'Che Secretary of the Westporfc Record Reign Day celebrations has about £360 in hand. Oiimaru, Putea, Giaborno, and Tauranga are tlcclarctl ports at which Customhouse agents must be licensed. According to Mr Northcroft, the Wan ganui S.M., it costs the country something between .C7OO and .€BOO per year to replace the telegraph insulators broken by boys. The (liHborne Building Society commences its new financial year to-day, and we are informed that the year just closed has been a successful one. Now is an opportune time to commence subscriptions. Additions to the Telephone Exchange have been made as follow:— (f. R. Wyllic (7o), Police Oiiiee (7'i), Customs Oilice (77), ' Tames Brown, Lowe .Street (7t>), W. A. O'Meara (79). The lambing season has already com menced in some parts of the North Island, and quite .1 large number of early lambs are running about the paddocks in the Tarauaki district. An operation of a critical nature has lately been performed in the Wellington Hospital upon a daughter of Inspector Miller, of Mastorton, and a hydatid cyst of large dimensions removed from the liver. A woman witli a crippled husband and family of seven, living in a house without doors or windows, applied for assistance at the last meeting of the Wellington Bene volent Society. A new departure in the shipment of food supplies to the western portion of the Aus tralian continent is being made in the case of the sailing ship Timaru, which was load ing frozen meat at Sydney last week. At a mooting of the Auckland Harbor Board, it was decided, on the casting vote of the chairman, that it was desirable to increase the revenue of the Board by £3000 per annum. The Hoard will now sit to revise the tariff so as to raise this amount. Mr Firth, Principal of Wellington College, is about to form a lire brigade from the lads under his control, and intends to organise and drill them in minimising the risk of lire. Apart from the useful training of the boys, the example, if followed in similar in stitutions in other parts of the colony, should mean diminished fire premiums. Within a year (says a correspondent of an English paper) cab horses will have a'most entirely disappeared from the streets of Paris. 