NEWS IN BRIEF.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 191, 30 November 1876, Page 3

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Comedy and tragedy were first exhibited t Athens, B.C 5*3. The colored people of Alabama now own bout £2,000,000 worth of property. One email town in Connecticut turns at 1,000 clocks daily. It tabes 50,000 cabs to convoy the popcttion of London front place to place. The police and fire department of Paris, » one year, coats close upon £1,000,000. Bret Harte's eldest son, aged ten, has tribbled several amusing little stories. England paid last year £2,000,000 for weign egg*. There am 289 jonxnals published in the topublic of France. Suicide tmon; men in Prussia ts on an forage four times as frequent as amongst roraen. History makes out that the height of ha great Napoleon was only live feet two oil seventh-tenth inches. An enterprising ornithologist calculates hut there are 900,000 canaries in the United State*. By a late decree the Japanese C*ovemlamt undertake to provide for all aged and Incapacitated paupers. Somebody has noticed that nineteen oat of every twenty newspaper men have •taught noses. Offenbach, the celebrated composer, (waived £BO,OOO for ** authors rights"' of three of his piece* in one year. There are stiU living in France 23,000 ton who served under the First Napoleon "aixty-two years since. The Kind legs of frogs were recently M in New York at from 15s. to £1 per ozen pairs wholesale. The largest plato of gloss ever manufacireci in the United States was cast in bdiana. It was 284 xl 9 inches. The late Barry Cornwall declared that • was while going to his business in an nmibus that he wrote all his poems. Sir PhilipJßgerton is now " Father of ta British House of Commons." He has «d a seat in the Senate for forty-six fears, having been elected in 1830. A French chemist has discovered that *ood can be preserved by means of sulfate of copper and creosote oil. A gold medal, struck off in France in tutor of John Brown (of peripatetic notofoty), has been forwarded to the family >I the famous Abolitionist. Sir. Sharon, who is accredited with Wng the owner of the present Nevada fogialatajre, has an income of £1,000,000 *y«w, Only twelve veterans of the campaign °f 1812 celebrated last year the evacuation *the City of New York. Twenty years fMhey mastered 500. ■ hundred thousand francs were subthe Aral* Chiefs of Algeria fur decoration to be placed over *«r -toe* 111.

Lanterns of horn were used by both the Greeks and Bomans; they put lamps into them for the purpose of lighting themselves home on moonless nights. Hungarian jockeys frequently tie a clove of garlic to their racers bits, when the horses that run against them fall back they breathe the offensive odour. If any carriage upsets or injures another carriage in the streets of St. Petersburg, or any passenger is knocked down, the horses of the offending vehicle are seized and confiscated to the use of the Fire Brigade. A writer in Le Figaro says that the magnificent red velvet mantle of the Empress of Russia i» lined with 228 sable skins, each worth £l2, being valued at nearly £4,000. A precocious young Belgian named Frederick Vaude Kerphone died last year. Although only ten years of age, he had executed not less than 350 pictures. The paper used in the manufacture of Japanese fans, now so commen, is obtained from the root bark of. the mulberry tree. The figures upon the flat fans are printed by a lithographic process, whilst those upon the folding ones are printed by hand. A car hung on elastic springs, by which all jotting in made nearly imperceptible to passengers, is being tried on one of the French railways. There are 700,000 gypsies in Europe, 18,000 in England. Their religion seems to extend no farther than a belief in their annihilation at death. " Grog" the sea term for rum and water, it may not be generally known, derives its name from Admiral Edward Vernon, who wore grogram breeches, and hence was called." Old Grog." About 1745 he ordered his sailors to dilute their rum with water. The Japan Mail describes the Citv of Ycddo as a miracle of cleanliness. " Notwithstanding the feet which tread the streets, they are as clean as the seldomvisited parks of the aristocracy." No person throws any paper or refuse in the streets. A little canal was wanted in China, in 1823. Time must be precious there, though life is so cheap. Only six weeks were given in which to dig it, though it went through great forests, and over extensive marshes. Twenty thousand men worked upon it night and day, and over seven thousand died from fatigue. It is not generally known that among many trades in Europe, no work is done on Mondays. Dr. Boyd, preaching on behalf of the hospitals of Devonshire, calculated the loss to the work people engaged in the woollen manufactures, the cotton trade, and the bricklaying trade alone by " Idle Monday," amounted to £7,000,000 a year. It is stated on the faith of certain statistics, that thirty years ago Alexandre Dumas was paid one franc for every sixty alphabetical letters; Frederick Soulid had one shilling a line ; while Balzac obtained three centimes for every alphabetical letter. We may add that poor Thackeray used to say that he was ashamed of receiving so much as " sixpence a line." The foot soldier of the Austrian army carries a burden of about forty-seven pounds; the American, about fifty-three pounds; the Swiss, fifty-nine pounds ; the Prussian, about sixty-one pounds; the English and French, nearly sixtytwo pounds; and the Russian over sixtyeight pounds.