LOCAL AND GENERAL

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1636, 8 July 1903, Page 46

LOCAL AND GENERAL

The death is announced by cable message from London of V iscojunt Colville, of Qulcross, Lord Chamberlain to Queen Alexandra, at the age of eighty-five years. The contractors, Alessrs Adams and Cooper, are making rapid progress with the new post and telegraph office at Levin. The building will bo ready for the staff to niov6 into in about a month. Speaking at Levin on Saturday, Air F. W\ Bradey, chairman of the Education Board, stated that tlie Board hoped at no very distant date to institute a high school at Levin. The new school at Levin opens with over 300 pmpils. Professor Easterfield, speaking on Saturday when the deputation interviewed the Premier concerning Victoria College, stated that the students who had passed through the college while he had been there included ten or twelve barristers, a crowd of schoolmasters, representatives of all the trades, including several watchmakers, and last year six dairy managers. In the course of his lecture at Palmerston North on aiseases of horses, Air C. J. Reakes, Assistant Chief Veterinarian, stated that there were two drugs nyuch abused by horse-owners in New Zealand. These were arsenic and nitre. Both were valuable when used legitimately, but there were many horses in the country whose constitutions had been permanently impaired by the use of one or other of these dings.. As regards arsenic, not a few, he said, had been killed outright. , The Postmaster-General has received advice that the International Telegraph Conference, which met in London last month, has virtually decided to allow all combinations of letters fairly pronounceable according to the usage of the eight admitted telegraphic languages to be employed as code words. This is regarded as a concession of public importance, in view of the doubt which existed as to whether the conference would insist upon limiting code words to those in tho vocabulary issued some years ago. According to a cable message from London, the University of Dublin has conferred the degree of Doctor of Laws upon Sir F. M. Darley, Chief Justice and Lieutenant-Governor of New South Wales. Sir Frederick Darley, who is now in bis seventy-third year, was educated at Trinity College. Dublin, and was called to the Bar in that city in 1853. In 1862 he commenced practice in New South Wales. He was a member of tho Legislative Council for twenty years until his appointment in 1886 as Chief Justice. The directors of the leading British breweries in a circular issued early this year on the subject of compensation, presented the case of the trade for consideration in a forcible manner as follows “By the end of March, 1903, the wade of the United Kingdom will have paid a special war tax of Is per barrel on beer and 6d per gallon on spirits for ten months after the war has ceased, and if it be continued until August Ist this year v then for fourteen months after the war was closed. The trade has now, apart from the general burdens of taxation, to carry the increased income tax, additional local assessments, and the new tax on grain, and vet, at the same time, there has been a steady decrease in the output of beer since 1900. What the trade demands, and what should be striven for, is the earliest possible remission of the extra war taxes, and, as a matter of common honesty in the forthcoming Budget, a rebate to brewers of any special taxee paid, and also a reduction of the spirit duty to 10s 6d per gallon. The extra war taxation has been loyally paid by the trade, but as it, to a great extent, comes out of the pockets of the ordinary shareholders, dividends axe thereby considerably reduced, and it- behoves all shareholders to see that they join is the application for an early romissioa oS the special taxes referred to.”