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Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 11, Issue 820, 22 January 1867, Page 2

A House carried Away.—^We clip the following from the West Coast Times of the llth inst;: — An accident occurred on the. North Spit yesterday morning that would have been extremely ludicrous but for the , ■; fact that a family of unfortunates were thereby very summarily driven out of house , and home, their habitation being literally pulled down about their ears. The house in question is one of those little buildings that stud the North Spit, and is situated upon the outskirts of the " block " at the back of Beach-street, in a somewhat isolateci : position close to the old steam-boiler, that ' has so long graced the spit. It was there that the Eucalyptus and Storm Bird moored '■'■'. to land their cattle, both vessels making fast to the aforesaid boiler, and thus placed the house between the bow-line of the latter and stern-line of the former. Suddenly the barque sheered into the river, and her stern warp caught the house, which in an instant was removed from its foundation of piles and hurled over on one side. A woman and three children were inside at the time, and their terror may be easier imagined than described at this sudden disarrangement of their domicile. Fortunately they received no bodily hurt, but, evidently belonging to the poorer class, the accident is likely to . cause them some distress, as the house was rendered quite uninhabitable. '" ~ Horses for Canterbury. — This morning we (Evening Post) had the pleasure of inspecting, in Messrs. Bethune and Hunter's yards, one of the finest mob of horses we have ever seen in the colony. The nags, sixty in number, none of which are under three, or over six years of age, were driven into town at half-past four o'clock this morning by Capt. Anderson, who picked them out of three hundred and fifty of the best horses along the West Coast, and purchased them for the Canterbury market as a private speculation. During the day the animals, together with a mob of cattle also purchased by Capt. Anderson, were taken on board the Phcebe, and on arrival at Christchurch will be sold by public auction. The whole, mob is very valuable, and the speculation will doubtless prove highly remunerative. A Novel Industry. — Amongst the various developments of the industry of our community during recent years is one of a rather eui-ious Gkaraetef, we mean the collection and export of leeches. This branch, of trade has grown to pretty extensive proportions, both as to the number collected . and the distances to which they are forwarded. The trade is principally carried on in connexion with the operations of the Murray River Fishing Company, the fishermen employed by the company, turning their attention, at seasons unfavorable to the fishery, to the collection of leeches. At such times it is customary for the steamer of the company to take a trip down the Murray, perhaps 100 or 200 miles, and the leeches are then gathered from the swamps, lagoons, overflows, and shallow anabranches of the river. From 150,000 to 250,000 leeches are sometimes collected in one of the trips. They are then packed and conveyed to Melbourne, where a large proportion are put up for transmission abroad. Large numbers of them are sent to London and Paris, where it is stated, they are preferred to leeches brought from any other place ; but the principal outlet for the export is America, where the demand is always great, from the absence or rarity of .' the proper kind of leech throughout the whole of that great continent. The shipments of the company are made to San Francisco, Panama, and New York, whence they become distributed in all directions. From the great extension of the use of the leech in Europe, to meet the demand it has been found necessary to collect them from the swamps and shallow lakes of a large part of the globe : and a contractor, under a licence from the Viceroy of Egypt, has,, for some years supplied the European market will i .tbout three millions of them annually, gathered from the shallow waters left by the periodical inundations of the Nile. But still the demand is greater than the supply, and the export from this country appears likely to be a remunerative business for some years. — Australasian. Submarine Communication. — The Australasian says: — The Tasraanians have recently been twitted with want of enterprise, but the announcement of the departure of Captain Grilmore to England on a mission to make arrangements for the construction and laying clown of a telegraphic cable ber tween the island and Victoria, will go far to show that the imputation is unwarranted. By the way, is it not time that there/should be some talk, to say nothing yet of action, about connecting New Zealand with Hewr,South Wales? ■.."./;.--- p' '"'_:< p. :^XX