Multum in Parvo.

Otago Witness, Issue 1506, 25 September 1880, Page 6

Multum in Par vo.

(Compiled for the Otago Witness.)

_ Pasha Baker will shortly conclude his mi«aion and make a general report on the present condition of Asiatic Turkey. In Bussia, whole localities have been deprived of their children by diphtheria and other diieases.

The Hospital Sunday Fund in London for this year amonnta to nearly £29,000, which considerably ia excess of last year. A plague of rats is at present doing much damage to tbe scgar crop in the island of Negrrß, Philippines. The expenses of the first Graveaond election and tbe petition proceedings which followed were £20,000.

China has a force of 50,000 men in Kashgaria, with Krupp's gar. a and many of the appliances of civilised Western warfare. Until 1824 it was a punishable offence for anyone to shear a sheep within five miles of tbe aea coaat, the law aJs» forbidding the exportation of wooL The revenue of the Imperial family of Eusiia is £2,500,000. About £500.000 is set aside for charities, schools, 4c, under the direction of tbe family.

Mr Matthew Burnett, the temperance lecturer, claims to have induced 13,000 people to join tbe temperance ranks in Adelaide and the district daring the past few months.

M. Dumas, the veteran French scientist, finds that in his researches respecting the occlusion of gases, while silver imprisons oxygen, alluminnm and magnesium specially retain hydrogen. Ihe new Channel steamer Albert Viotor, built for the Folkestone and Boulogne service of the South Eastern railway by Messrs Samuda Bros., at her trial trip on the Government meamred mile, made a speed of 21£ statute mi es an hoar.

Colonel Gordon— Chinese Gordon — being at first refused leave to proceed to China, tendered his resignation. On this the authorities reconsidered their decision, and granted him six months' leave of absence.

A Fingo labourer in Gape Colony astonished bis fellow workmen by carrying a 24 feet steel rail, weighing some 3601b, on hiß ihoolder a distance of 50 yards, repeating the feat oa three successive occasions.

Mount V*»ttviuß has been lit up by the electric lighi, three lamps being placed at the tramway station, nine along the tramWay, and three on the cone.

An Imperial ukase has been published in St Petersburg, fixing the number of men to be enirlled daring ihe present year for completing the Russian army and navy at 235,000.

There is quite a crusade against vacoination in New York oity, several children inoccnlated with matter obtained £<om the Board of Health having died with erysipelas. Doctors, however, say that tbe deaths from erysipelas were not due to the vaccine matter, bat to b»d blood in the children. Mr Isaac Seama-i has just severed his connection with Public Opinion. He has been associated with that journal for over 17 yean— first »s manager, and afterwards as manager and editor.

Famine continues to iage in the districts of Payazid, AUsbperd, and Van, and the inhabitants are taking flight into But-sian territory. Ten thousand people, chiefly Kurds, are reported to have perißhed irom banger.

The Great Council of the canton of Thurgau, one of the famous fruit districts of Europe, have jast elaborated a law for the plantation of fruit treeß along the public roadr. The trees are to stand at a distance of 26 to 30 metres from each other.

The dory Little Western, with two men aamed George W. Thomas and F. Norman on board, Bailed from Gloucester, Un>t<d States, on the afternoon of the 12th inst., on a voyage across the ocean. Ie is intended that the boat shall stop for a time at London, and then proceed oa a visit to the Baltic.

In the crowded cities ol Europe, or among ill-fed populations, there in a much greater number of blind, deaf and dnmb, insane, &c, than in the United States, British Colonies,' or other new countries.

Mr Graham Bell has been recommended by the commission appointed in 1876 to consider the distribution of the £2000 decreed by the French Government, to the Minister of Instruction as worthy of receiving this prize for tbe invention of his articulating magneto-electric telephone. M. Gramme is also recommended for a prize of LBOO for his magneto-electric machine. Ia fifteen years the public debts of Europe have been increased by nearly 70 per cent, or by the enormous sum of nearly two thousand millions sterling. Germany, in spite of her vast war baoty, has added a hundred millions to her indebtedness.

The estimated population of Victoria on Juce 30, 1880 was 908,853, being 494,763 males and 414,089 females. The increasa daring the quarter by excess of births over deaths was 4078, viz., 1961 males and 2109 females. That by exceEs ot arrivals over departures was 1788, viz , 1368 malei and 420 females. The total increase of population was thus 5858, viz., 3329 males and 2529 females, as shown in the table.

Of public libraries, the collections of the British Museum and the Bibliotheque Rationale of Paris are unrivalled, the former boasting 30 miles, the latter 18 miles of book shelves ; and the library of Melbourne is described as being worthy of any European capital. Niko, the brigand who captured Colonel Syngp, carried off two girls near Drama, for whom he demanded a ransom of 300 liras, or over £270. The father sold all he had to rabe the money, bat Niko only surrendered one girl. Some days after the father saw Ms other child standing against the wall of his house, and ran to embrace her, when the head of the corpse tnmbled over hit shoulder.

The expenditure of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers on purely strike purposes in 1879 was only a trifle less than the purely strike expenditure in the whole cf the preceding twenty-six j ears At the end of 1878 the accumulated funds of the society amounted to £251,676, but the unusual drain of last year reduced the snm to #146,116.

The Golos states that Count Milontlne, Minister of War, hai asked for a grant of 10,300 roubles, in order to purchase heliographs to be used in the expedition against the Tekke Turcomans.

