News and Notes

Southern Cross, Volume 5, Issue 37, 18 December 1897, Page 11

News and Notes

A vacancy in the nursing staff of the Southland Hospital has been filled by the appointment of Nurse Child. A mechanical device recently patented pastes paper labels on 100,000 tins in ten hours. * To-day it costs £187,500,000 per annum to maintain the peace of Europe. Narrabri (N.S.W.) has been the scene of a great fire damage, £20,000. The steamer Fitzroy went ashore near Sydney last week. The crew and passengers were landed safely. Two boats were dashed to pieces, but the two remaining were successfully launched, , and brought everybody ashore in five trips. A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court office at Invercargill by certain shareholders in the J. G. Ward Association, praying the Court to instruct the liquidator of the Ward Farmers’ Association to initiate proceedings under the penal clauses of the Companies Act against Mr J. Gr. Ward and Mr John Fisher for alleged false representations regarding the Association. Twelve million silk hats are made annually in the United Kingdom, worth £5,000,000. Steps are to be taken by the Imperial Authorities to make the army more attractive to young men. They will be paid Is a day, the amount increasing with length of service, and work will be found for them when they retire. Medals have been given to chief officer Ranken and six of the crew of the steamer Orient for relieving a brig off the Victorian coast. In the famous Garden of Olives in Jerusalem there are eight flourishing olive trees that are known to be over 1,000 years old. The use of the Rontgen rays is proving of great service in the treatment of gun shot wounds among the troops on the Indian frontier. ' The Lyndenburg (Transvaal) coach was stuck up and robbed of £12,000 worth of gold. The loss is covered by insurance.

During a hailstorm at Emmaville (N.SW.) iron roofs were penetrated, poultry and sheep were killed, and crops destroyed.

Mr J. E. Watson has been reelected chairman of the Southland Hospital Trust, members feeling that he , should remain in office pending the completion of the Victoria Ward, in the initiation of which he had taken a leading part.

A simple barometer may be made in this way : Half fill a jar with sand and place on the top of the sand a pine cone. In fine weather the leaves will open, and in wet weather will close up closely. During the Miowera’s last trip from Sydney to Wellington a seaman named William Manson was knocked down on the forecastle head by a sea, and died from his injuries. It is stated that the engineers at Horae have voted in the proportion 300 to 1 in favour of the rejection of the employers’ demands. The formal opening of the final link in the railway between Wellington and Napier, via Wairarapa, took place on Saturday. The Governor in his °peech on the occasion hoped increased railway facilities would induce settlers to utilise the large timber areas now being destroyed by fire.

The Premier claims that during the six years the present Government have been in office 508 miles of railway have been constructed, at a cost of about £1,295,000, and in the same time 2693 miles of carriage roads, 1923 miles of horse roads, and 356 bridges have been made.

Mrs McKinley, wife of the President of the United States, is ddad.

; Francis Wood, aged seventeen, was I on » recent Sunday gathering chesnats with some friends on private land near Godaiming, when the proprietor chased him and his companions. In running away Wood fell on some ploughed land and broke ( his neck. The Duke of Westminster has forwarded to the secretary of the Chester General Infirmary a cheque for £SOO cut of the receipts from visitors viewing Eaton Hall during the year. The institution has for many years benefited by his Grace’s liberality in handing over part of the receipts from this source. A Liverpool shipowner named Truscott has been sentenceed to three years’ imprisonment for stealing £36,000. Several of the Horae railway companies have granted their men special payment for Sunday work. December 26, 27, 28, and January 1 and 2 will be Government holidays Since Prohibition has been in force in the Clutha electorate, the fines imposed for sly grog selling have amounted to £651. Mr Gilruth, the Government expert, approves of a site on the western reserve for the Invercargill abattoirs. J. Johnston and Sons’ tender for machinery for the Invercargill baths has been accepted, and they will probably be opened before the New Year. The Southland Frozen Meat Company invite tenders for £30,000 worth of debentures at 5 per cent. An old woman named Quigley lost her life in a fire at Oamaru last week. In the Supreme Court, Dunedin, orders have been made sanctioning an agreement for a sale of the debts to the Ward Farmers’ Association in liquidation of R. A. Anderson and John Fisher. A woman has been arrested for threatening to assassinate the Queen Regent of Spain. During the last twenty years the number of British apprentices on sailing ships and steamers has fallen from 16,000 to 9,000, whilst during last year only 1,500 apprentices were entered. The low rate of wages is said to have something to do with the decrease. Harry Pilcher, who passed as the Earl of Hardwicke, has been sentenced at Sydney to a year’s imprisonment for certain jewellery frauds. In 1813, the British Navy, exclusive of aramament, might have been valued at about ten millions sterling. Its value to-day, according to Parliamentary returns, is sixty-one millions, excluding small ships, steam tugs, and the like. At the Invercargill Police Court last week John Gorman, farmer, Hedgehope, was charged on remand with having sent certain letters to one Margaret Macpherson containing threats to do grievous bodily harm to the said Margaret Macpherson and others at Hedgehope, on or about the 2nd day of December. After hearing the evidence, from which it appeared that Miss Macpherson had refused to marry the defendant, he was committed for trial, and was also bound ovr to keep the peace. He was admitted to bail. George Vince and Thomas George, senior members of the 4 Peculiar People,’ who were each convicted of the manslaughter of one of their children through neglect to call in medical aid, were brought up at the Old Bailey tor sen tenpe. Mr Justice Ridley said the doctrine which the prisoners held —that they could ignore with impunity the whole of the learning and researches of science in medicine on the faith of mere religious convictions was appalling. They were entitled to opinions of their own, but when the law was broken it remained for them to justify their conduct. This they had not done. He did not propose to make martyrs of them, but the law must be obeyed.

He should release them on recognisance of £2O each to come up for judgment when called upon. If they again broke the law they would undoubtedly be called upon to receive sentence. The men, having entered into the required recognisance, were released. Early in the century the famous nursery gardener Lee was walking in Wapping when he was attracted by flower unknown to him, in the window of a small, dingy house. He went in, and offered to buy it, but the owner, an old woman, was loth to part with her treasure, as it had been given her by her husband, who was a sailor, and it was not until tempted by the sum of eight guineas and a promise of two young plants that she gave it up. Cuttings struck freely, and soon Lee was the possessor of three hundred plants, and visitors to his nursery were charmed when they beheld for the first time the dainty hanging blossoms of the now familiar fuchsia. Its success was rapid, and

it soon became one of the chief ornaments in every greenhouse, while the more hardy varieties were freely planted out of doors, When the fashion for fuchsias was at its height, entire conservatories were devoted to them.