SCISSOSR.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 4145, 4 November 1884, Page 4

SCISSOSR.

A French almanack predicts that Emporor William and General Moltke will die b ofore December 31, 1881. _ Emma Wangenheim is going to star again. The ', Mascotto" is ihepicee de retistcncc, and Howard Vernon is the tenor. A pure white sparrow is reported to have been seen on Tuesday in the vicinity of the Woollen Factory, Kaiapoi In an old tenement house that was recently pulled down in London thirteen cartloads of cockroaches were curried away. In one town of Saxony, during three months of last year, 403 persons were attacked with trichinosis, and of these sixtysix died. In the German houses of Hesse-Cassel and Hesse-Darmstardt there have been no fewer than sixteen morganatic marriages in eighty years. Murdoch's batting average in 1881 in England waa exactly the same as in 1882, while Spoftbrth's bowling average was nearly identical in the two years. The total value of imports for the quarter ended September 30, was £2,2 M,O-10 ; corresponding ' period last year, £1,957,108. Exports, £1,100,522; same period last year, £1,109,149. Of the four original proprietors of the London Telegraph, a paper which now nets a profit of £5,000 weekly, the sole survivor is now tho owner of a country weekly, and another died in a poorhouse. The daughter of a merchant, at Odessa, named Kalhishiiaj.'i., preacntccl hcreclf tlic other day tit the house of Colonel Katansky, of the gendarmerie, and fired at him with a revolver. The shot missed, and the girl was arrested. At a recent execution in Japan, thirteen strokes of a sword were necessary to behead the victim.; Tho edge of the instrument had been blunted purposely so that tho agony of the doomed might be as prolonged and terrible as possible. A monster rat,' about the second that has ever been scon or destroyed in Ballarafc West, was killed lately at tho establishment of Mr. Siddall, printer and paper-bag manufacturer, Mair street. The ugly brute (says the Post) was almost as large as a bandicoot. An American Philistine has built himself a house on the topmost peak of biblical Mount Carmel. He went to dig a cistern, and found one already hewn in the living rock, fourteen feet deep and two feet three inches l square. He needed a wine-cellar, and found an old tomb under his house in the loculi or coflius, in wlrich the irreverent "wretch stowed his bottles. A litsits naturee in the form of a goose-e«-g was to j day presented to the School of Mines by Mr Dodd, of-Marong, Sandhurst. The peculiarity of the egg, which is 4in. in length, and weighs lb., is that, enclosed •within the outer'"shell,, and floating, in the white of the egg, is a smaller one perfectly formed. .. " ' " Spain 'has lost one of itn most popular dramatic authors in Senor Garcia Gutierrcs,' who has just died at Madrid. He wrote tho drama from which Verdi drew his opera '' H Trovatofe." Born in IS 12, Gutierres ■was jusf-20 year old when he composed this first work, and offered it to the manager of the El Pincipe Theatre. He was so poor at the time, thathavingbeendraftedby conscription into the army whilei his.piece was in rehearsal, he was,unable, to purchase exemption. 'However, the immediate success, of the play soon enabled him to Jcavc the and from"'that time he devoted hiinpelf to dramatic composition. i