GENERAL NEWS.

Colonist, Volume XLIX, Issue 11999, 27 July 1907, Page 2 (Supplement)

GENERAL NEWS.

During tbe rr.ontb of May raisins grown in the Commonwealth were exported over-sea to the value of £27,580. For the same month of 1906 oDly £i worth was sent away. It is generally conceded that Australjangroiva raising, are amongst tbe finest produced in tbe world. A' pony owned by Mr Joseph M' Donald of Annandale (Sydney) was recently found dead in the cornar of Rose and Annandala streets, having been electrocuted. The animal had a wire round its neck. 'George Elliot"( Mary Ann Evans) died in 1880, and the first memorial of her in the district, in which she was born in 1819, has just been completed. It takes the form of a granite pillar— with an inscription recording tbe date of her birth, deafen, etc., and the words, "Lest we forget." A Port Chalmers syndicate is procuring from England a first-class steam trawlar. fitted with refrigerator and cool storage, with a view to -trawling from the Bluff to Lyttelton, and establishing depots at all towns along the coast. Quite recently the widow of the late Edward Gibbon Wakefield died in the Old Country. In her will she leaves a sum of money, which will De supplemented by her sister, for the purpose of erecting in Wellington a statue to the memory of her lllustrions husband. Sir Frederick Young, vice-president of the Royal Colonial Institute, has taken the matter up, and a committee will be formed consisting of prominent colonials from all parts of the Empire to carry out the project. In a lecture on India at Sydney a few days ago, Professor David stated that the British Government, finding that a primitive race, the Bhils of the Satpura Hilla, were particularly troublesome on aacount of their want of discrimination between other people's property and their own, had conceived the idea of raising among the most active of the robbers a strong police force. That experiment proved eminently successful. Joseph Tucek, a fourteen-year-old schoolboy of Vienna, was presented recently with a watch by the well known surgeon Professor Baron von Siselsberg, for remarkable courage du-ingan operation. The boy's arm had to be amputated, but he refused to have an anaesthetic, as he declared he wanted to watch the operation. He waa so insistent and promised so solemnly not to mind the pain, that the Processor let him have his way. He did not shrink or utter a sound during the course of tbe amputation, which he watched with the greatest attention, and at the eDd stated that the interesting sigbt was well worth the pain. A recent Army debate was lightened a little by Lord Valeatia or? War Office ways. An officer he said.scot in a bill of expenses which lucluded the item, "Porter, bd.' The War Office declined to pass it on tha ground that refreahments were not a permissible charge. Tbe officer explained that the item was not in respect of tbe porter which is a liquor, but of the porter who carried bis luggage. He got tbe rejoinder that he should have described it as "porterage" ; and was so goaded that he wrote asking whether, wben uaxt un Army service he took a cab, he would have to charge it as cabbage." The mail service from New York to Rio and Buenob Ayres is being hastened by the curious expedient of sending them acros3 the Atlantic t viee -° Tbey go to Southampton by he White. Star Line, and thence are carried to South America by the Royal Mail packets. This saves saven to nine "days.