NEWS IN BRIEF.

At Indore the Sessions Judge sentenced a Mahomedan to fifteen yeare' imprisonment for counterfeiting Queen's coin. In the course of the trial it transpired that a band of coiners live and trade in Central India. A French etatician m^kes out that ' ' there is room for 1 1 5, 000, 000 people more in Europe, 1,336,000,000 more in Africa, 1,402,000,000 more in Asia, 515,000,000 more in Oceania, and 2,000,000,000 more in North and South America." Out of 28 murders committed in London lastyear, in only six instances were the perpetrators brought to justice. The modern names of sizes of books are derived from the folding of paper. When the sheet is not folded it is called a folio, and this sheet was very fashionable throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The folio sheet doubled becomes a quarto; another double constitutes the octavo of eight leaves or sixteen pages. It is a curious fact that' there are 200,000 people in the United States who have artificial legs or hands. This number does not include the veterans of the Union or the Confederate army. In New York city and vicinity there are about 5000 men and women who have supplied the place of lost limbs with the manufactured article. The study of Greek is now engaging the Empress of Austria, and it is reported that she is making exoellent progress. At Reval a well-known aeronaut, named Leroux, descended from a balloon by a parachute, which fell into the sea. Leroux was drowned. The English population of Montreal — not half of the total of about 175,000 — support with good attendance quite a complete volunteer military Bervice. It contains one cavalry regiment, one corps of engineers, one battery of field artillery, one of garrison artillery, two rifle regiments, one of Highlanders and one of fusiliers. The French Canadians furnish only a rifle regiment. They have a novel way of dealing with tramps in Miosouri. They put them up at auction — that is to say, sell them as labourers for a certain period, which would otherwise be spent in gaol. At a recent sale in Moberley four were offered, and three purchased— two for two dollars, and the third for 75 cents. They will have to serve their purchasers four months. The Russian nobles are rushing to bankruptcy in great numbers. The credit bank for lending money to them on mortgage of their land, established by the Government two or three years ago, has now no less than 2000 estates which will have to be sold by public auction at the end of this year for non-payment of interest on loans. The Queen having decided to establish a small herd of Kerry cattle in connection with the royal dairy at Frogmore (says Truth), several beautiful animals of this picturesque and useful breed have just been sent to Windsor by Mr. .Robertson, of Malahide, who has also supplied a number of Kerry cows to the Prince of Wales for the dairy at Sandringham. General Booth has discovered another world to conquer. He is about to inaugurate a campaign in I the Argentine. The Grand Duchess of Baden, whose table is said to be the befit in all Germany, requires a good cup of coffee as the highest of all gastronomic luxuries, and a good cup of coffee, according to a German recipe, should be "hot as Hades, black as night, strong as death, and sweet as love." A little girl, four years old, has died, near Sittingbourne, through fright. A few days ago, she waß standing on the railway platform with her parents, who were on their way to Kent for the hop-picking season, when an express train dashed through the station. The little one was terror-stricken, and on the journey down screamed every time an engine came within sight or hearing. The doctor ascribed death to the shock. There aro 18,290 persons under restraint who have, according to the Alliance News, lost their reason through drink. It is to be presumed that London Justice has made its computation with accuracy when it says that all the people now living in the world, or about 1 400,000,000, could find standing room within the limits of a field ten miles square, and, by aid of .a telephone, could be addressed by a single speaker. Queen Victoria's visit to Wales appears to have been of a pleasant character. She was able to speak a little Welsh, and that pleased the people, who are proud of the fact that they have been able to preserve their language intact through so many centuries. The German Kaiser is said to be much less eccentric as an Emperor than he was as a prince. He has surprised even his warmest friends by the good sense he displayed 6ince he came to the throne. The weight of responsibility has been to him an effective ballast. The Scotch Good Templars number 60,000. In Massachusetts liquor cannot be sold on holidays, including Labour Day. The Inquirer, a high-class weekly which circulates chiefly among Unitarians, Free Christians, and other liberal religious denomications, and which has since, 1882, been published at twopence, has been recently reduced to one penny. From 1842, when it was founded, to j 1882, it appeared at fivepence weekly. There is to be no reduction in the size of the paper. The popular OrUbsus of Spain has juet died in the person of the Marquis de Urquijo. His executors have paid into the Spanish Treasury succession duties amounting to £96,000 on his fortune, which exceeded five millions sterling. This was gained in fifty years. The owner began life as a Basque village lad and died a Senator, grandee and ex-Mayor of Madrid.

