ENGLISH NEWS.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume II, Issue 110, 19 August 1846, Page 4

ENGLISH NEWS.

Precious Stones and Precious Bones. — The following is an extract of a letter from Rome of the Bth Jan. :—": — " The Emperor of Russia has testified his gratitude to the Pope for his hospitable reception, by presenting him with a superb and costly crucifix, of beautiful workmanship, and richly studded with jewels; and his Holiness, not to be behind-hand in generosity with his mighty ally, has intimated his intention of presenting to his Imperial Majesty, in return, the relics of the great St. Nicolas, the Emperor's patron Saint. The gift and the return are worthy of the parties making them. One. is irresistibly drawn to

think of Gil Bias, in nearly similar circumstances. The Emperor does not appear to be so much put out by the result, as the nephew of the canon of Oviedo. He is determined to make the best of the matter. The relics of St. Nicholas are to be carried into Russia, and are to be inaugurated at St. Petersburg with great ceremony. A ship of war is to be sent to Italy to carry the precious remains to their new destination, and thanksgivings are to be offered up in all the churches iv the empire on the occasion." M. Triger has communicated a new method of employing compressed air, as practise 1 under his invention, in the coal-mines of Maine and Loire, where the workings pass under the latter river at a depth of 100 metres. A steam-engine, of about 18 to 20 horse power, on the surface, used for the ordinary purposes, ventilating, &c, is made to compress air, by which another engine, of about 10 to 12-horse power, at the bottom of I the pit, is put in motion ; and this second engine works an incline of 90 metres. The compressed air acts as a liquid body, and may be compared in this machine to a column of water the reservoir of which was at a distance of 350 metres. An advantage, too, of this arrangement is the facility of ventilation in places where air could not be otherwise conveyed. — Athenaum. The Siamese twins are no longer singular, they are now matched, and a quadruple alliance might be easily formed by their junction with the prodigies now in Paris, which have already occupied the attention of many learned societies, especially the Academy of' Sciences, the Academy of Medicine, Institute and the first Medical Society. The phenomenon consists of two girls, enjoying perfect health, of the age of three months, and soldred together through the greater extent of their bodies. They were born en the 6th of August, and were baptized in the names of Philomene aud Helena. — Liverpool Albion, A newly-invented, musket ball has been tried at Vincennes, and produced effects similar to those of the cylindroconical Lall. This new missile consists of the ball having a nail run through its centre, and is put into the musket with the point towards the muzzle. This is said to make it carry further and with greater precision. Liebig was distinguished at school as a " booby," the only talent then cultivated in German schools being verbal memory. On one occasion, Wing sneeringly asked by the master what he proposed to become, since he was so bad a scholar, and answering that he would be a chemist, the whole school burst into a laugh of derision. Not long ago, Liebig saw his old schoolmaster, who feelingly lamented his own former blindness. The only boy in the same school, who ever disputed with Liebig the station of ' booby,' was one who never could learn his lesson by heart, but was continually composing music, and writing it down by stealth in school. This same individual Liebig lately found at Vienna, distiriguished as a composer, and conductor of the Imperial Opera House. Influence of Fashion. — A fashion always becomes more fashionable as it becomes more ridiculous. People cling to it, as they pet a monkey, for its deformity. The high head-dresses of France, which must have been a burden, made the tour of Europe, and endured through a century. The high heels, which almost wholly precluded safe walking, lasted their century. The use of powder was universal until it was driven out of France by republicanism, and out of England by famine. The flour used by the British army alone for whitening their heads was calculated to amount to the annual provision for fifty thousand people. Snuff had been universally in use from the middle of the seventeenth century; and the sums spent on this filthy and foolish indulgence, the time wasted on it, and the injury done to health, if they could all haye been thrown into the common form of money, would have paid the national debt of England. The common people have their full share in this general absurdity. The gin drunk in England and Wales annually, amounts to nearly twenty millions of pounds sterling — a sum which would pay all the poor rates three times over, and. turned to any public purpose, might cover the land with great institutions — the principal result of this enormous expenditure now being to fill the population with vice, misery, 'and madness. — Blackwood's Magazine.