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South Canterbury Times, Issue 4980, 12 April 1889, Page 3

Messrs Davies and Murphy are offering special bargains in ladies’ winter goods. Dressmaking entrusted to them is still being done at cheap rates. Messrs T, and J. Thomson have this week opened up a second shipment of new goods. Mr S, Anderson,tho local boot manufacturer, has an advertisement in another column, well worth reading. Mr Moss Jonas will sell to-morrow at 1 o’clock, at Mr John Douglas’ shop, Woollcombo Street, tho whole of his stock-in-trade, household funiluro, and large quantity of firewood. To-morrow we shall place before our readers the first instalment of a now story, which wo feel sure they will find interesting, amusing and full of “go ” from first to last. The scene is laid in England, the date tho close of the Crimean war; the principal characters a provincial mayor’s family, and a military officer ; the plot—but we will leave the story to develop the plot in its many striking situations and amusing dialogues. Several Paris papers publish articles on the population of France. Their tone is uniformly that of discouragement. The France shows that the increase of births over deaths is due entirely to a diminished death rate. Men are living to be older, but this cause of increase is from its nature temporary. The tendency of the population is to decline, while England and Germany grow at the rate of half a million a year. The Anglo-Saxon race, which was much inferior in point of number to the French race, is now two or three times as numerous. Within a century for one speaking French ten will be speaking English. The France passes in review all the proposed remedies, and rejects them as visionary and impracticable, and concludes that the only one is to revive the old spirit of the nation. This, however, cannot be done by decree. The Univers says :—“ We can fix the day, not a distant day, when by the perennial falling off of births Franco will have lost onethird of its population. Tho result is fatal. Within half a century France will have fallen below Italy and Spain to tho rank of a second rate Power. There is no denying the figures. If it continues, in addition to other causes of decadence, we arc a lost nation.