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New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 4890, 23 November 1876, Page 2

Earl Carnarvon’s last .despatch is accepted as a definite solution of the question at issue by the Otago Daily Times. Our contemporary says :—“The most determined opponents of abolition will probably be inclined, however unwillingly, to accept Lord Carnarvon’s last despatch as a final.settlement of all their hopes. It is difficult to suppose that .any -representation home now will have ; nh . effect in staying the progress of events ;, and. we may suppose that had this missive been before the convention at its meeting, the resolution to send an embassage home of three of its members would

hardly have passed. Lord Carnarvon does, in fact, inform Sir George what before was only hinted at, that the advice to her Majesty not to disallow the Abolition Act was given under legal counsel) and the result of taking legal advice was the conclusion that the Act was not ultra vires. ‘With a somewhat fine vein of sarcasm, Lord Carnarvon repeats the remark given on a previous occasion— ‘ The Courts are open : let them implead one another.’ This course remains open to all, and with much unwillingness we must again say that no other course save this or open rebellion seems to lie before the most stubborn opponent of abolition.”

Already the action of the City Council in abolishing transhipment charges on the wharf is appreciated. At a recent meeting of the Otago Harbor Board the following conversation took place:—Mr. Reid: We will be theorising here for two or three years and then we will not want a deep water channel. I see that Wellington is abolishing all wharfage dues upon goods for transhipment. We will be sitting here for years getting reports while other places are getting the trade.—The Secretary : The charges at Wellington are still 2s. 6d. as against Is. here.—Mr. McNeil: The abolition of those dues at Wellington will have a great effect. Those dues have hitherto been a stumbling block in’ the way of importing goods at Wellington for transhipment.—Mr. Ritchie : We will soon find ourselves a long way behind them.—Mr McNeil: The Wellington people know what they want. The unearthing of three stones on the site of the Wellington Athenaeum caused a little excitement yesterday. A small collection of the population of. Wellington assembled in frqnt of the building when the steps were taken away and as the workmen exercised their picks and shovels on the ground immediately beneath those steps. The Athenaeum has been standing so long that grave doubts are entertained of the precise direction in which the foundation stone is situated. One or two old settlers stated yesterday that they hadadistinot recollection of the stone being laid in the spot where the stones we have mentioned were discovered, and between which were found three small coins, amounting to the sum of thirteen pence. Others state that the foundation stone should be found somewhere about the centre of the building. It seems moat probable, however, that one (discovered yesterday) must be the veritable and only one, forasmuch as there was found on the surface of one of the stones (there were three) a copperplate, upon which was inscribed the name of the architect, Mr. Reed. There is something foggy about the whole .business, but we should say that the particular stone we have mentioned must be the real one, although it had no real connection with the building, being some distance from the porch of the building. A meeting of the creditors of Sidney Soffe was held in the Supreme Court buildings yesterday,. Mr. Bannatyne in the chair. Mr. Roxburgh read the trustees’ report, which showed that dividends amounting to ss. 6d. in the £ had been paid, and that a further dividend of Is. 3d. would be forthcoming in a few days. Mr. Moeller proposed a resolution which was carried, that the trustees should endeavor to close the liquidation by the end of the year. This was the first case under the Debtors and Creditors Act, 1876, and reflects great credit on the trustees for the manner in which they have administered the estate. We understand that the cost of winding up will amount to about £6O, including advertisements.

A fire occurred at Kaiwarra on Tuesday night, by which Messrs. Pollock and Young’s slaughteryards and buildings there were totally destroyed. The blaze and smoke were seen from the city, but seemed to be a bush fire along way off. It appears; that the fires in the boiling-down department, which had been lighted during the day, were extinguished as usual when the men left work in the evening, and those who were the last to leave assert positively that so far as they could ascertain, every spark of 1 fire was out by 6 p.m. However the fire occurred as stated, and it was found impossible to, extinguish it, fed as it was by the tallow; and the tank of water being enveloped in flames, no one could get at it. The building was therefore sacrificed. Messrs. Pollock and Young value their plant, boiling-down apparatus, and other machinery at £3OO, the yards, slaughter-house, piggeries, &0., at £2OO, and the meat destroyed at £IOO, making their loss fully £690, none of which is covered by insurance, the premises and contents being wholly uninsured, owing to a difficulty experienced in inducing the insurance companies to accept the risk in consequence of the non-residence of anyone on the spot. Last week they removed 70 casks of tallow, valued at £SOO, for shipment on board the Jessie Readman, otherwise the loss would naturally have be en increased to that extent.

