Mr S. Spalding, of the well-known firm of Spalding & Hodge, papermakers, died at Adelaide on the 19th June. Mr Spalding had visited South Australia partly on account of his health, and partly on matters connected with the Adelaide exhibition.

Mr Thomas Spalding, late senior partner in the firm of Spalding & Hodge, papermakers, Drury Lane, died on 29th June, in his 81st year. All his life he had made it a practice to consecrate a tithe of his gains to Christian objects, and for many years he has thus devoted large sums to church extension and various charitable works in an unostentatious but effective manner. The Rev. Andrew Reed, brother of the late Sir Charles Reed, was his son-in-law.

An English telegram of 4th September records the death, at the age of 62, of Mrs Emma Jane Worboise, a popular and prolific writer of religious novels. Many of her stories made their first appearance in serial form in the Christian World, and for some years she has edited the Christian World Magazine. She was the daughter of a clergyman, and was left an orphan at an early age. She has been a widow for some years, and leaves a daughter who inherits her gift for storytelling.

Mr David Burns, for 37 years a resident of Nelson, died on the 2nd September, aged 76. He was a relative of the poet, and himself possessed a measure of the « divine gift, » having published some years ago a volume of verses, which met with a favorable reception.

The South Star Hotel, at Blenheim, was burned to the ground on the morning of 27th August. The fire broke out at 1.30 a.m., and the lodgers upstairs escaped with great difficulty. One, an elderly man named David Henderson, was burned to death; and Mr Richard Winter, editor of the Marlborough Times, jumped from an upstairs window and sustained a compound fracture of the leg, besides being much bruised and singed. Mortification ensued, and he died on the 29th. Mr Winter, who had an eventful career in New Zealand, had been formerly connected with the Wellington Chronicle, Wanganui Chronicle, Wanganui Herald, and Marlborough Express, and was one of the cleverest journalists in the colony.