GENERAL NEWS.

Westport Times, Volume VI, Issue 915, 18 January 1872, Page 3

GENERAL NEWS.

| The first move under the new Act for railway formation has been commenced in the Wellington province. A tramway in the Manawatu district jb under construction, the contractors for the first section of four miles being Messrs- Dalrymple and Stewart, the former an old Molyneux settler. The manufacture of hosiery is about to be started in Dunedin. Mr J. O. White, some time ago, ordered the necessary machinery from home, and it arrived by the Christina M'Ausland. fhe manufactory will be erected in Hanover-street, and Mr White intends to use wool spun at Mosgiel.

A list of future solar eclipses appears in the " London Times," from Which we learn that a total eclipse will hot be observable in New Zealand until Sep. 9, 1885. Mr Fox, at the recently held Bangitikei races, prohibited the sale of liquor 3n the course, but the magistrates granted the necessary permission. It is said that Mr Fox intends to lay an information against the publicans for the illegal sale of liquors. 6n the 27 th December, Bobert

JBlayinire, an old settler in MarlboRough, was drowned off Cullen's Point, ptbout nine miles from Havelock, whilst jjmshing hw boat off some rocks where phe bad grounded. He was seen by ftffo men who were going to Havelock, fto get out of the boat and walk alongfade of her, pushing her into the water, fwhen he suddeuly sank, the tide at the lame time running very strong. The hen pulled to the spot as quickly as Possible, but he did not rise again until [pe was about three chains distant, and jthen sank immediately. His body has iiiot yet been discovered. I The ■" Echo " ascribes tire decline of ymarriage in New Zealand to defective JJaod Jaws; —" One of the most deplorable results of the absence of a good liberal law for settlement on the land Is that the marriage market—if the prreverence may be pardoned—is just [its much as locked up as the lands; find at really —to one unacquainted fwith our system of misgovernment and tits relationship to our social position [j—would seem strange to see so many Eligible young; women as one does see tbere —where there are teu men to one [woman—doomed to needlework as a e substitute for the position of a wife. Lin the overcrowded old country, this I would be the natural sequence of the ■ existence of thousands of hereditary I monopolies; but here, where the race •is more even between monopoly and the day-laborers, where the merchant of to-day may be the hard-worker of : to-morrow, and vice versa, it does seem -strange that our young women, instead «f having homes and husbands, should be, apparently, condemned to pass life behind a sewing machine or behind the bar of an hotel. If it be said that : necessity is at the basis of this seeming Anomaly, our reply is that a hundred would show that marriage find not celibacy would—if there was prevention—be woman's choice." : Mr Creighton, who professes to hold all protection as a mistake, has exi pressed the opinion that as the cereal ■ duties of last session create additional ■ facilities for the disposal at Auckland of grain produced by the Southern provinces, Auckland would be justified in imposing a tax on their importation?. But the Provincial Council cannot impose customs duties. Mr Creighton proposes to rise the wharfage rates 'to such a price at the Auckland wharf as to compel the Southern corn growers to refund to consumers the amount of the preferential duty placed upon importations from other counI tries. " Feats against time," says the '* Wellington Independent," Dec. 28, * pervade the enthusiastic reins of all society. The officials at the Besident Court have caught the lever, and yesterday timed themselves a committal case, the result being the ' shortest on record.' Lappan was brought up for hearing, the charge iead, evidence taken, the man committed, and all in the short space of ten minutes 1 Justice is getting over that sore foot." '•"" A tree was felled the other day at Sandy Creek, Wagga Wagga, for the purpose of procuring honey, which it was known had been collected there ..;% a rather . large swarm of bees. I- When the tree was cut down there *. was found in the hollow one of the toost astonishing collections of honey ever known, probably, to have been .gathered by one swarm of bees. There .were several immense layers of comb ten feet in length, and of great density, extending along the line inside of the trunk, and almost clothing the hollow of the tree entirely. After it had been .carried borne (having been wasted considerably by the fall of the tree, 'and the primitive mode in which it P£ collected), the comb yielded over 01b. of honey of the purest quality. "Melbourne Age."