SCISSORS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 4119, 3 October 1884, Page 4

SCISSORS.

Sydney has 100 miles of streets. In the States there aro fifteen million horses. "See Naples and dio has a terrible reality just now. Tho minerals produced in N.S.W in 1883 -were valued at £3,200,000. At Naples the carabineer Marino, who killed his superior officer recently, has been sentenced to death. The most remarkable echo known is that on the north side of a church at Shipley. It repeats 21 syllables. At the funeral of a Liverpool athlete a feature of tho procession was a line of bicyclists on their machines. In Havana the bodies of persons who have died from yellow fever are burned to prevent tho disease from spreading. There has been a large decrease in failures for the firnt six months of this year in the United Kingdom as compared with last year. Near Tercara-Friddi, in tho province of Palermo, petroleum has been found of such a limited epiality that it is used in lamps without any previous refining. A new Christian mission is about to bo started at Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee. It will bo under tho supervision and conduct, aud at the expense of the Free Church of Scotland. An English judge recently condemned five prisoners to an aggregate of 25 years' penal servitude for stealing two ducks, four bullocks, seven fowls, one apron, and three small pieces of jewellery. The fato of Mr Alfred Sheldon, the member of a Manchester family, who was kidnapped and carried off from his homo in Kansas three months ago, is (says the Manchester Guardian) still a mystery. The Mayor of Plymouth has received from Professor Roy Lankester an intimation that the newly-formed Biological Institute of Great Britain has resolved to erect its first laboratory and museum on tho Hoe foreshore. Tho Scotch definition of metaphysics is, after all, not a bad one: " Twa men arc talking together. He that's listening dinna ken what he that's speaking means ; and he that's speaking dinna ken what he means himself—that's metaphysics!" At Naples the other day a steel torpedoboat was launched which had been built for the Italian Government. In her trial trip she not only accomplished the stipulated speed (20 miles an hour) but did 21A miles, Avhich is believed to be tho best time on record. A curious instance of the vagaries of birds in building their nests has just occurred at Adisham, where a wagtail's nest, with five eggs in it, was found between a pair of points a few inches from the rails of the main line, where trains were actually

passing. Tho London synagogues, it is stated, contributed about £5000 to tho fund raised on the recent "Hospital Sunday" by the churches of that city. St. Michael's, Chester Square, sent in £1087, the largest anm ever received from one church in aid of the fund.

The adjudicators of the prize of £500 offered by Mr Ellis Lever for a now and improved safety-lamp have not been able to make a specific award. They have examined 10S lamps, of which only four wore electric, the others beiny designed for various kinds of oils.

The Rev. J. S. Watson, wdio was sentenced to penal servitude some 14 years ago for tho murder of his wife, has died in prison. Mr Watson was the author of a life of Porson, a life of Wilkes, and a life of Cobbctt. lie executed a number of the translations in Bohn's Classical Library.

Last year the duty paid in Great Britain on patent medicines amounted to £150,000. If we reckon the selling value of tho medicine at about eight times this, we have for this ono class of medicine alone a total of nearly a million and a quarter of money, all of it spent in amateur doctoring. The Louisville Courier Journal predicts the final triumph of Mormonism after this fashion: —"Five hundred more Mormons arrived from Europe" is repeatedly tho news from New York. After a while, with homo production and the arrival of foreigners, there will be enough Mormons to whip the United States and compel every survivor iv our armies to marry seventeen wives. Referring to tho offer of the American, Dui-yca, to give §0000 to bo rowed for in America by six scullers, including Beach, a Sydney paper says : —"The gentleman who has offered this prize is reported to be the largest manufacturer of starch in the world. We give him this free ' ad,' as probably this i i about tho only object he had iv view when he decided to offer the GOOO ' almighty dollars.' "

It appears from a .statement in a newspaper published at Bari that tho steamer Lombardo, which, conveyed Garibaldi to Sicily in 1869, aud with him the destiny of Italy, is now degraded under tho name of the Utile, and employed in towing mudboats from Voids to Naples. The little paddle steamer, the old name of which is hidden by a zinc plate aud painted over, is fust dropping into decay.

Particulars arc published of-the project for constructing a ship canal across Ireland. The proposed canal would be 127 miles in length, and would contain 110 lnc.lcs. For .ships of 15()0 (mis the cost, would bo £8,000,000 ; for ships of 2,500 tons, £12,000,000; and for ships of 5,000 toni and upwards £20,000,000. If built on this scale, the canal would be 250 ft. wide on tho surface and 100 ft. at the bottom.

