MISCELLANEOUS.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume V, Issue 512, 21 June 1897, Page 4

MISCELLANEOUS.

Something nobody wants and nobody likes to lose—a lawsuit. The canary bird may be small, but he eats his food by the peck. The annual income of the Pope is said to be 4520,000. Kid gloves, with hand-painted flowers on the back, are the latest fad in Paris. The most heavily insured building in England is St. Paul s Cathedral. It is insured for 495,000 in ten offices. The business in which you know you could make money is generally the other man’s. The public debt of France is the largest in the world, and amounts to about 41,000,000.000. The library of Gottingen has a Bible written on palm leaves. There are 5378 pages, each made of a single leaf. Our new Governor has been created a K.C.M.G. Selfishness is a misdirected search for happiness. In the banquet of life the scum is sometimes mistaken for the cream. It takes more to keep up appearance than it dees to support a family. Butter is the most nutritious article of diet, and bacon a good second. Spending 5d foolishly leads to spending 45 the same way. The Bengalese bet on ram falling and have tote shops on the event. Hunting bluejackets in Auckland is a profitable game to those who lay low. It takes a man to make a fool of a woman and a woman to make a fool of a man. Generosity is a quality which few people possess, and yet they are always hunting for it in others. Statistics of life insurance people show that in the last twenty-five years the average of a man’s life has increased 5 per cent., or two whole years, from 41.9 to 48.9. A London clergyman asserts that the overdressing of most churchgoers lias been a curse to Christianity, by influencing those who cannot buy good chillies to absent themselves from church. “ Mamma, what part of the body is the trombone ? ” “No part ot the body* my dear.” “ Yes, it is, because it says in the paper here that last night, while returning from the symphony concert Professor Gridel fell and broke his trombone.” A I-’rench cyclist named Garand, a plumber by trade, recently rode round the coping stone of a house in course of construction for a wager. The coping stone was barely two feet wide, anu was about 501’t from the ground. A correspondent wants to know how to discern when a hen is over three years old. Our poultry expert advises that the towl be killed and cooked, and then if she eats tough she is over three years. Punch's caustic critic’s remark on British scciity.—“ It is divided into four classes:—The Huve-beens, Would - bes, Haven’t • beens, and Never-wtll-bes.” You can get the whole lot in Pahiatua. Newly married husband (home late for the first time) —“I know I’m a little late, Alice, dear. You really shouldn’t sit up and wait supper for me, darling.” Newly married wife i with withering scorn) “ Supper, dearest; it’s too late for supper, I laid the breakfast table ! ” He never did it again. A new method of preventing the escape of smoke from furnaces has been devised by a glasgow inventor. A door of peculiar construction causes the smoke to whirl in eddies until it is consumed. The tea trade in India and Ceylon gives a means of livelihood to about 1,000,900 natives. The amount of British capital embarked in the tea industry in India and Ceylon is , about 420,000,000. Bishop Julius, of Christchurch, speaking in England on the Church in New Zealand said : “ But there are some classes of young clergy that we do not want in the colony. YVe do not want men who come out to New Zealand and expect to be made Archdeacons in three months. Nor do we want men who como out to put things right in the colony—men who look with contemptuous disapprobation upon the way things are done in New Zealand, and remark loftily, 1 That is not how wo do things in Kensington.’ Nothing puts up the back of the colonists more than that sort of thing. Colonists don’t tliink much of Kensington, and don’t want to be taught by Kensington. W hat wo want is to have men who come out feeling that God has work for them to do there. 1 have been asked by a man who thought of going out to a parish in my diocese • What aspect does tlio parsonage front ?’ I had no notion, so 1 said • All four ways.’ And then be said, ‘ And wliat soil is it built on, fur my little liny could rot stand a clay soil.’ I replied, ‘ 1 have not the slightest idea.’ Then that is not tlie sort of nun wo want. I think we wart men who will not get mari i-d until they are thirty-live. 1 confess that I married before thirtyfive, but th<n yon see times hive changed. We mostly need men who could he told at any time to pack up and go to the ends of the earth, men who will say, 1 Send me wherever you like ; st nd me lo what you like ; onlv don’t make an Archdeacon of me.’ (Laughter). But can England spare sueli men ? Yes-, I tliink -be cui. New Zealand lias a deep inti ie t ior England. A great nation is springing up there on the otlursideof the world, and milch, very much, depends upon the foundations being well and truly laid.” There at present resides in Dunedin Hays the Gtago Daily Times) a gentU man who was the first to bring the news i.f the Queen’s Coronation to Tasmania. The gentleman in question is Captain Neil Smith, who at. that tone was master of the vessel Miiigaiiit Wilkie, which wascliarteri d by the Home Government to take despatches to the Governor of Tasmania, and provisions, tools, etc., to the convicts. Captain Smith was present as a witness of the coronation procession, mil some live days afterwards left London for Tasmania, where lie arrived after a passage of 105 days. There was great rejoicing on his arrival with the news of the , Queen's acer sion to the throne, guns { being fired oil' and bonfires lit in celt hratio.i of the event, Captain Smith was subsequently engaged in the West Indian trade for some years, and in 1859 lie came to this colony, where he has resided ever since. He is now ninety years of age, and seems pretty vigorous for u , man uf such uu advanced age.

Says a writer in the Bush Advocate ; The Buahine ranges have been prospected for years, and prospectors have brought fine specimens into the settled communities after a sojourn in the mountains. When gold is visible in the stone it is of course immensely rich. To prospect successfully now, however, requires much more than mere casual examination of specimens. A careful test of the stone by the new method is absolutely necessary. Nor should the assay be confined to any particular formation. The specimen which on casual survey is considered worthless, may prove to be the most valuable. It thus follows that where prospectors have been formerly, they may have rejected as not worth their notice the very substance which contains that of which they were in search. Districts which until of late were considered non-auriferous, and have been thickly settled for years, are about to become gold producing. Patea is an instance. A company has been formed to work the country immediately adjoining the town. That such would ever be the case never entered the mind of a Patea resident twelve months ago. That auriferous traces are not wanting in the Ruahine ranges is well enough known. Everything points to the probability that valuable ore may be found there sooner or later. Tlie formation is favorable, though that, as wo have stated, may be no criterion, and the rivers which find their source in its summits in some cases show traces of gold. “ ‘ Doctors differ,’ but electricians never agree, and Marconi’s telegraphing without wires has made rabid opponents and enthusiastic partisans," writes the London correspondent of the Bulletin. “ Professor Silvanus Thompson considers it merely the slightest improvement on the llerz electric spark generator across space, while Post-office Preeco is loud in the new system’s praise, and will not let the Italian boy, Marconi, leave his side. The writer, after thirteen years’ electrical experience, sides with Preece, and from wliat he saw the instrument do believes it will revolutionise telegraphy. Wealthy syndicates are offering the inventor big sums for the English rights, much to the annoyance of the War and Admiralty Offices, a Committee from which—including “ Torpedo ” Brennan—saw and was conquered by the scheme’s jotsibilities. Briefly, electrical waves generated by an induction coil are directed—as the rays of asearchlightare—ata receiver seven miles away, where they work an ordinary telegraph ‘ sounder,’ and signal messages by means of ‘ dot and dash ' combinations.”