NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 6189, 17 September 1881, Page 7

NEWS IN BRIEF.

LtWACY in New Yofiie increasingC " " Cremation is finding favour in Europe. I A tame alligator in Florida is-sboy% bedfellow. - . - Opium is said to kill 3,000,000 Chinese annually. i Fourpenny bits and half-crowns are to be abolished. '- St. George's, Bermuda, is called the -"City Ox bit otlll. * The diamond mines of Golcorida'aro about to be worked again. Non-alcoholic beverages aro in - great demand in England. London journals predict a financial crisis in the United States. The flesh of the zebra i 3 said to be the best animal food in Africa.

The whole town of Akron, Ohio, is now lighted with electricity. The French Senate cost 3 the country three million francs per annum. The number of teetotollars in the British navy is rapidly increasing. Cincinnati will have no married women aa teachers in her public schools.

The largest lighthouse in the world is to be erected in Chesapeake Bay. Several deaths hi.ve occurred iniondon recently from vitriol-throwing. ~.' A mill to grind 8000 barrels of flour per day has been erected in Minnesota. .

Adelaide apples fetched 03. per stone of 14 lbs. in the London market recently. - . Only four sovereigns of England have reigned longer than Queen Victoria. .:■ Dr. Beard says tho idea of fish-food as brain nourishment is a popular delusion. ! The question of lighting the St. Gothurd Tunnel by electricity is being discussed. A total length of 700 yards of tho : British Channel has been successfully tunnelled. An American balloonist has offered to " balloon" anybody in the United States. Some of the" dolours used by the ancient Egyptian painters are yet bright and fixed. There is now more activity in Arctic research than has ever characterised it before. Egypt is about to take a long- stride in civilization, by the total abolition of slavery. The nnmber of dissenters from, the' Greek; Church in Russia is estimated at 14,000,000. Patent medicines in England now yield a Government revenue of over £200,000 pet annum. ' . - . The trustees of the Jordan burial-place liave refused to allow Penn's bones to be removed. $ " ■ Some of the rocks in the Nevada mines have been lifted three feet by the growth of fungus. A man named John Guymber, in Philadelphia, has awakened from & sleep of four months.

Glass was early discovered. Glass beads have been found on mummies throe thousand years old.

The Presbyterian communicanta ■ in the world number about 3,000,000, and the adherents 12,000,000. \ ■'; Regulations have been published in Eomd for putting in force the law for the abolition: of forced paper currency. Owing to the unsettled state of Ireland i 6 has been decided to maintain military establishments at their present strength some time longer. The New York Journal of (fenmerce saya the American flag is fast vanishing from seaa where it once waved over a prosperous commerce. An American paper says that M. Faure'a method of storing electricity was invited years ago by Mr. Charles Brush, the electrician. ' : A romantic story is told in late California papers about the widow of a once American Minister to Russia begging her way to Washington. A horse whose death was caused by hydrophobia, was recently served at a banquet at Berne, Switzerland, upwards of 60 persons partaking of it.

Nihilism is fast spreading in Kussia, and the inevitable revolution is only stayed by the vast military organization and the terrorism practiced by the police. Two characteristic decrees have been pub« lished at Constantinople, one ordering the Turkish ladies to wear thicker veils, and the otherabolishing the local post. Jake Bryant, a Butler Georgia negro, cut out his eyes with a penknife to escape" being set at hard work in the penitentiary, to which he had been sentenced for ten years. The original amount paid for what is now the richest mine in New Mexico, said to be worth £60,000,000, was 133 6d in silver, a little gold dust, and an old revolver.: A "day census" of London is talked of. One was taken in 1866, when it was'found that nearly three-quarters of a million people entered the city during the twenty-four hourSi The Secretary of State has sanctioned a grant of an India medal with clasp, inscribed 'Naga, 1879-80," to all the troops engaged in the recent campaign in the Naga Hills. '••■■■ A steamer has arrived in the river Thames from the Clyde which is steered by an electric apparatus. The steering gear worked well, but the compasses were so affected by the electricity as to be useless. The New York Herald describee a new experiment in street-lighting by means of lamps supplied with a mixture of petroleum and naptha. The flame is steady, soft and white, and equal to 15-candle power." The Havanajpolice surprised and captured thirty-five members of a society of outlaws calling themselves , the "Nanigos," while they were swearing in a new member. They were composed of both blacks and whites..

