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Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 6373, 8 February 1892, Page 2

On our back page to-day is commenced a new and highly interesting story entitled •'The Golden Caves," by M. Quad.

Full Cabinet meetings will be held this week, at which the proposed appointments to the Legislative Council will be considered.

The head of tho Labor Bureau, Mr E. Tiegear, who has been on a visit to Auckland, leaves for Napier this week. Ho is of the opinion that the number of unemployed in the colony is decreasing.

We beg to thank our contemporaries for their kindly noticee of the Daily Tklkgbaph on the attainment of its majority. The hearty good wishes they havo sent us are an assuranoe of the bond of fellowship that exists between journalists of New Zealand.

A fourteen - roomed boarding - house, named "Cottage of Content." owned by Mr William Aduir, and occupied by Mrs M'lntoeh, was destroyed by fire at Giebornc oil Saturday. Insurances—Building, £250 in the New Zealand ; furniture, £250 in the 2?val.

The farewell banquet to tho Governor at Dunedin on Saturday was attended by about three hundred persona. In replying, Lord Onslow said ho would never L,e* able to repay the kindness he had received, and would always entertain a love and affection for this colony which must tinge tho course of action of his future life.

" Old Judgo " Whisky is tho bett in tho market.

The revemio of the Government railways for the four weekly period ending 2nd •J.'iiiiiry, 1592, was £lt)l.i!'j;j as atrwinVc

C 95.381 f..r the eurresoonding period la>t yen;. Tie ;'(.r:li l> , .mu <; .ii!.:i!.uted a 8,170 of tin*, and c.c 'ou h IsUn-i Co."), 891. as iiji.i,i>t CM 122 iviid £u1.2-")S lii-l year. Tin- i xpenlit .re fur th>- »!i le colony wii« i:yU.2lii> iii uaiiin-f C-9.762 ■ li«-N.-rth Island absorbing f17,901, and the ,-.'uuth Island £;)•;,365.

Seldom has I ivereargdl been so full of visitors from abroad as yesterday (says the .Southland Kewn of the 2nd instaut) Over fifty landed from tho h s. Manapouri from lui-tralia, and v goodly number came by j'ltil from the North, ii/'commodation at the urtiicipal hotels being fully taxed. Tliin morning the majority "renmed th;>ir h iliday trip, some going by the TiiDUvur.i io the West Court Sounds, and others to tho Lakes District.

The barque Star of lirin, Captain HopitiiiM, which left the Bluff for London on Wurday, has none ashore at. Waipaoareef, and hi'.s become a total loss. All bauds have been saved. The ship hud been de\:vi'\ by an easterly wind, Mid left ''hen it h t'vd o the r-,;.miw,inl . >ne,e the:. <)i,v.iK,! h;,« c .in ■ lip Mmiii.' from the .- -n.l (liis pr.i>i '.hly eau>ed the '<<». cf the shi;i ihe vreok is a mile from t): : lighthouse. it occurred n midnight A bout and ten inui reached Fortrone at 9 o'clock on SuLrlav morninjr. The mate and one man lulled ..t Waipapu. The captiiin nnd th' 3 remainder of the crew landed ft. 1 1 it.in. Only tho inizzen mast is standing. M. Drouhet, a French e;entlemn,n at present in Melbourne claims to h:ivo discovered tho secret so much sought by machinists of old of perpetual motion. Tie has constructed ». machine, the main feature of which consists of a circuit of bulls on a chain, so arranged in conjunction with discs or wheels that there shall, alwnys bo more balls on one eide than the other, and therefore a kind of perpetual tuyr-of-wur i> established. M. Drouhet claims for tho machine that, it can be used as a motive power to tho smallest clock or to drive a traraciir ; and so fur as he can sco at, proent he has set up a motion s.« perpetual that hie principal difficulty will be to discover a method of stopping it.

Mr T. Mackenzie asks : Who think you, pays the Property T'ix ? And ho replies : We have in this colony a population of G30.000 people, and out of ttmt number 29,000 pay the Property Tax. I went to considerable trouble trying to discover the proportion people paid. Out c.f the number mentioned 10.0G9 people pay an average of

15s 6d each. That surely is not a heavy tax. Then there are 4000 who pay about £2 7s each, and 5500 who yay about £5 10s each. That accounts for ',0,000 out of the 27,000 people who p;iy 1113 Property Tax, and they only pay about £")0,000 out of the ,£350,001.' of the tax. As a matter of fact the bulk of the Property Tax is paid by about '2000 people, and I happen to be ono of them, and as one of them I say that the Property Tax is not a bard and oppressive tax.

Tho Dowager Lady de Ros, who died in Eaton-plaoa on Tuesday, at the great ageof 96 (says the London Daily News of December 18), was present at the famous ball in Brussels on tho night before the battle of Waterloo, commemorated in Lord Byro-j's well-known poem. Shq put on the Duke of Wellington's sword when he went to meet Napoleon, and tho scene of thn festivities was the house of her father, tho Duke of Ku'.hmonil. years afterwards she married tho Hon. William Lennox L;i>celles de Roh, afterwards twentieth baron of that ilk, who in 1839 succeeded his brother, the hero of the famous curd case. Her husband died in 1574, and tho present Lord de Ros is her son. Lady de Ros is believed to havo eurvived every officer, if not every man, who fousrht at Waterloo, Lord Albemarle and General Whiehcote having ! died within tho present yenr. Lady do Ros published a few mon'hs ago her reminiscences of the ball, with a description of the building and tho street in which it was held.

