MISOELLANEOUS ITEMS.

Grey River Argus, Volume 21, Issue 3072, 20 June 1878, Page 2

MISOELLANEOUS ITEMS.

Sir James Watts, of Manchester, has died at the age of 74 years. He was : the senior partner of one of the largest commercial establishments in Manchester, and was knighted in 1857, when he entertained the Queen and Prince Consort on their visiting the Manchester Exhibition. The constabulary of Cloughjordan received information on March 30 of a dreadful' murder having been committed on the previous night at Lackamore, a place situated a few miles from Nenagh. The victim is a respectable farmer, aged 28 years, named Martin Gorman. He was beaten to death near his own house. At the coroner's inquest a verdict of wilful murder was returned against some person or persona unknown. The cause of the murder is not generally known, but it is believed to be the result of a party quarrel, having its origin in a dispute about land. The deceased, John Gorman, who rented a large farm, was drinking during the early portion of the previons day in Newport with two other men. Nothing further was seen of him until night, when the. constabulary patrol discovered his body lying on the roadside about half a mile from the village of Newport. _ . A portion of the distillery of Messrs AUman, Bandon, county Cork, was destroyed by fire on March 25,- and one life was lost. The fire broke out in the millroom, and destroyed the mill, with malthouse and 400 barrels of grain. The bonded stores, in which a large quantity of whiskey was stored, was saved, by cutting down a timber bridge which connected it with the burning premises? The damage is estimated at L6OOO, but the losses are covered by insurance. A young man, who bad been rendering assistance in extinguishing the flames, was proceeding from one part of the concern to another, when he fell from a hight of 12 feet, and was killed. The House of Commons has been agitated and scandalised by the renewal of of the Irish rows. The scenes commenced at the evening sitting of Friday, April 12. In the House of Lords a few hours previously Lord Oranmore had drawn attention to the prevalence of agrarian crime in Ireland, and one or two excellent speeches — notably by Lord Dunraveu — had been delivered on the subject. The same topic was introduced, though in a very different style and for a very different purpose, by the irrepressible Mr O'Donnell in the House of Commons. He complained that the measures taken and the reward offered by the Government for the apprehension of the murderers of Lord Leitrim were excessive, and he then proceeded to vilify the dead nobleman in a series of hypothesis and innuendoes. He took an imaginary case — a Cumberland landlord who offered his tenants no choice but eviction or the dishonour of their daughters — would not the murder of such a monster be almost justifiable? But the House of Commons declined to tolerate this apology for assassination any longer, Mr O'Donnell was called to order; the Speaker decided that Mr O'Donnell, having taken a suppositions instance, was in order, and then, in the midst of great uproar, a motion, to exclude strangers — 30 thai: publicity might not be given to Mr O'Donnell's accusations through the Press — was carried by a majority of 57 to 12. The rest of the Bitting was, therefore, conducted with closed doors. Muohin-

