NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 6261, 10 December 1881, Page 7

NEWS IN BRIEF.

" 3 I English is the mother tongue of 90,000,000 3 people. 1 i . Ostrich farms are being established in the j interior of Queensland. . Cincinnati has abolished the study of j grammar in her public sebools. ( The export of tea from China to Australia I last year exceeded 20,000,0001b5. ( The American subscriptions to the Irish , Land League are rapidly falling off. , The ?ale of the Moody and Sankey hymnt books has reached 9,337,000 copies. ; New York shipped 278,423 cases of kero- | sene to the Australian colonies last year. t The latest estimates of the world's populaJ tiou places the number at 1,445,923,000. I It is proposed to construct a railway tunnel under the Hiver St. Lawrence, in Canada. Great Britain has now in course of construction nearly a million tons of shipping. In London there are 12,000 licensed cab drivers, and 3000 of these are total ab- , Etainers. i A quarter of a million of the New South , Wales revenue is annually devoted to State ! charities. f The Siamese princes, before leaving Paris, • bought 3.30 pianos for the harem of their ; august brother. The postal service of the United Kingdom ! employs 47,000 persons, of whom over 2000 ! are women. 1 The feeling in favour of the complete ins dependence of the Dominion of Canada is : reported to be increasing. : A Roman Catholic Mission has been 3 despatched from the United States to New 1 Guinea, to convert the 16,000,000 natives, i Arrangements have been made for a new , line of sailing vessels between London and 1 Australia, to be termed the Alliance Line. , An " important literary event" is the find- , ing in the Bitish Museum of a long-lost tract : by Roger Williams. It was printed in 1645. I Southern California wants to set up as a ; separate state, and a convention is to be held : at Los Angelos in furtherance of that object. Rome was captured four times in 16 years, i and during that time 15,000,000 human ; beings perished by sword, pestilence, and famine. A New York man has just received from ; the dead letter office his photograph, which ; he sent his mother from the army eighteen . years ago. The cost to the Imperial Government of : training the 120 men who deserted from the , Detached Squadron in Australia is estimated ' at £10,000. The Dreamers are a now Minnesota sect 3 who believe drcamsarc revelations of divinity, and they have an expert who professes to interpret them. Last year the value of British goods exported to the colonies amounted to f55,500,000, being £0,000,000 more than the whole of Europe. I Mr. Edison, the American electrician, i 3 • said to hold interests valued at £1,000,000 in. the various companies formed to introduce 7 his incandescent light. i The Conservatives have made substantial i gains over the Liberals in the annual municipal elections in England, attributable to ; the support of the Irish voters. : Three hundred Russian nobles hare ; organised themselves into a band termed ■ "The Sacred Legion, "to counteract Nihilistic ; attempts on the life of the Czar. Br. Siemens is of opinion that before long all the work of a farm will be accomplished by the aid of electric power, including ■ ploughing, reapiiii.', and threshing. : At Munstermaifeld, Westphalia, a child was recently christened that began its earthly . career as a great-aunt, its father being the . great-grandfather of several grown-up great- ; grandelidren. f A Marseilles, 111., man has invented an t organ and piano combined, which can be . played together or separately from the same ; keyboard, the change being effected without I a break in the music. Jean lugelow spends much or her time in ; visiting the poor of London, and gives a i dinner three times a week to discharged invalids from the hospitals, and to other of the I sick and disabled in want. ; Dickens's Wooden Midshipman, celebrated in " Dombey and Son," is being removed to [ fresh quarters, and, say 3 the Athenteum, the . old shop of Sol Gills will be pulled down in i the course of city improvements. The plays of Charles Dickens, which are shortly to be issued in two volumes, are :— "The Village Coquette," "Is Shea Wife 2" "The Strange Gentleman," "The Lamplighter," and "My Nightingale's Diary." A new system of robbery is being practised in Paris. Two men hire a cab late at night > to drive to some outlying district, and in > passing through some deserted street or i road, garrote the driver, and rob him of his day's earnings. L Mr. Laycock, member of the House of ' Commons, inherited by his father's death £40,000 a-year. While stopping at his father's home to attend the funeral he slept i in a room newly-painted, in which he con- : tiaetel iiu illness that terminated fatally two weeks later. 