MISCELLANEOUS.

Press, Volume XXVII, Issue 3644, 14 March 1877, Page 3 (Supplement)

MISCELLANEOUS.

Mr William Tinsley, the publisher, has entered the list of inventors. For the benefit of the eick and bedridden he has devised and patented an ingenious contrivance, whereby a patient may be gently raised in his bed into a sitting poeture, or placed at any degree of i jcline that he may desire.

The Nord states that by an ukase of the Bth December the Czar has instituted a brorze medal in commemoration of the brilliant service of the Russian troops at the taking of Kokhand. The medal bears the inscription, " For the taking of Kokhand, 1875 1876."

In well-informed circles in India, it is understood, ssya the Natal and Military Qazette of December 13th, that the Supreme Government is sketching out in the military department the arrangements whiGh would have to be made if it should ultimately be determined to eend an Indian corps d'arviee for service in Egypt. Should an Indian contingent be sent to Egypt, General Sir Edwin Johnson it is said will most likely be offered the command.

The moat magnificent tent at the Delhi Assemblage, as far as regards the interior, wa9 that of His Highness the Maharajah of Cashmere. He brought down the one he had expressly made for His Boyal Bighness the Prince of Wales. The inner fly and the shamiana in front were all of shawl work in silk on a pushmeena ground. It was an enormous tent, and the three poles • were of massive carved silver. The whole structure is said to have cost a lakh of rupees.

It is intended to supply slabe of gun* cottoa as part of the British cavalry equipment, to be carried in a eirt of waist-belt, and used, if necessary, for destruction of railways, stopkadee, &c, for which purpose gun-cotton has proved the most powerful of all explosive agencies, while it is also the Eafest and most convenient to carry.

The most successful recruiting officer of his generation is euppoeed to have been Sergeant Thomaa Warnes, who died at Woolwich in December. He was formerly in the Koyal Artiljery, and latterly attached to the Woolwich Pensioners , Staff, and he has, while, in the recruiting gervice, eniieted 4387 men for the army, of which 3290 have been for the Boyal Artillery, and the remainder for other regiments.

The first volume of Mr Herbert Spencer'e " Principles of Sociology" has been completed. Tfc forms the sixth volume of the " Synthetic Philosophy." The Athenceum regrets to hear that Mr Spencer's health is not what his friends would wish it to be, and that it may be some mouths before he will be able to be at work again.

According to a statement in the Politische Correspondent of Vienna, the Turkish flettie at piesent divided into two squadrons, of which one, composed of five armour-plated frigates, two, other frigates, and two despatch boats, is lying at Latnpeak, on the Mediterranean side of the Dardanelles. The other squadron, consisting cf thirteen ironclads, three frigates, and three despatch boats, has anchored in the harbor of Buyak Linian, at entrance of the Bosphorus. The command of the fleet hag been entrusted to Grand Admiral Achmed Kaisserli Pasha, who has under him Hobart Pasha and Arifi Pasha.

A correspondent of the Manning River Times, New South Wales, relates that a rather extraordinary incident occurred recently at the Pampoola Saw Mills. A bird got entangled ia the webs of spiders, and was utterJy unable to extricate itself, although making desperate efforts to do so. After come time it began to manifest unmistakable signs of exhaustion, and to sink under its fatiguing exertions to free itself from the web. Several ppiders made their appearance, and gazad on theirhelpleesprey, but a man standing by liberated the bird.

