AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

Colonist, Volume XLI, Issue 9108, 28 February 1898, Page 2

AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

The New Gas Swindle. Sydney, February 26. The absconder Lee, who went away by the last trip of the Aorangi, and is wanted in connection with the illuminant fraud here; was married last month to the daughter of a wellknown resident in the Orange district. He tried to induce thß officiating minister to have the church lighted with his new atmospheric gas. At the meeting of the shareholders of the Atmospheric Gas Company, Mr Garrard, Minister for Education, who presided, gave a history of the company up to the time of the clis-

appearance of Lee and Elliott, til When the promoters had every con fldence in the bona fides ot the in i,fention and the inventors. He statec tljafe the absconded took away £180( of the shareholders' money, and th< shareholders had a moral claim t< /meet, to refund about £50 to Nev Zealand. The meeting passed [ \ote of confidence in the directors and authorised tli9m to use the funds in hand for bringing back the ab seonders. It was incidentally men tlffned that there were at least twc others against whom proceedings would probably be taken. It was decided that the syndicate ahonlc take up £1 contributing share foi each of the original shares. The Rev E. J. Eodd has beerj elected president of the Wesleyan Conference. The Government steamer Thetis has returned from an experimental deep-sea trawling expedition along the coast, which has been highly euccessful. In less than four days she captured between eight and ten thousand fish. Mr James Mills, managing director of the Union Steam Ship Company, at present in Sydney, has procured a fine suite of offices in the Equitable Buildings, in the centre of the city, to accommodate the Sydney branch of the company. A fire at the Orinond Presbyterian College destroyed the extensive gymnasium and the baths.