Local & General.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 4793, 10 September 1883, Page 2

Local & General.

It ii notified by the Drainage Board that arrears of rates will be sued for withont further notioe. At noon, on Wednesday, Messrs Beauchamp and Bell will offer for eale by auction a oottage and land at Addington. Ihe following items appear on the fourth page of thia iieue:— Tale: " Miss Garston'f Oaie" (oonoluded); Football; Diamond Prospeoting t Parliamentary Ne we ; Hurricane in Tonga. Ihe last conoert ef the Merivale winter season will take place on Wedneaday next. A capital programme ii promised, compriaing vooal and inabramental musio, and the faro* of "The Cantab " by the Merivale Dramatio Olub. Mr A. Gardiner, of North Moeraki Downs, met with a serious accident on Satnrday through being kicked by a horae. while carting aome straw. The extent of hia injuries hai not yet been ascertained, but he ie .apposed to be ».rio_fly hart. The Ohriatohuroh Mnaioal Sooiety annonnoe a performance of Mendelssohn's oratorio, "Bt Paul," for to*morrow evening. The concert! given by thia Sooiety have grown— and deservedly—- ateadily in the estimation of the pnblio, io that with favourable weather vre> antioipate auoh an attendanoe at will fill the Oddfellowß' HaU. The annual meeting of the Midland Canterbury Crioket Olub was held on Saturday evening. The report and balance-sheet, whion were of a tolerably favourable nature, were read and approved. Mr Wynn- Williams waa 1 re-eleoted President, and other office-bearer* • were alao oheien. Some alterations in the | rulea were made, and other bnsineaa trans* aoted. The third monthly meeting in oonneotion with the Addington Total Abstinence Sooiety , waa held last Friday evening, in the Free Methodiit tohoolroom, Selwyn street; Mr George Booth ocoupied the ohair. A varied and interesting programme waa given. "The 1 dialogue by Matin Nioholls, Weill * and , Simpion was very well rendered, aa were alao the cornet iolo by Matter Trengrove and the aonga by Mrs Donald and Mri Trengrove. The members of the Masonic fraternity in Kaiapoi havo deoided to augment their funds' by an operatio performance, for whioh eeveral ladiei and gentlemen have kindly volunteered their servioes. It ie understood that Gilbert and Sullivan* " Patienoe" is the work selected. There will 1 be no necessity, it it said, for ueing the " wanted " oolumn for " twenty love eiok maideni." Parliament was formally prorogued on Saturday, but not without a slight breeze oaused by Sir G. Grey desiring to give a notioe of motion for next session, whioh the Acting-* Speaker, Mr Hamlin, refused to take. A aohedule of the buiineti done during the session, inoluding a list of all the Bills brought before the two Houiei, ia appended to the report of the prooeediuga. A ipeoial meeting of the South Canterbury Teaohera' Association -was held on Saturday in the pnblio sohool, Timaru, Mr J. Soott in the ohair. The Ohairman introduoed the Bey T. Flavell, who delivered an intereiting addren on educational matters. The matter of supporting the eduoational journal " The Sohoolmatter" was brought up, and the meeting pledged the Association to eupport it. Ihe meeting then terminated. The football matoh between the Chriatohuroh and Bait Chrißtohuroh Olnbt on Saturday ended in a viotory for the latter by a goal to nothing. There was a very large attendance on Cranmer square, and the luooeet of the junior olub appeared to be very popular. The matoh between Auokland and Wellington ended in a draw. There teems to have been a great amount of disputing, and the report of the Press Assooie* tion iB ao very oonf uaed towards the end, that it ii not possible to make out exaotly what hap* pened, or in what order thingi took plaoe. Whiteside wai hurt in the fint spell, and had to retire. Hii losb, of oourte, must have made a serious difference to the Auokland men. During the reoent flood, considerable injury and lobb wai sustained at Mr- Jbhmon'i fishbreeding establishment at Opawa, chiefly through the esoape and mixing up of the varioui descriptions and agei of fish ; the water having riten to such a height ai to render nearly useless all the precaution! taken to guard against suoh a misfortune. So far aa oan be at preaent aaoertained the loiiee inolude a large number of breeding trout of both Amerioan and English varieties, Amerioan salmon, several hundreds of beautifully ooloured goldfish, and tome thousands of young Amerioan brook trout. Fortunately only a portion of this season's hatohing had been removed from the boxes, so there are etill eeveral thousand! left of thit beautiful and game variety. It may be considered by future anglers that the reoent flood was by no meani a misfortune, lince it will probably have ttocked the Hoathoote river with valuable fish. A meeting of ihareholdera in the South. Canterbury Meat Befrigerating Oompany wai held on Saturday at Timaru, Mr Blworthy in the ohair. Fifty or aixty persone were present. The objeot of the meeting waß to authorise the taking of the neoessary steps for forming and registering the Company. The following resolutions were oarriod unanimously :—>" That the Oompany be formed with 2500 ehftrW " That all the original provisional Directors that have taken shares retain their names on the Articles of Association and the neoetsary alterations be made in the Artioles and Memorandum of Association." "That the permanent Directors be nine, five to form a quorum." " That the provisional Directors be instructed to look out for a site for permanent works, such site to be fixed within a distance of five miles north and three miles south from Timaru, and as near Timaru as possible • and that they have power to invest the funds of the Company temporarily to the best advantage, procure all information concerning shipping, plant, kc, and plan of operations, to be submitted to the firet meeting of shareholder!, to be held in November next." The provisional Directors wero instructed to obtain exact information ai to the ooit of registering the Company, in order that there might be no unnecessary expenditure in legal oharges and fees. K | Speculation in margins it not lawful in Japan, and the Government hae a ihort and easy way of dealing with suoh epeeulaton. It wai reoently resolved to arrest at the same moment all the offenders on the utock exohanget at Osaka, Yokohama, and Kobe, as wrll at those on the rice exchangee of Tokio, Otau and othor important oom* meroial oentres. Tho polioe inspeotora re* ceived their orders only on the morning of the day fixed, and Btrong detaohments of constables in disguise proceeded to tbe vioinity of the exohangei, mingling with the crowd io as to avoid observation. A few minutes after 11 o'olook all wai in readiness. Six deteotives stationed intide gave the signal, and before the amased speculators realised the situation, the exohangei were in possession of the polioe, the doors looked and the prisoners scoured. All the books, reoordt, and papera I were taken with the priioneri to the oentral polioe station. Over 700 offenders were put 'in prison.