A new Chalet Church has been opened on the Riil'el Alp, Zermatt. The church is situated 7000 ft. above the sea-level, aud is the highest place of worship connected with tho Church of England, and, with the exception of the church in the St. Bernard Monastery, it id the loftiest sanctuary in the

world. It affords accommodation for 100 worshippers, and has cost £600, the whole of which has been raised by the Rev. Canon Lefroy, of Liverpool. An official return has been published in France of the women who aro members of the order of the Legion of Honour. They are 10 in all, and just half the number arc sisters of one religious order or other. One of tho lay members, the wife of a provincial mayor, earned tho cross by defending the mairie against an armed attack, under what circumstances is not stated ; an episode of the war, doubtless. One name well known in tho world of art figures on tho list—that of Rosa Bonbcur. The only foreign female is Lady Pigot, who received the decoration from M. Thiers in 1872, in acknowledgment of her service during tho war. In tho supplementary estimates issued last week, there is an item of £2725 for the late Duke of Albany's funeral expenses, and it is monstrous that tho taxpayer should be called upon to pay tho amount. H.R.H. left the by no means small fortune of £45,000, and one would have thought that the expenses of his funeral might have been paid out of this sum, and more especially as his wife is amply provided for to tho tune of £6000 a year. If this could not have been done, surely Her Maiesty, with an income of £430,000, and a private fortune to a large amount, might have prevented such a stigma being put upon her dead son of being buried at the expense of the public. The recent fire at Messrs Gooch and Cousens's warehouse at Wapping, which ended in the destruction of about £180,000 worth of Australian wool, is one of those fortuitous occurrences which appear to hurt no ono but the insurance companies, who, in accordance with some strangely conceived notion, are never worthy of tho slightest popular sympathy The following are the details of the wool consumed :—New South Wales, 1520 bales ; Queensland, 234 bales ; Victoria, 13G0 bales ; Tasmania, 4 bales; South Australia, 600 bales ; New Zealand, 3445 bales 1 sack ; Cape, 051 bales ; Falkland Island, SSO bales 5 sacks ; Persian, 133 bales. Total, 9154 bales and 6 sacks. What is a kiss, asks the Pall Mall Gazette ? The question can only be answered by experience : solvilur oscuhnido. But it is easy after a decision in the Lambeth County Court to say what a kiss is not: it is not legal "consideration." A surgeon in Lambeth kissed a-working mam s wife ; the husband valued the kiss at £5. and tho .surgeon gave him an 1.0. U. for that amount. A month after date an action was brought on this document, but the judge promptly ruled that there was no consideration, and gave a verdict for the defendant. Perhaps the lady was in court, and the judge may have been influenced by that. For even the poets admit that there aro "kisses and kisses;" the interesting question is whether the judgment was meant to lay down a general principle, or whether every case must be decided on its merits.

It is well-known that vessels built of thin steel rust through rapidly if not kept constantly painted. This is found to bo the case to a remarkable extent in such vessels when navigating the rivers draining the interior of tho African continent, tho waters of which possess the power of corroding and eating through steel plates very rapidly. In view of this, it hits occurred to Mr A. Dick, of 110 Cannon-street, London, the inventor of the new alloy known as "delta metal," to apply it to ship-building purposes, as it successfully resists corrosive action. A steam-launch called the Delta has, therefore, been built entirely of this metal, by Messrs Yarrow and Co ~ r>f Poplar, and is for tho present at the Crystal Palace International "Exhibition. Delta metal (which is an alloy of copper, zinc, and iron) having- been proved by repeated experiments to be equal in strength ductility, and toughness to mild steel, the plates and angle-pieces aro of tho same thickness as they would be if steel were used. We are accustomed to plume ourselves upon the remarkable development of newspaper enterprise in the Australasian colonies ; but in this respect, it would appear, California could "give us points." San Francisco supports six daily morning and seven evening papers, exclusive of weekly and monthly publications ; and you will rarely find a town of 30,000 inhabitants in the interior, it is said, that cannot boast of four daily papers. It is not quite 40 years ago since the first English newspaper on tho Pacific Coast was published at Monterey, under the title of the Californium At the present time the names of the journals published in that state are legion. And they teem in the neighboring- states and territories, where they adopt the most unconventional designations. The Alameda Encinal, for example, which was so named from a grove of live oaks near the town (Encina is Spanish for evergreen oak), has rpiitc a poetical sound, while the Mokelunmes Maveraok, if alliterative, is altogether unintelligible. But what shall we say of The Gringo and Greaser, published at Manzano, in Now Mexico ? or of tho Modesto Strawbiick ? or of tho Calico Print '? As to the Casa Grande Plebeian, it is a contradiction in terms. Nothing but what is patrician should come out of a great house. The Las Vegas Optic is a curious mixture of Spanish and English ; but nothing can be more appropriate than The Epritaph, which is the title of a newspaper published in Tombstone, a mining township so named by its founder, "Ed." Schieffelin, who on setting out to prospect the lonely region, which was infested by Indians, was told by his friends, "Better take your coffin with you, Ed., you will find your tombstone, and nothing else." But he found a largo fortune there in silver mines of remarkable richness : and in six years a township of 2000 inhabitants has sprung up : The Epitaph is issued daily, and the place is said to bo so healthy that it is popularly believed people would never die there, if it were not for whisky and cold lead, both of which are apt to prove fatal.