The Inangahua Times, PUBLISHED TRI-WEEKLY. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1882.

Inangahua Times, Volume VII, Issue 1204, 6 December 1882, Page 2

The Inangahua Times, PUBLISHED TRI- WEEKLY. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1882.

The directors of the Lankey's Creek Gold Mining Company, have accepted the tender of Sangster and Nichols for the erection of the Company's crushiug plant. A man named Alexander M 'Do wall, alias "Blackguard Sandy" was brought before Messrs Bowman and Potts J.P.'s, yesterday, on remand, charged with indecent behavour at Boatman's. The charge was fully proved . and the Bench sentenced the man to two months' imprisonment in H okitika Qaol. Mr Bowman, who presided, commented severely upon the conduct of a number of persons who were present on the occasion, and abetted the offence, and regretted that the police had not brought the whole of them before the Court. Sergent Neville said that the police had very great difficulty in finding evidence to support the charge, owing to the determination of those who were present to deny all knowledge of the occurrence. It seems that the offence was the outcome of a bet of a shilling made with defendant by a publican named O'Neili, and the Bench characterised the proceeding as a most disgraceful one, and directed the police to report O'Neill's conduct to the Licensing Bench, Boatman's. The Court then adjourned. The long talked of transit of venus will take place to-morrow morning. At sunrise venus will be visible well on the sun. The middle of the transit will be at 4.34 a.m. and the end at 7.42. The following particulars of the transit will no doubt be read with interest : — The transit is especially valuable as affording a means of measuring the sun's distance from the earth. If ow this is done can be thus explained. The rate of the motion of Venus is well known from long observation. Let the planet be supposed to travel from one side of the sun to the other, through the centre, in 10 hours, as seen by an observer stationed at the centre of the earth. One stationed at the north pole would see the planet traverse a line south of this central fine, say, in nine hours ; while one at the south pole would see the planet traverse a line north of the central line alao in nine hours. If the central line is divided into ten spaces, each north and south line will contain nine of these ; and it will be an easy matter to place these accurately in their true positions in a circle drawn to represent the sun. The relative distance of Venus, and of the earth, from the sun is well known. Thus if the earth be placed at 100 inches distant from the sun, Venus must be placed at 72 inches ; and as a consequence of this distance, the separation of the two north and south lines upon the sun's disc will be 2£ times more than the distance apart of the observers from each other. The value of the sun's diameter is thus readily found, and then the sun's distance ; for the sun's apparent size is known by long observation, and a body so large must be at a certain distance to have the observed size. 'I he greit difficulty is to observe the beginning and end of the transit exactly. A t present the distance of sun is said to be from 61,000, 000 to 90,000,000 miles: Astronomers at this transit will have the experience gained in 1847. That these distances, should so differ is no wonder, for it is said that the distance that is uncertain depends upon the measurement of an angle equal to the breath of a human hair seen at 125 feet distance, or of a sovereign at eight miles distance. The B«v. Phillip Gast, of Charles-street Chapel, Goßwell-road, recently wrote to Sir William Harcourt requesting permission that the convict Arthur Orton should be made acquainted with the fact that a conference of Christian ministers and other sympathisers with the claimant was to be held in the lecture-mom of the chapel named, and further asking that the oonvict might be permitted to write a statement of those points of his case which he would desire to be considered at the conference. In reply Mr Gast has received a communication from the Home Secretary declining to comply with the application. A meeting convened by the Democratic Federation has been held in Palacechambers, Bridge-street, Westminster, for the purpose of considering the question of the expected introduction of Chinese labor into this country. Mr H. M. Hyndman, who took the chair, read a paper in which he stated a number of Chinese merchants bad met in the city of London and resolved to import Chinese labor. "It might be asked, he said, why we should object to Chinese competition.

