NEWS AND NOTES.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIII, Issue 70, 23 March 1907, Page 12

NEWS AND NOTES.

A shocking discovery was made recently at Loughborough, Leicestershire, three children, aged five, three, and one year, being found dead in bed, from no apparent cause of death. Their mother slept with them during the night. Tbs Ohio River, on 15th January, broke a channel across tho Big Horseshoe Beaii between Evansville and Henderson, Indiana, and unless the break can be stopped the city of Evansville will bo left five miles from its water front. Attempts are being made in France to train oxen for saddle riding, and several races have been organised to test their capacity. They havo been trained not only as racers on the flat, but also as successful jumpeis. The bridle and saddle used are almost similar in genera] design to those for hunters. Professors Parker and \Vood, of Columbia University, have discovered a new filament which they call helion. It magnifies the efficiency of electric light forty-five times as compared with the carbon filament. The lamp also lasts twice as long, and will sustain an overcharge of electricity without breaking. According to the British Australasian, Sir William Lyne, tho Commonwealth Minister of Customs, was a pioneer bushman and a dTover. At twenty years of age he took breeding stock out to tlio Gulf of Carpentaria, but his health gave way, and hd was obliged to return to civilisation. The body of Charles Coughlin, the English actor, which, whilo awaiting shipment to England was swept away in its metallic cofhn by the great flood in Galveston on Bth September, 1900, has been found by hunters almost buried in the marsh, and hidden by weeds in an out-of-the-way place on the mainland. The Actors' Club has for the past three years had a standing reward for its recovery. Home papers record the death, at the age of ninety-five, of Henty Smith, queen of the %ribe of gipsies who for many years occupied Black Patchy Handsworth, Birmingham. Twelve months ago they were evicted, but tho old lady was so distressed that the friends Tented a piece of land for her. As a young woman she eloped with her late husband, incurring tli* wrath of her parents, but when he was proclaimed king they relented. Dialect is a curious thing. A workman, after long self-d-enial, was able to build his own house, and inscribed it "Mile and Tile Cottage" — a designation which puzzled passer#by not a little. One of these had the curiosity to enquire of the owner as to the allusion. "I should think that would be plain -Enough," said the freeholder. "For years I had to mile and tile foT it." And then the enquirer saw the point. Eugenia Stowe, a middle-aged woman, who surrendered to the Salford police, confessed that it was she who caused the great fire in the arches under the Exchange Station, Manchester, the pro yious day, which resulted in the burning of twenty-eight horses. She is the wife of the owner of five of the horses stabled there, and her story is that she went to the stables to sleep. She lighted a fire to keep herself warm, and the flames set fire to the wagon sheet. The police formally charged "her with arson. Mr. W. B: Warner, ot Smithfield. has compiled statistics for last year of the immense imports of frozen rabbits from Australasia. The imports from the five sources — New South Wales, South Australia, New Zealand, and Tasmania — reached the huge total of 1,039,371 crates, or approximately twenty-seven million rabbits, being an excess of 283,000 crates, or seven and * half million rabbits, over any preceding year. The extraordinary fact is revealed by the Board of Trade, returns that in the month of November nearly 6,500,000 rabbitskins were imported into tho United Kingdom., A very large proportion of these, it is said, are manufactured or 'faked' 1 in "sealskin," "ermine" and "blue tox" goods, and sold as such. For these pnrposes thfc «kin» of white rabbits, "Belgians," and "silver-greys" are most in demand. A ladies' paper, giving an account of a fashionable wedding, described the rice-throwing as "that pretty time-hon-oured British custom." The writer must have been, like David Copperfield, "very young." Lately also, an English clergyman protested against the fashion, calculating how many tons of good food was thus wantonly wasted every year. , The custom is Asiatic — we borrowed it, ' within living memory, Trom the CMhose. The symbolism also is Eastern, the prolific grain being the emblem of fecundity. A touching tragedy occurred jiear Cambridge recently, when the custodian of a Great Eastern Tailway crossing, named Challis, and his wife, saw their three-year-old child knocked