Miscellaneous.

Clutha Leader, Volume XX, Issue 1038, 15 June 1894, Page 7

Miscellaneous.

Some ofthe most eventful changes in the British Constitution have been carried by feeble majorities. The chief points of the national religion, under Elizabeth, were carried by six votes. The great question on the danger of Popery, in Queen Anne's reign, was decided by a majority of 256 to 208, , The Hanover succession was carried hy a single vote ! The Remonstrance, in Charles I.'s time, by eleven. The Union with Scotland and Ireland, by very small majorities. The Retorm in Parliament in 1831, by one ! But in New Zealand ifc requires a majority of three-fifths to shut a poisonous grog shop. Tho oldest epitaph in English, which' is found in a churchyard in Oxfordshire, and dates from the year 1370, to modern readers would be unintelligible, not only from its antique typography, but from its obsolete language. The first two lines of it run as follows, and may be taken as a sample of the whole : ' Man com & se how schal alie dede be : wen yow comes bad and bare : noth hav ven we away fare : all ye weriness yt ve for care.' The modern reading would be ; ' Man, come and see how shall all dead be, when you come poor and bare ; nothing have, when we away "fare • All is weariness that we for care.' The paper on which letters to Queen Victoria are written must nofc be folded. No communication which bears evidence of having been creased will ever fall into Her Majesty's own hands. The proper method is to write on thick, glossy white paper, and to despatch the missive in an envelope which fits it. Any folded communication never reaches the Queen, for the simple reason that she never looks at ifc. All such letters are opened by the Mistress of the Robes, and as a rule their contents never get beyond her, or, if the letter is of importance, it is returned to the writer with the directions how to forward it. The New York papers are publishing an anecdote of Miss Ellen Terry, to illustrate her ready tact. She had promised to introduce a man to Mr Irving, but had forgotton his name. On the pretext, as the story goes, that she and Mr Irving bad bad a little dispute about the way the name was spelled, she got him to write it on a sheet of paper, and so got out of her difficulty. If this really occured, Miss Terry was more fortunate than another clever woman about whom a similar Story was told. She, too, bad forgotten a name, and told the, owner of it that to settle a dispute abont the spelling she vished he would write his name for her. The man did so very gravely. It was Jones. The Daily News announces that the two women inspectors of workshops appointed by the Vestry of Kensington seem to have done good work for the first ten weeks of their official duties. They have inspected two hundred and forty -four launderies in North Kensington, and one hundred and thirtythree dressmakers' workrooms. With fche other places inspected the total numbpr of inspections made was four hundred and thirty-two. Here is sufficient proof that these two ladies are energetic, and we also know that the sex is very thorough in anything it undertakes Many defects have been discovered which will have to be remedied. It seems that women are well qualified for this kind of woik ; they will not be put oft by any subterfuges, or have their attention diverted from the object of their visit. The scheme for producing a vast photographic map of the heavens, which was agreed upon by the congress of fifty-eight astronomers, representing fifteen distinct nationalities, which met in Paris five years ago, is stated by Mr R. A, Gregory in Good Words to be now well advanced. Two English observatories are taking part in this self-appointed task, Greenwich Observatory and that of Oxford University. The telescopes employed by all tke cooperating astronomers are substantially the same, as that constructed by Sir Howard Grubb. Two tubes are rigidly connected, the lower being merely a long camera, and the upper an ordinary telescope. The astrouomical photographer uses the telescope as a viewfinder. When he sees through it the bit of celestial scenery of which he desires a permanent picture, he places a sensitised plate in the lower end of his long camera, and starts the clock which keeps the telescope moving at the same rate as the vault -of heaven. The instrument can then be left to itself, for, it will do the sky-sketching automatically. More than twenty-two thousand celestial scenes will, it is stated, have to be photographed in this manner, and the patchwork map which they produce will cover the surface of a globe nearly twenty-four feet in diameter.