GENERAL NEWS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 189, 10 November 1876, Page 14

GENERAL NEWS.

The depression of trade at the diamond fields is causing peo pie to shake their heads and predict all kinds of gloomy things. There can be but little doubt that a crisis is impending, and the banks have accordingly put the screw on with what Dougherty used to call " much emphaticness." The news concerning the price of diamonds is enough to upset us even though there were no other causes for us feeling uncomfortable. "We are told that all but first-class stones are utterly valueless in the market, and that the best thing we can do is to stop mining operations altogether for a few months, after the plan adopted by coal and iron mine proprietors in England — a proposition simply absurd. What would become of our native labor while mining operations were suspended ? — 'Eastern Star.' The nuns are rapidly getting charge of the hospitals in the Irish Union workhouses, thus causing great saving of rates, and improvement in the health and the moral condition of the afflicted. A branch of the Dominican Nuns has just been established in the town of Wicklow. France exported, last year, false hair, beautifully got up in different shapes, to the amount of 130 tons, worth nearly two million francs. Nearly the whole of this went to England and America. The Paris chiffoniers now carefully collect all small paper parcels with hair combings, which ladies and servants daily throw out of the windows, and obtain five francs per kilogram for the combings. An apparatus for reviving persons nearly drowned id exhibited in Paris. The body of the patient is put in an air-tight vessel, with his head protruding. A pump then draws the air' in and out of the vessel, which tends to make his breast heave and his lungs move, as in breathing. ' Bear-Admiral Benic, who recently died leaving no heir, bequeathed his entire fortune, amounting to 500,000 francs, to the French Lifeboat Society. In recollection of this act of munificence, the Association has decided on erecting a statue of its benefactor. A French soldier named Henri Duhamel has just died at the hospital of Bicetre, who was wounded in the head at Buzenval, in the war of 1870. His wound had soon healed, but he was left quite insane, and had fancied himself dead. When people asked after his health he would answer: "How is Duhamel? Poor fellow, he was killed at Buzenval. What you see is only a machine made to resemble him. But it is badly made, and they ought to make another." He never spoke of himself as "I " or " me," but always as " that thing." He was sometimes insensible for days together, and would show no feeling whatever, though pinched and blistered severely. Liberal Borne was thrown into consternation by the suicide lately of one of the principal Boznan bankers, Giuseppe Baldini, who threw himself into the Tiber. He leaves a deficit, it is said, of five millions. It is thought the Boman Bank and Bank of Genoa will lose largely. A Senator is entirely ruined, and hundreds of families will suffer greatly. He left letters explaining' the causes which drove him to the rash act. His body, recovered some days later, was borne through the streets, as if in triumph, covered with flowers, and followed by crowds of friends, thus presenting an apotheosis of suicide, and, as was fitly expressed by a. looker-on, furnishing a thermometer of the actual morality of Borne. At this time, when the public mind is sufficiently distracted and worried by the many strange and uncouth-looking Slavonian names of persons and places, it is the bounden duty of editors not to add unnecessary confusion to the bewildering nomenclature. The 'Times,' otherwise more correct than some of our contemporaries, has of late been one of the worst sinners in this respect. Though the name of the commander on the Timok, Leshjanin, has now been before the public for nearly a month, it was recently given, in an important battle account of the ' Times,' as Lesheinoff — which looks almost like an attempt at a pun, by means of a mixture of French and English. To make confusion worse confounded, the ' Times' spoke, in the same report, also of Leshjanin ; thus splitting up one person into two, in true mythological fashion. Zaitchar, or Saitehar — a battle-ground so frequently mentioned — was mentioned in the 'Times; as " Zeitscar"; whreh looks like a pun in mixed German and English. Izvor, or Isvor, was rendered " Asvor." The Lower Timok became converted almost into a personage, viz., the " Lower Sindik" ; which might have been read as a phonetic spelling of the French word " Syndic." The death of a regular cricketer of consumption seems one of those anomalies which requires explanation. The Cambridge batsman, Thos. Hayward, has succumbed to this disease. The fact is that a man may wear himself out by athleticism and out-of-door activity as readily as any other way. Cricket is severe exercise just in proportion to a man's expertness in batting and bowling, and the constant running tells upon the powers of both the heart and the lungs, especially when, as is frequently the case, it has to be undergone upon a full stomach after those objectionable affairs — the mid-day luncheons. It is no uncommon thing for athletes to die of diseases indicating the failure of organs which have either been overworked or not allowed fair play. • Only the other day an old professional dropped down dead from heart disease, and now we have a death from consumption to emphasise the warning. A melancholy accident has occurred at Fencine-le-Bas (Jura), in Switzerland, tfive young girls belonging to good families of the neighborhood had gone in a boat with a waterman for a row on a small lake, but at a short distance from the shore the boat suddenly capsized and left them all struggling in the water. The man at once struck out for the shore, leaving all the girls to perish. Their "bodies, some clasped together, were found next day.

