Volunteer Gossip.

Observer, Volume X, Issue 629, 17 January 1891, Page 11

Volunteer Gossip.

By Rift eman. —Sergeant W. Craig, of the City Guards, is going to Napier. — Colonel Mahon who has been over here on a visit, returned to Australia by Wednesday's steamer. — The estimated cost of the trip to the Napier Rifle meeting comes to about .£ll, which includes cost of entries, passage money, and, in fact, everything. — Major Goring, who is coming to Auckland to take charge of the permanent force at North Head, is highly spoken of, but in any case he must be an improvement on his predecessor. — Commander Harry Rosa, who perished in the wreck of H.M.S. Serpent, off the coast of £pain, was very well known in these waters. He was here a few years back as Commander of the gunboat Raven. As I have already stated, Captain Crosby of the ship Maohri banish is a Eoyal Naval Reserve officer, and received his cominiss ion after passing an examination in Sydney. He had first of all to attend a number of drills on board the Nelson. — Sergeant Fairs of the O Battery will not go South after all, and I think he will be acting wisely in remaining here. He is a fairly good shot, but a New Zealand Meeting is a little too ambitious. — I am very pleased to state that gunner Greenshields of the O Battery has at last been selected to go to Napier. He is a young volunteer, but a most painstaking and consistent shot, and with a little more experience he will make a first-rate marksman. — It is Captain Somerville's wish that all volunteers attending the Napier Meeting should remain in camp, particularly as the arrangements for catering are most satisfactory, and the scale of charges for conveyance to and from town very extortionate. — Volunteering would be quite a dead letter in Auckland were it not for the love of shooting oar young men feel. At present everyone is talking of Napier, and this district is sending a very large batch of marksmen, and I have every hope that the championship will be brought to Auckland. — An order has just gone forth that all branches of the Fermanent Force are to assemble at Wellington for drill. This will prove rather an expensive pleasure trip I was always under the impression tbat the men were well drilled in their respective forts ? — The application to grant free railway passes to pressmen attending the New Zealand Rifle Association Meeting at Napier, has been refused, as I anticapted. Everyone wishes newspaper men to be present, but they are even refused the privilege granted to volunteers attending the meeting. How would it act if the meeting was unnoticed in the daily papers ?

Mr A. E. Cousins, of Wellington, is the artist who ' sculpt ' the 2^d picture of Queen Victoria, and the Chief Postmaster is so well pleased with the work, that he has asked the same gentleman to design a Queen's head for the 5d stamp.