GLEANINGS.

New Zealand Mail, 22 April 1887, Page 5

GLEANINGS.

Signor Frederick Lablache has died at the age of seventy-t wo years. He was the eldest sou of the famous tenor Luigi Lablache, by whom he was musically educated. He early appeared in Italian opera in London and the provinces, and at Manchester a generation ago he frequently sang with Mario, Grisi, Favanti, &c. He played the part of Count Rodolpho to Jenny Lind’s Amina in ‘ La Souuambula ’ on the occasion of that celebrated sougstress’s first visit to Manchester.

News comes from Somersetshire of an incident which proves the st lying powers of superstition. A child being bom with hernia, its parents—a farmer and his wife—took it to a wood, where, an ash tree having been split open, the child was solemnly passed three times through the aperture, which was afterwards closed up with a hayband. The idea is that if the sides of the tree reunite and grow together the child will be cured. It is singular that such things should still be believed even by a Somersetshire farmer.

Mrs Lynn Linton’s article on Greek women in relation to home in the Fortnightly Review is to be the first of a series of articles on the women of various nations and various ages. The writer of the * Girl of the Period ’ seems more gently inclined towards the failings of her sex.

Mme. Zieger, better known as Alboni, is living yet, and singing at sixty-two, as grandly as ever.

The ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ was lately produced in Japan, the whole work being done by native scholars, artists, and workmen.

The Duke of Oldenburg, cousin to the Russian Emperor, recently visited Paris to inform M. Pasteur of the results of anti-rabid inoculation in Russia. He stated that of 114 patients only one, a man of seventy two, had died.

The fashionable engagement ring is no longer the single diamond splendidly set. It has a row of small sapphires extending onehalf way round, and on the other side a row of small diamonds. The sapphires are for good luck, and the diamonds mean undying affection.

The little Duchess of Albany had a curious adventure the other night. About 9 o’clock three men, having procured a ladder, mads their way through the nursery window at Claremont. The Duchess of Albany’s little daughter saw the burglars, but wa3 in no way alarmed, thinking, as she afterwards explained, that ‘ Father Christmas had come again.’ Their noise, however, alarmed the servants, and the burglars decamped without taking anything.

A cement very much used at the present day in China and Japan is made from rice. It ia only necessary to mix rice flour intimately with water and gently simmer the mixture over a clear fire, when it readily forms a delicate and durable cement.

Queen Victoria has her fifth great-grand-child, Princess William of Prussia having another son. Prince Henry of Prussia is bethrothed to his cousin, Princess Irene, daughter of the late Princess Alice.

As an entertainment was being given at the Islington Workhouse, Holloway, for the amusement of tne inmates, a gal-ery, containing 100 people, with 100 seated beneath it, suddenly fell, killing one aged pauper, and injuring about 30 persons, some of whom were visitors.