MISCELLANEOUS.

Grey River Argus, Volume XIV, Issue 1736, 26 February 1874, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

* In consequence of the recent exposures respecting the adulterations of tea, greer tea is now almost unsaleable in London. ~The~Duke"of Edinburgh is stated to be " a quick reader of complcated music." An immense restaurant, just opened ie Piccadilly, is described at considerable length by the Times. The establishmeni can provide more than 30,000 dinners daily. Operations have been commenced for widening the North Bridge, Edinburgh. The number of assistant-masters at Eton is_4s. Mr Young, the Lord Advocate of Scotland, has been made a baronet. A similiar honor has been declined by Mr Walter, M.P., chief proprietor of the Times. Great numbers of artisans who have been unable to obtain employment in the United States have returned to England. The police force of England (exclusive of London) and Wales number 17,000. The convict warders in England are organising with a view to obtain an improvements of their present position. The National Miners' Association of Britain now has .120,000 members, of ■whom 100,000 belong to England. In November the Firth of Forth was almost choked up by an enormous shoal of sprats, which were vended at a shilling a barrel. There has been dug up in Cyprus a colossal statue of Hercules holding a lion before him by the hind paw, as if he were a lamb. It is said to be exceedingly anoient. The inmates of the Birkenhead Workhouse have given notice that they will leave the house in a body if the present ■roaster is superseded in his office. It is in contemplation by the Corporation of London to construct a new Council Chamber in connection with the Guildhall, at a cost not exceeding £50,000. In the last financial year there were in Great Britain 270,858 male servants on whom a duty of 15s each was paid. There were in the last financial year, 12,731,753 packet boxes stamped, on which the duty paid for patent medicines wasi9s,Bl2i9s7£d. One of the Scotch miners' unions has passed a resolution to fine every member 7s 6d upon every occasion of Ms breaking the rule of the union not to work above five days a week. ' The town council of Munich has presented a congratulatory address to Dr Dollinger on the occasion of the 50 years jubilee of his professorship. At a Permissive Bill meeting in Edinburgh on November the 25th last, the Hon. Ne*al Dow, from America, asserted that the Scotch Church was the bulwark of the traffic in intoxicating liquor. Dr Brindley, the well known lecturer on infidelity, has died suddenly in New York. He went out to America to deliver addresses in opposition to those of Mr Bradlaugh. It is stated that sixteen competitive designs have been sent in for the Hastings Aquarium. Some of them are said to be highly novel. The range of cost is from £21,000 to £31,000. The European country where newspapers are most abundant in proportion to the population is Switzerland, where every town and almost every village has its special organ. Af the Richmond Petty Sessions a boy was sentenced to receive six strokes with the birch for stealing. /The' Inspector of Police stated that he had "no funds" wherewith to purchase a birch, whereupon the cost (6d) was subscribed by the Magistrates on the bench, and the boy thus got his flogging. An Athens banker has obtained a concession for cutting a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth. The canal is to have a minimum depth of 27 feet, and to be 37 feet wide at the bottom. In the centre a dock capable of holding the largest vessels is to be constructed. The canal is to be finished in six years, and its estimated cost is £800,000. A double-woman is being exhibited in Paris. The phenomenon consists of two ■women bound by nature back to back, and has two heads, which sings duets and speak two different languages. The Water. Committee of the Liverpool Conioration are trying to put a stop to the enormous waste of water in that town. In one pile of buildings the meter showed that the water had passed through the pipe at the rate of 97 gallons per head per day. As an instance of the stagnation of <Arade there, the Pioneer's Bombay correspondent mentions that when an assistant to a merchant was lately refused an increase in his salary, his employer added, " If you don't care we'll make you a partner." Speaking at a trade union demonstration at Darlinghurst, Mr Brogden, M.P., stated that he had at that moment an offer of 10,000 tons of rails of English make that were lying in New York at L 2 a ton less than they could be bought for and put free on board a vessel in a Welsh port. It is stated that the committee formed in Ireland to promote Irish emigration are meeting "with considerable opposition in Ireland, and, failing to get the support they have asked for, are going to issue a general appeal to the English public for subscriptions to enable the Irish peasantry to emigrate. The name of Roger Tichborne will be handed down to posterity by other means than by the fame of the great trial which is now going on. The returns from the local registrars in England show that nearly 100 children have by their parents been named Roger Tichborne. A Hungarian named Mester has invented a new locomotive, which is propelled by compressed air, instead of by steam. Several Hungarian engineers express warm approval of this discovery, and funds are being raised for trying the locomotive on railways and roads. It is understood thab the late Mr Thomas .Baring has in his will "left a year's salary to every clerk in the firm of Baring Brothers and Co. In 1867 when Messrs Kirkman, Hodgscn and Co. joined the firm, Mr Baring made, a gift of similar extent and amount. The foundations for the Scottish National Memorial to the late Prince Consort have been finished. A huge block of Aberdeen granite, some 20 ions in weight, will be placed in position when the foundations have had time to consolidate. One of the greatest philanthropists in France, or any other country, has passed

BOOTS.

