GENERAL SUMMARY.

Otago Witness, Issue 1824, 5 November 1886, Page 15

GENERAL SUMMARY.

A block of buildings was burned at Leicester on September 20. The loss was estimated at £50,000. They were occupied by Barrow, leather manufacturer, and Wright, boot and shoe dealer.

On the 30th September the Due d'Aumale presented his domain of Chantilly, valued at 60,000,000f, to the Institute of France, to be held in trust for the French nation.

Dissensions have broken out between the two Anarchist clubs in London, and threaten to lead to active hostilities.

Herr Schwabe, a German long residing in England, presented an art hall to Hamburg on September 30, filled with valuable paintings.

In a distraining for rent case on September 30 at Milltown, County Clare, the mariied women of the neighbourhood attacked and overpowered and imprisoned all the officers engaged, while their husbands secured the cattle and removed them from the locality.

On the 30th September the Lord Mayor of London handed United States Minister Phelps £1000 for the benefit of sufferers by the Charleston earthquakes.

Franz Anan, the historical painter of Munich, died on September 30.

Lord Brassey publishes a letter in a London paper of the 29th September, in which be says the victory of the American yacht Mayflower over the Galatea is due to the superiority of the American model over the British.

At the London wool sales on September 30 there was fair competition and prices were firm. Among the lots offered for sale was a parcel from America, which was withdrawn because none of the bids covered expenses. It was rumoured in Berlin on the 29th that a plot to blow up a train on which the Czar was travelling had been discovered at St. Petersburg. Seven persons, including three Glasgow magistrace?, were suffocated to death on September 25 while viewing the monster blast at Loch Fyne quarries. Seven tons of gunpowder was used. It appears the crowd paid no attention to the warning to keep at a distance, but rushed past the persons giving the advice. An indescribable scene followed; peoplelooked as if intoxicated, undergoing convulsive contortions, accompanied by laughing, crying, and screaming as they returned to consciousness. The medical men say that after the explosion, which loosed about 500,000 tons of granite, a cloud of nitrous oxide gas ascended, and in the absence of any wind, fell to the earth and enveloped the spectators. A number of persons escaped unaffected, while others, probably 150, detected a puugent taste and odour, accompanied by a difficulty^ in breathing. This waa followed by convulsions and vomiting.