MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 1639, 21 April 1883, Page 6

MULTUM IN PARVO.

'—Through the influence and labours for seven years of a single Quaker missionary and his wife, the Modoc Indians, once bloodthirsty, treacherous, and degraded, have been transformed into well-mannered and wall-dressed-people, owning nice farms, and for the most part members of tha Society of Friends. — The lovers of Burnß— and what Scotchman does not love and revere the peasant poet ?— will be glad to hear that the tombstones of the Burns family are being restored, and that measures will be taken to preserve these memorials in the future.

— There seems to be no lack of students for the ministry in the theological halls of Scotland. In the new College of the Free Church, Edinburgh, the number of students is far greater than it has been for a number of years A. portion of the old Roman wall can be Been at the back of the Tower of the London station of the Metropolitan railway. It is a remarkably fine specimen, and in perfect preservation, and as sound, apparently, as when it was first built by our Roman benefactors, as well a 8 conquerors, some 1800 years ago. — There is a story current that the Due d'Aumale said to a friend in 1869 that the Empire would fall and be followed by a Republic, adding : " A day may come when I shall be nominated to be President, and I shall astonish the world by the loyalty with which I shall carry out the commission entrusted to me."

— The native Christians of Cawnpore are exhibitingan aggressive phrase of Christian activity that is a hopeful indication. Of there own accord they nave established a Sunday-school for nominal Christian children, of whom there are a great many in Cawnpore. — An extraordinary accident occurred at Stockton recently. A mourning coach, containing four persons, was being driven over Stockton bridge, when the horses rushed on the side path, and leaped over the parapet, breaking the shafts and leaving the carriage against the bridge. The horse fell into the river 30ft below, and swam about 500 yards before it could land. The animal was little the wor«* for its extraordinary leap. — In half a century the population of England and Wales has increased 86.9 per cent. At a similar rat 6it would be doubled by 1936. The great cause of growth of late years has been the reduction of the death rate ; thus the the reduction of the death rate in the last decade is equal to the survival of 299,385 persons who would have died had the death rate been the same as in the previous decades. — Every year the Duke of Athol plants from six hundred thousand to a million trees. He has covered two thousand acres with trees during the present season. One of these dukes is well known as the Planter Duke, having in his lifetime planted 27,000,000 trees, covering 15,000 acres. — A Mr Jones, who made a fortune as an army tailor and then devoted thirty years to collecting objects of art, died recently, leaving to the South Kensington Museum the entire collection, valued at £20,000, and pronounced by experts to be the most costly ever presented to a national museum.

— The sculptor Gerard, who obtained a medal at the last Salon for his " Tobie et l'Ange," has, without any premonitory symptoms, lost his reason. He was working in his study, and giving the last touches to a remarkable group called " Maternity," when he suddenly went mad. , His friends succeeded in getting him into a cab under the pretext of a drive, but the vehicle deposited the unfortunate man at the Asylum Sainte Anne. — One of the signs of the breaking up of old prejudices in India is the fact that a Mahratti lady of good position, not a Christian, is going to America, with the full approval of her husband, to pursue a thorough medical course, with the intention of returning to practise medicine among her countrywomen, bhe is a brave woman and well vouched for.

— Three Arabian mendicants, who recently arrived at Boston from Liverpoool, England, en route to New York, began to solicit alms as soon as they got ashore. They were promptly arrested, and the Cunard Company, which had brought them across the Atlantic, was compelled to take then back. —The throne to be used at the Czar's coronation has already been ordered. It will be made of black oak, richly carved in antique Slavonic patterns, and will cost over £2000. The canopy will be supported by columns 10ft. high, and will be ornamented by f-he Imperial eagle and a scroll-work bearing the 56 coats of aims of the Government of Russia. Crimson velvet hangings, embossed in gold, will shelter the Imperial chairs, which will stand on a dais.

