NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 9179, 20 April 1893, Page 6

NEWS IN BRIEF.

ivcCKsanh Bale of Crown lands yesterday. Confirmation service ab St. Mary's Cathedral last night. # 4 A piano worked by electricity is being exhibited in Wellington An outbreak of typhoid fever has occurred at Oriental Bay, Wellington. Stainer's " Crucifixion" will be repeated this evening at St. Paul's Church. Typewriting has lately been added to the curriculum of the Canterbury College. During the fishing season just closed there were 169 licenses issued in the Wairarapa. Officers of the Masonic Lodge Ara, No. 1 Mew Zealand Constitution, were nominated last evening. The policy of th* Queensland Government will be to construct land grant railways on a 20 years' basis. Considerable publia interest is boing manifested in the election of school committees which takes place on Monday. On Sunday last the Otahuhu Presbyterian congregation contributed £8 Is 6d to the funds being collected for tho hew Hebrides Mission. There are three petitions in the Ormondvilla, Norsewood, and Makotuku district, S raying for women's franchise. They aro lling up fast. On tho 31sb of March last, when the burgess roll had to be made up, there were in Napier 869 ratepayers, of whom 546 were defaulters. During last year the sum of £18,553 was paid to agricultural societies in New South Wales by way of endowment, and £10,000 by way of special grants. An fronbark pumpkin has been grown ab Totara, South Canterbury, this season, weighing 80 pounds, and measuring 6 feet 6 inches in circumference. A chess match by telegraph has been arranged between the operators of the Wellington and Napier telegraph ofiicos, play to commence on the 22nd inst. A gang of eight men and two women are under remand at the Sydney Water Police Court, charged with conspiring to defraud trades- people. Over 60 firms are alleged to have been defrauded. The owner of an estate near Townsville, Queensland, offered to arrange with a number of bona fide agriculturists for the free use of 25 or 30 acres of cleared land, with horses, implements, irrigating plant, seed, etc., on the condition of receiving half the produce. A writer in a Southern paper points out that when the facb is taken into consideration that the Land Tax Department loses £3000 by tho purchase of tho Cheviot estate, the return to the Government is less than two per cent, on the money invested in tho property. Ab the annual general meeting of the Manawatu and West Coast A. and P. Association it was resolved " That this meeting instruob the committee to assist, and, if necessary, subsidise, the efforts about to be renewed to free this district from tho necessity of branding sheep ab any other time than that of shearsng." The elevation and descent of some people in the social scale (says tho Napier Tele{;raph) is exemplified in the case of a abourer in the back blocks of this district. Be does nob present any outward indications of having ever been anything higher than what he is ; but a glance at the graceful and delicately-constructed outlines of his handwriting betrays the existence of better times in his career. At present he is content to drudge among the horses and keep the books of a settler, but time was when he managed a bank. The following is the drink bill of New South Wales for 1892 :-Spirits, 1,028.095, £1,901,976; wines, sparkling, 17,057, £34,114; wines, still, 118,998, £118,998; wines, colonial, 885,250, £442,625; beer, imported in bottles, 1,231,441, £431,004; beer, imported in wood, 974,061, £243,515 ; beer, colonial, 10.637,513, £1,603,127: total for 1892, £4,775,359. The mean population of the colony was 1,181,175, and the expenditure consequently wa3 £4 0s 10d per head, or £20 4s 2d for each family of five personß. _______«___«.