DE OMNIBUS REBUS.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 210, 10 February 1875, Page 4

DE OMNIBUS REBUS.

A telescope of immense proportions has, it is stated, been for some time past in course of manufacture at the Paris Observatory, but is still far from its termination. It was commenced in 1865 by M. Leon Foucault, but the death of that savant, and the events of 1870 and 1871 interrupted this work, which were subsequently resumed under the direction of M. Wolf. The power of the new instrument will exceed those of the Cambridge and Herschell telescopes, hitherto the largest known ; its length will be 49ft, and its diameter 6ft 6in, while the dimensions of Herschell’s were only 40ft by sft. The mirror will be of glass, but the surface will be faced with gold or silver. The telescope will be provided with a movable staircase.

Prince Gortschakoff plainly thought, says the Fall Mall Gazette, the report circulated by German newspapers of the coming occupation of Khiva at an early date to be of some importance, for he not only caused it to be contradicted, but an assurance to be given that no such appeal as was asserted had been made by the Khan to St Petersburg for aid against the Turcomans. In the letter of the fact the Chancellor of Bussia no doubt is correct, but it is tbe use of the letter strictly that makes him so : for the intervention referred to, it appears, has been actually asked for by the Khan from the nearest Eussian commander, Colonel Ivanhoff, who is left by General Kaufmann in charge of the newly acquired district on the Amoor. Colonel Ivanhoff did not take on himself the office of a diplomatist by replying directly, but has addressed nimself to the Turcoman chiefs, warning them of the certain consequences of their insubordination to the Khan’s authority, and of the violence with which this has been accompanied. These particulars come to us through Germany; and it is only necessary to add that they are fully supported in their general tenour by the declarations of the Eussian press that the Turcomans round the new territory are so bold and aggressive that it will be necessary for Colonel Ivanhoff soon to take the offensive and cross the river to punish them, in order to prevent them becoming emboldened to make an attack on him and his garrisons. We pointed out some time ago (says the Pall Mall Gazette ) for the benefit of these who fear that the addition of colonial empire must inevitably mean new burdens to the mother country that the Dutch have somehow or other never been persuaded to take this view, even when it rose for the time among ourselves to the dignity of an article of political faith ; and we reminded certain writers who condemned the Atchin hostilities by anticipation as certain to entail financial embarrassment on Holland that they were reckoning singularly without their shrewd host. That the caution was not unnecessary is shown clearly enough by the annual budget laid before the Dutch Chambers, which is accompanied by a memorandum of the Finance Minister, asking for an immediate vote which shall allow him to pay off a million sterling of debt, the ground for this proposal being that there is an unnecessary surplus on his hand? as cash balances, which will soon be considerably augmented. The expenses of the two expeditions are given in the financial statement as reaching nearly £2,400,000; but of this sum over £300,000, though charged against them, would have been spent in any case on the fleet and its army allowance. The real addition, therefore, is two millions, a sum which will not affect the revenue of the Dutch East Indies seriously for the two years over which it is distributed, and which Holland may be excused for believing to be not a very high price to pay for the sovereignty acquired over Sumatra, considering what Java has become in her hands. A graver matter, many Dutchmen think, is the loss of life incurred, amounting to 2,042 in the second expedition, of whom over 600 are returned as victims of cholera. The check sustained by the original one cost, it appears, only seven soldiers actually slain, but more than ten times that number were wounded in the attack which the Atchinese repulsed. Professor Huxley in his recent lecture on animal automata relates the remarkable case of a man who was injured by a bullet during the late Franco-Prussian war. This man suffered from nearly the same injury as an animal that has had its brain hemisphere very largely damaged. His brain seems to bo according to Huxley’s account, just on the border between total and permanent disorganisation of this part of the brain, and a condition which enables it to perform its functions satisfactorily, the result being that while his general health is good, he is subject to partial and transient derangement of the functions of this part of the brain. For about twenty-seven days in the month he is a respectable well-conducted man, and performs his duties as a warder in the hospital quite satisfactorily. Then for a day or two he passes into another life quite suddenly. He goes about just as usual, makes up his cigarettes, eats and drinks, and performs the same sort of actions as he does when he is well. But he sees nothing, hears nothing, tastes nothing. The only unimpaired sense is that of feeling. He walks straight on until he strikes against something, then he turns aside and repeats the operation, He smokes as usual, but shavings please him just as well as tobacco. He eats, but nothing comes amiss to him—aloes, assafeetida, all things are the same to him, Besides this, he is, while in this condition, an inveterate thief.

The results of the new policy of the three northern empires as to the Danubian Principalities are already, says the Pall-Mall Gazette , manifesting themselves. Turkey has at present signified in polite terms that she will not surrender her suzerain rights in regard to commercial treaties except by compulsion ; and, encouraged by the attitude of their supporters, tne Roumanians are noisily demonstrative on their side. The German paper of Bucharest, the Epoche, reports with much satisfaction that the unveiling the other day of a statue erected to Prince Michael, the defender of Roumania at the end of the sixteenth century, had been made tL« occasion of an almost warlike speech by

Prince Charles, who declared that “in the hour of danger the entire people of Roumania would rise as one man anddo their duty as in days of yore.” The reply of the Burgomaster, Colonel Manu, was couched in a still more national spirit, and appealedto the ancient and glorious independence ol the country as brought home to the soul of every one present by the occasion. In Servia the agitation is hardly less; and the Government cannot, if it would, proceed with the project of carrying a railroad forward into Turkey, because the mere assent of the Porte in an Iradi, or Imperial decree, is held to be insufficient to meet the national demand, and •a special convention must be made with the Principality, as with a Sovereign Power—a condition the Grand Vizier naturally will not yield to, as it would prejudice the rights belonging to his master by inheritance and treaty. In Servia, therefore, as in Roumania, everybody is ready to stand up like one man; that is, so long as the moral support of the rulers who dispose of about two and a half millions of soldiers is assured to the cause of the Principalities.