Items.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XIX, Issue 5907, 31 March 1894, Page 4

Items.

Of late years the ancient tower of St. Jacques la Boucherie, a-hich is so conspicuous an object in the Rue de Rivoli, in Paris, not far from the Municipal Couucil buildings, has been used as a meteorological station. At this place a new work has been begun which promises to be of great value to the meteorologist of the future. For the first time a com-! plete record is to be kept of weather and natural phenomena in the French capitalIt is to take the form of a gigantic atlas, so arranged that day by day, by means of figures and conventional signs, may be registered the state of the barometer and thermometer, the prevalence of misti the speed and direction of wind, the height and form of clouds, the appearance of the sky, the rainfull, the quantity of snow or hail, the strength of evaporation, magnetic disturbances, the phased of the moon, etc. At the same time a seismographic registering apparatus has been placed in the great sewers close by, with a view to recording tho force, of : earthquakes, and other disturbances underground. In. tba matter of Free public Libraries, Manchester continues to lead-the way; Mr 0 W.- Sutton, the Chief Librarian of the Corporation, states that-with, the magnificent library which Mrs Rylands is, building in Deansgate, and which willopen with 80,000 volumes, with the Reference Library of 100,000, and the Lending Libraries containing about raore, with the Ch'etham Library of; 40,000 volu ues, with the libraries now in: the Owens- College-- containing aboufct

70,000 volumes; for the housing; of which Mr Chancellor Chrisrieis about to erect a fine building, there, will. soon, be in Manchester a group of libraries accessible to the public of such excellence and magnificence as to be unrivalled- in, any city outside London.

According to the Spectator those persons who oppose the employment of feathers in millinery on the ground of cruelty are making a great mistake. The egret plume, which the writer considers " unapproachable as an ornament," 'is now very rarely plucked from the bird, being much oftener than not the product of manual skill. And'the same is true of the other feather decorations, while if it were not for the demands of fashion ostriches would long ago have ceased to exist. Fine feathers, it seems,, make not only fine birds, but fine misconceptions. Incidentally the writer states that the apex of the Prince of Wales'crown is a tuft of feathers tipped with gold, said to be worth LIO.OOO, which, took, says an organ of the bird trade, twenty years to collect, and cost the lives of a dozen hunters. He adds, in quotation marks, '•The bird from whose tail the feathers are plucked is called the feriwah—a sort of creature of the bird of Paradisej3peoks fbut of the rarest kind. Toobtain a tail feather in its full beauty, it is necessary to pluck it out of the living bird, as instantly after death the plumage becomes lustreless. What makes the hunting of the feriwah so dangerous is that the bird always frequents the haunts of tigers !"