SOME CURIOUS FINDS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XXVI, Issue 248, 29 October 1892, Page 3

SOME CURIOUS FINDS.

A lady on going to bed one night pi ced her rings upon a little china plato, which also contained sonao oatmeal used for w»Bhing her hands, on her dressing table. Among these rings was a little blood-stone, which disappeared, and which, after eompleto search, wns given up as irrevocably lott. Ton years afterwards some alterations wero mode in the house, nnd the flooring of the bedroom wns removed. Under one- of tho planks was found the Fkeleton of a mouao with n bloodstone round its neck. It hud evidently, us the narrator remarks, ventured upon the toilet table in search of the oatmeal, had unwittingly pushed its head through the ring, anil had returned to its hole to die— an involantary thief [strangled by its useless prize. The lady who relates this incident gives another curious story, with the actors in which she was familiar. A governess was one day walking with her charges in their father's kitchen garden. The children pulling at her hands as she walked between them, loosed a ring slip wore, and before they noticed whither it went the ring was gone from her finger, nnd wns nowhere to be seen. Tho garden beds nround, which had been newly dug over, were reirched, but no ring was to be seen. A moLth after the governess returned to her home for her holiday, tiking with her a basket of garden produce, ns a present to her mother from her pupils' parents. Oddly enough almost the fust thing unpaoked from tho basket was a fine cabbage with a close green heart, amo-.gj-t whose ourled blades lay tho muoh-lamented, long-sought-for signet v'.ng. In this connection we may relate a curious romance attaohing to a diamond whioh originally formed one of the eyes of a god in an Indian temple. It was purohs s d by an Indian officer for n few rupees, tho vendor fanojiog it was nothing better than what he called "a comical-looking pebble. ' The officer had it placad in a liu* w-d wore it for several years. O«ie day while in London on leave of absence he missed it. aud after making all soiti of inquiries about it gave it up for lost. Some days later he found it in a dark passage in his club. Several more yearß years passed, and th^ officer wns Bjrain at home and was grouse Bhootiug on a Scotch moor. He was raising his gun to Bhoot, when he Buddenly observed tho riug without the diamond. Where was it / He bad tramped for miles that dny, nnd to have retraced his steps over the ground he had covered would have been madness. All at once it came to him as an inspiration from heaven that probably the precious atone had fallen into the barrel o£ his gun, " Rather a mad thought," he said t j himself, '' but the thing is just possible." He drew the wad, and shook out the contents of the barrel — shot, powder, and the diamond I Other things besides jewels conic to light in a most unexpected manner, and at the most unexpected times. A few years ago— to be precise, in 1878— the ship Irvine ni rived in London from Peru with a cargo of nitrate, in which was found embedded the well-preserved body of aavonian, supposed (though on what evidence is not exactly stated) to be one of the victims of an earthquake which occurredsome centuries ago, Almost as curious, in much the same way, v as the find of a wooden coilin, containing a guano efligy of a man, seventeen feet from the top of the guano mound of Ichaboe. The coffin and its contents crumbled to dust after less than an hour's exposure to the air but the finders managed to decipher all that remained of a rude inscription-- " bermann " and " GBi)," and to come to the conclusion that the remains were those of the carpenter or " tombermaun " of a Dutch sealing ship, who had shullled oil" this mortal coil in'the year 1689. About as ghastly as all this was the skeleton of a man found not many years ago fn the chimney of an old house in the High-street of Hull, notable as the birthplace of Wilberforce, the slave emanoipitor. A banking business was at one timo carried on in the htuse, so the bones were set down as belonging to a thief, who, hiding in the chimney, either preliminary to committing a felony or to escape pursuit after committing it, had bten suffocated. The explanation is convenient, and comparatively simple ; but how are you to explain tho presence of a Bkeleton cat with a skeleton rat in its mouth in a chimney at Highgate / These curiosities are still to be seen, unless chrotiiolero are unwoithy of belief, in a local public-house.