NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7644, 22 May 1886, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

ANGaopnoßiA is said to be on the declin* in New York.

One Mississippi gaol contains thirteen prisoners charged with murder. The Kentucky Legislature has passed 4j Bill prohibiting the sale of pistols and bowi4 knives.

Dead horses are quoted in London now at 15 shillings. Last year they were worth £2 or £2 10s.

Baron Rothschild has surprised Londoners by pinning on tlio blue ribbon of total abstinence.

It is said that leprosy has appeared at various places iu Canada We3t, the result of Chinese immigration.

In Greenland there are 7000 Esquimaux converts under the fostering care of the Danish Mission Society.

The net gain in communicants the past 'year was nine times greater in foreign missions than in Christeudom.

On a Duudeee drunkard, being picked up by the police, there were six "food relief" tickets found in his pockets.

Liverpool has no cathedral, but plans have been prepared for one, and the edifies is to be one of the finest in England, The Qiicen has intimated that she will give a cup for competition at the wapia scliaw to be held in Aberdeen in July.

It is reported from Home that the ironclad Italia, on her trial trip ran seventeen knots within the hour, which is very satisfactory.

A New York doctor who died penniless was married three times, and each wife brought him a fortune of between £20,000 and £60,000.

The eminent English physician Sir Henry Thompson, considers fish a particularly suit* able article of diet for persons unable to take much exercise.

The Free Church of Scotland numbers 1035 separate congregations, with a membership of 324,000, aud *221,501 teaoherß and scholars in Sabbath schools.

Young women, harken to this, from the Rev. Samuel Jones :—"I would rather be five hundred old maids shut up in a room by my« self than be the wife of one drunkard."

The statement is made that a statue of the Pharaoh which ruled Egypt during the ten plagues has been found in the desert, where it had been buried for over three thousand yearsA lady in Queen Victoria's service, who made the mistake of wearing a oherry ribbon during a recent term of Court mourning, has been deprived of her position for two months.

The Government of Russia has called & convention of scientists and engineers to take measures to develop the petroleum lields on the Caspian Sea and build up an export trade. This season's crop of oranges at Valencia, Spain, will prove exceptionally good, and the export will be 2,000,000 boxes, representing the almost fabulous quantity of 900,000,000 oranges. A list of the old-fashioned corvettes and gunboats of the British Navy has been pre« pared by Lord Charles Beresford, who proposes their sale or destruction rather than wasting money in repairing them. An interesting bust of Brutus, in white marble, from Rome, recently acquired by the trustees, has just been placed next to tha well-known bust of Julius Caesar in tha Roman Gallery in the British Museum.

A recent careful calculation shows that England owns nearly three times as large t>n extent of colonists as all the rest of Europe together. Her colonies are eighty" five times as big as the mother country.

Tha commemoration of the fourteenth anniversary of Mazzim's death passed off in Rome on March 26 without disturbance. The bust of the celebrated revolutionist in the capital was decorated with garlands.

A Russian convict is said to have survived a punishment of 2000 lashes. As high a number as 4000 laahes is said to have been imposed in some cases, but no convict ever survived the infliction of the punishment.

Filial affection was never more strongly exemplified than in a recent case in Ger« many, where a young man secured a life insurance payable to his mother, who was very poor, and then took poison and died. At the recent marriage at Vienna of tha daughter of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, to the brother of the Queen Regent of Spain, the principal ladies in attendance wore dress-trains from thirteen to nineteen feet long.

An Indiana juror got tired the other night while the jury was out trying to reach a verdict in a Grant county case, 80 he crawled out of a window, went home, and was comfortably in bed when the Sheriff found him.

Switzerland will celebrate, on July 9, the 500fch anniversary of the fatal fight by Lake Sempach, when the men of the Four Cantona utterly routed the Austrian forces, and stow Duke Leopold with most of bis knights and men-at-arms.

The verger of All Saints' Church, Isleworth, had a little surprise one Sunday evening, when he found that a silver almsdish, valued at £50, had been stolen, probably by someone who had attended the afternoon service.

Owing to indisposition, Her Royal Highness the Princess Louise has not been able to complete any work for the Grosvenor Gallery this year. She will, however, contribute a drawing of a head to one of the water-colour exhibitions.

It is said that the only comfortable person at an English court is the prisoner at the bar. The judge has a softer seat, but less room, and the jury has been especially illtreated, one injustice just meeting redresa —the non-payment of the jury. It has cost Canada £525,547 to put down the rebellion. It would have been cheaper to have given the half-breeds their land in the first place, as Gladstone proposes to do by Ireland. It costs less to buy up a rebellion than it does to put it down. It .is stated that many of the leading farmers in the Weild of Kent and a few in the Eastern Division also, have decided not to pay any more extraordinary tithes after the present year. In several instances the collection of these tithes has been suspended. The Rev. John Guttridge, a prominent minister in the United Mothodist Free Church, well known as an eloquent preacher and lecturer, died on March 24 at Manchester. The rev. gentleman, who was sixty-six years of age, bad been in the ministry, nearly half a century.

At Paris it is said that a syndicate for the exportation of French produce will shortly send a commercial mission to Central Africa, to try and open a market there for manufactured goods. Another similar mission will go to Tonquin, Annam, Cochin China, and Cambodia.

The proprietor of a Paris matrimonial agency has been sentenced to two years' imprisonment for swindling, by getting a fee of £5 from his client, and then, after a certain period of negotiation, throwing the case up, on the pretext that the party was not sufficiently good looking.

Several Russian explorations in Central Asia are sanctioned for the coming summer. Among others, Messrs. Ignatieff and Karas* now are to explore the K'ran Tegri mountains, which are little known. The Khan Tegri mountains are at the western end of the Tian Shan, and are full of glaciers.

Canadian fauna seem in so much risk of dying out through injudicious sport and the advance of civilisation, that it is suggested by Toronto naturalists to sot apart one of the islands of Lake Superior for the preservation of the moat important native animals.

An extraordinary case of juvenile suicide is reported to have taken place at the Collega of Bordeaux, where a student, aged seventeen, a member of a rich family, was found dead at his desk. A letter was found by his side, containing the following wordß — "I am tired of life, and have poisoned myself."

At Wolverhampton two bailiffs were fined 20s and costs for forcibly seizing a quantity of bedding on which two patients were lying ill of scarlet fever. The bailiffs were warned of the danger they were inourriug in spreading the infection, but they persisted in taking the bedding to a publichouse, and it waa there sold by auction.

The two great political forces at Niagara ire the hackmeu on the one side and the rest of the citizens on the other. Up till the last election, the hackmen have always been in a majority. Now, however, the citizens have established their supremacy. The immediate effeot of this great political crisia will probably ba a reduction in the excessive fares of the hackmen who drive viators to the Falls.

Professor Virchow, assisted bj; Dr. Woolff, has ascertained beyond all doubt that the poision in mussels is contained in the liver of the mussel, that it is not all of a metallic character, and that it is absolutely neutralised by putting a little ordinary washing soda in the water in which the mussels are boiled. At the same time there can be no doubt) that many people cannot safely touch ahelli fish at allt