GENERAL NEWS.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 896, 5 December 1871, Page 3

GENERAL NEWS.

His Honor the Chief Justice, at a sitting in Banco in Auckland, on the 15th ult., admitted James Bannatyne Graham and Albert Edward Tyrrell Devore, as solicitors of the Supreme Court of New Zealand. We wonder who Captain William Reynolds and Miss Catherine Mary Fitzgibbon are. Either by way of " chaff," or on account of some singular interest that attaches to the loving couple, the" Auckland Herald," of the 17th ult., announces to the public three times in five consecutive columns their marriage. It appears in the ordinary space devoted to happy people, and twice in the local columns. No wonder the Auckland people are particularly desirous of taking some steps to lessen drunkenness, if w r e may judge of the morality of that city by an announcement in a recent issue of the " Morning News," which seems rather to rejoice over the fact that " Only five drunkards occupied apartments at the police station last night, in addition to two individuals who have each violated a clause of the Vagrancy Act." Mr Warwick Weston has furnished the Auckland papers with certain returns relative to the goldfields, the moral of which deserves notice. They contain a statement of every ounce of gold reported as having been yielded from the crushings of every claim at Thames and Coromandel, during the period between the Ist January and the 30th September of the present year, namely, an aggregate of 285,020 oz 18dwt. They also contain a statement of every ounce of gold purchased by the banks during the same period, namely, 387,1540z 8 dwt, and a comparison of the results is in the highest degree instructive. From the returns it appears that no less a quantity than 62,1330z Bdwt, have been purchased during tho nine months which have never been reported as passing through a battery. But Mr Weston makes an allowance of tailings and small specimens crushed at private batteries, for which no returns may possibly have been made. For such yield there is allowed what must be regarded as a liberal margin—viz, 30,0000z, in nine months—and still there reman 32,133 unaccounted fcr. The "Herald" asks: Where has this gold come from ? It has been purchased, and has passed through the Banks, but so far as we can find it has never passed through the batteries. Here we have upwards of 30,0000z of gold over the origin of which there hangs a heavy cloud of mystery. That it has been secretly extracted from the quartz is manifest ; but whence came the quartz ? If it came legitimately from the claims it must have passed through the batteries and heen entered in their returns. If it came to light in other ways we should no longer wonder that so many claims have been uuprofitably worked.