Alultum in Parvo.

Otago Witness, Issue 1500, 14 August 1880, Page 6

Alultum in Parvo.

ICompikd expressly for the Witness.]

The deep-sea fisheries of Italy last year employed a fleet of 3132 sailing vessels, of 29,783 tons and manned by 20,292 men. m An exhibition of articles connected with the watch and clock trades was to be opened at Geneva in June and July. The first edition of the revised translation of the New Testament may be expected in the Autumn of this year. The Catholic population of the aiooeae ol Goulbourn has increased from 16,000 to 24,000 in thirteen years. A new gun, which can fire 5 000 shots in 13 minutes, was recently tested in Washington. The Gardner is a machine gon like the Gatling. It has two barrels made of Bte4 encased in brass. Prague papers announce that a manu ; .cripAranslation of the , « Nibelungenhed " into the Czech language has been discovered in the library of the Cathedral of that city. The manuscript belongs to the fourteenth the past year 30 divers engaged in the pearl fishery in the Peman Gulf los their lives, most of them being victims of sea monsters. The value of the pearls taken from the Persian Gulf was set down at •loub £300,000. , , A Bircelona telegram Btates that a cotton mill in that city has been set on fire by the operatives, 1000 in number. The flames were extinguished, and the ringleaders arThe' Municipal Statistical Bureau of Bsrlin announces tbat the population of .that icity at the end of 1878 amounts d to 1,081,380 perBon<, of whom 1,060,057 were civilians, and 21,173 military persons, The steel deepen -vessel Iks has broken down while on her trial trip in the Channel, her enf-ines have succumbed to the severe tests imposed upon them. The Bishop of Manchester recently said ttt Ashton ucder- Lyne that there was no barm in a duke having his £100,000 a year If he madfl a good aDd worthy use of it. In the Britißh Parliament, the Dissenters are more numerous than at any time since the Commonwealth. There are 25 Independents, 5 Jews, 5 Baptists, 9 WesleyaßS, 29 Presbyterians, 48 Irish Roman Catholics, 16 Quakers, and 1 Bradlaugh. ... .. Of all the epidemics which have ever appeared in Russia, dipthem, on account of the great mortality it causes, is the most destructive. « Pastor Hiroh, of Lintorf attributes a decrease of 9 per cent in Buicideß in Norway to the recent legislation agftinßt drunkenness, and he calls attention to the inorease of suicide in Germany. Mexico probably contains the largest area of rich mining territory of any nation in the world. Yet the whole country exports only about $25,000,000 worth of bullion, moat of it being silver. Up to 1870, 4,068,000 acres of land had teen alienated in South Australia. Now the -quantity is 8 477.8 00 acres, or 32 acres per bead of the population. An almost perfect house has been lately disentombed at Pompeii. It is probably the beat preserved of all the Boman dwellings hitherto discovered. Through the Joss of the Atalanta there are 28 widows left destitute, and some hundreds of orphans and other relatives. It is estimated that about £20,000 will be required to give commensurate relief to those who have lost relatives in the vessel. Experiments with the telf phone, J>y which the exact direction of Bound given by foghornß or fog-bellsmay be ascertained, proved that it was easy to ascertain whence the pound came from a distance of feur to six miles. At a late sale in Paris a book by a modern bindor, Trantz-Bauzonnet, a master of the art of inlaying, sold for £640, of whioh at least £440 was paid in reapeot of the binding. The Age states that the crowd that assembled in front of the newspaper offices in Collins street on the night of the Victorian general elections numbered 40,000. No disorders ooourred. Alice Lewis, 54, was, at the Durham Quarter Sessions, committed to ten years' penal servitude on the charge of stealing a chair, value 6d. The prisoner had been previously convicted. The question of the election of a coloured Bishop was indefinitely postponed in the Methodist Episcopal Conference at Cincinnati by a vote of 229 to 139. Mr Bishop, the Englishman who was condemned some yeaTß ago to a term of imprisonment for high treason, has, on a petition from his relations, been pardoned by the German Emperor. A man named B. Jones, a groom at the Hoyal Hotel, Cooma, picked up a purse containing upwards of £1000 belonging to a bawker, and when he found the owner returned the money safe. The owner gave Jones a half sovereign 1

In Wurtenburg, where capital punishment his been in abeyance since 1866, a inau named Eapp has been hanged for the murder of hin former master and mistress. The Bodie Standard tells of a man who located a ranch on a a smooth field of snow tin Mill Oreek canyon, and found that when 4he snow disappeared he had fenced in a The French Council of state has decided that Biflhops are to be styled in decrees Monsieur, instead of Monseigneur, the latter term being contrary to the law of 1802. ' A working mechanics of Montreal claims to have discovered a new motive power that will be as effective as steam, is applicable to all kinds of locomotion, and will work at one-tenth the cost of fueL The Pope has issued an order decreeing the formation of an ecclesiastical commission to investigate the apparitions at the Church of knock and report upon the same. It is stated that the population of the Australian Northern Territory, white and yellow alike, is fast decreasing. Over 100 Chinese die there annually of fever. It h«8 been decided that the institution of the Gaelic chair in Edinburgh University should be delayed till next yea*, when it is hoped the funds for the endowment of the professorship will have Increased to an Smcunt considerably pvejr #13,000,

The number of pawnshops in Java and Madura has alarmingly increased during the last ten years. In 1869 there were 292 of these inatltutions only; now there are 1107. Whimper, an English traveller, has distinguiabpd himself by olimbing Mounts Cotopaxi and Ohimboraza. The latter baffled Humboldt's endeavours. Its crest is 21,120 feefc above the level of the sea. If current report speaks truly, Mr Carry's reward will not end with a lift into the peerage. Some day may Bee the whole of Lord Beaoonsfield's possessions pass into his hands.

