Late Mail News.

Hastings Standard, Issue 237, 3 February 1897, Page 4

Late Mail News.

A secand large party of Chinese have arrived at Odessa en mute to the Caucasus, where they are to superintend the cultivation of the tea plant. A series of ancient Greek remains has recently been discovered in one of the principal squares of Patras, comprising a mosaic pavement and some marble sculptures. Among the latter is part of a statuette which is undoubtedly a copy of the Athena Parthenes of Phidias which stood in the Parthenon. A mission which the Russian Government sent to inspect Manchuria some time ago returned to Odessa in the last week of November. The Chinese are said to be delighted with the idea of a Russian railway through part of the country, and " openly state that they would be more than delighted if all Manchuria became Russian territory." A medical board has made a report showing that the city area of Calcutta is terribly over-crowded, several wards having a population of over 100,000 per square mile, one of them rising to. nearly 115,000. Houses which should accommodate 50 persons only if ordinary precautions regarding health were observed, contain five times that num-

ber, while the hantis, which are collections of mud huts are densely packed. The environment of filth in which the residents of these huts live is described in terms which cannot fail to excite alarm, as it is plain that if disease of the typhus type obtained a footing it would be almost impossible to stamp it out. In a recent issue of the Isis, a paper published at Oxford by and for undergraduates, appeared an article, which the junior members of Christ Church considered cast reflections upon the Dean and Mrs Paget. On a Sunday at about midnight they gave the writer, who resides within Christ Church, a ducking in the fountain in Tom Quad, and on the Monday night the editor of the publication, Mr March Vaughan, of Exeter College, was waited upon by the indignant students, who gave him a mock trial and prepared a draft of an apology, which, whilst he denied his responsibility for the offending article, he consented to print in the next issue of his paper. It is stated that a suggestion that the " ducking " process should be repeated met with general upproval, but on account of Mr Vaughan's delicate state of health wiser counsels prevailed, and this was not resorted to.

The Hawaiian Government has now fully pardoned the ex-Queen Liliuekalani, and has restored to her all her civil rights in the Republic, as she faithfully kept the terms under which she was allowed partial freedom.

The latest novelty in autocars is a military or fighting motor car of Mr Pennington, the well-known maker of Coventry. The car is low, and of an oval shape. It is armor-plated, and carries two Maxim guns with their targets. Two tragedies that have recently occurred in France offer a curious contrast. Both are horrible, each resulted in the death of more than one human being, and both were concerned with primal elements of passion. A woman, criminally sharing the responsibility for her illness, is admitted to a doctor's house, and dies. The police telegraph to her lover in the country to come to Paris and explain what he can. He opens the telegram, retires to his room, and shoots himself. In the other case a man goes to borrow a horse, kills two children while a man is harnessing it, sends the man of the place to lead it down the road while he murders the woman, follows the man and attempts to murder him too, is captured, condemned, and will presumably be guillotined.

Sir Alexander Mackenzie, Lieut— Governor of Bengal, laid the first stone of drainage extension works at Calcutta on 2Gth November. In reply to an address he strongly criticised the inconsequence debate and unbusinesslike work of the Corporation, and said that,unless steps were taken to remedy the present apalling state of sanitation, the Government would have to act without consulting the municipal authorities.

An Austrain military paper gives some interesting particulars about tha new cannon sent from Russia to arm the new fort of the Dardanelles, which was to have borne the name of the Tsar Nicholas, but, owing to' his refusal, is now known as that of the Sultan Abdul Hamid. Four new guns of large calibre and two electric searchlights were sent especially from St. Petersburg, and with them went the artificers and engineers to place them in position. A Russian professor has offered his gratuitous services for the working of the searchlights, and these have been accepted. The new fort Abdul Hamid is at the very entrance of the straits, and several new works are declared by the Austrian paper to have been constructed along the straits exclusively by Russian engineers.