ONE THING AND ANOTHER.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 4, Issue 373, 17 February 1880, Page 3

ONE THING AND ANOTHER.

(Collated from our Exchanges.)

We lay before our renders the improved version of the first chapter of Genesis : 1. There never was a boginw ning. 2. And Cosmos was homogeneous find undifferentiated, and in .somehow or another clovution began and molecules appeared. 3, And molecule evolved protoplasm, and rythmatic thrills arose, and tJisn there was light. 4. And a spirit of energy was developed, and formed the plastic cell whence arose the primordial germ. 5. And the primordial germ became protogene, and ** protogene ■ somehow shaped cozoon ; then was the dawn of life. G. And .the herb yielding- seed and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after its own kind, and *»■ /whose seed is in itself, developed according to its own fancy. 7. The cattle after his kind, the beast of the earth after his kind, and every creeping tiling became evolved by heterogeneous segregation and concomitant dissipation of motion. 8. So that by survival of the fittest, there evolved thu simiads from the „ jelly-fish, ami the simiads differentiated themselves into the anthropomorphic primordial types. 9. And in due time one lost his tail and , became man, and behold * he was the most cunning of all the animal,?. 10. And in process of time, by natural selection and survival of the fittest, Matthew Arnold, Herbert Spencer, and Oharlee- Darwin appeared .and behold it was very good. The Americans, thanks to their natura advantages, will soon have a monopoly of the manufacture of lampblack. In several parts of..the country, especially in Pennsylvania, there are fountains or wells, of natural gas, from which an undiminished flow has continued to■ pour ever, since■ they were bored. Attempts in some cases successful, have been made to secure the gas and use it for metal- - - lurgical oparations, the lighting of towns, and the heating of steam boilers. The •~ " famous Murraysville well yields about 60,000 cubic feet of gas per hour, and - - though a largo proportion is allowed to waste, in a short time it will be all util- — - ised for the manufacture of the finest lampblack. The operations are simple « in.the extreme, for the gas has on!)' to be led to.burners in the sheds, Avhere 'T"'- the fmnky flame is made to impinge \ upftn the plates of iron, which are speed "* covered with the soot, and are then scraped over proper receptacles. The product will shortly aim unt to as much ns two tons per day, and the owners of the well will, if the.gas supply continues, speedily make a. fortune, for the raw material costs nothing, and the expense of manufacture is an insignificant fraction of the. price at which laiwpblack sells. Something to Talk About. —An "American paper rather sleepily says it / was a curious thing to see a horse in f lowa recently pull the plug out of the ' "■' bum'holc of. a barrel and slake his thirst. "We do not see anything extraordinary in the occurrence. If the horse had pulled the barrel out of the bunghole and slaked his thiist with the plug, or, if the barrel had pulled the bunghole out of the plug and slaked its thirst with the horse, or if the plug had pulled the horse out of the _- barrel and slaked its thirst with the bunghole, or if the bunghole had pulled the thirst, cmt of the horse and slaked its plug wtira'barrel, or if the barrel had pulled X the horse on i of 11 ie bunghole and plugged its thirst with a slake, it might be worth "making a fuss about. Slu r 'S and snails are, under ordinary circumstances, formidable foes to the kitchen "wardens, but in damp and rainy seasons Tike the present, the ravages they commit •ire so serious that a farmer residing in the Grand Duchy of Hrssc publishes, for the benefit of others, he believes to be a hitherto.unknown and simple means for ridding vegetable ground of these troublesome depredators. The land which-he cultivates wns, he says, suil'erintr greatly a few weeks, since, from the *»]ug.« and "snails in spite of the measures taken to destroy them. Latterly, however, they seemed, to his surprise and satisfaction, to have abandoned bis vegetables, a which gladdened Hie agriculturist's honrt, but-thfl cause of which he only accidentally discovered subsequently". He had, it nppears, a week or so before the absence of snails nnd slugs struck lrini, thrown into a corner of his grounds a number of half-rotted carrots, the which, when later on he proceeded to cart away, he found to r ' ally swfirming vrjlli tin , ?© insects. This * inlut tlh >\i 'to-1< 1 (o him i n> »<■ for I i v't O'"• Ji t tl> in lin i oii mol« I ffo H(i« in' 1 lV liiul h« A .] ( , ii, i to iui ut : T ;'. l "»"- /•■■ "■'.■■' : a on* tin in n / '"i ir ; • l'li' 1 i it' , Uv r v 1 ; I ' VI t M j idr 11 1 ' 1( ,<* LX 1( i / ' n '] { , \ *!"' / M ' ' 1 M ' ~,,1.1.1 i/ , ' ' . n . - *• ' ; l <) t inn' '» l ! v ' u -

The Loch Ard.—A correspondent of the Belfast Gazette, who recently visited the scene ofthewreck of the Loch Ard in 1878, states that since that time varied and only'partially successful attempts have been, made to recover the cargo. The. vessel, with her back broken, panic in f>o fathoms of water, between an immense mass of detached portions of cliff and the mainland, with sunken rocks on both fides of her. The sea breaks in at this point of the coast with great force, and very rarely is there an interval of calm, so that the chances of getting any more of the cargo are very improbable. The strip of sea beach near Mr. Gibson's house is strewn with the sad memorials of the wreck. Wood and ironwork— portions of the interior fittings of the doomed vessel, and occasionly useful and even valuable articles float to that part of the const. A hairbrush was picked uj) by the correspondent just above high water mark, in an excellent state of preservation, snowing that it had not' long left/the ship. .Quite rpcently Mrs Gibson received a letter, from Miss Carmichaol, acknowledging the receipt of ; a few. buds of a flower that blqonis on her mother's grave. The, young .lady so .wonderfully rescued is still unmarried, and is still living with her friends.; • : .