Miscellaneous.

Clutha Leader, Volume XXV, Issue 1276, 6 January 1899, Page 7

Miscellaneous.

A scientist o|ice| p.fi£lan| ajitomatic nvUsic&l boxfpn|th| la'v|n,^asd "spent ho-irs watching 'the robins, blue- birds, and othert birds gathering about it. A looking-glass, put. up where the birds ittractive, while a combination of a musical box satijpi;a5 atijpi;a looking-glass' pleases the bird* .njore than anything else one could put out for their amusement. At a great. tpniperj*nce^de^/)nß{ra\ibii ,' in connection witjb t fche Qongfegational ' Un'oM of England and ,VV.R]e>,.the . Rev.', Canon Hicks,. JVlancne^t»-r, saiß tetti-.' p*»ranct? was a cuuse Which united all Christians^ l£ was a noble work. quite iworthyl irff^Mmi ClftVt)ti&y Sf UK^liest. One of the great quest i.onsof the day was, . rhow to abolish the slums ? They "were ' tilled with seething masses of humanity who were often gfr ieVotisl'y afflicted by the drink curse. -Total abstenance was good in every way, as a self-discipline, as an expression bf love toothers ; as a safeguard from temptation it was a Christian, duty., Whilst speaking most .hopefully of the outlook of the cause he said it had reached a point when the question "'would" have to be taken up and settled as the slavery question was at last grappled with and solved. He closed with a powerful appeal to all to ■rise to the height of their opportunity and responsibility. — Mr Alfred Rowland said, « Were the drink curse incarnated as a monster desolating a certain areas of |h« he believed the Church would go forth as a modern St. George to slay it. But it was a ' disease which tops often was; not recognised until a near and d«a*r one had been stricken down by it. It spared no class.' A merciless monster, truly. Excluding the two capitals, there is not a single city in the whole of Russia, properly so called, which' wouid be deemed a large town in Britain. Only twenty have a population exceeding 50,000, and only 150 count more than 10,000 inhabitants. Great Britain is the largest consumer of cheese in Europe. Ihe combined countries of Europe import anually 430,000,0001b., of which Great Britain takes upwards of 360,000,000 or nearly 70 per cent, of the whole. When sheep-farming was first introduced into England it wag opposed by the poor, because the necessity of layingdown fields in grass deprived them of certain privileges which they had in the cornfield, and in 1532 a law was passed that no man should keep more than 2,000 sheep. ; During the Soudan campaign (he cost of the heaviest message wou'd not, I am told (writes the London correspondent of the Glasgow Herald) reach L2OO. During the war between China and Japan that figure was, owing to the great cost of telegraphing, easily beaten. Perhaps one of the most expansive despatches ever cabled to a newspaper was that giving the details of the capitulation of Manila, which wag sent at a charge of LIOOO to New York. Commenting. on the passing of the Old Age Pensions Bill, the' Liverpool Mercury says : » In the face of the adverse report of the Committee of Experts who investigated the subject on bejialf of the Imperial Government, the audacity of the $ew Zealand'Ministry can only be described as- reckless. One would imagine tJiat with fa population np^much larger than that of Liverpool, ..anpV with a public debt of L44,366\6r8j Mr ! Beda6s arid his col. leagues would abstain from a confessedly risky experiment to .which the wealthy mother country fears to commit herself. But with a lightness of heart which would be culpable even if the colony were in a flourishing finan* cial condition, they have persisted in a scheme which, will entail, atjtjieir own estimate, an "annual' burden of L160,000, and may not .improbably cost rritich mord.' '•' • • i In Prussia the morphia mania seems largely ontho increase. 1 ; Statistics show that in one year no, less, than 135 deaths took place from ,t,hf. habit~Bp men and 55 women. Of tbe latter, several were the wivpg of doctor*, ' and many 'were women of means, j The statistics have added that a number of the unfortunate individuals were alse * conainistes,' For 1000 marriageable persons of fioth, sexes, there arp in France 45 marriages ; in Holland,' 49 \ in'lfal.y, 50 ; in Anrt-ria, 51,; in England and Denmark, 52 ; and in Germany, 53, On the other hand, the number of divorces pronounced in France is increasincr with extraordinary rapidity. 'In 1886 the court* released from .their marriage W*ws 2920 coupler : In j1896 no flower thnh'7o2l divbr'ces were pronounced, and adcording to the results, whirth are still ihcompletP?yktiown t for 1897, it is stated that' the' number of divorces last. year will be s'jtbvr.p.tp have exceeded 90b0. ' Under these" circi|mstances, it is not astonishing that the number, of. births in ; France should be inferior to those of a^y^other countr 4 v. On an average in'Francß there arVl'63 births per 1000 married' woman from 26 to 50 ypars of sgp, wherens. there are Bf 0 iin ;G<R,rjrjany, 269jinfScot1and, 261 ' in Belgium; 251 ; in [ Italy" 250 in .England and Austria, 240, in Sweden and Ireland, 'and' 236 iri v Swi»7>Vla«d.