BREVITIES

Evening Star, Issue 11890, 19 May 1903, Page 1

BREVITIES

r . The case Hamilton v. the Bank of New Zealand and Assets Board has been transferred to Wellington. At Wellington yesterday decrees nisi were granted in tne cases S Beckman v. Beckman and E. Highky y G. Highley. Dealing with a couple of stowaways from London,. Dr M’Arthur, S.M., saidilhat one of the hardest problems magistrates had to deal with in New Zealand was the question of what to do with stowaways. Accused pleaded, for leniency, as they had worked during the passage. The magistrate inflicted; a fine of £3 each, or fourteen days, adding that if they were genuine in their desire for work they would show it during their period of incarceration, and when they came out they would find plenty of work to do if willing to take whatever was offered. Yesterday at Timaru the licensee of the , Club Hotel, prosecuted under the Public Health Act, was fined £2 for putting a. scarlet fever patient into a cab without ■warning the driver, and £1 for failing to notify the local authority of a case in his hotel. He was also convicted of failing to notify the Health Officer of letting the room subsequently to another person without notice that it had been recently occupied by a scarlet fever patient, and that person caught the disease. The.patient was fined' at Duhedin for travelling by train while sick. ' ", ■ The Arbitration Court (Christcbdrch) is at present hearing a case brought'by'the Canterbury Typographical Union against several newspaper proprietors in respect of wages and hours of labor. Tpe Christchurch City Council have decided to allow the Mayor of Greater Christchurch £4OO a year. Mr H. R. Smith, town clerk of the old City Council, was appointed town clerk of Greater Christchurch at a salary of £6OO, and Mr A, D. Dobson, former city surveyor, to a similar position under the new- Council at £SOO. The late town clerk at Linwood was appointed accountant to the new Council, but the town clerks of the old Boroughs of Sydenham and St. Albans were not included in the list of officers. A proposal has been made that the old Borough Council Chambers in the wards should be turned into public lifoaries. One of the proposals being considered for the construction of the great North Shore bridge over Sydney Harbor from Dawe's Point to Blue’s Point is to freeze the waters of the harbor where the central pier is to rest into a circular wall of ice, pump the water from the centre, and work within the wall at the foundations for the pier. It will be, when undertaken, one of the -biggest bridge contracts in the world. Neville Cayley, the well-known painter of Australian birds, whose pictures are highly valued by ornithologists as well as the general public, died in Sydney Hospital last week of Bright’s disease, aged fifty. _ The Feilding Borough Council have de-. cided to object to the whole of the valuations, which were recently made by the Government valuer, of that borough. The ground for the objection is that the rateable values of the properties as assessed are inconsistent, the valuations being excessive in many cases, while others are rated too low. \ A contemporary, describing a' wedding, soys : —“ The Brass Band farewelled the happy couple, who left for Nelson to spend the honeymoon, with appropriate selections, including ‘ The girl I left behind me.* ” It is, estimated that about ,sjooo bundles of fish were thrown into the tea during the ‘ past few days from the Wellington Fishing Company’s depots in the Sounds and Cook Strait through rough weather interfering with the collection by steamers. An. elephant named Jingo was lately bought from the Zoological Society and shipped by the Georgic to America. From the time when the steamer sailed he fretted and pined away; he became furious, and twice knocked down his keeper with bis trank, which he thrust between the bars of his cage. For sixty hours before his death he trumpeted without ceasing, which roused some leopards and a tiger, which joined in his lamentations. He took no food except two buckets of biscuit on one i‘ T . awre . nce ’ bis keeper, is of opinion that Jingo died of a broken heart, caused by ms separation from his mate. Mr Martin Boyd, harbor-master of Irvine (Scotland), has invented an automatic apparatus, to be actuated by the tide, and which will indicate the" depth of water at night. The apparatus is wrought by colored slides and lights, and the inventor believes he can perfect it so that it will hoist the ball signals automatically. The Law Courts of Argyll are to be transferred from Inveraiy to Dnnoon after the summer session. The Commissary Courts are not to be removed meantime. This transference of the Law Courts removes from Inverary almost the last remnant of ite former glory. It is now but a collection of bouses mostly inhabited by persons connected with the proprietor’s service. It is reported that emigration ia likely to effect house-letting in Edinburgh to a market extent. It is believed that the number of persons leaving Edinburgh for Canada and South Africa is very much greater than has been the case for nearly the past quarter of a century. According to the census returns, it appears that in Denbighshire one child in every five between the ages of three and fifteen speak only Welsh, At the age of twenty-five nearly one-half of these speak only English, but after forty-five they return to their mother tongue. The publicans of Dublin refused to dose the public-houses on St. Patrick’s Day. “They will keep open for the national credit,” it was said. By closing their doors it would suggest that the Irish people cannot keep the national holiday without abusing it. The famous bell, known as “ RouveH,” at Rouen, has become cracked. It has rung the curfew for an uninterrupted period of 600 years, and as repair seems impossible the townspeople are dismayed and griefstricken at their loss.

The seventy-eighth birthday of Mr August Manns, the well-known orchestral leader, was celebrated by sending the following * Musical Litany* to a London paper: —“ From ambitious singers with bad voices, from fiddlers who play out of tune, from Wagner—discipline without talent—Good Lord deliver me.”

Professor W. M. Ramsay, of Aberdeen, is arranging for the inauguration of a great school of historical geographical and scien. tific research in the interior of Asiatic Turkey. The proposal is that specialists should go to Asia Minor every summer for a few years and make explorations of the country. It is hoped that students from all the univeisities of Great Britaad may take part in the work.

A story comes from America of a farm horse which has a well-developed taste for new-laid eggs. Whenever it hears the cackle of a hen. it hunts about in the neighborhood until -it discovers the egg that caused the announcement, and after cracking it in its teeth laps it up with gusto. It is a. fine story. But when a horse and an egg are found in this sort of conjunction it is only possible to call the whole thing a mare’s nest.