MISCELLANEOUS.

West Coast Times, Issue 7554, 22 November 1889, Page 4

MISCELLANEOUS.

Before leaving Paris Mr Edison sent a cheque itot £400 to the president of the inuniclpaljcouncil for the poor of the city, accompanied by a letter, in which he said that it was but a slight testimony of his gratitude to all those who had helped to make hia visit the period of hia life to which be would always look back with most pleasure. Owing to the rapid depletion of the American forests the United States Department of Agriculture Is Inquiring into the advisability of substituting metal sleepers on railways for wooden ones. The story of the Oxford man who refuaed to saro a fellow student from

drowning because they had never been Introduced has been beaten by an actual Incident in the State.of New York. A party of men going from Eondout to Steep Bock came upon a man hanging by a rope from the limb of a tree. He was still alive, for his legs and arms were twitching ; but they refused to cut him down, as they considered, after consultation, that they had 1,0 rii»htto do so without an order from the coroner.

Carrier swallows are proving very successful in France. Two young birds, about two months old, were lately sent up from the Paris Exhibition, and reached their home at Jtoubaix in an hour and a Quarter, the distance being about 160 miles.

The Northern and Southern States of America have recently been rivalling each other in horrors, Every day come reports in the Southern papers of negroes roasted, or hanged, or flogged to death for assaults upon white children, and the community approves of these punishments. Not to be outdone, the North presents a man who bites off the beads of two kittens " for fun ;" an organised Bystem by which young girls are decoyed Into the woods of Wisconsin as victims to the wood cutters and miners ; incendiary fires are frequent in Pennsylvania ; 400 miners are starving lathe black wilderness of Alaska ; a lunatic assaulted Father Lavelle at the alter of the cathedral during the children's mass, aud assaults and murders of women are so frequent that the public sense is dulled by repetition of the dreadful stories.