BRIEF MENTION.

Evening Star, Issue 10391, 12 August 1897, Page 4

BRIEF MENTION.

At Melbourne George Cranny, a registry office keeper, has been sentenced to "three months' imprisonment on a charge of swindling several persons by pretending to get them situations.

Ihe Royal Lifeboat Institution, which controls the bulk of British lifeboats, has been instrumental in saving nearly 30 000 lives with its 300 boats. ' '

At an English Police Court recently a man was summoned for neglecting to have a ohild vaccinated, but the defendant brought forward evidence to show that others of his children had suffered in cons'!, quence of vaccination, and thereupon the maqistrato dismissed the case. The ' Poverty Bay Horald ' points out that tho lesson taught the inhabitants of Gisborne by the wreck of tho Tasmania and the outoreak of fire on the schooner Aotea is that the port is in urgent need of a steamer powerful enough to go out to the assistance of any vessel in distress along the coast. A Sydney man has invented a bicyole without chain or cogs, and the frame is radically altered, the wheel base being reduced considerably. The inventor expects it to cover a mile in Imin 20sec. Last week an old man named Wallace, believed to be a Frenchman, met with his death in a singular manner. He went to draw, water from a well at Ropiha'a property (Ormondville), and while in the act pitched forward, his head falling into the bucket, and he was drowned without a struggle. There wa ß only 3ft 6in of water in the hole. Deceased was seventy years of age, and very weak.

A man named Hugh Ford, of Porangahau (Auckland), reported to S;rgeant - maior Scanlon the other day that he had been robbed of a gold watch and chain and a considerable sum of money on the previous evening. Detective Bishop instituted inquiries, and found that there was no truth in the man's statement; the money being in his pockets, and the wa*xh and chain were found at the place where he was boarding Information was received bv the mail' of the death, after much suffering, of Mrs Mary Steadman Aldis, wife of Professor Aldis late of Auckland. She was residing in Kent, England. She was a noted controversialist and opponent of the CD. Act in the Auckland Press.

By the Moana the Rev. Wardlaw Thomson, foreign secretary to the London Missionary Society, arrived from Samoa en route forbydney. He has juat completed a tour of inspection of tho society's missionary stations throughout New Guinea and the fcioutn Sea Islands with 'a view to bringing the arrangements into confirmity with the general scheme of the London Missionary Society. J

The Christchurch Meat Company are offering a 50-guinea trophy for collections of farm and dairy produce exhibited by counties at the next Canterbury winter show. At a social meeting of the members and friends of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, held on Tuesday night, it was unanimously resolved that "a reformatory was urgently needed, and that Government aid should be asked to carry out this plan." At the same time it was pointed out by several of the women that a reformatory under Government would not meet the case at all. It was also resolved "that in the opinion of this meeting it is very desirable that two women at least should be appointed to serve upon our Charitable Aid Board " and it was decided that the members of the other branches of the Union should be asked to assist in this matter, .and that letters should be sent to all prominent public men who would be likely to aid the women in the furtherance of this project. . The «Mount Benger Mail' reports that an invitation to the Hon. John* M'KenzieT Minister of Lands, 'signed by a large number of the principal residents of the district, has been forwarded to him. asking him to visit the district and address a meet£w fk?M bur J, h ' a ?-. d alaoto for himself the Moa Flab Estate, with the object of the Government acquiring if for close settlement, and to view the proposed route of the Menot-Roxburgh Railway extension. «. A , sum J n ° ns was issued against a settler in the Master-ton district for arrears of rates It was returned by the constable, who stated S -Tu! m r a > T had P aid 811 his debts, ev<m the debt of Nature, for he was buried that morning.