General News.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 221, 4 December 1875, Page 6

General News.

'The first case to be brought before the Public Worship Court will be that of the rector of St. Peter’s, Folkstone, charged with ritualistic practices. In the year ending the 31st of March last, the stamp duty on patent medicines, as appears from a Parliamentary document just issued, amounted to £114,322 15s. 7LI.

'The Press Association understands that arrangements are being made for a conference of leading traders, manufacturers, and members of Parliament, for the purpose of considering a scheme for the taxation of trade marks.

The business of private telegraphing has reached to a wonderful extent in New York. Even the lawyers now have private wires, so that without leaving their chambers they learn what is going on at tlie courts.

There was a considerable decrease in the importation of guano this year compared with the previous year in the same period of seven months. The amounts were respectively £421,409 and £1,187,260.

Some considerable surprise lias been created at Batli by the local Magistrates sending a boy. aged about fifteen, named Orchard, to prison for six weeks with hard labor, for stealing some pears of the value of 6d. The governing body of Eton College have decided to expend £15,000 upon the enlargement and improvement of the school buildings. This vote of money is, however, only preliminary to a still larger outlay.

During a recent tornado in Minnesota, a couple of sheep, au American paper states, were carried fully a mile and landed in a tree top, and were found pinned together by a board that had been driven through the bodies of the poor animals. Wo are informed on good authority that the statement made recently by tlie Hour that it is Mr. W. G. Grace’s intention to retire from active service in the cricket field at the end of the present season is correct. Mr. Grace is qualifying for the medical profession, to which two of his brothers belong, and will only play in occasional matches. By the recent death of an uncle in France a Chicago newsboy has become heir to a large property and the title of marquis. The boy’s father, Aymav de Belloy, was at one time a prominent grain merchant in Chicago, and, failing, left his family in distress. The War Office, it is said, has sanctioned the carrying out of a series of experiments with the view of testing the Biers rifle, the great novelty of which consists in the position of the trigger un the top of the stock instead of underneath. To fire the gun, the trigger is pressed with the thumb of the right hand. The skeleton of an adult in a good state of preservation, tlie molar teeth and portion of the jaw of a large animal, and some copper coins, which are supposed to have been buried for 200 years, have been discovered in the progress of some excavations at the Bishopsgatestreet corner of Houndsditch, London. The British pharmaceutical conference is being held this year at Bristol, under the presidency of Mr. T. B. Groves, who in his introductory address hinted that Parliament should make a grant for the physiological testing of new remedies proposed for the treatment of disease. The patent medicine question, he added, was a hopeful one for any member of Parliament in search of a hobby.

At a farm laborers’ meeting near Learnington, the other day, Mr. Arch was frequently interrupted by the laborers respecting the Union accounts. At last he told them he would have none of their “mean, contemptible cackling.” If they did not mind they would soon have no officers at all. He would uot be badgered like this, but would wish them “ Good morning,” and be glad to get out of the job if the districts desired it. For once we are in accord with Dr. Kenealy. That learned gentleman has just written a letter to South Shields, wherein lie expresses a wish that lie was a South Sea Islander. He fervently exclaims—“ When I sit opposite to Ward Hunt, and listen to Lowe, and those who are still lower (!), I wish myself under the shady vales or reclining by the silvery rivulet of some South Sea Island, with God above me, nature around me, and the perfumed air and warm sunbeams playing on my delighted frame.” We also cordially wish that Dr. Kenealy was in the Southern hemisphere, enjoying the Paradise thus gushingly pictured, or in any other place equally distant. According to a Brussels paper, Louise bateau, tlie Belgian girl whose alleged fasting and stigmata have been so much vaunted by the Ultramontanes, lias resumed the habits of ordinary life. Her sister, concerned at seeing her wasting away, refused admission to the house to the parish priest and the episcopal delegates, from which time the fasting, visions, and stigmata have ceased.

It is stated that satisfactory results have attended boring for coal at Swindcrby, Lincolnshire, coal measures having been reached at a depth of 1700 feet. Garibaldi has requested his sou Menotti to open a list of subscriptions for the wounded in the Herzegovina, and lias himself subscribed IOOf. towards the fund.

