A PECULIAR COURTSHIP.

Hastings Standard, Issue 198, 16 December 1896, Page 4

A PECULIAR COURTSHIP.

An amazing story which illustrates that truth is often stranger than iiction was unfolded at the Wiltshire Autumn Sessions. Maud Randall, a nuis", who was living with a Miss Freeman as teacher at Trowbridge, persuaded her friend that a Dr Taylor had fallen head over ears in love with her. The doctor, said Maud, had reasons for not wishing for a personal interview, but he had asked her to he the intermediary in the matter. Miss Freeman believed everything. She entrusted Maud with messages for the invisible lover, and more than two hundred letters were exchanged through this marriage broker. The courtship went on swimmingly until one fine day a letter came with a proposal of marriage. Miss Freeman consented rapturously and ordered her

wedding garments. Maud represented that Dr Taylor was in temporary need of a loan of £SO. Could she oblige him who was so soon to be her husband ? Love is blind, and Miss Freeman parted with the money. Maud evidently has a conscience, for when she could keep up the deception no longer she made a clean breast of it. After the manner of Betsy Prig, she confessed that " there wasn't no sich person as Dr Taylor." The letters supposed to be written by him were fabricated and penned by herself. Maud is now doing six months for false pretences. THE TICK PEST. Calling in the aid of insectivorous birds to cope with the tick pest has been suggested by a correspondent of the " Queenslandor." He recommends the preservation of all native insectivorous birds, and the importation of others from all parts of the world, which should be reared and acclimatised at depots throughout the country. He says : —" lam led to believe that small insectivorous birds would be a factor to cope with the tick plague by seeing a small dairyman near Townsville roping his calves and tying their legs, and leaving them in his cowshed for a few hours for his fowls to clear them of living insects. They (the fowls) also cleansed his milking herd daily if left standing in the bales a sufficient time. Some at first sight may be disposed to laugh at such a simple remedy ; however, there is a precedent. The tobacco plantations of America would soon have to be abandoned, owing to the depredations of the grub peculiar to the plant, did they not breed immense numbers of turkeys to feed upon and keep the pest under."

OVER DEVELOPMENT IN CALIFORNIA. A large proportion of the money being expended in California upon socalled development work is wasted. This is especially true of smaller mines, where the owners sink many shallow shafts or run Short tunnels, that do nof any more than prove the presence of good prospects. They do little to show up the extent and value of ore bodies. This is one of the relics of the vicious system of early quartz mining in this State, when it was supposed that mines along the mother lode would not pay in depth. Taking the mines in this State that have been big producers, nine times out of ten we find that they are mines that have been abandoned after a lot of money has been wasted in "gophering" on the surface. Capitalists later took hold of these prospects, and, by working them properly, developed good mines. The cost of sinking several shafts or running tunnels often amounts to more than enough to sink one deep shaft that will develop large ore bodies ; and not only that, be of permanent use in working the mine. Yet it sometimes happens that the mine owner is wLe in not sinking very deep, lie knows the old maxim that many a rich prospect has been ruined by developing it. —American Exchange.