NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9560, 11 July 1894, Page 6

NEWS IN BRIEF.

& thief at Hawera has taken to robbing Jhe street lamps of oil. " , The s Wellington Supreme Court is to be lighted by means of electricity. ■ Five marriage licenses have been taken But in Featherston in three weeks. . There were in the lock-up last evening four persons on charges of drunkenness. . A young man died in Queensland the other day from injuries received while playing football. The cost of maintaining the seventy inmates of the Wellington Benevolent Home last month was £83 13s lOd. The Sydney factory girls are said to be . working 14 hours a day for salaries ranging from 3s 6d to 5s lOd per week. The Inangahua Times, which has recently absorbed the Reef ton Guardian, is in future to appear as an evening journal. The Art Union drawing in connection with the Suburban Poultry Fanciers' Club , has been postponed till Saturday evening. Altogether, since the Public Works Committee was first established in New South Wales, over £12,000,000 worth of .work have been dealt with. : A football match between the Auckland College and Grammar School and John's College, Tamaki, will be played at Potter's Paddock on Friday afternoon. ■ ' The number of estates placed under the charge of the Public Trustee during the month of June last, was 26, ranging in amount from a few pounds in value up to £700. A Manawatu paper remarks : —" That energetic little animal, the stoat, has again been at work. The other night a farmer on the Taonui Road had no less than 26 of his fowls killed by this unwelcome pest." The Government steamer Hinemoa left for the Southern lighthouses on July 3. It is intended to erect three beacons at the mouth of the Tautuku River, midway between Dunedin and the Bluff, after which the vessel will proceed to Westport to load with 4000 sleepers for the Manukau. The Wellington Post says :— The dreaded Icerya purchosi, an insect blight, is reported to have re-appeared at Napier, where it was supposed to have been exterminated. The natural enemy of the blight is the little insect known as the ladybird, and the Museum authorities have been asked to try and procure some for forwarding to Napier. Last year (says the Sydney Daily Telegraph) the Victorian people paid £84,000 duty on woollen goods for the protection of •even woollen mills, employing 639 hands. This means a subsidy of £153 per annum for each woollen mill employee, taken out of the pockets of the taxpayers who use woollen goods. These facts are taken from the official statement of the president of the Melbourne Master Tailors. The Victorian Railway Commissioners, having recently been mulcted in heavy damages for compensation to persons who have slipped between moving trains and platforms, they have determined to prose cute on their own account, and the other day a traveller named Grace was lined £2 for attempting to enter a moving train, and being dragged along several feet, narrowly escaping with his life.