"At the preeent moment," writes the Daily Nefps of .December 16;;h, " the office of works is engaged id clearing out and} restoring the chapel within the precincts of the Tower of London known aa Sfc Peter's ad vincula. It wae here that the state prisoners who died in the Tower, or were beheaded on the adjoining hill, were generally interred, according to the custom, in plain deal coffins, often with quicklime to destroy them more rapidly, and always without plates by which their bodies might be subsequently identified, Luckily at this time the secretary to the office of works is a gentleman who, by his writings aa well as by ench portions of his collections ac haye passed into the possession of the Sonftj Kensington Museum, chows himself to be both a etudent and an artiat, and it is owing to hie reverent care that in I clearing out the vaults of the Tower Chapel I the dead have given up some of their secrets. The Tower records have been carefully searched, and the information has been applied to each coffin as it was brought to light. First almost among them was one lying far down the nave containing bones which, according to the opinion of the surgeon, were those of a woman of at least 65 or 70 years of age. The Tecords show that in come each spot was interred the body of Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, whom Henry Vni. caused to be beheaded in 1541. Near the altar,' in a common elm-tree chest made to put arrows in,' weTe the remains of another woman, yenng and delicately made, and whose ' lyttel necke' woold give the headsman up little trouble to geyej. These are almost certainly those «if Anne Boleyn. Not far off the diggers came upon the remains of what must have been a man of more than ordinary stature ; and on comparing contemporary chronicles with the official Tecoids, theee were identified as the remains of Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. Of hie daughter, the unhappy Lady Jane Grey, no trace has as yet been discovered, and it ie feared that in her case, as probab,y in that of many others, the later comers have disturbed the testing places of the original ocenpfcnts, qnd as in no case was there even the pretence of Jjbonor or respect #hown to the remains of state criminals, it ia not improbable that Lady Jane Qiey and her coffin may ha.ye Jong eincebeen ground to powder. Amongst the other persona buried in the chapel may be mentioned Sir John Eliot, the Duke of Montnoutb, Ribets Oevereux, Karl of Besas, and the Lords Balmeiino, Kilmarnock, and impliest.d in the Scottish heoellion Of 1T46. n

A startling discovery was recently made at Tithebarn street railway station, Liverpool. In removing a box from the luggage vaa of a train from Preston one of the porters heard a cry, and on the box being opened it was found to contain a fr-male child about a month old. The extraordira-y consignment was addressed to " Mrs Williams, Liverpool; to be called for." The child was taken to the workhouse, aad is in a healthy condition.

"Lordonis rarely regarded as a fortified city, but still," says the Daily News of Docember 16th, •♦ when the new forts on the Thames, now on the eye of completion, are fully armed and provided with stores, our cipital may fairly be considered to have some claims to such a name. The heaviest guns that Woolwich could supply have baen transported to these recently erected defences ; and Tilbury Port, which has for years past been the laughing-stock of military engicesrs, has now mounted formidable 25 ton guns. Opposite, on the Kentish shore, is New Tavern Port, which is to aid Tilbury in beating off the enemy if ever he gets so far, and the fire of these two works is go contrived that it can sweep the whole of the Graves end Beach. But the hostile vessels would have to pass through a great deal before they reached these, the last points of defence, on the way to London. Our gunnery establishment at Shoeburynesa, at the very mouth of the Thames, though well supplied with cannon of very heavy calibre, might perhaps be dexterously avoided by an enemy, but he would have to deal with the batteries at Garrison Fort, at Sheernees, and the Isle of Grain. These successfully passed, he would next find the middle forts opposed to him—those at Shornmeade and Coal-house Point, both of which are , armed with 600 pounder guns. These forts not only deliver a eweeping cross-fire, but by reason of their position, facing a long reach in the river, can bring their guns to bear upon an approaching vessel miles before the latter comes abreast of the battery. Supplemented by an efficient system of torpedoes, the Thames, therefore, would be most thoroughly defended, and there need be no fear of any hostile frigate or ironclad forcing its way up as far ac the Government stores and factories at Woolwich and Purfleet, much less of entering our docks, or, as some alar mis is think, of coming to anchor under the walla of the Tower. Very probably a heavily-armed turret vessel, carrying 100-ton guns, would be able to make short work of the best of our defences as they exist; but let thechannel be well planted with torpedoes and submarine obstructions, and the bravest sailor would never dare to trust himself a dozen miles up our river."