NEWS ITEMS

Gisborne Times, Volume IX, Issue 821, 9 February 1903, Page 3

NEWS ITEMS

A conference of representatives of fire and marine insurance companies is being held in Wellington.

Tho steamer Maori, which left Wellington for London on Friday, carried about 40,000 cases of butter, mostly from Taranaki.

Tho Taihape paper is very bitter against some co-operative workers and refers to “social lepers who pitch their tents, obtain provisions from the storos, make an ostentatious demonstration of work, and do the. ‘ Pacific slope ’ as soon as their credit is exhausted.”

A telegraph messenger in Ballarat, finding nobody at a house at which he -was to deliver a telegram, forced an entrance and stole a diamond ring,

A Melbourne barber was fined recently for shaving a man on a Sunday, fin stated that he was peeling potatoes, and had a knife in his hand, not a razor.

Tho ilaxmilling industry is brisk in Otago, and one journal states that new” 'daxmills are springing up all over the country.

The May Ciueen Hauraki Goldmining property has been sold by auction for £1505, and the New Moanataiavi for £205 to Mr J. J. Craig, on behalf of a syndicate.

By order of tho Czar, all the Russian students recently sent to .Siberia for participating in college riots are to be allowed to return home.

Four sons of Sir Wm. Feilden, of Scarborough, with ten of their cousins and an uncle fought in the Boer war.

Every inch of railway-lino in England may be said to have cost 12s, every mile £39,000, and it is interesting to remember that English railways m-e three times as costly as those of America.

There are only two English plants which it pays to grow for perfumemaking. These are lavender and peppermint. Women aro now entering upon lavender-farming in Surrey and making profits up to £3O an acre.

The penalty for stealing a fixture of value exceeding £5 from any house is penal servitude for seven years If the value is under £5, there is liability to imprisonment for two years, with in the case of male off sutlers.

A strango incident is reported from Melbourne. A woll-known music-teacher of an adjacent suburbs was convicted of indecently assaulting his domestics, and was sentenced to tho severe punishment of seven years’ penal servitude, although strongly recommended to mercy by the jury. Prisoner has now been released on £2OOO bail, pending an appeal to the Full Court. Some curious developments are promised if a new trial is ordered.

Dissatisfied with their cool treatment by the Education Board, and not content to “ simply pay the caretaker’s salary and a fow stationary accounts,” to quote a member of the Devonport Education Comraitte, that body will probably resign at a special meeting to be held on Monday.

Borzois, now such popular dogs in England, arc really Russian wolfhounds. Wolves are coursed with them as hares are coursed in this country. Tho wolf is allowed 200yds start, but the burzois almost invariably catch the animal before it has travelled half a mile. Burzois make excellent housedogs. As a reward for ten and a half years’ constant school attendance a boy has been presented with a silver watch and chain by the Jedburgh School Board. As the Emperor of China has gone to the Temple of Heaven to worship, an edict has been issued prohibiting trains from entering Pekin for twenty-four hours.

Fifty tons is tho weight and eleven miles the effective range of a cannon which has just been mounted at L’Orient. It is statod to be tho largest on the French coast.

Mohammedan depositors in the postoffico savings banks are enriching tho British Government, as their religion forbids them to recoive interest. They insist on taking out no more than they put in. A boy who is intended to enter the army as an officer through Woolwich must at tho age of eighteon be five feet five inches in height, and weigh 130 pounds. For Sandhurst, at the age of nineteen, the candidate mu3t be tho same height and weigh at least 132 pounds. A master or mistress may uot make any deduction from a servant’s wages for bad or negligent work unless expressly entitled to do so by tho terms of the contract of engagement. The contract must bo in writing, and signed by the servant. To increase tho receipts return ticket 8 are to bo abolished on the State rai)wey B in Saxony. The price of single tickets' howovor, will be reduced. News comes from Brussels, via Boston, United States of America, that tho Antwerp Yacht Club will probably challenge for the America Cup in 1904.