A letter from Marseilles gives details of a mysterious crime just committed in a train on the line from Marseilles to Nice. A young man named Roses-Salles, aged twenty, a native of Auch (Gers), on his way from Bordeaux to visit his brother-in-law, Lieutenant Boubec, at La Ciotat, was found dead in a second-class carriage. In the same compartment was also lying in a state of insensibility a man aged thirty, named de Bonyn, and who described himself as an operative engineer at Marseilles. He related that between the stations of Cassis and La Ciotat, a fellow traveller had given them to drink some champagne, of which he had a sample in a portmanteau. The stranger afterwards attempted to rob the two young men, and, not succeeding, escaped from the train. A f singular fact, not yet explained, is that the watch of M. RosesSalles, with the chain broken, was found on de Bonyn, and the travelling bag of the latter contained a hatchet, some phials of a greenish liquid, and some india-rubber tubes. A post-mortem examination of the body of the deceased will be made to ascertain the exact cause of death. — ' Galignani.' At the opening of the business in the Nisi Prius Court at the Liverpool Assizes on Wednesday, it was found that one of the jurymen, named Louis Wilde, who had been sworn in a case commenced the previous day, had not arrived. The case was proceeded with in his absence, and in a quarter of an hour he came into Court. In reply to the learned judge (Baron Bramwell), the juror said he had no particular explanation to give for his delay. His Lordship— Then I fine you £2; you know I warned you last night to be in time. The Juror— You can have the £,2 if I can go home and not come back. His Lordship — Then I fine you £5, and you will have to remain in Court. The Juror — Very well, sir, you can have it. Bis Lordship — Be quiet, sir. I advise you to behave yourself, or I will do something else besides fining you. The -juror then became silent.

A young gorilla has been brought over from West Africa by the German African Society's expedition. It is a young male, three feet in height, and in the most parfecb condition. It is now romping and rolling in full liberty about a private room in an hotel at Liverpool, where it is staying, "now looking out of the window with all becoming gravity and sedateness as though interested, but not disconcerted, by the busy multitude and novelty without, then bounding rapidly along on knuckles and feet to examine and poke fun at some new comer ; playfully mumbling at his calves, pulling afc his beard (an especial delight), clinging to his arms, examining his hat (not at all to its improvement), curiously inquisitive as to his umbrella, and so on with visitor after visitor." " If," says Mr. Moore, of the Liverpool Museum, who has paid the creature a visit, " he becomes overexcited by the fun, a gentle box on the ear would bring him to order hke a child, like a child only to be on the romp again immediately. He points with the index finger, claps with his hands, pouts out his tongue, feeds on a mixed diet, decidedly prefers roaet meats to boiled, eats strawberries, as I saw, with delicate appreciativeness, and is exquisitely clean and mannerly. The palms of his hands and feet are beautifully plump, soft, and black as jet. He has been eight months and a half in the possession of the Expedition, has grown some six inches in that time, and is supposed to be between two and three years of age." It is a pity, says the ' Observer/ that the animal cannot be secured for the Zoological Gardens. Ifc is the second of its kind that has been brought alive to England, Mr. Wombwell having exhibited a female some twenty years ago which died in the course of a very few months. If Mr. Dv Cbaillu is any authority, the gorilla can be tamed when young, but as it advances in age becomes exceedingly intractable and dangerous, so that the owners of this new acquisition are likely to have a lively time of it. The proposed flooding of the Sahara Desert is •omething more than mere talk. Mr. M'Kenzie, the projector, with an engineering party, is about to leave London for Western Africa, to make the necessary surveys for turning the waters of the Atlantic into the great desert. He is confident that a canal eight or nine miles long will accomplish the object, and enable tie flodding of the low lands to be accomplished, so that Timbuctoo will be brought within navigable distance to the sea. The opening up of a vast trade with the interior of Africa is the inducement offered for carrying out the project. A man residing at Taunton, Mass., has had some hardships during his life, as the following will B how :— He has been shipwrecked once, narrowly escaped burning to death in a railroad disaster, was shotin the neck at Gettysburg, had a taste of the horrors of Libby J?riT>n, fell overboard from a whaler, and before his rescue had two fingers bitten off by a shark ; he was drafted twice, had his right arm broken in two places during the first New York riot, and stood on a barrel, with a halter round his neck, in an Alabama town at the outbreak of the Rebellion, from sunrise to sunset. In 1863, he was crushed under a falling building during a California earthquake, and was without food or drink nearly fifty hours, and when homeward bound from the mines of the White Pine regions narrowly escaped lynching, having been mistaken for a criminal. We were in error last week in stating that Mr. Archibald Forbes was acting at Paratjin as correspondent of the 'Times.' We had heard from Belgrade that he was acting for the ' Times ' as well as tor the ' Daily News,' with which his connection for several years has been unbroken. The representative of the 'Times,' with Prince Milan, is Mr. Kelly. Mr. Kelly and Mr. Forbes were together at Prince Milan s head- quarters, and their reports at first were very nearly identical with one another and with the Servian bulletines, whence probably our informant's mistake. The mistake could not have been made this week. Mr. Forbes is not in the best position for getting at the facts, but he seems somehow to get at them. He is still without an equal as a war correspondent. There is no mistaking his hand in the last reports to the 'Daily News.' The ' Times's ' co--respondent, the other day, gravely repeated his assertion that there had been no fighting on the Timok on the 15th, and assured us that he knew for certain, because he had been told by lovanovitch a member of the Prince's staff. We owe Mr. Forbes au apolo»y if we

have caused him to be credited with such a statement as that. — ' Ulster Examiner.'

A savage duel has been fought in Belgium, between two communist refugees, Pindy and Charon. Both had. pieces of flesh sliced off their faces.