NEWS ITEMS.

Gisborne Times, Volume X, Issue 942, 15 July 1903, Page 2

NEWS ITEMS.

At Hull, the charge of cremation is only a guinea. The tenants of the new municipal cottages at Tooting have been guaranteed electric light at one penny per night by the London County Council. An hotel exclusively for women

lias been opened in New York. Athens is the only capital in Europe which cannot be reached by rail. Thirty years ago, Japan boasted one newspaper ; to-day there are 900.

Umbrellas made of varnisned paper are coming into favor in France. The limpet adheres to a rock with a force equal to 2000 times its own weight. Exchange of money-orders has been agreed upon between the Transvaal and Canada.

Married couples in Norway are privileged to travel on railways at a fare and a-half.

Mr Balfour will take the chair at the Allied Colonial Universities’ dinner on July 10. The women of Morocco never celebrate their birthday, and very few of them know their ages. Six inquests have been held by the Bolton coroner in ten years on the members of one family. A Lincolnshire man, who was fined at the Guildhall for. sending dressed pork to London, was variously described as a bill-poster, a chimneycleaner, building repairer, and cart builder. He is also an amateur pig breeder and dealer. On a decree of divorce being pronounced by a Swiss judge, the couple showed their joy by embracing each other. The former husband then entertained his former wife at a- “ separation ” dinner at a neighboring restaurant. The “ lead ” of black lead pencils ■is now made from coke. It is ground and mixed with iron ore and chemicals and subjected to pressure under great heat. Though sailors are the most superstitious class of persons in the world, Columbus set sail from Palos on his great voyage on Friday, Aug ust 3, 1492. In the electrical furnaces now in use quartz is volatilised at relatively low temperature, and lime and magnesia become vapour before the highest temperature possible is reached. Mr F. W. Ruckstuhl, a New York sculptor, is engaged upon the model of a National Peace Monument. It will be 600 ft in height, and is to bo erected on the banks of the Hudson.

While addressing his constituents at Massa, Italy, an anarchist, who had been elected to the Chamber in spite of a sentence of banishment, was suddenly seized with apoplexy and fell dead. / Mr Andrew Carnegie told an interviewer that he gets two hundred letters a day about libraries, from all parts of the world, and he answers every one of them. The walking-stick camera is the very latest thing in photography. The, camera occupies the small end of the crutch of what looks like an ordinary walking-stick. Wishing to hear the locomotive whistle a Chicago boy pulled tho wrong lever and started the engine, which did £3OO worth of damage by running into a goods train. A new high explosive for blasting purposes is “ Cheddite,” which is claimed to be equal in blasting effects to gelignite, but unlike explosives of the nitro-glycerine class it is unaffected by extreme heat and cold.

The albatross varies from twelve pounds to twenty-eight pounds in weight. The largest ever shot was seventeen and one - half feet between the tips of its outstretched wings. Mr Edward Linley Sambourne, chief cartoonist on the staff of Punch, was born in London on January 4, 1845. For the last 35 years he has been a fairly constant contributor. M. Antoine, a lapidary, of Antwerp, has succeeded in cutting a ring out of a single diamond. The work occupied three years. The ring is about three-quarters of an inch in diameter. Broughams and other vehicles of aluminum, and even a steel-clad Victoria, are now to be seen in Paris. They are lighter than the old style of wood and metal combined, are more elegant, and safer in case of a breakdown.

For some months past the Daily

News has had an army of enumerators at work on Sundays numbering the congregations of the various London churches, and the completed results, taken in connection with the recent publication of Mr Charles Booth’s volume on the .religious influences at work in London, are of

considerable interest, though the fi-

gures are, of course, only roughly approximate, While Mr Booth admits that there is no lack oi energy and devotion on the part of the clergy of the various denominations the results are, he contends, far from satisfactory, and the churches are making but little headway. Commenting on Mr Booth’s conclusions, the Guardian says : “If the result of the efforts of the Church is to be written down as failure, let us at

least ask ourselves what would have been the moral condition of London at the present time if it were not for those efforts?” The Guardian goes on to say : “ The sense of religious need can only be restored very slowly where it has become extinct. In so far as the prevailing indifference is caused by the conditions under which great masses of people are living, we can only expect limited results as long as those conditions continue to prevail. In any case, it is plain that, however perplexing the problem may be, the Church is hound 10 seek for the true answer-until she finds it. It may be that she will' find it more and more in that she is a missionary Church amidst 'a population which, exxept in name, has largely reverted to paganism. It is certain that she will never find it in being content with a low standard in her adherents. Such success as has been won by religious workers in London has generally been Won by those who, by the example of their own lives and by, their demands on those td whom they appealed, have shown that' the claims op religion upon heart and will and intellect are very real and very binding-” It is stated that a man who recently died in the Greenwich Workhouse Infirmary ba6 left JE20,000. He left legacies to the doctor and the nurses who waited upon him, and also paid the entire cost of his treatment,