NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 9378, 30 May 1889, Page 6

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The morning star is now very brilliant. The Newcastle Municipal Council [are taking steps towards lighting the city by electricity. Miss Aokerman, the temperance missionary, has arrived in Hobart to give a series of addresses. There has been a large falling off in South Sea Island produce shipped through Fiji during ISSS. The twenty-seventh anniversary of the establishment of the Albertland settlement was observed yesterday at Port Albert It is stated that the Irish delegates to the Australian colonies have, so far, collected £650*2 toward the funds of the Irish National League. The three new boats building on the Clyde for the A.U.S.N. Company will be larger and finer thau those at present engaged in the service. At four p.m. yesterday Captain Edwin advised:—North to east and south-east gale, with heavy rain, within 12 hours. Glass will further fall. Yesterday Mounted Constable Hutchinson brought to town a Maori prisoner who had been sentenced by the Mercer Bench to a month's imprisonment for larceny. An action has been commenced in Melbourne by Mr. J. O. Inglis against Mr. T. Bent, to endeavour to enforco a contract for the purchase of land valued at £92,000. It is reported that Si?nor Bernacchi has purchased Maria Island (Tasmania), and that lie goes to England to float a company to extend the operations of fruit and vino growing. Mr. J. C. Miln, the Shakesperian actor and lessee of the Melbourne Opera House, has been fined £5 and costs for having inadequate and ineffective fire appliances in the theatre.

Direct trading between Great Britain and Fiji during the year ISSS has been almost nil, while there has been a large increase in tho trade between Fiji and New South Wales.

The South Australian Postmaster-General says that if Mr. Deasy, the Irish National delegate, asserts that his letters wore tampered with in Adelaide, his allegation is absolutely and unequivocally untrue. A man named Charles Wilkinson, alias Robinson, alia* Charles Robinson Trowling, was arrested yesterday by Detective Ede on a charge of larceny of a pair of marino glasses, the property of W. h. Oliver. According to the report of the ReceiverGeneral for the trade, commerce, and shipping of Fiji for ISSS, the total trade of the group for the year amounts to £560,000, being an increase on the previous two years. At the Police Court yesterday one person was punished for drunkenness (first offence). Ellen Hermiston, who had been previously convicted, was ordered to pay 40s and costs, or in default, be imprisoned for seven days with hard labour. A fine specimen of the roaroa—a bird which usually frequents the Alpine regions of the South Island— caught lately at Stewart Island. The bird belongs to the apteryx order, and the feathers are grey, spotted with reddish white ; but, unlike those of one of its congeners, the grey kiwi, are soft to the touch.

At a meeting in Wellington in reference to the Athenaeum a speaker deplored the tendency of the young men to athletics to the exclusion of intellectual culture. He expressed an opinion that if that meeting had been called in connection with football or cricket the attendance would have been three times as large. TheHawera Star of Saturday last has the following : —"A telegram has been received by a well-known settler from Sir Harry Atkinson stating that Mr. John Chamberlain, of Auckland, is moving in the matter of reopening the Waitara freezing works, and will be in Hawera on Tuesday. Mr. Chamberlain is anxious to sec people interested in the meat trade.'

The New Zealand Times says :—" Letters have recently been received from home from the manufacturing centres, such as Bradford, in which it is stated that New Zealand flax is being steadily used more and more, mixed, with other fibres, in quite a number of factories, and that by means of new machinery it is confidently believed by experts that it will bo in much more steady demand than heretofore."