NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 9322, 27 March 1889, Page 6

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Copious and welcome showers of rain have ' fallen in Waikato. A very heavy hailstorm passed over the Thames yesterday afternoon. 1 „ There are 35 branches of the Order of " Foresters in the Sydney district. The body of a man drowned at Lyttelton was recovered at six p.m. yesterday. It is reported that the difficult}' at Capo Foulwind is in a fair way of settlement. The will of the late Moses Joseph, of Sydney, has been sworn under £126,000. There was only one prisoner in the lockup last evening—a man for drunkenness. The Railway Department of Victoria has received 546S applications for 628 vacancies. The New South Wales Commission at the Centennial.Exhibition has cost £11,906 123 £d.

The Tasmaninn Land and Exploring Company, with a capital of £10,000, has been registered. Mr. S. Browning left yesterday by the Manapouri for Australia. He is going to England by China. At 1.24 p.m. yesterday Captain Edwin advised, "Same indications as wired yesterday. Glass further rise." The Hon. E. Mitchelson arrived at the Thames yesterday afternoon on business connected with the Piako block.

A potato exhibited at Wanganui turned the scale at 21b soz. Threo apples have also been shown, of a total weight of 60oz. The law of Victoria prohibits the admission of the body of any dead person into the colony who Ik is died from any contagious disease.

The burst up of the land boom in Melbourne is being followed by rowdy and unseemly meetings of disappointed shareholders.

Grant, one of the men injured by the Otaki rocket accident, is in a critical condition. The fourth man, Mcintosh, has nem lv recovered.

In Victoria the amount of territorial revenue received from July 1. last year, to February 28 last, was £4115,787, as against the estimate for the period of £376,515.

Victoria is about to send a collection of the vegetable products of that country to the Hamburg Exhibition, and another collection to the Royal Agricultural Show in England. At the Dnnedin City Court, Henry White was charged with an illegal game in betting: totalizator odd? with a ten-pound limit. Mr. Solomon, for the defence, contended that no offence was disclosed. Judgment •was re.- ved.

There was a grand exhibition of rat catching by a fox terrier ?lut in Wanganui ihe other evening. Within 12 minutes no less than 2t> large rats were placed hors dc combat by the aforesaid terrier, which, however, was quite exhausted when its task was over.

jlr. O'Connor, of the Public Works Department, is under orders to proceed to Wescport to inquire into the administration of the works there by the Harbour Board. Ho will also, if he sees his way without interfering with the contractor, endeavour to settle the Cape Foul wind strike.

The Lytt'lton Times says that Christchurch is getting rapidly worse in respect to vice, and ascribes this to the failure to enforce the Contagions Diseases Act. It says : —" The hanging-up of a certain Act of Parliament has been followed by a steady and deplorable increase of rampant immorality here.''