CRICKET.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume VIII, Issue 1373, 31 July 1886, Page 3

CRICKET.

AUSTRALIANS v. SURREY.

(renter's telegrams.) LONDON, July 29. The return match, Australians v. Surrey, commenced at Surrey to-day. The attendance was good and the weather fine. The visitors went in first, and remained at the wickets all day, the last wicket falling shortly before time was caliled. <xiflea> bowted 5g was the most Buccesstul batsman. The first innings of the Australians closed for a total of 159, the bowling of the Home team being dead on the wicket.

Hawera folk are talking of organising a mounted rifle corps, and wondering whether Manaia means also to niakeja more in that direction or not.

From the Waihoa Downs, Mr. Douglas (says the Timaru Herald) forwards to Dunedin this week a consignment of 2000 sheep for freezing, making altogether 8000 since shearing. Not many stations of 10,000 acres show np like that.

The following circular from the Education Department was read at the last Board of Education meeting : — " I have the honor to advise you that Government has in contemplation a scheme for the establishment of an insurance fund, to which all bodies having public buildings under their care and control would contribute in equitable proportions, and I am to say that the Minister of Education would be glad to receive a statement of the views of your Board on the subject."

We (Evening Post) have time after time ia these columns protested against ibe way in which nnconvjebed prisoaers, and therefore presumably innocent persoDs, simply detained for safe custody, are treated under the existing prison regulations, and contrary, we contended, to both the letter and spirit of the Prisons Act. The treatment of these Maori prisoners in a case in point. We nil know how a Maori loves his pipe. Smoking is scarcely a luxury — it is almost a necessity — to the old Maori. To be deprived of the use of tobacco ie in itself an exceedingly severe punishment, and it is one to which these Maori prisoners, who are as yet unconvicted, are now subjected.

News from Kimberley has been received by Mr. David Spence, of Hawer.i, from liis eon George, wbo is now in Sydney. The latter writes to the effect that, having the opportunity to go np to Kimberley a few weeks ago driving stock, he accepted the offer, and went. He stayed a week on the field, and during the time, ot coarse, cried bis haad at digging, and succeeded in getting a little gold, though he hardly knew what it was wben he got it. He found the climate very hot and trying, and Bays that little profitable digging can be done until the wet season commences — in a couple of months from the time when he wrote. The experienced diggers on the field are all agreed that, if sufficient water can be procured later in the season, the field will prove one of the richest ever opened up, and that large quantities of gold will then be obtained. Mr. G. Spence is thinking of taking another trip up to Kimberley in a month or two's time, provided tlrat he can obtain a trustworthy agent to undertake the work entrusted to him when he left Wanganui. A late Hawera settler is spoken of as likely to undertake this commission.

Numerous additional entries for Messrs, Budge and McCutchan's next Waimate sale.

An interesting announcement re small birds is published. *"""""