Page 5 Advertisements Column 3

New Zealander, Volume XXI, Issue 2252, 18 October 1864, Page 5

The Duke of Manchester, who was recently installed as Provincial Grand Master of the Freemasons of Huntingdon and Northampton, made a suggestion which will probably startle the brethren. He proposes that discussions should be held in the lodges for the purpose of reconciling the apparent contradictions "between the facts as related in the sacred writings and the facts as discovered by scientific men." Such, he thinks, was once the business of the lodges, and masons now-a-days "would enter on such discussions with becoming reverence." In making alterations on a mansion at Munraw, Haddingtonshire, which was a nunnery in the middle ages, a painted Mediaeval ceiling has been discovered. There are innumerable figures, but the most prominent are armorial bearings of monarchs who flourished at the time. The apartment measures 30 feet by 18, and is 16 feet in height. The side wall of the old refectory still also bears traces of paintings. A Welsh fishing-boat, belonging to Pwlheli, trawled up a glass bottle on the 10th of June, near Sarn Badrig or Causeway, in Cardigan Bay containing a strip of paper with the following inscription thereou : "Joseph Culbert, ship Matilda, lost on coast of Africa," and the word "struck" written across the side. Oa the other side of the paper was written "James M'Fadden." An American paper opened a leading article recently with this astounding assertion: —"A great many events have happened since the year one of the Christian era." Another journal thinks the assertion to be probably true. A letter from St. Petersburg states that the telegraph intended to place the Old and New Worlds in communication by way of Behring's Straits, separating Russia from America, is not only decided on, but is actually in course of execution, all the difficulties, both monetary and intercolonial, having been surmounted. Should the line be completed before the new submarine line is laid all communications between both continents will pass through Russia for a time. One of the correspondents of the New York papers relates the following incident of the battle of the 6th of May in the Virginian "Wilderness." Far down the plank-road where Hancock fought, beyond the thickest rebel dead, lay a boy severely wounded, perhaps not less a soldier that he was but a boy. He hadjfallen the day before when we were farthest advanced, and had remained unmolested within the rebel lines. They had not removed him, and he was alone with the dead when I rode up. The poor fellow was crawling about gathering violets. Faint with loss of blood, unable to stand, he could not resist the tempting flowers, and had already made a beautiful bouquet. Having caused a stretcher to be sent for, I saw him taken up tenderly and borne away, wearing a brave, sweet, touching smile.