SCISSORS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 4166, 28 November 1884, Page 4

SCISSORS.

The Indian census shows that the native Christians are.increasing 15 times as fast as the general population. Bronze needles have been found in Egyptian tombs, which must have been made 4,000 years ago. * An agitation is now going on in various parts of Britain for a reduction in the price of bread. ...

A symphony by Mendelssohn, never yet published, has been found among the old papers in a music shop in Berlin. New streets in Paris have recently been named after the following authors : Heine, Darwin, George Sand, andSainte-Beuve.

Thti two inlands, Steers and Calmej r er, ■which sprang up last year at the time of the Krakatoa eruption, have again been swallowed up by the sea. An office for " universal information " has "been opened near tho British Museum. You pay your shilling and ask your question and get your answer. It is said that negroes scarcely ever commit suicide. They may be hard up from the day of their birth to the day of their death, but they rarely become melancholy. Mrs Haweis, the wife of the well-known clergyman and author, has just published a birthday book, compiled from proverbs by Chaucer. She calls the volume " Chaucer's Beads." A money-lender at Carlsrnhe, in Baden, named Hauseman, has been fined 800 marks imprisoned six years, and deprived of civil rights for five years thereafter, for excessive usury. Mons. Karkoff, a Russian journalist, is calling attention to the gold mines of the Caucasus, and declares, that what California is to America, the Caucasus might be made to Russia, with a little expenditure. The London Times begins a nix-column review of two recent works onLordßolingbroke with a statement that he was "the best writer of his time." And yet Bolingbroke was the contemporary of Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope. . The new Alpine railway connecting Vienna directly with Lake Constance, and shortening the route to the East, has been opened by the Emperor of Austria in person. Its tunnel is the third longest in the world being only surpassed by those of St Gothard and Mont Cenis. Fancy the electric light being used for what the Americans would call " bug killing." Yet this has actually been the case on the . banks, of the Dneiper in central Russia. Insects were found to be attracted in immense numbers by the brilliancy of the light, so that they could be destroyed wholesale. Perhaps ultimately the world may get rid of mosquitoes and other insect posts iti a similar mariner. One Andrew Carnegie, a New York millionaire, has been driving all through England in a four-in-hand. He has now ■written a book. In it ho has been kind enough to give Queen Victoria a " character." He says: "Queen Victoria is probably the most respectable woman that ever occupied a throne—such a character, indeed, as one would not hesitate to introduce into one , s family circle. ,. This is magnificent. A volume of Biographical E-says by Professor F. Max Miiller will be issued soon by Messrs. Longmans. The chief interest will consist in the biographies of tho three great Indian reformers, Rammohun Roy, Keshub Chunder Sen, and ■ Dayananda Sarasoati. These three " lives " will present a short history of the jfi'eat religious movement which has been going on in India almost unobserved during the last 50 years, aud which has led to the foundation of a new religion, which is Christianity in all but its name. The correspondence between Professor Max Miiller-and some of the principal actors in that new religious reformation has been printed in full. An ingenious mechanic in Birmingham constructed a safe which he stated to be absolutely burglar-proof. To convince tho incredulous of the fact,- he placed a one thousand pound note in his pocket, had himself looked in the safe, and declared he would give the money to the man who unfastened the door. All the blacksmiths, carpenters, and burglars in the country have been boring and blasting - and beating at that safe for a week with every kind of tool and explosive mixture known to science, and the man is there yet! Pie has whispered through the key hole that ho will make the reward ten thousand pounds if somebody will only let him out. He lias convinced everyone that it is the safest safe ever invented. Fears are entertained that tho whole concern will have to be melted down

in a blast furnace before he is released, and

efforts are being made to pass through the keyhole a fire-proof jacket to protect the inventor while the iron is melting.