MISCELLANEOUS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 593, 29 August 1873, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

The he’t of land five hundred miles north and five hundred and three miles south of the Equator abounds in trees producing india-rubber. These trees, we are told, stand so closely together that a man may tap eighty in a day, the average yield of each being three table-spoonfuls. Fortythousand of these trees have been counted in a track of country a mile wide by eight miles long. There are in Europe and America more than one hundred and fifty manufactories of india-rubber articles, employing five hundred operatives each, and consuming more than ten million pounds of gum a year, and yet the business is considered to be in its infancy. The numerous efforts which for many 1 years have been made in England for the j relief of pauperism would seem to he making themselves felt if we may depend at all on statistics in the investigation of such a question. According to a return just issued a consideiable diminution in the pauperism of the country has recenty occurred. At the close of the last parochial year there were 852,9 15 paupers in receipt of relief in the several workhouses of En<r land, and at the corresponding period of the previous year there were 907,047, showing a decrease in 1873 of 54,132 or six per cent. But compare d with the last week of March 1171, there was a decrease of 14(5,170, or 14.6 per cent, the number in receipt of relief at the last mentioned period being 990,085. This decrease is confined to the out-door paupers. About 4,000 more persons were relieved in the workhuuses.