NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 9013, 19 October 1892, Page 6

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The Tapanui Courier states that a milk ■nppliers' syndicate intends opening the Tapanui dairy factory. * There was a if air muster of the Newton Rifles at their usual weekly drill last night, when the arms were inspected by Adjutant Petitions to be adjudged bankrupts have been filed by Thomas Henry Baylis, miner, Hukerenui West, and Patrick McMahon, shoemaker, Hamilton. A country editor complains of the village settlement scheme. He says that in his village the subscribers all want to settle with firewood and onions. The Taieri Advocate understands that Mr. J. G. Ward's buyer has been in that district making preparations for extensive purchases of grain for the coming season. There is a great demand for first-class dairy stock in I'ahiatua just now. The l-'ahiatua Star says that a hundred or two hundred head would sell readily during the next month or so. A Torskina settlor jerked a shoulder out in a peculiar way. He was driving through the streets of Marton, and it struck him that it would be good form to crack his whip. While engaged in that pastime he dislocated his right shoulder. Mr. George Kelly, who is travelling with Edison's loud-speaking phonograph, arrived at Auckland yesterday by the Taluoe. Mr. Kelly has decided to make a trip North before opening in Auckland. His entertainments are highly spoken of by the Southern press. The Wellington Herald says :— Having crowded out the white fruiterers and small storekeepers v the Chinamen are now taking to the boarding-house trade in earnest, the latest Chow who has started in this line, naming his hash foundry Caledonian Board-ing-house." A Wellington man claims to have " invented" an electrical method of defying rheumatism. He puts a plate of copper in the sole of one boot, and a plate of zinc in the other, and the moisture of the body converts it into a peripatetic electric machine. That is the theory. The Grey River Argus states that although the Midland Railway Company have practically withdrawn from the timber export trade, there is no interruption to the trade itself, which is still going on, and will no doubt extend itself as time goes on and the merits of our timber become better known. The Napier Telegraph says :—" The Napier District School has on the roll some 1200 children, but the average attendance is below 700. This is simply disgraceful, and shows how little store parents put on the means provided for the education of their offspring. What costs nothing is rarely valued." Half a dozen Carterton schoolboys managed to bring about alcoholic poisoning for themselves. They played truant and went out rabbiting, and among some logs found a bottle of whisky that had been hidden by somebody. The boys drank the bottle of spirits between them, and became so ill that some of them had to be treated by a doctor. Influenza of a deadly kind is by no means the novelty in New Zealand that some people appear to consider it. Swainson, anchor of " New Zealand and its Colonisation," writing prior to 1559 (when his work was published), speaks as follows upon page 13 of that book :—" Some years ago the influenza carried off a considerable number of the natives, of all ages." A Chinaman, who had been running amuck in the Upper Buller, has been arrested. It appears that he became mentally deranged in consequence of leaving off opium smoking, and was running about with a tomahawk. Fortunately he injured nobody, but being evidently a dangerous character, it was decided to arrest him, with the object of having him placed under restraint.