NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 9080, 5 January 1893, Page 6

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Poking the past few weeks 14,802 acres of Crown land were taken up in the Hawke's Bay district. The new chief clerk of the Postal Department at Auckland, Mr. Halliwell, has arrived and taken up his duties. We live in the neighbourhood of some of the finest agricultural farms in the colony (says the Pelorus Guardian), and yet it is no Uncommon thing for Havelock to be out of chaff and oats. A woman, writing to a Wellington paper, complains most bitterly of the neglect and discourtesy of the women clerks at the telephone exchange. The men, she says, are far more attentive and courteous.

The artesian water bore at the Wanganui Freezing Works has now reached a depth of about 210 feet. The drill is in a stratum of blue clay, and it is expected that water will be struck immediately below the clay. In the Police Court at Napier, recently, . ifa was alleged that a man and woman had sold one of their daughters to the Maoris for two sacks of chick wheat, and she was now living with a native at the pah, beyond Farndon.

The New South Wales Government proceeded against a settler at Koondrook, named Dean, for. contravention of the Stock Act, by introducing sheep into New South Wales without having notified the stock authorities of his intention.

During the Christmas week Lady Whitmore entertained the inmates of the Napier Children's Home. She provided a drag and had all the children taken to her place at Clive, where they were supplied with all descriptions of country delicacies. A little boy, the son of Mr. Connell, cf Stone Hut, Laura, South Australia, was bitten on one of his fingers by a snake a few days ago. The bitten part was cut to make the blood flow, a ligature applied, and the patient taken to a doctor. The snake, about four feet long, ,when killed was found to be non-poisonous. Several shaft men working at the Golden Age mine, Bendigo, struck work owing to dissatisfaction with the manner in which they were treated below. They also objected to interference by the directors, and to a glass window being placed between the manager's room and the changinghouse.

In delivering an address in favour of Starting a central dairy, with branch creameries in the Oamaru district,the other day, Mr. Sawers, dairy expert, said that to show how much more valuable factorymade butter is than home-made it was stated that the former is brought from a distance and sold in Oamaru at twice the price obtained for the latter. A wind-ami-rain storm of exceptional violence swept over the Albury district recently. In Jindera and several other places houses are reported to have been unroofed, whilst trees were torn up in hundreds. In the central track of the windstorm, somewhere between Albury and Tabletop station, a strip of country a quarter of a mile wide was almost wholly denuded of timber.