The wage-earning class in this country were just enabled at the present time to keep themselves in their position as a class and hand tint position do'wn to those who followed them. If the Chinese, who were able and willing to work and live on wages on which we should starve, were admitted, the result would be most disastrous. Thirty million Chinamen could be brought hete, for there were over 400,000,000 of them. They could swamp us industrially and crowd ua out of almost every occupation. But not only would the working classes suffer by the competition ; it would be felt much further. Those working men who were driven into pauperism would have to be supported ; and, as Chinamen were very saving on small wages, they would soon open shops themselves and undersell those who had at first employed them." Resolutions deprecating the importation of Chinese labor, and calling upon the Government to prevent it, were adopted, after being spoken to by Mr Johnstone, DrDrysdale, Mr J. Edgcumbe and Mr Floundes. Addressing the Newcastle and Gateshead Chamber of Commerce, the other day, the president, Mr C. M. Palmer, M.P., who is a large shipbuilder, referred to the future of the Suez Canal. He considered that while the canal remained in the hands of a private company it was unlikely that it would be deepened or widened. He thought it was a question whether the reshould not be a new canal for British shipping alone. This could be done profitably, and would be an enormous convenience. One of the greatest monuments of human folly in this modem Babylon will shortly cease to exist. Kensington House, which has been doomed for some time, is now being despoiled of its gaudy trappings and all its Brobdingnagian splendors. The subject is worthy of a sermon from every pulpit in the empire, but the facts themselves are a sufficient commentary on the fates of what may be called the toy of a spoiled child of fortune — a huge h^ouse pulled down before it has ever been flved in ; an expenditure of, it is said, a quarter jot a million lying sunk for years, and at last returning a first and final dividend of something like 4 per cent. Gorgeous as the house was within, it was ' one of the most hideous in the district, and the passer-by looking at Kensington Palace on his right hand and Kensington House on his left had a good chance of comparing the artistic architecture of the seventeenth century with the trashy stucco work of the nineteenth. The Kensington House, which preceded it, was handsome enough in its way, and I believe that immediately before its demolition it was occupied as a lunatic asylum. But a far wider domain was taken up by "Baron" Grant for his huge barrack ; rows of other buildings were swept away in order to make room for this "lordly pleasure," with its skating rinks, bowling alleys and other rediculous adjuncts. Probably no house, except Buckingham Palace, within an equal distance of Hyde Park Corner, took up so much ground. The mania for assassination now threatens the Emperor of Austria. He has been visiting Trieste,- which has now belonged to his house for exactly 600 years, to, open an exhibition. A parly among the citizens, however, wish for annexation to Italy, and a party among Italians sympathise with their desire ; and the police discovered that some 20 young men in Udine, chiefly deserters from the army, had resolved to assassinate the Emperor. The lot fell to one of their number, a native of Trieste, named Agostino Rossi, but called Overdank, from his mother, who prepared two Orsini bombs, to throw at the Imperial cavalcade as it traversed Trieste. Overdank was arrested on the frontier, fired at the police, and, it is said avows his intention to have thrown his bombs as " Italy's welcome to the Hapsburg." One of the most interesting and amusing papers read at the late meeting of the British Association, was that by Dr Spencer Cobbold, the well known helminthologist. He showed that it was the female mosquito, and not the male insect, which is notorious for its blood-sucking habits. Moreover, she makes her attacks on the human body. Our blood swarms with filarise, and it is these on which she preys, fishing in our blood for them. Many persons during the summer weather especially, suffer greatly from bleeding from the nose, and in some cases the loss of blood is large, and the stopping the bleeding very great. An Auckland paper states that Mr Shailer, a well known Auckland contractor, in the course of a conversation on the subject, instanced the case of a young man, a friend of his whose case was so bad that three medical gentlemen who attended him "gave it up." Some person recommended ft simple cure, which was tried as a last resource. It was to tie a skein of scarlet silk sewing thread loosely round the throat, and in seven days the bleeding was entirely stopped. Mr Shailer was at the time a severe sufferer from the same cause and was worn to a shadow. He bled as frequently as 15 times in one day. He tried the remedy as soon as he heard of it, and experienced the same beneficial effect as his friend, and he now believes that the remedy saved his life.