It is a startling fact that one pair of rats with their progeny, will produce iu three years no less a number than 646,808. A doe rat will have from six to eight nests of young every year for four years together, aud from twelve to twenty-three at a litter ; and the young doe will breed at three months old ; aud there are more females than males, at an average of about ten to six. If they ran about the streets like eats or dogs the public would be terrified, but as they hide and work in the dark, men seldom see or think of them. At Guanajai there lias been another execution like that of tlie students which horrorstruck the civilised world. Eight youths, between sixteen years and twenty, belonging to the foremost families of Havana, have been shot, and six more escaped. They went on a fete day to shoot in a friend’s plantation. A patrol of gardes eivils met and insulted them. 'They replied, and the gardes fired at once, killing three. Five others were captured. At a court-martial next day they were condemned and shot.

A peculiar ease of death from hydrophobia was inquired into by the coroner at Stockton. A girl named Sarah Bishop, aged twelve, was seized with the symptoms of hydrophobia, and was removed to the Cottage Hospital four days ago. She died on 'Tuesday last, the surgeon being convinced that tlie cause was the bite of a dog, though neither the child nor its parents were cognisant of such having occurred. It seems that the girl cut her hand two weeks ago, and it is assumed that the dog licked her hand whilst suffering from hydrophobia, as it disappeared some two weeks ago with symptoms of madness upon it. So the blood became poisoned, causing death. The Emplorateur (says a correspondent of the Argus) has been giving an account of French Guiana, which it alleges rivals the plains of California with respect to the production of gold. It appears that a company obtained a grant on the banks of the Apponagus in 1862, but the want of labor proved an obstacle. Some Americans in 1872 started to investigate the statements made about the mines, and appear to have been satisfied with what they ascertained. Hitherto, the men it: work have had no experience in gold mining, but now it is thought tlie new blood will prove the country thoroughly. The mines lie in a mountainous country, where drinking waters abounds. It is sheltered from the winds of the marshy plains, which engender colds aud fevers in the rainy season. “One of the Lower Orders” sends in to a Melbourne paper his report of tlie proceedings on the Flat, at Flemington, on the Cup Day, which contains the following passage : —“ I know something of the youthful roughs of London and Southwark. I have been familiar with them in Bethnal-green, in Shoreditch, iu Bermondsey, in the New Cut, and in Fieldlane, when as yet the Holborn Viaduct was not ; blit for ribaldry of language, brutality of demeanor, and insolent aggressiveness of manner the cockney savage is a Sandford or Merton by comparison with the young blackguards who constitute the terror of peaceable citizens in the poorer suburbs of the city, and who were ready for any devilry on the Flat. And these foulmouthed ruffians will be entitled to exercise the suffrage, you know, as soon as they come of age. There is much matter for reflection here, my masters, is there not ? You will not dare to speak disrespectfully of them then, or they will never allow you to make yourself heard, in or out of Parliament. Mark that, if you please. 'The “ Catholic revival,” according to the Lircrpnol Weeklg Mereuri/ of August 28, is going on at a great rate. The latest development of it is a deliberate attempt to introduce the worship of Mary into the English Church, and in order to facilitate that, to found a guild, the members of which shall “ say mass” on all the feasts of “Our Lady,” ring the Angelos bell at certain hours of the day, and repeat the “ Ave Maria” so many times a day. The Church Herald of to-day contains a number of letters on the subject, and it appears from these that the proposed practices have already been adopted in some parishes, notably by tlie Rev. \V. W. Malet, of Ardeley, Herts Mr. W. Cecil Hardisty, of Birkenhead, says that he teaches the children at the Sunday school under liis charge to worship Diary. The gentleman named is a teacher belonging to the Holy Trinity Church, Birkenhead, a ritualistic place of worship. Major Arbuthnot. ex-M.P. for Hereford, writing in the Times, lias very little belief iu the success of the Hezegovina insurgents. He was present with Omar Pasha when that, general quelled the insurrection of 1861, and the Turkish army, he says, has been reorganised and strengthened since then. I am able to give the following figures, which state that at all events nominal strength of the Turkish army at tlie present time, or rather what it will be in 1878, when the present system has come fully into operation- There will he 150,000 regular troops, 70,000 men in the first reserve, 120,000 of the first levy, 120,000 of tlie second, and 320,000 of the landsturm, making 780,000 in all. But it is not likely that more than 400,000 of these could be considered effective. The army is divided into seven corps, of which only three are available for European service, and these three number 142,858 men and 270 guns. The infantry are armed mainly with old-fashioned muskets, though there are 200,000 Sniders in the magazines. Every cavalry soldier has an American revolver and a Winchester carbine But these are only paper soldiers after all. The great difficulty which the Sultan would have to encounter in the event of a serious war would be the payment of his troops. The Imperial plunger has become so hopelessly involved that it is difficult to see how he ecu stave off bankruptcy much longer.