TABLE TALK.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXII, Issue 45, 22 February 1901, Page 1

TABLE TALK.

Disastrous fire at Feilding. A rush for the Seventh Contingent. Boors are still busy derailing trains. Sehalk-Burger advises the Boers to surrender. New steamer Einiutaka has arrived from London. The N.Z. University Senate resumed its session to-day. Krnger' intends returning to the Transvaal after the war. Otahuhu Trotting Club's racen take place to-morrow at Epsom. The Imperial Troops Reception Committee will meet this evening. General French is hard pressing Botha's main body of 4000 Boers. Auckland troops for the Seventh Contingent' will leave for Wellington on Monday. j An English mail is on board th» s.s." Mararoa, which loft Sydney yesterday for Auckland. I The Hon. W. Jlolleston has arrived here from the South to attend the session of the N.Z. University Senate. Stanton, the cancer specialist, lias been fined £50 for practising in Duuedin. A full report of the case is published in this issue. Ignatius Donnelly, the author of tho famous theory that Shakespea,re's I plays were written by Lord Bacon, Iras died at the age of seventy years at Minneapolis. Mr J. 11. Witheford, M.H.E., has received a cable from San Francisco, i stating that Mr John D. Spreckels, of I the Oceanic S.S. Co., left.there for i Auckland on February 14. The Mayor and a number of City Councillors intend making another I visit of inspection to the works for the auxiliary water supply at Nihotupu and Titirangi to-morrow. A fault has been found in the site I of the proposed auxiliary water supply ( reservoir ait Titirangi, and the City. j Council are abandoning the works j there in favour of another site. It is suggested that the Sixth Contingent, now on its way to ■ South Africa, .should be called "The King's First," a.s it was the first corps embodied and sent for active service in the reign of Edward VII. By way of giving a real holiday to some of our fast disappearing birds, it was enacted last session that one year in every three shall be a year of grace for "native pigeon, pukeho, and kaka." The 'first- of these years commences on Ist April, 190.1. A small boy in.the street on Friday^, in argument with another of his kid* ney, wag discussing tho letters. I.F< on the shoulder strap of an Irish Fusilier. At last the pair decided that the letters stood for "I fights," and they felt convinced on that point, —Christclmrch "Press." Wireless wires are obviously to lie the messages of the near future. Already two,of London's suburban fire stations afec&nnected by the ethereal messengepfv|yi that remains to be done," sai{tj«t expert at the Marconi headfiarters "to an "Express" representative, "is the making of instrument,-; for general use." Mr Rudyard Kipling is ' using his holiday in South Africa writing hia first play. The dramatisation of "The i Light that Failed" is the work, of "George Fleming," but the author is himself working on a stage version of his famous Jungle Book, which he is under contract to complete. for Mr H. M. Cameron by April next. . A newspaper of TCastamurii states (according- to the Ceylon "MohamI medan") that while a peasant was shooting in a forest near that place he heard the growling of a bear, which he found under a tree suffering great pain from a large thorn in Its paw. The animal permitted the sports to extract the thorn, and showed its gTatitude by taking the nian, by means of waving its paw, to a tree in which was a honeycomb 201b in weight. This is "Androcles and the Lion" up to date.