Intelligence received at Lisbon from tbe Azores states that a disturbance of the earth h-»s occured in tbe island of St. George resulliog in the formation of auother small island of about 18 000 square yards, and distant 600 yards from the shore.

Forty-two thousand and twenty-eight emigrants landed in New York in Jane, making 177.362 arrivals in the half-year, aguiist 55,910 arrivals dutiogthe fitst half of 1879. The National Library in P^ris comprises two halls, the Salle da Travail, for admission to which a Government order, obtained on certain conditions, ia required, and the Salle Pabiiqua, open daily to all without restriction. Last year, in the Salle de Travail 63,391 readers consulted 221,840 books, while in the Salle Pablique 61,380 readers conaulted SS 169 books.

A shocking balloon accident has occurred at Le Mans. M. and Madame Petit went up in one balloon, and their son in a smaller one attached to it. The former burst soon after starting, and the car fell 400 yards to the ground, Madame Pdtit escaping with Blight braises, but her husband was much hurt, and lies in a precarious state. The smaller balloon got; free, and the youth effected a descent some miles distant.

The perfume manufacturers in the department of the Maritime Alps consume annually 600,000 pounds of roses, and the neighbourhood of Grasses and Cannes is thickly studded with rose farms. On one hectare of two and a half aCres 30,000 bushes are planted, a single tauh yielding, fur twelve yearß. A single hectare in good cultivation will net an average profit of twonty-four per cent per year. The English steamer Kbalifab, belonging to the Euphrates Company's line, has been attacked by Arabs, who kept up a f usilade upon the vessel for about an hour, but did not succeed in boarding her The quartermaster and one of the passengers were killed, and the captain wounded. The Turkish authorities at Bagdad have promoted the English consul to make anj investigation into the outrage, which was wholly unprovoked.

The Examiner lays :— " The next election of a professor of pastry in the University of Oxford will, it is expected, be an interesting and even an excitisg event It is understood that the present occupant of the chair, Principal Shairp, of the University of St. Andrew's, will offer himself for reelection, but that he will be opposed to a very large extent on account of his strictures on Barns. Mr Matthew Arnold will be asked to resume his old post. Mr Edmund W. Goue is also spoken of."

At the burning of Professor Mommsen's library at CharUtenburg about 40,000 volumes were lost. Farther, a number of highly precious and rare manuscripts, among which were five borrowed from the libraries of Bresl&u, Heidelberg, and Vienna. Most of them were of the fourth and eight centuries. They were unique, and are now totally and irrecoverably lost. Professor Mommsen had been at work until 2 o'clock in the morning. An accident to a petroleum lamp is supposed to have caused the fire.

The official census returns of the American cities on June 1 show that the population of New York was 1,209,561, an increase in ten years of 234,269; Philadelphia, 847,43?, an increase of 173,430 ; Brooklyn, 554,696, an increase of 159.594; Boston, 352,000, an increase of 101,474 ; Baltimore, 331,000, an increase of 63,646; Chicago, 477,500, an increase of 176.023: Cincinnati, 246 151, an increase of 29,914 ; New Orleans, 207,328, an increase of 15,910 ; San Francisco, 227,350, an morease of 77,877; and Washington, 160 000 an n increase of 50,801.

In making a caref ulfsurvey of the mountain d'Essaup, near the Spanish frontier, in the Pyrenees', Dr Fhen has found circles and ovals formed of stonee>,|like those on Dartmoor, and both straight and curved avenues. He h&s also witnessed the ceremony of the fires of St John on the eve of his festival. The fires are lighted by the clergy while a service is chanted, acd after tbe hurniug the charred wood ia distributed to every household, and kept leligionsly all tbe year, as was the custom in Britain before the Christian era. At one of these fires at Luchon, liviag serpenti were bnrnt in the flames.

The admission of women to the arts and science classes at University College, London, has been justified in every way. There has been during the eeseion which closed in Jane a perfect working of the system, the number o! men in the college, instead of being diminished, has considerably increased, and at the late distribution of prizes in the faculty of arts the women took a very honourable place among their fellow workers. Of 68 prizes the men took 52, the women 16; of JO3 first 'class certificates, the men took 65, the women 38 ; of 50 second-class certificates the men took 40, the women 10 ; of 52 third-clase certificates, the men took 50 and the women 2.

Mr Malet, the British Consul-General in Egypt, has just sent to the Foreign Office a number of reports made by his subordinates respecting the present condition of the conntry, and how far the administrative changes made by the Government wtre producing effect. The result of their reports, he ssys, is extremely satisfactory, and leads him to hope that the misrule and oppression to which the fellaheen have been subject for centuries has passed away for erer. There is, he adds, a great deal still to be done before it oan be said that Egypt is well goverened, but the result of the first half of this year gives a good hope for the future. The testimony in support of the great medicinal properties of the Eucalyptus globulus is increasing every year. In parts of Corsica and Algeria, where the tree h*s been planted for the sake of Its reputed virtues, endemic fevers have been stamped out. Similar testimony also comes from Holland, the south of France, Italy, California, and many other parts of the world. The Ceradotus (the bunzip) is a connecting link between fish and the animal creation. Its peculiar movements on land, its ability to live either above or below water for a length of time, and the rapidity with which it runs to water when disturbed c*ased it, twenty years ago, to be regarded with superatitioa.