MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1526, 9 April 1886, Page 1 (Supplement)

MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS.

It seems that the 254 members who suported the Gladstone Government in June last, the fatal Budget division represented 1,777,839 electors, while the 260 who voted against the Ministers and defeated them represented only 843,566 electors. The following news has lately received at Cooktown from New Guinea The epidemic at present raging among the native inhabitant at Port Moresby has assumed a very serious character. Of the total population of 800, about 50 men and women, mostly in the prime of life, have died within the last three months. Although the panic stricken natives, in their dense ignorance and superstition, blame the Vala-Vala or detil devil for this mortality, the true causes are to be found in the filthy state of the villages, and the unclean rabea, or sago they are to a large extent living upon. In the British Medical Journal Dr Fothergill says the popular belief that beef-tea contains "the very strength of the meat "is a terrible error it has no food value. A terriMe error truly, if Dr F. is right. In that case how many poor invalids must have been starved to death by their doctors and nurses! There are lots of stomachs that will have nothing to do with beef-tea, but it may be doubled whether it is such useless stuff as Dr F. says. Speaking at a mayoral banquet at Chester, England, the other day, the Duke of W estminstcr alluded with some warmth to the Parnellitee, who, he said, had obtained a powerful hold over the people of Ireland. They had gained that position by the help of the most intense cruelty, the most extraordinary extortion of money, the aid of assassination and murder, and the assistance of Homan Catholic priests. The people of Ireland were not, he thought, such fools as not to know that they would never get that whicli they were now agitating for. Not many years ago aluminum was an almost unkuown metal. Jules Verne, the scientific and romantic French novelist, knowing the qualities of the metal, used it as the material of which huge shells were made which carried his heroes on their trip to the moon. He was evidently writing with * prophetic mind, for at that time aluminum, was almost as costly as silver. Now an American paper says the metal of the future is aluminum, and that in a few years it will displace iron and steel, aud revolutionise the industrial arts. It says the world contains ten times as much of it as of iron—every clay bed being an aluminum mine. It is three times as strong as Bessemer steel, will not corrode, is very ductile, is a third lighter than cast iron, and the raw materials for making it are not worth £4 a ton. The contention fsays a contemporary) that protection raises wages involves two assumptions(l) That increase in the profits of employers means increase in the profits of employers means increase in the wages of their working men ; and (2) that increase of wages in the projected occupations involves increase of wages in all occupations. So soon as these assumptions are stated their fatuity is apparent. Is there anyone who supposes that because an employer makes large profits he therefore pays higher wages ? In the mining industries of the United States it is estimated that the enormous sum of £160,000,000 sterling is invested as productive capital; over 480,000 persons are furnished employment, and the value of the whole of the mineral products of the States for ISS4 was over £83,000,000. Of this, 37,744,6050zs of silver, valued at £9,750,000, ami 1,459,9490zs of gold, valued at £6,150,000 were produced during the year. Patti and Jenny Lind (says the Wiener ZoHung) recently had a little tiff at a private party. Patti had been singing with great brilliancy, and among other pieces an air of Mozart. Jenny Lind, at the conclusion ventured to express her opinion that Patti had rather hurried the time in Mozart's music; "and lest you may think," she added, "that I am like a blind man speaking of colour, I may tell you that lam Jenny Lind (loldschmidt." Patti, somewhat nettled, is said to have retorted thus: "Oh, yes, I know you were a famous singer—once, I have heard my grandfather speak of you."