Page 4 Advertisements Column 5

Evening Post, Volume LVI, Issue 16, 19 July 1898, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL. 4 We are assured that a decided improvement in the quality of the fruit sent to New Zealand- from the neighbouring colonies has been -observable since the Agricultural Department insisted that all infected fruit should be returned to the port at which it had been shipped to Maoriland. A Wellington expert says that only the best class of fruit is now being sent to us. The boat found in Pukutea Bay, near the French Pass, by a fisherman named Tronson, of which news was brought to town by Captain M'Lean, of the Penguin, has been ascertained to have been that in which Dr. Stnylie set out on what has evidently been his fatal trip from D'Urville Island. The new school at Roseneath is practically finished, and the formal opening will take place immediately a teacher has been selected by the Education Board to take charge. Illustrating some of the risks of fire insurance, a delegate to the Municipal Conference stated last night that at an Aucklaud fire the damage by fire was £30 and the damage by water £30,000. " Did they put it out P" queried another delegate, amid some laughter. "It was a four-story building," continued the raconteur, " and the fire started up in the top story." "And now we come to the fifth story," interrupted a waggish delegate, and. the rest of the tale remained untold. The immigration returns show that 1048 persons arrived in the colony in the month of June, as against 1069 iv June last year, and 1305 persons left these shores as against 1206 in the corresponding month. The Magistrate seized his pen and was about to number aud initial, as an exhibit, one of the suspected betting-books produced in Court yesterday. " Don't write yoiu name there, your Worship," exclaimed the solicitor for the defendants with such i seriousness that the Magistrate stayed hi? hand with the pen already on the paper, and looked up enquiringly. " You had better not sign your name there ; you might sret into trouble," proceeded the solicitor, with melodramatic warning, aud the humour of the joke seising the Magistrate, he joiued in the laugh against himself. ' " There is no one who can blow his own | trumpet so well as a Scotsman," said one of the speakers at last night's Otago Reunion, | aud he aud other speakers proceeded' to . prove the troth of that statement. But in ' the remarks made as to Otago's " vera great ' prosperity " were many home truths, and , one of these was the reference by Sir Robert Stout to Wellington's seeming inability to , even keep in existence an Agricultural and | Pastoral Association — a state of things much , to be deplored. Sir Robert compared Wel- , lingtou in this respect with Otago, where, in Dunedin, was an Agricultural Hall for \ winter exhibitions which would do credit to a town three or four limes the size. The • speaker could not understand why we could not support an Association here, aud did not . know whether to ascribe Duuedin's success in this respect to the climate or the people. i The delegates attending the Muuicipal Conference have been invited to lunch at Groverumeut House on Thursday.