TELEGRAMS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 121, 18 November 1909, Page 3

TELEGRAMS.

AUDITOR-GENERAL'S CERTIFICATES. SOME COMMENT. [BY TELEGRAPH — PRESS ASSOCIATION.] DUNEDIN, 17th November. At, the City Council to-night, Councillor Barr made some comments on the Auditor-General's ceitificates on the corporation balance-sheets. He said that the Auditor-General's certificate made some exceptions, disallowing large sums of money for the repayment of which the council might naturally be held responsible. The City Treasurer had told him that he would sooner make up his accounts this year from the point where he 'left off last year, and the Auditor-General could sirhply go over them, and perhaps draw up some more objections. If their accounts were so radically wrong as the Auditor-General would lead them to believe, it was hib duty to go further, and call on the council to rectify the wrong charges nnd place them to the proper account. If that were not done the certificate was absolutely worthless, which it was in any case, for the objections were not acted upon. The nroper thing was to write to the Auditor-General and ask him for reason for his objections, and for his legal authority in saying that the charges had been made without legal authority. He was told by the staff thai they were tired of writing for explanations, for they got no satisfaction. He thought the time was approaching when the whole quest.ion of corporation accounts should be gone into, particularly by the corporation, because it was the second largest trading concern in New Zealand, the Union Steam Ship Company being the firet, and its accounts were necessarily voluminous and complicated, and it was disheartening that the accounts already complicated should be made even more by the necessity of complying with the requirements of an antiquated law, framed when .corporations went very little into trading. fPBESS ASSOCIATION.! CHINESE AT PUBLIC BATHS. NAPIER, 17th November. At a meeting of the Napier Borough Council to-night, Councillor Eagleton moved: — "That Chinese be excluded from the municipal baths premises." He said Chinamen were in the habit of going to the baths, and other persons objected. Chinamen were, he considered, unfit to bathe with the people of Napier. Councillor Thomson thought respectable men who paid their taxes Had a perfect right to go to the baths. Chinamen were men and entitled to the rights of other men. The Mayor asked Mr. Eagleton to withdraw his motion, and said the matter could surely be settled in some other way. Mr. ''Eagleton refused to withdraw his motion; and gave notice to move it at next meeting. RE-CAPTURED PRISONER SENTENCED. CHRISTCHURCH, 17tfi November. Thomas Creagher, a- prisoner who escaped from Hanmer Camp 'on 3rd October, and was arrested yesterday, came before Mr. Bailey, S.M., to-day, charged with being an incorrigible rogue and vagabond. Ho was sentenced to nine months' imprisonment, cumulative with the sentence he is now undergoing, which is five years for housebreaking. QUAIL. AUCKLAND, i7th November. Quail are reported to bo in such abundant numbers ii some parts of the I'iuko and Waikato districts that farmers are expressing an intention to lay poison for them if a close season is declared for next year. The reports of the abundance of theso birds have travelled to Ilawkes Bay, Canterbury, and Otagoj and the Auckland Acclimatisation iSoriety has received enquiries as to the cost of trapping some birds and sending them along to other provinces. STREET -BETTING. DUNEDIN, 17th November. At the Police Court to-day Win. Forrester was lined £50 and costs on a charge of betting in a public street on 14th October. The evidence showed that a constable in plain clothes offered to make a bet on the street, and defendant agreed, asking the constable to step inside an hotel, ■where the transaction was completed. The defence, was that the bet was .not made in the street, but the Magistrate (Mr. Widdowson) ruled that an essential part had been completed there. On a similar charge Thos. Kerwen was also fined £5O and costs. In a similar charge against Sydney Wynne, the evidence % showed that wneu the constable approached defendant with the object of making a bet, the latter said : ''All right, but I don't bet on the footpath ; come in here," whereupon the two men went in to the doorway of the hotel. In this case the Magistrate reserved his decision. DEFENCE OF NEW ZEALAND. AUCKLAND, 17th November. The Napier Borough Council to-nigjit unanimously passed a resolution viewing j with satisfaction the Prime Minister's proposal with reference to the defence r of the Dominion. ALLEGED CALLOUS TREATMENT OF A STOWAWAY. AUCKLAND, 17th November. A report from the Cook Islands states that when the London Missionary Society's yacht John AVilliams left Aitutaki on 13th October, after proceeding eight or ten miles it was discovered that a stowaway (a native woman) was on aboard, who wished to visit her friends \at Rarotonga, 140 miles' distant. There being a very stringent rule against carrying passengers, the steamer put back, and it' is alleged put the woman into the -sea outside the reef, live' miles from the mainland. The woman had to swim over the breakers on to the reef, and r wade over broken coral for some distance, when she wa-s discovered by a fishing canoe and brought safe to the shore. Much indignation is expressed by the natives — pastors, deacons,' and everyone else — at Aitutaki at the alleged action of those aboard the mission steamer. " FATAL ACCIDENT. INVERCARGILL, 17th November. James Duthie, aged 19, while getting off a ballast train at Athol station, stumbled, aijfd the plough on the van dragged him under the trucks. He was so severely injured that he died on the way to the hospital. MIRACULOUS ESCAPE. CHRISTCHURCH, 17th November. A man named Percy Waddell had a miraculous escape from death at the tunnel works early this morning. Waddell was trucking from the tunnel mouth to the tiphead, and had taken a rake of seven tracks down, and was in the act of tipping them from the trestle, when by some means the whole rake commenced to move forward, apparently through being insufficiently braked. All the trucks are fitted with a powerful screw brake, and there should bp no difficulty in holding them, but. as Waddell was a new hand at the work it is surmised lhat when he found the trucks moving towards destruction ho iottt his head, and unscrewed the brake instead oi" screwing it on. The result was that the whole rake went over the trestle, and was smashed to pieces. Waddell attempted to alight on the end of the sleepers, but missed his footing and fell a distance of 45 fept to the riverbed below, where ho was picked up in an unconscious condition -»»me tigofi jitter. He hujumjs^&d

consciousness, but is suffering from internal injuries, besides a broken leg and several cuts and bad bruises. DEATH OF A CHILD THROUGH EATING MATCH-HEADS. DUNEDIN. 17th November. Some days ago a girl named Constance Neilson, aged nineteen months, whose parents live at Ravensbourne, managed to reach a box of wax matches on a table near to her cot. She bit the heads oft' a number and swallowed them. It was not until yesterday morning that any ill-effects became visible, and then the mother sent for Dr. M'Kellar. From the first he held out -no hope, and the girl died during the day. An inquest was held this morning before the coroner (Mr. Graham) and a verdict of death from phosphorous poisoning was returned. Mr. Graham, commenting upon the case, said there was a Bill being brought before Parliament at Home to do away with the manufacture of phosphorous matches on account of the disease imparted to thoce engaged in the trade. Such a Bill, if it became lav/, would nlso prevent such a distressing misndventure as the present.