NEWS OF THE DAY.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XVI, Issue 5630, 27 November 1889, Page 4

NEWS OF THE DAY.

The "Century Dictionary" i 3 Bftid to have coat ita publishers considerably over LIOO.OOO. Since Donovan commenced his career ns a racer ho has won over L 54,000, an extraordinary sum that has no parallel in the history of the sport. At Baltimore, U.S., recently, a big Newfoundland dog, trained at thieving, was captured by the police in the act of robbing a house on Pennsylvania avenue. Does the great Barn urn mean to flood London ? Two hundred tons of advertising matter have been shipped from NewYork, all for the coming Olyinpia show. He has also taken care to send over forty agents and bill-posters. °At a sale in London what is described as an " unpublished autograph sonc; by Robert Burns, written on one sheet of dirty paper stained and torn," sold for 14 guineas. The song is in the Globe edition of Burns. Alexander Graham Bell, m Science, calculates that a mother in talking to her infant speaks 36,000 words a day— equal to about four hours' continuous talking. There is a revival of a species of hand embroidery known as " flowering " in the North of Ireland. Formerly it was practised largely, but "sweaters" or middlemen drove it out of the country by paying starvation wages. The Due de Broglie has summed up the present condition of political affairs in France mos^, neatly in a mot. The present Government of France, by the fitful Parliamentary majority, reminds one, he said, of a locomotive impelled heedlessly along by the force of the steam without the controlling intervention of the enginedriver. Sword blades should be, and usually are, made and tempered so that they will chip a piece of stone without a showing a nick upon their edges. This information is given by one who has been through the great sword manufactury at Soliaen, Germany. Sir William Gull says that thousands maybe said to have literally "died of drink" who never were drunk in their lives. In Switzerland 70 per cent, of the young men are said to be unfitted, by the use of alcohol and tobacco, for military service. . The tubular boiler was invented by Booth in England in 1828, and was used by George Stevenson about that time. A Frenchman named Sequin seems to have discovered it independently of Booth the same year. The public schools of Argentine teach English, French, German, and Italian, as ■well as the language of the country, but devote more time to English than any other foreign language, as the people regard it as the most desirable. The English and Welsh are the most lawyer-loving people in the world. They have a lawyer or lawyer's assistant to about every 650 of them. The Americans manage to settle their differences with one to every 950, the French with one to every 2000, and the Belgians with one to every 2700. It is not often that a horse entering in a race to be sold for SOsovs. realises 500gs at the subsequent auction, but that price was paid for Wrinkles after the colt had won the Selling Plate of lOOgs at Ayr. The transaction left the very acceptable surplus of 450gs to be divided between the race fund and the second horse. Two men engaged as navvies on the Linceford to Kilmore railway line secured a handsome sum on the Melbourne Cup. They had conjointly taken a ticket in Tattersal'smonsterconsultation of L 50,000 in Sydney, and they were lucky enough to drawßravo,thus winning L 22,500 between them. The fortunate men left work the day after the race, and proceeded by the express train to Sydney in order to obtain their winnings. Among the Vancouver Islanders, Kaffirs, Polynesians, and Khasias of Hindoostan one of twins is usually killed. The natives of that part of Guinea called Calabar look upon twins as montrosities sent by evil spirits, and destroy them as a propitiation to the good spirits. During one week recently there have been no less than five bodies of infants found in and around Melbourne. In one instance two boys playing on the Yarra bank saw a man fling a parcel from the Johnston street bridge into the water. When they fished it out they found the body of a child. The man cannot be fourid. The constructors of the Denver and New Orleans railway met with an obstruction in the shape af a buried forest. Axes of steel could not prevail against it. The trees, having suffered an elemental change, ■were monuments to themselves — invioable timber.

An Irish member the other day took the House by storm, so surprising were the flights to which his eloquence rose. "MiArthur Balfour deserves," hesaid "twenty years penal servitude for life." The lion, gentlemen failed utterly to see the joke, though even his own colleagues joined in the laugh against him. A new hydraulic brick is now manufactured in eight different shades of red and brown, which, on cheap houses, is designed to supply the place of brownstone for trimmings. The shades of colour run from a rather dark brown to a reddish hue, and at a superficial glance might well be taken for the stones tlie place of which they supply. The Temuka Leader says :— " Nothing has so far been heard as regards the man, the railway, employee, who it is alleged drowned himself in the sea near Makikihi. There is very little doubt as to his fate. The poor man, it is said, was haunted with the fear that he and hLs children would be reduced to poverty, and owing to the way the Government were retrenching this preyed on his mind, and doubtless drove him to insanity. He was an upright, honest man, and everyone who knew him when he lived in Temuka regrets sincerely that he came to such a sad end."

Truth saya : — Lord Zetland's tirst official act as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland has been the purchase of an Irish outside car. A straw can show how the wind blows : a, trifling act may give the key to a policy. Does Lord Zetland mean when in Ireland to do as the Irish do >. A goose once saved the Roman capital ; will it restore —or rather save the popularity — of the Irish Vice-Royalty '! A terrible affair is reported from Odessa, A teacher at the Richelieu Lycee, Robert Sause by name, committed suicide by hanging himself. His wife on hearing the dreadful news, lost her reason, and in <i lit of homicidal mania killed her five children, cutting their bodies in pieces with a large carving knife. She afterwards sprang from a window to tlie third storey of her residence, and was found in a, dying condition.