Untitled

New Zealand Mail, Issue 849, 8 June 1888, Page 33

Three new barbette ironclads have lately ibeeD finished in the Black Sea yards, and the •greatest activity now prevailsin the arsenals. The Catherine 11., ToUesma, ■ and "Sinope • carry plates of 40 centimetres thickness, and : aix 30 centimetres breach - loading guns, placed two e->cb, in revolving turrets. The. .-sides sre armed with 15 centimetre guns and lance-torpedoes. The three ships each mea- • sure 10,5 CK) tpn.s; h ve engines of 12,000 h.p., .and their speed is 15 knots. Six gunboats, .at present building at Sebastopol and Nikolaief, will be armed with2o.7in guns. Russia has also a,very powerful torpedo flett in the Black Sea; 20 first-class torpedo boats, and several torpedo cruisers, one of •which latter 'has a speed of 21 knots. The •expense of building all these ships has been enormously high, because Russian steel has been employed, which costs 3.roufalea.ss copecks per pood, whereas the best foreign eteel -would only hsve cost 1 rouble 10 copecks and. a duty of 90 copecks per pood.

'A recent decision of the highest Russian court of justice deprives the Hohenlohe (family of the enormous Lithuanian estates .belonging to the late Prince-Peter of Sayn"Wittgenstein. These cover no less than -632 470 a res in the provinces of Vilna; Vitebsk, Kevno and Minsk. Prince Peter mortgaged these estates, and at the time -of. bin death he was deep in a negotiation •with t he. Russian Foreign Trade Bank, -which, owing to the Prince’s failure to pay -the interest on the money lent, had acquired the right to foreclose. Ou the Prince’s death

the .Hohenlohe family, who became his heirs, .proceeded with the negotiations for resettling the mortgage but they were confronted by ■ the Imperial' ukase of March 14, 1887, ■which prohibit, d foreigners from owning ,or occupying land in Poland and Lithuania. The validity of this decree, as .affecting the Hohenlohe succession, was tried before the, .court--of -Vilna, which authorised the 'foreclosing of the mortgage by the Russian Bank, and this judgment has now been confirmed oh appeal. - The -eljeot of it (according to The Times) is that the vnst Wittgenstein estates will now be pare, lied but among Russian proprietors, . and the .thousands' of Germans employed on them -by the late Prince’s agents will he turned away. -v

A brewer who evidently believed in.bis. ■ Cttii minip il«, atilt, d at .an auti-looui nitet-, ing at Kanluhawk, Victoria, that be had, on •an average, di uuk 20 glasses of betr daily for -.the last 32 years. ' .;■* ■