MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS

Bruce Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 2180, 4 July 1890, Page 4

MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS

In a chat at a meeting of thn Piako County Council on old road works, the difference between the old constabulary roads and those since made by contract was talked of. In respect of the former it was said that the men must have wanted to prolong their job, for they put culverts not a chain apart. The contractors had a different style, illustrated by a case in which a set of pipes way ordered to be put across a road to carry off the water. Somehow they did not do whab was required, and years after it was decided to remove them. But ■when tho road was broken up, lo ! there weie only two pipes — one on either side of the road.

The Grand Canon of the Colorado River has become the nucleus of a gold craze. It has recently been announced that the magnificent valley is full of the precious metal, and is also rich in other valuable minerals. There is consequently a rush thither, and the Cmon •will soon be the scene of all the horrors which are developed by a gold fever. As illustrative of the great falling-off in the value of ships, it is said that a Glasgow shipowner who was in Tanuary offered £50,000 for a vessel which was being built on "spec. ''in one of the Clyde yards was recently offered the same vessel for £37,000.

Ten thousand French soldiers and more than that number of civilians were last year engaged in Algiers and Oran in resisting an invasion of a formidable kind. The enemy who was requisitioning the food supplies and laying waste the country was simply the crickets, which came down in countless hordes. The egga alone that ■were destroyed represented four hundred thousand millions of crickets. Tlio result has been that (o a great exteut the crops have been saved ; but the victory is not yet complete, and the struggle will have to be renewed.

The Moderator of the G-eneral Assembly couldn't accept the invitation to the opening of Edinburgh Exhibition, and Sir Thomas Clark couldn't §cc any Presbyterian minister in the hall. Hence the opening prayer by the Episcopalian clergyman, which has set Edinburgh by the ears.

A medical man in London has just recorded the cases of three children, a,ged ten, elveen, and twelve years respectively, each of whom died of meningitis, of which tho exciting cause was clearly overwork at school. The children were actively preparing for the School Board examination, and during their illness rambled about school tasks, teachers, .and of other matters. The deaths all took place ■withiu a month.

The wife of a man who was convicted of "cursing and swearing" went to the Police Court to pay his fine. As is customary, she waited until the man came down, when the turnkey asked her if that was the man she wanted. "Yes," she responded ; then, turning to the man, she exclaimed, "What the— — did " when her husband, with impressive gesture, interrupted her, saying" wheesbt, woman, wheesht; that's what I was run in for yesterday." The average Kenluckian is a man of resources, and it is astonishing Low much ingenuity he will expend in his efforts to lighten labor. The very. latest instance of his cuteness which we are asked to give credence to is this Early last spring a curkey hatched a large brood of young. The farmer who owned the hen ami brood placed a bell on the mother, and the young, after they had ceased instinctively to follow their feathered parent, by force of habit continued to follow the bell. The farmer, observing this, took the bell from the hen, and, when he hoed his tobacco tied it about his own neck. The young turkeys then followed him up one row and down another, eating the worms from the plants. They did the work of five men and saved the crop. The • Tiuie3" Calcutta correspondent telegraphs : — A strange incident occurred in Bombay not long aso. A monster meeting of Hindoo barbers was held for the purpose of considering the question of the impropriety of shaving the heads of Hindoo widows and thereby disfiguring them for life. About 400 burbers having assembled, one of them, named Rubajee More, read a pamphlet in Mahratti, in which ho stated that the b nbeivi of old were happy acd contented, but latterly, as though a- curss hid decended on their head 3, traJe had fallen off and they had become poor. The curse could only be accounted for by the fact that their were committing a «reat sin in shaving the heads of poor, iuuocent widows, thus depriviu^ .them of their best ornament. It was against the Hindoo scriptures to deprive a widow of her hair, and doubtless it was the curses of the widows that had lowered their calling. Tfis meeting thereupon unanimously , resolved that no barber should shave a widow's head, and that if he did, he should be excommunicated.