An Englishman, -recently travelling in Ireland, greedy for information, and always ■•fingering the note-book in his breast pocket, •got into the same railway oarriage with a certain Boman Catholio Arohbishop. Ignorant •of his rank, and only perceiving that he was a •divine, he questioned him pretty closely •bout the state of the country, whiskey drinking, ko. At last he said. " You are a parish x>nest yourself, of course." His Grace drew himself up. "I was one, sir," he answered with icy gravity. " Dear, dear," was the sympathising rejoinder, " that accursed drink, I suppose." Baxony baa some very curious laws •concerning servant girls. For instanoe, the .mistress is required to allow the servant one poatid of butter and one pound of ■coffee per month, or tho equivalent in money. If the servant furnish her own bedding, the reoeives I. cents extra per night for so doing. ■Seventy-five cents per month is allowed the oervant for her washing, and she reoeives five per cent on all purchases Bhe makes. Bhe ■must give a month's notioe before leaving her place, and mutt keop a book for reoom* tnendatiom, in whioh, upon leaving her plaoe, her .mii-trets is compelled te state the cause -of the servant's leaving, and also what is her ■charaotor. A suit for the lobs of a hat wai trought ia a London Court against the Owner of a restaurant reoently. Complainant stated that he had gone to the rettaurant ' te dine and placed hit hat on the raok with Others. When he rote to leave his hat was misting, and henoe the proceeding! in suit for 14s, the price of the hat. His Honor held that the keepers of the rettaurant were not to be held responsible for the loss of the hat, 9$ they were not inn-keepers. By adopting the oautious Amerioan custom of keeping the hat on while taking meals in a restaurant, eaoh occurrences as that complained of would never happen. Of oourse, the exohange of umbrella, cannot very well be prevented, and it is espeoiaUy when the remaining umbrella is a red cotton one instead of a blaok silk, that the discomfited owner realises that there must be a good deal of truth, in the "colour blind" theory. Writing af a uaefal official, a London correrpondent dilates upon the frequenoy with whioh tho services of Mr J. B. Lowell are oalled in o requisition at Home. One really «mazing peculiarity, he remarks of the people who get up publio dinners, is always to invite Iho American. Minister to return thanks for -English literature. This was an excellent joke, no doubt, -at first, but it gets a little stale by repetition. At the Irving dinner, -indeed, they, got Mr Toole to propose the health of the Lord Chief Justioe, whioh wat a considerable stroke of humour and quite new; but there was Mr Bussell jjowell returning thanks for Bnglish literature again. It is in* •oonteetible that he doos it extremely well, but oannot any Englishman of letters meke a 4peeoh, even upon matters relating to his own oalling ? There is a statue of Fielding to be •unveiled at Taunton next week, and Mr Buiiell Lowell is to do that. The Yellow river, or Hoang Ho, one of the prinoipal rivars in China, is *t lait to be improved and confined within ita banks. In 1855 the river burst its hanks at Lan-yi Hoien, and the devastation through annual overflows has never been checked. The break now extends for a distanoe of 250 miles. The Government has at last realised the necessity of dredging the ■fiver, repairing its banks, and opening some of the river's mouths to the ocean. The plan is not to uso steam dredges, but to employ a large number of dredging junks, and as tbe men are as numerous and as busy as ants, auoh can be accomplished, notwithstanding the absence of steam. The estimated cost is .£600,000, of whioh the new dikes will require .£125,000, and one hundred drtdging-boats, £SCCD. The expense entailed is only one-sixth of the annual revenue from the foreign oui--torni establishment. Mr Noils Basmussen, a short time ago, .gave tho Launceston Examiner some partionlars about the "black oholera," also known as "oholera morbur" and "Asiatic oholera," whioh have been gathered from his Srsonal recolleotions of its outbreak in penbagen, Denmark, in 1853. He states that when this outbreak first occurred, 295 persona were strioken fimultaneously at 'Sing's square and succumbed to the disease in a few minutes, and in one week 2295 persons died, the disease still spreading. While it was raging a vessel from Copenhagen arrived atsvensborg, in faweden, but no one waß allowed fo go on shore. One man alone landed, and was ordered baok by the authorities, but although ' he did not go beyond the wharf the disease broke out in a Btreet several hundred yards distant, the intervening streets not being attacked. The reason assigned for the apparent preference shown for this street was that the sido towards the river, whioh -Originally eloped, had been filled in for building upon with atreet sweepings, garbage and Other refuso. All known remedies were resorted to in Copenhagen without avail, till a "professor diocovered tbe following remedy :-— Take half a pint of Frenoh brandy and one nutmeg grate, fine, mix, and allow to stand , for a couple of days or more, and before using .shake the bottle. Immediately the system is affected ta«e a wineglassful of the mixture, And if no good result follows in five minutes take another. Mr Basmmsen states he oan Touch from personal experienoe for the efficacy -of this remedy, and amongst others who-owed their lives to it was his own wife.