EXTRACTS.

Westport Times, Volume II, Issue 312, 31 July 1868, Page 3

EXTRACTS.

Observers of the phenomena attending the recent earthquake in New South Wales, says the Australasian, all dwell upon the terrible noise by which it was accompanied. A.n openair observer in Maitland heard, as he thought for the moment, a mighty wind roaring through a forest, rapidly approaching him, and then the sound striking him with a rush, and a kind of electric shock, but no wind accompanying it. " We may imagine," writes the Sydney Morning Herald, that those various reports as to the kind of sound heard indoors are partly due to the fact of people being suddenly awakened, and being confused ; and partly to the ever-varying acoustic properties of different houses and different rooms in a house. But a thoughtful observer, who was certain at the first moment his house was tumbling about him, suggests as the cause of these extraordinary sounds, that—the crust of the earth being supposed to be three miles, or say 16,000 feet in thickness —the earthquake was splitting up and distributing the relative portions of the rocky layers, perhaps thousands of feet below the surface of the earth ; grinding, falling sounds may have been thus generated so far below us, and their faint echoes have been heard by us as pervading all the air around us. Certainly it is wonderful that so very few houses have had more than the plaster slightly broken, when such awful sounds of crushing power wera heard in the houses. It may be of interest to learn whether any difference is observable iu deep wells, or in mines, since the earthquake. The water in a well in Olive-street, West Jvlaitland, is stated to have fallen four feet lower since, but whether the bottom of the well itself has also lowered we have not heard. But it is hardly to be expected that in West Maitland, situate on alluvial soil of unknown depth—no rock has ever yet been reached in well-sinking in it, we believe, such changes would show strikeinglyfas they would in other places." Something like a snake story is told by the East Maitland correspondent of the Neiccastle Chronicle —a terrific contest with the subsequent death of a snake of wondrous size. He says it was seen about two miles from Newcastle, on the Oakvale road, by a young man who was on horseback. He at once dismounted and attacked the reptile with a sapling. " It however, had no intention of being so summrrily disposed of, and showed fight. The issue of the combat seemed somewhat uncertain, "but Mr James Mayo happened to come along at the time,andhis assistance by his snakeship was despatched. The beast was of a

leaden color, aud, I believe of a very venom us species. It was, according to my informant, very little short of twenty feet in length, and about five inches in diameter. On openiug it, its destroyers found three or four J opossums and several young snakes] in it."

Female Lawieus.—A bill has passed the lowa Senate which will gladden the hearts of the fair sex. It reads:— " Any person twenty-one years of age, who isactually au inhabitant oi the State and who satisfies the district court of this State that the said person possesses the requisite learning and is of good moral character," shall be admitted to practice as an attorney in the different courts of the State. A correspondent says the wisdom of Blackstone and Coke hereafter will be nowhere, and that beautiful lawyeresses " with a bewitchiog smile and a sparkling eye," will turn juryman's heads topsy-turvy. The only remedy will be to give women a representation on the jury also. It takes a woman to read a woman. — Toronto Globe.