BREVITIES.

Evening Star, Issue 11863, 17 April 1903, Page 1

BREVITIES.

Soon after the mail train left Hawera for New Plymouth last evening the infant child of Mrs Hughes, of Inglewood, became suddenly -iIL There was no medical man on the train, and before Stratford was reached life was extinct. Admiral Edwin Clayton Tennyson D’Eyncourt, -C.B. (cousin of the poet Tennyson), who died on January 14, aged eighty-nine, left an estate valued at £67,328. The Pope has a pretty turn of humor of his own. At a recent reception of members of the Sacred College such a lot of cardinals turned up to pay their respects that Leo observed: “This splendid gathering is so numerous that one might suppose you were assembled for a conclave.” The cardinals, in duty bound, protested against the insinuation—very much, perhaps, in the spirit of Jack Absolute deprecating Sir Anthony’s “ I shan't trouble you much longer, my boy.” The Waikato Land Council, now sitting at Huntly, have received an application Mahuta to deal with a block of 40,000 acres near Raglan. Glasgow is the only town or city in the United Kingdom that has a complete municipal telephone system in operation. Captain Percy Scott, of H.M.S. Terrible fame, has just assumed command of the gunnery-ship Excellent, at Portsmouth. He has been on half-pay for some time past. Admiral Cochrane states that his nephew has been offered reinstatement in the Guards, by direction of the Commander-in-Chief, and through a junior officer, but has declined the offer made to him

The total gross expenditure provided for in the British Navy estimates for the year was £32,264,973. The total gross expenditure was £32,249,377 18s sd, being an excess of estimated over actual expenditure of £15,595 Is 7d.

A romantic marriage is reported to have taken place at New York, the contracting parties being Mrs Hendrickson, one of the wealthiest women in Brooklyn, and Patrick M’Hngh, an Irish coachman, and widower with six children.

The net profit on the past half-year’s working of the Co-operative Wholesale Society, in Britain, is repdrted to be £164,805 0s 7d. The sales totalled £9,541,442, being an increase of £434,292 on the corresponding period of the previous year. His Majesty’s obsolete eighteen-gun sloop Dido, built in Pembroke in 1836, was sold by auction at Sheemesa. dockyard for £845. His Majesty’s ship Discovery, which took part in the Arctic expedition of 1875, was sold out of the Royal Navy at Sheemess recently, realising £1,640. A small boy has died at Eastbourne (Eng.) from a gradual choking. He was supposed to be suffering from diphtheria, and he was taken to tire sanitorium and the operation of tracheotomy performed. A post mortem examination revealed that the boy had swallowed a steel collar stnd. It had got lodged in the windpipe several inches below the throat.

In Kent a disease has been communicated to a man from ? fowl. The man some time ago bought a Plymouth Rock cock, which developed “ whitecomb.” He used his hands mstead of a brush in rubbing in a mixture in his endeavors to cure the fowl, with the result that he contracted the disease himself, and-he has not-been able, despite all medical aid, to arrest the progress of it. Mr E. R. Henry is the new Commssioner of the London Police, vice Sir E. Bradford, Bart., retired on a pension. The post is worth £2,500 a year. The love of John W. M'Guire, a New York corporation official, for ping-pong has ted to his incarceration in a lunatic asylum. His wife having informed a magistrate that her husband made her play ping-pong for twenty-two hours without ceasing, the necessary order was unhesitatingly granted, A story, said to be vouched for by the church authorities, is published m Mexico City. A drunken woman, prevented from entering a shrine at Basts swore horribly at the priests, and white in the act of cursing a bolt fell from the sky. turnmg her into a rock statue. The wonderful piece of statuary was removed to the dwelling of a priest, who is exhibiting it at a < J? r ß e .°f fifty cents a head. • m of , New Yart ■wiU shortly he jubilant over the celebration of her 250 th anniversary of municipal birth The tribune gives some interesting figures relating to the growth of the city as follow: Population m 1653, 1,120; population 150 years later (1800), 60,000; population in 1905, 3,600,000. I. 1663 ItoStSfK trails, and a few poor roads on the island; to® l ® are 430 miles of streets, of which 365 miles are paved. The buildings in early New York were low, small structures; today there are on Manhattan Island scoAs „f buildings more than ten storeys high, some more than 300 ft high. mga, some The Italian Government have just erected a fortress on the great Chaberton summit opposite Bnancon, for the defence of the Simplon tunnel. The fort is 10,600 ft high, to be the most elevated fortified point in the world. M. Loubet has ordered the release of Jeanne (males, who was sentenced in 1875 ™ servitude for life on a charge of

Mr Davis, an American, who is exploring near Thebes on the Upper Nile, has dil wvered a spiendid chariot in the tomb of Kmg iS? tm Sl W' ,< 18th Theban dynasty, b.c. 1553). The fittings are of bronze, and “• cW »

The village of Ospedaletto, on the shore of Lake Como, is being evacuated by its inhabitants. The spot has become undermined by the water, and the entire village is expected to fall into the lake. One house has gone already. The land on which the village stands is sliding gradually into the lake.

A Ruthenian engineer, named Livcok, has invented an apparatus for ascertaining the speed and exact position at any given moment of a railway train. It is claaned that the invention is of great value for preventing an accident during fog or storm. After a very successful demonstration before the Czar, the Russian railway authorities ordered a thousand sets of the apparatus for passenger goods trains. A despatch from Hamilton. U.S., states that the doctors are agreed that a ma.ii under arrest, called Knapp, is a moral pervert of the type of “Jack the Ripper.” One of Knapp’s victims was a child. He says he cannot tell what made him kill women. Some kind of desire to kill took hold of him, and he could not resist the temptation, and he says he is sorry now. He is suspected of having strangled three women at Evansville, Indiana, besides having killed women elsewhere. He was in a Cincinnati house of refuge when he was seventeen.

One of the principal confectioners in Glasgow last month imported some foreignmade chocolate late,” and having reason to suspect the presence of spirit in the confectionery, determined to know his standing as regards the law before selling this toothsome sweetmeat. He accordingly submitted a sample to the Inland Revenue authorities, and analyses revealed the astonishing fact that it contained no less than 10 per cent, of proof spirit! Instructions were given to the effect that its sale would entail liability to a spirit license. Ten per cent, of proof spirit is about the normal alcte holic strength of bitter beer.

Best roller flour, 501b bags 6s; new oatmeal 251b bags 3s, Wardell’s.—JDWrtJ