LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 665, 1 April 1879, Page 2

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

There will be a meeting of the Borough Council this evening. Beyond the ordinary routine business, the transfer of the ■wharf from Mr. William Adair to the Borough Council will comprise the chief item of business to be transacted. A tea meeting, to be followed by addresses and music, vocal and instrumental, will be held, in the Wesleyan Church to morrow evening. Vide our advertising columns. The business of the Police Court goeg with the times. It is dull. To-day, a couple of trifling police cases, and two or three unimportant civil cases, comprised the whole of the B.M'a duties. The Gisborne Building Society is rapidly increasing in the number of its shareholders. Last night, the amount paid in for fortnightly subscriptions, reachednearly £40. • A proclamation in a Gazette of Thursday last prescribes the season in which native game in the various districts of the Colony may be killed. Under the above head may be enumerated wild duck of any species, bittern, pied, stilt, plover, wild geese, dotterel, native pigeon, teal black stilt plover, and quail. The close season varies in different places. In Auckland, Hawke's Bay, Wellington, Marlborough, Nelson, Westland, Canterbury, and Otago the time for shooting is from to-day to 31st July, both dates inclusive. In Taranaki the season is curtailed, being from the Ist of May to the 31st July. To-morrow, Mr. Hart, representing the Union Steam Shipping Company, will arrive at Gisborne. The Company viewing the Port of Poverty Bay as one of their most important and profitable stations, intend establishing a branch under the management of one of their officers. The office of the Agency will we believe be at the shipping offices of Messrs Graham & Co. Yesterday, we learn, has earned the name of "Black Monday." We enquire for what reason, when we are told that it was the half-yearly settliug at one of the Banks. We ask what that has to do with it ? We are told that all customers, having overdrawn accounts, must place themselves at credit. We ask " why," and are told " because they must." We say why must they ? The answer is, because—because — because — well, because, if they do not, it will be awkward for them. We want to know how awkward — will people be skinned, or go without their 12 o'clock beer, or their evening meal, or will it cause earthquakes or thunder and lightning, or whirlwind, or snow storms ? . We are told no — that it is not likely to produce any such phenomen on. Then we ask, why is yesterday called Black Monday? The banks have any amount of notes left for distribution and there is not the slightest occasion for a feeling of any uneasiness unless indeed it be upon the part of the banks. The latest freak of Edward Kelly (remarks the Siverine Herald) fully maintains his character for impudence. In a mining centre within the boundaries of the electorate of Rodney, a grand fete was to be held on St. Patrick's Day. In this town resides one who is said to be acquainted with the Kelly and Quinn families, and last week he received a letter from Ned Kelly, enclosing a £5 note towards the funds for the demonstration on St. Patrick's Day, the recipient averring that Kelly naively states that the bank-note was a portion of the plunder annexed at Jerilderie. The Wellington correspondent of a Canterbury paper writes as follows : — Things are coming to a crisis bere, I think, in ! business matters. The banks have excised the word accommodation from their vocabulary. They won't look at paper, and all' their clerks are working overtime in writing peremptory notes demanding the immediate reduction of overdrafts. The "fourth " witnessed bills returned in heaps, and I believe that more than' one linn has to ask for time. It is said the next fourth will seal the doom of more than one of our mercantile magnates. Why the banks should act as they are doing, and press perfectly solvent men who have for years been customers to them, is a mystery which the general public are unable to fathom. An ' ' active and energetic " constable named Connor has laid an information against the Masterton brass band, and had them fined Is. each and costs (with the alternative of 24 hours imprisonment) for playing in the public streets ! The correspondent of the Evening Post says : — "Much indignation is expressessed, and a petition asking for Constable Connor's removal is talked of. It would probably be numerously signed, as Connor haa been long enough here to make friends and enemies, and act accordingly. This action against the baud is regarded as a piece of gratuitous Dogberryism. Not a single settler have I heard endorse the constable's extreme conduct." After the decision was given, the baud were invited on to private property, where they played, and the Magistrate, after listening to them, gave a guinea to the band fund, so much did he sympathise with them. The members of the band are all respectable settlers, whose crime in our constable's eye is their fondness for music occasionally. A Cooktown telegram, dated, 19th ultimo, says - — A Chinese mutiny occurred on the Sydney barque Kate Waters, and bloodshed ensued. The row was caused by the promotion of one man. The captain, first and second officers, and a carpenter's boy were slaughtered add thrown overboard. The mutineers wrecked the ship at Labuan, and quarrelled over the spoil.