ITEMS PROM DIFFERENT PARTS

Colonist, Volume XVII, Issue 1838, 19 November 1874, Page 4

ITEMS PROM DIFFERENT PARTS

OF THE WORLD.

Sic John Bennefc is reported to have stated at Hastings, while delivering a lecture on Switzerland and the trades in which the Swiss were chiefly employed^that they manufactured .. for England alone watches and clocks to the value of a million sterling annually. He said that 20,000 females were employed in delicate parts of the work, and that he could'not get this done in England at all. ; f Misa Kellogg has just declined an offer of §20,000 and expenses for ten nights of English opera in California. Ladies in Buckinghamshire (remarks the Graphic) have been following the example recently set by their Australian sißters, and have been playing cricket matches. Eleven ladies of the parish of Nash have beaten a similar team from Great Harwood by 115 against 86 runs, and an innings to spare. Bradford, the American painter, has just finished a splendid picture of a scene on the coast of Labrador, for the Baroness Burdett Coutts, for which, he asked her 800 guineas and she sent him a cheque for 1000. There is some hope {Nature says) that an Arctic expedition of discovery may be despatched in the spring of 1875. The Prime Minister has undertaken to consider the subject carefully in all its bearings. Official reports state that 250,0001bs of opium are annually imported into the United States —ten times as largo a quantity as the imports of ten- years ago. Barely a third of the amount is used for medical purposes; the rest is consumed by opiumsmokers.

It is reported that Mdme. Chistine Nilsson, after a tour in America, and a farewell season at her Majesty's Opera, wiD retire into private life.

Two ladies were practising recently on the harmonium, in the military'church at Kowher, near Gosport, when a rifle bullet, came through the window, and lodged in the instrument at which they were playing. It has not been discovered by whom the rifle was fired.

According to a Neapolitan journal, Marie Taglioni, the famous danseuse, is in great distress in London. ;

■ Penryn, in Cornwall, was visited on the morning of the 29th August by a thunderstorm of unusual violence. The lightning ,entered the Post-office, and after destroying the telegraph instruments nearly demolished the building. The thunder is said to have been so terrific that people left their beds, fancying that there had been an earthquake. The Monitor Bepullicano of Mexico gives Borne curious particulars of Victor Hugo's novel " ]Ninety-three," of which a translation is being printed in that capital. Simultaneously with the Paris edition it was published in English in London, Boston, Philadelphia, and Calcutta; in Russian at 86 Petersburg, in Portugese at Lisbon, in Italian at Florence, in Spanish at Madrid, in Dutch at Amsterdam, and in Hungarian at Pesth. Before a single copy had been sold the booksellers of Paris had realised 80,000f. for the right of translation.

"To obtain light instantly without the use of matches and without thedonger of setting things on fire," take," says Public Opinion, " an oblong phial of the whitest and clearest glass; put into if a piece of phosphorus about the size of a pea, upon which pour some olive oil, heated to the boiling point, filling [the phial about one-third full, and thftn seal the phial hermetically. To tise it, remove the cork, and allow the air to enter the phial, and then recork it. The whole empty space in the bottle will then become luminous, and the light obtained will be equal to that of a lamp. As soon as the light grows weak its power can be increased by opening the phial and allowing a fresh supply of air to enter. In winter it is sometimes necessary to heat the phial between the hands to increase the fluidity of the oil. Thus prepared, the phial may be used for bi'x months. This contrivance is now used by the watchmen of Paris in all magazines where explosive or inflammable materials are stored."

There are several manufactories for the production of iron machinery in Greece, two of the most notable of which are located at Syra and the Piareus, working upon a capital of £100,000, and manufacturing iron machinery of almost every description.

The " Escape Box."—lt is stated in the reports of the different prisons of Paris that five or six thieves die annually in gaol from the effects of swallowing this box. It is of polished steel, about three inches long, and contains turnecrews, hammers, silk thread, and every implement necessary for escape. The box is easily swallowed," but sometimes refuses to glide along the intestinal canal as expected, and often causes death. When, however, it does re-appear, the thief is in possession _of implements with which he can saw toe thickest bars.— Lancet.