NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8610, 4 July 1891, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The coffee palaces of Melbourne are said to be the finest in the world. The next Presidential election will occm? on Tuesday, November 8,1892. The quaint costume of the Bluecoat boys, says Truth, if! to be abolished. A Piccadilly jeweller displays for eale a necklace the price of which is £7500. According to an eminent doctor, whistling is frequently productive of wrinkles. It is estimated that Ceylon will export quite 60,000,0001b of tea during 1891, theoub. put for the two months of January and Feb* ruary having been 10,750,0001b. Until about tho end of the firefc quarter of the seventeenth century England supplied the North American colonies with most of the wheat they required. The Princess of Metternich has taken the initiative in an exhibition of objects of trades, industries, and souvenirs relating to theatres and mußic. The exhibition will be held at Vienna. According to Professor Grandeau, the surface of the earth consists of 33,600,000,000 acres, and on these there is a population ttl 1,429,000,000 persons. This is about 23$ acres to each person. An American stamp, issued at Brattle* borough in 1846, has just been sold by Mr. J. W. Palmer, of 281, Strand, for tfae extraordinary sum of £250. The original price of the stamp was 5 cents. It has transpired that at the marriage recently of Lady Cecilia Howard the clergyman purposely omitted from the service the words "obey him, bride having, ib it said, declined to pledge herself to obey her husband. Nearly one million enumerators were employed in taking the Indian census. It has been said that this simple fact brings home to the imagination the vast population of Hindostan even more directly than the estimated totals. From a report presented at the late Evangelical Alliance Conference, it appears thato the New Testament is now read in all the primary state schools- in Greece, and its introduction is causing a wide and general demand for it. Every town in England whose name- consists wholly or in part of cester, caster, or Chester (derived from Latin castra, a camp] marks the site of one of those wonderful entrenched camps for which the Roman armies were famous. The Earl of Zetland has built) and fitted up at his own expense a chapel and readingroom at Grangemouth, for the nee or British and foreign seamen who come to the port, the town of Grangemouth being his lordship's property. Ex-King Milan has consented not) to visit Ser via during the minority of his son on condition that his ex-subjects pay him ' £40,000 a year and prevent the publication by Queen Natalie of memoirs in which Jam figures to a disadvantage. The Sultan of Turkey is said to bo imbued with the superstition concerning cross-eyed people. He had a man in. his suite afflcted with an obliquity of vision in one eye, and, as the courier was too useful to discharge, the eye was extirpated. In a speech at the Marine Academy at Kiel, Kaiser William said the navy would exorcise the chief offensive p&rb in the next) war, and should endeavour to annihilate the enemy by a grand coup, its duties in this respect resembling bhose of the cavalry ashore. The late Mr. Tapling had a collection of stamps, the value of which was estimated at £30,000. A few months ago Mr. Tapling expressed his intention of bequeathing the collection to the British Museum, an<3 there is reason to believe that his intention was carried out.

The marriaee-rate was rising in 1890, according to tHe returns. In England the number of marriages was 222,688, of births 872,515, and of deaths 564,24.8. There were 443,689 males, and 428,876 females born, and the deaths were, of raalijs 291,633, aad of females 272,615^ The value of the minerals produced in the United Kingdom during 1889 was :— Coals, £56,175,426; iron, £20,390,918 ; copper, £49,948 ; lead, £464,342 ; tin, £860,342 j sine, £192,145 ; silver extracted from lead, £54,453 ; various, including value of gold, £30,370; t0fca1,^£78,217,944.

The Spanish Government hug introduced nto the Senate a Bill prohibiting Sunday labour by minors under 18 years of age in industrial establishments, guaranteeing Sunday rest to adults who de-sire it, and prohibiting Sunday labour in official departments and upon public works. Manchester will expend £3,000,000 sterling in a new water supply. Birmingham is to be supplied with water from Wales at) a cost of £4,000,000. The water at present supplied is very hard, and under the new system the town people, ib ia estimated, will save £35,000 a year in soap alone. Mr. Goschen, in his Budget, estimated the revenue for the year at £90,430,000, and the expenditure at £88,444,000. In Mr. Gladstone's first Budget presented Id 1853, the estimated income was £52,990,000, "* and the expenditure £52,183,000, the national income having gone up £37,000,000. Dr. Lehner, of Augsburg, is said to have solved the problem of making artiiicial silk. He declares that it costs ouly onefourth as much as natural silk ; that, ite elasticity, lustre, and feeling to the touch are at lea.st equal to those of the latter, but that its strength is only two-thirds as great. Strong measures are being taken in Formosa against She bandits, robbers, and pirates in the island. They are summarily executed when caught in the act. Three of them were decapitated the other day ; one bandit, after his head was severed, leaped up and stood upright for a few seconds before falling again to the ground. In some of the Prohibition States oi America, it is said, thousands of people have taken to drinking essence of ginger, a drug alleged to bo made by allowing pure alcohol to filter through powdered ginger, the result bbing a fluid with 92 per cent, of pure alcohol, or about twice the strength of proof whisky. Sir. J. Crichton Browne, lecturing on " Brain Rust," at Newcastle, said he knew no surer method of producing premuture senile decay than for a man of active habits to retire and do nothing when just past the zt-nith of life ; and he did not know a eurer way of enjoying green old ago than to keep on working to the close. Prosperity is consistent with intense worldliness, intense selfishness, intense hardness of heart; while the grand features of human character — self-sacrifice, disregard of pleasure, patriotism, love ol knowledge, devotion to any great and good cause—these have no tendency to bring men what is called fortune.—Froude.

The postal authorities are very well V satisfied with the success which has attended the establishment of tho London," Paris Telephone. To show how satisfactorily it works, a stockbroker in London sent a message of 300 words within tbe space of three minutes, the time allowed <«»•*; user of the telephone for the fee of Bs. ' '■■>-k The American Ordnance officials are now, : - convinced that ib is only a question of a •; few months before the army and navy willbe able to adopt the now standard smoke-■ less powder which has no odour, gives a T: progressive rate of burning, is of uniform ■"-.] action, does not foul the weapon, _ and issupposed to have good keeping qualities. A novel feature was introduced at a ball 3 given three weeks ago in Paris by M. and : ; Mme. Georges Hachette. On one of bkt upper floors of tho spacious hotel a photo ;< graphic studio was installed, and than each of the fair guests who felt so disposed was taken by electric light, and received her portrait as a souvenir of the occasion. ■ The Cape of Good Hope railway system ; consists of 1608 miles of line, 800 of wnicb have been built during the last, decade These lines have cost £14,250,000 sterling, or not quite £9000 a ni%. They earn £1,894,000 per annum, and are worked aeg| a cost of £1,100,000. The interest -cngl capital cost is £555,595, and the system shows, therefore, a clear annual profit of i £249,183. Ten years ago there was a loss of £223,065. , - Mr. Justice Hawkins has made the ; following statement with regard to baccarat playing:— Ib is a game of cards. Ib is a game of chance, and though, as in other things, experience , and judgment) may make one player or bankor more successful than another, itwould be a perversion of words to say ,tha&J| it was in any sense a game of mere sfcuiIb is, therefore, in my opinion, an unlawful , game within the weaning of thp;act. ;