Mr Nelson, an English expert, recently arrived, takes charge of smelting operations at the Endea vour Inlet antimony mine. A high opinion of property states the ore is of best quality and free from impurities. Sometime ago, Mr M'Kerrow, Suevey-General, reported upon w hat may lie called a somewhat dummy application for agricultural lands between (Jibbston and Victim Bridge, Kawarau river. He recommended the Waste Lands Board not to accept the offer, the land being the only available area in that block available for settlement. There are, we understand, other honafittt applicants for the land so applied. The land should be thrown open under the perpetual lease system, and with a small and easily defined back hue of hill country for grazing. It is situate upon the the line of main road to Dunedin, and is also situate amid )>oth a goldfields carboniferous country, capable of further future development

j Some eorres|>ondence has l*en published in the I Southland papers over the flogging/raca* on the J second day's racing on the Plankton course, when ; Walter Duncan, who rode Solitude in the Flying | Handicap, was whipped l.y MrR. H. Gault (who j had charge of him), for not riding the horse properly. i Whatever faults there may have been on either { side, we do not think Mr Gault (who seems to !>oßsess a hasty temper), was justified in acting m le did, and the stewards of the local Jockey Club j would have been doing their duty by demanding an * explanation. Stone's Diretory for 1886 is a great improvement j on its predecessor, both in bulk and the additional I amount of information, useful alike to the business | man and to settlers generally. It also contains j correct and well executed maps of Dunediu, Inver i cargiil, and of Otago, and, taken altogether, should | prove a- valuable hook of reference in the counting house of every house of busiuess. Mr L. Hotop, of this town, is the local agent. | We hear that one of the hottest days on record | in the colony, was at Cromwell last week, when a I commercial gentleman registered 140deg. in a ' sample room in that town, the building was of iron. ! This must be, so far as we have learnt, the j champion hot day of the colony. 