—A girl sixteen years of age, living at Ulster county, N V., haa undergone a successful operation for the complete closure of the mouth Of twelve years' standing, with adhesions of the cheeks, the result of salviation in childhood. Most of the time she has been unable to open her mouth even to eat, food being forced through an opening left by the absence of teeth on either side of the jaw. Since the operation the girl can open her mouth and speak plainly, and faith is expressed in her final recovery. — Mr Emmett, underwriter, of Ramsgate, wrote to the Meteorological Office London, on the subject of Wiggins' prophecy, and received the following reply : — <r The prophecy to which you allude emanates from some man in the Finance Department of the Canadian Government. It is utter nonsense. No living man can predict the weather two days beforehand, much less six months. The idea that the Admiralty have ordered ships to be in port is also absurd and utterly false." —The Bedouins of the East have just stolen the throne of King John of Abyssinia— a brand new one, made to order for him by an English firm at Aden. The throne, carefully packed up, was "entrusted to a caravan which was to convey it to its destination. The caravan, however, was attacked by a band of robbers a few miles outside Aden, and the throne disappeared. With it, too, went no fewer than 600 decorations of the Abyssinian order of the " Seal of Solomon," which were also manufactured at Aden.

— Over three thousand congratulatory letters and telegrams have been received by the Crown Prince and Princess of Germany on the occasion of the celebration of their silver wedding ; also a hundred packages which have not yet been .opened. The_ Emperor has presented a massive «ilver tea service, the Queen of England has Bent a marble statue of herself, the city of Berlin has -donated 118,000 marks for the foundation of a sanitary school; the sum of 800,000 marks, •collected throughout Germany, has been re■recieved lor benevolent purposes. —The French Commission dcs Monuments jHiatoriques has lately been occupied by the .consideration x>f a report on the present condition of the ancient Palace of the Popes at Avignon, which is now used as a barracks. The report states that .fchia circumstance is She cause of permanent degradation to the •building itself and the frescoes it contains. The commission has. entreated the Ministredes Beaux- Arts to spare no efforts for the removal of the troops if rora qua historic palace..

— The London correspondent of the Liverpool Mercury Bays the aristocracy still pushes into the Stock Exchange. The latest arrival is Hon. Frederick Ponsonby, the third son of Baron de Manley, an Eton boy and a D. C. L. of Oxford. The Stock Exchange, it is said, does not care for its aristocratic adherents, and, at all events refuses to give them their titles. When Rothschilds sent over the other day for Lord Walter Campbell, the porter heard the request for him by his title as almost an insult to the democracy of the place. " Lord Walter Campbell?" said he. "We've got no lords here," and then shouted, *' Walter Campbell's wanted."

— From observations made on specimens still in existence, the longevity of various trees has has been estimated to be, in round numbers, as follows : Deciduous cypress, 6000 years ; baobab trees. 5000 ; dragon tree, 5000 ; yew, 3000 ; cedar of Lebanon, 3000 ; " great trees" of California, 3000; chestnut, 3000; olive, 2500; oak, 1600; orange, 1500; (Mental plane, 1200 ; cabbage-palm, 700 ; lime, 600 ; ash, 400 ; cocoa-nut palm, 300 ; pear, 300 ; apple, 200 ; Brazil wine-palm, 150 ; Scotch fir, 100 ; and the balm of Gilead about 50 years.

— One of the evangelistic workers of France says that in five years he has delivered 1650 conferences, in presence of 400,000 hearers. —The American climate agrees with Jumbo. He has been in New York less than a year, and has grown seven inches in height. Cakes, tarts, candy, and other dainties continue to arrive for him from children in England. — Crime has of late been alarmingly on the increase in Germany. Desperate murders and robberies are of almost daily occurrence.

—As an evidence of the extraordinary progress of the cigar manufacture in the United States, it seems, from recent statistics, that of the 3,290,109,447 cigars consumed in the States in the year 1881, only 40,000,000 were imported, the rest being of domestic manufacture. — The Calcutta papers are urging the establishment of crocodile farms in India, in view of the demand in Europe and America for the skins for various uses.

—There are 60,000 coloured Baptista in Tennessee, with 150 churches. — At Forfar, in Scotland, Hugh Townley, only 18 years ef age, pleaded guilty to having two wives alive, and to having committed perjury with a view to marrying a thiid. He was sentenced to nine months' hard labour.

