NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 9040, 19 November 1892, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Vesuvius is reported active. . ' Proposals are afoot for a railway over the, Simplon. * , The children of the German court are learning to dance tho minuet. A violent form of influenza has. been added to the other miseries of Russia.

The Spanish Government proposes a law to punish dynamite outrages with death. The movement in France in favour of athletic sports is assuming tangible shape. Salvation Army Booth's matrimonial bureau scheme finds no favour in England. " Peter's pence" is said to be increasing again, much to the gratification of thai Pope. Vienna is -in the throes of a fresh lot of what are called "aristocratic court scandals."

Bavarians now employ the electric-light to capture a moth that is destructive to the forests. ,

A waterspout ab Trieste lifted an omnibus into the air and overturned it, injuring seven passengers. . An American lady is said to have shob herself ab Monaco after losing £50,000 at the gaming tables. The thirty-fifth anniversary of the death of Auguste Comto was commemorated in Paris on September 5. The railway from Jaffa to Jerusalem is completed, and the first locomotive entered Jerusalem on Sept. 13. The renewal of the excavations ab Hissarlik has been postponed till next spring, owing to the cholera scare. A syndicate of British capitalists is preparing to send an expedition to explore the coast of Patagonia for minerals. The famous leaning tower in Saragossa has been condemned, and the wreckers are already busy ab the work of demolition. A young girl died on Sept. 11 at Lourdes of a fit of apoplexy as she was passing the image of the Virgin there in a procession. The King of the Hellenes paid a visit to President Carnob *ab Fonbainebleau on Sepb. 9, and lunched with the President. The Automatic Scent Fountain Company, Limited, is in liquidation ; the liabilities are put at £7235, of which £5325 are unsecured. The purchase of the Moscow-Koursk Railway by the Russian Government will be completed in the course of the present month.

In one of the great Paris hospitals, oub of 83 patients who suffered from epilepsy 60 were found to be the children of drunken parents. English insurance companies say their business in the United States in 1891 was worse than with the rest of the world put together. Live fish have been safely senb in ths mail from India to the British Museum. They are now prospering in the tanks of the museum.

It is said that the French are making steady preparation in Algeria to extend their dominion southward over the nomads of the Sahara.

The London newspaper Modern Society makes a vicious attack on American society women, and declares the Deacon marriage the typical American union. Ifc has been found that by the use of the sand-blast the lettering on tombstones can be done at greatly reduced cost, with no. sacrifice of beauty in the result. A' remarkable aerolite is said to have fallen in Owyhee County, Idaho, on Aug. 20, weighing 4001b, and containing, it is believed, a large percentage of gold. At Brunn, in Moravia, on the night of September 2, the Burgomaster dispersed by means of a stream of water from a fin engine a riotous mob of discontented workmen.

The recrudescence of brigandage in Sicily is attributed to the economic crisis prevailing. The Government have sent a force oi infantry and gendarmes to the' disturbed districts.

Of the firsb submarine cable between France and Algeria, about fifteen miles of the cable have been laid from the African coast, and the work is proceeding satisfactorily. A minor planet of the eleventh magnitude has been discovered by Dr. Wolf, of Heidelberg. Another supposed discovery turned out to be a planet already known as Erigone. A Constantinople telegram says an official contradiction is given to the statement that by order of the Sultan a modified or mutilated version of the Koran had been printed. In France, as in England, a new eoinagc is in prospect. Bub while in London there is only the question of design to deal with, in Paris they have to settle also the question of material.

The serious altitude of the Nile, in consequence of which all the European and native engineers of the Irrigation Department have been called from leave, has been causing great anxiety in Cairo. During seven months of last year more than two hundred buildings were struck by lightning in England. During the same time 18 men and women were killed by this cause, beside 93 cattle, 35 horses, and 153 sheep. During some recent excavations in End-sleigh-street, in the north-western part oi London, the workmen came upon remains of a mammoth and other prehistoric animals at a depth of about twenty-two feet from the surface.

A movement has been started to geb the sentence of penal servitude for life passed on George Osborne in ISB6 reduced. Although the offence was theft and extortion, the lad was only 17, and it is thought the sentence was unnecessarily severe. A remarkable case is reported from Brooklyn, New York, of a man named Frank M'Kiernan falling eleven stories, breaking two four-inch timbers on his downward flight in the elevator 3hafb, and escaping without broken bones. The members of the International Railway Congress were entertained at lunch or Sept. 2 by'the railway directors of Moscow. Among the speakers was Sir E. Braddon, Agent-General of Tasmania, ho represented the English and colonial railways. An electrical " transformer" has been ex-' hibited in the Crystal Plalace by which 50-horse-power can be transmitted for a reasonable distance through a wire no thicker than a hair, and across the Atlantic, with a loss of 2-horse-power, through a wire a tenth of an inch thick.

At Vilna, Russia, six Jews and Jewesses were convicted of murdering babes entrusted to their care, and were sentenced to from six to /twenty, years', penal servitude each. In many instances the murders were committed with the connivance of the mothers of the little victims.

The Brussels Chronique declares that the Government of the Congo Free State, in violation of the anti-Slavery Conference decision, has ordered 20,000 repeating rifles, which will be bartered with the natives for ivory. Certain officials are allowed a commission of 10 per cent upon the transactions.

It is easy to guess why Premier di Rudini's flour tax is likely to make trouble in Italy. The Italian peasant probably consumes more flour than the peasant of any other European country, because the manufacture of flour into various forms of macaroni is common in all the poorer Italian households. The Baring liquidation up to August 31 shows that the total liabilities were then reduced to £5,113,613, with assets valued in October, 1890, at £8,391,261. There should, therefore, be over three millions surplus foi the old partners, but, of course, this is " subject to realisation," and may disappear in the shrinkage to which all South American stocks have been subjected. .... The Chief Engineer of the Sharpshooter was acquitted at the court-martial recently.; held to try him for a breakdown in "the ma- i; chinery. His explanation. was that-the machinery was most defective before he took charge of it, and that practically he was nursing an invalid through more trying circumstances than had . ever been ex. perienced before." ; Someone else clearh should be court-martialed now. '" A city jury gave a verdict in favour of a wife who sued her husband for money due under a deed of separation. The husband claimed that the deed had become void by a subsequent cohabitation. The cohabitation was admitted, but it was alleged to have been procured :by fraudulent misrepresentation, the husband having signed a paper of conditions without any intention 61 keeping them. £ The deputy judge said ibis was a new point in separation law.