Odds and Ends.

Otago Witness, Issue 1440, 28 June 1879, Page 20

Odds and Ends.

(Compiled for the Otago Witness.)

It isreported that Major General Crealock, his staff, and the officers of the various regimentß tent out to tbe Cape, have been supplied with sloi es of Kofi's consolidated food. In Italy, ou Palm Sunday, sprigs of olive and pa'm branches which have been blessed — emblems of peace and love — are exchanged between parties who have disagreed during the year, and reconciliation follows. A daily newspaper in the style of the London Times will shortly appear in Paris. Foremost amongst its contributors will be Sarah Bernharat, whose versatility of talent is welt known. She will write the criticisms on the halon.

An Ame.ican paper offered a prize for the solution of a very difficult diets problem. The only person who sent a correct solution was Miss O. A. Holoyd, of Hull, England, In \he course of th© alterations being car« ried out in the Old Kirk, Edinburgh, it was found that the flooring beams rested upon a mass of human bunes about two feet thick. They had, no doubt, been taken from an old church yard adjoining.

Dr Caiver, the Uahforniaa rifle expert, lately gave a private exhibition in London. He broke 89 out of 100 glass balls thrown by. hand upwards, and broke 50 balls in one minute and fifty-seven seconds, using a Wincluster repeating rifle wiih Bingle bullets. A very curious article of dress now made by the Parisians is the artificial bust. It is ot india-iubber, perforated to allow circulation ot air, and covered with white cambric. Messrs Kopf and Co., of London, have made great improvements lately in preserving food for travellers. They consolidate and concentrate all kinds of soups and meats, UjfesbiDg them into tin cylinders, two inches long and one and a quarter in diameter, open at both enda. A fac-simile lithograph of that famous old Irish manuscript, "The Book of Leinster," the greater number of which are in the library of Trinity College, is about to be published. The prizes offered ihia year by the Massachusetts Horicultural Society— competition open to all persons— aggregate the splendid sum cf 3050 ools., for plants, flowera, fruits, vegetables, gardens, greenhouses, etc. la a speech in the Suchstag, Herr Liedknecht, Socialist, said that it ihe Government could prove the connection of the German bccialiste with the attempt on the lives of kings in Spain and Italy, he would accept anti Socialist laws. Nearly every town in America, from San Francisco to New York, hatf its skating .floor for roller skating, some of * the rinEs being | capable of accommodating over 3000 people. [ They continue using the rollers during the whole year. We ate told that Mr Edmund Yates, in his new venture, "Time," will aim at supplying "amusing liter* ture." This is a feature we do not meet vtry often in monthly magazines. A well known Parisian fashion critic pre- [ diets that there will be a change in favour of short dresses. He gives us just two years tor the blcirts to reach mid leg. Some ladies I already begin to show tne ankles. Mr Sergeant Cox, in a paper read before the Psychological Society of Great Britain, arrives at the conclusion that man is not material ma-eiy, but thai the conscious self is a dt finite existing entity, distinct from the molecular structure. On St. Patrick's Day the new line of tramrails consttucttd by the Dublin Central | Tramways Company, from College-green to (Jlon&keagb, wa-* opened. I The labour employed on the Great Pyramid was equivalent to lifting 15,733,000,000 cubic feet of stone one foot high. If accounts can be relied upon, it took W ICO,COO men 20 | years to complete it. The melodies of Thomas Moore, translated ' into Irish, with the .English words also, have been issued by Lynch, Cole, and Mcc han, of New "Xork. They have been trans- | lated by the Archbishop of Tuam. I American women a r e notably M. Worth's I beßt customers. Of his own countrywomen he epeaka with a mournful t hake of the head, and French women no longer dresa as extravagantly as in the days of the Empire. The authorities of Cleveland Ohio, have made a contract to light a large portion of the city by electricity. The results of the experiments will be noted with great interest.

During the year there were in Ireland 133 370 Oirths registered, 99,839 deaths registered, and 41,124 persons emigrated. This would show that the population has decreased by 6593. Motions were adopted in the English House of Lords calling for tbe figures of American meat imporis and of general trade with the United States, probibly with a view to reciprocity between the two countries.

The exodus of negroes from plantations in Louiaianna and Mississippi to Kansas continueb, and tl us far 4000 have arrived at St. Louis. They were all in a destitute condition. It is pretty certain that tbe Prince of Wales will visit Australia and make his first rcstmg-place Victoria, which thus scores another gigantic hot tit. Terrible prairie fires recently occurred in Kansas. They extended over an area ten miles long and three wide, and swept everything before them. About one hundred houses were consumed, abo large quantities of grain, &c. It is stated that in consequence of the unprofitable character of most of the great mercantile pursuits in England the amount of unemployed money held in London is over £120,000,000. Carbonaceous food is recommended for those afflicted with a fondness for strong dunk. The starch contained in macaroni, beaus, and oil seems to render unnecessary, and therefore repulsive, the carbon resident in alcohol.

vviJderand (Jo , of Honolulu, wh> were havirg a now steamer built at S <.a Francisco, offi red to give a free passage for one year to any one who would gaes* her nime. Three humirci guesses were stnt in, and two were correct.