down by a train and fatally injured. The child was apparently crossing the line to visit his father, who was on duty in a hut a short distance from the cottage where he lived, and the man was unable to quit his post to attempt a rescue. The driver made an ineffective effort to stop the train in time. A painful scene wa3 witnessed at a> sitting of the Grimsjsy Immigration Board on ll'th Januaoy, a Russian Jew, with his wife and tlrree children, being refused permission to land because of their debilitated condition. When asked to xetiro the man fell on his knees and begged pittously to be allowed to remain in the country. He admitted that revolutionary meetings had been held in his houee at Minsk, and d*clare<l that to send him ba"ek to Russia would mean either torture or death. The man* was on his way to join his son in Glasgow. Recent despatches from Charles City lowa, report that a mob of leading citzens, including four clergymen and several women, none of whom waa in any way disguised, held a prayer-meeting on the subject of a local murder recently committed by a man named James Cullen. After the meeting the congregation proceeded to break open the city gaol, and take from hia cell tho murderer, who was detainee], on the charge of having killed his wife and son.' The mob carried Cullcn to a bridge near tho town, and told him to nray for forgiveneta of hk sins. Having been allowed a certain time for this purpose Cullen was hanged and his body interred with prayers. The Pope has decreed the abolition of the conventual law of strict enclosure in the c;ise of all religious communities of nuns engaged in educational work, obliging the sisters to take walks abroad at least twico a week. This most important of tho reforms in monastic discipline 6ince the days when Pius IX. suppressed the famous Silent Sisters vowed to perpetual dumbness has been achieved principally through the urgent repeated appeals of tho bishops in Roman Catholic as well as Protestant countries, and through the tireless humanitarian propaganda of Catholic ladies of prominent social standing. The motives which bave at length wrenched tho concession from the Roman Cnria are mainly hygienic. Evidence amassed at the offices of the Sacred Congregation reveals the prevalence of sickness and an appalling death-rate among women leading a cloistral life, particularly from consumptive dkeasev

The official report of Secretary Metcalf, the commissioner appointed to enquire into tho state of the municipal government of San Francisco, states inter alia: — Dr. F. Omori, of the Imperial University of Tokio, one of the world's inpst distinguished scientists, and, as stated by Professor George- Davidson, of tho University of California, one of the gieatest living authorities in sfcismography 1 sent to San Francisco by tho Japanese Government to study tho causes and effects of the earthquake, was btoncd by hoodlums in the streets of San Francisco. Profe&£or T Nakamura, professor of architecture in tho Imperial University of Tokio, was also stoned in the streets of San Francisco ,by young toughs and hoodlums. Dr. Oinori wad also assaulted when visiting Eureka, California. Neither of these eminent gentlemen made formal complaint oi theso assaults, and wished that no official recognition be taken of them. Regarding the assaults on aliens in San Francisco, Secretary Metc&lf says : — "Most of them were mada by boys and young men ; many of them were vicious in character, and only one appears to have been made- with a view of robbing j the person attacked. All these assaults appear to have been made subsequent to the fire and earthquake in San Francisco, and my attention was not called to any assaults made prior to tho 18th day of April, 1906. Theso assaults upon ths Japanese are universally condemned by all good citizene of California. For months the citizens of San Francisco and Oakland have been terrorised by numerous murders, assaults, and robberies, both at day and night. The police have been powerless. The assaults upon the Japanese, however, were not mads, in my judgment, .with a view of robbery, but rather from a feeling of racial hostility, stiired up possibly by newspaper accounts of meetincs that have been held at different times relative to- the exclusion of Japaneso from the United States." According to "The Jewish Outlook," the Jews of the United States are rejoicing too much over the recent elevation to high office of some of the peoplo of that persuasion. "There is a certain incongruity in tho fact," says the writer, "that in tho United States, tho fie-cst country of the globe and the oldest republic, the Jews do not occupy, at least not politically, the