A house in Te Aro nearly escaped being destroyed by fire the other night. One of the inmates, to. put out a kerosene lamp, blew down the glass chimney, and the lamp exploded, and burnt numerous articles on the table. The fire was luckily extinguished before any serious damage had been done, but this incident shows the danger of extinguishing kerosene lamps in that way, a very common practice. The committee of the Benevolent Institution met yesterday afternoon. There were present: Mr. L. Levy (elected chairman), the Yen. Archdeacon Stock, Rev. Father MoGuinness, Rev.- W. H. "West, Rev. B. W. Harvey, Rev. J. Paterson, Mr. J. G. Holdsworth, and the Secretary. A subscription of £1 was received from W. R. E. Brown, Esq., and several cases were considered and relieved. - ; The Dunedin Convention and its deliberations are not looked upon with becoming respect by portion of the provincial Press. A Shortland contemporary is a little bit hard on Mr. Macandrew and his following, and thus speaks of the great men :—“ The Convention has opened and shut up. The attendance was first-rate. All the tagrag and bobtail •of the Otago notables, ex-officials recently ejected from comfortable appointments, parasitical contractors who ‘ knew the ropes ’ of Dunedin centralism and could work the oracle well, old identities, beautiful and almost unique fossils, who were quite sure that any New Zealand law made twenty-five years ago is as unalterable as the law of gravitation, ‘ solemn shams,’ like Thomson of Balclutha, ‘ purblind opaque flunkeys,’ like Daniel of Riverton, ‘ phantasm captains,’ like Stout of Dunedin, and' ‘incarnate solecisms,’ like Wood of Mataura, smug Larnaoh, the Dunedin Demetricus, ready at any time to assure the citizens that the chaste goddess of Provincialism came down direct from Jupiter, and that it is a disgrace that her silver shrines should no longer be marketable, and a miscellaneous collection of great unknowns, eager to see their names in print,—

All these, and many more. Came flocking, as Milton in his usual neat and happy manner describes another convention of dark complexioned gentlemen of a rebellious turn of mind.”

The Standard has the following items of Wairarapa News Shearing at the Huangaroa station, the largest run in the Valley, is completed.—One of the oldest settlers at Greytown, Mr. M. Hirschberg, is seriously ill, and it is not anticipated that he will recover.—Some of the Wairarapa natives apparently still hold to a claim in the Wairarapa Lake. Four of them threaten to prosecute all persons attempting in any manner to reduce the natural level of the water in the Lake.

The writer of Sporting Notea in the Otago Daily Times says—“ I notice a mistake which has been repeated in several of the papers. It is to the effect that Timothy, who ran third in the' Melbourne Cup, is by the same sire as Briseis and Sybil. He is by a horse of the same name—Tim Whiffler—but the latter is a colonial-bred horse, and is generally known as Sydney Tim. Tim was a great performer on the colonial turf, having won the Australian! Jockey Club Queen’s Plate three times, the Metropolitan once, the Australian Cup once, and the Melbourne Cup once. He is a son of Now Warrior, and consequently represents the Buzzard strain of blood,” ! ■

The ordinary fortnightly meeting of the City Council will be held this afternoon at the Provincial Hall.

At the committee meeting of the Chamber of Commerce held yesterday afternoon, a subcommittee was appointed to go through and consider the regulations under the Bankruptcy Act.

A reward of £2OO is offered by the insurance companies in Wanganui for information which will lead to the conviction of the person or persons who wilfully set fire to the Shamrock Hotel, Turakina. There was only one case on the chargesheet of the Resident Magistrate’s Court yesterday morning, viz., a charge of threatening language preferred by Jane Morgan against Amy Payne ; but there being no appearance of either party, the case was struck out. We have been requested to call attention to an alteration in Messrs. Bethune and Hunter’s advertisement, intimating that the entire horse Emperor will be at the New Zealander Hotel livery stables every day,, instead of their stockyards, Manners-street. There was a good attendance at the entertainment provided by Messrs. Kohler and Bent yesterday evening. The performances of these gentlemen are really worth witnessing, and we have no doubt, to judge from the patronage they have received up to the present time, that their season here will be a successful One. ■

We have great pleasure in announcing that Miss Plorence Colville will appear to-night at the Theatre Royal as Lady Teazle, in the “ School for Scandal,” and Mrs. Onnsby Delmaine, in the “ Serious Eamily. Miss Colville’s impersonation of Lady Teazle in Sheridan’s comedy is without doubt one of the finest impersonation in the colony and her Ormsby Delmaine is too well known to need an announcement.

