LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 102, 18 August 1876, Page 2

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

The postal authorities notify that British ami other mails, via .San Francisco, will close at the Post oiiico, Oainaru, 011 Tuesday, the 22r:d hist., at four a.m. The Council received an extraordinary communication last evening from a gentleman named John Cochrane, residing at Hampden. Mr. Cochrane is terribly aftected with the complaint known as cncotthcs His epistle last evening commenced by advising the Council to carefully read the Bible right through from Genesis to Revelations. It was decided not to receive the letter. One Councillor, however, thought it so good that he requested permission to take the precious document home, and 011 a vote being taken leave was '.'ranted.

The dry reading of a Committee's report is varied occasionally by a spice of humor, which, in the ordinary monotonous routine of municipal business, is quite refreshing. Last evening, when the Town Clerk was reading the report of the Select Committee /v widening of Tyne and Itclien streets, he came to the sentence commencing "After several interviews/' then there was a stop. The next words were not intelligible ; they had been scratched out. .Several members endeavoured to decipher the hieroglyphics, but to no purpose, and eventually the gentleman who wrote the report was called upon. He read the line as follows :—" After several interviews and many drinks,'' but it appears the two last words were not intended " for publication, but merely as a guarantee of good faith." "There is many a true word spoken in jest," so remarked the mayor last evening, at the Council Chamber, 011 a member sugge ting that the .Special Committee on the Tyne and Itclien streets widening case should proceed to Wellington. His Worship pointed utit that there were a number of matters affecting the interests of the town, which a deputation might bring under the notice of the Minister for Public Works. We are inclined to think that it would costless to send two gentlemen to Wellington to explain matters, than the voluminous telegrams which have lately been wired up to the Government. When we begin to telegraph the drafts of Acts, and columns of resolutions, it is high time that the Council was represented in Wellington in propria pur-

The rabbit nuisance must be making its appearance iu Oamani. for at last night's meeting of the Municipal Council, Mr. Richard Butt applied for permission to shoot the dear little bunnies which in his garden do congregate and eat up all the cabbages. The application was refused, the Council in-

fi'mating that they could not grant permission contrary to the provisions of the Town and Country Police Ordinance. One of the Councillors last evening, in handing in a report which he, in conjunction with another member of the Council, had been requested to draw up, informed the Mayor that in his (the Councillor's) official capacity, he had been saluted with a rotten egg when entering a shop on business connected with the report. The city legislator held up the document, which appeared to have been the target for some ovarious matter.

According to our morning contemporary, Councillor Headland intends going in for a big thing in the borrowing line. He moved last night that the Council should go into the London market, and borrow one million sterling. He did not believe in the small sum of £7,s<bO —too trifling altogether. Go in for a million, it sounds big; and as to paying it back, well, the less said about that unpleasant part of the proceeding the better. We believe we are correct in stating that the sum Councillor Headland suggested should be borrowed was £IOO,OOO.

A new style of consecrating graveyardft has been invented in England. The Bishop of Kipon, who went one day to a village in his diocese to opt 11 a cemetery, found the rain so troublesome that he did not care to expose himself. So the keepers of the ground brought to the hotel ,1 few handfuls of earth; the Bishop prayed over that, and sent it back to the cemetery as sufficient. We hear of courting by telegraph and marrying by proxy, and this is what we call consecrating by sample. What next ?

Some time since an announcement was made that two Maoris were required for the Philadelphia Centennial. It was generally imagined that there would have been quite a rush of applicants to he exhibited, but the contrary was the case. In a report of the proceedings of the Wellington Philosophical Society, an exchange says that the meeting was much amused at Dr. Hector's undisguised distress at the expected advent of a live Maori, for whom there was no accommodation provided in the Exhibition buildings, and at the alarm produced by Mr. Mantell's telegram, "Eirna Eau awaits your orders at San Francisco." The lion, gentleman had taken the precaution of announcing, in Maori, a remittance of £5(10. Dr. Hector telegraphed back in great consternation that Birna Pv.au would get 110 lodgings. Mr. Mantell gave the meeting a circumstantial account of the steps he had taken to give effect to the wishes of the Commissioners, which he was glad to say had ended in failure, only two "seedy" representatives of the race having responded to his call, both of whom had bolted from their wives. One of them was suffering from heart disease ; the other, who had apparently learnt the art of "doing good by stealth," had helped himself to a pair of boots at a country store before leaving Foxton. He felt very thankful, therefore, that he had not been able to send these men back to their disconsolate wives.