MISCELLANEOUS.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 4441, 18 July 1887, Page 2

MISCELLANEOUS.

Mr T. 8. Fatron, the well-known Dutch and Irish comedian, died at Sydney recently. For some time past he had suffered from a severe cold, caught whilst the bellringers were performing at Rangoon, British Burmah, which ultimately settled into consumption. Mr Todd is editing, after the light of other days, his father's work “On Parliamentary Government: its Origin, Development, and Practical Operation.” The work, as previously, will be in two volumes. A new mode of lighting is on trial at the Marlborough booms, London. A small gas flame has an ordinary lamp glass over it, and over this is suspended a small muslin skirt impregnated with imcombustible oxides. The gas flame lays bold of these, and the result is an enormous illuminating power. The light is white and smokeless.

The American State of Maine has reverted to its former system of punishing murderers with life imprisonment instead of death. It has been found that the extreme penalty is attended with many obstacles, arising from the amount of evidence often required by juries before consigning accused persons to an irrevocable doom, and many of the worst murderers have escaped conviction. The Poverty Bay Herald says:—The schooner Gisborne brought from Tokomam some samples of the wreckage recently found at that place, shipped by Constable Tillers for the Collector of Customs here. wreckage consists of a deck plank with a deadlight in it; some teak wood belonging to - the door (ashutter one) of a pilot-home; a panel of a locker door with a gilt edge round it; and another piece, supposed to be part of a spring mattress —and a very fachionable one from appearance.

The foot of an ass is one of the most in* genious and unexampled pieces of mechanism in animal structure. The hoof contains a series of vertical and thin laminae of horn amounting to about 600, and forming a complete lining to it. In these are fitted as many laminae belonging to the coffin bone, while both sets are elastic and adherent. The edge of a quire of paper inserted leaf by leaf into another will convey a sufficient idea of the arrangement. 1 hus the weight of the animal is supported by as many elastic springs as there are laminae in all the feet, amounting to about 4000, distributed in the most secure manner, sr ee every spring is acted on in an oblique direction.

Since the last war between France and Germany immense improvements have been made in the fortifications in and around Paris. A now line of forts, far outside the old ones, has been erected. In all, 24 forts have been built, and these contain all the improvements of modern warfare. Their barracks and magazines are all below the ground, and they form such a wide circle round the city that it will hardly bo possible to beseige it in future. It took 300,000 Germans to encircle the old line; it ought to require an almost incalculable force to invest the new. The walls of Paris have been demonstrated to be useless, and the French do not roly on them in any way as a means of defence. The celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the first railway in France, which will take place on August 24th next, recalls to mind that the driver of the first engine a four-wheeled locomotive, purchased in England —is still living at Versailles. M. Arnaud is now 77 years of ago, and believes ho is the only surviving official connected with that event. All the men employed in connection with the train, which ran from Paris to St. Germain, wore English, excepting himself, and the passengers included the Queen, Marie Amclio, the Duke and Duchess of Orleans, and the Dukes d’Aumale and de Montpensier. There was only one line f railway, and the transit was effected in from 85 to 4o 40 minutes.

Fifty thousand children are receiving moral and religious teaching in the English ragged schools.

It is reported from the New Hebrides that several of the emigrants who lately arrived from France have returned to Mew Caledonia fever-stricken after a few months* residence there, and it is feared that the wretched climate will always be a bar either to French or English colonisation. The Guichen is reported to have punished the natives on the island of Mario by tiring and burning their villages for having killed and eaten two natives, returned labourers. The firing party succeeded in capturing two supposed culprits, and has brought them to Noumea. One of the oldest traders from New Caledonia to the islands, Mr Petersen Stuart, is reported to have been killed by natives of one of the islands. This report is from one of the Queensland labour vessels. The mortality amongst Kanakas in New Caledonia, more especially those from the New Hebrides, has been very considerable of late; from four to five deaths are reported each week, mainly due to the cold and wet weather, and in a great measure to the use of alcoholic liquors.