English News.

Clutha Leader, Volume V, Issue 218, 13 September 1878, Page 3

English News.

Mrs Elizabeth Tilton has been excommunicated by Plymouth Church, of which Henry Ward Beecher is minister. Five boys brought before the Cardiff magistrates on Saturday, said they had not seen a bed for a month, and had no friends. Scarlet fever is reported as very prevalent in Liverpool, and an epidemic of the disease is feared during the present hot weather. Mr Stanley has gone to America for the benefit of his health. The Royal family of Siara is rather an extensive one. The present King has twenty-one brothers and twentyfive sisters. Another batch of 600 Mormons left Liverpool for the promised land, on the 30th June. During the last year there were in attendance in the Glasgow schools 28, 344 scholars. At the Hampshire assizes a widow named Lacy obtained of a dockyard ' pensioner at Portsmouth LlO damages for breach of promise of marriage. j The plaintiff was 70 and defendant 72 years old. The Committee of Inquiry into the Egyptian revenues has prepared a plan by which it is expected to extinguish all liabilities by 1888. A man has committed suicide at Stettin through having been wrongfully accused of being a sympathiser with the Socialist, Hodel. Her Majesty has expressed a wish to have a representative brigade of the native army, now at Malta, brought to England for inspection before their final return to India. Stores of all kinds, in immense ■qnantities, are being sent to Malta, Natal, Singapore, Hong Kong, and other foreign stations, from a shipyard at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich. At the Hammersmith Police Court, London, a father who had chastised his son with undue severity, was sentenced to three months' imprisonment, with hard labour. The annual bicycle race from Bath to London, has this year been won by Appleyarr^ in 7 hours 18 mm, 55 sec, the quickest time od record. Some leading farmers and gentlemen of the County Cork intend to ex-port their butter in iced carriages, fresh to London after the completion of the " Duke's line" to Waterford. Mr James power, of Lismore, has an extraordinary prolific sheep, which has reared eleven lambs within the last three years. The mother is barely four years old, and this season she has had four lambs, all of them being strong-limbed " innocents " of one month old. Last year the sheep brought forth three and reared them also. — Cork Examiner. The question of flooding the Sahara is not apparently to pass into oblivion. There are two chief schemes for effecting this geographical revolution, one of which proposes the creation of an inland Algerian sea with an opening into the Mediterranean, while the other demands the creation of 60,000 square miles of the Sahara into a vast lake with an outlet into the Atlantic. The first scheme has the support of the French Government. While a farmer by the name of Sawyer was ploughing on his farm in Scott County, Illinois, a day or two ago, his plough struck against something hard and metallic, deep in the ground. He unearthed it, and was rewarded by a pot containing 10,000dols. in gold. The gold pieces were eagles and half-eagles ( black with age, and of the coinage of 1805. By whom buried is a mystery, but it is thought that some Government official in early days hid the treasure for safe keeping, and either died or never was able to find it again. Sawyer is moro than jubilant over his stroke of good fortune. It would save some lives if people only understood the dangers of typhoid. The Queen of Spain was murdered by love. Instead of being kept quiet at the critical moment, she was subjected to visits from her parents, given anxiety by the sufferings of her husband, and excited by the forebodings of those about her. No disease in the world needs more quietness than typhoid. No disease is more dangerous at the point where the patient, seems to have " turned the corner." The great danger is often at the very time when danger seems to have passed. Nurses should be warned that the illness may take a fatal turn by haste in treating the patient as well because the fever has left him. Friends should be told that successful convalescence depends upon its happy beginning. The Halifax Guardian says that a gentleman, well known in connection with a firm of telegraph engineers in town has contrived to have his sermons at home. He placed a microphone in the pulpit of a chapel in the town, and connected it, by means of a private telegraph line, with a house more than a mile away. Every part of the service was distinctly heard by the owner of i the house, with the exception of a few words rendered indistinct by the speaker becoming a little excited, and shaking the microphone> the presence of which he never dreamt of. During the week experiments have been made in the schoolroom of another chapel} and the singing 1 of the scholars was transmitted and retransmitted over a number ot - telegraph lines with remarkable clear" hesa. '

