ITEMS BY THE MAIL.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1342, 3 June 1878, Page 3

ITEMS BY THE MAIL.

[From the " Spectator."] A WORSE INVADER THAN MAN.

A Colorado beetle, it is said, has made good liia landing on the coast of Glamorganshire. A Cardiff house-decorator, Alfred John, took one recently, which had been observed by his wife on a potato, to the police station, and there the health officer, Dr. Pain, declared the beetle to bo of the genuine Colorado type. The insect is supposed to have travelled by a vessel now in port with a large cargo. It may well turn out that the successful landing of this expeditionary force on the coast of Wales will, as Sir Wilfrid Lawson long ago predicted, be more disastrous for England than the landing of any naval or military force which we could rationally expect. Indeed, the beetle may prove far more formidable in Wales than even the Bashi-Bazouks in Thessaly. It is not so cruel, but it is even more rapacious ; and the law of the increase of its population is in itself only too formidable* TIIE CONTINENTAL PRESS ON ENGLAND. It should be noted that while the Press of the Continent is almost unanimous in praising England for threatening Russia, no Continental Power has as yet shown any willingness to take serious part in a war with that country. The idea obviously is that if England will do the whole work, that will he very pleasant, and the foreign Powers will look on complacently. We believe there is a feeling on the Continent, which explains a great deal of this attitude, —namely, a kind of indignation that England alone in the world should be free from the miseries of war. England, onco remarked an Italian of importance, " England is too dam comfortable !'' and the remark roughly embodies Continental feeling. It was displayed in the satao way just before the Abyssinian Expedition. "Ah !" said the French journalists, not ill pleased, " England also is now to have her Mexico." We did not have one, and may escape one this time, but to quote lists of the journals which are patting us on the back iq rather undignified, DONNYSBOOK TRANSPLANTED,. The House of Commons have made one complete night of it, and one half-night of it this week, over the Irish Sunday Closing Act; and the " Obstructives " in this case were by no means exclusively Irishmen, many English members iqirung in the fray on both sides, and some of them alternately voting for the Bill, and for the obstruction to the Bill. In short, the O'Connor J)on, who has charge of the Sunday Closing Bill, and has had the promise of Government support, has had a weary task of it, —many of his own countrymen doing their very best to prevent Ireland from obtaining what the majority of Irish members say she desires to obtain, and the English joining, in schoolboy fashion, in the fray. Indeed, the struggle on the Sunday Closing Bill for Ireland has been a kind of Pariuv menlary Donnybrook. REMNANTS O? TiiE The reoent accounts, from India as to the Btate of the crops excito very little interest, but thoy are by* no moans pleasant reading. The Madyao corespondent of the "Times," writing on March 2nd, says there are still 280,000 people supported by Government relief, the harvest has been very bad, and there are still 4000 tons of grain a. wee';; imported from Bengal and Burma'tr. ' The price of fecd-stuxfs throughout India remains upon ; the indrease." In the North-AYest, Oude, and the Punjab, the official quotations for wheat, barley, and millet range from twice to thrice the quotations of last year, and in Rohilcund there is something like an actual famine. In Agra and in Oude the number of starving is very great, officers reporting in the Jatter country that they find th? watercourses "strewed with dead bodies." This writer . complains that the famine allowances have lowered the normal rate of wages, and estimates tho total number of deal lis from famine in Madras and Mysore—the deaths, that is, in excess of the normal rates —at two millions. AVe trust he is unconsciously exaggerating, bufitis true that India seems to have entered on a cycle of scarcity, and that pauperism will for a timo he a vevy serious evil. At the sav.ie time,'two i;act9 must bo remembered. The great bulk of the p?ople, being peasants, benefit by the high prices of grain, and tho relief measures of Government maV.s distress, which always exists, very manifest-. The paupers flock to centres, and arc counfed. A a.WAUH CURE FOR BKILI-COSITV.

