Odds and Ends,

Otago Witness, Issue 1319, 10 March 1877, Page 3

Odds and Ends,

The steamer St. Osyth arrived in England on the 28th January, fifty-one days from Melbourne. This is a splendid passage.

The rather startling discovery has been made, in Melbourne, of upwards of 300 newspapers, at the house of a post office employe', which had not reached their destination.

The expenditure in connection with the sending of the Ballarat F.B. team to Dunedvn amounted to £158, and the receipts from outside sources to £110, leaving a balance paid by the brigade of £48.

The story about the capture, in Tasmania, of a 281b. salmon, was a fabrication. The fish caught was a 51b. trout.

The Home New 3 says of Sir Julius Vogel : — " Sir Julius has grave defects of manner, but those defects are only superficial. He is a vigorous man, who has the interests of New Zealand at heart."

Mr Colin Macandrew is about to start a fish curing establishment at Taukutu Bay, ft little south of the Nuggets.

- The Victorians complain that the South Australians are making inroads upon their trade in the interior. The widow of the Duke de Galliera has laid the sum of 1,000, 000f. at the feet of the Holy Father, imploring the apostolic benediction on the suffering soul of her deceased husband.

The block of land in Bourke street, East Melbourne, above the Opera-house, has been purchased by Mr George Petty for £36,500.

The Brisbane cabmen have struck, in consequence of the alleged low scale of fares. They ceased running before dusk one Saturday evening. A bill is to be introduced in the House of Commons during next session for restricting the penalty of death to cases of murder in which the jury find that the crime was premeditated. Mr R. B. Leefe, a planter in, the Nananu Islands, is attempting to introduce sericulture. He expects to realise a considerable sum by the sale of his raw silk this year. It is now becoming the custom, in the London theatres, to throw upon canvas, by means of the oxyhydrogen light, an enlarged photograph, instead of painting scenery. Woodd and Surenne, clerks in the Rockhampton Branch of the Joint Stock Bank, have been committed for trial on two charges of embezzlement. The religion of the intelligent, in China, ia Buddhism, while the ignorant worship Joss — that is to say, they seek to propitiate him, believing that God is too good to liana item. The ship Loch Lee has arrived at Adelaide with five hundred immigrants. There were twenty-six deaths during the passage. A North Carolina farmer, to catch thieves, put some strychnine on a ham. He has forgotten which one, and the whole family dare not touch one of the hundred and fifty hams.

A company is prepared to erect a theatre in the vicinity of the Paris Exhibition palace, capable of accommodating 7,000 persons, and giving morning and evening representations. Redditch, in Worcestershire, England, and Aix-la-Chapelle, in Germany, may be regarded as the seats of the needle trade of the world, comparatively few needles being made elsewhere. The books of the Melbourne Athensaum have been catalogued under the names of their authors, arranged in alphabetical order, with certain modifications held to be desirable. One of the most attractive features of the Paris Exposition of 1878 will be a large aquarium capable of affording tank room for four million pounds of fish. The total value of timber exported from New Zealand during 1876 was £39,407, as against £24,166 in 1866. " Jesus of Nazareth, neither baptized nor slain by Jew or Gentile," is the title of a book about to be published by the Rev Dr George Bartle, of the Church of England. An American paper says the Irish, Germans, Negroes, and Chinese, are the bones and muscles of their community. The native population of British descent constitute its brain and nervous system. The New York Times takes a very hopeful view of the prospects of free trade in the United States, and regards the abandonment of protection as merely A question of time. The Suez Canal route is now taken by 24 regular lines of steam vessels, employing 234 ships, of a total gross tonnage of 509,447 tons. Mdlle. Raspail's "non-ecclesiastical" interment was attended by thousands of the working classes of. Paris. She was the daughter of Raspail, the oldest of the senators. Captain Balfour, of the -steamer Brisbane, has been fined £100, or three months' imprisonment, for a breach of the quarantine regulations. A splendid diamond suite was presented to Lady Musgrave at Adelaide. A little boy fell down a shaft 100 feet deep, near Eaglehawk, Victoria, and received only alight injuries. In 1876, the excess in the yield of gold and silver, in California and adjacent States, was no less than ten millions of dollars over the produce of 1875.

A leading soft goods firm, in Melbourne, lately distributed £1000 amongst their employe's as bonuses. The French are preparing a cannon for their great . exhibition, which can con* Teniently cradle the Woolwich infant.

