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South Canterbury Times, Issue 6204, 1 May 1890, Page 3

The Little Dust Pan’s great slaughter sale will close in a few days.

■ Tenders are invited by the Timaru School Committee for the supply of coals and firewood.

The officials of the Primitive Methodist Church met last evening to make arrangements for the annual tea to be held on Queen’s birthday, and in connection with the tea it was decided to have a sale of work to clear off the goods left from tho late bazaar. All the articles are of a useful character and no doubt will find a ready sale, as they are to bo offered at specially reduced prices. A promenade concert is also to be held tho same evening. The following advertisement appears in an Invercargill newspaper:—“Children for adoption. I have four children in my charge whom I wish to place out by adoption in respectable families, being three boys, aged respectively 9,7, 4 years, and one girl 5 years. All bright, intelligent, and'healthy children.” This does not emanate from an illicit babyfarmer. Application is to be made to the Secretary to the Charitable Aid Board, or at the Home. Herein is a hint for our local board —advertise your young stock. The Invercargill Literary and Debating Societies have combined in arranging for the delivery of six popular lectures during the coming winter, " by well known hands," Sir B. Stout, and Dunedin University prpfossors. The charges are as low as they well can be, Ss for the course or Is for a single lecture. Herein is a hint for other towns.

Last week an old soldier came to a sad end. He was a survivor of the Balaclava charge, and afterwards served 30 years in the stores department. Ho had retired from the service, and left for New Zealand by the Doric, but was followed by a warrant for embezzlement, and was stopped at Hobart. 'While detained in gaol waiting for a steamer Homeward bound, he got a nail can full of water, carried it into a closet, and with great determination held his head under water till he suffocated.

That was an extroardinery precedent set by Mr Goldsmith at the meeting of householders at Waimate, in moving after seven nominations had been received 11 That the nominations be now closed.” This was seconded and carried. We do not know the circumstances ; the meeting may have been waiting some time for other nominations and none were offered. But if so, the precedent is a bad one, and worse as coming from the Chairman of the Board of Education. The Act says nothing about time of nomination, and it seems much the better practice to go slow, and free and easy about it, than to fix by formal motion the closing of the list. Otherwise a loophole is left for schemes for rushing the business and closing the nominations early in the interests of a clique. The following is an account of the ' mutiny > on H.M.S. Egeria, at Auckland, The men had a grievance against First Lieutenant Helby, who, they said, gave them unnecessary wor.k keeping them at it from four o’clock in the morning until late at night. It was on Good Friday that matters came to a climax. The men were brought ashore to church, and' amongst those so sent were some of those who had previously been sent on board by the police and picket. When they were returned on board, they were ordered to go to work, but refused on the ground that Good Friday was a public holiday and should be observed as a Sunday ; in fact, they refused duty, and the first lieutenant called them to the quarter deck. They refused to go, and the petty officers were ordered to bring thorn 'forward, but they said they were too few for this service. However, on the captain sending an order forward the men at once obeyed., .What transpired afterwards is not known, as the Egeria left port early next day.

So one half of the planet Mercury never gets any sunlight, and the light he sheds on us as an evening star is always from the same side. That follows from the result of the patient observations of Professor Schiaparelli, director of the Observatory of Milan, carried out since 1882, for he has established that the period of rotation of Mercury on its axis corresponds with that of its revolution round the sun, sothatthe same half is always towards the aim on the same principle that we always see the same half of our moon. An interesting point about the professor’s observations is that they were all taken in the daytime. The basis of his conclusion is that the same configurations—and he has 150 drawings—have always been seen during the eight years ho has boon observing.

The French doctors suggested warm alcoholic drinks as a good remedy for the grip, and within the next three days the arrests for drunkenness in Paris rose to 1;200. _