MISCELLANEOUS.

Inangahua Times, Volume X, Issue 1610, 7 October 1885, Page 2

MISCELLANEOUS.

Koep your receipts (advises a contemI porary). It a -pears that in Auckland I the sura of £3,155 is due for uncollected rates. It would seem from . the correspondence going on in the papers that the accounts are iv a preat muddle, one writer stating — "I am informed on good authority that over ' twenty ratepayers have received threatening demands to pay for rates that they had already paid, and in proof of which they h-.ve tendered the official receipts. o:her ratepayers who were summoned, and even where judgment was obtained successfully resisted double payment by prodocing receipts. Some who had lost their receipts had to qnietly pay over again. But some of those who paid twice wero afterwards fortunate in finding the lost acknowledgment, and upon pre .eutatiou received back their money. In the face of these facts, who will bs bold enough to say what is the extent ofthe present mismanagement By a singular coincidence, there were" recently staying at Dover, General Fisher, General Cockburr, Colonel Ravenhill, and Colonel Andrews In 1865 these gentlemen, then subalterns in the Royal Artillery, performed the feat of crossing the Channel from Dover to Calais in a fonr-oaTed galley in five boon*, an event which at the time created great interest. The French fleet was then being fitted oat for the Baltic, and as the English officers were entering the harbor they tossed oars to the Emperor who wa* on the pier. The town was crowded with visitors at the time, and on tha Emperor t-eing told that fomf British officers h-.il rowed across the ChaaiMt, aud cou'd get no **c*onniodatio_i, hf gave up to them his own apartmento.

