BRIEF MENTION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6120, 5 March 1898, Page 4

BRIEF MENTION.

London has 600,000 houses, Paris 90,000 and New York 115,000. The Tsar of Russia always corresponds with his own family in either French or English. _ The air contains a certain amount; 01 alcohol, and it has been ascertained by » certain authority that the higher the altitude the stronger the alcohol. The young Countess of Cromartie is declared to have refused more offers of marriage than any lady in the United Kingdom, "ihe has an income from land of .£IO,OOO a year. It is announced that Dr Leyds is to receive i617,000 a year as representative of the Transvaal in Europe. This salary is oreatly in excess of the amount which Great Britain deems sufficient for any one of her representatives in foreign countries. A woman died at Romsey, England, recently, aged seventy-four, who had passed the whole of her lite in the workhouse of that town, in which establishment she was born, being an imbecile, and the child of an imbecile mother. This poor woman is believed to have cost the local ratepayers about £1200. Further discoveries have been made in the wonderful ice caverns opened up at the foot of Cow Mountain, Colorado. Three chambers have been opened, the walls and ceilings being covered with great masses of ice" in grotesque forms. In the centre of one of the rooms is a lake 40ft by 65ft, with no apparent outlet. The greatest classical scholar in the House of Commons is Professor Jebb, who now enjoys the distinction of being the single living M.P. to whom Tennyson addressed verses. The House of Commons has many excellent classical scholars, amongst others, Mr Purvis, of Peterborough, who carefully keeps up his Latin and Greek. Mr George Garcia, Q.C., who has just resigned the Attorney-Generalship of Trinidad, was one of the very few men of colour who held a position of legal authority under the Crown. Trinidad'B Solicitor-General has also this distinction. Mr Garcia, whose resignation is due to ill-health, is a man of considerable academic distinction, and has a fine forensic style. Vesuvius, the central cone of . which maintains its renewed activity, has lately emitted a quantity of ashes of two different kinds. The towns around the mountain were covered with a very thin strata of very black ashes, while on the summit of the central cone a large quantity of yellow and grey ashes, extremely light in weight, was spread over the ground. Of the thirty projected light railway schemes in Great Britain, no fewer than sixteen propose to employ electric traction. Many of the lines are of considerable length, — one of 15£ miles, in the neighbourhood of Folkforstone— -though the majority are nnder ten miles. Of the thirty schemes, twenty-two are for England, six for Scotland and two of Wales. Between the stage and the auditorium of Bamum and Bailey's Show at Olympia, a steel fire-proof screen is being fitted which is a triumph of engineering. The width of the stage front is 460ft. The screen, in two enormous spans of 240ft each, will run in grooves let into the sides of two steel towers 90ft high. The first span, weighing 35 tons, was raised to its place among the rafters recently, the operation occupying ten hours. At Eton, anyone who is so minded, may at " Tap " essay the feat of drinking a yard of ale. This is only a pint in liquid, but a yard in linear measure, being contained in a long, horn-shaped glass, so constructed that unless the drinker drinks with care most of the contents are spilled over him. A book is kept of the time in which the yard can be drunk, and for years until lately the "record" was lOsec. This is an iconoclastic age, however; and someone lately disposed of his 3ft of ale in 9sec.