DISTRESS IN INDIA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10099, 7 April 1896, Page 5

DISTRESS IN INDIA.

Press Association.—Electric Telegraph.— Calcutta, April 6. Tiie number of persons employed on tho relief works in the distressed provinces in North-west India is one hundred and thirty thousand,

Writing with reference to what ho torms the " pleasing and interesting" interflow with Mr. (Jhoong, published in the Hkkald on Wednesday last, Mr. W. E. Sadler nays ho knew Dr. Legtje, having mob him over 40 years ago. He was of the London Missionary Sooiofcy, and succeeded Morrison and Milne, the translators of the Bible into Chinese. He was married to Dr. Morrison's daughter. "Mentally I see him now. About eight years the junior of Gladstone. Ho and Dalo and Fairbairn founded the grand Now College ab Oxford ; yet he had for long been engaged as tutor in Chineso literature by the old University, and Is so now, I think. He, like the groat London Missionary Society, is very catholic. Belongs to the Lord Christ only. Lately, indeed, there has been an accession of true magnanimous catholicity ab Oxford."

Some of the Southern papers in their accounts of the Brunnerton mine disaster state that it was thofirsb time in the history of the mine that an acoidsnb had oocurred through flro damp. Mr. James MaCky, of this city, states that some eighteen years ago, when he was a resident magistrate in the district, ho held an inquesu on ft man who was killed by fire-damp In the mine, A theory has been started as to whether the explosion may not have arisen through bleakness on the part of an employee, though the use of the electric light miniraises the risk of explosions. The question is prompted by the evidence of a survivor of a similar catastrophe in one of tho Lancashire coal pits. When one of the old surviving miners had completed his evidence, he was asked by bho foreman of the jury if it was not possible by care toprevenb these explosions, he replied, " Yes, if you could make sure of oare ab all times; bub you'll aee men working in a drive and the air suddenly gets bad and fliokers the safety (lamp), and all work careful, then on comes a boy, with a naked candle, a singing 'Suwner,' and blows you all up before you can speak. 1 ' ' ,