Multum in Parvo.

Otago Witness, Issue 1502, 28 August 1880, Page 6

Multum in Parvo.

IGmpiled expressly for the WUneu.}

„ A steel, rail is on exhibition in Franoe that Tub been in use 18 years, and over whioh 256,000 trains have passed. : . The Wesleyan chapel in London founded by John Wesley, which was recently burned, hat been restored and re-opened. A terrible scourge, re Bembling dysentry, is , prevailing in Adams, Mass.,, whioh has so far ■ bifflsd tne "skill of the physiolans. Over 1000 .persons, old and young, have been ■trioken.down. , Cause,: bad water. . The Live Stock' Journal mentions a cow, in Yorkshire whioh has dropped three oslyes, all alive and well; this oow has had five, within twelve months. : Sending live oattle to England from America is not always profitable; fortyeight head were lately thrown overboard in one voyage, owing to rough weather. \ ' Hereafter imoking in the. street of Boston is not iUegtl, as it has been sinoe the enactment of the law of 1818. The law has been - repealed,, although it has always been. a dead etfcer, , ' , „ • '• Tho Emperor of China goes through the form every year of holding the plough,; to show his peorle, by example, that no, man oughb to be ashamed of being a farmer. - The experiment of ooating the interior of a . , -aUway oarriage with <Beimain's luminous paint has, been tried ip England with cimaderable success. . ■ . • .The Hove School Board have adopted a novel plan for collecting school fees,. They have resolved upon giving no prizes ', to qhildren. whole parents are in arrears. !;,'The provisions and stores for the relief of shipwrecked crews on the Crpzet Islands have been conveyed there by ' Her 'Majesty's Bhip Oomus, placed in a hut, and covered with ' painted, canvas. . : . The total men in the British army during the past year punched by flogging, exolusive of these so punished, in prison was 39, total number pf laihea 103. . , ! : -" The ex Princess "of Monaco, , Lady Mary Hamilton, haff married at Pesth, Count Tassilo Testetioi, a member of one of the . oldest Hungarian families. A mulatto woman in the Philadelphia House of Correction is said to be gradually turning white! She §»yg the change began aix years ago. Monument! show that the Chinese lan,:guage dates back at leaMt to the eighth 1 oentury before Christ. The symbols of the language are said to have;, been invented by the., page Tange, shortly after the Flood. ' .The highest yield, of wheat, in New South • Wales during 1879 for one district was 21 , bushels per acre,. at Bombala ; and the low- . ' eat; 7 bushels, at Merton. ' < A story is afloat that an American newspaper representative reoently offered Prince Bismarck 180,000 dollars "yearly to write a weekly article for the journal . in question, but he respectfully deolined. The men engaged' in grain elevators are found to saooumb]very quickly to pulmonary diseases.' The lifeof a Vsoooper" is variously estimated at an average of three to five years. , ' The prbduot of honey in California bai grown from a single hive of beei, imported into that ocuntry 30 years ago, to 35,000,000 •" pounds a' year; A- report to the annual conference of the Mormons says that the Mormon population of Utah i« 111,820, that the ohuroh in that territory has lost 600 members and gained 1600 in a year, and that the church receipts in that period were over $1,000,000. It ill said that the Chinese Government intends to issue paper money, and that the machinery required for its manufacture has been ordered in Germany. The English income-tax, to be now raised to 6d in the pound, has been levied at that rate in only three of all the years since the tax *a« imposed by Sir Robert Peel in 1842. He fixed it at 74 in the pound, and for, 12 years that rate remained unohanged. The Athenesum sayß that Mr Laurence Oliphant is sngaged upon a book to be en- . titled "The Land of Gilead," in whioh he ■will glye an account of his travels and discoveries ia Eastern Palestine. Louise Lateau, the famous " stigmatic," is threatened with exoommunioation by Monseigneur Durousieau for adhering to Mon* seigneur Dumont, Bishop of Tournay, who has been suspended by the Pope m being of unsound mind. The return of corporal punishment in Her ' Majesty's navy for, 10 years ending December ■• 81, 1878, shows that the total number of men sentenced to be flogged was 247 ; number of ■ lashes awarded, 9833 j lashes inflicted, 9173. A JN ew York telegram states that the Naval Committee, of the House of Representatives will tsk Congress to vote 5,000,000d01. to oomplete four turret ships on the Delaware river. k Theie ships, say the Americans, will when finished be among the most formidable

armoured vessels in the world. , i ' 'The council of the Oamden Society have ' accepted an offer from 'Professor P«uli to 6dit two volumes of the Wardrobe "Accounts of Henry Ear lef Derby, aftewards King Henry IV, kept when he was journeying in Prussia, Lithuania, and other parts of Eaat'ern Europe, ■ - '• '"Excavations for a railway at Elbeuf, in France, have brought to light the remains of a dinotherium gig»nteum. Fragments of the tusks are 15 centimetres in diameter. ; A grant of £1000 has been made from the Indian Exchequer to the relatives of the late Mr Jenkyns, who was secretary to the illfated Cavagnari Embassy, and shared the fata of hi" gallant comrades at Cabnl. . The death of Carl Petersen, the Danish Arotio explorer, is reportedfrom Copenhagen. He took part in the "Vox" expedition under Sir Leopold M'Olintook, wbioh brought back <elios of the Franklin expedition. Profeisor Noriienikjold propoabi to proceedin 1882 by land to the mouth of the Lena, where the vessel for his next Arctic voyage ii being built. He will then draw ■ : maritime charts, measure the depths of the waters, and gather all the other necessary information for the further use of the new road of commerce. An unknown tramp near Americas, Ga., gave ohase to * rabbit and ran it into a log. Patting in his arm to take it, he was horribly bitten by a rattlesnake, and died in » few minutes,