A meeting was. advertised to be held at the Newton Hotel, as to the establishment of a fire' brigade for that district. Our reporter attended; and on the way met with another gentleman of a literary turn of mind. The way was long, and the wind was cold ; but at length the comfortable hostelry at Newton was reached. There was no meeting or signs thereof, the only persons present being residents in the central parts of the city.' Superintendent Whiteford and Mr. Tolley were present by requisition to give instructions as to the formation of the brigade, but unfortunately their services were not required. After waiting for about half an hour a gentleman volunteered a song to vary the monotony of the proceedings, and delivered himself of ‘‘Bonnie Mary” with excellent effect. He was followed by a gentleman with high aspirations who attempted “ Phoebe Dearest,” breaking down in the second verse. He was not, however, lacking in pluck, and immediately started of with “The Bridge,” which was rather of a dispiriting character. A recitation by another gentleman, as to Mr. Jones' adventures in Scarborough, was very amusing, and brought the night’s proceeding to a close, those present having to wend their way Wellingtonwards. It is a great pity that the meeting was not well attended, as it is a matter of great importance, and we can only hope that ere long the dwellers in Newton will look at this matter seriously. The liberality of those who have just passed through the ordeal of being rivetted together for life is proverbial. The Rev. Mr. Calder related a striking instance of this liberality at the recent meeting of the Diocesan Synod in Auckland. It appears that a blushing bridegroom was so satisfied with the manner in which Mr. Calder had tied the nuptial knot that he presented him with a cheque for two guineas. This liberality was considerably more than that usual on these occasions, but when Mr. Calder took the cheque to the bank to get cash for it—it was dishonored. The Otago Daily Times reports that there are at present about 100 men employed on the Waikouaiti Section of the Dunedin and Moeraki railway. They are engaged at piece work, and are making fair wages, but they work long hours. It will be remembered that this work was started chiefly with the intention of finding employment for those who could not otherwise obtain employment. While many will willingly avail themselves of .the helping hand thus held out to them, others, on ascertaining that they would not receive day wages, declined the terms offered, and quitted the ground. Considerable progress is also being made with the Blueskin section, and the line of the proposed railway is now cleared of the dense scrub which was formerly upon it. The small tunnel at the Maori Kaik is now finished, as are also the three bridges on the same section.

It is a well-known fact (remarks the Melbourne Herald) that most of the persons employed in the banks of this colony who have within the last years been convicted of stealing moneys belonging to the banks have been brought to ruin by betting on horse races and gambling in other ways. The various banks have begun to recognise the danger of allowing their employes to gamble, and seem determined to prohibit it as far as may be practicable. It is stated that the other day a dialogue, of which the following is the substance, took place between the manager of one of the banks in this city and one of the clerks; Manager: “Is it true that you have won £SOO by betting on Nemesis?” Clerk: “It is.” Manager: “ Then you have your choice of two courses; furnish to me immediately an account of your debts and your assets, or resign your position here.” The clerk chose the alternative first indicated, and the account showed a balance in his iavor of £SOO. The manager then addressed him thus: “You must now lodge this £SOO to your credit; and if it is again discovered that you bet or gamble in any shape or form, you will render yourself liable to immediate dismissal.” The clerk lodged the £SOO to his credit, as required, and it is to be hoped will also carry out the final salutary injunction of his manager. In speaking to the question as to whether the Municipal Council of Palmerston should be represented at the Otago Convention, Councillor Affleck is reported to have said: —“l also think it would be much better for the Mayor to stay at home. It certainly will be a very good chance for a lot of 'people to go to Dunedin, and air their political opinions. There are some people who are very fond of doing that—too fond, in fact; and that is the only thing they manage to do. So far as actions are concerned, they do nothing. The fact is I heard a good deal when I was in town a short time ago. I was asked as to the advisability of agitating for a public meeting to give an expression of opinion against our representative, the Hon. George McLean, and whether it could be done if a few of them came up from Dunedin ? I replied, however, that political agitators had better stay at home, as we could get on much better by ourselves.”

