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New Zealand Mail, Issue 1194, 18 January 1895, Page 38

With a view to a trial of his patent siren at Fort Ballance, Mr A. S. Ford has just had constructed a specimen of the apparatus in copper. This material, however, does not yield such good results as the siren made of brass which was tested by the Fire Brigade and the Union Company last year. Mr Ford is therefore anxious to have the trial postponed in order that brass may be procured from Dunedin or elsewhere with which to make another siren. In all probability the Marine Department will accede to this request, in order that the patent may be tried on its merits. The police authorities received a telegram from Palmerston North on Friday stating that a man named Duncan Calvert Monteith, going tinder the name of H. M. Brandon, had been arrested by Constable Watty on a charge of false pretences at Foxton. Monteith was also charged with false pretences at Napier, and with forgery and uttering (two charges) at Waverley.

THE EAGER SEARCH FOR GOLD. No small amount of excitement was created in Lambton quay on Friday morning when it became bruited abroad that gold had been discovered in the rotten rock which is being excavated for the cellar of Mr Bodley's new premises. The rumour, as it flew around, increased the quantity of the supposed precious metal discovered in direct ratio to the square of the distance travelled. What wore at first but mere specks gained in size until they became respectable nuggets, worthy of the palmiest days of the West Coast goldfields. The despised prophet of other days came on the scone, and reminded those around that he had always predicted there was gold in Wellington, notwithstanding what “those scientific fellows ” had said. Knots of men and boys gathered on the ground during the forenoon, and discussed the matter in all its bearings. Several amateur diggers took a hand at washing up, but their efforts were not crowned with success, whilst their methods were irreverently criticised by onlookers who had been on one or more goldfields. A native of the land of the flowery Pekoe, who had evidently done some dry blowing in his day, shrugged his shoulders, after prospecting the locality of che supposed lode, and exclaimed “ No gold there!” The prospect of a goldfield in the centre of Wellington was eventually dissipated by the matter-of-fact opinion of an expert, who declared that the specimens were only the spelter of zinc, &e., which were melted when a fire destroyed a building which stood on the locality many years ago.