MISCELLANEOUS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1155, 17 January 1874, Page 9

MISCELLANEOUS.

The death of Vice-chancellor Sir John Wickens is announced. Eight hundred million oysters are annually eaten ixi London alone. The American cotton crop has been seriously damaged by drought and worms. Miss Emily Faithfull has recently opened a printing office for women at Paddington. The potato blight is increasing in England, but is not expected to be so serious as last year. A London barman has been fined £20 for writing a false character for a barmaid, who afterwards turned out to be a thief. The Palais Uoyal in Paris has now been rebuilt, and the famous clock bells which sound the hours have been replaced. The excess in the expenditure of the Vienna Exhibition over the receipts amounted to £1,100,000 on October Ist. All railroads running out of Philadelphia carry the daily papers free for a distance of 50 miles. The King of Italy gave no fewer than 150 gold watches as presents to servants during his late visit to the Berlin Court. The Mormon "apostles" are reported to be making large numbers of converts in Switzerland and Scandinavia. Damage estimated at £37,000 has been caused by a fire in the granaries of Bailie Milne, at Montrose. There is now in gaol at Warwick a child, i eleven years of age, undergoing a sentence of three months for sleeping under a hedge. Bailie Lewis, Senior Bailie of Edinburgh, ha 3 been unanimously appointed Treasurer to George Heriot's Hospital, at £600 per annum. It is said that one-third of the present Parliament of Canada, consisting of 200 members, are now or have been editors of newspapers. The number of deaths attributed by coroners' juries in England last year to excessive i drinking were 379 — 25Smen and 121 women. Bits of straw professedly taken from the Pope's " dungeon " are being largely sold by the pedlars in ultra-Catholic districts of

Italy. According to the Paris Figaro, Mdlle. Belocca, the new operatic star, has been offered £1000 to sing at ten concerts in London. A London music dealer not long ago received the following order: — "Please send ms the music to ' Strike the harp,' for some coJiers who have just struck work."

A new breakwater at Aberdeen has just been completed at a cost of about £80,000. It occupied three years iv its construction, and is 1050 feet long. A new method of fishing is in vogue in Stokes Bay. Torpedoes are exploded in about twenty fathoms af water. The fish come to the surface, and are then captured with ease.

In acknowledgment of his services as a reformer, Mr Edmond Beales ha 3 been presented with a i^old watch and chaiu, of the value of one hundred guineas, by the PLoform League. A Working Men's Club has been opened at CirltoH, near Nottingham. It includes lecture, refreshment, bagatelle, billiard, juid smoking rooms, be3idcs all the usual accessories of a clnb.

The death is announced of Captain Mangles, many years chairman of the lloyal Mail Steam Company, and also of the South Western Knilvvoy, from which positions ho retired about a year ago iv consequence of failing health. The Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Civil Service expenditure, in their third report, fiud that the charge for superior officers, cloiks, and clerical assistance in the Civil Service is about £3,000,000 per annum, and that the number of established clozks is about 11,000.

Calif ornian Theatrical Managers carry realism t ) such an extent that recently at a San Francisco theatre, during the performance of a piece — "The Sea of lee " — a current of cold air was let into the auditorium, to enable the sj)ectatois to realise the sensations of the actors.

The Freemasons in America do things grandly when they go in for a pageant. The Masonic Kniyhts Templar had an elaborate parade in Philadelphia to mark the dedication of their asylum in the new temple. Three thousand knights appeared in the display. Rev. Samuel H. Merrill rose in his pulpit in a church in Scarboro, Maine, on Sunday, 6th Sept., and announced his text, "There is but a step between me and death." Then he stopped suddenly, sank back upon the seat, and, being unable to rise, was carried to his home, where, on Thursday, he died.

In convection with the Paray-le-Monial pilgrimage of the " Sacred Heart," we (the llock) are reminded of the Mahometan legend, viz., that the Angel Gabriel had been sent with a pair of golden pincers to extract the heart of Mahomet, burn out its original sin, and restore it to "the prophet's" bo3om pure and sinless.

Sixty feet of a new chimney shaft 220 feet high, at a, cement factory at Northfleefc, fell the other day just as it was about to be christened with some ceremony. Seven deaths occurred, and several other persons were injured. The rest of the shaft was afterwards blown down by a party of Koyal Engineers from Chatham.

Several London physicians of eminence having been consulted as to the beat method of warding off the fever with which Europeans accompanying the expedition to the West Coast of Africa are threatened, recommend that the habit of smoking should, amongst other things, be adhered to. The Lancet endorses the opinion of the physicians.

