EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN.

Cromwell Argus, Volume IV, Issue 159, 26 November 1872, Page 7

EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN.

Three hundred Warwickshire labourers |a ve sailed for Queensland. jfi Horace Greely has resumed his seat in h e editorial chair of the New York Tribune.

« Travelling pillows, to awaken the sleeper j a given time, with music," are advertised a Paris. The will of a musician, who died recently t Schanenstein, Germany, has been found e { to music. A. machine reproducing speech with the apidity of thought has been invented by a Jenoese savan. At Sheffield, a grocer's wife committed suijjje because her three children were "so uj, trouble-"

A billiard-player in Lima, Peru, recently uade, at the four-ball or American game, a ireak of nearly twenty-two hundred. A firm of opticians in Manchester have ,resented 1500 pairs of spectacles for distriiution to the poor of the workhouses. There is some, probability of sleeping oariaaes, after the American pattern, being hortly introduced on some oi the English A photographic marriage certificate is the ttest novelty. It is provided with receptajes for the photographs ot the bride and iridegroom and officiating clergyman. At the recent wedding of the daughter of chief of the Piute Indians with a lieutenant, |t Salt Lake, the bride was attired in a blanket (kcolhU, with oyster-shell necklace;, and ie heartily at the wedding feast of fricasseed ,rairie dog. "lam no alarmist, says Mr Mechi, suinning «P tne results of the harvest in a letter o the Times, "but I believe that we shall live to pay for foreign corn, in quantity and njce, fifteen to twenty millions sterling more lian in a good wheat season.' The Paris correspondent of the Daily Neivs binks it probable that Father Hyacinthe's narriage wiil be followed by that of a large lumber of French priests, many of whom are, wording to the Patrie, going to denounce mblicly their vows of celibacy. The average mmber of priests in France who marry is, it ppears, not less than from twenty to thirty year.

In relation to Prince Arthur's visit to Birlingham, the Republican Club of that town ave passed a unanimous resolution protestng against punlic rates being expended in gas mming and other antiquated fooleries, under iretence of doing honour to Royal or other ersonages, believing such tampering with üblic money to be illegal and not provided irby any act of parliament. During the hearing of an action for slander t the Guildford Assizes, one of the witnesses parked that marriage was a dangerous tog to have anything to do with.—(Laugher.) Mr Hawkins: Are you married J Witess; I have been a widower for 35 years. Ir Hawkins : You look very happy. Witess : Ido not know how I look, but I feel ay happy. —(Laughter.) Mr Baron Martin bMr Hawkins): He has shut you up.— Renewed laughter.)

I An extraordinary trotting performance took [lace at New York on the 21st September. A liree-iiiile race had been arranged, for which everal well-known trotters were entered, and leavy odds were laid that the fastest time on pird, 7 min. sec. would not be beaten. fir Goldsmith's mare Huntress, however, iicceeded in trotting the whole distance in |e wonderful time of 7 min 21 i sec. In p), Dutchman, a bay gelding, in a match gainst time, ran the three-mile course in 7 iin. 32i.sec, and this time has not been [eaten for thirty-three years, although such Imous horses as Flora Temple and General lutler have made the attempt. IA drama, performing at Vincennes, in ranee, has been called " Vengeance and the ooden Leg." The Marquis de Solanegs, bo has lost his leg at Solferino, finds a ranger at the feet of his fiancee. The ranger draws his sword. " No matter," (claims the Marquis, " mine was left in the >dy of an Austrian general. No matter !" nd he unscrews his wooden leg, with which i strikes his adversary dead, crying " Vive Fnmce!" while the orchestra strikes up the Marseillaise," and the fiancee, touched by is act of heroism, substitutes the support her arm for that of the missing limb, and ads the Marquis back to the chateau. Florence was recently invaded by a progwns quantity of butterflies. All the disnce of the Lung'arno between the Piazza anin and the Barriers, and in all the adcent streets, the passage was almost ob'ucted by an extraordinary quantity of ese insects, which swarmed in such thick "ids round the gaslights that the streets 're comparatively dark. Fires were immeitely lit by order of the Municipality and e citizens themselves, upon which the tterflies burnt their wings. Half an hour wwards one walked on a layer formed by } bodies of the butterflies an inch thick. e )' are of a whitish colour, and some of the sets appeared as if covered with snow. Mount Vesuvius is again showing signs uneasiness. Slight shocks have been felt |«e neighbourhood, and smoke has been r 'tted from two craters, while the misfor|«s caused by the recent eruption are not H. Besides the loss of the entire harvest, 'the ruin of countless houses and fields, 1 ff ells at many of the surrounding villages re become sulphurous and utterly unfit for W™& w hile in some in some houses the ■jalatioris of carbonic acid are so noxious, ■ .J" some cases even deadly, that the inPtnnts cannot live in the ground floors, Pat the cost of constant headache and palPi"P of the heart. All the rats and mice | de ad, and dogs avoid the neighbourhood.

Chinese Arithmetic. The Chinese have the most ingenious mode of reckoning by the aid of the fingers, performing all the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, with one up to a hundred thousand. Every finger of the left hand represents nine figures, as follows : —The little finger represents units, the ring finger tens, the middle finger hundreds, the forefinger thousands, the thumb tens of thousands. When the three joints of each finger are touched from the palm towards the tip, they count one, two, and three of each of the denominations as above-named. Four, five, and six are counted on the back of the finger joints in the same way ; seven, eight, and nine are counted on the right side

or the joints, from the palm io the tip. The forefinger of the right hand is used as a pointer. Thus, 1,234 would be indicated by first touching the joint of the forefinger ; next the hand on the inside ; next the middle joint of the middle finger on the inside; next the end joint of the ring finger on the inside ; and finally, the joint of the little finger next f the hand on the outside. The reader will be | able to make further examples for himself.