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New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 9, 2 March 1907, Page 40

After the great fire in San Francisco, hundreds of tons of lead and zinc and other metals were found fused into a solid mass, four or five feet thick, covering the entire foundation of the ruins of an old shot-tower. This represents a large money-value; but owing to its enormous size and weight it is quite impossible to make use of the metal by any ordinary means. It has been decided, therefore, to eut the metal up into ■blocks weighing about one ton each, and this work is now being accomplished by means of an electric arc. All the men who are engaged in cutting or melting the channels through the mass of metal have their faces covered with canvas to protect them from the blinding glare of light. It is believed that- the work will occupy the whole of the winter, for it i» estimated that over two hundred ton* of lead, zine, and tin still remain to bo recovered;

The blood of prinee and peasant, bo it is said, mingles every hundred years. A striking instance is the case of young Queen Victoria of Spain. She is the first cousin to the Emperor of Russia, to the German Emperor and to the heir to the throne of Great Britain. But she is also as nearly related to a far humbler circle. Toward the beginning of the last century a Polish Hebrew, Hauke by name, entered the service of the Grand Duke of HesseDarmstadt, and occupied a very subordinate position at the little court. His daughter, Julia Theresa, born in 1825, was, at the age of twenty-sir, married inorganatically to Prince Alexander of Hesse, two years her junior. Renouncing the faith of her fathers, she was baptised into the Protestant Church, and by the reigning Grand Duke was accorded the title first of Countess of Battenberg and subsequently of Princess. Prince Henry, the third child of this union, became tne husband of Princess Beatrice, and, of course, father of Queen Victoria of Spain. So little was he considered as belonging to the inner circle of European royalty that when Queen Victoria of England conferred upon him the rank of royal highness protests arose on all sides. Formal notifications were made by the courts of Berlin, Vienna and St. Petersburg to the effect that Queen Victoria’s son-in-law, issue of a morganatic union, could not be recognised as royal highness elsewhere than in British territory. Twenty years later tlie daughter of the man on whom this affront was put became Queen of Spain, and is now treated •n a footing of perfect equality with all the reigning monarchs of Europe.