dignatibn is said to have been created in the district in which Lord Leitrim lived by Mr O'Donnell's attacks, and at ameetof the tenants it has been determined to institute a strict inquiry into the charges. Americans are smart. Here is a practical illustration. At the workshop of the Michigan Central Railway, at Jackson, Michigan, an experiment was recently made, in order to ascertain the very shortest time in which a locomotive engine could be mounted ready for use from the finished component parts. Up to the present this work had been generally done by about five or six workmen in the space of from nine to fourteen days. When the fact became known that a Mr Stewart, of Jackson, had done the work with fourteen workmen in 25 hours, and a Mr, Edington, with the same number of workmen, in 16£ hours, a bet between these two gentlemen was the result; and before a number of spectators they eventually both proceeded to mount a locomotive engine, each being assisted by fourteen workmen ; and, having all the parts of which the engine consists ready at hand,* they accomplished the task in the remarkably short period of 2 hours and 55 minutes. The bet was won by Mr Edington, who finished' one minute sooner than his antagonist. f~ Some experiments have been made at Brussels in breaking in horses by means of an electric bridle. The apparatus, called the Engstrom bridle, after its inventor, consists simply in a couple of reins, along which run electric wires. ' At the end of the reins a small electric battery 1b attached, which is entirely in the power of the experimenter. By pressing on a little knob the electric current acts on the corners of the horse's mouth, and. after a few consecutive or intermitting shocks the animal becomes perfectly docile. !; A very intractable mare was broken in after one experiment with the bridle." The inventor asserts that runaway horses can immediately be brought to a standstill by means of this apparatus. Panama was again devastated by. fire on the forenoon of March 6. The north-east and east sides on the Piazza and adjoining neighborhood were destroyed,; with a loss estimated at half a million dollars. The fire originated in a drug store of Messrs F. Herbruger and Co., on the east side of the Plaza under the Grand Central Hotel, in the absence of Dr Kratochurl, who j has charge of the business. The boy left'in. care of the store lit a. candle, to seal, a bottle of medicine, and carelessly threw the lighted match into a measure of bay rum that stood close to a tin of inflaniable oiL ..••• :■■'! ■ ■ < : -- ■:-■■ •\ivl3AU'.; A melancholy accident has occurred in a paper manufactory at Droogenbosch, near Brussels, thrbugh the bursting of one of the huge boilers in the centre of the building. A number of young , girla are employed there, six of f whom : found lying dead amongst* the ruins. Another had been blown into a pond attached to the works, where she was seen struggling in the water, to which, fortur n ate circumstance she owes her life. ; - Rossini's widow died on March 22, after six month's painful illness, at Rossini Villa, Pasay, aged 78., The large fortune bequeathed by tier illustrious husband she leaves, subject to small legacies :to poor relations, to found a charity for superannuated singers. Her executors are M. Gerod, a retired stockbroker, and M. Pierre Schefferi a partner in the firm of Erard, the harp and piano manufacturers. The St. Petersburg papers publish a telegram from Tiflis, announcing the close of the trial of. Prince Davedoff, 'charged with having incited some Circassians ho smother a lady whom? he thought had proved unfaithful to him. The ; prince has been deprived of all his rights and sentenced to twenty years' incarceration in the mines of Siberia. Gabisonie, the man who effected the murder, has been sentenced to ten years penal servitude. A recent telegram from New York stares that Mrs Tilton has made public a confession of her adultery with the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. Mrs Tilton gives as the reason for making this tardy confession, compliance with her , quickened, conscience and a sense of what is due to'-. truth and justice. ' ' : ' ■ ! l , Advices which have bden received 'from Central Asia state that 30,000 Mussulman,refugees have arrived at Kulj a from j^a^h-»i garia, and are being fed by the -j Russian frontier authorities. Several thousand fugitives were massacred on their road to the frontier. The Chinese cavalry pursued them as far as the Russian boundary, and they were checked there by the ' Cossack patrols. Twenty thousand of the refugees have been sent to Fort Vernoe;: where they will be granted land by the military authorities. The Chinese have \ occupied Khokand. . ■ „, "Atlas" in the 'World .says >-ote) toast of the Queen's health haa J been drunk in many extraordinary places^- on the tops of mountains, at the bottom of mines — but never perhap3 in odder fashion than a fortnight ago, about, threo •= a.m.,° at the printing office of the Paritf Figaro, where.it was proposed , by. ; Fran^~ cois Maignard, the journalist; the applause led off by Mdlle. Theo, of the Bouffes ; and the response made by the nearest relative of the august lady whose health was proposed. I hear, that the proceedings — which, had been very festive, *of course in honour ;of 'the/ forthcoming Exhibition — came to an abrupt conclu • sion after this. ■; ■ '•;"; The following, which is authentic, tells not unfavorably for poor Lord Leitrim. He was "a man of strong likes and dislikes; and one of his chief antipathies was a horror of goats. An old woman, one of his tenants, bad a favorite goat, which he espied one day and made her bring 'up to him by the side of the road. Without a word of warning he took out his knife and cut its throat; The woman, as far as she dared, reproached him with his ruthless act, whereupon he . gave - her a L2O note, saying, " Take thisto buy a cow with." If I were a member of the peerage ... (says a! writer in Truth), I should' feel it 1 r my bounden duty, out of regard to the order to which I belonged, to do some- " thing for Viscountess Kingsland. A vis» countess making shirts, at twopence each, 1 assisted by a niece who also braids mantles, in order to keep them from star-vation,-is a scandal which the nobility, for their own sakes, ought to put an end to. The grant from the Royal Bounty Fund will produce an annuity of about LlO for her ladyship, and, with her shirtmaking, she may be able to keep body and «-< soul together; but as her ladyship is ■< about eighty years of age, she cannot hope . to make shirts much longer. Surely a : few noblemen and ladies could easily subscribe enough to make the poor viscountess comfortable for the remainder of her days.