Adelaide sales of 8000 bushels of wheat have taken place at 63, for shipment to England, freight having been secured at 223 6d,

The ex-Lord Mayor of London expended £17, 000 in maintaining the dignity of the municipality, while Sir A. Lusk, in his year of office, lavished £22,000. It is stated that the collection of goods lost and found on the exhibition grounds at Philadelphia would stock a mammoth store for a year to come. The last thing that men of the North Pole Expedition invariably took before, turning into their sacks for sleep was a stiff glass of good Jamaica rum. Alfred R. Wallace, who had framed a theory of the origin of species not inferior to that of Darwin himself, does not include man in his scheme of organic evolution.

Seventeen steamers running between New York and England are now fitted up with refrigerators for keeping meat fresh. Each will hold 200 carcases. Great complaints are now being made all round Ballarat of the way in which hares are being destroyed out of season, and otherwise than by coursing. A survivor of the Battle of Trafalgar, named Nathan Grant, died in the Geelong Benevolent Asylum on the sth inst. He was 98 year 3oi age. The Art Union of London have decided to engrave, for presentation to their subscribers, Mr Armitage's "Christ among the Doctors."

At the inquest on the youth Daniel Marks, aged 16, a pupil at the Scotch College, Melbourne, it was proved that he had poisoned himself with strychnine. It is now certain that in the Prince Patrick claim, Stawell, ninety feet south of the shaft, a strong lode has been struck at a depth of over 1100 feet.

The "Arctic regions" section of the Paris Exhibition, to be furnished by the English Admiralty, will be a new and attractive feature — in the dog days it must be positively delightful. It is feared that the general wheat average in South Australia will not exceed five bushels per acre, leaving an exportable surplus of about 70,000 tons. Specimens of quartz taken from the Prince Patrick mine at a depth of 1700 feet contain indications of gold. The New York Art' Museum has secured, for $60,000, Gen. Cesnok's famous collection of Phoenician relics, found in the tombs of Golgos, in Cyprus. The Germans are beginning to roof their buildings with cast iron tiles, or rather plates. The plates have projecting edges, so they fit tightly, and are held in place by two wire nails.

The Bishop of Melbourne is represented to have said that " a man who is ignoranfof thtfßibleft an uneducated man." What of the Greeks and Romans 1

The Bank of Adelaide shows a net profit for the year of £48,174, pays a dividend of 10 per cent., and increases its reserve fund to the extent of £105,000. Baron A. Baldacsi has endowed the Protestant Evangelical Church of Hungary with a sum which will produce eight to ten thousand pounds yearly. M. de Rothschild and Sir Moses Montefiore have established a printing office at Jerusalem, which has just issued a work upon the Holy Land.

£31,500 has been refused at auction for the Criterion Hotel property, in Collins street, Melbourne.

It is ia contemplation to at once establish steam communication between Auckland and New Caledonia.

Scribner's Magazine says that the religious mind of America is not now as much afraid of the theory of Evolution as it was, and is not proof against conviction, as it might once have been.

Darwin's "Animals and Plants under Domestication " is an intensely interesting work. It is rather a record of observation than an expression of theory. The population per square mile a hundred years hence is likely to be — in Australia, 56 ; in the United States, 83 ; and in British North America, 4. Mr Angus Mackay brings with him, from America, for Queensland, a horsepower centrifugal seed-sowing machine that sows 60 acres per day ; also a huge hive of Italian bees. Mr Millais is paintin£""~Sortrait of Mr Carlyle, which will appear in the next exhibition of the Royal Academy. The exports from the port of Melbourne for the year 1876 are of the value of £13,316,955, being £111,702 increase on the preceding year. Mr Mark Twain is said to be engaged on a book named " The North Pole, and how we didn't get there." Mrs Beecher Stowe will shortly publish a work, entitled "Footsteps of the Master."

The imports for the Port of Melbourne for 1876 were, according to the Argus statistics, £12,402,252, being a decrease of £402,378 as contrasted with 1875. Exports exceed imports by £914,693. Mrs Lynn Linton i 3 writing another novel. Its title is "The World Well Lost." Mrs Linton is spending the winter in Italy.

"Green Pastures and Piccadilly" is the title of Mr Black's new story, begun in the Examiner on the 6th of January. A cable 2900 feet in length, and weighing 12 tons, has been put on the rolls at the Bonanza mines. It will easily handle CO tons.

The next number of the British Quarterly Review will contain an article entitled "Herbert Spencer's Sociology : Its Grounds, Motive, and Sphere."

The undertaking of the French Government, begun in 1874, of making a complete inventory of all the treasures of art in Fraace, is still being carried on with great vigour.