NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8705, 23 October 1891, Page 6

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Diocksan Church meeting to-night. " General " Booth has left for the South. About 100 members of the Adelaide infantry forces are suffering from influenza. Forged bank notes on the Bank of New South Wales are in circulation in Paramatta. '■ Of the lllawarra collieries. Mount Kembla and South Clifton are the only two which work regularly. "The Deep Well Boring" Company of Queensland have made an offer to dovelope the Gisborno Oil Springs. . Shearing is progressing satisfactorily in the northern district of New South Hales, and the new agreement is working well. A heavy shower fell between Wednesday night and Thursday morning. During the fWort timo it lasted *15 inches of rain fell. Edward Smith was sentenced to 12 years' penal servitudo at the Goulburn Criminal Court for a criminal assault on an old woman. „ , ,TT ... The New South Wales Board of Health has issued a circular giving instructions as to the prevention of the spread of hydatids. The Queensland Premier has given instructions that all correspondence with reference to the floating of the last loan shall be printed. A reward of £100 has been offered for the capture and conviction of the thieves who stole the mace from the Melbourne Parliament House. The Queensland Government, it is believed, has decided not to abolish the Civil Service Superannuation Fund, as requested by the Civil Service Association. The regulations for trout fishing in connection with the Tauranga Acclimatisation Society are gazetted ; as are also the regulations for trout, carp, and perch fishing at Wanganui. Collections were made in the streets throughout the city of Brisbane and suburbs on a Saturday recently in aid of the local hospital, the total amount received being about £380. At the Redfern Police Court, New South Wales, recently, a large number of Chinamen were fined in sums ranging from £1 to £25, in connection with the raid on gambling dens at Botany. The Minister for Agriculture of New South; Wales paid a surprise visit to the Agricultural College at Ham Common, at seven o'clock in the morning, and found all at work. There are 53 students in the college.

The hon. medical staff of the Sydney hospital, in their report, say:—"ln no jivilised city in the world does there stand jo discreditable a monument of the want of interest and sympathy in the sufferings of She sick poor." A telegram received in Adelaide from Newcastle was read at a meeting of the Moonta miners, to the effect that the delegates had decided to support the Moonta miners, and that a levy had been struck from 6000 colliers, George Hawkins, a religious crank, who took off his clothes in a Wesleyan parson's iittingroom at Adelaide on a Sunday night, nid'said he was going to fly up to heaven, was brought up at tho Adelaide Police Dourt, and remanded for medical examination. Th'e output of coal from tho associated ;ollieries in the Newcastle district during the nine months ended September 30 was 103,767 tons. The non-associated collieries 3o not supply a record of the output, but it ia believed to have been about 1,032,787 Sons ; the total export being about 2,210,000 tons. Major-General Tulloch, the military jommandant, has forwarded a memoranium to the-Victorian Minister for Defence complaining of the quality of the cartridges supplied. He states that it has been brought under his notice that several accidents have occurred owing to defective cartridges. From the annual report of the Minister of Mines we learn that the quantity of New Zealand coal raised during the past twelve years has increased steadily. In 187S 162, tons were raised, whilst in 1890 637,397 tons were raised. The quantity of imported coal for the same years were 174,188 and 110,939 tons respectively. The outputr of coal from the associated collieries in the Newcastle district during the nine months ended September 30, 1891, was 4C3,767 tons. The non-associated collieries do not supply a record of the output, but it is believed to have been about 1,032,787 tone, the total export being about 2,210.000 tons. This is 90,000 tons more than the whole output of last year. We have to acknowledge the receipt of a copy of Sharland's Trade Journal for October. The opening article espouses the formation of a railway line between Auckland and Stratford, so as to put Auckland in railway communication with the Southern parte of the North Island. There are various items of interest to the general as well as the professional reader in the present number. Visitors from the Home country seem to have a very hazy idea about the Maoris still. A gentleman recently from England Baid he did not mind meeting a Maori single-handed, but he had been told they went about in batches tackling any isolated white man they saw. When a friend explained that the average Maori was a thoroughly civilised being, the "new cium " seemed rather dubious.