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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 4

[trade dispatches]

Of 695 patents applied for in New Zealand during 1889, 6 were for printing, 2 for rubber stamps, 1 for stationery, 1 for perforating, and 4 for advertising.

Mr John Farrell, the poet, having resigned the position of editor of the Sydney Daily Telegraph, Mr L. J. Brient, late London correspondent of the paper, has taken his place.

The Blenheim Borough Council have passed a new bye-law for the special benefit of the book-fiends. These gentlemen are now classed as « hawkers or pedlars, » and are required to pay a licence-fee of 10s per month.

After an existence of two centuries the publishing house of Rivingtons—the oldest in London—has ceased to exist. Francis Rivington, the last proprietor, retired from business on the 1st July, and the house has been incorporated with that of Longmans.

Mr John Stone, of Messrs Stone and Son, had the pleasure recently of receiving an autograph acknowledgment of a copy of the Otago and Southland Directory sent to the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, who wrote:— « I thank you for your obliging gift. Certainly the directory is a most impressive as well as conclusive proof of great and rapid progress at the antipodes.—I remain, dear sir, yours faithful and obediently, W. E. Gladstone. June 3/90. »

We have been shown a little book of 24 pages, issued by Fergusson & Mitchell, of Dunedin, and advertising the various branches of work undertaken by that firm. Each page is different in design, and some recent novelties in type are displayed. It is the work of Mr J. Mclndoe, and contains the best tint-printing and some of the best typographical designing that we have seen done in New Zealand. Mr Mclndoe should send a sample of his work to the Specimen Exchange —it is much above the average of the contributions to that collection.

The Manawatu Herald takes credit to itself and its staff for turning out the Palmerston electoral roll—containing 2239 names, and occupying 38 quarto pages—in the « ridiculously short time » —one week—allowed by the department. By working long hours the feat was accomplished, and it was smart work for a country office.

A complete edition of the Chicago Evening Post was written, set up, and printed the day before the paper was put on the market. The edition consisted of only twenty-five copies, and was got up solely in order that Mr Scott might be assured, before the paper was sent out, that all the machinery of the office, literary and mechanical, was in perfect working order. The cost was about $l,200; but the real No. 1, when it appeared, was perfect.

The original Harpers, of publishing fame, were printers, and their sons and grandsons have learned the craft. Each one of the family that intends entering the firm must learn the trade. He starts as an apprentice, and is not admitted to the firm until he has mastered the craft. He also practises proofreading, and in this manner goes the rounds. There is something suggestive of « the good old times » in this excellent custom, which is worthy of wider adoption.

New York papers announce the death, in his 67th year, of John W. Watson, engraver, a writer of verse, and one of the numerous claimants to the authorship of « Beautiful Snow, » which it is alleged he wrote in 1858. (We have no reference at hand, but have a strong impression that the verses appeared in the London Journal before that date.) Messrs Ward, Lock, & Co. recently published an edition of his poems—which are not of a high order of merit—with « Beautiful Snow » in the place of honor.

The Auckland Observer, a paper which does not ordinarily exchange with Typo, has sent us a batch of marked copies containing articles, &c., in reference to « The war against women » by the N.Z.T.A. in Auckland. The question is a wide one, and requires more room that we can devote to it this month. We will only say at present that we consider that the position of the Australian and Auckland Unions in the matter is a wrong one. It is nonsense to assert that their rules are framed out of any regard or consideration for the women.

The low sandhills on the East Coast abound in remains of the extinct moa, and nothing is more common than the discovery of nearly complete skeletons when the sand has been blown away. Lately some unusually large relics were found, the thigh-bones being 14½ in. long and 8½in. in circumference. There is nothing very remarkable in this, nor in the fact that along with the bones were found some hoop-iron, broken bottles, and broken tobacco-pipes. What is amazing, however, is the inference drawn by a West Coast paper that the bird « was alive certainly as recently as when Captain Cook anchored in Queen Charlotte's Sound, and more probably after the whalers first visited Waikanae, about 1820! » The moa has been so long extinct that the very tradition of its existence among the natives is almost lost. They did not even know, until told by the missionaries, that the fossil bones were those of a bird at all; and yet we find newspapers suggesting that it was in existence sixty years ago!