THE PROVINCES.

Colonist, Volume XLI, Issue 9108, 28 February 1898, Page 4

THE PROVINCES.

The « Taranaki News • tells the following joke regarding the Hon E. J. Seddon : — A porter had done some service for the Premier, and the latter at once dived his hands into his trousers' pocket. He withdrew it again, and the porter extended his " fin." But the Premier, with a merry twinkle in his eye, fai'ed to see the " fin," and quickly placed a lollie in his month. The porter was crestfallen, and confusedly sneaked away. However, he got his " tip " later on. The Point Elizabeth Coal Company has received an order for 70,000 common firebricks from the Consolidated Company, Beef ton. A young man at New Plymouth (says f News ') recently called at the house of a young lady who looks upon him as somewhat of > a bore. In answer to his suniinons, a maid came to the door, and ingenuously informed him that " Miss told me to tell you she is not at home." The young man gasped once or twice, and then reason reasserted her sway, and he remarked ' Tell Miss that I'm glad I didn't call." The ' Waimate Times ' states that the Hessian fly has made its appearance in the Waimate Country, and is well distributed. At the annual meeting of the Southland Meat Preserving Company, the Chairman stated that 56,675 crates of rabbits had been exported, and there was an average of 26 in each crate this export reached the enormous total of 1,473,550 rabbits, In this connection he thought that the eyes of the Stock Department should be fairly opened to the value of the rabbit export as bearing on the extermination of the pest. The export of rabbits had become a very valuable one, and would, he thought, increase in value, as he was perfectly sure it would increase in volume. Says the • Auckland Observer ' : — Some of our savants ought to get hold of the Rev. C. Murray, who told the Eemuera Presbyterians one night this week how, in a recent evangelical excursion to the back-blocks of the Wairarapa district, he came across a family of pakeha children who could only talk in a language of their own invention that neither he nor their own mother could understand. Travellers' stories are proverbially steep, but this one seems quite precipitous. Still, Mr Murray's veracity is beyond question. When Mr Tregear and Surveyor- General Percy Smith have quite finished their investigations into the early history of the Maori, they might devote some attention to the genesis of this brand new language. Local industry does not receive anything like the attention it deserves.