NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9022, 7 April 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

A bittern has been shot; in Yorkshire. A. skate seven feet in length was landed afcKirkwall. ■ , Work is running night and day in the arsenals of Italy. Ifc is seven hours and a quarter now from London to Paris. ■-..:•' It is said that £9,000,000 are engaged in the American sugar trust. The first time the 100-ton gun was fired at Gibraltar it knocked out ;ite carriage. A performing elephant died from the eflitjcts of the severe weather , at Plymouth. It is estimated that 83,250,000 pounds of East India tea will be available for export) this year. Some of the good people of Lowell wann to have water substituted for wine at the communion table. t Tiger hunters killed 1464 tigers in India last ye. , and tiger hunting tilled about 1000 human beings. Two horses were overwhelmed in a quicksand at Southport, and in a short time entirely disappeared. Recent returns give the population of the Rusisian Empire as 108,787, itt.3. European Russia has 81,725,185. Russia has sent an order to London for t» lot of war balloons. They are to be made to accommodate six men each. .In Jefferson county, N.Y., they have been baptising converts in a pond, with the mercury at 15deg. below zero. Horse distemper appears to be prevailing among the horses in all sections of the country from Maine to Kentucky. Michael Davitt saye that for every year Homo Rule is withheld the Government will have to ewallow a leek of Radical legislation. a Th«> oldest known bearded woman has just died in the Pyrenees. I3he had exhibited herself in the village fairs for sixty years. The punch-bowl has been nearly banished from Washington society. Tea and coffee take the place of the intoxicating draught. A peculiar fish is found in the Japan Sea, which lie so poisonous that it often serves as a means of suicide. It produces sensations similar to those produced by morphia. Henry Harms, a Minnesota farmer, has just awoke from a seven years' sleep. He is wasted almost to a skeleton, and long shaggy hair covers his head and. face. A portrait of the first Napoleon, worked in his own hair, and given by him to a noble Venetian lady in 1809, has lately been purchased in Venice by Prince Napoleon. The stones of Temple Bar, after having been exposed for eleven years, have b&3n built up into a gateway of a brewer's residence. It is now called " Temple Beer." A thunderbolt, which fell at Brixton, having been analysed, was found to consist of 40 per cent, of iron, 40 per cent, of sulphur, and a little lime, nickel, and silica. Comedians with tails are soon to delight) playgoers in America. A troupe cf monkeyactors is being organised. These charming creatures go by such illustrious names as Irving, Bernhardt, Langtry, &c. The Pojpe on Feb. 16 gave an audience to the Scotch pilgrims. The delegation was headed by the Archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, the Archbishop of Glasgow, and the Marquis of Bute. America has ceased to be the great absorbent of diamonds. Its millionaires seem to have got enough, and the country that buys most now is China. Shares in African dietmond mines are almost all at a premium. According to a liquor law passed in France every person who may be condemned twice by the police for open drunkenness will be held incapable of voting, of elective eligibilty and of being named for the jury or any public office. At the Nottingham, England, show of horses fit for military purposes, a Kentucky horse took one of the premiums offered by the Queen, and in the opinion of many of the oldest horsemen ana hunters present, was the b<sst horse exhibited. The United States Consul at Moscow reports that a Russian has invented a process, now in successful operation, for producing iron and steel direct from the ore. The secret of the process is the construction of the furnace, which is inexpensive. The Agricultural Society of France urges the sale of the State railways, the re-estab-lishment of harbour dues and custom duties on cocoons, the maintenance of the tax on foreign and colonial sugars and the withdrawal of France from the payment of sugar bounties. The Empress Eugenie has expended £100,000 on the mausoleum at Farnborough. The building is constructed of Bath and Portland stone, in the French renaissance style, and it is surmounted by a bronze cupola, which in a conspicuous object for miles around. The Crown Priinco is writing much ever}' day, and it is surmised from the immense quantity of documents and works he has consulted bearing upon the campaigns of Koniggratz and Sedan that he is writing a history of the Austrian and the FrancoGerman wars. At Godmanchester, Benjamin Bruce, of Pap worth, was ordered to pay £1 for kissing Priscilla Neath, a "cadet" of the Salvation Army at Godmanchester. Hβ went to the " quarters," asked for a book, and afterwards put his arm round her waist and kissed her. The Turks, who are Prohibitionists, by order of the Koran, are working to abolish saloons kept by the "Christians" in Constantinople. All drinking places within 250 feet from the houses of Turkish worship have been ordered closed and the police are enforcing the decree. The forthcoming Glasgow International Exhibition is to be the largest in the United Kingdom since 1862. The electric light in the grounds will be equal to 1,100,000 candles. The Queen Mary Exhibition, proposed to be held in Edinburgh, will be transferred to Glasgow. The 25th annual exhibition of cage birds has been opened at S3rdenham. The entries numbered 2113, the highest on record. The native birds included a Cornish chough, a grasshopper lark, and a number of nightingales. An American mocking bird attracted much attention. Presiding at the a-nnual dinner of the Birmingham Law Students Society, the Solicitor-General addressed the assembled company on the proposed fusion of the two branches of the legal profession, warmly advocating such an amalgamation of tha Bar with what was known as the inferior branch of the profession. Madame Sarah Bernhardt professes to bo an atheist. At the same she is very super ' stitious. She will very of tenrefuse to act with an actor who is a stranger to herself on the ground of his having an evil eye. She also has a great dread of saffron tint. Madame Patti, too, is very superstitious, and will never sing where there is a cross-eyed conductor. Pope Leo, according to the London Truth, has provided for the distribution of his jubilee gifts after his death. The presents from sovereigns and all the most valuable articles are to form a new museum in the Vatican, except those which are of an ecclesiastical character, and they are to be given to St. Peter's. Everything else is to be distributed among the hospitals of Rome. Her Majesty Queen Kapiolani is said to have returned to her dominions with an unimpaired relish for eating live fish, and scooping up " poi" out of a calabash with her royal hngers, after the manner of her own native land. She says that the London police have more power than the King of Hawaii. They have only to hold up their hands and all the people obey them. A "ghost" which had nightly terrified people in a village on the outskirts of Shrewsbury has been effectually laid. On one Sunday fifty villagers set out with sticks and missiles, and succeeded in effecta capture. The ghost was none other than a farmer. .His captora chastised him severely, and he was only released on hie handing over £5 for the local infirmary by way of compensation for his folly, At the annual ball of the Syndioal Cham ber of Paris Tailors, most of "the men who, by their designs, decide what shall be worn and what shall be regarded as out of fashion, wore, it Is true, tail coats, but they also wore white waistcoats, knee breeches, and black silk stocking*. There were even some who donned the sky-blue tail coat, white eiilk breeches, and blue stockings. A compositor in the London establish, menfc of the Messrs. Cassell, publisher* committed suicide recently. He" left the following nbte, addressed to hte foreman :— " Dear Mr. Shinner: Please excuse my leaving without the usual fortnight's notice, but I nave received a peremptory summons to go to heaven to set the title-page of the Book of Life.—Youre, H. G. S3. Agnew." The jury rendered a verdict* of temporary insanity. ''•