The farmers in the vicinity of* Quebec ! are in good spirits over the prospect of fine crops. An ex-local preacher at Newcastle; has been sentenced to five years' penal j servitude for forgery.. . A large portion of a tunnel near Barmen, in Westphalia, has fallen in and 27 persons have been buried. Scarlet fever of a very fatal type covitinues to prevail in the Airdrie district. A crater of an extinct volcano, 3000 feet long and 2500 feet wide, has been discovered in Oregon. Polygamous marriages continue to be frequent in Utah, 110 having been solemnised in one day lately. There is another threatening of famine, or at least great scarcity, in Madras, in consequence of drought. The Duke of Buckingham, governor of Madras, is taking means to meet the : possible scarcity. A woman has been taken into custody at Longridge, near Preston, on snpicion of having successively poisoned her three children and her husband in order to get the burial money to which their death entitled her. The largest strawberry farm in the world is said to be that of John R. Young, jun., two miles from Norfolk, Va. It comprises about 250 acres, and yields 2000 quarts to the acre. The Glasgow Free Ohurch Building i Society has given grants for seventeen new churches to the extent of LSOOO in excess of its income. The Socialistic press of Germany boasts no less than seventy-five publi- | cations, 135,000 subscribers ; an inj crease of eighteen in the number of the papers since last year. | Watercresaes are fashionable wear in bonnets in New York. They are made ', into wreaths with a large water forget-me-not. i At an inquest upon the body of a j patient named Webb, who died in the i County Asylum at Gloucester, three attendants at the lunatic asylum, named David Rodway, Henry Collins, and Lewis, were committed by the Coroner for trial at the Assizes for the manslaughter of the deceased. It was shown at the inquest that the deceased had four ribs broken on his right side and five on his left, and his breast bone fractured. A patient named Cook deposed to his being jumped upon, and praying to Heaven to take him out of his misery. The three warders denied ill-Using "deceased, and each gave evidence before the Coroner, after being duly cautioned. Locusts have been credited with doing any amount of damage to trees and herbs, but it appears that they can do more than this, and stop a railway train. The Madras Mail tells us that on the 13th June a very large number of locusts settled en a portion of the Madras line of railway, covering the metals for some distance. A passing train crushed some thousands of them, and the glutinous substances from their bodies rendered the rails so slippery that the wheels refused to take the metals, and the engine had to be brought to a standstill, and the wheels and metals cleaned- before the train could "proceed. The train which followed was also detained by the same cause. It is a scandal to say that the Jesuits are foes to the advancement of the applied sciences. That excessively Clericalist organ, the Sociedad of Lima, is in raptures at the gains which are likely to accrue to true believers from the discovery of the telephone. "It will enable us to hear with our ears," says that journal, " the living voice of Christ's I Vicar on earth as often as he speaks in the Vatican upon the great questions of faith and morality. When the Pope addresses, all the faithful, urbis et of bis, j we shall no longer be in need of an intervening interpreter." Similarly* when the electro-telescope is also perfected, all I the faithful, however widely they may be scattered throughout the world, will | perhaps be able to look into the countenance of the Supreme Pontiff, as well as hear his voice, when he is uttering his infallible decrees, curses, or benedictionSi The blindness of the late Ring of Hanover was occasioned, it is understood, by an accidental and by no means violent blow upon the eye* Scarcely a dav passes, we believe) without some schoolmaster (or schoolfellow, in natural imitation of his master) giving a lad a smart box upon the ear. Few persons would be bold enough to choose the eye as a part upon which it was expedient to inflict a violent blow by way of moral education, but there is apparently no end to the numbers who select an organ upon which violence is liable to be attended with much more dangerous results. For not only is deafness caused by " boxes,*' which rupture (as they continually do) the drum of the ear* but the incarnation of the internal cavity, which is so frequent a result, may be followed by disease of the bone, giving rise to abscess of the brain, and having a fatal Termination, Medical men alone can be fully aware how fruitful a source of suffering and danger is represented by a box upon the ear> There are, for example, under observation at the present moment two schoolboys who have been the victims of such an assault. Surely the schoolmasters ouglit to have learned, long ere this, the danger of a mode of personal chastisement ..that has apparently usurped the place of others, which, if more disgusting, were not attended with an equal amount ofpefiL —The Lancet*

