Local and General.

Clutha Leader, Volume XXIV, Issue 1223, 10 December 1897, Page 6

Local and General.

«. The Norraanby town district, Taranaki, has adopted the rating on unimproved value scheme. it is said that there are this year €0,000 pilgrims at Lourdes — so far the record figure. In the Legislative Assembly of South Australia a motion to extend the franchise to women was defeated by 17 to 11. The Auckland District Klondyke Exploring Syndicate, with 2000 shares, and the New Zealand Klondyke syndicate are announced. ' Notices of motions for new trials have been given in the Mills libel eases against the Otago Daily Times and the Christchurch Press. A New Plymouth man was the other day fined LlO for accompanying a prohibited person into a hotel and encouraging him to drink. The prohibits 1 cne was also fined L 3 and costs. The North Otago Times states that a fine salmon was taken in the net of Mr Cross on Wednesday outside the mo'.e, and immediately put back into the sea. The Mnsterton School Committee is going to sell its swings by auction, because the head master has been kept busy bandaging up the youngsters' heads lately. The body of a man named William Small was found in a waterhole at Fingai, Tasmania. The head was battered. At the inquest a verdict of ' Murder ' was returned against John Beckett, Small's mate. It is understood that the report of the medical gen tie- men who examined Cresswell, an inmate of a lunatic asylum in Sydney, is unfavorable to establishing his identity as Sir Roger Tichborne. The chief characteristic marks are wanting. At the quarterly meeting of the Bruce Licensing Committee on Friday the application of Mr D. Corson for a transfer of tb.2 license of the Bridge Hotel, Kaitangata, to Mr John M Corley, was granted, and also that of Mr M'Corley for an 11 o'clock license. A conditional license for the Athletic Sports at Kaitangata on December 27 was granted to Mr T. B. Smith. A robbery of a particularly daring character was perpetrated at Forbes, New South Wale*. Judge Decker, who was presiding at the Court of Quarter Sessions, left his coat in the retiring room, leaving his gold watch and chain, a medal, his railway pass, and some sovereigns in one of the pockets. At the termination of the business of the Court he discovered the nbove articles wj? re gone. The Hinemoa, which returned from the outlying islands, brought reports that five men of Hatch's Macquarric Island penguin oil party left one landing place for another in a boat on the 9th November, that it capsised, and that four, named Wright, M'Kinnon, Hooper and Mitchell were drowned. The Hinemoa encountered bad weather and much ice. All Hatch's men came from Dunedin and thereabout. M'Kinnon was a son of a former hotelkeeper at Tapanui. As an example of the careless drafting of many of the bills which are passed by the present legislature we copy subsection c3 of the Old Age Pension Bill which reads as follows : — Every such person shall be entitled to a pension provided ' that he is not notoriously of drunken or immoral habits, and as such was known to the police or any other person at the time he filed his pension, claim." The ambiguity lies in tho part italicised, and the proviso would seem to imply that to obtain a pension a man or ■woman mast not be notoriously of drunken or immoral habits, but at the time of filing his or her pension claim mast be known as such (namely, of drunken or immoral habits) to the police or any other person. The bill would thus become a special provision for the old age of reformed drunkards and evil livers. In the action Coker versus the Queen, Judge Williams held that a railway servant who loses hia office through his own default ig disentitled to compensation. In this case until appelant's negligent act he had suffered no Joss of employment requiring compensation. His loss of office was a direct consequence of his own negligence, and would require plain language in the Act to entitle the man to compensation for loss caused by his own negligence On Saturday morning two Jersey cowg, the property of Mr James Rowe, of Windsor Park, near Christchurch, were found dead in a paddock. Tbne is no way of accounting for their death. One of the cows was found to have frothed at the mouth, indicating the possibility of poison. Early on Sunday morning tho trotting horse Vermont was found dfjafll in a paddock at Woolston. Mr Allen, veterinary Mrgron, i& oi opinion that th<* hor*e was poison<jd, and had bwn given fritl'ftr oxalic acid or tartar emetic. A pardon ie offered to any peruon, not being fh«* principal offender, giving information wbk;h will I«<a,d to the conviction of th<i offender or cftwider* in i\it wwiil horse-kil ling cases there. A reward of LIOO is *)eo ofiered,