GENERAL NEWS.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 850, 15 August 1871, Page 2

GENERAL NEWS.

We (Argus), have been informed that Mr Elmer, of Paroa, has been appointed to the office of bailiff to the Besident Magistrate's Court, Greymouth, in room of Mr Gourlay, who recently resigned. Dr Beale has been committed for trial at Braidwood, New South Wales, on a charge of manslaughter, one of his patients havingdied through his leg being improperly set. The publicans and brewers of Adelaide have combined to raise the price of colonial beer on account of the high price of hops. The Customs revenue of New South Wales for the last five months shows an increase of £21,000 on the same period during last year. Mr Hall intends to introduce salmon ova into New South Wales from California, by the return trip of the City of Adelaide. The Adelaide Government have taken up the ship Bengal for the Northern Territory for £750. Another vessel will shortly be despatched. Plana and estimates for a railway 200 miles north of Port AugUßta, as prepared by the surveyor-general, are now in the hands of the Government, but no action has been decided with regard to them. A late telegram from New Plymouth states:—"Mr John Knight, M.P.C., was drowned in a small stream on Sunday night, and his body was found next morning. Mr Kuight held the honorary office of Provincial Treasurer for Taranaki. At the inquest the fo]-

lowing verdict was returned • —" That from the "evidence of Rawson, the jury are of opinion that the deceased being on the bank of the Mangatuku River, fainted and fell into the river, and was drowned on Sunday evening, the 23rd July." A woman named Mary Anderson has been committed for trial at Invorcargill on a charge of manslaughter of her own child, a male, infant three months old. At the inquest, ovidence was given by several persons, which went to show that the child had been greatly neglected both as regards food and clothing. The surgeon by whom the post mortem examination was made, Mr F. A. Monckton, said that the child's death, if not caused, had been accelerated by neglect and want of proper sustenance. He had never in his life seen a child so emaciated, without some very apparent evidence of disease.

Mr Purvis Russell has issued a writ for libel against the " Hawke's Bay Herald," in consequence of an article published in its issue of May 18th, entitled "Native Land Frauds Prevention." Damages are laid at £IOOO.

A paper has been read at the Institute of Civil Engineers on Phonic Fog-signals, to be used at sea, or along coasts. It was shown that the best means for producing the required sounds were the whistle and the trumpet; blown by a steam-engine, they would be loud enough. But the author, Mr Bazley, has long believed that the vast dynamical power afforded by the rise and fall of the tide will some day be made use of to produce the required noise. If so, this power eould be applied in situations where steam-engines could not be introduced.

One effect of the Prussian occupation of the Champagne districts has been to increase enormously the exports of brandy to England. The bonded stock of brandy there now amounts to nearly 13,000,000 gals.; the bonded stoek to the end of last quarter amounted to upward of 4,500,000 gallons more than the previous year, and these enormous imports still continue on the same scale. Literary ventures do not appear to be very profitable in the far East. The copyright of a paper started in Hong Kong in 1860, entitled " Notes and Queries," was recently sold by auction and fetched one dollar ! The Rothschilds are said to have lest from fifty to seventy-five million dollars by the result of the FrancoGerman war. They all believed at first that the French would be victorious ; but two weeks after the Germans had crossed the Rhine they saw their mistake, and "made new investments, which prevented them from losing thrice as much as they would have done had they not corrected their blunder in good time. A bottle of petroleum from one of the springs near Poverty Bay has been exhibited in Napier. It is extremely clear, and paper or rag dipped into it burns with a white and brilliant flame. At the eighty-eighth annual convention of the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons in America, held in New York on the 6th ult, the Grand Master delivered an able and eloquent address, in which he snid: I have been compelled to file with the Grand Secretary an order recalling the commission of our former representative to France. This was required, perhaps, by the former resolution of nonintercourse ; but the present position of French Masonry, leagued with communism and atheism, and bearing the bamier of masonry into the front ranks of civil war, indicates too surely that, until purified and reformed, French Masonry differs so widely from our own that fraternal relations are impossible with it and other bodies sharing its errors. The "Mai-nichi Shin bun" is the title of a native Japanese newspaper recently started. The contents of the first number are of a very varied complexion. There are advertisements in plenty, notices of ships sail* ing, a list of the mercantile marine in port, the men-of-war, and a price current of all staple articles. The printing and get up of the paper would drive an English master printer to distraction, but as the Japanese have not had much experience in these matters its advent must be hailed as a step in the right direction. Nearly all the Chinamen who lately arrived at Dunediu from Hong Kong went up the country on the Ist inst. They intend to scatter themselve over the Waipori, Tuapeka, Bannockburn, and Wakatip districts. The first number of a new monthly, entitled the " Oddfellow," has been published in Launceston. The want of a hospital in Fiji is increasingly felt as the European population of the group becomes large, and it is proposed to endeavour to raise subscriptions for the establishment and maintenance of such an institution.

Colonel Bordone, late chief of the Staff to General Garibaldi, is engaged on a work entitled " Diary of a Staff Offier," in which he will expose the behaviour of the French Ministry to the General.

One hundred tons of tailings from the Alburnia claim, Thames, realised 20s per ton. According to statistics given in an Adelaide paper of May 27, New Zealand baa imported this season from South Australia as follows :—Flour, 275 tons, valued at £2350; wheat, 53,096 bushels, valued at £12,761 ; total value, £15,111. The above figures relate to a period up to April 15th.