The two men who started from Boston, J U.S., for Llelbourne in a one and a-half ton boat, in July 1879, have been brought back to New York. They succeeded in reaching a fishing village in Brazil. William Huntly, a pupil of George Stephenson, haa just died in England, at the age_ of 82. He entered the first locomotive engine that drew a passenger train, under Stephen, son's personal superintendence. Count Soyez de JBrancourt' a well-known .French sporting man, has died from a bite in the arm from a stallion bought at Madrid, the animal being affected with glanders. The famous orange tree at Casgell, which was riddled with bullets by the Cossaoks on September 30, 1813, has at last died. The Heß9iache Morgenzeitung writes that even last year the tree bore new leaves and full blossoms. A curious old bye-law haß been put in force at Shrewsbury, Emma Fawcett, proprietor of a travelling circus, being fined £1 and 11s 6d costs, for driving 10 vans and 30 horses through the streets of the town upon Sunday. The cheapness of English bookbinding is shown by the fact that a thousand volumes belonging to the Astor Library, New York, were Bent over last year, and returned, handsomely bound, at a cost, inoluding all charges, considerably less than would have been oharged in New York. The Mussulmans in China have multiplied by millions, and are making many converts. Some day they may make their way by force of arms, and it is prophesied that before so very long the peoples from Bagdad to Shanghai will be of one faith, and will push their : creed by conquest. I The French Geographical Society, which fifteen years ago comprised only 303 members, has now increased to 1915, including 215 additions in 1879. Among its members are seven sovereigns. The following are the statistics of epidemical diseases in Russia in 1877:— SmallpoxPersons attacked, 10.287; deaths 2632. Scarlatina— Persons attacked, 25,733 ; deaths 6439. Diptheria— Personß attacked, 46,136 : deaths, 18,698, Measles— Persons attacked, 45,925; deaths, 5912. Typhus— Persons attacked, 50,445. The Lord Mayor has consented, at the request of Admiral Ryder, to open a fund at the Mansion House for the relief of sufferers by the loss of the Atalanta. Lord Northbrook, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and Mr W. H. Smith, have each subscribed £100 towards the fund, The last deoade shows the annual suicides per million inhabitants to be: — Saxony, 300 ; Denmark, 280 ; Witrtemberg, 180 ; Mecklenberg, 167 ; Baden, 156 ; Prussia, 133 ; Austria, 122 ; Bavaria, 103 ; Sweden, 81 ; Belgium, 73 ; and Norway, 40.

The strata in the " Windy Stretch " section of the Sb. Gothard Tunnel are composed of a caloareous aluminous sohist, which has a great affinity for moisture, and swells enormously on exposure to the s,ir. If a tunnel were made through Mont Blanc, 3000 metres of similar material would have to be pierced and vaulted. The Cologne Gazette states that the towers of the Cologne Cathedral are now the highest in the world, the height they have attained being 5 feet higher than the tower of St. Nicholas's Church in Hamburg, which has hitherto been the highest edifice. Ultimately they will be 51 leet 10 inches higher. A letter from Rome announces that an extensive coral bank has been lately discovered south from Sciarra, on the Neapolitan coast, i Judging from the quantity and quality of the material already fished up, this new bank seems to be richer and more imporant than the one discovered about five years ago not far distant from the same spot. The Golos states that in a village in the Skiomin district, government of Grodno, a peasant was perpetually quarrelling with his wife, because, as he declared, he "had ceased to love her." The village council took the matter into consideration, and adjudged the peasant to receive 20 blows with rods. A bill for the separation of churoh and state has been read a third time by the great council of the Geneva canton. The law is intended to take effect from the beginning of 1882, but before it can become valid it must be ratified by the popular vote. It is believed that the engineers of the St, Gothard Tunnel will be able to overcome the difficulty arising from the threatened collapse of the passage in the part known as the " Windy Stretch." The height of the Towers of Cologne Cathe. dral, is 524 feet 11 inches, from the pavement of the cloisters, or 515 feet 1 inch from the floer of the church; that of St. Paul's, London, 365 feet 1 inch ; and of Notre Dame, Paris, 232 feet 11 inches. The Cupola of St Peter's at Borne, is 469 feet 2 inohes. The Bishop of Manchester recently said that thereTwere people living in cellar dwellings in Manchester, in hovels in Ashton, and other towns, eating offal, clothed in rags, and not spending as muoh on their sustenance as> the rich man's horse or hound cost.

A return has been issued of the agrarian outrages reported by the Irish Constabulary during the year 1879, from whioh it appears that the total number of such outrages committed was 977. Of these, 544 took place in C^nnaught, 154 in Leinster, 148 in Munster, i nd 127 in Ulster. The following is an amusing proof of how an item growS'-at least, in America :•— After the sleigh accident which befel the Princess Louise, it was stated by the Montreal Witness that Her Royal Highnesb had lost a jewel valued at $2000 ; the Boston Traveller soon inoreased these figures to $20,000 ; the Chicago Times to $200,000 ; The St Paul Pioneer Press raised them to $2,000,000 ;. the Denver Tribune to $20,000,000 j and finally the San Francisco Poet fixed $200,000,000 bb the right figure J I