NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9132, 14 August 1888, Page 6

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Red tope is strangling settlement in Northern Wairarapa, says an exchange. Good copper ore has been found in another portion of the Maharahara block. Bush-falling is very brisk this winter in the Forty-mile Bush, says a Wairarapa paper. The Maoris near Hawera attribute the recent eclipse of the moon to the death of Titokowaru. "Is New Zealand to be ever blighted •with this borrowing lunacy ?" asks a Southern paper. Rinking is a bigger mania than ever in Sydney, and suburban rinks are springing up like mushrooms. The ship Trevelyan, from Glasgow to Dunedin, is 143 days out. She has 45,000 gallons of spirits on board. The timber mills along the PalraerstonWoodville line are all very busy at present executing orders for Sydney. A blacking factory has just been started in Dunedin. Twenty youngsters will be employed when work is in full swing. An exchange says the Dunedin Star is gnashing its antediluvian teeth over the miscarriage of the Otago Central railway job. _. The Christchurch Telegraph says: 'The Melbourne correspondent of the Auckland Herald is a public benefactor to New Zealand." . , , xt The Bill introduced to deal with the New Plymouth harbour more than fulfils our worst expectations, says the Lyttelton Times. The Rev. J. A. Dowie, faith-healer, delivered his first lecture in the Young Men's Christian Association Hall, San Fran cisco, on June 17. The Geelong (Victoria) Gas Company, 1 dreading the competition of electricity, have reduced the price of gas to 7s 6d per thousand feet. The Dunedin Herald sides with the seamen in the maritime labour dispute in Sydney, and says, " We have no doubt the seamen are right." Hawke's Bay is said to be relatively the richest provincial district in the colony, and probably the most productive of all the pastoral districts of Australasia. The Auckland West Kindergarten and Creche was opened yesterday. It is probable that the occasion will be celebrated by a conversazione at an early date. Referring to the proposed Federal Court . of Appeal for the Australasian colonies, the Christchurch Press thinks such a court would be of very considerable advantage. The Otago Acclimatisation Society s rangers have secured half-a-million trout ova this season, and expect to procure another quarter of a million ova before the season is closed. Visitors to the Ashburton Domain in the mornings {says a Canterbury paper) may now hear the sweet song of the English thrush, some of these beautiful songsters having settled there. A Southern paper refers to the fact of the Onehunga ratepayers having decided not to borrow £*2000 as" "a hopeful sign that a more healthy feeling is springing up when we hear of a check being placed on these leech-like little loans." It is said that the prospects of the Maharahara copper mine are very satisfactory, and the result of the drive and crossscut now being put in is anxiously looked for, as if satisfactory a company will be immediately formed to work the concern. Commenting on the proposal to limit the export of kauri, the Christchurch Press says that prepared as it was to find the wildest and most hairbrained projects advocated in this colony, it scarcely expected to have to seriously discuss such an idea. There was a large attendance of spectators at the Eclipse Rink, in the Onehunga Drill-shed, last night, to witness a two mile race between Masters Auckram and Plowman. The stakes were £1 a-side, and after a desperate struggle, the race was won by Auckram in 124 minutes. The Hawke's Bay Herald condemns as unjustifiable the action of the Sydney Maritime Union, and says:—"They are threatening to paralyse the shipping trade of half a hemisphere simply because they suspect others of doing that which they themselves boast of doing." According to the Taranaki Herald all the Harbour Boards in the colony will in a few years need Government assistance. " The Auckland Harbour Board," it says, "is drifting into the same position as the Otago Board, and Wellington also will in a few years need Government assistance." Is the depression passing away ? asks the Lyttelton Times. Then it quotes the figures published by Sir Dillon Bell, refers to the millions of foreign capital being invested in the colony by the Kauri Timber Company and the Midland Railway Company, and concludes that the position is in <?very way encouraging to look upon.