ENGLISH CLIPPINGS.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 2, Issue 118, 7 September 1877, Page 3

ENGLISH CLIPPINGS.

Three young men, employed at one of the Thurso pavement works, made a wager as to which of them could drink the greatest quantity of whisky. After they had consumed three bottles amongst them, one of tbein drank off a fourth. He immediately became insensible, and, notwithstanding every medical effort, he expired in two hours;

An area of 100 miles of country in Tripoli and Barbary has been devastated by locusts, The crops have been entirely destroyed, and there is groat .distress amongst the people.

The Sussex Daily News reports that during.a storm a curious incident occurcd at Blatchington Battery. A soldier was sitting in his room, and a table knife that he had just been using lay beside him, when the lightning entered the apartment, struck the knife, cutting it completely in two, and throwing the piece about the room, one being taken nearly up to the ceiling. The man was not hurt, but naturally very much frightened.

A boy named Morthy, aged twelve years has been sentenced by a London magistrate to six weeks' hard labour and a subsequent residence of five years in a reformatory, for having stolen a pony and cart laden with vegetables, as well as three horses and carts, and for having whilst in a police cell, robbed a fellow-prisoner of five shillings. '

The Northumberland colliers have, by an overwhelming majority, decided to resort to arbitration as a means of terminating the present strike in that district. The Freemasons' Chronicle says : —" We are informed there will be a very startling innovation with the stewards' badges at the festival of the Royal Masonic institution for boys. We have reason to believe the new feature will give the' greatest satisfaction." The first board school in Westminster, and the 152 nd in the metropolis, was opened in the Horseferry-road.

The population of Ireland was estimated by the Registrar-General to be in June, 5,338,996.

One of those rare occasions, a diamond wedding, was celebrated at Germantown, N.J., the other day, by Hiram Gudck and wife, who are 97 and 94 respectively.

Robert M'Naughton, a blind piper, wellknown for the last 70 years over the greater part of Perthshire, was buried in Amulree churchyard in June. He was 93 years of age.

At Barnard Castle Cemetery, were interred the remains of Peter Bennison, who alternately fired and drove the first locomotive engine. For over a period of 40 years Bennison was continuously employed on the railway, during a great portion of ibeitane'a* a.passenger driver. Jllthough quite an illiterate man, none more throughly understood the mechanism of a locomotive.

At a meeting of the Whitby board of guardians, Mr. Beef6rth, the guardian for Sneeton, announced that an old woman, named Featherstone, who died at Lombardhill, in the union, and who had received 2s fid pei;week out. of the common fund until her death,- 'turned out to be worth £140, which she had saved up, and bequeathed to her family.

There has been no further outbreak of cattle "plague in Great Britain since the notice in the London Gazette of May 22nd. '"' An /old frieUfdJias turned up again. I'jWhijO" the r>\y&):ffl?(;]\t Os orne was on her way "home, an<&luhdin£ the Princess of i Wales at Brindisil sjio bad the good fortune to fall in wifli the sea serpent. Unluckily for the ''interests of science, the monster paddled 'fiftvay in a contrary course to that of the Osborne, and, as the vessel had a long voyage before it, was permitted to depart without molestation. By the bye the serpent has now assumed theshapp of a monstrous combination of. seal, turtle jand crocodile.