The revision of the Bible will be finished in thrpe years. The German Telegraph Offices are rapidly introducing the telephone^ Prince Louis Napoleon is stajritig at Copenhagen, and is the daily gwest of the King or of the Crown Prince. A farm in the parish of Mearns haft been reported as affected with pleuro* pneumonia, and three cows have be9ft slaughtered. A newly imported Hungarian, employed on a farm a few miles north of this city, tilted up a beehive the other day, to" see what the bees were doing under there. He knows now. He says they were making chain lightning* and bad 2000 tons of it on hand,, which exploded before he had time to let the box down. — Burlington Hawkeyo. There is annually imported into the United States no less than 2600 nail* lions of grains of opium. It is said that after making full allowance for the legitimate purposes of the drug, some six millions of grains are daily used for its narcotic effects, and that if each opium debauchee be allotted thirty grains a-day, this computation would show that there are over 200,000 of these unfortunates in the United States* — 'Medical Examiner. i A curious account is reported of the ! frenzy of a Beloochee Sepoy, at Hydrabad, Scinde, who, after shooting his mistress, whom he believed unfaithful) quietly left the barracks in the early morning with 100 rounds of ammuni* tion and deliberately shot every person he met. He was eventually brought to bay by one of his officers, who shot him with a revolver, but not before he had killed six persons and dangerously wounded tour others. The London Gazette notifies the ap* pointment of the Duke of Cleveland, thA Earl of Devon, Lord George Cavendish^ Viscount Midlaton, the Bishop of Peterborough, the Bishop of Ely, Lord Justice James, Sir W. H. Stephensofy Archdeacon Palmer, Mr George Cub» bitt, the Rev. George Venables, and Mr F. H. James, barrister, to be her Ma* jesty*s commissioners to inquire into the law and existing practice as to thn sale* exchange, and resignation of ecclesiastical benefices, and to Vernnrmend remedies for abuses, if any nr* found to exist. In the Court of Session judgment was given against Mr Robertson (Dundonnachie)in theDunkeld Bridge Case* Mr Robeftson was allowed to go on his undertaking to respect in future the interdict of Court — not to attempt to cross the bridge without paying toll* Thia he said he would do oy avoiding in future to pass the toll. He wag warned that serious consequences would follow any future breach of the interdict. Mrs M'Collester, of lowa, will not go into the divorce business any more, should she marry. She and M'Collester lived unhappily. He sued for 1 divorce. Divorce suit dragged its slow length in the lowa courts. Pending suit, they made love to each other. Made up» Lived together* Forgot the suit. He died. She claimed property. Found that proceedings had been stopped. Suit had gone on of itself, like the Dutchman's famous cork leg, immortalised in the old song. Mrs M'Collcster not being the legal widow of - M'Collester, deceased, not only mourns the loss of M'Collester himself, but of the estate she had hoped to remember him by* And she is much disgusted. — Leavenworth Times. A marvellous piece of clockwork, now on view in the Paris Exhibition, is described by the Horological Journal. It is the work of an American watchmaker, Stephen D. Engle, of Hazelton. The figures alluded to in the following description are about nine inches high, about one-fourth of the size of those in the famous Strasbourg clock :•— Three minutes before the hour an organ inside the clock plays a hymn or an anthem. Bells are then rung, and when the hour is struck double doors in an alcove open, and a figure of Jesus appears. Double doors to the left then open, and the apostles appear slowly one by one in procession. As they appear, and pass Jesus, they turn towards him. Jesus bows, the apustles turn again, and proceed through the double doors lin an alcove on the right. As Peter approaches, Satan looks out of a window above and tempts him., Five times the Devil appears, and when Peter passes, denying Christ, the cock flaps its wings and crows. When Judas Iscariot appears, Satan comes down from his window, and follows Judas out in the procession, and then goes back and up to his place to watch, Judas appearing on both sides. The Biblical lesson is magnificently illustrated, the figures being carved and coloured after a very old and reliable painting. After the procession has passed the door is closed. Below the plaza, where the procession is made, is the main dial, about 13 inches in diameter. To its right Is a figure of Time, with an hour glass. Above this is a window, at which ap-, pear figures representing 1 Youth, Manhood, and Old Age* The clock also tells of the moon's changes, the tides, the seasons, days, and days of the , month and year, and the signs of* the zodiac j and on top a soldier in armour is constantly on guard, walking backward and forward. Twenty years are said to have been spent upon this piece of mechanism, which is-with-out doubt the most wonderful elofels ever made.