NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8360, 13 September 1890, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Max Muixer says that some of the natives of India need fear no comparison with the best men and women of Europe. The clerical journals in Rome publish a letter from the Pope to Cardinal Lavigerie eulogising the latter's work in Africa. ' The Scotch brain is said to average fifty ounces, the English forty-nine, the German forty-eight, and the French forty-seven. For centuries real wild cattle have existed iu Chartley Park, Staffordshire. One of the bulls was recently captured and sent to the Zoo. A Lynn woman named "Walker gave birth to a male child with double limbsfour arms and hands, and four and feet. c"The tallest schoolgirl in the world" lives at Reidnaun, near Sterzing. She is in her eleventh year, and is about six :feeb high. A sale of antiquities in London included some tablets from Babylon 4000 years old, one being a marriage contract, which' fetched £12. Oxford University has decided, by a vote of 75 against 58, that women may be admitted to the examination of the degree of Bachelor of Medicine. Emperor William of Germany recently delighted the hearts of the officers of his army by issuing a degree allowing them to ride their own horses in races. Newspaper men hold twenty-six seats in the present German Reichstag. Eleven are editors, and the rest describe themselves as journalists or authors. A bill is before the House of Lords to render a widow, whose husband dies intestate, entitled to a larger share of his property than the law at present allows. The Japanese Government has inytituted a college for women, with English professors, and put it under the control of a committee of Englishwomen for six years. Measures are on foot to open female medical colleges next fall in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and a plan of establishing commercial colleges for women in various large cities of the empire is in preparation. The five most populous cities in the world are London, Paris, New York, Berlin, and Vienna. The Chinese cities don't count ; no one knows how many inhabitants they have.

The testing of the gold and silver coins at the Mint, called the " trial of the Pyx," has just taken place. Coins were selected and weighed, the samples representing over £8,000,000. Government documents in Canada are to' follow the English mode of spelling, and not the American. Such words as favour, labour, and honour are in future to be spelt with the " u." The Emperor's prize at the recent National Rifle Contest in Berlin was won by Herr Musch, of Meran, in the Tyrol. It consists of a valuable silver cup, accompanied by a diploma. Dr. Talmage estimate's the wealth of King Solomon, the extensively married man, at 680,000,000 pounds in gold, and 1,028,000,377 pounds in silver, a grand total of §191,528,006,032. In the Kingstown regatta, the 50 miles sailing match for £S0 (£6O for th a first an I £20 for the second) was won by Mr. John Jameson's Iverna, the Thistle being second, Valkyrie third, the Yarana fourth. A West African monarch, King Salifou, was so impressed with the Paris Exhibition that he went home and commenced instituting all kinds of reforms. This so displeased his subjects that they murdered him. A Cairo correspondent announces thab most of the Soudan tribes have revolted against the Mahdi. The Sheikh Senoussi is reported to have completely annihilated the Mahdi's forces and to have occupied El Obeid. Birmingham and London and Liverpool and London arc now brought within speak ing distance by means of the telephone Although 200 miles separate London and Liverpool, the messages are distinctly heard. While Daniel Walker, an Edinburgh septuagenarian, was engaged in removing turf at the top of Craigleith Quarry, ho lost his balance and fell to the bottom of the quarry. When he was picked up life was extinct. The Opinionc has reason to believe that King Humbert's Government have received from the Italian Ambassador in London and the English Ambassador in Rome assurances that England has .'o intention of abandoning her rights in Tunis. The first organised pilgrimage to Canterbury of late years is fixed for the Feast of the Translation of St. Thomas a Becket, and it is expected that a large number of Roman Catholics will journey by rail and road to this ancient centre of religious devotion. R A German paper states that in Lapland an eagle was shot, and " around its neck it had a brass chain, to which a tin box which contained a little tin box was fastened. The box contained a slip of paper, on which was written in Danish, " Caught and set free again in 1792." The Russian Government has decided to construct forthwith another naval port on the shores of the Black Sea, near the mouth of the river Dneister, at Akkennan. Heavy batteries will also be placed at the mouth of this river, and the Dneister is to be dredged for a considerable distance. A letter was read from the Prince of Wales, at the ann; al meeting of the Burial Reform Association, expressing the hope that the present system of burying the dead may soon be exchanged for one more in accordance with the requirements of the age and the sanitary interests of the community. A new departure in London club life is promised. It will boa high-class restaurant club, with an exclusively French cuisine. A feature of the club will be the admission of ladies as guests of the members. The Prince of Wales will join the club, and premises have been secured in Albemarlestreet.

"Ten thousand pounds wanted" is the gist of an appeal addressed to the public by the " London Playing Fields Committee" on behalf of a fund to be raised by voluntary subscription for the provision of more open spaces whereon cricket and footbal may be played by the men and lads of tin

I great city. A Rio de Janeiro telegram states that the draft of the new Brazilian Constitution is copied in great part from that of th< United States. It provides, among othet things, for a president and vice-president two legislative chambers, universal suffrage with certain restrictions, religious freedom and separation of Church and State. When Mr. J. Gould was a struggling young surveyor, with hardly one cent, tr rub against another, he stamped his initials and the date on a copper cent and put it in circulation. The other day Mr. Gould received some pennies in change on a streetcar, and on looking them over he found the coin he had stamped was among them. The result of the inquiry by the Highland Land Court on the Duke of Sutherland's estates in the west of Sutherlandshire is announced. In 84 cases dealt with the old rents paid by the crofters have been held to be fair, the average reduction f ranted hardly amounting to J per cent. a 28 cases rents have been slightly raised. At ten years of age a boy thinks his father knows a great deal at fifteen he knows twice as much ; at thirty he is willing to take his advice ; at forty he begins to think his father knows something, after all ; at fifty he begins to seek his advice, and at sixty, after his father is dead, ho thinks ho was the smartest man that ever lived.— American paper.

That body of amiable enthusiasts who believe in the possibilities of universal disarmament hold their Peace Congress in London this year. Among the subjects to be discussed by the Congress are the religious aspects of the question of peace and war, neutrality, disarmament, national arbitration, and the educational aspects of the question of peace.

Lord Aberdare presided over the annual meeting of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, held on July 17, at 105, Jermyn-street. The report presented and adopted showed that the convictions secured by the society last year numbered 5886, or 450 more than in any previous year, horses, mules, and donkeys being chiefly affected.

Frederick William Kunisch, who murdered and robbed a milkman named Lust, on Christmas eve, and who was found guilty, and his petition to the Kaiser rejected, was taken to the Plotzensee penitentiary, near Berlin, and executed in the courtyard there, by a headsman from Magdeburg, who arrived at Berlin with five assistants. The weapon used was a sword, and the head was severed from the body at a single •broke. ■•' : -' : ' ■'•'■ '-■