NEWS EPITOMISED.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXIII, Issue 9347, 2 March 1881, Page 2

NEWS EPITOMISED.

» The estimate for the probable requirements of the Southland Education Board for the current year is £17,782. At the last meeting of the Council of the Eoyal Colonial Institute, Mr B. H. Darnell, of New Zealand, was elected a fellow. The free reading-room in connection with the Oainaru Athenamm .is largely patronised, there being on an averago 70 daily visitors. One of Miiner's safes was in the mill destroyed by fire at Otepopo the other day. On being forced open the papers were found to be calcined and destroyed. In an article advocating the establish' ment of a market for Dunedin, the Daily Times estimates that there v ould be a population of fifty or sixty thousand to supply. A leeturess from Waimate — Mrs Goldsmith — read a treatise on the work of the " Salvation Army "at Oainaru last week to a small audience, composed principally of ladies. There is no doubt that the jurors of the Sydney Exhibition were impartial in the distribution of their favours. Gordon and Gotch exhibited some new type cases, and were awarded a gold medal for washing boards. The Oamaru Mail says that, although the information may appear startling, no less than thirty-two sly-grog houses, twelve houses of ill-fame, and .twenty houses licensed to sell intoxicating liquors exist in Oamaru. The Bruce County Council negatived a vote of £40 in aid of the Kaitangata Library building fund by the casting vote of the Chairman, who voted with the noes because he considered it his duty not to establish a precedent. . A correspondent in the Oamaru Mail suggests that Otago and Canterbury should adopt a system of exchange of inspector of schools, thereby preventing a partiality to certain teachers, and discovering those who may be really efficient and energetic in their labours. In an article on young Scott's recent performance at Invercargill, the Southland Times protests against what it terms " the supreme inhumanity and folly of such an exhibition of athletics run mad as that which has just closed in Invercavgill." A Bill will probably be introduced next session of Parliament authorizing the sale of the Queen's Wharf and bonded store by the "Wellington Corporation to the Wellington Harbour Board. The divided authority in harbour matters has been found inconvenient, and both bodies are anxious for the change, supposing price can be agreed upon. The Magistrate at Invercargill, last weekj dismissed a case against a vegetabe hawker who was charged- with hawking without a license, on the ground that the definition of a hawker was one who sold goods by " crying" them in a public place, and that the clause of the by-laws could not be enforced till a market was established in town. Lord Harris, presiding at the Faversham Agricultural Association dinner, said they "were confronted -with, three factors in agricultural depression — the weather, foreign competition, .and the landlords^ He ventured to add a fourth, the farmers themselves. Farmers would have to pay a little more attention to the various branches <& their profession. They were constantly paying, for example, more than the bondfde value for manures, because they did not take the. ixouble to^i&ve/th&iiJsnaLysQd.,