NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9124, 4 August 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Russian Lapland is about to be thoroughly explored. China is expected to resist any further English influence in Thibet. House property in London has been going down in value for some years past. Lord Rosebery is about to import into England a team of American trotting horses.

It is believed the trustees will this year assent to the opening of the British Museum on Sundays. Six men named Wolf have petitioned the New York Legislature this season for a change of name. The pin factories of England, France, Holland, and Germany are said to turn out 77,000,000 pins daily. The mercury reached 96° in the shade at New York. There were on June 24 a number of cases of sunstroke.

Myriads of grasshoppers have appeared if many parts of Southern Indiana and are de vouring all vegetation as they go. Armstrong, the famous English gunmaker has bought the secret of the manufacture of the French explosive, m^lenite. The Inspector of Butcheries in Paris reports that the consumption of horse flesh has increased to an extraordinary extent. The English farmers have turned against the sparrows as a pest to agriculture, and are offering rewards for their destruction. The smallest people of the world are the Ahkas of South Africa. The average height of both sexes is four feet five a/,id a-half inches.

Leprosy is said to be spreading at a rapid rate in Russia. The cause is fc'ae way the people live. They neglect the laws of sanitation.

Half-and-half of soda arid milk is the drink now in vogue in London. They say it was introduced by John Ruskin, who vouches for its being wholesome for the stomach.

Never lay your heart at a woman's feet. Hold it up proud and high and make her climb for it. She will like it all the better when she gets it. Still another victim of tobacco. He is a Chicagoan, aged thirty-one, and has smoked an average of one pound per week for many years. His reasoning powers are completely shattered.

The light &k St. Catherine's, the most southerly poit.it on the Isle of Wight, is now the most powerful electric light in the world, and r/he fog signal is a steam horn of great power. The number of immigrants who arrived at Castle Garden in May of this year was 73,770. The number for the first five months this year is 187,13.9, against 166,090 in the same time last year. The Yale Faculty has just, passed a law which forbids absolutely the use of Intoxicating liqueur in any shape whatsoever in any of the societies or organisations of the student of the university. Ten French students are to measure sword's with ten students of a German society on neutral ground in Switzerland. The origin of the trouble was insults to French tourists in Baden.

A St. Louis hotel clerk claims to have made the discovery that tall men sleep later in the morning than short men, and that persons of a dark complexion invariably re* quire more rest than blondes. The Royal library at Monaco, which is one of the finest in the world, has been overhauled during the last three years, and ib is found to contain upwards of 750,000 volumes and 24,000 manuscripts. The military commander at Moscow has directed that special attention be paid during the summer to cavalry manoeuvres, principally in the shape of forced marches of large bodies over long distances. The residence of Mr. C. Rayner, Moor Crescent, Hunslet, near Leeds, was broken into early one Sunday morning. The thieves left behind a letter saying : " You are very hard to wake in this house. Good-bye." It is singular that in the regular semiannual black list just published by the American railroad officials of those who loan or sell their passes, no names appear but those of clergymen, judges, and legislators. English child-life is said to wither in the delta of the Ganges, one of the malarial tracts of India. There the British race cannot reproduce itself, if unmixed with Indian blood, beyond the third generation. The jury sympathised with Miss Sarah Chellis, aged 40, a school teacher at Watertown, N. 1., who sued a rich farmer of 73 years for breach of promise of marriage, and awarded her 8000dols. for blighted affections.

Mme. Albani recently sang " Home, ! Sweet Home," at the inauguration of the exhibition for the benefit of the London Home for Incurables in such a way that a lady present at once wrote her cheque for £1000 for the charity. In replying to a correspondent, Mr. Gladstone says that he in no way shares the alarms created in some minds by the project of a Channel tunnel, which, indeed, appeared to him to redound but little to the honour of the country. A gigantic ancient well has been found in the middle of the place of St. Mark Venice. It was evidently sunk in the fifteenth century, and is choked up by immense masses of sand, which have drifted in from the sand heaps on the Lido. Bishop Clifford, of Clifton, England, is to be among the next batch of Cardinals, He is of very ancient family and closely related to the Catholic aristocracy, and would fill the place that Cardinal Howard has lost) through his recent attack of insanity. Many experiments in burning brick with oil in place of wood are being made by manufacturers of brick along the Hudson River. If the new method proves to be practical, it is estimated that there will be a saving of 40 per cent, effected. The main difficulty is in the " drying-ofi - " process. Mrs. Mary Rock, 70 years old, of West Eighteenth-street, New York, while kneel* ing at prayer in her room on the top floor, was attacked and bitten in the ankle by a pet cat. The cat had to be beaten off by her daughter. Erysipelas soon set in, and the old lady was dead in a few days. The United States Government has adver tised for 5000 American white marble headstones. Congress, on March 30, made an appropriation of £4000 to pay for them. The headstones will be used for the unmarked graves of Union soldiers, sailors, and marines in various parts of the country. The present crown of Great Britain was constructed in 1838, with jewels taken from the old crowns, and others furnished by command of the Queen. It contains four large pear-shaped pearls, 273 small pearls, J47 table diamonds, 1273 rose diamonds, 1363 brilliant diamonds, 5 rubies, 11 emeralds and 17 sapphires. A triumph for vegetarians. Cholera rages on all sides of a Bengalese tribethe Oswals of Marwar. But none of them has ever taken the disease. They attribute this immunity to their frugal habits. They never touch animal food nor spirituous liquors, they dine early, and sup only on milk and fruit. Wherever an Oswal goes, he never breaks these rules.

Nero, says a South Carolina paper, an old Jonesboro negro, who belonged in slavery times to the Koonee family, of Henry County, asserts that he is IOS years old, has been married nine times, and is the father of 117 children. He has been preaching eighty-six years, still has all his senses, and is now about as active a3 a boy. His last wife is living, and is sixty-seven years old.

The Cambridge Historical Tripos list, recently published, contains the names of two men in Class I.—namely, Wyatt Da vies. Trinity; and Corbett, King's; whilst four women have obtained a First Class—namely, E. M. Leonard, Girton (who comes after Corbett)'; C. A. Simmons, Newnham ; E. F. Bad ham, Newnham; and A. Law, Girton. Eleven men and two women have passed in Class 11., and 15 men and two women in Class 111.

A great sensation has been created in Russia by the murder of Lady MiklouchoMaclay— aunt of the late New Guinea explorer—and her maid. The crime was committed ■at the lady's residence, the murderers at the same time making off with a sum of money amountingto 15,000 roubles. Two men, one of whom is the son of a female servant formerly employed by Lady Maclay, have been arrested as the murderers. The money has not, however, been recovered.

A native lad while amusing himself by throwing fruit into the tigers' cages at the Zoological Gardens, Lahore, a few days ago, approached too near, with the result) that trie tiger caught bis arm in its mouth, tearing the flesh from the bone. Some soldiers who chanced to be near, observing what had occurred, rushed up to the cage, and, by belabouring the tiger on the head with thfeif sticks, induced it to let go its hold of its victim's arm, not, however, nnt; the unfortunate lad had swooned away