NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 10426, 26 April 1897, Page 6

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Flora gone to Fiji. Manapouri from Sydney this morning. Wyndham rabbit-trappers are stated to be malting over £1 a day. There are only three total abstainers on the Supreme Court Bench in Australia. A man named Paddy Lee was thrown from hie horse at Cobar, and has since died. An immense underground cavity has been discovered in the Central mine at Broken Hill The governors of the Gisborne High School propose to make shorthand a compulsory subject. Palmerston North is now paying a rate equal to five shillings in the pound on the unimproved values. An emplovee at Puruatanga, Martinborough, had several ribs broken by his horse falling with him lately. A fire at the Melbourne Police Barrocks stables recently resulted in three valuable horses being burned to death. A strange disease among horses has broken out at Fitzroy, West Australia, and is causing great mortality. Over 2,000,000 sheep will perish in the western district of New South Wales if the drought continues much longor. Gulgong, New South Wales, boasts of a real live baronet, who earns a precarious living by fossicking local creeks. A young lady named Agnes Murray was drowned in the Macquarie River. She is supposed to have fallen in while fishing, The water courses in the Illawarra district, New South Wales, have not been so dry for 50 years as they are at present. The other afternoon an albatross, fairly beaten by the wind, was caught near the centre of the township of Petone, Wellington. , The Wellington Homing Pigeon Society intends to send some birds to Auckland, and arrange for a flying match from that city to Wellington. The first ploughing match in Melbourne took place just forty years ago in the Carlton Gardens, about the northern part of the present exhibition. The statement published in Southern papers that phylloxera has been discovered amongst vines growing in Southland, is said to be incorrect. An Otago paper hears that the Buckeye Harvester Co. intends placing both autocars and motor-cycles on the New Zealand market early next season. During a recent hailstorm at Douglas Park, New South Wales, iron roofs were pierced by the hailstones, and scores of geese and fowls were killed. The exports of wool from Sydney since July 1 have totalled 609,819 bales, a decrease of 6532 bales as compared with the exports for tho same portion of last season. In the Mutual Life Buildings, Lower Queen eteeet, Mrs. Draffin lectured last night on " Invisible Helpers on the Astral Plane" to a good audience. Questions and discussion followed. At an Otago seaside resort the Maoris let their hall to the Salvation Army at two shillings per hour, and managed, by sending one Maori after another to testify, to spin out the time so as to bring in an extra two shillings' worth. The 36 students who are receiving instruction at Canterbury Agricultural College cost just three times as much as tbey pay in fees. Every parent who sends a boy to the institution obtains a subsidy of £80 a year from the public purse. Four natives on a rabbit-shooting expedition near Otaki last) week were riding in Indian file, when the rear man hit bis horse with his gun, which exploded. The shot struck the horse immediately in front, and glancing off wounded two of the other riders, one in the back and the other in the leg. The one who was struck on the leg is seriously injured, and, according to the Otaki Mail, may be crippled.