away We allude to M. de Metz, the founder of the agricultural Colony of Mettray, where children convicted of crime have, for some years past, been received and educated, and, as a rule, reclaimed. _ An amusing letter, attributed to Marshal Broglie, is quoted in Paris. It appears that the father of the present Duke wished the Marshal to betray the King and cleave to the Republic. The old soldier wrote back :— " If a sound caning could be trasmitted by writing, I should beg you to apply this ietter to your back. —Your affectionate father," &c. The Bangalore Examiner reports a horrible case of murder and mutilation at Ghazepoor. It appears that a woman, having cut her stepson to pieces, roasted them, and served them up for her hust>and's supper. He, however, discovering a finger among the pieces, waa so horritied to find that it belonged to his infant son, that on extracting a confession from his wife, he at once sent for the police and gave her into custody. We have heard of paper railway wheels from America, and of paper suits of clothes from Japan. Dinner napkins at Hamburg are generally of paper, while Londoners are last taking to paper curtains, but the biggest article in that material is evidently a paper church near Bergen, capable according to the Journal of the Society of Arts, of containing a congregation 1000 strong. Dr Vaughan, the new Roman Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, lately described the Anglican Church as an effete and worn-out institution, from jvhich the best nrinda were gradually detaching themselves, seeking refuge and quietness in the bosom of their great mother. Bishop Barker, in reply, stated that so far from his ecclesiastical corporation being used up, it never was in a more vigorous condition, and that if any attacks were made upon it its enemies would find that it was as ready as ever to hold its own against all comers. French duels have of late years been such ludicrously harmeless things that quite a sensation has been caused by an eucounter having a fatal termination. A Prince Ghica, of whose antecedents we are ashamed to say that we are as ignorant as everybody else is as to the name of his antagonist, " went out " at Fontainbleu, and at the first exchange of fire was shot dead. The telegrams have still something of the comic element in reference to the affair, for they say in a melancholy manner that the Prince was very much deplored at the Gymnase Theatre, of which he was a noted patron, especially on first nights. An English duel in humble life has been scarcely less marked by absurdity. Two friends in a public- htfuse quarrelled abdlit a matter which has puzzled the brains of more cultivated individuals. The contention was whether the Btimulus to generous actions proceeded from the heart or from the head, aud the logicians waxed so angry over this point that they got from metaphysical to merely physical argument, and one received injiuies which have prevented his ever discussing that or aDy other subject any more. Rather a curious trial has arisen out of a " horse squabble," Captain Clayton, of the 9th Lancers, having been sued by a job-master named Wolf for violent assault. The soldier wanted ahorse for the autumn manoeuvres, and went to Wolf's yard to look at some animals. A mare was shown him,- which he averred to te twelve years old, wheareas the owner asserted her to be but bix. The latter was so enraged with the Captain for " crabling " th 9 mare, whatever that operation may be, that he used strong language, and according to his own account, received much stronger, and some personal punishment. But the jury found, for the defendant, and added their opinion that the whole thing was a mere horse quarrel, whereon they were solemnly rebuked by Mr Justice Bret for giving reasons. "It is your great privilege, gentlemen," the learned judge sarcastically added, " to decide a case without giving reasons." It used to be a common saying that " Francß was rich enough to pay for her glory," and in those days she little thought of the cost of adversity. Now the attention of the country is drawn to the following items, which show what a costly game war sometimes is. The war indemnity'is 5,000,000,000 f .; the interest on the same for two years, 300,000,000 f .; the maintenance of the German troops, 273,637,000. f; requisitions, 327,581,000 f.; value of objects taken with requisition, 254,172,000 f .; war contributions levied on Paris, 200,000,000 f., and so on till the account forms a total of 6,672,81], 0001. But this enormous sum does not include pensions to the army, the damage done to material, nor the expenses of reorganisation, nearly as much again. The average value of a day's work in France is one franc and a quarter, so it is ea3y to calculate the amount of labour which will be required to repair the folly of a few months violence and bloodshed — Pall Mall Gazette. California possesses a philanthropist whose name is James Liek — a large landowner in the State, where he is estimated to be worth between L 600.000 and He has just presented to the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco a block of land in the very heart of the city, with a frontage of 80ft. and a depth of 275 ft., valued at L 30,000. On it will be erected a substantial three-story building, to be applied to scientific purposes ; the donor merely stipulating that it shall be kept entirely free from religious uses. The cost of constructing this edifice he has also intimated his intention of defraying. Nor does the bounty of this public-spirited man end here. He has determined to erect and to present to the academy an observatory, at an elevation of 10,000 ft. above the level of the sea, in the pure atmosphere of the Sierra Nevada. This is to be furnished with the largest telescope in the world, and supplied with every variety of instrument and apparatus necessary for astronomical and spectroscopic investigations ; while the observatory will be endowed with ample funds for the prosecution of a systematic Burvey of the heavens by men of the highest qualifications and experience in this department of science. The Californians are justly proud of this splendid act of beneficence ; and Professor Davidson, in announcing it to those who will be the custodians of the observatory, remarked that "no greater opportunity was ever offered to a scientific society to make its name famous than is now set before the Californian Academy of Science/

£100