position they do in old European lands. The number of Jows in the United States Congiess is small, when compared with the number of Jews in the parliaments of other nations. Even in Russia there were in tho last Du-na proportionately more Jews than are in the Congress of the United States. The same is the case in Germany, Austria-Hungary and France, where m the parliaments Jews are prominently in evidence. In Italy, with her small Jewish population, there is a large number of Jews in Parliament, and the most important positions in the Italian Cabinet of Ministers are held by Jews who, moreover, take interest in Judaism." "Distinguished pianists, as a rule," says the New Music Review, "aro conservative in the selection of programmes. After a certain age they dread the task of memorising a composition. Then, too they are in doubt about its service as an applause trap. They wish a hand all trumps. The late Josoph Jefferson would sulk for a day or two if by some mischance he uid not receive a curtain call. So it is with pianists. Few of them can bear the sound of faint, respectful appreciation. Few of them v. ill persist in playing the unappreciated piece until it becomes the fashion and is added to tho repertoire of amateurs among our wntitled aristocracy." However (adds the Springfield Republican), as H. T. Finck has often said with emphasis, it is tho amatour3 who discover nsw music. This is not surprising, for they ore unfettered. They have no routine to adhere to, to keep in prime condition, they havo no responsibilities such as weigh upon the piofessional. They can browse at will, and those who have money — and there are many well-to-do amateurs — can buy all important new music and spend their whole time, if they choose, in reidmg it. A serious loss has be fallen astronomy by th« death, at the age of 64, of Miss Agnes Mary Clerke, who has been carried off by pneumonia, following influenza. Mis 3 Clerke was bi ought into tha life of the astromical world twenty ysars ago by the publication of her book, "The History of Astronomy in the Nineteenth Century," which created a considerable sensation, since it was not only a complete compilation of tho facts of astronomical observation and research, but was written by tho brilliant pen qf someone who evidently was able to weigh tho merits and discuss the possibilities of theso same facts ; and that some one was a lady until then unknown. Since that day Miss Clerke has been a factor in astronomy ; not as an observer, por as a computer, but as a writer, principally on subjects connected with spectroscopy, and what is known aa physical astronomy, the branch j which has for its aim the knowledge, of the formation and constituents of the heavenly bodies. In 1903, after tho publication of her "Problems in Astrophysics," she, with Lady Huggins, was elected " an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society, a title which had at that time fallen into abeyance, and had previously been held 1 by only two ladies — Miss Caroline Hcrschel and Mrs. Mary Somerville. Readers of Nature will be familiar with her essays. She was a clear thinker, with a fine grasp of her subject and a faculty of lucid and popular expression comparable to that of tho late Professor Procter. Centralisation was the key note of tho Trado Union Congress, which opened at the Trades Hall, Melbourne, on 27th February. A motion in favour of instituting a "central and consultative body" to bo called "Tho Federal Council of the Australian Labour Unions," was agreed to, and it was strongly urged that tho powers of the Federal Parliament should bo widened ho as to remove industrial legislation absolutely from State jurisdiction and make all laws and regulations affecting labour uniform throughout Australia. A motion to this effect was proposed and met with considerable support. Mr. Barnford, M.H.R., opposed the proposition, but only on tho ground that ho was not inclined to v/ait for an amendment of the constitution. Ultimately it was resolved : — "That whilo strongly urging Labour organisations in the various States to relax no effort in furthering industrial legislation in the several State Parliaments of the Commonwealth, this congress is of opinion that an amendment of the Federal Constitution is desirable, which would give tho Federal Parliament authority to legislate upon such industrial matters." Two country youths were on- a visit to London. They went into tho British Museum and thero saw a mummy, over which hung it card, on which was printed "B.C. 87." Thoy were mystified, and one said, "Whut dost 'o mnko on't Bill?" "Well," said Bill, "I should nay it were number o' t f motor car as killed him."