Tha Zulu chief Cetywayo Ims hit upon a notable remedy for tho war-fever which sippears to be common to Zulus and Londoners. On tho advice of persons learned in natural magic, he ordered up all his and administered an emetic to yho moil, u to bring out tho 67il in their'Hearts which causes them to fight 1 and kill each other." If such an

emetic—(say) any sort of moral antimony—really existed, and could be administered to the " Daily Telegraph" and the " Pall Mall Gazette," what valuable lives might even now be saved. But we fear the "perilous stuff" has been taken for too long a time into the system, so that the remedy of the Zulu magicians, even if it could be applied, would no longer be effectual.

THE ROSEBEBY JEWEL STOET. It soems impossible just now to ascertain the truth about anything. The whole cf that story about Lady Bosebery's jewels, though minutely given in the "Times" of Friday week and other papers, was untrue. Burglars, between 1 and 3 a.m., did, indeed, attempt to enter the ground iloor of Potworth House, and may have beon in pursuit of jewels ; but they did not get in, did not enter the dressing room, or the floor on which it stood, and tried to enter a dummy window not made to open, clear proof, as Lord Leconfiold writes, that they were not a very scientific gang. Lastly, Lady Bosebery's jewels were not taken down to Petworth. We only need an assurance that Lady Bosebery was not in Sussex either, to make the story quite perfect as an illustration of modern daily history. PROPOSED NEW BISHOPRICS. Lord Beauchamp's Bill for creating four new bishoprics—the Bishopric of Liverpool, severed from the diocese of Chester, and to be subsidised by revenues from the Bishopric .of Sodor and Man; the Bishopric of New-castle-on-Tyne, to bo assisted in the same way out of the revenues of the great See of Durham ; the Bishopric of Southwell, including the counties of Derby, severed from the diocese of Lichfield, and Nottingham, severed from that of Lincoln, to be assisted out of the revenues of the See of Lincoln; and the Bishopric of Wakefield, to be assisted out of the revenues of the See of Bipon —was discussed in the House of Lords on March 26th, and the second reading carried without a division. MORE TURKISH HORRORS. The war has not altered the Turks. The " Times " of Thursday 'publishes a shocking account of the atrocities perpetrated on some insurgents near Volo, in Thessaly, on the slopes of Mount Pelion, written by its own correspondent, Mr Ogle, who has himself been assassinated by the Bashi-Bazouks, under circumstances not yet investigated, but apparently, because he interested himself in saving the households of the victims. The Greek Government intends to inquire narrowly into the affair, and the body of the murdered gentleman is to be received in state at Athens, but the principal comment of the " Times " on the catastrophe is that the Greek Government exposes itself to contempt and suspicion by' .encouraging insurrection. When its correspondent in [China was murdered by the Chinese, the " Times" called for reparation in its loudest tones, and compensation to the victim's family was exacted in the Treaty, but it seems in the present instance remarkably cool. It has of late become decidedly anti-Russian, and perhaps does not wish " to excite prejudice " against Turks. How any Englishman can read Mr Ogle's description of Boulgarini and its horrors, and not demand that the Greek produces shall be relieved of such a Government, it passes us to conceive. Batuk was hardly worse, except in scale. THE MINISTERIAL CHANGES. Lord Salisbury has accepted the Foreign Office, Mr Hardy takes the India Office and a Peerage before the end of the session, and Mr F. Stanley accepts the Secretaryship for War. There is, therefore, only one new member of the Cabinet, and he the heir of the family whose head has just seceded, a combination most oreditable to Lord Beaconsfield's social stx-ategy. Sir C. Adderley at the same time accepts a peerage, Lord Sandon takes the Board of Trade, and Lord G. Hamilton is promoted to the Vice-Presidency of the Council. We have commented on these changes—most of which are well conceivod—elsewhere, but may mention here that Mr E. Stanhope will probably be the Under-Secre-tary for India. Mr Stanhope is not very young, and has lately slipped out of public notice, but he made one remarkable speech in Parliament on the employment of women and children in agriculture, and may have been of more use at the Board of Trade than the public knows. The objection to putting two new men into the India Office is unreal, as the Council is a permanent institution.