BY THE WAY.

Mataura Ensign, Issue 716, 27 March 1900, Page 2

BY THE WAY.

Foggy mornings. Mushroom weather. None too good for harvesting. Wanderers returning from Dunedin. Otago worthily rose to the occasion ; and the tradespeople gathered in some skekets. The " Dandy Fourth " and the " Fighting Fifth " are now ploughing the briny main and probably finding the furrows a little bumpy. Lord Roberts has cabled from Bloemfonlein thanking the .Very Rev. Dean Burke for the congratulatory message sent him by the Irishmen of Invercargill. An old Chinaman at Hongkong has given £500 to the war fund. The Anglo-Saxon race controls one-third o£ the earth. Spain has had 31 years of warfare during the present century. The artificial oyster is the latest thing in Paris. It is fastened to the real oyster shell with a tasteless paste, and it is said that the connoisseurs cannot tell the diilereace. Ihe English Good Templar Grand Lodge of Wales, at a recent session at Wrexham, resolved to raise a thousand guineas for aggressive templar work. A Chicago professor predicts that in 1500 years Chicago will be inundated by Lake Michigan. The city is sinking at the rite of nine inches every hundred years. A correspondent writes to a contemporary suggesting that the naturalisation papeis of pro-Boers should be cancelled. During the siege of Kimberley the shops were kept open and tram ears kept running as usual. There are a lot of miners leaving Westport who are out of employment — men with large families depending on their soe earnings. A few days ago the Victorian Cabinet decided to grant the surveyor who laid out Melbourne an allowance of 30s a week for himself and his wife, and £1 a week to the survivor. One day last week £10,019 was taken in customs dues over long-room counter at Wellington Custom House, being nearly £3000 better than the previous best day's record. The ladies of Gore forwarded (through the N.Z. Express Co.) by the Monowai packages and cases of comforts and other good things for the second contingent. Mr Pile, a Protestant Home Ruler, has been unanimously elected Lord Mayor of Dublin. t