MISCELLANEOUS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 660, 11 December 1874, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

A Floating Menagerie.—lt is stated that a party of army officers, who have been engaged in mounting guns and otherwise putting the Gulf Forts m serviceable condition, whilst sailing through Mississippi Sound, since the recent Hood, encountered a remarkable scene. For miles were seen logs, driftwood, and patches of turf and soil floating out into the gulf, filled with live animals, who clung to their frail barques with the tenacity of ship-wrecked mariners. Among the animals were seen raccoons, rabbits, possums, alligators, and mocassin snakes m uncounted numbers, all brought down from the swamps and marshes, perhaps from fifty to one hundred miles inland. The novel exhib'tion had a scientific interest, as it suggested the manner in which, during past geological periods, animals were transported from regions far inland to the mouth of estuaries, and their bones being entombed in the silt and soft mud, furnished the organic remains which which are preserved for ages in the strata. It was doubtless, by similar means that the fossils now found in the solid limestones were engulphed and preserved ; and also that animal life has been distributed over portions of the globe.

Tho “latest thing” in the advertising line is a lady who, through the New York newspapers, seeks for employment as an “ ornamental guest,” She will assist at dinner evening parties—by her grace her wit and beauty, contribute to the entertainment of guests, and she will do everything iu the highest style of art—but she demands handsome compensation.

MrH. M. Stanley has addressed a letter to a gentleman at Nottingham in answer to tho question whether he is of the same opinion as the late Dr Livingstone respecting the use of spirituous liquors by travellers. Mr Stanley replies to the effect that a man who needs the support of such liquors is unfit to travel in Africa, and that a drunkard cannot stand a tropical climate

General C. R. Decker, of San Francisco, claims to bo the smallest man living. He was born in Missisippi in 1830, ami' hence he is twenty-four years old. He measures 2ft. "in. in height, and weighs forty five pounds. He is well formed, and lias a handsome and intelligent face. The General is the sole support of his mother, who lives in Memphis, and ho earns their living bj selling photographs of himself. Barium has made repeated offers to little MrDeoker to become part of his show, but ho has a repugnance to exhibiting himself and has therefore declined all overtures of that kind.

The highest price that was ever given in England for a calf was paid at the Messrs Leuey’s sale in Kent recently, when Mr J. Loder, a spirited young breeder from Northamptonshire, outbid Earls Dunmore and Bective for a nine months old heifer calf, of the celebrated Duchess tribe and secured the little wonder at the extravagant figure of 2000 guineas.

The mace of the late Fijian Parliament was presented by the King to Sir Hercuks Robinson, as a present to Queen Victoria. The mace is made ofthe Kinns own w*ar club, and is beautifully ornamented with scrolls, in solid silver frosted, of palm leaves and other emblems of the tropical treasures we possess and surmounted by a noble crown.