Odds and Ends,

Otago Witness, Issue 1323, 7 April 1877, Page 3

Odds and Ends,

George Fawcett Rowe's new local play, "Fifth Avenue," will illustrate high life . and the under strata of Now York life. - Mr H. J. R. Marston, a blind gentleman, has obtained a first-class in the -examination for the degree of B.A. in the University of Durham. The only emigrants required in America at present are agricultural labourers and -persons who would purchase land and .settle on it. In France, the working men have given up the old trade of conspiring, and they are now universally engaged in powerful combinations for their material improvement. The master of a merchant vessel was fined £6 by the Sunderland magistrates for giving a certificate of good character to a sailor who had been guilty of drunkenness. A terrible story comes from Dakato of V the capture of a Black Hills train, bound / for Yankton, and the massacre by Indians \ of some twenty men accompanying it. Mr J. R. Planches extravaganza, "The Invisible Prince/ as played at the Globe, is said to be one of the pleasantest entertainments in London. Professor Blackie complains that gentlemen of the Press have got into a habit of reporting his nonsense and leaving out his sense. Louisiana guarantees to supply this year one-eighth of the sugar required for consumption in the United StateB — 200,000 .hogsheads. The duty on English playing cards last year amounted to £12,528, which covers •the salaries of Lords Beaconsfield and Derby, and leaves £528 over. ; The increase in the cultivation of beetroot in Europe for the manufacture of sugar is Baid to be causing great loss to the cane sugar planters in Cuba. The. Edinburgh University Matriculation for the session 1876-77 shows a large increase over that of past years. The Academy states that we may hope Very soon to have the reports of competent scholars on the astonishing discoveries of Dr Schliemann at Mycense. M. Re*nan is correcting the final proofs of his fifth volume of the *' Origine dv Chriatianisme." . About 1200 Icelanders have immigrated into British territory, and settled on Lake "Winnipeg, at a place which they call Gimli. The Colonial Government has given; them land. >The United States now produces as much coal and iron as England in 1850. Germany comes next, and then France. !Os the 19th January last, twenty-three ladies, representing as many different States, rose one after the , other, in the United States House of Representatives, andpresented petitions in favour of .woman Utah, the Mormon Territory, now contains a population of 105,000, and it is thought that the next (the fifth) attempt to Jiave it admitted into the Union will be successful. It is reported that an arrangement, looking to peace, has been entered into between the Spaniards and the Cubans. In five years the island is to be independent. A water velocipede is made with two cigar-shaped floats connected by a plat-, form, with a seat above aIL The operator works a paddle-wheel precisely on the principle of a terrestial velocipede. There is, it appears, on account of the value of ground, great difficulty in increasing the entrances to, and means of exit from, the London theatres. A canal to make Berlin a seaport has been projected. It is to be only seventyfive miles in length, and is to cost two millions. ■ In Switzerland, all smokers and snufftakers under eighteen years of age are by fine. f It has been announced that the claims \ of Peruvian bond-holders in England are to be satisfied by the confiscation of Church property in Peru. A Mr Henry Morley traces the pedigree w of the English novel to a Platonic philo- " sopher of the second century, named Apuleius, and to a Christian Bishop — Heliodorus. The value of goods exported from San Francisco to Australia in 1876 amounted to 477,439d015, and the imports from the same country during the same period to 647,382d015. A Melbourne tent-maker has received an order for a tent from Cooper, Bailey, and Co., the circus proprietors, which will be 170 ft. by 120 ft. The Carcoar district (NT. S. W.)is crowded with travelling sheep, which are dying in large numbers. Ophthalmia is very prevalent at Echuca (Vie), and hundreds of children and adults are suffering from it. A conversazione has been held at Brisbane in honour of Mr Angus Mackay, the Queensland Commissioner to the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia. The crusade against false hair has commenced in several Parisian journals, and " No More False Hair" is a very frequent heading. A man named Constable at Stawell, Victoria, has been fined £20 for sending indecent valentines through the post. An Agricultural Society in Massachusetts has offered prizes of from 400dols to lOOOdols, and issued printed instructions for the best plantations of larch, pine, ash, and other trees. v Martini - Henry rifles are being despatched to India from England at the rate of about 4000 per week, to complete the armament of the troops with the approved small-bore.

The Age announces the arrival of a large quantity of Martini-Henry rifles. This is the lot expected with the improved lock action.

