Direct Mail Items.

Thames Star, Volume XVI, Issue 5039, 7 March 1885, Page 3

Direct Mail Items.

. It used to be a fact that far mo;o people t mißrated to Canada than to the antipodes. • During 1883 and 1884, however, tue table? hare been turned. Canadar-Entisli Emigrants in 1883, 44,185 ; ditto in ISB4. 31,163; Australasia—British Emigrants in 1883, 71 264 ; dilts in 1884, 44,428 respectively. There has, you observe, beeD ■■• a great falling off in the emigration both ' to Canada and Australasia in 1884. New Zealand and A.Dg!oNew Zealand merchants interested in the frozen mutton trade must prepare, during the next Uo ' years, to enconraga opposition cf a far more formidable and trying character than any they have so far met with. Hitherto, the importations from the Hirer Plate, South America, hare been of a desultory and second rate character. The mutton, however, sold fairly well; indeed, . §o satisfied are the proprietors and directors of the vast estancias at'tbe River Plate that they can place on the London 'market meat equal to but cheaper than .the New Zealand that they'have formed ■ a regular league, offensive and defensive, " for the purpose of pushing their wares, and chartered a line of regular meat ships (hither!o engaged in the North American beef trade) to convey the caresses to England. To underrate this competition would *■- be folly, more especi»lly as it is almost certain to be associated with very large importations of Dutch sheep (pronounced by exporters fully equal to English). At the - same time Australian exporters will probably suffer more seriously than the New Zealanders, who can scarcely come to the ground whilst the quality of their meat is kept up to the present level. By way of proof .that the Biver Plate people have already commenced operations, I ra&y ' mention that since the beginning of the . year 10,400 sheep have arrived from South America, as against 13,030 from New Zealand, and that the mutton from both places is now quoted wholesale at the same rates. The body of a respectably dressed Soung woman was found on the sands near outhend. It has just been identified as the body of Ellen Bloxaro, wife of the second officer of the Boyal Mail steamer Tongariro. In November last the deceased was married, and fwo or three days later her husband left England in his vessel for New Zealand, promising to write to the deceased from Plymouth and Teneriffe. Owing to stress of weather the vessel was unable to put into either port, and the pilot and letters were in consoquecce carried on to the Cape of Good Hope and landed there. The day after . the body of the deceased was found, the expected letters from the husband, with an explanation of their delay, reached England.. The non-appearanc3 of letters from her' husband had preyed upon the

deceased, who was only twenty-two years of age. It was thought that fhe was drawn on to the sands by some impulse, and that the tide came- in upon her uuperceived. In London for tlie week ending January 11 last, 2,816 births and 1,956 deaths were ' registered. Allowing for increase of population, the births exceeded by 270, and the deaths by 52, the arerage numbers in the corresponding weeks of the last 10 years. The annual death rate per I.COO , from all causes, which has been 20 7,18 6, and 249 in the three preceeding weeks, further rose last week to 25*0. During the. 13 weeks., ending 271h ulfc., the death rate averaged only 198 per 1000, against 216 in the corresponding periods of the.five years 1879-83. The 1956 deaths included 34 from small-pox, 14 from measles, 16 from scarlet fever, 26 from diphtheria, 38 from whooping cough, | 15 from ebteric fever, 1 from an ill defined form of continued fever, 11 from diarrhoea and dysentry, and not i either from . typhus or from cholera; thus 155 deaths were referred to these diseases, being 102 below the corrected average weekly number.—City Press. . London litterateurs are somewhat jealous ta«t lecturing is so much more profitable nowadays than literature. Charles Dickens appears to have acquired £33,000 by bis two last courses of lectures, a fact which induced Mr G. A. Sala, at a dub dinner jast before he sailed to the Antipodes, to humorously affirm that be anticipated making a larger pile in his tour in Australia; than he had succeeded in doing during tbelast decade in the practice of his profesiison. Mr Archibald Forbes, too, acquired more money by two years' lecturing than he made during a dozen as a warcorrespondent. Unfortunately he has lost it j all in mining speculations and in Egyptian stocks. Mr Sala will deliver lectures in the-principal cities of. the Uuion while passing towards San Francisco, whence he j will Bail for Australia, to continue the course in Sydney, Melbourne, and the chief Antipodean towns. The subjectmatter of Mr Sala's addresses will be derived from his experiences as a journalist and special correspondent, prominence Being given to the pageants and great processions which it has been his fortune to witness in all parts of the world during the last twenty-five years.—Anglo-New Zealander. -