GENERAL NEWS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8354, 6 September 1890, Page 2 (Supplement)

GENERAL NEWS.

THE DESCENDANTS OF THE HITTWM. 1 After a sojourn of many months among tho Druses of Lebanon, tho Rev. Haskott Smith, M.A., formerly of Cfttnberwell, is (the Daily Telegraph says) about to return with an important discovery made under romantic circumstances concerning that mysterious people who are supposed to be lineal descendants of the Hittites. It appears that Mr. Smith was admitted to the most secret? intimacy with tho Druses through havingsaved the life of a popular young man by sucking the venom of a deadly snake-bito from his body. He was initiated into a number of mysterious rites hitherto unknown to any foreigner, and among these the natives startled him as a Freemason by passing tho most characteristic of Masonic signs, from all which this adventurous clergyman augurs that the Druses are none other than the rural branch of tho great Phoenician race whose ancestors supplied the Lebanon cedars to the building of King Solomon's Temple. THE LIABILITY OF HOTEL PROPRIETORS. In the Queen's Bench Division, Baron Pollock and a special jury had beforo them the case of Carey v. Long's Hotel (Limited). The plaintiffs, Mr. and Mrs. Astor Carey, Americans, sued the proprietors of Long's Hotel, in New Bond-street, to recover £580, the value of some bank-notes and jewellery which were stolen while they were staying at the defendant's hotel during their honeymoon. The defence was that) the plaintiffs had not exercised ordinary care, as tho property was taken from a drawer in a wardrobe which was not locked. This, however, was said to be due to the fact that there was no key, but this was denied Tho defendants also placed eliance on the fact that the door of the bedroom was not locked, but it was said it was left open so that the waiter might attend to a tire. The defendants also said tha plaintiffs ought to have placed the goods with the manager, and that they allowed others to become aware that they had a quantity of jewellery with them. The jury returned a verdict for t.ie plaintiffs for £586. Judgment was given accordingly. Til HUMAN OSTRICH. Mr. M'Kenna, of New York, who is professionally known as the " Human Ostrich," is a strange being who has a taste for eating all sorts of queer things. Ho has exhibited himself in the various museums of New York f-r a number of years, and his picture generally appears on the show bill as an ostrich with a human face. That's a little exaggeration of the management, for M'Kenna when seen inside is just the same as every other human being—that is, he seems so as viewed exteriorally. M'Kenna one day in the space of half an hour actually swallowed six tenpenny nails, a handful of assorted carpet tacks, a good-sized pocketknife, a piece of a fork, prongs and all, four frogs, and then chewed up a glass tumbler and swallowed that. He has been at this strange business for about three years, and appears unusually healthy. It is true he is not as well built as some male members of society, and in fact is so thin that lie would give the living skeleton a hard rub for honours, but this is due, he says, to carrying so much weight around. DECK-LOADING. Everyone by this time knows that deckloading and the absence of water-tight compartments are fertile causes of maratima disaster. Wo are glad to hear that Mr. Plimsoll has introduc 1 a Bill to make deckloading in winter u- .vful, and to empower the Board of Trade to make regulations as to water-tight bulkheads in the construction of iron vessels, registered as British ships. With the Bill he prints some " remarks" showing how the former legislation on these matters was clandestinely repealed without the consent or knowledge of Parliament. A PRESCKIBER'S LAPSUS PEN'N'.E. A medical man has just been fined by a Berlin court for a serious slip of the pen in a prescription. A lady having consulted him for night sweats, he proscribed atropine pills, each one containing "06 gramme (about a grain), instead of '006 gramme (about the tenth of a grain). The prescription was taken to a druggist, not to ail Apothcker (or pharmacist), and the assistant who dispensed it did not detect the evident ; slip of the pen ; the consequence was that? the lady took one of the pills and suffered severely from its toxic action, for which she was treated by the prescriber for a couple of days. The husband summoned both tho medical attendant and the druggist, the result being that the former was fined £25 and the latter £10. COUNSELS' ELOQUENCE. Looking through Mr. Justice Stephen's Digest of the Criminal Law, wo were struck by a passage which shows at what a prosaic pass we have arrived. He refers to the fact that in defending prisoners counsel never become eloquent. This must surely be since the day of the late Mr. Ribton. But, says the author, " It is impossible to be eloquent) in the sense of appoaling to the feelings without more or less falsehood." Can this possibly be true? We doubt it extremely. " And an unsuccessful attempt at passionate eloquence is of all things the most contemptible and ludicrous, besides being usually vulgar;" which means, we suppose, " Never attempt to be eloquent, never let passion enter into your eloquence, because, if you fail, you will become contemptible and ludicrous, and possibly vulgar." Mr. Justice Stephen would reduce everything to a code, and would limit eloquence at the Bar to a tabular statement. This is the result of the " critical temper of the age."— Law Times. A STRANGE APOLORY FOR LITERARY PIRACY. Perhaps the coolest of all the apologists for literary piracy in America is a writer in a Milwaukee paper, who considers that the attempt to create sympathy for the English publishers of the " Encyclopaedia Bri tannica," because an American publisho happens to have appropriated a work it which they have invested a million o dollars, is absurd. The probability, says this expounder of the ethics of publishing, "is that before Messrs. Black went into their enterprise they calculated all the chances. If they miscalculated, that is their affair." This, it has been well observed, resembles the "Bedouin robber's argument"—" He knew the kind of place the desert is ; if he did not like beinc robbecl, why did ho travel in it ?" CUCUMBERS AS FOOD. Many people are under the impressiof that cucumber is very indigestible; anf when they eat it they do so under protest, and with apprehensions of possibly dirt consequences. How this delusion can have arisen it is difficult to say, unless it be that the cucumber is often eaten with salmon and other indigestible table friends. It is not the cucumber, however, but the salmon, that sits so heavily upon out stomach's throne. Cucumber, in fact, is ■very digestible when eaten properly. It cannot, indeed, be otherwise when it is remembered that it consists mainly of water ; and that those parts which are nob water are almost exclusively cells of a very rapid growth. In eating cucumber it is well to cut it into thin slices, and to masticate them thoroughly. Even the vinegar and the pepper that are so often added to it are or service to digestion if not taken in excess, The cucumber, as everyone knows, belongs *■-0 the melon tribe ; but in our somewhatcold country it does not grow to very largo size, and therefore it is firmer and looks less digestible than its congener, the melon.— Hospital. AN IMPEACHMENT OF STANLEY. Mr. John Laidler, a Newcastle workman, on returning a ticket which had been sen' him to attend the presentation of the freedom of Newcastle to Mr. Stanley, gives the following reasons for so doing Mr. Stanley has proved by his own writings ana speeches that he wishes to bo the annexor and subjector of native African races. His explorations have resembled more the marches of a brigand chief than the peaceful marches of his predecessors, and have carried with them slavery, misery, degradation, and death. If we look to the Emm Pasha expedition we find Mr. Stanley in alliance with the slave trader Tippoo Tib ana the Manyenos. Ho writes: —"The abundance found by us will never be found again, for the Arabs have followed my track by hundreds, and destroyed villages and plantations, and what the Arabs spared the elephant herds completed." Mr. Stanley has first broken the spirit of the native! with the deadly fire of his breechloaders, and they have fallen an easy prey to t e Arabs, who have followed closely on mheels. Finally, if his ultimate aim is successful, what do we see but an extension o shoddy commercialism, including the improvement of the savages off the face of n earth, the Martini-Henry, Gatling guns, » n b whisky bottle, and the worst diseases ttt» our civilisation breeds.