GOSSIP FOR THE LADIES.

The Empress of China has sent five ladiss to the Court of Berlin in order to learn German manners and etiquette. Mile. Tartonovski, of Odessa, a Jewess, is tbe first Ru SRian woman to adopt a trade hitherto confined to men. The Trades Council in Odessa have awarded her the diploma of Master Watchmaker. She learned the business at Kiel. In Portugal a married woman may not publish her literary work without her husband's consent, which, should it be unjustly withheld, she may supply the place of by a Judge's authorisation.

Miss E. Winifred Dickson, M.8., B.Ch., R.U.F., Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, Gold Medallist, and Travelling Scholar, Royal University, has been appointed by the Board of the Richmond, Whitworth, and Hardwick Hospitals, Dublin, as gynaecologist. Miss Layard recently exhibited at the British Association, Oxford, a series of casts in wax, models of flowers intended to ba used for purposes of study at times of the year when it is impossible to procure natural specimens. Tbe botanists present pduted out how useful such a series would be, and expressed a hope that Miss Layard would persevere In her endeavour to preserve flowers in their

naturalcondiion. We are in full silly season now, just touching the decline in fact, writes a London correspondent, and it is worth notice that the sources of silliness have been less productive than usual. The Daily Chronicle has tapoed the roost of these, and " Rational Dress for the New Woman" has proved even more irresistible than the Schoolßoard circular and the ethics of "The Heavenly Twins." The proposed abolition of the side-saddle and the actual adoption of the masculine attitude by lady cyclists have produced a controversy of a most animated kind ; in

some cases couched in terms amounting to "langwidge," In others conducted o*_ the lofty tight-rope principle, but very amusing to outsiders of the open-mind persuasion. The costume now de rigeur for lady cyclists on the "aye" side is technically described as follows -.—Shore coat, tight" knickerbockers, men's boots and socks, with an interval of bare leg, which is really a stocking of the new kind, with pink silk let in between the top and the knickerbocker to look like flesh. ? In August last the devotion of Wellesley College girls to athletics was' shortly to take tangible form lo their newly completed boathouse. Above the space devoted to the boats is a large dance hall, a broad verihidah crosses the front, and the building 3s crowped by. a whlte-brick rotunda of darkish design. The crews receive scientific training under Miss Hill, the head of the .athletic depart* ment, and thegirls have discarded skirts whsn boating, snd wear gymnasium blouses and Turkish trousers. They have shells with sliding seats, and there are three regularly organised class crews, although there Is no racing. Float day, when they all appear on the lake, is ona of the great festivities of the college. Bach class owns its boat, and the new boathouse, for which the students themselves raised the money, was to cost ?3000. By autumn the college was to have an athletic field, with a running track. Lest the girls should injure themselves by undue attention to these sports, and to tennis, bicycling, &c„ Miis M. A. Wood, a competent physical examiner, is retained in i the gymnastic department. The Faculty of the University of Virginia recently decided to admit women to the Academic School of that institution. This is the first time in the history of the South that a State university has granted such a concession to women, the rules always forbidding women to enter such institutions. The fight for the admission of women to the higher colleges has been going on fa Virginia for the past two years, and at'?'the last session of the Legislature a Bill was Introduced with this object in view. Mrs A. G. Conrad, of Colorado, went West in search of health some years ago. Like most Western tourists, she used to send pressed flowers home to friends In the East. By and by the thought occurred to her thab she might make a business of flower pressing and souvenirbook making. She opened a booth, gathered and pressed hsr flowers in the summer, and made souvenir-books of them in winter. At the end of the second year she had a contract to supply 80,000 pressed unmounted wild flowers, at 50 cents a hundred, for season. By-and-by Mrs Conrad bought a ranch c where wild [ flowers grew in J**of uslon. There she lives now, extending /het" business, and gaining strength as : *weti| s The income from her flower business, has paid for the ranche, and supports -her comfortably. -She em ploys a number of women, generally semi, invalids and'tourists. San Francisco women recently requested the Mayor- to appoint a woman health inspector, offering to pay three months salary, as an experiment. The Prince of Wales, remarks a London scribe,!*, shortly to spend a "Saturday to Monday" with Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild at Waddesdon. It may astonish some who are not well acquainted with the Baron's "little place iv Bucks" to know that be gave £240,000 for the estate without a residence upon ft. One he built, however, on the summit of Lodge Hill, overlooking the village of Waddesdon, and about seven miles from Aylesbury. It cost the Baron to take the top off the bill, prepare the land for the building, and make a road to it, £55,009, and the first contract for the shell of the house was -387,000. To bring the water from the Chiltera Hilts cost another ten or twelve; so that, before he began even decorating, be had exceeded four hundred thousand pounds, and by the tine it wm ready for occupation its cost had exceeded two millions. Is seems a waste of Ink and paper to just the sort of place one would choose to spend a "Saturday to Monday" at.