NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 7170, 8 November 1884, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Lepbssy has prevailed in a virnlenfc fona in Brazil for 200 years. ,-.. . A Mr. Webb, of England, ha» reduced the bicycle record for 100 miles to 6h. 43min.' ; Dr.- Koch has been made Director of the Imperial Bureau af Hygiene of Germany. ,: The authorities of France have taken tip the question of the health of school children. ■■ Abbe Liszt, the pianist, has been granted a pension by the Grand Duke of- SaxeWeimar. - ■ -.:.-■-■ The revival of brigandage in the Roman provinces is beginning to excite soma concern in the capital. The natives of Zambezi, East Africa, have revolted, and killed or wounded the entire Portugese force. ■ . ' A physician of Naples declares that seawater administered by sub-cutaneous injections will care cholera. • • - There are in Great Britain 212 reformatory and industrial schools, the total number of pupils being 25,337. There is not a single prima donna, or tenor of any marked merit in Italy, and the musical critics of Home deplore the fact. ' The latest fancy of Parisian ladies is to have landscapes and miniature portraits painted on their finger-nails by talented artists. The Bible mentions 620 places in Palestine, west of Jordan,'and 430 have been identified, 132 by the staff of the Palestine exploration fund. - An effort, with quite serious intent, is being made in London to have a law passed giving each policeman at night a big dog a 4 a companion. ■ ■ .•■ . • One of the proposals submitted fora change in the French Constitution provides for the payment of voters for the time lost at the polls. : Prosecutions by the French Government of publishers of immoral works have been frequent of late, and heavy fines have been inflicted. ■ ; • More visitors from the provinces have sojourned in Paris this snmmer than during any eeason since the siege., Many were I refugees. - ■ In the grand lottery in Paris for the benefit of a museum of industrial and decorative art there was over 13,000,000 tickets sold at 10d apiece. An Englishman lately died in London leaving an estate valued at £1,000,000. Hβ left no will, and his nearest heir was a farmer 76 years old. Army, navy, and now police in Japan are to be completely Germanised. The " Japs " have applied for German police officials on loan as instructors. Of 4,692,348 persons returned by the census of Germany in 18S2 as engaged in agricultural work, 1,230,050, or nearly a million and aquarter, are females. A society 350 strong has been organised in Toronto "for the purpose of propagating amoDg the people ideas of independence and separation from England." ' Specialism in the madical profession is said to be carried on to such an extent in London as to seriously lower the usefulness of the medical profession in general. The title "xoar Honour," was recently introduced in England by Royal proclamation as applied to country Judges who hitherto were neither lordships nor worships. A sister of Jeffreys and Catherine Lewi*, recently on the stage in London, has contracted a marriage with a scion of * noble house, and has retired to'private life. The city of Paris has leased 27,000 acres of the low-lying forest of St. Germain and the adjoining meadows, for the purpose of experimenting in utilising the sewage of the capital. An article adjudged "disrespectful to the person of the King" of Spain has cost the editor of El Porvenir, a Republican journal, eighteen years' sentence of imprisonment and a fine. •■ The price of cigars has been raised from a cent and a-half to a cent and two-thirds by the Treasury Department at Borne, which enjoys a total monopoly in tobacco and cigars. English telephone companies are- now allowed to connect their lines with the postal telegraph offices, and to telegraph to any part of the United Kingdom without extra charge. : ' Illuminated soups will be followed injthe French style by illuminated coffee. French brandy is burned on top of the beverage, and is thought by the fire-eaters to improve its quality. The body of a woman left over night, enclosed in three coffins or caskets, one of them of lead, in the church at Digny, France, was cremated by' spontaneous combnstioa. • . The will of the late Baroness Nathan Rothschild has just been admitted to probate. The value of her personal property is stated at £295,139, and she leaves £100,000 to charity. The weight of a theatrical earthquake, which is travelling with an English dramatio company, is said to be four tons. The'thunder rolls and lightning flashes from heavy materials. A London newspaper, devoted to hotel interests, laments the fact that the hotel business of England is gradually slipping into the hands of foreigners, owing to English inactivity. ' Trains on the Liverpool and Manchester line of the London and North-western Bailway are now lighted by electricity generated by an engine run with steam from the locomotive boiler. A Bill is now before the Brazilian Parliament declaring all slaves of sixty years old free, and providing for the emancipation by the State at a tariff fixed according to the age of those younger. Travellers arriving in Russia must show a certificate from the Russian Consul at the place they have left to the effect that they nave not been any locality infected with cholera for three weeks. ■ Two children in London, hearing that a reward was to be got for dead bodies, and not having a corpse handy, locked a three-year-old child in a dust bin. He was fortunately discovered in time, .'■'"' At the International Medical Congress, which the King of Denmark has just opened at the Palais d'lndustrie, in Copenhagen,' America was more numerously represented than any other foreign country. Several French papers announce that the real object of the King of Sweden's visit to England was to settle the preliminaries' of a marriage between his second son, Prince Oscar, and the Princess Louise of Wales. . . Lastyearthe value of fish caught in Scottish waters was £3,250,000, while a few short of 50,000 men and boys were employed in tho 15,000 boats engaged in the fishery. A million and a-half barrels of herring were taken. A model of an overhead electric railway is now on view in London, which the inventor declares will attain a velocity of 150 miles an hour for passengers. He prudently intends, however, to start hie railway only for parcels at first. . The German Ministry of Pablic Works is seriously considering the question of a uniform standard of time for all the empire. It is proposed that the time of Berlin shall be the regulator for the entire railway system. ' ■ - -' An international music congress will take place at .Antwerp next year, invitation* to participate in which will be extended to the celebrated artists, connoisseurs,' directors professors, critics, and publishers of. all countries. ■ • The committee appointed by the Minister of Public Instruction, to verify M. Pasteur's experiments in the inoculation of dogs for the prevention of rabies, has just presented its report. It is an endorsement of the great savant's theory. ■ '■■■'.' Prince Bismarck has 'been asked by" G'er? man musicians and others interested, .to establish or introduce in. Germany a normal musical diapason, similaf to that adopted in France and Italy.' Belgium is moving in "the same direction. - - ' '.' '! The Russian Government has deoidea to dispatch a special commission, consisting of the Minister of Public Works and a party of engineers,- to*Scotland' to examine the"coni atruction of the great bridges now being erected across the' Forth of Tay. '•■""-" ''<• The sohool savings banks of France have been wonderfully sucoesefu].'-'-'ln ; 1879,'* five years after their foundation, there" were 10,440 schools provided with such'banks, and 224,200 depositors. -The numbers'have now. risen to 21,454 schools, and 442;021 depositors.- ■"■ "'-. •-•■ ".-'■■;:- ■'"■ ' ' : ■-■■■-■'• •""■ ■At a dinner given- : recently in Paris in honour oj a distinguished artist thirteen guests sat down. : So great was the dread: of a well-known superstition* connected with' this number that a cab-driver was brought in''to serve' as ; the :fourteenth guest, beiß|» seated next to a Cabinet Minister; '-' t ;'i- SL . subduing a thousand-wonieri-'convlote' in a Spanish prison, of which they had gained possession .by open- revolt,, the? troops'were ordered to use none but' blank cartridgev ana. while a noise of musketry was being mad«_afc the main entrance, a hole was' batteredran-. the wall afe another -'-point?thus •affording ingress. . ■ ' " ' ' . -■■":. . 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