GOSSIP BY THE MAIL.

Otago Witness, Issue 1161, 28 February 1874, Page 11

GOSSIP BY THE MAIL.

The ratepayers of Edinburgh as a whole, and more especially the Sabbatarians and teetotallers among them, have been somewhat exercised of late by the discovery that their Town Council had been feasting on Sunday at the expense of the city. A lynxeyed gentleman named Hope, at a meeting of the Council, discovered that two items, amounting together to £14 4s, were being smuggled through with suspicious haste. The reason of this haste was apparent when it was found that the little bills were "for wine for Sunday luncheons." Further enquiry disclosed the fact that the luncheons at which the wine was drunk took place on the days on which the Town Councillors made their annual visitation of tho city churches. The facts place the Councillors ill anything but a creditable position. Either the exertion of attending church was so great and unusual to them that they required to take something to sustain them during the arduous day's work, or they were simply doing on these particular occasions at the expense of the city what they would on other Sabbaths have done at their own expense. Yet these gentlemen would no doubt severely punish any publican who sold drink on Sunday to any "common" person, and would recoil with horror from a proposition to open, the reading-room of the Philosophical Institution on Sundays.

In amusing contrast to this conduct of the Edinburgh Town Councillors standß a decision arrived at by them nearly contemporaneously with their Sabbath fuddling. They proposed to celebrate their joy at the marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh by illuminations and a bonfire on the top of Arthur's Seat. Referring to the latter, tho Lord Provost said that the fire was not to be fed with coal, but with old wood saturated with tar, "as they did not like burning coal at the present time." This conscientious scruple to put the ratepayers to the additional cost that would be incurred by burning coal instead of "old wood"

cornea with ludicrous inconsistency from the men who had been guzzling on Sunday at the public expense. A better instance of Pharisaism we have not come across for a long time.

The dense fog which enveloped London on the 9th, 10th, and part of the 11th December, was a much more serious business than it might be thought at the first blush to have been. Some years ago the Times stated it to be its belief that a single day's stoppage of the traffic of London caused a loss of between two and three million pounds sterling, so that the loss caused by this fog may be set down as amounting to something like five millions. Irrespective of this monetary loss, the fog was very fatal to the lives both of human beings and animals. Independent of the loss of life from accidents, many deaths were caused of persons suffering from disease of the heart and of the respiratory organs. The deaths I among the short-horns at the Smithfield Cattle Show have already been noted in these columns ; but it may be mentioned that the life of one ox was saved by its being " encouraged to drink old ale out of a tub. " This anti-teetotal remedy is stated to have had an immediate effect for good upon the suffering animal. The pigs at the Show stood the fog unconcerned, and the sheep bore it with meeknes3. In the Zoological Gardens, however, it was attended with a fatal result as it killed "the toughest rhinoceros" in the Gardens. Altogether the fog seems to have exceeded in density that of the 29th January, 18G5, which was stated at the time to have been the worst within the experience of this generation.

What may be called the representative plants of Australia and New Zealand respectively, viz., the blue gum and thephormium tenax, appear to be spreading over the world. The blue gum is now common in many parts of the south of Europe, in Algeria, and in Brazil,' and has of late been ■winning considerable distinction on account of its medicinal properties. " The Fever Medicine Tree" is the name the Times gives it. The New Zealand flax is also frequently planted in the South of Europe for ornamental purposes, but it is in the islands of the Atlantic that it seems to thrive best. In the Azores it is being cultivated with success, and the same, we now learn, is the case in St, Helena. The Times publishes a letter appealing for help for this island, which has been devastated by floods, the letter being signed by the officer commanding the troops, the Sheriff, and other leading inhabitants. The writers give a list of the principal products of the island, and among them we rind the New Zealand flax. This is all the better for us, as the more attention that is given to the plant the more chance is there of a means being discovered of utilising it more profitably than hitherto. It is quite possible that the problem that has so vexed New Zealand may be solved in some place where the plant is exotic.