More than 2000 workmen are engaged, day aad night, in the Champ de Mars and Trocadero preparing for the Paris Exhibition.

While playing at Wilson's Circus in Adelaide, Airec, the trapezian, slipped from a trapeze and fell a distance of thirty feet, fracturing his wrist and bruising himself.

The Temperance News says Dr Macartney has offers of employment as lecturer from the Temperance Societies of South Australia and New Zealand.

The keeper of an oyster saloon in Sydney has been fined £3 for tarring the face of a customer who ordered supper and was unable to pay for it. Whitening was spread over the tar.

Cooper, Bailey, and Co.'s great circus and menagerie will leave Hobart Town for New Zealand in the Claude Hamilton on the, 7th April. Cardinal Antonelli's will contains no evidence whatever that he possessed any fortune beyond such as he may have inherited from his father — at least, so some of the English papers contend. At the Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition a handsome cup, as well as the Society's medal, will be offered for the "farrier who shall be considered the best at his craft."

£1000 reward will be paid to the person who is found to be the discoverer of a payable goldfield in Taranaki. Ward, Lock, and Tyler, of London, announce a new humorous work, by Max Adeler, entitled "Elbow-room."

The Japanese say that they would adopt the English language, were it not for the incongruities of its orthography — so many words spelled not as they are pronounced.

A Mississippi lawyer has invented and patented a machine by which a barrel, keg, or hogshead can be made in two minutes.

The New York churches were crowded on Christmas Day, and the selection of music in some of them was of a high order.

The Palmer goldfields yielded for the last year 183,0000z5. of gold, against 322,0160z5., the yield of the New Zealand goldfields. Three newspapers are now published in the Black Hills. The Ouster City Herald is the latest venture. The hew coal bed in Western Wyoming is said to be 1000 feet thick, and to cover an area of not less than 30 miles square. The coal is represented as a splendid coke. The Presbytery of Newark, by a vote of 16 to 12, has found the Rev Mr See guilty of violating the Scriptures by allowing women to preach in his pulpit. Eight hundred' bushels off fourteen acres of wheat was cut in eight hours with a' Reid and Grey machine, at Tapanui, one day the week before last. The work was good, likewise the crop. Thirty years ago Texas entered the Union as a State, with 140,000 population — white, black, and Mexican. To - day she has 1,750,000 population. The track of the Southern Pacific is already extended 150 miles eastward of Los Angelos, and is progressing towards the silver mines of Arizona and Sonora. Naphtha, from the ever-burning springs of Bakou, is being used as fuel for the Russian flotilla in the Caspian Sea. Birds are the only enemies able to contend against insects victoriously. They are the great caterpillar-killers and agricultural assistants. Thomas Davies, a Welsh farmer, has been fined £1 for making scare-crows of living cats. He suspended the latter by their necks. Dr Felix Adler, son of a famous Jewish rabbi, has started a new sect in New York, free from sectarian and theological influence. His studies were pursued in German universities. Utah is again applying for admission into the Union as a State. The scheme of admission will bring the Mormon question into prominence. Mr George Honey has long been one of the most popular of English comedians. He displays comedy art of a very high order. The California Fish Commissioners have arranged to receive 50,000 grayling eggs from Michigan in the coming season. The grayling is the most beautiful fish in American waters. Mr James Buller, now in England, an old settler of 40 years standing, says of the Maoris :— " They are a peaceable, intelligent, and honest people, dangerous only when under the frenzy of a war spirit." The author of "Old New Zealand" considers Maori religious superstitions about .equal to that of the Spiritualist mediums of New York and London, addressing the same degree of intelligence in their disciples. Out of 1357 cases of small-pox reported in San Francisco since May 19th, 1875, there were 385 deaths. In " Our Boys," which has now run at the Vaudeville Theatre, London, for wellnigh two years, Mr H. J. Byron has written, perhaps, the most successful comedy of modern times. A hundred and fifty-nine divorces were granted in New York city last year, and yet men go on marrying women for their beauty, and girls wed wild young men with the hope of saving them. Mr W. R. Douglas, an old resident of Dunedin, is pushing his boat-lowering apparatus in Scotland. He read a paper on its merits before the Royal Scottish Society of Arts, in Edinburgh.

