General News.

Bruce Herald, Volume XXXX, Issue 97, 16 December 1904, Page 3

General News.

m . ■- ■ Mr W. K. Haselden, S.M. has accepted appoiutment as a District Judge in place of Judge Ward, who has been given twelve months' leave of absence. Mr Haselden will probably sit for the last time on the magisterial bench in Christchurch next Monday, and intends leaving subsequently for Wellington for a few days' holiday. He will first take his seat as Judge at Westport, and will travel from there through the West Coast. His itinerary will next take him to New Plymouth, and from there he will tour tho southern part of the North Island. His duties will afterwards bring him to Canterbury, and he will sit at Ashburton on March 7, and work southwards from that town. It is understood the appointment, though nominally covering a period of a year, is a permanent one. Mr Haselden, it will be remembered, acted as chairman of the Mines Commission which sat at Kaitangata two or three years ago. Mr Wilford, solicitor has had a long interview with the prisoner Ellis. In consequence of this he will apply to the Justice Department for a survey and locality plans of the district in which Collinson was shoe He will also apply for a postponement of the hearing of the charge against the prisoner until January 20. Asked about the movements of the prisoner during the past nine months, Mr Wilford would commit himself to nothing further than to suggest that the prisoner might- not be Kllis. The Sydney Herald has issued a provisional forecast of the wheat harvest, which it estimates will yield 13,000,000 bushels. A grain expert, addressing the Adelaide Chamber of Manufacturer* predicted that this season's harvest would be one of the finest crops, so far as quality was concerned, ever secured. The State would be able to exploit most successfully the markets of the world in wheat and flour. In the Commonwealth Senate Mr Pulsford moved a series of resolutions deprecating preferential trade. He declared that the whole proposal was not preferential trade but penalised trade. Australia will gain nothing because Mr Chamberlain's scheme did not affect raw material. At a large meeting of shop assistants at Wellington it was decided to form a league to support universal early closing, and to urge the Premier to put clause 3 of the Shops Act into force at once. Mr Norton created a sensation in the Sydney Assembly by stating that in connection with the bankruptcy of Captain Bird, harbourmaster,., the latter had given as ' one of the grounds of his bankruptcy j that he had to pay Sir William Lyne | £500 for the billet. Mr Perry, a former j colleague of Sir W. J. Lyne, said he j had heard the rumor, and saw the j chairman of the Harbour Trust and j Captain Bird. They stated that there j was nothing in the story, and that it ! was an absolute falsehood. The Premier , stated that he would hold an immediate J and searching inquiry. J Mrs Chadwick, who was arressed in j connection with frauds in obtaining j money from banks and financiers, entrusted Reynolds, treasurer of the Wade , Park Bank, Cleveland, with securities representing five million sterling, and j secured loans elsewhere on Reynold's j affidavits, Reynolds kept silence to . ! protect Mr Carnegie, whose child Chad- j wick represented herself to be. Mr i Carnegie .denies signing anything for , two years \ A block of shops in the busy part of j Queen street, Auckland have all been visited in turn by thieves recently The series of thefts commtinced with a daring j haul, a dentist's show case, containing '. gold-filled specimen teeth, and valued j at £"20, being taken between 2.30 and ! 4 o'clock in the afternoon while the j dentist was at his business The thieves ; entered the stme building last night and ransacked a sewing machine ag -nts office without result. They attempted. to enter a grocery store next door, and broke dowu the fence, but found the window barred. A few nights before a neighbouring perambulator manufacturer's premises were entered and the articles thrown about, but nothing valuable was taken.