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Waipawa Mail, Volume 2, Issue 119, 1 November 1879, Page 2

The sparrows appear to be giving great trouble to the farmers in Canterbury. At a largely attended meeting, at Southbridge, the chairman stated that the farmers were paying a tax equal to Is. 9d. per acre for feeding these pests, through being obliged to sow an additional half bnshel of seed per acre to cover ths amouut of seed eaten by the birds. He then proposed that an association should be formed, to be called tie “ Ellesmere Sparrow Association.” It was then proposed—“ That a reward of l£d. per dozen bo given for eggs, and 3d. per dozen for tne heads of the birds, young and old.” Both resolutions were carried unanimously.

King Iron is dying; and King Steel is preparing to reign. King Steel has invaded the shipbuilders’ yards, the boilermakers are making a treaty with him, and now he is conquering the bridge builders. The great bridge over the Forth is to bo built of steel, and a large bridge for a railway in Australia lias just; been made in Scotland entirely from steel. The sooner ironmastors recognise tho new order of things tho better for themselves.—Echo. English Railways—Lord Hartington, presiding at the annual dinner of the Railway Benevolent Institution, London, recently, remarked that in the railway interest was invested £G73,000,000, representing 17,000 miles of railway, over which 551,000,000 passengers had been conveyed last year, while tho traffic receipts amounted to £00,000,000.

Emigration. —During the first six months of the current year the number of immigrants into the United States amounted to 52,284, against 37,919 in the same period in 1878. Tho greatest monthly total was 18,328 iu May, while in June the total number of arrivals was 11,692, aud in April 11,406. The greater majority of these immigrants came from Europe, and about 80 per cent, of them landed at New York. Germany contributed more than any other nationality ; Ireland second in point of numbers, and then England, Italy Switzerland, Russia, Scotland, and France.

The following characteristic letter from the Rev. J. (J. Andrews, appears in tho Nelson Evening Mail of the 3rd ultimo :—“ The Princess Louiso has been catching salmon in Canada. To-morrow is the Ist of October. Is it because fishing is a royal sport that our democratic Government have failed, neglected, or refused to gazette the opening of the trout fishing here at the usual date ? Is it t# spite the Nelson members and electors ? Is it to spite the Nelson boys ? Is it to injure the passenger traffic on our little ewe-lamb, the Foxhill railway ? Is it from sheer incompetency and slovenliness in the ordinary routine work the servants or masters of the public arc paid to do ? Is it that the trout are spotted and the Maori tattooed, and both are to be protected ? Is it that the Government have a fellow feeling for everything that is fishy ? Our surveyors may be shot down : our steamers barred by savages and assassins from navigating our inland waters : our properties may be taxed to increase tho value and unearned increment of aboriginal holdings, to pay for tangis, and to give an outing to dusky beauties, and wo might boar it, but this last injury is unbearable. The trodden worm and the trodden fisherman alike will turn. The Government must go out. No sportsman (I wish I could answer for the member for Waimea) can give them a vote.”