upon poor Cadge. The combined weight made the trap yield, and down went " Chips " to sensational chords and tremuloso music, amidst shouts of laughter.

The Bruce Herald states that the other day sixteen thousand rabbit skins were sent by waggon from Galloway Station Manuherikia. Thirty thousand rabbit skins are now lying at Castle Brook Station, Southland, and on that station above 130,000 rabbits have been killed this year. On many stations in Otago more rabbit hunters than shepherds are employed. The rabbit skins are shipped in bales from Dunedin to the Home market. • •

The other day (says an English paper) the Archbishop of Canterbury consecrated the new Church of St. Michael and All Angels, at Maidstone ; and, observing that two vases of flowers had been placed at the back of the communion table, ordered them to be removed before proceeding with the ceremony.