A good idea has occurred to Her Majesty's Commissioners by whom the International Exhibitions at South Kensington are organised. It is the formation of an International Ethnological Exhibition of a permanent nature. The exhibition is to consist of collections illustrating the manners and customs of the aboriginal inhabitants in all parts of the British dominions, and it is intended to ' ' ultimately form a great national museum of the empire upon which the sun never sets." We can conceive of few collections more interesting than this one is likely to be, and the more so as before long not a few of the races whose habits the collections will illustrate, will have passed away. We have frequently thought it a mistake on the part of the various missionary societies of the United Kingdom not to establish a joint museum of this sort, seeing the peculiar facilities they possessed for doing so. They would, to take no higher ground, have found it a paying speculation, as a sight of the immense number of hideous weapons, to which the lives of the missionaries are exposed in many parts of the world, would have excited the sympathetic co-operation of many who from ignorance imagine that a missionary's life is as pleasant and peaceful as that of a lotus-eater. The opportunity the missionary societies neglected has now been seized by the Imperial Commissioners, who appeal to all members of the British Service to assist them. Their circular also contains the following sentence, which is especially interesting to New Zealand :-- " The ludian Empire, the Eastern Archipelago, and the Islands of the Southern Hemisphere are also able to afford abundant and valuable materials for the proposed museum, of which it is believed that the nucleus can be formed at once from materials in private collections. "

An establishment which bids fair to become a formidable rival to tho public house, has been in operation in Liverpool for nearly a year past with entire success. It is known as the Hand-in-Haud Club, and was sot on foot by several enlightened gentlemen who saw that the best way to entice men from the public house was to offer them something better. At this establishment the working man finds a comfortable, well-lighted reading room, supplied with a pleutiEul stock of newspapers and magazines, and an abundance of "tempting arm-chairs." There are also billiard and bagatelle rooms, and a skittle alley has lately been added. At a bar in the building tea, coffee, cocoa, and other unintoxicating drinks, as well as solid refreshments, may bo had at exceedingly moderate prices. Everything is cloan, neat, and comfortable, and wo read that " in addition there is throughout a measure of elegance and refinement which few working men are unable to appreciate." Admission is by monthly subscriptions, or on

payment of a penny for each time of en« trance. The bar above mentioned, however, can be patronised without paying for admission. Even during the short time the place has been hi operation, it has required to be enlarged, and it has been self-supporting from the outset. It may be worth noting that it does not owe its origin to any of the societies professedly formed to combat intemperance.

The expression "railway slaughter" has been looked upon for the most part as an exaggeration indulged in by sensation-loving newspaper writers. It is now shown to be only too accurate. A Committee of the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce has been investigating the subject of railway accidents, and its report is absolutely startling. After giving the statistics for 1872, the report says :—": — " Keeping in view the frightful casualties of the present year, there can be no question that more deaths have resulted from railway accidents in the United Kingdom in the last two years than were killed in action of British soldiers during the two years of the Crimean war " — i.e., 2755. This is a heavy indictment, and unfortunately the figures adduced fully sustain it. If this state of things continues, there will be some chance of the Pail Mall Gazette's remark, that travelling by railway would come to be regarded as a proof of lunacy, being verified.

The winter assizes in England show that even "good times" are not always free from epidemics of crime. At Liverpool there waa a very heavy calendar, including no less than six cases of stabbing, while at Chelmsford, the Judge (Mr Baron Pigott), stated in his charge to the Grand Jury, that the calendar included " nearly every possible crime." It is to be noticed that all the stabbing cases at Liverpool had their origin in drink, and may therefore have actually been due in the first instance to the "good times" aforesaid.

A discovery that will interest philologists has recently been made, and reported to the Philological Society. Hitherto the Etruscan inscriptions discovered have been undecipherable, and the language to which they belonged, unknown. By the discovery, in a tomb, of some dice, bearing words on their faces, it has been ascertained that the Etruscan language was Altaic, and following on this, the Etruscan mythology is proved to be essentially the same as that of a Finnish epic. Thus it may literally be said that the gravehas disclosed the fact that the Etrurians came from the centre of Asia.

London dressmakers and milliners, although nominally protected by law, liko their Dunedin sisters, are very much worse off than the latter. The Inspector of Factories, Mr Baker, reports that many complaints have reached him of "intolerable overwork" among milliners, but although some of these have personally told him of infringements of the law, not one has been bold enough to put the law in motion, from fear of being afterwards regarded as a marked person and refused employment. It seems that in the height of the season the girls are at work for 14 hours a day, including an hour and a half for meals, aud it is no extenuation of this alave-driving to say that in the dull season the girls only work for seven or eight hours daily. The girls think 12 hours a day ought to be the outside limit of their work, and most people will consider their desire a very moderate one. The part of their cisc, however, which has most interest for New Zealand people is that the law is being systematically violated by the employers with impunity. This is the more instructive from the fact — which we learn from an official report just issued — that it is found practicable to enforce the law where children are concerned, the convictions for breaches of the Factory Acts numbering about 800 annually.