NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 6065, 26 April 1881, Page 6

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The, latest political .gossip is that Mr Travers intends to run for Manawatu.

Mrs. Fiske, with "the Davis "Vertical Feed Sewing Machine," is now in Wellington: , ' ,

Seven hundred and twenty-three cases of cheese were shipped from Canterbury to London early in April. '.'■' The. water supply of Wellington completely broke down during the late dry weather, and much suffering and ineonyenience was caused in consequence. Mr. W. T. L. Travers has indignantly ■withdrawn his • name from the committee appointed to carry out the project of the West Coast Railway in the North Island. • Last.year the county of Ashburton sent away grain'to;foreign markets to the value of £350,000, and the annual Talue of the wool grown in the county is estimated at £110,000. ; _; ', ■■:,:■■ ■'■"■

■ The inhabitants of the New Hebrides have consigned to-London 3700 pounds weight of arrowroot,'- by way of payment for an edition of- the New Testament in their language. " .•_•...... .

; It may not be generally" known to the musical world that Miss Deakin i 3 a daughter of tHe late Dr. Deakin,;who served ,at the siege of Lucknow, and that she was born in the Kyber Pass.

■The/Cape Legislature has sanctioned an expenditure of £4000 to give .Cetewayo, Secocoeni, and' other chiets, suitable prisons. It is expected that each of the captives will cost £50 a month.

■■' The South Canterbury Times has the following :—" The Rev. C. Pym, of Auckland, has commenced a series of evangelical ser-, vices on behalf of the funds of the New Zealand Insurance Company." . The death is announced on the Gold Coast of Captain Claud Bettington, who served as a volunteer in the New Zealand war. Captain Bettingtoii was at one time connected with the police force in Canterbury. ; The Australasian says : — The wooden pavement at the intersection of Collins-street and Swanston-street lias been thrown open for traffic. The pavement has at any rate the advantage of being almost noiseless. A : Sydney paper contains the announcement of the marriage again of the muchmarried Mr. Richmond Thatcher, whose late wife, it will be recollected, obtained. a divorce at the Sydney Divorce Court a few weeks ago. '.'•..'. Wellington harbour has been visited for the last few days by immense shoals of mackerel. Some of the "hauls" have been so large round at Oriental Bay and Evans' Bay that the fishermen have had great difficulty in dragging in their nets.

Messrs. Henry Hall, J. M. Speed, A. Gray, E. L. Barton, and J. Connolly have been admitted and enrolled as barristers of the Supreme Court of New Zealand, and Messrs. J. Chubb, Cave, and Brown, English barristers, have baen admitted to the New Zealand Bar,

In the Victorian Government Gazette it is stated that there arc 10,700 landholders in arrear with their payments ; and the question is asked—will these debts ever be collected ?; This beats the defaulters undei the land-on-deferred-payments system in this colony.

Mr. Shaw, the Wellington R.M., has ruled that a verbal guarantee to be responsible for another man's debt is of no value even under the " equity and good conscience " clause of the Act. All such guarantees must be in writing, according to Mr. Shaw .

Dawson habitually whipped his wife at Paducah, Ky. Wyatt, his neighbour, said to him, "Ifyoudou't stop the practice I'll kill you." The next time Mrs. Dawson screamed, Wyatt went in and kept his promise by shooting her husband through the body, though the wound did not prove fata until a. week later.