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Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8018, 20 September 1897, Page 4

The Invercargill Corporation recently decided to levy a charge upon growers of vegetables selling their products in that town, but legal opinion has now been obtained to the effect that the levy is illegal.

The Auckland City Council the other evening presented Mr Thomas C. Moyle, steward of the s.s. Gairloch, with the Royal Humane Society of Australasia's certificate for life-saving at New Plymouth. The Mayor, in handing over the certificate, referred to tho bravery of the recipient, and ut the close of his remarks the members of the Council, who remained standing during the presentation, gave vent to their approval of Moyle's conduct with hearty hand-clapping.

Professor Elihu Thomson, the eminent American electrician, has been for some years experimenting on a motor to propel carriages. After having tried various elements, such a3 gas and gasoline and various oils, the Professor returned to his first love, electricity, and it is understood that a perfected electric carriage on his system will shortly be ready. The motors (according to the New York Electrical Review) are to be placed on the rear axle of the waggon, and a speed of twenty miles an hour can be easily maintained. The electricity will be supplied from a stoiv.ge battery of greatly reduced weight. The motor is light, a-id the steering attachment is to be connected with the front wheel.

A letter was received, in pencil, by the English mail, from the late Mr W. E. Payne, Auckland city treasurer, which has a melancholy interest. He says, "Have taken my passage back to Auckland by the s.s. lonic. God knows if I will ever reach it."

Information is to hand of an explosion at the Chinese Arsenal, Shanghai, on the 9th August, resulting in the death of twelve Chinese, and serious injury to four others. It is supposed that a high wind blew down a rotten watch tower, causing it to fall on the small magazine, which was filled with powder and percussion-capped cartridges. Numerous buildings were destroyed. The large magazine happily escaped.

That smoking by young people is injurious is beyond a doubt. In an article in the Nineteenth Century Sir Benjamin Richardson says:— "With boys the habit is as injurious and wrong as it is disgusting. The earty 'piper' loses his growth, becomes hoarse, effete, and stunted. The use of cigarettes is far more injurious. The cheaper varieties of them are mr.de from the vilest materials, and boys almost invariably buy the cheapest kind."

When the steamer Queen was about tosai for Alaska from Seattle a few weeks ago, in the height of the rush to Klondyke, a man rushed down to the purser and exclaimed excitedly : " Look here, I paid for a stateroom for ni3'self and wife, and when I got there I found an old cow sticking her head through the window." "I am very sorry, sir," said the purser, "we are very crowded, but I will do the best I can for you. John !" (turning to a deck hand) "go up on deck and turn that cow around 1"

The London correspondent of the Argus, writing on July 30, says : — We have this morning a curious story of the tyranny of the German Government. A builder named Schoen, a wealthy man, was erecting a two-storey residence opposite the Emperor William's palace at Potsdam. The work was stopped by the Raiser, who issued a decree forbidding the contractors to finish it. Shortly afterwards Schoen declared in a public cafe that the Emperor's interference was infamous. This remark was repeated to the police, and a charge of lesi majc 16 was made, the punishment for which is five years' imprisonment. Schoen fled in time to escape arrest, but the police confiscated all his property and his fortune. Even the contents of his safe and the belongings of his wife and children were taken. He is now in New York.