We learn from an exchange that a gentleman, writing to a friend in Launceston on the 26th ult. as to the acclimatisation of salmon in Tasmanian waters, states as follows :■—“You may well say * the glorious success of the salmon.’ On Saturday last I saw hundreds of the migratory species in the Derwent below New Norfolk. Sometimes ten or twelve were out of the water at once : fish ranging from eighteen inches to two feet six inches in length, while numbers of larger fish only made great curls in the water without showing themselves. A mile of the river was alive with them. Of course I cannot say these were salmon, but I do say most positively they were not trout, and could only be salmon or salmon trout, or both. It is the first time I have lighted on them in numbers, and I could have imagined nothing like it.” The New Zealand rivers are far more suited for the salmon as a habitat than those of Tasmania, and now that fish have been successfully hatched out in Otago, Canterbury, Nelson, Hawke’s Bay, and Auckland, we ought in a few years to run the sister colony close, if not to excel her. We are inclined to think that the Otago people have got the best of it in having introduced salmon, which is a far superior fish to the Californian, but the products from both sets of. ova may possibly be quite changed by acclimatisation, and the quantity and quality of the food in the rivers and estuaries will have undoubtedly a very appreciable effect in this direction.

An immense iceberg, 1500 ft. in height, has grounded just outside the harbor of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Things are not sultry in St. John’s, and the price of woollen goods has not fallen during the summer. A bicycle race between David Stanton, the English long-distance rider, and Camille Thuillet, the French champion, took place lately at Lillie-bridge. The distance was fifty miles, and the stakes were £SO a side. After a close race Mr. Stanton was announced as the winner by eighteen yards. The Brabant Journal of the Agricultural Society recommends very highly a mash for horses made of three parts by weight of bran, four of oats, and 36 to 48 of flaxseed. Boiling water is first poured upon the oats and flaxseed in a bucket, and the bran then added, and the vessel covered with a woollen cloth, and allowed four or five hours to cook The horses take it eagerly. A fiddler, named Joseph Lee, who is well known throughout the Murrumbidaree district, New South Wales, labors under a singular delusion. The Yass Courier says that this poor fellow, ever since he was hocussed at a certain grog-shanty, labors under the delusion that he has got three legs, and that one of them is fractured. He has other peculiar idiosyncrasies which render it necessary to keep him under strict surveillance, if not in close confinement.

The local taxation returns for England and Wales for the year 1874-5 have been issued. It is the fifth annual return of local taxation, the particulars for which have been collected and published under the supervision of the Local Government Board. The sum levied in England during 1874-5 by local taxation, properly so called, was;—Levied by rates falling on rateable property, £21,962,783 ; levied by tolls, dues, and rents, falling on traffic, £4,180,645 ; levied by dues falling on consumable articles, £332,853. The sums derived from Imperial taxation, which during the year were granted in aid of local taxation, amounted to £1,511,018, viz.;—To rates, £1,506,370 ; tolls, dues, and rents, £4648; total, £1,511,018. These sums, however, were short of the aggregate grants voted by Parliament and paid over to the local authorities during the financial year 1874-5, and which amounted t0£1,771,841. The difference arises chiefly from the circumstance of the Government taking upon itself many charges in relief of local taxes which do not appear in the annual returns made to this Board. The sums raised by loans or derived from other sources, exclusive of Treasury grants, during the year in further aid of each branch of the local taxes are stated below in respect of—rates, £10,979,269 loans, and £3,404,760 other receipts; tolls, dues, and rents, £1,931,510 loans, and £218,873 other receipts ; duties, £SOO. The valuation of the property on which the rates are incident amounted during the year 1874-5 to £140,651,435 in gross estimated rental, and to £119,017,815 in rateable value.

AVe are requested by Messrs. BeaucA amp, Campbell and Co., to call attention to their sale this day of ten cases of best Scotch harness, leading and shaft, imported by the late firm, Messrs. Edmondson, Sellar, and Co, The sale is wholly without reserve, by order of the successful tenderers, Messrs. J. McDowell and Co.