THE AYR BURGHS ELECTIONS

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVIII, Issue 5, 30 May 1890, Page 11

THE AYR BURGHS ELECTIONS

The result of the Ayr election has been declared as follows :— Mr: James Bomerville (0), 2610; Mr. Edmund Routledge (L) 2480." Conservative majority, 130. Thi^ seat was captured by us from the Liberal-Unionists in June, 1888. The voting on that occasion was :— Mr. J. Sinclair CD 2331; Hon. E. Ashley (U L), 2268. Libgral majority, 63. The voting at the previous general elections were • 188 G. ISBS. Campbell (U L; ... 2673 Campbell (L) ... 2460 Sinclair (L) ... ... 1498 Low (C) ... ..' 2118 Unionist majority ... 1175 Liberal majority ... 342 United Ireland, writing on the election, says :— " We have lost Ayr— a crumb of comfort for the Unionists in their period of doubt and stress ; but it was not lost by any big majority, but after a tough fight. From the outset the contest was not hopeful, as the late member only won it by the skin of his teeth— and he was a strong candidate because of his great local influence and personal qualities. The contrary was the case with Mr. Routledge, the Gladstonian candidate, who has now failed to hold the seat for the party. He was an entire stranger to the electors, but he proved himself during the contest to be an able and popular man. The Unionists only carried the seat by a majority of 130. The Laccadive Islands are suffering from a dreadful plague of rats which have destroyed the cocoanut plantations and reduced the inhabitants to destitution. The plaster of Paris cure is being tried. It consists in sprinkling plenty of powdered plaster of Paris upon boiled rice. After eating it the rats become thirsty, it ia said, and when they have drunken, the water hardens the plaster of Paris and kills them. A Pennsylvania railroad man says young men are selected as drivers of the locomotives on fast trains because old men do not have the nerve to stand the strain of the terrible speed of those traius. and even the nerviest young man gets afraid of them after a while Then they get to letting up a little in speed, the trains run behind time, the engineers are given other runs and new men are put on in their places. Tippoo Tib, observes a contemporary, is a nice man to know. If you reside anywhere within his " sphere of influence," which seems to include almost the whole of Equatorial Africa, you have to be very careful what you are about. If you shoot an elephant, you must present the astute scoundrel with one of the tusks and sell him the other at a price fixed by himself, which probably comr s to very nearly the same thing. If you omit these attentions he will have you shot. So far Captain Taioier, the French exploror, whose experiences of Tippoo seem to be very similar to those of Mr, Stanley. In this way he keeps a virtual monopoly of the ivory trade, aeaiEst which it is exceedingly difficult for European traders to smuggle. Tippoo Tib annexes the bulk ot the ivory to begin with ; and th- white trader, when he succeeds in obtaining ivory, has his profits reduced by the necessity of paying three or four middlemen. The position, moreover, is growing worse because the elephants have been so persistently molested along the coasts that they have taken refuge in the interior, and have thus made themselves subject to Tippoo. What reserve of elephants there may be in the interior of Africa no man knows ; but it seems not unlikely that their fate may be as the fate of the American buifdlo,