NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9145, 29 August 1888, Page 6

NEWS IN BRIEF.

An Irrigation League has been formed in Adelaide. Froste have recently done great damage in the fruit-growing districts about Sydney. Three thousand Mount Morgan shares were sold lately in Brisbane at £16 for cash. There are only four lawyers ab Westporfc, and two of them are opening branches at Reef ton. Of the recent New Zealand loan, Berlin is said to have taken either £600,000 or £800,000. The Hobart Gas Company at their last meeting reduced the price of gas to 7e 6d per 1000 feet. At the City Council last night, it was stated that girls were breaking stones at the relief works at Mount Eden. Herr Kuster, the musical director of the " Hans the Boatman " Company, is skilled in imitating the bagpipes on the violin. Friends of Mr. Hugh Owen will be glad to hear that he has passed the Dentists Examination successfully in Dunedin, Otago. . , The " Mantraps of Christchurch, is the sensational title of a sermon delivered to young men in a Wesleyan Church at Christchurch. ... At a meeting of the shareholders in the Block 19 Silver Company, held in Adelaide recently, it was decided to wind up the company, and ask the promoters to forego their dividends. One of the results of the extreme activity lately displayed by the Anti-Chinese League of Sydney lias been to involve that body deeply in'debt. The deficiency at present exceeds £200. The Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science now numbers 4301 members. The general meeting began yesterday. A veiyTarge attendance of visitors j from the other "colonies was expected. Betsy O'Sullivan, said to be a widow of one of the miners who lost his life by the Bulli colliery disaster, was brought up at Sydney recently for being drunk and disorderly. It was stated that she had spent the whole of the allowance given to her by the Bulli Relief Fund in shameful debauchery, and had ill-treated and neglected her seven children, who were found Bleeping on the bare floor of a miserable hovel. An exchange draws attention to an odd occurrence, and says that yesterday being the 2Sth of August, the date expressed by the ordinary commercial contraction of giving the number of the day, the month, and the year, thus 2S-8-ISSS, contains five figures of the same denomination, viz., five eights This will not occur again until September 9, 19, and 29, 1999. This is not correct; 23 years hence there will be a date written as follows :—ll-11-1911, or, as is more usual, abreviating the year, we have 11-11-11.