Page 7 Advertisements Column 1

Dunstan Times, Issue 2409, 18 November 1907, Page 7

MAGAZINE EXTRACTS.

A German chemist has discovered that, ; by boiling sawdust with hydrochloric acid, grape sugar is formed. '1 he liquor is fer merited and then distilled. From g cwts. o. sawdust about 6 gallons of proof spirit? were obtained. Apples all the Year Round. —This fruit, says a Home contemporary, is to be found on sale in English shops all the year round. And the reason is easily given. No fewer than one hundred and twenty thousand cases of apples have been shipped >to the Thames from Tasmania, at the other side of the world, where their summer is our winter This, too, is in addition to a very large quantity that arrived in London from New Zealand and Sydney With the surplus from our own orchards, and ‘hose from gardens in other countries, apples will scarcely ever be out of season. And it is well, for vegetarians declare that apples and bread yield all that is required for human sustenanee. The Lord of Burghley— Julia Cartwright, in the Magazine of Art, tells the story of the romantic marriage of the Lord of Burghley, the subject of Tennyson’s famous poem. "In the year 1791, Henry Cecil, then a man of seven or eight and thirty, nephew and heir of the Earl of Exeter, and Lord Burghley of those days, came to live in the quiet village of Bolas, on the banks of the River Teru, in a remote corner of Shropshire. While young be had j been led into a marriage which had proved unhappy, and when he came to Shropshire bad recently divorced his wife. In a melancholy mood he resolved to hide himself from the world, and, concealing his birth and rank, heassumedthe name of Jones and the profession of a travelling artist, and lodged during some months in the house ol a farmer named Thomas Hoggins. Here he tell in love with the farmer’s fair young daughter, Sarah, and, with her parents’ consent, made her his wife. The names of the contracting parlies may still be read in

the parish register of the Shropshire village, •where the wedding took place on the 3rd October, 1791. Upon his uncle's death, a year afterwrds. Mr. Cecil succeeded to the earldom • and, without telling his secret, he brought his bride home to Burghley, where she learnt it for the first time.” A Rival to the. Bagpipes.— Perhaps the most peculiar ol Turkish musical instruments is that known as Mohammed’s Standard, which consists of a brass frame with numerous bells, on the top of a long pole surmounted by the crescent and'streamers of horse-hair. It figures in Janissary or military bands, in concert with various drums great and small, trumpets, horns, and cymbals, which produce noise enough to put any foe to flight. That such a triumph has been obtained by our own beloved national music (remarks C. F. Gordon Gumming in Blackwood) we are all aware, for is tt not recorded in one of our favourite historic ballads how The Esk was swollen sae red and sae deep. But shouthei toshuuther the braveladskeep; I'wa thousand swam ower to fell English ground, An* danced themselves dry to the pibroch’s sound Dumfoundcr'd the English saw, they saw— Dumlounder’d they Heard the blaw, the blaw; Durnfounder'il they a' ran awa', awa'. From the bundled pipers an' a*, an' a' I am quite sure that no Southron will (or a moment question the veracity ol this incident ! Even a single stand ol pipes has done right good service in putting to flight the most savage ol locs, as when, in Hie Benin sular war. a solitary piper somehow found himselt separated Irom his regiment, and in imminent peril from a whole pack ol hungry wolves With the calmness ol desperation he blew up his chanter., aud what was his joy when, ul the first skirl of the ytyes, tht whole yack, turned taxi and fied !

Capt unfit) litsiDus --Traces of the ptiml iive custom oi capture, says a writer in an old number of Blackwood, are obin the marriages of the Miao tribes vn South Western China. The women of one mbe. without waiting for the attack simulated or otherwise, of their wooers, go through the wedding ceremonies, such as they aie. with dishevelled hair and naked leet Other branches of the same people dispense with every form of marriage rite With the return of each spring the mar riageable lads and lasses erect a “ devil's stall.“ or May pole, decked with ribbons and flowers and dance around it to the tune of the men s castanets. Choice is made by the young men ol the particular maids who take their fancy, and, if these reciprocate the admiration of their wooers, the pair stray off to the neighbouring hills and valleys for the enjoyment of a short honeymoon, after which the husbands seek out their brides’ parents, and agree as to the amount in kind which they shall pay them as compensation tor the loss oi their daughters. Among other dans the young people repair to the hillsides in the "leaping month," and play at catch with coloured balls adorned with long strings. The act ot tying two balls together, with the consent of the owners of both, is considered a sufficient preliminary for the same kind of al Jrescu marriage as that just described In the province of Kwang se a kind of official sanction is given to those spontaneous alliances. The young men and women of the neighbouring aboriginal tribes assemble on a given day in the courtyards of the prelects 1 yamuns. and seat themselves on the ground, the men on one side of the vards and the women on the other. As his .inclination suggests, cadi young man crosses over and seats htmself by the lady of his choice He then, in the words of the Chinese historian, "breathes into her mouth”, and if this attention is accepted in good oart the couple pair off without more ado The"act thus described is probably that oi

kissing ; but as that form of salutation is en tircly unknown among the Chinese, the historian is driven to describe it by a circumlocution. In the province of Yunnan the la tive tribes have adopted much of the Chinese ceremonial, though they still pre serve some of their peculiar customs. By tlicse people much virtue is held to be in the hath taken by the bride on her weeding tnornin" and in the unctuous anointment 01 Peri whole body with rose-maloes which succeeds the ablution. But among the Kakliyens on the Burmese frontier, the relics oi capture become again conspicuous When the day which is to make a Kakbyen young man and maiden one arrives. ■■ five voting men and'girls set out from the brideLoom's village to that of the bride where f. .... wa ,i till nightfall in a neighbouring house At dusk the bride is brought thither by one oi the stranger girls, as it were, withon. the knowledge of her parents and told that these men have come to claim her Thev all c et out at once for the bridegroom s v ,lj s L In the morning the bride is placed ruder a close canopy outside the bridegroom s house. Presently .there arrives a Lrtv of young men irom her village, to Larch as they say. for one ol their girls who hL been stolen. They are invited to jrjnk under the canopy, and bidden, if they -., !j to take the girl away ; but they reply, • i is welt' let her remain where she is."' :‘ h |, practice is identical with the custom v hich prevailed among the Maoris ot New Zealand below they learned from r-iircountry-v.erf that (here were other and more civt.tsed } oi «merws tbe state of matrimony.