Items.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXI, Issue 6504, 13 March 1896, Page 4

Items.

Sir Westby Perceval is doing all in his power to smooth the path of his successor. Everywhere he is quietly sounding, the praises of the Hon. W. P. Reeves, and especially in the more influential circles. He speaks of Mr Reeves as a brilliant man and an orator. Great regret is felt among the colonial Agents-general at Sir Westby's retirement. He is beyond question the most popular A. Gr. in London. Mr Edward Tresrear, the permanent head of the New Zealand Labour department, has a very interesting and suggestive paper in this week's Spectator on "The Problem of Arctic Life." It has been much read and greatly admired. Startling news (writes a contemporary) comes from the United States with reference to Japanese competition. Mr Stewart told the Senate recently- there were agents from the Land of the. Rising San in the States offering for sale bicycles, watches, doors, window sashes, cooperage, hate, gloves and other wearing apparel 50 per cent below the price .of the same articles made in the United States. If all this be true, it looks as if the expectation of competition from cheap Asiatic labor in the trade of the world was to be realised sooner and more keenly, than any of us expected. If the Japanese, with theirfine faculty for imitation and their wonderful cleverness in detail, begin to make bieyclei

for exportation, ib is very evident that they are equal to competing with the white men in all sorts of skilled industry. The Otago Daily Times says : A specimen of Professor Rontgen's new process of photography, is at present being exhibited in the shop window of Mr Frank Hyams, jeweller, Princess street. The picture is that of the living band, but the outline of the flesh is scarcely visible, while every bone and joint may be seen with remarkable clearness. The photograph is the same as that shown by Professor Rontgen at the Hamburg University, and is attracting a great deal of attention.

In Austria, a woman, no matter what she may do, is never regarded or treated quite as a criminal. She may rob, burn, kill—set every law at defiance, in fact, and break all the commandments in turn—without a fear of ever being called upon to face a gallows. She is. not even sent to an ordinary prison to do penance for her sins ; the hardest fate that can befall her, indeed, is to be compelled to take up her abode for a time in a convent.

Window srlass was first used in modern times in 1557. .Now the annual consumption of plate glass alone exceeds 6,000,000 square feet in England. Several Egyptian haips have been recovered from tombs. In some the strings are intact, and give forth distinct sounds after a silence of 3000 years. The man who patented the brass spring fingers one sees on lamps for holding the chimney in place received for many years a royalty amounting to LIO,OOO. In the river Hooghly at Calcutta 1000 vessels are sometimes anchored at one time. They lie in tiers parallel to the shore, each vessel moored stem and stern to buoys.

The autograph fad shows no signs of dying out. Mr Gladstone sometimes receives as many as 25 requests for his in a day—and sends that of his secretary instead. A Parisian electrician has succeeded in forcing violets by the aid of his battery, and recently sent a bunch of these fledglings only four hours old to the exEmpress Eugenie. Paper indestructible by fire is said to have been invented by a Parisian. A specimen of it was subjected to a severe test—4B hours in a potter's furnace—and it came out intact.

Attempts are now bring made to acclimatise Scotch grouse in Denmark. The birds thrive well on the extensive moorland of Jutland. They are fenced until the end of next year. In Paris there is a wine shop for every three houses.

It is estimated that there are 1,300,000 Irish in Australia.

It is not by the grey of the hair that one knows the age of the heart. The winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators. Hongkong at present possesses the only two sugar refineries in the East. The Metropolitan Railway cost more than half a million pounds per mile. "While the gravel paths were being overturned in a garden at the rear of a house in Fairmead Road, Upper Holloway, three ancient tobacco pipes were discovered. The oldest compares in shape with those in the Guildhall Museum, dared 1625-4:8.

The quantity of bananas shipped from West Indian and adjacent ports into the United States now amounts to thirteen or fourteen million bunches annually, valued afc considerably over four millions sterling.

Kansas is a Prohibition State, which makes it odd that a noted temperance lecturer should be about to start on an aggressive tour of the State, under the direction of the Kansas State Temperance Association.

Mrs Frances Hodgson Burnett, at a dinner given at the King's Hall, Holborn, by the New Vagabonds' Club, said she was not ashamed to be both illogical and feminine—qualities which were estimable inasmuch as they afforded interest and amusement to mankind in their idle leisure.