NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 9284, 21 August 1893, Page 6

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The Auckland City Council's overdraft is ab present nearly £8000. There were in the lock-up last evening, bhree persons on charges of drunkenness. The Auckland football team arrived from the Thames early yesterday morning. They won.

The fate of the Government Alcoholic Liquor Bill is being watched with considerable interest in Auckland.

The Auckland and Wairoa footballers played a drawn game at Epsom on Saturday. The scores were 13 all. The Mayor considers that the increase in the cost of street maintenance in the city for the present year will be over £2000. A debate, dealing with the drink question from a medical point of view, has been arranged between Mr. Ninian Melville and Dr. Bakewell. , , The Hawke's Bay farmers, who have of late years to a great extent stopped cattlebreeding, now find themselves compelled to go to outside districts to obtain supplies. In our report of the presentation of university diplomas lasb week an omission last week was made in nob stating that Miss Annie C. Morrison who obtained the M.A. degree also obtained third honours in mathematics. Owing to the distress prevailing in Melbourne an old lady who, a few years ago, had a row of cottages built for the use of destitute women, has lately been permitted by the men into whoso hands the working of the charitable scheme was placed, to occupy one of those cottages herself. The Wanganui Chronicle says :—The evening paper "pertinently" asks—as it very stillly puts it-when the Chronicle rose "to the eminence of a critic on literary productions." Our contemporary has overlooked one point. We were criticising the "Wanganui Herald. The distinction is obvious. The Groy River Argus says -—There is every reason to believe, from all we can learn, that if tho existing differences between the Midland Railway Company and the Government are mutually arranged, the company's works will afford pormanent employment for 3000 men for at least the next five years. A Southern contemporary says that in a recent case of the death of a child from congestion of the lungs following the measles, the doctor, who made a post-mortem examination, disapproved of the treatment that had been followed—namely, steaming the child's throat with hot water and eucalyptus oil. Under the circumstances he considered the treatment very injudicious. A Sydney paper says Two years ago a Melbourne timber merchant formed a syndicate with £350 capital, to prospect Western Australia for gold. The two experienced miners, after getting as far as Coolgardie, pegged out claims there, abandoned them as worthless, and are now amongst the unemployed of Melbourne. The abandoned claims are now worth a score of thousands. The Otago Daily Times asks : —" Why should the right of any individual to reasonable facilities to buy and drink wine or beer, cancedod as such right now is by the voice of the majority of the colony, be taken away by any small subdivision in which for the moment a part of the minority of the colony has accidentally a majority ?" On the arrival of a funeral party at the Reefton cemetery, the other day, it was found that all attempts to dig a grave had proved futile, for no sooner had a hole been sunk that it filled with water. Several parts of the cemetery were tried, but with no success. There was, therefore, nothing to be done but to leave the coffin in the mortuary chapel, and to adjourn the interment till the difficulty of digging the grave had been solved.