PROVINCIAL AND GENERAL.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 181, 27 July 1871, Page 3

PROVINCIAL AND GENERAL.

The Superintendent of Auckland would appear to be unpopular, judging from the following extract from a letter which appeared in a recent number of the Thames "Evening Star":— "l read in to-day's paper that the Thames people are going to burn the Superintendent in effigy, and some there want to tar and feather him. I should very much like to be down there to see the sport, and having been for so many years governor and manager of a tarring and feathering association at the Bay of Islands, I should like to be there to give them a little instruction." " You are like a little beggar girl ! " said a ftithev the other day to a seven year old child, who entered the room with a torn and muddy pinafore. " What is a beggar girl ? " was the innocent rejoinder. " Happy country ! " says the " Nelson Colonist," where such a question is possible. Happy- country ! say we. Speaking of the Princess Louise's marriage, the " Southern Cross " says : , — " We may hope that this event is j indeed the introduction of a new order } of things, and will lead to the break-up ! of the establishment in Germany which appeared to exist for no other purpose than fattening up princes for the sacri fices of Hymen." In Melbourne it is proposed to cele brate the centenary of Sir Walter Scott's birth on the 17th August next, by a fancy dress ball, the costumes of i which will be rigorously limited to ] the characters in the great novelist's works of fiction. The following instance of Yankee ingenuity is lecordcd : — A genuine Yankee at Lisbon, Con., who wanted to put a- water pipe through a di'ain several feel below the surface without digging

up the drain, tied a string to a cat's leg, thrust her into one end of the drain, and having given a terifflc # " scut " the feline quickly appeared at the other end. The pipe was drawn through the drain by means of the line, and an expense of ten dallars saved by the specu lation. At Wellington, a woman named Catherine Petford has been summoned for thrashing her husband. The Magistrate ordered her to find bail in two sureties of £50 each for her good behaviour for six months, which, under the circumstances, is tantamount to six months' imprisonment. The following alteration has been made in the regulations regarding the posting of letters-: — Clause 31 — If a letter be posted wholly unpaid, the letter must be detained and dealt withaccording to rule 153. If a letter addressed to any place within the Colony be not sufficiently prepaid with postage stamps, but nevertheless bear a postage stamp of the value of one penny, the letter must be forwarded charged with double the amount of the deficient postage. If a letter liable to more than one rate of postage, and addressed to any place in the United Kingdom, the colonies of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and Western Australia, be prepaid with one rate at least, the letter must be forwarded charged with the deficiency and an amount equal to one rate as a fine ; but a letter addressed to any other colony or foreign country, if not fully prepaid, must be detained and dealt with according to rule 153. A French printer in New York, Mons. Paul Messant, was married recently to Princess Editha, daughter of Lola Montes and the King of Bavaria. She was bom in Florence, and is just twenty-one years old. Mounted policemen must be careful and not get fat. At Wangaratta a man who has been in the force more than fourteen years, and is a most efficient bush constable, has been reduced to the j foot police because he is too fat to ride. As this retrograde step will reduce his , salary twenty-five per cent., it is too bad to make him pay such a penality for getting " width and wisdom." The Upper Groulburn district can boast a sub-inspector of the mounted police who rides over fifteen stone, aud whose re- \ mounts cost not a little. Here is I another subject for official Bantingism. j A home paper says : — An official con- ; tradiction is given to a statement that the Duke of Wellington had left a casket to Prince Arthur, not to be opened until His .Royal Highness becomes of i age. A London paper states that a land and water velocipede, which is to take its inventor from Loudon to Paris i without stopping, is to be the next novelty. ! Some excitement has been caused in Westport by a report brought by some cattle dealers to the effect that valuable gold discoveries had been made iv the river Mangles, a tributaiy of the Bnller. No less than 16 ounces of coarse gold was said to have been obtained from a single dishful of dirt taken from the river bed. According to the " Post," the Maori prisoners in the Mount Cook barracks, "\V«lli*iaffcon 7 eatcli get £l nannilrTn of rum hot every night before going to bed. After the Ist of July single letters in all towns in Victoria are to be charged Id, newspapers are to be sent for a id, and the postal cards are to be transmitted for Id to any part of the colony ; packets under an ounce, halfpenny. The first white woman who ever set foot in Tasmania was buried on Thursday, the 16th ult., in Hobart Town. When a girl of 17 years of age, the deceased landed at Eisdon, in June, 1803, and died at Kingston the other day, aged 84 years. The " Wairarapa Mercury " is informed that on the arrival of the last batch of the Swedish immigrants at Wellington, a settler in the Wairarapa endeavoured to obtain the services of a married couple for a station in the district. The wages demanded, LBO a-year, were, however, so exhorbitant as to preclude their being engaged. Verily the Swedes appear to have a very good idea of the value of their labour, more especially when it is taken into consideration that it will be necessary to engage an interpreter as well.

A Suez mail telegram, dated Grpymouth, July 13th, says Mr. Yogel was still in London when the mail left, endeavouring to negotiate with Mr. Brogden for the construction, of railways iv New Zealand. He was presented at a levee to the Prince of Wales, and Mrs. Yogel was presented at a drawing-room to the Queen. Mr. Yogel has been elected an honorary member of the Reform Club. Miss Burdett Coutts is elevated to the peerage, under the title of Baroness Coutts. The Immigration and Public Works Act, 1870, has been assented to by her Majesty. At the usual pound sale at Mount Moriac, Victoria, held a few weeks ago, three tolerable hacks were sold for 11s. 6d. One of them fetched 3s. 6d., and the other two 4s. each. The animals were in fair condition, and only one of them could be considered aged. One of the "people's organs" — Reynolds' Newspaper — congratulates the working men on the death of the infant prince, as preventing another addition to the prospective burden of princely allowances and marriage settlements. So far as its father is concerned, that is about the extent of the sympathy felt.