MISCELLANEOUS.

Otago Witness, Issue 904, 27 March 1869, Page 4

MISCELLANEOUS.

The average weekly number of deaths in London during the winter season ia about 1600.

An English pauper has been sentenced to twenty-one days' hard labour for making comical faces at another pauper in church.

A Christmas circus pageant in London, this year, included 23 Portuguese oxen, each bearing a maiden in a gilt pagoda on its back.

The Cobden Society in London is about to publish the speeches of its great founder. They are to be arranged and edited by John Bright and Thorold Rogers. A strong pressure is being brought to bear upon the British Government, in favour of buying the Irish railways upon terms submitted during the last session of Parliament by a joint committee. Miss Emily Faithfull is one of the prominent women's rights speakers of Great Britain. In her last address, in the Hanover-square Rooms, she said that out of 6,000,000 women of England 2,500,000 were unmarried.

The Jesuit Schools of France have increased very greatly in number, importance, and popularity since the establishment of the Second Empire. They are liked by parents of all classea, because they are " respectable and quiet." Lord Cork now holds the highlyhonoured office of "Master of the Royal Buckhounds." This position does not <4ive him a position in the British Cabinet. Both his honours and his duties are as light as hiß name. One of the San Francisco papers has added a new feature to its birth, mar» riage, and death column — "Divorces." This department is as well supported and as much a public convenience aa ita com* panions. The mild sentence — 18 months' imprisonment — of theses cap'ainwho maltreated and murdered the little stowaways of the ship Arran, is pronounced in London " the most astounding failure of British justice on record." John Stuart Mill spends much of his time in private at Avignon, devoted to his forthcoming work, " The Life of Buckle." He ia generally to be found there during the Fall and Winter, when public duties do not call him to London. Queen Isabella has finally gone_ to housekeeping in 'Paris. In her destitution, she is obliged to put up with a 360,000d0L house on the Boulevard dv Roi-de Rome. She had previously contracted for two houses in the Champs Elysees, and paid 12,000d01. forfeit. The Manchester Stock Exchange vtsm recently thrown into a panic by a number of forged telegraphic messages from London ordering the purchase of American bonds. A great amount of stock changed hands before the trick was discovered. Forged orders were received by telegraph in Liverpool on the same day. The famous Grand Duchesa de Gerolstein Schneider received a bracelet valued at 15,000d015. from an English lord, during Jher visit to Baden-Baden. The donor's name and title were set in diamonds. " What a pity," exclaimed the

actress, when she received it, "that hd is sot a Spanish nobleman — his name would have been so much longer." The Spectator Bayß of the four gentlemen who received baronetcies from tho retiring English Ministry, that " George Etienne Cartier deserves the label for real services, and none of the other gentlemen have done any particular harm." Cartier is an eminent French Canadian politician. He waß once leader of a rebellion ; but is now an influential member of the Dominion Government.

A new one-penny serial Btoyy is being published in London, enticed "Crimea of the Aristocracy." It professes to be " a series of strange events, undiscovered murders, and other crimes, compiled from important documents stolen from among the private papers of Bis Royal Highness the Prince Consort, upon the night of the 14th of December, 1861, by a footman in Her Majesty's service !" Silk, it is said, possesses peculiar medicinal properties. In Pomet's history of drugs, he says that silk was used in hia time as a medicine by reducing the pur© part of a cocoon into a powder. Silk thua prepared has the virtues of cleansing the blood, making the epirits brisk, and heart pleasant. Neumann found that few materials afforded an equal quantity of volatile alkali. Tournefort obtained from 15 ouncea of silk two ounces of volatile salt ; this when rectified with some essential oil, was the medicine formerly celebrated under the name of " Cuttce Anglicars," or English Drops.