NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8662, 3 September 1891, Page 6

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Tee death is announced of Mr. Hackworth, ex-Collector of Customs, Dunedin. There were in the lockup last evening four persons on charges of drunkenness. Cobalt, cinuibar, and other valuable minerals have been discovered near Rockhampton. . , , .. , News from Forth (W.A.) states that a lugger at the north-west during last month got three pearls valued at £1000. An Australian paper says that) an evidence of returning Victorian prosperity is the increase in the number of marriages. Mr. Thomas Hardy, the well - known South Australian vigneron, reports favourably on Western Australia as a wine producing country. ]TO , j Hares are increasing in and around ha- J ngarei very rapidly, and it is now with difficulty that, vegetables can be raised at all in many places. Some marvellous work from the application of electricity to the process of welding metals has been witnessed in Melbourne during the past few days. In the Wellington Supremo Court, yesterdav, Thomas Black well, charged with abducting his niece from her parents, residing at Grey town, was acquitted. The members of both branches of the Tasmaninn Legislature favour the passing of the Bills giving wider powers to syndicate to construct railways on 21-year leases. The labour party in the Now South )\ ales Assembly have succeeded in carrying a proposition to the eflect that, all marble quarries should be owned and worked by the State. . The South Australian Customs receipts during the first seven months of the year amounted to £425,873,' being an increase of £i)SS9 upon the corresponding period of the previous year. . ~ . A quantity, amounting to ll,4!jboz of gold, the produce of the colony, was entered in the Customs at Fremantle, Western Australia, for export during tho half-year ending June .'>o. The electric light at the Dyke (Newcastle) is giving great satisfaction to the railway shunters, crane employes, and others who work at the loading of vessels

at night time. . Complaints* are made that furze is spreading very much in the Archhill district, and wonder is expressed that the local Road Board do not take active steps to compel persons to remove it. A landlord at Glen Innes (Victoria) has been charged with burning down his hotel. ID is alleged that, he set the place on tire, and hid the tire brigade's hose to stop them from putting out the tire. At a meeting of the Oamaru Railway ■Union, the proposed Insurance Bill was unanimously condemned as cumbrous, arbitrary, and drafted in the interests of the Department, as opposed to those of the men. ■ The Victorian Postmaster-General favours the abolition of postal rates on daily and weekly metropolitan newspapers as in New South Wales, b«t he is dead against carrying advertising catalogues as newspapers for a halfpenny ! A Wellington telegram says :— It is stated that the elder of the brothers Langdale, who was recently fined for neglecting to destroy rabbits 0:1 their run here, expended upwards of £1000 in rabbit destruction this year. A judgment debtor said in a Victorian Court that he was not quite certain how much was coming to him under his father's will. It might bea,hundred, or it might be nothing ; it all depended on how much the lawyers left him. Victorian railway returns for seven weeks of the current financial year show a marked falling off compared with the corresponding period of last year, the figures being— IS9O, £417,959: IS9I, £390,542. The weekly averages being respectively £59,712 aod £55,791. Sabbath observance ha? been vindicated at Brunswick by the fining of a shopkeeper £0, with the option of seven days' imprisonment, for selling two pennyworth of potatoes to a ragged urchin, who said his widowed mother had no food in the house, and was starving. Two men named Foster and "Venn were fishing at Torbay (Western Australia) from the rocks, which were twenty feet abore high water mark, when an exceptionally big wave rose and swept them into the sea. Foster managed to regain the shore, but Venn was carried out to sea by the waves and was drowned. Some landholders on the Victorian Upper Murray have found a new and most effectual means of dealing with rabbits on their holdings. They divert the water from the mountain creeks which intersect their properties into the burrows on the low grounds; consequently they drown many of the rabbits by flooding the burrows. Mr. G. M. Pitt, of Sydney, strongly condemns the one man one vote principle as beinc " most iniquitous," and a '• dead leveller." Mr. Pitt is a firm believer in the best men—that is the best workers and those with most brains—coming to the front and enjoying the rewards of their exertions and talents, and the duffers and idlers going to the wall. Mr. Traill, the well-known journalist, who is a member of the New South \\ ales Assembly, advocates a State newspaper, which shall contain full reports of Parliamentary proceedings, such public documents as are considered advisable, reports of deputations to Ministers, and other matters, the publication to give space for advertisements, and to be delivered free to all electors applying for it. At a meeting of the vestry of St. Stephen's Church, Ash burton, the following ltsolu- I wons were passed : —"(1) That the vestry of St. Stephen's Church regrets the increasing frequency of Sunday funerals as leading to unnecessary Sunday labour, and interfering with the work of the Church and (2) "that, the incumbent be recommended not to undertake Sunday funerals except under special circumstances, of which he shall be judge."