A French author. Blous. Pelicot, honorary member of the protective societies of Paris and Brussels, has published a book in which he attempts to rehabilitate the iSuglish sparrow in public estimation. While not agreeing \vh"lly with the author's conclusions, Insect Life, in noticing t.ho book, rewmmeuds it us a most interesting contribution to a vexed question. in support of' his argument that the sparrow is beneficittl rather than harmful, the author gives a table of the estirrmtwi raadet by sc-veml others of the number of insects devoured by a sparrow in a given time. Ht; deprecates the slaughter of the litt'.o birds by guv or poison, and gives us a sure protection for fruit trees and garden crops the Ht; ing-ing of threads of red wool, or of any striking color, on the bri-iichch of treci ov on small stakes close to tho crop to be protected. This very simple device he e'aims to have tested himself, nud found it a perfect protection from the sparrows The American authority ahiove mentioned thinks this may be wo:th trying by those who believe that the :.pH,rrowfi do more harm than good, 'mt eoiisiaurs that many of tho author's statements will not boar the test of scientific enquiry. Has a clergy m;m tho right to inflict torture on Htiy member of his congregation (is naked by the London Daily Telegraph) The question is suggested by the fact, th;it Mr Hadden, vicar of f?t. Botolph, Aldgate, is having his chuivsh listed with a new kind of (■out, witL the uvouvd design of forcing neopie to knri>! durin r rrayers. His own desci ipiion ct Uk pews ir- rijat " for sitting on they are 'he mist convenient ones which can be desired , for half-kneeling against they are productive of torture." This worthy and " progressive " clergyman strongly objects to the tenriemiy of people in church to give up kneeling, and merely leau slightly forward when joining in tho prayers. Pueh an altitude, he believes, savours of irreverence ; but it is a question whether it will not look still mure irreverent to ace a number of people in a congregalition sitting bolt upright while prayers are going on, which is certaiu to be the result of an attempt to compel the adoption of kneeling. In most Scotch churches the congregation stand up to prity and sit to sing. Kneeling is an agony to th« weakbacked, who will probably avoid tho neighborhood of St. Botoiph, Aldgate, on Sundays in future.

Mr Walter Bentley's New Zealand tour is undoubtedly a great success. In Dunedin for teveral nights consecutively money was returned at the doora. The company, too, is powerful and splendidly rehearsed. The performances of '-The Bells," "David Garrick," "Hamlet," etc., are spoken of by the press as being tho finett evor witnessed in that city. Mr Bentley held a reception in Dunedin us a return for the great number of calls he had received, at which the elite of the place congregated very largely. In recogni'ion of Mr Bentley's talents and of his old associations with Dunedin, he was presented with a handsome testimonial on his last night, when il Hamlet " was pla3'ed. This is one of Mr Bentley's greatest parts. It is his own version that he presents, being sahoiurly and at the Hume time so interestingly arranged that tiie most stupid mind must grasp the full meai'jimr of the masterpiece of tragedies. Mathias, the Burgoraastei, in " Tho Bells," in Mr Ben Hoy's chef d'wuvro. It was the play that brought Henry Jrving into pro-mini-uce, and is tl-e m.ist wierd and intense conception that, ever filled the stage. Mr u entlry is on a tour of the world, and will vWtull places of importance in the colonies pervitins to a vifif whi r h is fixed at the time of the World's Fair, to iho United 'tides. He playr a season in Nfipicl , in. Itlnrch.

Dr. Hiieokcl, in common with otlrv ■Duikers at the Frankfort Electrical Oon- • jreijH, is not satisfied (writrs v London piper) wil.h our present sywcem <>i for the use of telephonic communication. ;Vs mutters stand, a subscriber who uses his telephone sparingly and moderately has to pay as mu:b as ona who continuously has the telephone i;\ hid ear, and further, thu iiihabitttiil of a small town, with a network of 600 subscriber!;, in charged an much im inhabitant of a large town, witK s. network of SCOO subscribers. Our contemporary, Electricity, thinks it clear tiint this is must uufair to* the moderate user of the telephone ; moreover, it encourages idle •-iul frivolous talk. While; staying with some friends in Germany, this writer iou.id that the lady of the house and her daughters aud servants ueed the telephones so much that the bell hardly ceased ringing tor half-an-hour during tlieday. Not only did they order their meat, their grocery, and their rish, but they talked about their draws and dressmaker", tho calls they re-

uisived and intended to make, and, worst of all, they tallied scandal. Sweden has already taken the matter in hand. In Stockholm tho tariff lias been fixed according to tho number of conversations. This , , however, is open to tho objection that it tuxefl short conferences and lung conversations alike. Dr. Stieckel desires to introduce an apparatus measuring the duration of the communication with a view to charge iiccordinuly, after exacting a slight uniform "fundamental tax." The apparatus is described as simply an electric clock, which is set going by the telephone being taken off the hook, and is stopped automatically by the clearing-out signal being given. Mr Owen, chemist, Hastings street, has received direct from the maker a new supply of Pepsoalia, Kola Wine. Bovril, Pumiline Essence, Roche's Embrocation (for whooping cough), Quinine Wine, Anti-C*tarrh Salts for Hay Fever, Influenza, etc