GENERAL NEWS.

Westport Times, Volume VI, Issue 910, 6 January 1872, Page 2

GENERAL NEWS.

The " Otago Daily Times," of Dec. 14, says ; —The Dunedin Jockey Club, for the last five years, has carried out its arrangements according to the rules of the old Otago Jockey Club, which became extinct some four years ago. The club has now compiled a new set of rules for its guidance—among them being some of the English rules not hitherto adopted in the colonies. The weights for age are the same as those in Victoria ■ they are much lighter than those previously used in Otago, and horses are to count their age from the Ist August in each year. According to the 39th rule, if the owner or trainer withdraws a horse a quarter of an hour before the advertised time of starting the race, without giving a satisfactory explanation, he may be fined in any sum not exceeding £SO, and the horse shall not be allowed to start, nor the jockey to ride again, until the fine is paid. By the 40th rule, if a jockey riding a beaten horse does not return to weigh after the race, he subjects himself to a fine of not less than £l.O nor more than £25, and the owner or trainer, if it can be proved that he connived at his violation of the law, is also to be fined. In future it is intended to enforce the 99th rule, that all owners of horses shall register their colours with the Secretary, a provision which hitherto has not been enforced. The rules are now published in pamphlet form, and copies of them can be obtained from Mr Sydney James.

According to the " Hawke's Bay Herald," the Maori " swells" have a penchant for white hats. Our contemporary says:—"No Maori buck iu Napier or Auckland considers his toilet complete without one. Of saddlery and slop clothing, too, the Maoris purchase largely, though in Napier, where so large a proportion of the Natives are in receipt of regular incomes from the rent of land, many of them have gone a step beyond slops. As the Honorable Augustus de Boots drives his phaeton to Poole's, and spends an afternoon in ordering coats, so the genuine Maori swell of the period, with a white hat on his curly head, a flower in his button-hole, a cigar in his mouth, and driving his pair horse buggy, drives to the local store to be measured for his suit."

In making some remarks on tho new Stamp Act at a meeting of the Dunedin Chamber of Commerce, held on the sth ult., Mr E. B. Cargill said: —There wa3 one duty of a most extraordinary character which had only come to the knowledge of those interested within the last day or two. It was a duty which was imposed upon all agents of insurance companies, amounting to £2OO for each agency, provided the capital of the company was anything like a respectable figure. The effect of this duty would be that the agent of any foreign insurance company in New Zealand must either pay, on the Ist January next, £2OO, or cease to do business within the colony.

Queensland appears to be working with great energy for the development of her resources. A correspondent writes : —" Sugar, will, in time to come, be one of her great resources; and the growers are making eiForts to bring the capacities of the colony to rival the West Indies, Brazil, Natal, and Mauritius in the home market, under the notice of the trade and the public in England Amongst other means they are now arranging for an exhibition of sugars from different plantations, to be held in Glasgow, which, as our readers know, has long been a great centre of the sugar-refining trade. The proposition is to send home samples in bags of ten pounds each, to represent not only the various districts but the different plantations. The collection is to be completed by the end of the present month, and forwarded from Brisbane to Glasgow. Guinea, the "Sydney Morning Herald" of Nov. 27 says : —This project, which Mr Keith Collins, initiated here many months ago, is now in a fair way of producing practical results. Recent visitors to Papua having confirmed the statements that gold is to be found there, has attracted the attention of some of the mining population, aud a meeting of persons interested in the matter was held last evening at Punch's Hotel. Their object was to make arrangements for a party well equipped and armed, to leave immediately for lied scar Bay and prospect its vicinity. For this purpose a committee of seventeen was appointed to arrange all details connected with the expedition. It was decided to accept eight men, each of whom is to pay £lO, for which they will be provided with a free passage there—and back if necessary—together with provisions for three months. In order to make the affair bona fide, it was resolved that each applicant for membership should pay a deposit of £l. The " Wellington Independent" understands that Mr Arthur Dobson has been appointed Resident Government Engineer for the province of Marlborough, and will on behalf of tho Government, generally superintend tho railway works in that province. The following lamentation appears in the " Wellington Independent" of Dec. 20:—What to do with our dairy produce is a question about which producers are sorely puzzled just uow. A dairy farmer from the Hurt brought in a quantity of fresh butter on Satur. day, and could only succeed in disposing of it by the slow and troublesome process of hawking it from house to house at Gd per lb. This is a price

insufficient to give a return for invest, ment in stock, and when to this ia added the expense connected with f -> second business of disposal by ha' sngi \u 13 tune uairy uVimerH, s v< themselves or by a farmers' tiou in each district, resorted to n „ ting for export. Butter in this shape might be sent to England, as has been done by some of the other provinces, or, better stiil, to some of the markets of the West Coast of the Middle Island, where farm produce of all kinds, if of good quality, will realise remunerative rates at all seasons of the year. It must be apparent to everybody that the present prices are very discourag. ing: The price of butter is so low at the Hutt in consequence of the want of a market that people prefer to give the milk to their pigs, the price at which it ia sold there, 4d per lb, being nothing like an equivalent to the pay. ment of the labour required in its production.