DE OMNIBUS REBUS.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 238, 15 March 1875, Page 4

DE OMNIBUS REBUS.

A young lady at a Western temperance meeting said, “ Brethren and sisters, cider is a necessity to me, and I must have it. If it is decided that we are not to drink cider, I shall eat apples and get some young man to squeeze me, for I can’t live without the juice of an apple.” An action brought by Mr Maldon, a farmer at Biggleswade, against the Great Northern Railway Company, for compensation for injuries sustained in a collision, was brought to a close in the Court of Queen’s Bench recently, after occupying the Court two days. The liability of the company was admitted, and the sole question to be determined was the amount of compensation to be awarded to the plaintiff. The defendants lodged 40s in court. The accident arose from a collision which took, pi ace at the King’s Cross terminus, owing to the train in which the plaintiff travelled leaving the up-line and running on to the down line. The plaintiff received a shock, though without any external injury beyond a bruise. It was stated that he had been wholly unable to attend to business since the accident. After being sworn he became hysterical, and was unable to give evidence. Sir W. Fergusson and other medical witnesses said he could not be expected to recover within two or three years. The jury, after deliberating for some time, awarded him £BOOO damages. The true policy of the future Government of this colony (says the Fiji Gazette ) with regard to the sale of land, and that which will minister most to its permanent prosperity, will be to dispose of it at a reasonable price, upon certain well-defined conditions, and in areas sufficiently extensive to ensure comfortable and profitable homesteads, but not so large as to induce mere speculators to enter into competition for the purchase of land with the bona fide settler and cultivator. If this is done, the country will soon go ahead, trade will increase, commerce will flourish, and instead of sending our produce to market through the hands of colonial agents, who fritter away the producer’s profits through their exorbitant charges, we shall have ships entering our ports from the various States of the world, and our productions will be sent to the great emporiums of commerce through first hands. New articles of commerce will be sought for and found, manufactures will gradually spring up, agricultural and pastoral pursuits will be established, towns and villages will be founded, well-to-do tradesmen and substantial yeoman proprietors will be located upon almoit every island, and the colony cannot fail to become a gem of priceless worth in the crown of the British Empire. We learn from the West Coast Times that the Speaker of the Provincial Council, it is said, has been the recipient of the following letter, purporting to emanate from the Harp of Eiin Hotel, and purporting to be signed by the member for Okarito . —“ Sir—l trust you will accord me the satisfaction of naming a friend on whom to wait, and make arrangements for an honourable settlement of our dispute. I may be permitted to state that I am aware the course I now adopt is not allowed by the Standing Orders of the Provincial Council or British House of Commons. But, sir, permit me to remind you that in pursuing this course I only do that which a very distinguished relative of mine did (this very day fourteen years ago) to the present Right Honorable Sir Robert Peel. lam also aware that this honorable system of settling disputes between gentlemen has at no time been recognised by your plebeian nation, but since time immemorial such has been the custom among gentlemen of all other nations and especially in the grand old country which gave me birth. In conclusion, I trust you will not further disgrace the name ot honorable by declining to accept an honorable settlement, or take advantage of my position as a member of the Provincial Council. If you do, Beware! Beware! Beware!—P.S. —You can have choice of weapons.” Of course, the communication is the production of some practical jokist, but such, it is said, was not the presumption on the part of its recipient, and it was for some time a serious subject of consideration with the police, the Executive, and the alarmed friends of the prospective duellists. The perpetrator of the joke did more than create fun; he established a funk. We may add that Mr O’Donovan was carefully watched by detectives, and that Mr Speaker consulted his safety by sleeping at Government House. Mr Herbert Spencer, says the Melbourne Argus , in his “ Essays,” maintains the theory of the spontaneous origin of fever. He has been unfortunate, however, in one of his instances, for he cites the case of the ship Wanata, which left Glasgow in 1852. Singularly enough, Mr Thompson, of South Yarra, was on board the vessel in question, and in his recent work on Typhoid Fever, gives the following account of what took place. He says ; —“ The contagion came from fever beds in Glasgow. The first man was ill while the vessel lay at anchor in the Mersey, before he had been one day on board, or before spontaneous genesis of fever was possible. The patient, an elderly Highlander, had lodged two weeks in Glasgow, on his way to join the ship. I was fellow-passenger with him and 600 other emigrants in a small steam-packet from Glasgow to Liverpool. The moment the fever showed itself I, as surgeon superintendent, tried to land the man at Birkenhead depot; but my effort was over-ruled by the port medical authorities, and the ship went to sea with the focus of contagion to thin out her living freight, and puzzle speculative biologists with specious theories about the cause of it. The man died on the fourteenth day. The next person attacked was a man in the adjoining berth, and he too died on the fourteenth day. Fever then slowly spread from one to another, with no outburst amongst a number, as it would have burst out had the poison been bred in foulness of over-crowding. Over a thousand souls were on board of a 1400 ton ship, with two decks, making isolation impossible. By strenuous efforts the fever was kept in check, so far as to enable everyone to go on deck when the pilot boarded at the Heads, There was no health-officer ; the ship came on to Hobson’s Bay, and was placed in quarantine, not for typhus fever, but for whoopingcough ! . . . Many who went on shore with fever incubating spread contagion far and wide on the goldfields. . . , The history of that voyage showed how contagion is carried from old to new countries ; that people who have not had fever are as susceptible here as in the old fever-familiar towns ; that fermentible blood ferments in this sunny clime as in the murky air of Glasgow kennels; and that typhus virus is not ‘ roasted out of viruleace iu the tropica.’ "