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Wairarapa Standard, Volume XX, Issue 2082, 17 June 1887, Page 2

In these days when men sleep in the trains some efficacious prescription for the prevention and cure of snoring is eagerly desired. The most jtopular remedy for the end in question is a liberal dose of soap—the yellow variety being preferable—inserted in the mouth of the snorer. As a rule, the criminal always lies on his back, and keeps his mouth wide open. If a wedge shaped piece of soap, of about the size of a piece of choose, or say a trifle smaller than a piece of chalk, is placed in the snorer’a mouth, he will undergo tomporory strangulation, and then sit up and make theological remarks.

Various proposals have been made from time to time for the extirpation of rabbits in this Colony, says the Melbourne Argus, and many thousands of pounds have been expended in tbeir destruction. The Premier received a letter by the last English mail, however, offering for sale an invention which “would make rabbits as valuable an agricultural product as sheep.” The purpose of the invention, it is explained, is to utilise the fur of rabbits in making dress fabrics, &c., of extreme lightness, warmth, and beauty, and without attempting to fix definite figures, the firm who hold the invention ofi'er it to the Government for one-half the sum expended in a single year in Victoria intho work of rabbit destruction. The letter was referred in the usual course to tbo Land Department, and it has boon returned to the Premier minuted as follows :—” The invention is not one which tho Government would bo in a position to purchase or make use of, and its adoption in this Colony would probably toad to on increase rather than a dimuuitiou of the rabbit plague." Sir Henry Parkes, of New South Wales, completed his seventy-second birthday on the 20th ult.

Gold and silver ought no longer to be called the precious metals. There are many far mure valuable. We have a list before us of no less than eighteen, the lowest of which is more than four times as valuable as gold. Gold may be taken as worth £64 the avoirdupois pound, while vanadium is worth £2OOO, rubidium £IBOO, and so down the list of tho eighteen which ends with palladium, valued at £2BO per lb.