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Bay of Plenty Times, Volume II, Issue 159, 14 March 1874, Page 3

,l Atticue,” in the Leader % writes thus in reference to Sir George Bowen’s visit to Tasmania;— “ The flowers of rhetoric wiil soon bloom in the garden of the Tasmanian press. The blue mountains of this eea-girfc isle will smile upon the daughters of the pilgrim fathers who loft their native land to find under Austral skies a home that would remind them of the hallowed dwelling place of the English race. Nature will have endowed this southern gem of the ocean so richly that man will have but to live in its sheltered valleys and teeming plains to experience the most exquisite pleasure that he is capable of enjoying on earth. In fact, till we get full reports of the speeches Bir George Bowen will make on his reception in Tasmania, wo can form no idea what the colony ia or will be." Paris has lost another celebrity, one Femorus, whose skill in the manufacture of monstrosities must have often made Barnum envious. Femorus first tried his apprentice hands on beasts, and succeeded in concocting no end of two beaded cows, flvo-legged birds, horned rats, and such harmless wonders, which went the rounds of all the fairs for many years. These at length got stale and unprofitable. Modern civilisation demanded something morn attractive, so Fcmoras turned his cunning to the human race itself. In 1854 ho was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for trying to implant the wings ©f a swan in the back of a child two years old, with the object of making a second lupid ! On leaving the prison he recommenced business by manufacturing all sorts of “ natural curiosities,” too ugly to specify ia anatomical museums, but the demand not being equal to the supply, ho was forced to brush np his ingenuity once more. This time he at once resolved to operate on himself, and he attempted to engraft the comb of a cock— a Gallio one, of course—on his own head. It was doomed to bo bis last wonder. The engrafting resulted ia abscess, from which he never recovered. A gentleman who, some years ago, was connected with the food department of the South Kensington Museum, London, sends the following receipt for a filter, called the poor man’s filter,” which he thinks may be useful This filter is made wllh a garden flower pot, the hole of which ia p’ugged, but not too tightly, with a piece of sponge. A layer of powdered animal eharcoal, about two inches thick, is then put on ; after this, the same quantity of clean sand, and on that a layer of rather clean coarse gravel, about three inches thick.”