SCISSORS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 7416, 13 July 1895, Page 6 (Supplement)

SCISSORS.

One fashionable dress-designer in the West End of London is computed to make between £5000 and £GOOO a year.

Forty to fifty miles a day is about the maximum distance attained by ordinary riders on a tricycle.

According to the new rule, passengers arriving on ocean steamers at New York are to be allowed to go on slnre at any hour of a day or night. Up to the present time no one was allowed to land after sunset from an ocean steamer arriving in i'-ew York.

A medical officer urges people to well wash watercress, cases of typhoid fever having occurred after eating cress taken from polluted water.

The eminent French chemist, M. Raoul Pictefc, claims tliat he has discovered a method of ageing liquors artificially. His process consists in gradually cooling the liquor down to 20udeg. C. below zero, and then gradually bringing it up again to the normal temperature. A frigoric laboratory, in which this new discovery is to be applied, is about to be established in Paris.

Hodman : I hear that Edison has discovered a scheme for doing away with sleep. Trowels : Hush. For goodness sake don't let the_ boss hear about it, or he'll make us work twentyfour hours a day.

During the last five years an average amount of more than £20,000,000 yearly has been wasted in England in the promotion of companies yielding no return to shareholders.

Electricity is becoming more and more popular as a means of public lighting. At the end of the year 1894 the number of gas lamps discontinued in the city of London ivas 1338, and the number of arc lamps lighted was 483 ;it follows that nearly three gas lamps were extinguished for each arc lamp lighted.

There aro 190,000 public-houses in the United Kingdom. In other words, one house in every thirty-seven is a public-house.

At a sale in London recently, a suit of bright steel armour, made about 1540, sold for 4GO guineas.

A Wedding Present Association has been formed in London. Tbe object is to provide the members with whatever wedding presents they desire at greatly reduced prices, on payment of an annual subscription.

A judge of much experience says :— ' I never had a breach of promise case before me in which the mother of the girl didn't know more about it than her daughter. She always suspects the fellow is a rascal, and gets ready for him.

The London- County Council have taken steps to have a close time declared for song and other birds throughout the county of London from March 1 to August 1. Starlings and sparrows are not included An end will thus be put to bird-nesting and the capture or slaughter of parent birds.

A huge pillar rock. 360 ft in height, and weighing about 125,000 tons, called Taclen Mavvr, a prominent feature of the slate quarries at Bethesda, having become dangerous, was recently tunnelled and reduced to a mass of boulders by the explosion of seven tons of gunpowder, in the presence of 7000 spectators, As it began to crumble a pair of kestrel hawks flew from the top of the rock, where they had nested for years.

After the dinner at the restaurant, Bobby noticed with great interest the heaped pile of change which the waitsr brought back to his father. ' Oh, papa ' he exclaimed, ' oh, "papa, I'd like a plate of that, too.'

The sixty natives—men, women, and children—from Somaliland arrived at the Crystal Palace recently, with elephants, ostriches, camels, lions, baboons, hunting ponie3, wild donkeys, sheep, goats, and snakes from the African Village. Tbey are a fine race of people, with splendid teeth. They are Mohammedans and teetotallers. The women do the hard work.

A basr containing £550 in sovereigns and £220 half-sovereigns was left in a London cab the other day by a gentleman who had been driven to Waterloo Station. The cabman took the bag to the police station,, and the owner, on recovering possession of it rewarded the cabman with £75.

A defendant, wishing to make a lady a present of a tailor-made silk dress with a jet-covered bodice, ordered the ' best that money could buy.' As £23 was charged, it was considered too much, and the dress was returned. The makers, a London firm, sued for the amount, and were awarded £20, tho lady to have the dress, minus the four yards of surplus silk which had been sent home with it.

Tom : You know, Simpkins is rather a decent sort of fellow, only I can't stand his jokes—they are so far-fetched. Harry : Far-fetched ! I should think they were, considering that most of them came all tbe wav from America.

A committee for the taming of African elephants has been formed in Berlin, under the presidency of the African explorer and naturalist, Dr. Paul Reichard. The pitiless, wholesale slaughter of elephants in Africa, says he, is a scandal to the educated world. Every year from 50,000 to 60,000 of these noble beasts arc, as the committee puts it, ' slaughtered in sheer wantonness and wa.xte, and the time seems to be fast approaching when scarcely an elephant will be loft alive.'

A Parisienne, named Marie Lebot, confessed to the chief of the Paris Detective service that she had murdered her lover, Ahtoine Keuiond, and that the body would be found swathed like a mummy in her room, in the Cite' Jeanne d'Arc. The officer despatched two agents to the address indicated. Later on the terrible truth was telephoned to him. Tbe decomposed body of Remond was lying by the side of the bed as described by the prisoner. The victim was a former soldier in the Foreign Legion with a pension of 700 francs. He was living with Marie Lebot, who sold black coffee in the markets, and who in a fit of savage fury murdered him with a hatchet because he refused to give up his money to her. After the crime she stated that she slept nightly by the side of the corpse for three weeks. At last overcome by remorse she gave herself up.

