NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVI, Issue 5490, 21 June 1879, Page 7

NEWS IN BRIEF.

I ♦ : I Sara, who oonld kick higher thnn any other girl in Soldene's tronpe, has retired to the shades of private life. Arthur M'Coony has been sentenced to nine months' imprisonment at the Criminal Conrt, Melbourne, for fraudulent insolvency. Dr. J. S. Myer has, it is rumoured, discovered the lost Egyptian art of hardening copper so far as to bear a cutting edge. _ Tha receipts from hackoey-carnage> licenses, now paid to the police authorities, in London, amount to about £2o;000 a> year - - i. MI Neither women nor wind mstutnents Will be permitted after June Ist in the choirs of the churches in the Ca'holic diocese of Montreal. The Marquis of Lome has accepted the position of commodore of the Nova Scotia yacht squadron, v.i«ated by tha Earl of Dufferin. The society whi :h advocates the cessation. of Sunday labour will be astonished to learn, that sixty miles of shops are open in London every Sunday. Some visitors at a great shoe manufactory in Lynn, Massachusetts, recently saw a pair of kid brmts made from the stock in just eleven minutes. A London art publisher, who paid £16,000 for the copyright of Frith's great painting, "The Railway Station," has prosecuted a Brighton man for photographiug it. The Parisian Press is nuccnpied with the subject of divorce, and two of the most able dramatists of Paris advocate the reform. Thus the public are being educated. It is expected that arrangements wilLbe made for Elliott, the great English sculler, to be sent out to Australia to wrest the championship of the world from Triakett. Cuff .e hotels are being established in many part of Victoria. A new room of this description has recently been openedat Prahrnn. They are found to be well patronised. The newly-invented pedo'motor is reported to give a good walker a speed of twelve miles an hour over good sidewalks, and it is expected that it will be greatly improved. At the annual festival of the post talegrapbers the chairman stated that as many as 2,279,000 messages passed through the central city office, Glasgow, last year. According to Mr. Caird'a calculations, Britain shall in 20 years number 40 millions of souls, and there is no clear prospect that the home supply of food will be materially increased.

In France the number of Catholics is given as 39,390,000, and of Protestants as 600,000, while in great Britain and Ireland there are 5,600,000, Catholics against 26,000,001) Protestants. .

America pays nearly twenty million pounds to foreigners for carriage, or, more strictly allows foreigners to earn that sum without competition, because she cannot build her vessels cheaply. France is to have an Academy of Tailors ! The academy's chiuf function, it seems, will be to save the public from the unskilled hands of makers of clothes who unfairly assume the title of tailor. The novelty for the ensuing season will be " coloured dances ;" which, being translated, means dances at which ladies must appear in. grean, red, or whatever coloar of the rainbow the hostess chooses to appoint. A Methodist miuister in Massachusetts was promised a salary of 400 dollars. By diuging clams and making shoes he earned 200 dollars last year, and his flock withheld that amount from his stipend. The value of the exports of the Victorian, manufacturing goods has increased from £98,746 in 1870, to £609,920 in 187 S. There has been a considerable decrease in the exportation of Victorian candles. The responsible editor of the Bonapartisfc Ordre was recently condemned to a week's imprisonment and 500f. fine, for stating that the amnestied Communists on landing at Brest shouted " Vive la Commune 1" In California it has been enacted that nothing but the English language shall be taught in the primary, grammar, and common schools, and also that no public money shall be granted to sectarian schools. Statistics have been published showing the good results of the prohibition of publichouses on the Moonta mines, South Australia. Although there is a very large population there, scarcely any drunkenness exists. The Governors of Australia and New Zealand have received a circular from the Secretary of State, to the effect that should axPresident Grant visit the colonies, no official honours, but all proper courtesies, should be extended to him. The Pall Mall Gazette states that the Admiralty have issued regulations that all candidates for the naval service, whethe: officers, men, boys, or marines, must produce a certificate that they, are ablo to swim, or they will be ineligible. Oxford is to follow tbe example of Cambridge in furnishing the means of higher education for women. A ladies' hall is to be established in Oxford, under the superintendence of Miss Wordsworth, who is to be the first lady principal. Two sisters in Edinburgh have lived for many years in one room without speaking to each other. Neither is deaf nor dumb, and no one knows the reason of their silence. They have a chalk-line on the floor, and do not encroach on each other's domains. A leader nf fashion in San Francisco has had her chairs and sofas and the cushions of her carriages stuffed with aromatic herbs, in. imitation of a practice prevalent among Oriental nations. It need hardly be said that she lives in an atmosphere of constant perfume. Preliminary ateps are being taken for an International Exhibition to be held in New York in ISB2, which will be the centennial anniversary of the close of the Revolution. There can be no doubt that tbe city o£ New York will use every exertion to outrival all former exhibitions. Thefollowing is tho Maori care for diarrhoea and dysentery :—Take, say, a handful o£ leaf buds of a common shrub known as koromiko, kokoinuka, or kogoromiko, and boil for half-an-honr in a quart saucepan ; strain off and set to cool; when sold, take two or three wineglasses at intervals daring the day. Lord Lytton has given great offence to the upper ten of India by presenting to Miss Crooke, a pretty circus rider, whose performances he nightly attended, a large gold medal, inscribed, "Presentedto Miss Victoria Crooke, the Empress of the -Arena, by Lord X.ytton, G.M.S.T., Viceroy and Governor of India." The French Republic has adopted a new orest, a laurel wreath with a dart of gold, in place of the ancient bird which led Rome, and Napoleon, and/or<is Etruria to victory. The eagle has had a long history as a military emblem, and it seems almost a pity that the Republic thinks fit to change such an honourable and martial symbol. A distinguished leader of Rnssian society— Madame Rimsky Rorsakoff—died recently at Nice. Her passion was for fanoy-dress balls. At one given at the French Ministry o£ Marine some years since she appeared as the Queen of Sheba; she was literally covered with precious stones, and made her entry on a camel gorgeous with coloured trappings ! Several farmers in the neighborhood of Gwynedd, Penn., are reported by the Bucks Country Intelligence]- as having lost their potato crop last year by planting seed that never cjme up, on account, as was afterwards; ascertained, of the tubers having been sprinkled, with salt by a dealer or shipper to prevent their sprouting while in his hands. At Clerkenwell Police Court recently, John Smith, aged 13, an errand boy, whose head did not reach the top of the dock, giving his address at 4, Hockley Road, Tipper Hoiloway, was charged before Mr. Hosack'with stealing from a jacket-pocket at No. 289, Goswell Road, one halfpenny, marked, the money of Mary Stenning. Ho was imprisoned for 14 days' hard labour in the House of Correction. Further procsedings are about to be commenced in the French courts, with a view to enable the Marquise de Caux to annul her marriage. In French law, divorce is not recognized under any circumstances; bnt a marriage may be declared null and void, if any irregularity can be proved in the'manner in which the marriage was celebrated. Several such irregularities will be sought to be proved in the case of Mme. Patti; and although no single one_ of them by itself might be of sufficient weight, yet several flaws taken together might have the necessary weight with the French courts. Lord John Manners, replying to Mr. Goschen, in the Honr.e of Commons recently, said that since 1874, when tho new mail contract oame into force, the Peninsular.and Oriental Steam Navigation Company ;:had made 117 late arrivals, incurring penalties amounting to £32,000, as the result of tho absolute penalty system now in- force. Had the premiums for early arrival of mails within the same period been retained in the present contract, and calculated, as in tho former contract, at half "the amount of f;ies, the company who, had made 644 early arrivals, wouldihave been entitled to, receive £92,403,