. What a Man did fob a Dbink.—A few Saturday nights ago, a man was arrested for drunkenness and lodged in the lockup Mansfield, Victoria. The following omormng a small hole was noticed under the door, and on the cell being opened, it was discovered that the bird had flown. The amount of labor he must have accomplished in effecting his escape must astonish any one who visits the scene. The floor is composed of solid sawn blocks of wood, weighing from 30ft>s. to 501b3., closely fitted together, and rammed hard into the clay. It was impossible that anyone could get more than the tips of his fingers between any of the blocks, and yet the prisoner must have lifted one of the heaviest in this manner in order to accomplish his purpose. Having got one block out, the rest was comparatively easy. With the bone ol a mutton chop only, he dislodged half a dozen other squares, and dug out a quantity of earth. The block tinder the eill was a very narrow one, nailed above, and secured on each side by two immovable bed logs. He contrived to remove this one also, and then with Bis mutton bone dug a small hole outside the door up to the surface. The opening was only 10 inches •wide, and in getting through this orifice he must have beat himself nearly double; but he did it, and got clear away. When recaptured he alleged us his motive for escaping that he wanted a drink. From the financial statement of the United Extended Band of Hope Company, Ballaarat, Victoria, submitted to the general meeting of shareholders held the other day, it appeared that the gross receipts of the company amounted to more than £1,000,000. The total value of gold obtained was £352,325 in three years and a-half. THE Maryborough Advertiser records an untoward circumstance which occurred at the funeral of a Mrs. O'Neil, on Friday, in the Majorca cemetery, Victoria. On the cortege, which was very large, arriving at the gates, these, "to the surprise of every one, were found to be closed, but after some delay the keys •were procured and admission gained. On proceeding to the spot whore it was supposed the grave was situated it was discovered, to the dismay of the assemblage, that the grave for the reception of the corpse had not been d"g, and that by a great inadvertency the usual certificate of burial had not been obtained. Another distressing delay occurred, and, after the necessary permission had been granted, the work of digging the grave was commenced, the coffin having been deposited on the ground some few yards off. In this painful state of affairs the Rev. Father Fenuelly J performed the funeral rites —amidst the grating sound of pick and shovel—and left the ground, leaving the corpse to be consigned to its last restingplace as soon as the grave should be completed. More than two hours, however, elapsed before this ! could b9 done, and many of the guests departed for their homes with hearts saddened by the mournful scene they had witnessed." The following shocking tale comes to vs from New South Wales :—" A horrible case of neglect and inhumanity, says the Border Post, has recently occurred on the Berrima road, near Nattai, in the case of a poor child named Underwood, who had be?n scalded. No medical aid was called. The poor child was allowed to die without a person near it, and in its dying agony it actually bit off the first joint of the third fingor, which was found in the bed." A POWEHFTTL DREDGING- MACHINE.—The new dredging machine about to be employed in Sydney harbor will be capable of raising from 1500 to 2000 tons of silt daily. This immense quantity of stuff, which it is proposed to raise, will be carried a few miles beyond the Heads, and dropped into deep water. Mh. Dobson, manager of the Parramatta (New South Wales) branch of the Commercial Bank, committed suicide by swallowing arsenic during a fit of temporary insanity, brought on by the knowledge of being deficient in his cash. At the conclusion of the inquest held at Melbourne! into the cause of the burning of the ship City of Melbourne, the jury, after a few minutes deliberation, found that the vessel was destroyed by fire on the 26th Jan., and that there was no evidence before them to show how the fire originated. An Unpleasant Wife. —A poor woman, wife of a retired soldier, living at Nuns' Hill, near Valparaiso, has recently brought forth six children at one birth, four boys and two girls, and, at last accounts, was wonderfully well under the circumstances, suckling her children herself, and exhibiting a vigorous vitality. Unfortunately, of this liberal addition to a pre-existent family of elaven, three have died, the two girls and one of the boys. The London Bakers. —The London operative bakers are becoming very much distressed. That terrible machinery which is always pouncing upon Borne class or other of working men has laid its clutches on the baker, and his occupation is going, and, I hope, will soon be gone. A sensation picture of unking as it was and as it is, is freely exhibited, showing on one 6ide a group of leprous looking individuals, sweating over the dough, and on the other, a dapper youth turning the handle of a new machine. An indignaut baker was taken up and fined for smashing one of these offensive representations. Dr. Letheby has still further frightened the bread consumers by a terrible account of German yeast, some of which he has been analysing, and found it positively putrid and made up to the extent of one third to a half of pipe clay! I think we should not trust the staff of life out of our own hands. Foreigners marvel at the inferior quality of the bread cold in London, and declare that they cannot get a good loaf except at some obscure Dutchman's bakery. Machines are all very well, but bread is as easily made as pudding, and the home-made is so comparatively, or rather incomparably delicious, that it is not surprising so much is purchased. Brewer's yeast makes the sweetest bread and is infinitely superior to the pipe-clay from G-ermany.— London paper. Smoking and Heabt Disease—M. Fould's last Cigab.—The Salut Public tries to make out that the last cigar smoked by M. Fould, the French Minister was the cause of his death —" Nicotine, the redoubtable poisonous principle of tobacco, acts as a heart poison. In experimenting on animals our eminent physiologist Claude Barnard observed that it paralysed the central organ of the circulation, thence sudden death. A dose sufficient to kill nevertheless produces symptoms analogous to those of angina pectoris. One of the most distinguished physicians of our time, M. Beau, who died two years since, read a memoir at the Academy of Sciences in 1862, in which he showed by a very considerable number of observations made during his practice the influence of tobacco smoking, and especially in the form of cigars, in producing angina pectorii. He remarked that the cigar chiefly has this dreadful result upon impressionable persons, who led sedentary lives, and •whoso minds are constantly on the stretch. Two years later another physician, Dr. E. Decaisne, adduced a series of upwards of a hundred cases respecting the pernicious action on the functions of the heart caused by smoking tobacco. This is now an accepted point in medical Bcience, and there is scarcely any practitioner who does not prohibit amoking, or at least who fails to recommend the greatest moderation in it to such of his patients as are liable to even the slightest perturbation of the functions of the heart. Now M. Fould, who was a smoker and subject to palpitation of the heart, evidently had a slight attack of angina pectoris in the morning, to which he paid little attention, and then in the evening a violent and mortal attack. In the interval a cigar was smoked ; "who can lay that thia cigar was not tbe last straw which broke, Ac."