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Grey River Argus, Volume LVII, Issue 10520, 14 December 1901, Page 4

The Premier says that the dismissals from the co-operative works throughout the colony were the course usually pursued during the summer months, when other employment was plentiful. . The price of kauri timber has been raised Is per hundred superficial feet. ■ Mr C Napier Bell proceeds to Hobart in the Westralia to attend the meeting of the Association for the Advance- 1 nient of Science, to be held in Hobart in January ; also to settle up contracts now being completed at Macquarie Harbour. Owing to the scarcity of kauri logs, two sawmills in the Mercury Bay district at Tairua and Whitianga, Jhave closed down. According to Mr J. L. Scott, of Christchurch, who has just returned from a tour abroad good sound bicycles can be bought -in America for from between sixteen and eighteen dollars, or about L 3 10s each. Owing; it is said, to the competition with the Manawatu Railway Company, the Railway Department is charging a lower freight for the carriage of goods from "Wellington to Dannevirke (130 miles) than from Napier to Dannevirke (79) mifes. - . ' : A theory is held by Mr A. M'Eay, Geologist of the Mines Department, that the seismic disturbances - which have wrought so much damage at Cheviot ha vef. had' their origin in the Hamner Springs district. ; Governor Grey Wilson, in his annual report on the Falkland Islands, issued recently; records a remarkable mishap on the slip. A Chilian vessel with Vcrirgo of- coke and sulphuric acid carried in iron drums pixt into the islands for ropair. .." The acid had eaten through the drums, and had consequently all leaked out. The dbums were packed in chalk, and sulphuric acid acted chemically on this, forming carbonic acid gas. Eventually n<ost of the acid remained at the bottom o| the ship and damaged the iron frames so seriously that she could not continue her voyage."

A St. Petersburg gentleman has tried the following peculiar way of probing the ties of friendship. He sent letters to twenty intimate friends, asking for a loan of LI. Thirteen of the two dozen fiends did not reply at all : five declined to lend the money 3 two promised to send it on the next day and did not do it ; one sent his last ten shillings ;" and only three sent the full sum asked for. The supplicant and all the "friends" he has written to are well off.