NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9184, 13 October 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Archbishop Croke has sent £50 toward!^, the Parnell Defence Fund. j The Paris census nhows 6915 Americans.' 14,702 English, and 35,708 Germans. ! A gold ring was found in the etonmch <>£• a grilse caught in the Nith the other day. It has been officially announced in Brussels that the forces of the Congo State,' have again taken possession of the Stanley , Fall station. General Legitiine has been elected Pre-1 sidenfc of Hayti. General Salomon, the late President, has left the island on board H.M.S. Canada. Paris is s.iid to have a statue of Shaks* pere. It is by Fournier, and will stand ab '• the angle formed by the Avenue de Mesoine ; and the Boulevard Haussmarin. A dog was sent over Niagara rapids In a cask recently. The passage was made in fourteen minutes. The dog, although a ■ little short of breath, was unharmed. Mr. Kilpatrick has sold his famous Clydesdale colt, Prince of Albion, to Mr. Gilmour, ■ of Montrave, for JCoOOO, which is by far the • highest price ever paid for a draught horae. A Congress of Florists is now in session ' in this city. It is reported at one of their i meetings that as many as 3(J,000 rosebuds ' are sold in New York every day in the season. It is said tlist between three and four thousand pounds of caffeine are annually made in Germany frpm damaged tea which has been rejected by the British Customhouses. The Anglican Bishop of Michigan, who had been visiting England in connection with the Pan-Anglican Conference at Lambeth, died ab the Langham Hotel on August 21. Russian kerosene is now being imported into Japan. A cargo of 131,000 poods has just arrived there. The people no doubt rejoice. The price of the American article at once fell 5 cents per box. At an inquest held at Murton Colliery, Durham, lately, it transpired that while tho dead body of a child lay in a room awaiting , the inquest, two cats got into the apartment, and had eaten the child's face. A steam-tug left the Mersey a few days , ago for Greenock for the purpose of towing the Great Eastern round to Liverpool, where it is intended to beach her on the shore at Tranmere, and to break her up. The Japanese Government have decided to expend £10,000,000 sterling during the> next five years in the purchase of ironclads. With this sum it is estimated that 15 iron-. clads and 30 torpedo boats can be obtained. At the general meeting of Guinness* Brewery company, Sir E. C. Guinness: presiding, the report, which recommended a dividend of 8 per cent, making, with the interim dividend, 15 per cent, for the year, was adopted. Three German officers have during the present year been killed in riding at horse races in the neighbourhood of Berlin, Another accident under similar circumr stances occurred the other day to an officer, and he was seriously injured. At a meeting of the council of the Balloon Society, held at St. James' Hall, London, Captain Campbell in the chair, Dr. Hastings promised to give a prize of 100 guineas for the most perfect method of solidifying gas so as to enable an aeronaut to dispense with. I ballast. The Rev. Col we] I Price, a coloured Methodist minister of Kansas City, aged r>o, has just married Mrs. Wylie Bell, aged 70. I This is Mrs. Bell's fourth matrimonial venture, and she wore the wedding dress that was given her 50 years ago for her first marriage. The Kentish Observer has received reports from America respecting the hop crops in the States, which show that the hot weather is having rather an injurious effect on the plants, and that the genera) estimates of the crop are from one-third to one-half less than last year. McVittie's famous 102 has been beaten— and that bya Saxon, Colour-Sergeant Moore, of Reading. Shooting under conditions the same as those governing the first stage of the Queen's, he made 103 out of a possible 105, finishing up with 17 bull's-eyes. The ranges were.'JOO, 500, and 600. Timber rafts on the Rhine are often fully as large and valuable as the monster American log-raft. Last month a raft went down the Rhine from Mayence to Holland, which was 725fb longr and 170 ft broad. It carried a crew of 120 liands, housed in some dozen huts along the raft, and the timber was worth £20,000. A Russian peasant, named Lewotshkohas, writes a correspondent, discovered beneath the ruins of a castle near the village of Starogorotho, in the governmental districb of Tschernigov, a hidden treasure of gold dating from the timo of the Grand Duke: Vladimir, and worth more than roubles. The man is to receive a reward oi 6,000,000 roubles. Some consternation has been created , amongst the riverside population in the vicinity of Hamburg by the news that aa many as 13 crocodiles were enabled, through an oversight, to escape from on board a steamer just returned from Africa, whence they had been brought for sale to various C ontinental zoological gardens. These formidable reptiles are now all in the River Elbe. M. Maranhas—a French authority—states that in examining the history of three thousand criminals undergoing sentences of various lengths, he found that of the vagabonds and beggars 79 per cent, were confirmed drunkards ; of assassins and incendiaries 50 to 57 per cent. ; of thieves and swindlers 71 per cent; and of those convicted of violence to the person 88 per cent. It seems that Mr. Plimsoll still interests himself in the question of overloading. He has, we hear, just set off on a trip to the North Cape in one of Messrs. Wilson's steamships, the Domino. Mr. Plimsoll's object is to inquire into the truth of the allegation that, as the result of the adoption of the English load-line, the carrying trade in timber has been to a large extent transferred to Norwegian bottoms. Hasty persons are calculatingthatbecause the Australians get eighty per cent, of the gate money taken in their matches, these cricket tours are very remunerative. As a matter of fact, this has never been the case. The most money got by any colonial team went to the eleven known as " Murdoch's," , but even then £830 was the total sum made by each member of the eleven, and off thab there were heavy expenses to pay. It is said that General Sheridan's death has left his widow and family in very moderate circumstances. Mrs. Sheridan has not sufficient income to live in the house inWashington which was presented to the General by his Chicago admirers. Congress has been asked to allow her a pension of £1000, a similar pension to that given to the widow of General Grant. It is probable that this Bill will be passed before Congress adjourns Three ladies and two gentlemen had a narrow escape from drowning &b Flamborough Head. Ib appears bhab they were aboub to explore, in a boat, the "Smuggler's Cave," when a heavy wave threw their boat against a rock. They sprang upon the rock to avoid being thrown into the water, and the boat immediately drifted, away. The adventurers were, after a time, rescued, amid a scene of much excitement, by being drawn up the cliff with ropes. The latest wrinkle in American society is to send divorce congratulations. This is indeed a new departure, and the custom, though prevalent in Chicago, is only now beginning to form at Newport, though one might think there had been opportunity sufficient to launch such a custom for some seasons past. A certain beautiful and wealthy young wife, now in Newport, has, says a correspondent, been the recipient of such congratulatory missives for the pasb few days. In prosecuting the publishers of translations of Zola's novels, England has been, forestalled in America. The sellers of Zola have been arrested by wholesale in Tennessee, and are now under trial as purveyors of indecent literature. This news reached New York, says the Critic, on the same day on which ib was heard thab M. Zola had been made a Knight of the Legion of Honour. The coincidence aptly illustrates the rival views thab are taken of M. Zola's work. An Englishman named Greenwood has met his death under most remarkable circumstances. He made a bet that he would stay under water longer than anybody in Hereford, without being drowned. He swam out into the river and disappeared, while his friends on the banks held their watches to time him. When he had beaten the record they became alarmed, and went after him, and dragged out his lifeless body. He had won the wager in one sense, for the doctors decided thab he had nob been actually drowned, bub that death had resulted from the sudden immersion after a heavy meal.