A doctor at Coventry has been sent toprison for four months at bard labour for neglecting to attend a sick child when summoned, although he contended tbat the casewas not represented to him as urgent.

An Illinois reformer has recently intr duced a bill into the Legislature providing that any person who treats anothew in asaloon shall be punished for each and/every offence by a fiae. The Tompkins Avenue Methodist Church, Brooklyn, was lately purchased by the Rev Anna Olivet for 14,0(0flols. The Society has called her to occupy the pulpit, although the chuich refuses to license her.

Within the three montha ending March the imports ot" the port of Dublin, consisting mostly of breadhtutfs, were h gh«-r than they have been, and the exports, consisting chiefly of intoxicating drinks, were lower. Large quantities of bacon and beef were imported.

A delegation from agricultural committees in sixty departments of France has called on President; Grevy with resolutions against the renewal of the treaties of commerce and in favour of the \ votection of wheat.

At Inver, County Galway, Ireland, a young man who was collecting sea-weed was* choked to death- by a small rock fish, which slipped into his throat wken he was killingit with h's teeth.

A terrible explosion of nitro glycerine on the sth May, in tbe Grand Trunk f. eight sheds in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, killed several men, and destroyed 150 cars and the sheds. The wieck beggars description. Probably in no city of Europe ia there so much distress to-day as in Berlin. The millards which, Germany exacted from France after the war would, it was thought, greatly benefit the city, but just the contrary has happened. The English girla are rapidly becoming: " Americanised," according to an English, paper. Young ladies in large towns walk, out without chaperones or other attendants, " much as they do in America." A man named Paul Jones has died at Sandhurst, Victoria, aged ninety-nine. Heoame out to Australia in the Bounty witk Governor Macquarrie in 1810. A bronza colossal statue of Dr Livingstone, with a Bible in one hand and cap in the? other, has been received in Glasgow. Thecost oi the statue was £2000.

The excavations at the supposed site ofjthe hanging gardens at Babylon are Baid to haveterminated. They have yielded many tablets from the time of Nabonidus to the Parthian era.

The Sandwich Island Government havearranged with the well-known English houseof Janion and Co. to bring to the islands10,000 immigrants from Madeira. Two shipswith 550 are on the way. A cable dispatch reports a revolution at Panama. There were fourteen hours' fighting in the streets and many persons were killed. Qu'et had been restored. A new Protestant sect distinguished, likethe Shaker, by their physical extravagances,, has appeared in Weotphalia, the pi'oselyteabeing chiefly women. A very active effort is being made to secure an abatement of the claims of the principal creditors vi the City of Glasgow Bank, and the committee . engaged in this work is reported to be meeting with very encouraging success. t The Victorian Government agricultural returns show the deficiency in the yield of the potato crop io that Colony, as compared with last year's, is seventeen thousand tons. Pittsbnrtf, Pa., produces more than half the glass made in the United States. Itsfactories number 73 -with 690 po's, and give employment to CMS hand-, whose wagesapproach 3 000 000 lob a year. Pi>per napkins are in innrpastng demand. A Boston firi'i has sold 2'o COO in one year. They are said to be ; 11 -m; o-'c-d from Japan. Tbe napkivas are wholub&led at six to ten dollars pf>" thousand. Tbe only t-xplau.'tion of the f?ct tfeat so many men go to see these femmine pedestrians must be that they invariably discard their petticoats, and appear en the trackin tights and phorfc tunic. Madame Jenny Clvi? is about to leave theSandwicli Islands. Before going she consented, at the earnest solicitation of her numerous friends in Honolulu, to give a farewell conc u rfc.

A C thoiie priest in New London, Conn., announces that the names and offerees of all members of his church who appear in the police court of that city will hereafter be publicly announced in the church. WillL»ni Daw-ion is the name of pJjOoor Quaker shoemaker in Spiceland, Itycfiana, who is an excellent ast»onomer, who has made his own telescope, and for twenty year* has furnished the Smithsonian Institution, with valuable observations. Mr H>nry M. Stanley is now on bis way to Zanzibar with a commission from the King of the Rf Igi ns to reorganise the hitherto unsuccessful Belgian expedition. In every It>.tfan scbool public or private, girls are taught t* sew and embroider, and as soon as tbey c>m they take their own dresses to Bchool to make there themselves. The Earl of Punmore conducted th© performance of a wedding mavch of his own composition in ho tour of the recer.t royal marriage in her M. j sty's Theatre, London. Ex Governor Young, one of the new representatives in Congress freni Ohio, was born in a cabin on the estate of Lord Duflferin's father in Ireland. The trial of the Rev. Dr Talmage in Brooklyn is opened wd closed daily with, prayer. The Ilev Mr l^ote, who made one of the cosing prayers, asked for forgiveness for all that was unst emly in the proceedings.

Some of the wealthy inhabitants of New York have bad telephones arranged from their drawing rooms to the opera house, hence they can heur every note of the various singers without leaving their domestic; hearth. In the north of England and Scotland harea, rabbi's, and ev«n d«er have been literally starved to death in considerable numbers ; but tbe pwr creatures have left mementoes behind them in the barkli ss stems and branches of numberless young forest trees.