One advantage, at all events, results from the new central system. A do<* license holds good throughout the colony! The grains of powder used to fire the 80-ton gun, or Woolwich Infant, have an edge of from l£ t0,2 inches. The small-pox epidemic is increasing in London, and the hospital accommodation is found, to be quite insufficient. 200 patients have been refused admission in one week. Re-vaccination is very general. Captain Drevar and several of the crew of the Pauline have made affidavits at Liverpool respecting a serpent they saw coiled round a whale.

There is an alarming outbreak of typhoidffever at Barrowsford, near Burnley. In fifty cases it was found to proceed from milk supplied at a particular farm.

Mr J. 0. Crawford, of Auckland, has discovered that the berries of a native shrub known to botanists as the coprosma baueriana, make a beverage equal to coffee.

Towards the middle of January last, 28 tons of silkworms, valued at £10,000, were received in England, from Japan, via San Francisco and New York, and forwarded to Italy. The Auckland Acclimatisation Society has received by the San Francisco Mail steamer twenty-six pointed tail grouse from Utah Territory. The Mikado of Japan writes to the President of the United States, congratulating him and the people of whom he presides, upon the success of the Centennial Exhibition. At the recent investigation of the Brooklyn Theatre calamity, an actor testified in regard to galleries : "Means of egress is the last thing calculated or thought of, because it is a cheap place." One of the chief events projected in England, the coming season, is a mediaeval tournament, to be hoiden at Hurlingham, under the auspices of the leading Scotch and Irish families. A grand yachting voyage round the world is projected on the style of the Quaker City, celebrated by Mark Twain's " Innocents Abroad." The fare is to be £500. Cuvier gives the number of muscles in the proboscis of the elephant, having distinct action, as not far short of forty thousand. Exports of American hardware to England are constantly increasing. One New York house has just sent out an invoice of twenty cases. The Irish Rifle Association has again challenged American marksmen to a match for the championship, to take place in Ireland the coming season. The Coroner's Jury, in the case of the Brooklyn Theatre calamity, has given a verdict that, of the 218 victims of the fire, two were burned to death and the remainder were suffocated. Arunah Huntington^ of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, has by his will left $200,000 to the Vermont common schools. Along the Virginia river in Nevada are some of the most remarkable salt formations in the world. They are, in fact, mountains of crystalj extending for more than thirty miles. Wong Chin Foo, the Chinese lecturer and scholar, is dressed in the costume of the " Flowery Kingdom," but he speaks \ as good English as any Colonial orator. Mr John Macfarlane, Rangiora, Christchurch, has purchased five very superior stud Leicester sheep from the Morton Mains flock, Southland. Jim Keen, Jones, of Nevada, ExGovernor Stanford, andother Californians, have transferred twenty million dollars to New York, and made it quite lively among the Wall street brokers. The Moravian Year Book for 1877 reports 13 bishops in different parts of the i world and 97,262 members. Of this total 67,413 are to be found in the missions. A woman in Illinois, while scratching her ear with a darning-needle, struck her elbow against the stove-pipe, driving the needle through the drum of the ear, causing paralysis of one side of the head and deafness. Cardinal Antonelli, it appears, has left his collection of " precious stone 3 and rare marbles" to his nephew, instead of to the Vatican Museum. Five times as many persona as perished in the earthquake at Lisbon were destroyed by the recent cyclone and resulting flood in Bengal. About bae quarter of a million were swept away. 1 Queen Isabella of Spain possesses a collection of old lace which cannot be equalled in Europe, and which is worth several millions. Productions of all countries, kind, and ages are there. The Churchman reports that the German congregation of St. Joseph's, Rome, Central New York (Roman Catholic), have attached themselves to the Protestant Episcopal Church. It is stated by a French chemist that the flesh of animals killed in the latter part of the night will keep much longer without salting than the flesh of those slaughtered in the day-time. The Methodists of Boston are about to build a church in that city large enough to seat 2500 persons. The seats are to be graded " as in an amphitheatre." Within a space of less than two months there have arrived at Liverpool upwards of 2000 sheep, shipped at Montreal or Quebec by farmers in the Dominion. The Melbourne Herald contradicts the story which it published on the conviction of Madame Cora on a charge of murdering Miss Alice Wren. The Rev. Charles Ciarke, at last accounts, was in Canada, where he appears to be very successful. The Canadian Illustrated News contains a good likeness of the lecturer.