China's population is a paltry two hundred and forty millions, two millions having perished in the famine of last year. Peking contains 3,OGO,000: Canton, 1,500,000; Hankow, 2,000,000 ; Fooohow and suburbs, 1,000,000 j and Shanghai, 800,000. It having been reported to the oommander in chief of the British fleet in the Mediterranean that piratical vessels have recently been committing aoti of depredation in the neighbourhood of Smyrna, Admiral Sir Beauchamp Seymour has despatched two of Her Majesty's ships in search of the saspeoted pirates. - , "j The Peninsula and Oriental Company have contracted with Messrs Oaird and Co., of, Greenock, for the construction of .two new' steamers for the Eastern mail, services, of very great size and power. Eaoh will be. of about 5000 tons gross, with engines of , 850horse power^ nominal (5250 effeotive), and will be capable of,, maintaining a speed of 15 knots an hour.

Colonel Warren has in the press a work called "The Tomple or the Tomb." He gives the history of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and proveß, from historical evldencs and arguments from his own and other recent discoveries, that the ohurch has always stood upon its present site, and that the Temple was where tradition and the unanimous consent of Jews, Mahommedans, and Christians have always plaoed it— on the highest part of Mount Moriah. - 1 Messrs B. Napier and Sons, shipbuilders, .Glasgow, have been entruted by the Ad- ' miralty with the construction of the hulls and Machinery of the three' fast steam cruisers of the Iris type about about to be added to the navy. The vessels, which will be named respectively the Leander, Pbseton, and Arethusa, are to be built of steel, and designed to attain a high rate of speed, ; In the last Parliament of Great Britain there were' two divisions on the qmstiori of opening museums on Sundays—one in Miy, 1874, and one in June, 1877. The total number of members who voted at the two divisions in favour of Mr P. A. Taylor's motion for Sunday opening w»b 118. The number voting against the motion was 362. The Savigny Foundation is a fund subscribed in commemoration of the great •lawyer. Yon Savigny, the interest o! which is Applied every two years in a prize for aa essay od a legal Subject, the adjudicators be ing the Imperial or Royal Academies of Sciences of Vienna, Munich, and Berlin, in rotations The competition is confined to no nationality. The Brighton Railway Company have for the last 10 years oonveyed sea-water from Brighton to London for the use of private, families and large establishments, inoludlng a supply for Beveral years ; past of many thousands of gallons of Brighton sea-water to the Crystal Palace and Westminster Aquaria, and a regular monthly supply to the Zoologioal gardens, Regents-park. „ ■ , Mr C. S. Sargent, Harvard Professor of Arborioulture, haß published in his, oapapity of special agent of the approaching United Stated census, a << Catalogue of the Forest Trees of North Atnerio*," preliminary to one' which will be added to the census report on the forest wealth of the United States. * ' Nearly 200 bioyole riders met on the green at Hampton Court, en Saturday, May 22, under the direction of Mr Yeoman, of the Piokw.ck Bioyole Club. After forming in processional order they prooeeded towards Teddingfcon, and came back to Bushey-park. The Wangaratta Dispatoh states that Constab'e Bracken, the only policeman in charge of Glenrowan station when Ned Kelly visited the plaoe on the morning of the 27th ult. , and who gave timely warning to the police in the special train, is to be stationed in Melbourne. The annual report of the Committee of Counoil on Education for England and Wales states that the Government grants to elementary day schools rose in the year 1879 from £1,820,661. t0 £1,981,720, or from 15s lfd to 15s 3|d per scholar in average attendanfee ; while the grant for the current finanoial year is estimated at 15s 8d per head. , During the 26 years since the change from 7d, the income tax in England has been above 6d in 9 years and below 6d in 14 years, 2d being the lowest. It was 6d in the financial years 1864 65, 3868-69, and 1871 72. It was but 2d in 1874-75 and 1875-76. In the Italian Chamber, on June 25, a man in the gallery threw two large stoneß .into the hall below. 'No one was hurt. When arrested, the man, who is a tailor of Viterbo, named Gordiglani, said that he had come to Rome with the intention of killing a personal enemy or committing suicide, but being in a desperate and starving condition, he had done something to cause himself to be arrested. The Prince and Princess of Wales, accompanied by Prince Albert Victor and Prince George, went in procession on June 26, with the chairman and members of the Metropolitan Board of Works, to free Putney, Hammersmith, and Wandsworth bridges, the last ef the 14 bridges over the Thames whioh still remained subject to toll. The consumption of spirits in Great Britain continues to decline. In the first quarter of this year, 1880, the quantity of home-made spirits on which duty was paid for consumption in the United Kingdom as beverage only was 6,594.988 gallons, showing when compared with the corresponding period, of lust year, a total deorease of 649.699 gallons. There were in 1879, 3,710,883 names of day scholars on the registers of inspeoted day schools in England and Wales, Cookery iB taught in 223 schools, and in 848 schools savings- bankß have been established in England and Wale?. The average salary of a certificated master, whioh in 1870 was £95 12s 9d, is. now £120 11s 9d; that of a sohoolmistress wbb £57 16s 5d in 1870, and is now £72 3s 2d. Moreover, 5817 masters, and 5278 mistresses, are provided with residences free of rent. The value of the estate of the late Hon. Neil Black has been sworn at £250,000 The deceased devised his property to his wife and children. It is computed that the probate duty will amount to at least £10,000. Owing to the wretohed implements nsed, and their deficiency in skill and soience the people of Palestine, according to travellers' accounts, are obliged to till the land all through the severest weather of winter because the frail ploughs and tiny oxen they nse are unable to stir the ground unless soaked with moisture.