Here and There.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXV, Issue 10017, 7 December 1908, Page 4

Here and There.

A CRCESUS PENSIONER. The police in Melbourne discovered the whereabout, of some £I4OO in cash and shares in remarkable circumstances last week. An old woman pensioner of the Education Department was charged in the South Melbourne Court with having been drunk and disorderly. She protested that she was not drunk when arrested, and was remanded. The woman, when searched at the watehhouse, was found to have in her possession a Savings Bank passbook with a credit of £IOO and £7O in notes, on.; of £SO and two of £lO. On (going to the cell next morning the police found on the floor a deposit receipt on the Commercial Bank for £IOO, a cheque for £l6'lss,ld,.and a cheque for £B. , The woman informed the sergeant that she had two other £lO notes besides those found on her on Friday. Thinking there might be some money also in the house iii which the woman lived alone, the police made an inspection of the. place. The building, a four-roomed weatherboard tenement, was found to be in a. very dilapidated condition, and almost destitute of furniture. Tn an old stool, which was taken to pieces, Savings Bank pass-books were discovered, showing, that the womanhad credit balances of. £245 at the head office. .£IOO. at the Collins street branch: and £IOO at the Bourke street branch. A share certificate for Metropolitan Gas Company's shares, valued at £640, .was also found, together with the deeds of the property on which the woman lived.

AX UNLUCKY ALCHEMIST. Sir Ray Lanekster told recently the curious story of James Price, one of the last of practising alchemists. Price was born in 1752, graduated at Oxford, and was elected a'Fellow of the Royal Society in 1777. He inherited a fortune from relatives, and devoted lumself to chemical experiments. About 1783, in the presence of a number of well-known people, he undertook to convert mercury into silver and gold by means of certain white and red powders. He satisfied his audience in seven successive experiments, and the assayers declared the precious metals genuine. Specimens "were sent to George 111., and the greatest excitement prevailed. The Royal Society urged Price to make known his recipe, but he refused to do so, and also to repeat his experiments before the society, saying that the labor had already affected his health, and he feared to subject it to a further strain. At last the president—it was Sir Joseph Banks —intervened, and insisted that "for the honor of the society" the experiments must be repeated. Unable to resist this pressure,' the unhappy Price asked for six weeks to prepare his powders. He prepared a bottle of laurel-water—prussic aeid. Three .Fellow's of the society came on the appointed day of August, 1783. One of them is said to have paid, indeed, an earlier visit, and discovered that the crucibles had false' bottoms, in which the gold and. silver was hidden. When_ all were gathered together the misguided Price drank up his laurel-water, and fell dead before them.