MISCELLANEOUS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1162, 7 March 1874, Page 5

MISCELLANEOUS.

There are 30 Unions and 190 parishes in London-

The Belfast flax-spinners are now Avorking short time.

Some land in the centre of GlasgOAV Avas sold recently at .£is per square yard. Mr Whistler, famous tor bis " Symphonies," is painting a portrait of Mr Car)yle.

Mr Cardwell has again been compelled to reduce the standard for recruits by half an inch.

Three dozen collier lads Avere fined 10s 6d each at Nottingham the other day for going on strike.

A new pulpit, said to be "exceedingly ornate," has been erected in Peterborough Cathedral.

At JarroAV, near South Shields, a deaf and dumb woman, named M'Nichol, has been roasted to death.

More than £5,000,000 Avorth of foreign bacon was imported into Britain during the last financial year.

The AvidoAv of Tom Sayers was lately sent to gaol for a fortnight, for neglecting to send her children to school.

Some pearls from the fisheries on the north-western coast of Australia, havo been sold by auction in London at high prices.

During the month of November, 92,122 fishes, Aveighing twenty -nino tons, avoi-o seized at Billingsgate as being unlit for human food.

Sir James Colquhoun, of Luss, and four attendants, Avere drowned in Loch Lomond on Decomber 1 Sth by the upsetting of a boat.

Tavo immense steamers have recently been launched on the Clyde, the one being 4200, and the other 4800 tons, register. Tho latter is said to bo, next to the Great Eastern, the largest merchant vossel in the world. It is intended for the Liverpool and South American trade.

The Pretender to the throne of Moroooo bears the appropriate name of Ben Sliman,

The authorship of the Pope's last Encyclical 19 attributed to "Father Curci, the faA'ourite preacher of the Catholic ladies of Rome.

During a storm, at GlasgOAV, on December 16th, the wind bIeAV a gate against a boy'a head with such violence, as to kill him on the spot. The estimated cost, according to the accepted design, of the public aquarium and baths to be constructed at Hastings, is £60,000.

The value of this season's rose crop in the district of Adrianople is put doAvn at £70,000. The crop is groAvn for the manufacture of otto or attar of roses.

The Illustrated London News says Sir William Bovill's estate has been sworn under £70,000, and that of Mr George Crawshay under half a million.

At an inquest held at Dublin on the body o£ a soldier who died suddenly, it was stated chat he had drunk in the forenoon a pint of rum and three quarts of porter. The horses purchased in Paris for eating fetch a market price of £5 or £6. This new trade increases the A r alue of used-up horses, not diseased, by more than £4 sterling : so that the public Avealth of France is increased by about 16 millions by the admission of horse-flesh into the public dietary. According to advices from St. Petersburg, the Russian Government has under consideration a railway project for a direct route through Siberia to the principal Chinese and Japanese harbours. The line will be 7000 versts in length, and is estimated to cost 3150,000,000 roubles.

A medical journal draws attention to the construction of German cigars, which are described as " eA'en Avorse than the cigars sold in this country." In the German cigars are to be found bristles, hair, wood, bits of linen, leather, needles, shirt-buttons, teeth, feathers, cord, and matches.

Professor Owen has just discovered in tho London clay at Sheppey a new fossil bird Avith teeth someAvhat resembling those in the Australian hooded lizard. He concludes it to have been Aveb-footed and a fish-eater. No evidence of true teeth had previously been known in any bird. Sir John Bennett, the well known Avatchmaker of Cheapside, London, stated at Hastings, Avhile delivering a lecture on Switzerland and the trades in Avhich the Swiss Avere chiefly employed, that they manufactured for England alone watches and clocks to the value of a million sterling annually. He said that 20,000 females were employed in delicate parts of the Avork, and that he could not get this done in England at all. A JSI eAV York paper says that a gentleman of that city recently addressed a letter to "Her Majesty Queen Victoria, London, England," asking for her autograph. He received the lolloAving reply :—": — " Sir Thomas Diddulph begs to return the enclosed photograph to Mr , and to inform him in reply to his circular that the Queen's autograph is neA r er giA>-en away. — Buckingham Palace, London, 27th October, 1873."

Speaking at a Conservative banquet recently, a Rev. A. Head, of Hyde, declared that Mr Bright had once called the Avorking classes "the residuum — the dregs of population." Mr Bright's attention being draAvn to this, lie says Mr Read is a "slanderous clergyman avlio must know (if he is not very ignorant) that his statement is false." Mr Bright thinks the man's congregation should pray for their minister. In a leading article the Times says : — " Forty years ago the number of persons apprehended [in London] as drunkards in the course of a year was 41,000; it is noAv 33,000 ; and Avhereas when the population of London Avas a million and a half the number of persons annually arrested for offences of various kinds was 72,000, the number now arrested, Avhen the population has risen to four millions, is only 75,000."

Mr E. Chappell, the Avell-known music publisher, writes to a London paper saying that tho truth is that English managers expected rather to be paid than to pay for producing a new opera, and this Avas fully established in the very case of "Faust;" as, after having vainly endeavoured during tAVo years to persuade Mr Gye and Mr Harrison to give that opera at Covent Garden, I had at last to pay Mr Mapleson £150 to produce it at Her Majesty's Theatre. Such was its marketable value then.

A French periodical states that the sale of artificial eyes in Paris amounts to four hundred a Aveck. The principal place of sale is a handsome saloon, where the man-servant has but one eye, and the customers Avishing to buy first judge of the effect of the artificial eye by placing it in tho man's empty socket. The best made eyes command a high price ; but we aro informed that poor folk can be fitted with second-hand eyes on Avhat is called "reasonable terms." The demand for artificial eyes is much greater than would commonly be supposed, and largo numbers are exported to India, and eA-en to the SandAvich Islands,

Professor Bain, in his recently published work, "Mind and Body," says : —"The memory rises and falls with the bodily condition ; being vigorous in our fresh moments, and feeblo when Aye aro fatigued or exhausted. It is related fcby Sir Henry Holland that on ono occasion ho descended, on tho same day, two deep mines in the Hartz mountains, remaining some hours in each. In the second mino he Avas so exhausted Avith inanition and fatigue that his memory utterly failed him ; he could not recollect a single word #of German. The poAver came back after taking food and wine. Old age notoriously impairs tho memory in ninety-nine men out of a hundred,"