ODDS AND ENDS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1024, 15 July 1871, Page 3

ODDS AND ENDS.

The German Parliament contains 382 representatives. A new oyster bed, six miles in length, has been discovered off Tenby, South Wales. A stream of immigration is setting in to New York, via Scotland, from Norway and Sweden. 54 joint stock companies are being wound up in Great Britain at the present time. The number of theatres now open in London is greater than it has ever been before. New Houses of Parliament are to be erected in Berlin at a cost of 750,000 thalers. The Rev. Dr Paterson, of Montrose, I who was at one time tutor to Lord Byron, died on April 25th, aged 93. The number of dogs on which the annual tax is paid in England is eleven millions. There are now more than three hundred post-offices in the United States in charge of women. At Memphis, Tennessee, there is a dog that geta drunk on ale "just like a man." The King of Wurtemburg's famous lion Mustapha, with which he used to play as with a dog, is dead. The Emperor William is said to care for only two kinds of reading — military treatises and sentimental novels. 20,000 dollars have been collected in the Southern States for a monument to the late General Lee. M. Thiers is said to look after the army just as if he commanded it, and notwithstanding his 74 years, seems indefatigable. "Ventilated garters" are the latest novelty in the United States. A palace is being prepared near Ajaccio, Corsica, for a "great personage," supposed to be the Pope. Sir Edwin Landseer is recovering from his late illness, but the doctors say he will never be able to paint again. Billingsgate is to be enlarged, and the J Common Council have voted L 150,000 for the purpose. Dr Hooker, the famous botanist, haß gone to Morocco, to collect specimens of j the flora of that country. The so-called " briar-root " pipes are in reality laurel root. Most of the raw material is exported from Virginia. | Mr Wixom, of Farmington, Michigan, has patented a potato-digging plough, which is said to work well. A force of 30,000 men, consisting of militia, yeomanry, and volunteers, will assemble at Aldershot in August or Sep - tember. Emigration societies to supply wives to the young men in the far West are to be formed in some of the New England States. A London paper states that a land and water velocipede, which is to take its inventor from London to Paris without stopping, is to be the next novelty. At the last half-yearly meeting of the Civil Service Supply Association, it was reported that the net profit during the past Bix months had been L 15,022. The wild firing of the Communist artillerymen is said to have been caused by their being constantly intoxicated. The Ri;jht Rev. Dr Cotter ill, Bishop of Grahanastown, South Africa, has been unanimously elected Coadjutor-Bishop of Edinburgh. The population of Leicester, Bradford, and Sheffield is shown, by the census returns, to be 95,083, 146,000, and 240,000 respectively. It is said that a Treasury minute is about to be issued in England, relieving all officers under the Crown from the necessity of providing sureties or guarantees. Omar Pasha, who was Generalissimo of the Turkish forces during the Crimean war, is dead. He was originally in the Austrian service, but deserted from it. A London gentleman, named Pennington, has published a challenge to " act Shakespeare against any man for 1000 guineas a side." The Principal of the University of Bogota, Venezuela, is actively exerting himself to have Chairs of shoemaking and tailoring established in that institution. Mr Halkett, who was Librarian for 22 years of the Advocates' Library, Edinbugh, is dead. He was one of the most accomplished linguists of the day. There is a fair prospect of the establishment of a Celtic Professorship in Edinburgh University. Towards the endowment one gentleman has offered LIOOO. A lecturer in a Western American State seeks damages of a journal which published a report of his discourse, " Mind and Matter," under the head of " Milk and Water." An official contradiction is given to a statement that the Duke of Wellington had left a casket to Prince Arthur, not to be opened until His Royal Highness became of age.

The Emperor William of Germany 1b a practical printer. All his family are obliged to have some trade. He chose to be a printer, and wrought at the case three years. At the meeting of the City of Glasgow Life Assurance Cempany on April 26th, the new policies for the year were stated to have amounted to L 353,982. The assurances in force are L 3,538,745., 538,745. A novel invention has been brorght out in Massachusetts. It is a pair of pincers, designed to be applied to the leg of a cow to grasp the tail and prevent the animal from switching it. The Paris Commune, despite its disregard of human life, issued a decree forbidding bakers to work at night, on the ground that it was bad for their health to do so. Among the horrors of the French siege of Paris, it is related that a shell fell into a room where a woman and her daughter were ironing clothes, and shattered their legs. The publication of Mr Darwin's last work is said to have caused a perceptible increase in the number of visitors to the monkey house in the Zoological Gardens, London. According to the New York Herald, there is a pig living near Cairo, U.S., which has eight noses, one ear twice as large as the other, and eyes placed so far back in its head that it is obliged to progress backwards. This is a fair sample of the Herald's powers of lying. In a recent debate in the House of Commons, Mr W. Fowler said he had heard of a young nobleman who borrowed LG50,000 during his father's life- time, and who was now living on an allowance from his creditors. Few people, says the Saturday Review, would be consistently extravagant if they made a rule of paying ready money for I everything. It is the system of credit, iof pledging something impalpable, of drawing long bills against an uncertain day, that is so fatal. Double- pointed carpet tacks are now used in New York. They are made of bent, flattened steel wire, similar in shape to a common staple. Their gre.it advantage is that a carpet fastened down by them can be much more easily lifted, and with less risk of being torn, than if secured by ordinary tacks. A distinguished French physician, just deceased, remarked a short time >»<>. shut, during his twenty-six years of \i- tciice in Paris, 20,000 children had I, . v i.orne io the cemeteries a sacrifice to th^ absurd costume of naked arms. The a> nu should be covered, from thb wrist t<> ■•• • sli<>ulder, with thick knit woollen v »• - 1-. While at Montevideo, tin- Duke of Edinburgh delighted and astonished the citizens, whose Pampas antecedew i a render them fastidious connoisseurs m every variety of equine manipulation, by the cool daring and finished dexterity with which he handled a team of four thoroughbred South American hors"H m an En Jiah mail-break. A notion got abroad amon^ the rural population of Ceylon tb.At < lie o ject of the Government in taking tlu- census waa to ascertain how many untnoried men could be spared to be husbands to French widows and spinsters. The Singhalese mothers, in consequence, sent their unmarried sons into the recesses of the jungle out of reach of the Government enumerators, in the hope that they might thus escape the French connubial conscription. It has been resolved to fit up a chamber in the Scott Monument at Edinburgh as a repository for relics of the poet. Thia was originally intended by the architect. There 1b an effort also being made to get thirty of the unoccupied niche 3on the outside of the monument filled with suiti able statuary. Mr James Ballautyne has taken the lead in this matter, and money is being raised in Edinburgh and London to carry it out. The subjects will comprise, it is intended, the more celebrated characters with which Scott's name ia identified. Mr Campbell, of Buscot-park, near Faringdon, has established a beet-root distillery on his estate, which has now closed, Bays the Times, its operations for the season, with so far satisfactory results as to induce that gentlemen to make preparations for sowing upwards of 800 acres with Silesian bee'root for next season. Upwards of 60,000 gallons have been produced this season, and there is now an increasing demand for beetroot spirit, as it has been found to contain qualities for the manufacture of British spirits superior to that produced from grain. The certain but sure progress of beetroot cultivation is now an ascertained fact in England, both for the production of sugap and distillation, and many enthusiasts assert that in a few years we shall witness many sugar factories and distilleries among our agricultural population.

A Co-operative Sooiety is in course of for* mation at Whangarei, Auckland.