Those who suffer from dyspepsia should provide themselves with a rock-ing-chair. Dr. Lai tie, a West Indian physician, says that a course of rock-ing-chair after every meal, the oscillations being quiet and regular, stimulates gastro-intestinal peristakism, and that dyspeptics should take notice. The chair ought to be light, so that rocking " requires no effort, and sufficiently inclined backward that the person may he rather than sit in it.

Much comment lias been caused ia artistic circles in Paris through the committee of the Salon rejecting the ! uchesse d'Uzes' statue of Emile Augier. At the first examination on April.9tli it was rejected by 26 votes to one, and on Tuesday when the statue was brought up it was refused by 2-1 votes to two. The duehesse had meanwhile asked to be allowed to withdraw the statue, but permission was refused as contrary to tiie Rules of the Salon. The statue was selected some time ago by the Town Council of Valence for erection in their town.

A Scotchman once went to America. During his stay there he visited Niagara Falls, which his host expected to astonish the taciturn visitor. ' Say, now,' remarked the American, ' did you ever see anything so beautiful and so strange ?' ' Weel,' the cannie one cautiously admitted, ' for beautiful, PTI say no ; but,' triumphantly,' for strange, why, mon, I auce saw a peacock wi' a wooden leg at Peebles !'

Killcannel church, county Limerick, was recently destroyed by fire on a Sunday afternoon. Just as the clergyman (Canon Wills) entered the reading desk tbe sexton discovered that the roof was iv flames. An immediate rush was made for the doors, and, though the congregation was larger than usual, fortunately no one was injured. Scarcely had the worshipers' escaped when portions of the burning ceiling fell' into the aisle. The churchwardens were able to save the large church Bibles and Prayer-books, as also the communion plate and some other valuables, but a strong wind which was blowing at the time made all attempts to save the building ineffectual. 1 lie fire is supposed to have been caused by the stove-pipe, which passed through the ceiling.

'By Jove, Wilkes, your column ..of personal gossip in the last number of your paper was the raciest thing I know. Where did you get all the'information V ' My wife had th<; Sewing Circle at our house hist Saturday, aud I concealed a phonograph in the room.'

A remarkable natural phenomenon is reported in -■ ome fr.nn Leprigano, in the province of Rome, where a considerable lake has been formed through the spouting up of water from subterranean springs. The waters of this lake, which has a circumference of twothirds of a mile already, are strongly sulphurous in character. Large numbers of people from the surrounding country aie visiting the spot.

The first exhibition held in Mexico will be opened on tho 2nd April. 1896. It will embrace the whole field of human activity, industrial, scientific, artistic, and commercial, as is designated by its title, the International Exposition of Industries and Fine Arts. The site is at the foot of the Castle of Chepultepec in Grand Avenue de la Reformo, ten minutes' ride from the centre of the city of Mexico, and comprises about 600 acres.

Stubbs : ' Well, sir, I gave it to that man straight, I can tell you. He is twice as big as I am, too, but I told him what I. thought of his conduct to his face, and I called him all the names in the dictionary, and a lot of others as well.' Spudds : 'And didn't he try to hit you ?' Stubbs : ' No, sir. And when he tried to answer back, I hung up the telephone-receiver and walked away.'

Tho London correspondent of the Bmninghatn Post hears from an authoritative source in Berlin that the latest achievement of the German : mperor is the invention of a new slowburning smokeless powder, which he has decided to call rexite. The explosive, though its constituents, have been so far kept profoundly, secret, is known to be of a very light s to? I-blue tint, and in the few experiments wTsich have been made with it it is said to have developed satisfactory force without either noise or smoke. It, however, emits a rather brilliant flame, and a smell which might become somewhat unpleasant when considerabiequantities are exploded. It was also interesting to observe that in finding a name for his latest discovery the Kaiser has shown his customary regard for monarchical privilege.

Of the taxes which different races

have at one time or another imposed on the graceless bachelor, the strangest is that enforced by the authorities of Eastham, Massachusetts, in the seventeenth century, for they enacted that every unmarried man in the township should slay six blackbirds or three crows yearly, producing the scalps in proof, and that no man should be allowed to marry until he had made up all arrears.

A strange recovery of a lost will has occurred at Forgue, Abeideenshire. A bachelor farmer, who had no friends or heirs, died a few months ago, and his property passed to the Crown. All the goods were disposed of except a pocket Bible and a few venerable books which were given to his old and faithful housekeeper. To her astonishment, she has just found a scrap of paper in tho Bible which proved to be her old master's will, by which he left her all his possessions. The Crown now will have to refund £2000.