Untitled

Oamaru Mail, Volume II, Issue 570, 28 February 1878, Page 2

Hi.-, Worship the Mayor has received a letter from the Treasurer and Aeting-Seere-

tary at Itmiedin for the Turkish Relief Fund. acknowledging receipt r,f a draft for i.3(j 10s. collected by the Mayor and Mr. Shrim.ski in aid of the fund, and which makes in all LSO subscribed by residents in Oaniaru. The writers express their thanks for the amount of sympathy which has been di.-played, aud the activity shown in collecting subscriptions.

The Press makes a\ boast that a Mr. Parnliarn, of Kaiapoi, has a crop of wheat that will not yield less than 70 bushels to the acre, and that on one of the heads from the said crop there arc oG grains of wheat. Tins is not bad : but we have been favoured with a head of wheat which contains no less than a hundred grains. The same may be seen at our office.

For some time past it has been currently reported that the Hon. E. \V. Stafford was about to resign his seat in the House of Representative.?, and go Home. After all the denials which have been given to the report, there appears Co have been good grounds for the rumour. This morning's Timorit Herald contains an address from Mr .Stafford to his constituents announcing his resignation, stating as his grounds that, for family reasons, he is about to go to England.

The Waiareka School Committee have nominated 'Dr. Webster and Mr. A. C. Be-g, of Dunediu, as their candidates for seats on the Education Board.

As will be st-eu by an advertisement which appears elsewhere, the hour of the p. 5. Samsons sailing will, from the Ist March, he changed from (>' p.m. to .").:;.!) p.m.

A meeting of the Council of the Waitaki County Acclimatisation .Society will he held at the County Council Chambers to-morrow morning, at 11 o'clock.

The ordinary fortnightly meeting of the Municipal Council will be held this evening; at a quarter-past 7 o'clock.

The Dunedin City Council has accepted the tender of Mr. Wm. Mercer for the erection of the first portion of the Town Hall, the contract price being 1.15,230. It is satisfactory to learn that the building is to be of Oamaru stone, the Committee and the architect alike strongly recommending the acceptance of the tender which stipulated the building of the Town Hall of that material. The Council itself was also unanimous in its decision in favour of Oamaru stone.

The Brunt Il'-rabl says there are from 20 to 30 eases of scarlet fever in the Waihula township, chiefly among the German families. Generally speaking the attacks are of a mild nature, but one child died on Saturday from the malady.

Lieutenant-Colonel G. Derdson, of the Canadian Volunteer Force, has just been awarded the prize of f>ooo roubles offered by the llussian Government for the best book on the " History of Cavalry." There were competitors belonging to all countries, and it is singular that Lieutenant-Colonel Denison, who never served in the regulars, should have produced a work deemed by the Russian authorities superior to all its competitors. The money value of the prize, though considerable, is comparatively little as compared with the honour of being deemed the best cavalrv historian.

The Vi'akatip Mail says :—" So far as the harvest has progressed it is amply repaying the husbandmen. The wheat crop will probably average 40 bushels per acre, and in numerous cases is of course much heavier than this—from 50 to GO bushels. The grain is plump, hard, and dry, and we hear few complaints of sudden ripening and shedding of the grain. It has been, as the farmer styles it, a good harvest gathering. The oat crop is also coming forward fast, and is very promising, but it is not a large one, more attention having been given last year to the sowing of wheat. Barley looks well, but it

is a small crop. We shall therefore this year be able to send away flour supplies, and must depend upon the Southland market for support. That market has chiefly in the past drawn upon Oamaru for wheat or flour for mixing purposes. The grain, it is well known, is harder and drier, and our flour better than obtained from thence. With every additional ten miles of railway from Kingston to Atliol being completed we approach the market more closely. Of course, the question of approach to the Southland markets is also governed by price, and this must be effected by cost of transit; hence our reference to the completion of the line of railway, which will also give tins district the beneiit of the Bluff Harbour for export purposes. The price per bushel will probably range at first from 4s 6d to ss, j delivered at Kingston or Qneenstown."

The Bruce Herald states that the crops in the Owake and Almriri districts, which consist principally of oats, arc looking splendidly. Harvest operations, except in isolated cases, have not yet been commenced. Mr. Donald Henderson's crops, wheat and oats, are fully up to those of last year, and will probably yield 70 bushels to the acre. Crops iu the vicinity of Lovell's Flat are in good condition, and generally lit for cutting.

Edward Hanlan, in a letter to an American paper, expresses his willingness to meet any of the cracks next summer. He says : "It is my hope that 1 may meet both Trickett and Courtney for a trial at the oar—that aquatic court of last resort—during the coming season. ' The Ahiroa Mull says that a storekeeper in that township is in the habit of sending pigeons to Christchureh, so that when the morning papers are issued, the cable and other news is cut from them by his correspondent, attached to the pigeons, and oftentimes in less than au hour the news is to be seen at his store.

The S/ienatur says :—"' We are fissured, on competent authority, that the telephone has Loch made to write its own messages, to communicate to a pin a motion which interprets the vibration on sand or paper, and I the application which, as wo have said, is already, made, would, if completely successful, upset every calculation as to speed in the transmission of messages. It would do much more than this. A telephone which could write would be a phonograph registering every sound by signs independent o£ mr.n, and always in the same way, and would furnish' us at once with a natural system of shorthand, a universal character, a stenograph applicable to all languages and every variety of sound, and devised, so to speak, by Nature or its tinier, and not by man-a bewildering thought, which, nevertheless, we repeat, on much better authority than our own, may be found literally