— In China the first class are the literati, the second the husbandmen, the third the artisans, and the fourth the interchanges. The prie'-ts hold no office. — When anything strikes Mr Gladstone, particularly in the course of his reading, it is his custom to write opposite to it the letters " M.A." What this means is a puzzle to the critics. Perhaps it means " Make allusions " or "Make abstract."

— It costs something to become a nobleman in England. The fee paid on letters patent for a Duke iB £350 ; Marquis, £300 ; Earl, £250 ; Viscount, £200; Baron, £150; Baronet, £100 and any other title or dignity, £30.

— The Rev. Charles Garrett, at the recent missionary meeting in Edinburgh, pointed out the fact that while £152,000 was co itribut. d by Wesleyans last yaar for foreign missions, Mr Bass paid £176,000 for the carriage of his ale.

— The statistics of British pensions Bhow that 10,000 pensioners draw £5,196,550 per annum from India, and 150,25" pensioners receive from the tax-payers of the United Kingdom more than £7,000,000 per annum. — The Japanese Government has determined to establish 53,760 primary schools. The Empire is divided into eight departments, with one college to each. Children are to be compelled to attend the primary school. — The nominal capital of the new companies brought out in England in 1882 was £84.500,000. About one-fifth was'of companies dealing with electricity. —There are 120,000,000 women and girls in India, and at the most liberal estimate not more than one in every twelve hundred has yet been placed under any kind of Christian instruction.

— An influential meeting, called at the request of the Scottish Meteorological Society, has been held in the Town Hall, Glasgow, to consider the proposal for erecting an observatory on Ben Nevis, at a height of 406 ft above the level of the Bea. The Lord Provost presided, and amongst the speakers were Sir Wil liara Thomson and Professor Grant, It was agreed to raise £5000 for the purpose.

— Henry Vincent, the English lecturer, recently ralated to an American that he wat driving with John Bright when the news of Abraham Lincoln's death was told them by a man who stopped their carriage by the wayside for that purpose. Neither of the two Englishmen spoke a word in response. They drove on in utter silence, and by-and by when each looked up at the other's face the eyes of both were full of tears.

— A dispatch from Mozambique announces that the French steamer Eloise sailed from Nossi Be to Ibo to ship labourers. The natives, all armed, assembled to prevent the French from making contracts. The Portuguese military intervened, but the natives resisted, and were routed only after having lost seventyfive killed and wounded. The Eloiße returned to Nossi Be without having accomplished her object. — According to an American contemporary Philadelphia derives an annual revenue of 12,000d0l from telegraph, telephone, and electric light companies for the use of its overhead and underground wires. Each company makes a return annually of the number of poles, &c, and a payment of sdol per annum for each mile of wire used for telegraph or telephone purposes, and 15dol per mile per annum for electric lighting purposes is required. There are at present about 10,000 miles of wire in the city. —A terrible accident has occurred at the Severn tunnel works. As a party of men were waiting at the bottom of the shaft to be drawn up the banksman, *t appears, pushed a tram into the shaft. The tram fell on the men at the bottom, killing four of them on the spot and terribly mangling several others, who are not expected to recover. A man has been arrested on a charge of manslaughter in connection with the calamity. — A panic has occurred at the German Catholic school in New York, caused by a trivial fire in the building. The scholars, who are girls ranging from Four to 12 years of age, and belong to the lower walks of life, were jammed in the Btairway. Seven are known to have been crushed to death, and a number injured. According to another report, 14 of the children were killed. A mammoth among safes has been constructed for the Government of the Argentine Republic. It is of iron boiler-plates, half an inch thick, with air chambers and non-conduct-ing cases, which make the thickness of the walls five inches. It is 9ft lOin high by 15ft 9in wide. The doors are of steel, and can be made to open either by a key, which will go under a finger ring, a lock without a key, opening by placing a dial at certain combinations of figures, or by an electric time lock, which unlockß itself at any time for which it is set. The safe weighs jußt under 44,0001b, or close on 20 tons.