NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9130, 11 August 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

There are about three thousand thro© hundred lighthouses in the world. The Italian Chamber of Deputies has agreed to abolish capital punishment. Russian newspapers are forbidden by law. to use exclamation points in their articles. At least thirty of the fifty-one metals with which we are acquainted exist in the sun.

" Shakspere" is being translated into Chinese for the benefit of the young Imperial Princes. Fifty thousand tons of soot are taken annually from the chimneys of London. It is used for fertilising. Steam occupies rather more than seventeen hundred times the space of the ivato from which it is produced. Recent statistics show that Germany has a surplus of 1,000,000 women. War is the last thing Germany should seek. There are thirty-six thousands churches and chapels in England and Wales, of which the Church of England owns 14,500. An alligator, claimed to be fourteen feet long, was killed at Dade city, Fla. Within him was found an alligator six feet long. A mass of copper weighing about twenty tons lias been found at Copper Falls, Mich., and is being cut up into merchantable-sized chunks.

The total contributions to the various schemes of the Church of Scotland for the year 1887 amounted to £151,805, an increase on the previous year of £9293. It is understood that the delay in issuing the new magazine rifle for trial to the troops is owing to a divergence of opinion at the War Olliee as to the bullet that should be used.

Pope Leo has ordered that the walls around the Vatican Palace be heightened. High buildings have been erected in the neighbourhood which overlook the garden in which the Pope takes his daily walk. It is estimated that fifty persons have committed suicide at Monte Carlo during the past three months, while the receipts of the established games at that place were during the same lime largely increased. A special mission has been started in London to provide poor applicants with spectacles carefully suited to their eyesight. Printers, seamstresses, tailors, and shoemaker;; are especially intended to be benefited.

A reader of the Boston Globe reports that the word " dude" is to be found in the dictionary of the Swahili language, spoken by Pzangibas negroes—that the plural is "mastude," and tho word itself probably older than the hills.

Professor Seeley has joined in the ranks of the alarmists. In an article on the Three Eighty-Eights," published in Good Words for June, he points out that as England was invaded in ].jSB and 168$, so she may be invaded in ISSB. The more democratic the House of Commons becomes, says the London Standard, the greater number it includes of representative sporting men. Rowers, cricketers, racing, and hunting men are all crowding in in ever greater crowds.

The price of quinine has been so low for the last three or four years that large plantations of the cinchona tree have been uprooted in Ceylon, and the tea plant is substituted. Ceylon produces a very large share of all the ba:k that is marketed.

Of the 71 students in Didsbury Wesleyan Colleee, 67 are total abstainers : at Hansworth, out of 52, all save the two are of the same mind; while at Headingley and Richmo ■I, which have 103 students, there is no division whatever in the camp. Despite the late fiat of Queen Victoria that she will not receive any American women unaccompanied by their husbands, it is said there never were so many " prominent society" women leaving New York without their husbands as there are this summer.

Catherine Crowell, of Lancaster, S.C., who married at the age of 16 years, died a few days o<zed 99, leaving- 16 children, most of whom followed her early marriage example. She left 1")(! grandchildren and other descendants, including six great-great greatgrandchildren, to the total number of 422. M. Paul Leroy-Beaulic-u gives figures snowing the quantity of tobacco consumed in the different countries of Europe. The rate per 100 inhabitants is, according to him, as follows : —Spain, 110 pounds ; Italy, 128 pounds ; Great Britain, 138 pounds ; Russia, 182 pounds ; Denmark, '224 pounds ; Norway, 229 pounds ; Austria, 273 pounds. Colorado is surprised at its growing importance as an agricultural state. The lirst crop report ever published of the condition of the state shows the available supply of the principal crops as follows : — Wheat, 4,250,000 bushles ; corn, 6,760,000 bushels; potatoes, 10,000,000 bushels. Grass is splendid and live stock in good condition.

At a meeting of the General Assembly of the Irish Presbyterian Church, Rev. J. Lind, the newly-appointed Moderator, said the Presbyterian Church saw in ho adoption of Mr. Gladstone's policy degradation of the country, secularisation of the Sabbath, handing over education to the Romish hierarchy, and their possible expulsion from a large part "of Ireland. Here are some curious calculations. Last) year's drink bill amounted to £124,952,680. Weight of the amount in sovereigns, 97S tons. Time to count it, at the rate of one sovereign per second, 3 years 11 months 21 days. The height of a pillar if the sovereigns were placed face to face, 116 miles. The length of a chain if the sovereigns were placed edge to edge, 1725 miles.

A despatch from Bridgeport, Connecticut, says:—Samuel Stevens, a milk dealer residing in the adjoining town of Monroe, on going to his barn found that the entire flooring of his cow stables had given way during the night, and precipitated his ten cows into the opening. Nothing remained but the stanchions to which his stock were fastened, and from these hung ten dead cows.

The news comes from Odessa that a caravan, including several wealthy Russian tourists, was lately captured by brigands about -00 kilometres from Aleppo. One of the captured tourists is the rich Count; Strognoff. son of the Grand Duchess MarieHis brother-in-law. Prince TcherbatoiT, and the hitter's wife have also been taken. It is expected that a very heavy ransom will have to be paid for the release of these captivcs. The present that Pope Leo XIII. is about) to give to the Princess of Brazil is an exquisite work of art. It is a golden rose of rare beauty, and very elegantly mounted. The inscription on the stand refers to the abolition of slavery in the Empire, slavery having always found its chief opponent in Christianity. The first emancipationist, properly so called, was long before Benezet's time and Dillwyn's. Pope Alexander was the first.

A discovery of very interesting Saxon remains has recently been made at the back of St. John's College, Cambridge. During some preparations that were carried on for the approaching cricket season several skeletons were dug up at no greater depth than two or three feet from the surface. On the finger of one of the skeletons, that) of a woman of apparently not more than 25 years of age, there was a silver ring, and some amber beads lay beside the bones Juliane Metz, who was the accomplice a Von Scheurer in the great frauds o: English insurance companies, was tried r& cently in Vienna. She was sentenced to four years' penal servitude ; and it was ordered that the money found in her possession, nearly £14,000, should be restored to the prosecutors. Dr. Castelnau and M. Martinet were found "Guilty," the former being sentenced to eight, and the latter, as an accomplice of Dr. Castelnau, to five years'imprisonment. According to news from the west coasfj of Africa, there have been some human sacrifices in consequence of the death of a son of the King of Grand Jack. Selected, victims were obliged to drink " sass water," a poisonous liquor, and were then pitched into the surf on the seashore. When the rollers dashed them ashore men, women, and children cut. at them with knives until they were dead. The chief of the tribe flies the British flag, and the captain of a trading vessel remonstrated with him in vain.

French geologists estimate that the gradual sinking of the soil of Brittany, Normandy, Artois, Belgium, and Holland is not less than seven feet a century. At this rate itis calculated that in about ten centuries all the Channel ports will be destroyed, and Paris itself will have become a maritime city. In another ten centuries it is predicted that the French capital itself will have become entirely submerged, excepting, perhaps, that the tops of the Pantheon, of the Arc de Triomphe, and other suet* monuments may he discernible at low wat" by the people who will then be liv Tig,