MISCELLANEOUS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXI, Issue 1230, 3 May 1864, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

Nkwspapers.—A inan eats up a pound of sugar, and the pleasure he enjoyed is ended; but the information he gets from a newspaper is treasured up in the mind to be enjoyed anew, aud to be used whenever inclination or amusement calls for it. A newspaper is not the wisdom of one man, or two men; it is the wisdom of the age, and of past ages too. A family without a newspaper is always half an age behind the times in general information. Besides, they never think much, or find much to talk about. And then there are little ones growing up in ignorance, without any taste for reading. Besides, all these evils, there is the wife, who, when her work is done, has to sit down with her hands in her lap, and nothing to amuse her or divert her mind from the toils and cares of her domestic circle. Who, then, would be without a newspaper ?—Ottawa Citizen.

Women require more sleep than men, and farmers less than those engaged in any other occupation. Editors, reporters, printers, and telegraph operators, need no sleep at all. Lawyers can sleep as much as they choose, and keep out of mischief.

Interesting Discovert at Pompeii.—A Tecent visitor writes as follows :—There are now boulevards around Pompeii, and a road is being made for the carts which convey the rubbish in the direction of the amphitheatre. From the top of the boulevards the visitor lias a view of the whole city, and can form a tolerably correct idea of the interior of the houses uncovered. Excavations are now going on on two eminences near the temple of Isis, and the house culled Abondonza. Our inspection was chiefly confined to the former site, where in a house situated in a narrow street recently opened, we saw several bodies, or rather forms of bodies, which now attract, universal attention. The unfortunate inhabitants of this house fell, not on the bare ground, but on heaps of pumice stones, and were covered to a great depth by torrents of ashes and scoria, under which they have lain for nearly 2000 years. One day, inside a house, amid fallen roofs and ashes, the outline of a human body was perceived, and M. Fiorelli, the chief of the works for excavation, soon ascertained, that there was a hollow under tne surface. He accordingly made a small hole through its covering, and filled it up with liquid plaster of Paris, as if it were a mould. The result was that he obtained a complete plaster statue of a Roman lady of the first century of the Christian era. Close by were found the remains of a man, another woman, and a girl with ninety-one pieces of silver money; four earrings and a finger ring, all gold; two iron keys, and

evident remains of a linen bag or purse. The whole of these bodies have been carefully moulded in plaster. The first body discovered was a woman lying on her right side, with her limbs contracted, as if she had died in convulsions. The form of the head-dress and the hair are quite distinct. On the bones of the little finger were two silver rings, and with this body were the remains of the purse above mentioned with the money and keys. The girl was found in an adjoining room, and the plaster mould taken of the cavity clearly shows the tissue of her dress. By her side lay an elderly woman, who had an iron ring on her little finger. The last person I shall describe was a tall, wellmade man, lying at full length. The plaster distinctly shows his form, the fold of his garment, his torn sandals, his beard and hair. 1 contemplated these human forms with an interest which defies expression. It is evident that all these unfortunates had made great efforts to escape destruction. The man appears to have perished in the vain attempt to rescue the terrified women, who thought they could be nowhere so safe as in their own house, and hoped that the fiery tempest would soon cease. From the money and keys found with the body of the first woman, she was probably the mistress of the house and the mother of the girl. The slender bones of her arms and legs, and the richness of her headdress, seemed to indicate a woman of noble race. From the manner in which her hands were clenched, she evidently died in great pain. The girl does not appear to have suffered much. From the appearance of the plaster mould it would seem that she fell from terror, as she was running with her skirts pulled over her head. The other woman, from the largeness of her ear, which is well shown by the plaster, and the iron ring on her finger, evidently belonged to a lower class, and was probably a servant of the family. The man appears to have been struck by lightning, for his straightened limbs show no signs of a death-struggle. It is impossible to imagine a more affecting scene than the one suggested by these silent figures; nor have I heard of a drama so heartrending as the story of this family of the last duys of Pompeii.