At tbe Jersey mine, Inglewood, Vie, all the h*.nds, with the exception of .'be en-'iiie-drivars and the mining manager, I. ye b«_n dismissed It appears that the directors were surp'isedat the small yield, and obtained information to tho effect that some of tha miners had been seen smelting -..ia, and that some smelted gold had Wen sold by working miners in Sandhurst and Inglewood. The directors nor, I. _inc: ah**, to obtain any clue, dis-•mi-.--.ed the man. aud a reward is offered by tlie .ompany for info, mation wbich will 1 *ad to the conviction of the offender.. They take some interest in local affairs in Auckland, judging from the extract from the Heralds correspond deut :— «• Ohinemuri is mad with jubi> lation ov~r s-pa.ation, even gold and ni! ver finds paling into iosi jn.r.caiice before thatmoci.ii-ous question. The jovbells, if there were any, would be ringing merrily, but as this thriving community has not advanced to that stage just yet, busy tongues and jingling glasses prove a very exh.lt* rat ing substitute. A separation hall is to be held ou Friday night, and it is said the licensing commissioners bave granted the publicans permission to Seep open all ni«ht long." From the same source we learn there are likely to be " myriads " of candidates for seats in the new Council. William I. Stead, the editor of the "Pill Mall GazJtt.," is about forty years of age, a slim, wiry, nervous man, with push and energy stamped upon his brow. Tlie son of a Congregational minister, he was born at Howden on Tyne, and at first floated on the world as junior clerk iv a shipping office. As a boy he was passionately fond o-iea*_i**_,e_->ec- i'iy of history. Whui a you.ig nr-n, he j was offered and accepted a p *sition on the "Northern Echo," a daily published at Newcastle. When Mr John Mo -ley accepted the editorship of the " P-'l Mall Gazette," he chose Mr Stead as fi_st lieutenant, and so faithfully and successfully did Mr Stead ful6l his duties, that when Mr Moiiey resigned the editorial chair, the propiietor of tlv» " Gazette, " made Mr Stead Mr Mo.ley's successor. This position Mr Stead has ever since occupied. Co-biderable excitement has been caused in business circles during the past few days (telegraphs the Adelaide correspondent of the, Melbourne Afgus) by a rumour that the public trustee, Henry A Wood, had absconded with a large s.'.ne of money be'ongiug to the intestate estate of Mary Ann Bryan. The hi-rh position held by Mr Wood in the civil service placed him almost beyond suspicion. He was appoiuted j pnblic trustee in January 1881, and since that tio-e has discharged h ; s dotiessatisfactorily, and hasal ways been considered a hard- working and trustworthy o fi.er. Considerjiblr- a ■■prehension exists in regard to the ultimate, results o. the in . estimations into his accounts which are now been carried ou by the Government. Early in June he received one letter, dated Jule 23, bearing the post-mark of Auckland, in •ivhi-.h lie -xpressed his interest in the ■iianag'-ment of his office, but gave no indication of any iutention to return. Wood held a deposit note for £7043, the amoant of Mrs Bryan's estate, and with the aid of an accomplice, a wim.n named Kate Burnett, he cashed the deposit note, which was afterwards transfei-red to the Bank of New South Wales in Burnett's name. She got a draft for £6300 ou Melbourne an 1 when in Melbourne applied for the draft for the remaining i.300. Subsequently an error of 10. was discovered in connection with the trans actions between the banks, and this discrepancy was the means of Wood's fraud being discovered so early. It is s .nnised that Wood, who Irifc for Mcl b mrne a f_w d.ys after Mrs Burnett, met, her in Mo bourne, and th_«\ having with-l-.*! >.v<i tin* lump ..u-n, t ley d"_amp*.l tog-tb.;- to Auckland.' Wan-ants hay*- been issued for the arrest of both, Wo->d on a charge of embezzlement, and the woman on a charg*-* of aiding and abetting him. Mr Galloway's discovery tbat explosions in coal mm«. are mostly due to very fine coal dust, aud not to fire damp, has been most satisfactorily confirm-d by the investigations carried ont by a German commission on a very large' scale. These experimenters got the use of a small deserted tunnel, into which they introduced different sorts of coal-dust. Shots wpre fired as in actnal mining, and the "ff'.-et*. could be observed through strong windows looking from side galleries iui ' <' tunnei. Th^y found whenever .*«»itld st was in the air near the point where the *x plosion of the shot tool*; pia*-'- a larsje flame travelled through it, U". larger and longer the finer the coal dust. Some sorts of -oal dust, when fin* enoush, produce not only a dime but a violent i-xp'osion, •lithongh oot a trace of fired imp is present. But th* presence of a little, firedamp makes the action in every ca3e more inter..., it spreads out Uie flame of the poorer sorts of dust : if it amounts to 4 per cent, it makes tl. . most inert sorts of dust dangerous, while 3 p«r cent, with the finer dusts causes serious explosions. A mass oi gas in a distant gallery cmi be exploded by th* llime travelling in the coal dust from the shot, and thus an explosion is produced, although there may nol be a trace of gas near the shot. Tlu German coin , n;s*ion found that it ionly when the .x plosion of the siioi flashrs out a flame Mint the dust cat. he! fife; by the *i*p of dyiniii.it.'- the. f * n it impossible to ignite th* _oil <!ust, Thus One Very simple precaution has been fouad for Uie avoidance of collier*] disasters, the use of dyuami c for «»1 ist injf with. Another very simple pro vision which has been tried in Franc* and England is the continual *■. ,t7-ri_| «f the galleries so as to lay the dust

The great pity is that those connected ' with the management of the great collieries do not take advantage of recent scientific discoveries and act upon them at once. Many valuable lives are being lost each year because the practical miner in his egotism and self-sufficiency will not acknowledge that so simple a cause for such serious results lay under his very eyes for discovery, but was missed by him. However, it seems as if the colliery world it beginning to be roused to a sense of its duty, and as if in a few years modern civilisation might be spared the most painful of its periodic tragedies. Mr G. A. Sala has been made much of during his progress through New Zealand. He bas been interviewed everywhere (if that can be called a kind attention), and banqueted at Bellamy's, where he had the distinguished honont of being toasted by Mr Te Ao. Mr O. A. S. gives three lectures in Dunedin at the Lyceum Hall on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday next. Yielding to pressure, Mr Sala is going to make another hurried run northwards, lecturing in the Exhibition building iv Wellington and once more in Auckland. He will also at the very last moment squeeze out ono address to the Invercargillites, even if he has to doit from tbe gangway of the Melbourne steamer.