He left £180,000 in bequests to charities in his native province, many of which he founded himself, and £20,000 for masses for himself. On September 28th, while an old man named Ralph Chambers waa witnessing a football match fit Middlesbrough, betweoi the towu club aud a team from Ecclosfield, ho suddenly foil to the ground, and expired within a few minutes. Tho deceased, who was 76 years of age, was a great football enthusiast. Heart disease was supposed to have caused death. 7000 persons witnessed the formal opening, by Sir J. King, Lord Provost, of the new municipal buildings at Glasgow. The foundationstone was laid six years ago in George Square, and the site has sines been visited by the Queen, the Shah of Persia, and Princess Beatrice. Mr. William Lang, of London, ■was the architect seleoted from 125 competitors. The building has cost £540,000. A remarkable addition has recently been made to the more or less valuable assortment of objects in tho Museum of The Hague. A prominent resident of Leydon has presented to that institution the tongue of John de Witt and one of the toea of Cornelius de Witt, two Dutch statesmen who were torn to pieces by a mob no longer ago than 1672. Sunday labour in Franoe is by no means so general as a few years ago. Visitors to Paris cannot fail to notice how many more shops are shut on Sunday after the early morning, and now the first step has been taken toward the Sunday rest on the railway. A London journal is very despondent on the proßp6ots of professional men in England. The rate of emolument for tho professional classes, it says, is steadily going down. It is nearly as difficult now for a member of the professional classes to make £500 a year as it was for his father to make £1000. It is said that trains of two electric cars rush through the streets of Pittsburgh at the rate of twelve miles an hour. People using the streots have to look out for their own safety. Under Count Tolstoi's scheme Jewish advocates will not be allowed to plead in the tribunals of the Baltic Provinces of Russia. The method in which the most delicate perfumes are obtained from flowers is not of tho most rosthetic nature. The flower petals are spread over the glasses which have previously teen covered with a quarter-inoh layer of fat. The glasses are then shut tightly into wooden frames, and before long tho fat absorbs all the perfume. The next process is to cut up the fragrant fat into small pieces and put them in alcohol. The perfume at once deserts its oily protector and unites with the alcohol. It is then fit for the market. The Duke of Westminster has contributed the sum of £600 towards a vicarage for the church of the Holy Ascension, Upton, near his seat in Cheshire. A new idea in Germany is tho wholesale manufacture of mortar of the best quality, to be sold to small builders and private individual. Some 2,000,000 brl. were thus sold last year in Berlin. Q?his obviates the nocessity of making the mortar on the ground under unfavourable circumstances and at unnecessary expense. By this system — carried out with respect to other materials — a builder needs only an office, and can dispense with the cost of maintaining hrge yards at heavy rental for the storage of materials. In 1816 it took just one bushel of corn to buy one pound of nails, now one bushel of corn will buy ten pounds of nails. Then it required sixty-four bushels of barley to buy one yard of broadcloth, now the same amount of barley will pay for twenty yards of broadcloth. It then required the price of one bushel of wheat to pay for one yard of calico, now one bushel of wheat will buy twenty yards of calico. Of the 4200 kinds of flowers which grow in Europe, only 420 (or 10 per cent.) are odoriferous. The commonest flowera are the white ones. In a village in Somerset the belief is prevalent that if the church clock strikes whilst a hymn is being sung, some parißhoners will die within tho week. A report has reached Zanzibar that Dr. Peters has shot four natives in the Vitu country, and that the people aro, consequently, up in arms against him. It is proposed that the surplus, amounting to upwards of £40,000, resulting from the recent exhibition at Glasgow, should be applied to the erection of a museum of art in that Henry Percy Mole is only twenty years old. But the Newcastle magistrates have committed him for trial on a charge of causing tho death of his wife by ill-treating her In a letter received at Rome, by Makonnen, chief of the Shoan mission to Italy, King Menelek confirms the intelligence that the whole of Abyssinia has now submitted to his rule with the exception of a small portion of the Tigre district. Every scrap of iron, wood, and paint work within reach of the hand upon the Eiffel Tower is already completely covered with pencil names and dates. The interiors of the lifts are similarly inscribed, and though the tower has been opened complete but for a few weeke, already the glass wind protectors of the elevators and on the various floors have thousands of names cut upon the face. The 110-ton gun at Shoeburyness is stated to have cost £15,000, and the carriage, with its various mechanical devices for handling if, £11,000, a total of £26,000. Each time it is fired it is calculated that, including wear and tear, the explosion costs £600, and experienced gunners assert that a hundred rounds is the limit of its capacity. Its range is fourteen miles. From the Jewish Chronicle : — A calamity, which has long been impending, has befallen the Jews in the canton of Berne. A measure has been passed by the Council of the canton making it penal to kill animals by cutting their throats. The effect of this measure is that throughout the whole canton tho slaughter of animals according fc> Jewish rites if forbidden.