General News.

Thames Star, Volume XIII, Issue 4266, 2 September 1882, Page 1 (Supplement)

General News.

An amusing story reaches me from the bucolic solitudes of the Wade. Mijor Stoney, father of our respected Clerk of the R.M.. Court, recently sold a house and some land to a man named Scotter. He had, however, previously given a man and his wife permission to reside in the housel—the occupiers state for 12 months. The major, who asserts they were merely tenants-at-wil), advised Scotter to take possession ; but that was easier said than done. The tenants at will asserted that they would not give up possession, and were prepared to back up their rights by force if necessary. Scotter, the purchaser, armed his friends and relatives with crowbars, and marched to assault the fortress, but the residents had been apprised of what was going on, and had sinews of war provided in the shape of boiling kettles of scalding water. The "crowbar brigade," as they are noir facetiously called, commenced an attack on the door, but a gallon or so of aqua pura at 212 degrees Fahrenheit cooled their courage, if not their bodies, and they beat a hasty retreat. I hear that the affair will culminate in ajlawsuit.

M.r H. A. Pr ctor has another popularly written paper in the Cornhill Magazine for May, entitled " The Sim as a Perpetual Machine." He says that this mighty orb of the universe pours forth ia each second of time as much heat as would come from the burning of 16 436 millions of milliocs of tons of the best anthracite coal; and yet of all this tremendous radiation of solar heat, the planets together receive less than one 230,000,000 th part." He discusses all the theorien that hare been propounded iv relation to the sun's nature and action upon the other planetary bodies. Mr Proctor takes a glance at the cometary world, and says:—" We have reason to believe that the nucleus of a comet consists of an aggregation of stones similar

to meteorites. . . . . Wbat will be the effect of such a mass of stone advancing towards the sun at a velocity reaching in perihelion the prodigious rate of 366 miles per second, as observed in the comet of 1843?"

A writer in a recent number of Macmillan's Magazine, signing himself SahU eUHag, thus describes the men on whom Arabi Pasha has to rely:—" The Bgyp* tian soldier is by nature docile 'enough, and was wont to be content so long as he was not asked to do more than barrack yard exercise. He has, however, always evinced a strong prejudice against active service. In Abyssinia, although led by experienced American officers, he was beaten in every encounter. In.the RusaoTurkish war, the Egyptian contingent had" to be relegated to garrison duty; and in December last, when the troops under Eachid Bey came in contact with the wild followers of Fakri Mahommed Ahmed, the fanatical prophet of Dongola, fire hundred Egyptian soldiers, armed with Remington rifles, ran away without firing a shot, their arms aud ammunition falling into the hands of the insurgents. And yet tbe bl;>ck troops of whieb '.he force WiS '• *ait.|y C r c^ii.'Oii •:»■•■ COriti'crf XuO b •:*} Kcldio'C i:> ihr Ef>jpthiu a.raiy."

Full hem* 4 ti-ruy past (he aa valorem duty 01' 20 per eeiu. on watches in rietoria baa been evaded -by the various portions being imported in detail, in separate vessels. By this means, firesixths of the dnfcy i« aaved.