At Bala County Court a plaintiff was nonsuited by Mr Homersham Cox, for refusing to give' his evidence in English, after the registrar had deposed that plaintiff could speak English, A farmer, who admonished the Judge in Welsh "not to insult the Welsh language," -was given into custody by His Honour until the rising of the Court. An ex-convict discharged the year after aa imprisonment for a first offence of stealing a few shillings, said, "Before I entered Convict Prison I knew nothing of burglary; now I could easily break into any house in London ; and 1 know the Bhops where to obtain the needful tools for the purpose, all of which 1 learned from my fellow prisoners." Dr Temple, Bishop of Exeter, has discovered a novel as well as a useful mode of spending his summer holidays. Proceeding to the isolated parish of St. Breward, in the north of Cornwall, he liberated the vicar, Dr Marfcyn, for a month, and took upon himself tbe whole of the duties of the parish, psrforming the usual services in the church and in the chapel of ease, two miles distant. The " British Workman " public house ia Greenock has failed— not from want of customers, but on account of the niggardly cohtributions these customers supplied. The Directors state that though the rooms were attended by from 800 to 900 visitors weekly, the voluntary contributions during eight months only amounted to £1 Is 6d, whereas the expense of maintenance was estimated at £100 annually. _ A Sheffield correspondent states that the high price of coal is causing collieries to be acquired by the principal manufacturing firms at enormous prices. In addition to the purchase of the Carhouse Collieries by Messrs J. Brown aud Co. for £137,000, and of the Oaks by another firm for £240,000, one o£ the leading Bteel houses has bought two collieries near Sheffield for an amount which is rumoured to be very large. The late Mr George Clark left; a legacy of £20,000 for the erection of a uew town hall in Paisley. The trustees have now come to terms for the purchase of a site for the building. The hall, which is to cost £15,000, is to embrace within itself a large public reading room, to be open from 6 a.m. till mid-

night, for the use of working men, who are to be permitted to read the newspapers gratis, and to be at liberty to Bmoke without restriction, A Galloway schoolmaster was staggered t! ( e other day by receiving an account charging him with school fees tor the teaching of his own children. The teacher has five of his children attending school, and the ma~

jorifcy of these are in the higher branches, aud thus charged for. The matter forms a serious item of expenditure ; but, as it is strictly in rule that all children taught afc the school should be charged for, and tlie fees go to the school fund, he had no alternative but to submit. Among the ammunition provided for fthe Ashanteo expedition are star shells, which explode and burn for several minutes with a Inight light, thus revealing the position of the enumy by night ; shells filled with a stuff which when lit can't be put out, a nastj visitor therefore to the enemy's camp ; aud, lastly, smoke-ba]ls, resemblin3 the "stinkpots" of the Chinese. These are, indeed, missionaries for converting the heathen with

a vengeance,

An amusing story is related in the Sporting G.izotte respecting curium proceedings at the War Oflice. Due of the clerks, in. the exuberance of his animal spirits, fastened several yards of string to an umbrella, and then set tip the article in the doorway of a. public staircase to watch the result. In the course of half an hour about a dozen different persons saw the umbrella, and after a

furtive glance around rniuchcd off with it, until suddenly pulled up short by tbe string, when a roar of laughter from invisible spec-

tators greeted the discomfiture of each who had thua given way to temptation.

A journal of Bogota, (New Granada), The America, announces a discovery so strange that confirmation, is required before giving credence to ifc. Dou Joaquim do Costa is reported to have found on one of his estates, a monumental stone, erected by a small colony of Phoenicians from Sidonia, in the year IX. or X. of the reign of Hiram, contemporary of Solomon, about teu centuries before the Christian era. The block has am inscription of eight lines, written in fine characters, but without separation of words or punctuation. The translation is said t» be that those men of the land of Canaan embar' ed from the port of Aziongaber (BoyAkubal), and having sailed for 12 months from the country of Egypt (Africa), carried away by currents, had lauded at Guayaquil, in Peru. The stone is said to bear the name of the voyagers.

The Graphic says : — "A work far more important than the much-talked of Exhibition, and which, unlike the Austellung, has proved eminently successful, was inaugurated ab Vienna last week by the Emperor

— the new water conduit from the Alps. Hitherto water has been supplied to the Viennese by water carriers and carts, but nowthn allneeessary fluid is laid on in every street, being conveyed over enormous aqueducts and through at least 18,000 feet of tunnelling from the Kaiserbninnen in the Alps — fifty-eight English miles distance from the town. The ceremony took place at the giant fountain ia the middle of the town, where there is a jet 180 ft. high, thus surpassing the famous jet at Wilheknshdhe. The work has cost £1,400,000, has been finished in three years and a half— six months less than the stipulated time — and has been principally constructed by 14,000 Italian workmen, imported by the contractor, who found Austrian labour too dear and dilatory."