1 South Australia will have two million acres under crop this 3'ear, which at an i average of six bushels to the acre, will give ' a surplus of grain above what is required for > consumption in the colony of 225,000 tons, ■ of the value of between tivo and three mil- '■ lions sterling. The Cincinnati Commercial is publishing the names of all the contributors to its one- ■ cent testimonial fund to the soldier who was • fined £2 for slapping the mouth of a man ! who hoped the President of the United States • would die of the wound inflicted by the ■ assassin. Over £100, all in one-cent pieces, • were forwarded to the hero. ; A bitter quarrel has sprung up between i Lord Bute and the Presbytery of Rothesay. I More than a century ago the first Lord Bute I built a chapel in the grounds of Mount ' Stewart, which for two generations was used ; as the parish church. When the present • Marquis became a Roman Catholic it was : closed. It is now proposed to reopen the ■ chapel as a Roman Catholic school, and the whole island is in a flame at the notion. Among the manuscripts lately acquired by the library of the Athenian Chambers is a roll of thick paper about a finger in width and a thousand feet long, on which the l r various, anagrams of the name Constantinople ' are written. These different anagrams are ' arranged in alphabetical order and amount to J 40,135. This roll was written apparently in England during the last century. ' "Major" Marvin, an American swindler ■ recently arrested in Virginia for obtaining ' money on a "bogus" draft, was discovered to be the husband of fifteen wives, each of 1 whom—except the first—married him offr hand on a few weeks' acquaintance. Aβ 1 soon as he had spent each wife's money, he deserted her and sought a fresh victim. 1 Strange to say, the "Major" is small in stature, mean in appearance, and slovenly in " htbit, and yet fifteen silly women threw themselves and their money into his arms:. 3 At the recent grand manoeuvres near Hanover, the Emperor of Germany was parti- • cularly pleased at the great number of mem- ' ber3 of the varions Veteran Associations 1 (upwards of 5000), who had flocked thither ' from the most distant parts of the Empirt ia order to see and pay their homage to the • Kaiser. Among them was a veteran of , ninety-four years, a pensioned quartermaster J and former tollgate keeper, who entered the ' service in 1812, and received a medal at Waterloo, with whom the Emperor shook hands, and to whom he said, " You and I are doubtless the oldest soldiers present, and it may not be very long before the Lord of Hosts 5 will summon us to the last roll-call." i King Ludwig of Bavaria is gradually bei coming more eccentric, and his capers are of > a character which, if committed by any one , not of royal blood or very high family con- - nection, would be classed as the acts of a fool b pure and simple. A few weeks ago the King • met with an amusing mishap at his romantic : residence in the mountains beyond Munich. t He had caused to be constructed a mechaniL cal contrivance for agitating the waters of - an artificial lake in a manner which should ■ imitate a storm. When the waters became ! very boisterous, so that they pleased him r much, he set out upon them in a boat alone. ■ Very promptly he found himself upset. ■ Courtiers who had remained in the vicinity, in violation of his command, came promptly ■ to his rescue, else he would probably have I been drowned. ; Two officials of the London Post-office have ■ invented and patented a method of automata- • cally registering the number of letters ? stamped. The counting may be done by , mechanical or electrical means. In the first i case a small counter, similar to an engine s counter, is placed in the head cr handle oi I the hand stamp, and each time the stamper L presses it upon a letter it is registered on tlie > counter. At the close of the day the stamp . is opened, the number of letters stamped read . off and registered, and the counter set ready i for the next day's work. In the second case, two methods have been devised for eiec--3 trically effecting the object. In one tne 3 striking of the inking pai causes electrical c contact to be made, which transmits a cur-. • rent to a counter similar to that of a gas e meter, and so registers every, letter t The other method is similar in principle, mn j, a lever stamp is employed.