Diseased Pork.—Did Moses know more about pigs than we do ? Was it a knowledge of the parasitic diseases common to man and swine which led the father of the Jews to condemn pork as human food ? Both questions can be answered in the negative; and the apparently slender grounds on which pigs-were first regarded as unclean are stated in the following verse: "And the swine, because it divideth the hoof, yet cheweth not the cud, it is unclean unto you : ye shall not eat of their flesh, nor touch their dead carcase." The wisdom of the Mosaic law can only be justly estimated with a knowledge of the accidents arising in warm countries from eating pork throughout long and hot periods of the year ; and there is no doubt that the direct evil results as manifested by human sickness led to the exclusion of pork from the Israelitish viands. The masses of measly pork which may be seen hanging from the butchers' stalls in Southern Europe, prove that the long-legged swine which hunt the forests for acorns, and rove about to pick up all kinds of offal, are often unfit for human food; and that they were so to no less extent in the land of Israel is probable It is interesting to observe that parasitic maladies in the pig specially abound in that section of the United Kingdom where swine live most among human beings. The Yorkshire and Berkshire pigs, in their native counties, inclosed' in the farmyards of their breeders, are free from worms which are likely to live in the body of man. The Irish pig is the one most commonly injured by entozoa, and the reason for this is evident when we know how much the cottager relies on rearing a porker which is permitted the free range of house and road, where every description of filth is devoured, charged with the ova of parasites expelled by man, or some of the lower animals. The observations of helminthologists prove that it is not unattended with danger for human beings to sleep together when one is affected with tapeworm or trichina. How much more dangerous, then, for animals to live with people who disregard all habits of cleanliness! Though we may ridicule the notion that filth breeds parasites, we must not forget that dirt protects the ova and secures their transmission from one nest to ; another The conditions under which we live in the British Isles are certainly much less favorable to the propagation of worms ; but we disregard, in our ignorauce, the most common precautions to protect ourselves from loathsome diseases, and not only permit dogs to eat any kind of offal in and around slaughter-houses, but sanction the existence of piggeries where all kinds of garbage, charged with worms or their eggs, are daily devoured by swine. The majority of germs calcuTaxeaTO sre~to" be iuuuu-iir-ai«M»-dance in the contents of the alimentary canal of human beings and domestic quadrupeds. If pigs are permitted to eat these, as in Ireland or in many British piggeries, we must expect hams, bacon, and pork sausages, to be charged with the embryonic forms of human entozoa. Whereas, in Iceland, then, the dog is the victim of human negligence, and en revanche the cause of human disease, in the British Isles the pig holds this unenviable position; the more however we learn of parasitic disease in man, the better we can understand how even the underdone roast beef of Old England may prove to us poison as well as food, and how the dog or the cat we pet may indirectly shorten our days. We have good reason to believe with Moses that the pig is an unclean beast; but without discarding him from the scanty list of animals to be eaten, it is evident that we can purify the race of swine, and thus prevent human as well as porcine maladies. ... In 1852 Herbert fed three dogs with the tricliinatous flesh of a badger, and found the parasites in the muscles of these dogs. Some of the first feeding experiments to trace the origin of trichina in man were performed in Edinburgh by the members of the Physiological Society, whose labors were of too short a duration. Specimens of the parasite were shown to the Society on the 19th March, 1863. by Dr. W. T. Gairdner, who, with his usual acuteness, declared that the whole appearance of the parasite was such as seemed strongly to bear out Owen's view, that the trichina was merely the first stage of an animal destined for further development. —Popular Science Review.

Escape of Maht, Queen of Scots, froh Holtrood. —The rendezvous appointed with the horses was near the broken tombs and demolished sepulchres in the ruined Abbey of Holyrood. A secret passage led underground from the palace to the vaults of the abbey ; and at midnight Mary Stuart, accompanied by one servant of her husband—who had left the lords under the pretence of going to bed—crawled through the charnel house, among the bones and skulls of the ancient kings, and came out of the earth where the horses were shivering in the March midnight air. The moon was clear and full. The Queen, with incredible animosity (animation) was mounted en croupe behind Sir Arthur Erskine, upon a beautiful English dapple gelding, the King on a courser of Naples ; and then away—away—past Restalrig, past Arthur's Seat, across the bridge and across the field at Musselburg, past Seton, past Prestonpans, fast as their horses could speed; six in all—their Majesties, Erskine, Traquair, and a chamberer of the Queen. In two hours the heavy gates of Dunbar had closed behind them, and Mary Stuart was safe. Whatever credit is due to iron fortitude and intellectual address, must be given without stint to this extraordinary woman. Her energy grew with exertion; the terrible agitation of the three preceding days, the wild escape, and a midnight gallop of more than 20 miles within three months of her confinement, would have shaken the strength of the least fragile of human frames; but Mary Stuart seemed not to know the meaning of the word exhaustion; she had scarcely alighted from her horse than couriers were flying east, west, north, and south, to call the Catholic nobles to her side; she wrote her own story to her Minister at Paris, bidding the Archbishop in a postscript anticipate the false rumours which would be spread against her honor, and tell the truth—her version of the truth—to the Queen-Mother and the Spanish ambassador. To Elizabeth she wrote with her own hand —fierce, dauntless, and haughty—as in her highest prosperity.—Froude's Queen Elizabeth.