It is said that Galley, the man who was wrongfully convicted of murder in Exeter, England, in 1836, and whose case was heard in the House of Commons in 1879, is eking out a miserable existence in Australia.

The Golos, of St. Petersburg, announces that a decree lias been issued ordering that all executions shall hereafter be carried out privately, andthatthecondemnedbeconveyed to the place of execution in covered waggons. The building of a mansion for the entertainment of distinguished foreign ,s> vJSite)a^as«_ been commeneed on the premises of the Yamashita Museum, Tokio, Japan. It should be a magnificent structure, the expense being estimated at £24,000 - ' The condition of the peasants in Russia is getting worse and worse. Large numbers in utter despair are leaving the interior and migrating to Siberia with a view of bettering their condition. They are described as half naked and utterly without means. A law student in the Uuiversity of Bonn has just been killed in a duel and another student is in the hospital hopelessly wounded, A student in Berlin, a few-days ago had his nose slashed nearly off. Scarcely a week passes but we hear of some such brutality. A woman in Jackson County, Tennessee, recently gave birth to seven children at one birth. They were delivered at periods of ten minutes to five hours apart. All were girls, weighing from four to five pounds each, healthy and well developed. The husband ia small and thin; the wife stroneand healthy. An Ayrshire cow was recently being sold at an auction mart at Newton-Steward, England, when it took fright, leapt the fence, mounted a gallery, pressed through the crowd, and bolted through a front window, alighting between-a carriage and a few bags of potatoes, seemingly none the worse for her dangerous leap. The feeling of abhorrence at the murderous assault on President Gariield, exhibited by the British Press and people, is warmly commended in America, and some of the American journals express regret that the: Government of the United States do not suppress the Fenian plots against England which are hatched in the States. The opium-eating habit is growing to an alarming extent in America, as shown by the ■ increase of its importation. Four yearfJ ago the American opium eaters were believed to number2oo,ooo; butsince then their numbers have been doubled, and it is now calculated that they cousume 5,000,000 grains per annum, In Illionois, Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky, there is said to be three opium-eaters to every 100 of population. ....,." The German Government is studying over a plan for uniting, by a system of canals, the rivera Elbe > :'Weser, Ems,: Rhine, and the Meuse. English capitalists propose to connect the Baltic and the North Sea by a deep draught canal from Eel to some portion of : the Elbe, most probably near Gluckstadt, by .■■/.-■; which Kiel, .the most important harbour and naval establishment id "the German Empire, would be connected with the Khina by_ a direct route and join tUe;German canalawitb. :jj the _water-ways of Holland,- Belgium and M France." "7 ~ ■" 'f . ■£'■% aAβ \ elephant was recently shown in/A" f'. r ;J jewellery shop at Hartford, "U, S, -It i golden elephant, .whose head and trunk/|?r i. '■ in continual motion. The oyes o£ l.tkvgQrt* ■ i phant were diamonds, each' valued^/.: rP~ 1 Its ears were decorated with .-.■ '- ;« bisfeetwerefettered with diam^Y; e tdoth?' j| bangles, and over his back was f *. e " e m^j.' .s|j suchas is nsually worn by eler«~r' _ n s t was borderea:by a circle of <i ; " rl n S i^M > - 3 two carets; and'in the senW/af. » ; (nfoon and^sla^ofTihe the forehead was an worth. £1000. , Erobally £7000 thisiritercsluigaiumsJi' : : : -ftv^;V; : ;; ii*