SCISSORS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 4034, 26 June 1884, Page 4

SCISSORS.

Snow fell in A'lenna at the end of April. There aro only 10,000 Avhitemen in China. Suakim literally means " built by the devil." London has 42 parks, containing seven square miles. In London 400,000 children attend the Board schools. The Hamilton library Avas to be sold in London this month. Lady Martin —better knoAA m as Helen Faucit —is seriously unwell. Mr Froude, the historian AA-ill shortly start on a voyage round the Avorld. The English traniAvays earned in 18S2 on an average £3,300 per mile. In St. Petersburg for drunkenness there are sixty thousand arrests per annum. Of girls between tho ages of 15 and 20 one in three is a domestic servant in England. Flour paste cannot become sour if a little carbolic acid or oil of cloves be added while making. Tho United Kingdom has 18,000 mile* of raihvay, the capital invested in Avhich exceeds the national debt. The annual butter product of tho United States is £i 0,000,000, and cheese figures for a tenth of that amount. Though Swden and Norway are ruled by one king, history, constitution, laAvs, language, are all different. To make the Jonk ii ping matches twenty steamers and eight sailing vessels were loaded Avith timber last year. A Newton mother surpassed Milnei Stephen; she has cured her boy of smoking by the " laying on of hands." All the paper used in making postage stamps, not only at home, butin the colonies also, is mado at a mill near Maidstone. To get rid of the smell of paint in a room, plungo a handful of hay in a pailful oi water, and let it stand in tho room overnight. An interesting object at the Nice exhibition is a Chinese clock Avhich is said tc date back to 800 years before the birth of Christ. Mr Mudie has determined to take 2.00 C copies of the Princess Alice's Letters. The editions are sure to folloAV one anothei pretty rapidly. It is stated that Sir General Graham Avill be promoted to the rank of lieutenantgeneral in recognition of the valuable services he has rendered in tho Soudan. France produces rags every year to the extent of seven million and a half sterling, and there is said to be 250,000 persons engaged in ragpioking and allied industries. The influx of neiv people into Florida is reported very great. It is estimated that 250,000 have settled there within a year. A rising industry is the manufacture of perfume from orange-flowers. Herr Carl Tauchnitz, the Avcll-knoAvn Leipsic publisher, avlio died recently, has left his fortune, amounting to several million marks, to his native city of Leipsic, foi the establishment of charitable institutions, It is somcAvhat of a novelty to notice that amongst the " Situations A r acant" advertised in a newspaper, are some lieutenancies "in one of the best battalions in the metropolis." The advertisement says, " The expenses are light for tho position," and " Gentlemen avlio can give unexceptionable references may apply," &c. Hoaxing appears to bo a favorite form of amusement in American literary circles just iioav. Mark Twain is the latest victim. On April Ihe received OA T er 250 letters from well-known persons asking him for his autograph. These 250 had banded togcthei for the perpetration of the joke, and then letters all arrived on the morning of April Fool's Day. In all European Legislatures, except the English, it is the president who propria ■inolu suspends a sitting. In the House of Commons the Speaker has to bo moved out of the chair. It once befell that Mr Dennison, being left during- the small hours in an absolutely empty House, had to summon back a number to perform this necessary office for him. That Lord Beacon sfield's f.iiends should regret his loss is only natural; nor is it surprising that the Conservatives should share in that regret, for they ivill have long to wait before they find so adroit a party leader. He Avas amiable, yet very selfish ; ready to do a good turn Avhen it did not harm him, and ready to sacrifice his best friend Avhen ho stood in his Avay. Prince Bismarck, who was once admonished for Avhistling on the Sabbath Day in Scotland, and has never forgotten it, will not be in the least surprised, whatever other people may feel, Avhen he hears, as he Avill with grim satisfaction, that a member of the Helensburgh United Presbyterian Church, who had been elected to tho office of elder, has just been refused ordination by the Session on the ground that he ' ( took a walk in tho country on the Sabbath afternoon." Probably tho most wonderful tree in the world is the baobab or Maibey bread-tree. It grows to the height of only forty feet, but it is thirty feet in diameter. The age of this tree is quite incalculable. Humboldt consielers it "the oldest living organic monument of our planet." A good sized room can be cut in the trunk of the baobab, with comfortable accommodation for thirty men, and tho tree will still live and flourish. The fruit, Avhich is nourishing, is about a foot long. The tree grows vory slowly. A specimen at KeAV, which is more than eighty years old, having attained a height of only a foot and a half. The oldest baobabs arc estimated to be over five thousand years old. Under the pretext of charity the' Duchess de Mouchy, the Duko do Castries, Prince Sagan, and other leaders of society in Paris have endeavoured to get up a sensational exhibition of the Bull Fight kind clear to Spaniards. They obtained an authorisation from M. Camesoasso, tho Prefect of Police, written summarily on a card, but M. Camoscas.se understood that no bulls and no horses Avere to bo killed, and no men Avoundcd. It now turns out, a Paris correspondent says, that Frasouelo, the great toreador, avlio had been engaged, is too proud of his art to consent to a sham ; the dilemma lying between barbarity and humbug, either a bloody fight Avhich Avould shock the French conscience or a ridiculous fraud upon the public. The Ministry has vetoed tho Avhole thing. One of the oddest.picture sales on record has just taken place at Berliu, the moral of Avhich seems to be that there really is not much in a name after all. The pictures were sold by Herr Lepke, a famous disperser of art treasures, and nearly all the canvases Avere attributed to great masters. The first picture, a '' Portrait of Oriental,'' by Rembrandt, Avent for £12 ; " The Death of Lucretius," by Guido, fetched £1 lis ; a portraitc by Tintoretto, £13 10s.; "The Alchemist," by Tenicrs, £2 lis and a Venus of Atm Loo, 17s! SeA'eral paintings by "unknown masters" Avere literally •' knocked doAvn " for four, three, and even two shillings ; ono even ivent for a shilling. The Berlin papers say nothing of the genuineness of these old masters—perhaps because there Avas not much to be said on fjiat head.