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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IX, Issue 179, 30 July 1874, Page 2

The customs revenue collected at Wellington for the past week was £3351 4s lOd. , The Wanganui Chronicle has the following :— A couple very well known m the country are arranging terms for a separation, to avoid the scandal of a judicial divorce, and a friend has been employed by the husband to negotiate the matter. The latest mission was in reference to a valuable ring given to the wife before marriage by the husband. For this he would make a \ much-desired concession. "What ! " / said the indignant wife, "do you think I could tear myself from a gift which alone recalls to me the days when my husband loved me ? No ! this ring is my only souvenir of happiness for ever departed !^ 'Tis all"— and here she wept — " that I now possess of a once fonii husband." The friend, however, insisted. The lady supplicated— grew obstinate, grew desperate— threatened to submit to a public divorce as a lesser evil than parting with the cherished ring, and at last confessed that she had sold it six months before, i The "vastness of the trade of Auckland" is illustrated by the Herald quoting the fact, that there were recently alongside the various jetties twenty-two vessels, including eight ships and barques. There were also ten steamers of all sizes, including the mail steamer Cyphrenes. In the stream, there were lying five vessels of large tonnage, and one steamer (auxiliary). On the . stocks there were six vessels, some of them of large dimensions, and there were a large fleet of small craft— not easily counted. Some one has been looking over the records of the Legislature of West Virginia, and finds that at its last session, it passed a law "to prevent owners of hogs from running at large." American files state that three vessels are loading with railway ties for New Zealand. One of them, the Sea Wave, sailed for Lyttelton on June 20, with 11,245 ties. A novelty in suicide is'reported from Adelaide. A telegram says : — "A man named John Allen attempted suicide by putting gunpowder in his mouth and lighting it with a fuse. The injuries are so serious that a fatal result is expected." He was probably a disciple of that Yankee who believed that it was better to be blown up ashore than at sea. Reasoning on this subject he said, "If your'e blown up at sea whar air you, but if you're up on shore thar you air." The Western Morning fNews publishes a description of a terrible predicament of the lighthouse keepers on Bishops Rock during a hurricane on a recent date, the violence of which is described as being fearful. The Bishops Rock lighthouse s is erected on a rock beyond the Sciliy Islands, far out in the Atlantic. "It was struck by enormous waves in quick succession, each causing a noise like the discharge of a canon, and making the massive stone building rock to and fro, so that every article fell away from its place. One fearful sea broke in the great lens in several pieces, and another smashed the cylinders of the spare light, while sand from the bottom, thirty fathoms deep; was found heaped upon the lighthouse gallery. The keepers j had a narrow escape. It is asserted that coal ashes exert a beneficial result on land, not only by reason of their mechanical action on some soils, but also on account of their mineral ingredients; a ton of ashes containing about 331bs of phosphoric acid, besides sulphate of potash and alkali. A correspondent of the Chicago Tribune proposes to carry grain from tha West to New York by means of a wire cable, to which would be attached bins five feet long and capable of holding two bushels each. At distances of ten miles would be stationed engines of 150 horse-power, to be used in_wor_d__g

the endless cable, the operations of which would be precisely like the ordinary elevator, except that it would carry its load horizontally instead of lifting _t. The inventor thinks that by this process wheat can be moved front Chicago to New York at a cost often cents per bushel, after leaving a margin' tor repairs and interest on cost of construction.