FOREIGN NEWS AND GOSSIP.

Patea Mail, Volume IX, Issue 1060, 16 July 1883, Page 2

FOREIGN NEWS AND GOSSIP.

Bismarck is working to nationalize the insurance business of Germany. The will of the Archbishop Tait shows that he left an estate of about 175,000d01. The desertions from the British army in 1882 were 6,948, against 7,530 in 1881, and 9,299 in 1880. The Spanish armj 7 consists of 134,000 men. of whom 94,000 are in Spain, and the rest in the Spanish West Indies. The Illusirite Zeitung describes a recently discovered MS. play by Moliere, which will soon be published in Paris. The English death rate between the ages of five and twenty-five has fallen from 25 to 35 per cent in the last thirty years. . The greatest woman land owner in England is Baroness Willoughby d’Evesby, who has an income of 250,000 dols. from land. A very interesting exhibition is now open in Paris, consisting of the famous portraits of this century, loaned for the occasion. The Governor of Limerick Jail has been removed in consequence of complaints of harsh treatment of suspects imprisoned there. Owing to competition, tickets from Swatow to Hong Hoi.*, miles including meals, is only twenty-'ilv© cents. An international congress of societies and individuals interested in the protection of children will be opened in Paris on June 15tb. The British Government has, during the last ten years, raised just about one hundred million:"; dollars of revenue annually by duties on imports. The largest man in the British service is Lieutenant Southerland, of the Fiftysixth Regiment. • He is six feet four inches high, and weighs about 364 pounds. The northern portions of tlid island of Borneo are being settled by Chinese and other foreigners. The Chinese own 137,000 acres of agricultural land in one district. **•

It is announced jthat Warsaw is to bo made one of the most strongly fortified places in Europe by the construction of fourteeen new forts, on which work is to begin at once. It is easy to get married in Austria. Klausenberg, near Vienna, answers to the English Gretna Green of former times, and couples have recourse to the-services of the innkeeper. A great trade in dried or jerked beef is being carried on in South America. Thousands . o£ tons - are .-exported- yearly from Montevideo, Rosario and other parts of Uruguay and the Argentine Republic., The Transvaal authorities have granted large concessions of territory, subject to a royalty upon minerals, to certain individuals, and a company is being formed in London to develop the land granted. All religious instruction, or evet allusion to religion in the schools of France is so strictly forbidden by the new laws on the subject that the name of Deity is carefully expunged from the text books. Sarah Bernhardt is to play the part of a deaf and dumb clown in an entertainment for the benefit of a blind hospital, by way of proving that the charm of her acting does not depend upon her much be praised voice. A shooting party in India, composed of His Highness the Maharajah of Durvanga and several English noblemen, made the following record in March, last : Four tigers, 47 buffaloes, 280 pigs, 467 deer, 50 hare, 7 fioriken, 560 partridges, 20 quail, 90 snipes, 158 ducks— -making a total of 1,683 head. The revenue returns of France for the first quarter of the second year, compared with the corresponding period of last year show an increase in the yield_ from '- ,n -. rect sources, amounting to 6,810,000 francs, and in that of the postal and telegraph services amounting to, 1,590,000 francs, or a total increase from both these sou res of 8,400,000 francs. It is rumored in Meiningen that Yon Bulow, the pianist, desires to remarry his former spouse, Wagner’s widow. The law of divorce is so easy that it is considered in Meiningen not at all unlikely that it may be applied in this case, as the yef undivorced wife of Bulow is quite willing to yield to her husband’s desire and to regain her freedom,