MISCELLANEOUS

Tuapeka Times, Volume V, Issue 250, 14 November 1872, Page 9

MISCELLANEOUS

The " Wanganui Herald " has the following :—": — " The members of the Armed Constabulary have been weighed and found — not wanting. The average weight of the officers and men now stationed in Wellington is twelve stone and a quarter of a pound, and their average height five feet. nine and three-quarter inches."

The " Sydney Mail " very sensibly asks, without capital what are you to do in a country where the market for educated labor is overstocked, where some of the necessaries of existence command extravagant prices — like houses at Sydney, for example, where a very modest one fetches £600 a year ? On the other hand, if a man of small income desires to live like a gentleman in quiet comfort and serenity, he might do worse than going to Tasmania. There the country stagnates for lack of labor and manure, but most of the inhabitants have hit off the fortunate mean between poverty and riches. With its clean county towns and old-fashioned inns, with its names, its hedgerows, and its stage coaches, the southern island is old England over again. It is true that the luxuriant growth of its vegetation casts the old country in the shade. Near Hobart Town, Major Bell made an excursion into the virgin forest in quest of " the greatest tree in the world." It is monopolised for show purposes by a resident gentleman of the name of Stubbins, who is located in a neighbouring hut, and keeps the path to the notorious gum-tree a family secret. There are no means of arriving at its precise dimensions. But, pacing it round its base, Major Bell measured thirty-one yards, and " bleached 'and. branchless till near the top, its huge Btem disengaging itself from its base of roots, rises ma girth of eighty feet, arises from roots that overtopped the boy who guided me, and perhaps were five feet in height." He has some reason for surmising that this Tasmanian monster may hold its own even with the world- renowned giants of the Californian forests.

Some few years ago, reports the " Hobart Town Mercury," our colony lost, through the hand of a ruffian, one of the most valuable blood horses we ever possessed. This was Phantom, by Jersey, by Bay Middleton, the winner of twenty-nine races on the English turf, without a single defeat Phantom's dam was a mare oi Mr. Field's, of Westbury, and this splendid creature was sent to Mr. Alfred Kearney's, with the spirited idea of improving the equine blood on our side of the island. One morning, however, when the stable door was opened, there lay Phantom, with his throat cut from jaw to jaw. and right in, until his head fell back disjointed on the pavement. No one but the murderer knows to this day who used the knife. Terrified beyond bearing, Mr. Kearney left his native home, and occupied a farm under Mr. Hadden. at G-reen Ponds, and just as fortune seemed to smile again, and his crops promised a reward for his labor, he was cleared out by a fire — haystacks, grain in barn, and all went. No one but thejineendiary knows even now who struck the match ! Driven still further, poor Kearney journeyed to the very end of his native land, taking wife and toddling children with him, and rented a farm under a gentleman named Jones, of White Hills, near Launceston; but the fiend followed still, and very recently, his first crop, and his little household and all, were again turned into flames ; and the hand of the monster who did this thing is unknown.

To persons about to eat sugar confectionary colored yellow and orange at Newcastle-on-Tyne our advice, like that of " Punch " to persons about to marry, is " don't." The good analyst of that town finds that nearly all of those colored confections owe their tint to chromate of lead, which is poisonous. Some of tbes? luscinous deceptions contained more than a tenth of a grain of metallic lead a- piece. Some con fectionary contained plaster of Paris of Paris to the extent of If per cent. Et is to be hoped, in the interest of childhood's omnivorous stomach, that the twopenny-halfpenny Bor»ias who vend these gaudj poisons will find the publications of the names of all such offenders by the authorities a speedy check to their nef vrious practices.

Mr Alexander Mickay, in reportiup upon natives in Nelson and Westiand, says the numerical status of the people is about.Btationary, the births keeping pace with the deaths. The total population in these districts amau-t to 920, in the proportion of 523 males to 397 females; the children form little more than one-fourth of the whole. The total area of Native Reserves in the Province of Nelson is 58,565 acres 3 rood?_and 35 perches ; and in tbe Province of Marlboroujjh, 21,414 acren 2 roods 8 perches. The Reserves in Westland comprise an area of 5937 acres 1 rood 16 perches. The total acreage set apart in the South Talanrl for native purposes amounts tol 19,544 acres 2 roods 18 perches. The quantity, when averaged over the population- in the middle and Stewarts Island, gives 53$ acres to each individual. But, besides the quantity stated, the natives in the Province of Nelson own territory at Wakapuaka, and D'Urvilies Island, comprising about 51,170 acres ; and at the Island of Ruapuke, in Foveaux Straits an area of 4033 acres.