INTERPROVINCIAL NEWS.

Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1159, 17 March 1874, Page 4

INTERPROVINCIAL NEWS.

The Otago Times says : —" It would be possible to reckon on the two hands the number of ministers of all churches in Otago who are really capable of directing, advising, and teaching the more educated members of their flocks. There is—and we lament the fact—an ever-growing gap between the cultivated intelligence of the community and the accredited exponents of religion. To whatever cause it is owing, we conceive that this fact is patent to everyone." Something like a photographic lens has been imported into Auckland. It cost £3OO, and is thus referred to by one of the local papers . —" This mastership of the optician's art will take a full life-size portrait, on a ground two feet square. The portrait stands out in bold relief, and every lineament is accurately defined and portrayed. The effect at the first view is extraordinary, if the person is known whom the likeness represents, having an appearance as if the head and shoulders of the living representative had been by some mysterious process placed inside the frame. It scarcely looks to be a picture, but a reality." A writer in the Dunedin Star says that the " three hundred" eligible young ladies of Taranaki are clean limbed, healthy, robust damsels, and nearly all blondes. It is a singular physiological fact that children of European parentage born in New Zealand are of the blonde variety. Let any person take a notebook in his hand and mark the rising feminine generation, in Nelson and Taranaki especialiy,'as they pass before him, and he will speedily find abundant confirmation of this fact. The different bodies of Orangemen and Good Templars at Grahamstown, Thames, are said to be actively at work to secure the return of their own candidates at the next general election. Mr Thomas W. Kempthorne, a brother of the Kempthorne who was murdered by the Sullivan, Burgess, Kelly, and Levy villiaiis, writes to the Daily Times asking if it can possibly be true that Sullivan has been liberated. lie writes as follows:—" On the l'ith. June, ISGS, this Sullivan, in company with three others, shot five men, and amongst this number an unfortunate brother of mine, under circumstances too dreadful to particularise. It will be remembered that Sullivan confessed the crime—that they were all tried at Nelson, found guilty and condemned to death ; but for some reason the Grovernnicnt spared the life of the worst of the gang, and changed the sentence to imprisonment for life." Mr Kempthorne concludes his letter in these words: " Believe me, the matter is not done with."

New Zealand is at last getting its due. It is actually becoming popular as a field for immigration. " The growth of her popularity," the Southern Cross learns by a private letter from an authority in London " is greatly, indeed mainly, due to the energy she lias displayed in public works, in securing peace with the natives which enables these works to be carried on, and by the liberal terms of immigration now offered. Of course there arc the attractions of the climate, and the good reports of the colony which returned colonists spread abroad in England. Both working men, agriculturists, and skilled artisans,, as well as persons possessing capital seeking investment, are now more than ever having their ettention directed to this colony. Mr Clayton, the Coadjutor of Mr Arch, the agricultural labourers' representative, is about to visit New Zealand, to see for himself the capacity and condition of the colony, with which, from the information he has already collected, he is very favourably impressed."