MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS.

Grey River Argus, Volume IX, Issue 711, 9 August 1870, Page 4

MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS.

A telegram dated Corinne, May Bth, says — A subterraneous outlet to the Great Salt Lake has been discovered opposite Corinne and between Frcemont and Kimball Islands. The schooner Pioneer, Captain Hannah, sailing in the vicinity last Tuesday, was drawn into the opening — which is an immense maelstrom or stupendous whirlpool —and the descent and circular motion of the water were so rapid and violent that the vessel was made to spin around in it with frightful velocity, and it was only by the high wind prevailing at the time that she was enabled to sail beyond the influence of the chasm. Captain Hannah reports that he has no doubt whatever that this opening, never before discovered, is the ' grand outlet of the lake. A party of scientific men will leave here immediately in the steamer Kate Connor to investigate the subject. A very singular article appears in the Cliemisb and Druggist of the 15th March last, from the pen of a talented Fellow of the Chemical Society, in which he records the circumstance that methylated ether is used to an enormous extent in parts of the north of Ireland as an intoxicant. The writer remarks that it was used in some of the towns to such an extent as quite to overpower the fumes of tobacco and other smells usually prevalent at fairs. He say 3, the reason of its enormous consumption is to be found in the fact that the Roman Catholic clergy in the district referred to have been making strenuous exertions to abolish the use of ardent spirits. He considers this to be a step in the right direction, inasmuch as for certain scientific reasons the use of ether must be far less injurious to the human system than that of other intoxicants of a more gross character ; and concludes with the great chemist Liebeg, " whether it depends upon sensual and sinful inclinations merely, that every people of the globe has appropriated some sucL means of acting on the nervous life ; from the shores of the Pacific, where the Indian retires from, life for days in order enjoy the bliss of intoxication with cocoa, to the Arctic regions, where Kamtschatdales and Koaiakes prepare an intoxicating beverage from a poisonous mushroom." A Melbourne paper, in referring to the recent brigandage in Greece, compares the action of the British Govern .nent in tliat case to its attitude on the question t of the massacre in New Zealand, in the following terms : — The value oi a British sovereign varies in different countries ; a phenomenon which surprises the unwary traveller, but is not altogether inexplicable. What is more difficult to understand is the variation in the value of British life. Four Englishmen have been massacred in Greece by local brigands, and England naturally is in arms, breathing fire and slaughter, threatening to subvert the Government of King George, and to restore the Lmd of Pericles and Themistocles to the hated sway of the Moslem ruler of Constantinople, to allow the Crescent to float once more over the Giaour. The ire may be excessive, but it is not worthy of a great nation feeling the outrage which has been perpetrated on its sons. Only casting our memory back barely two years to the massacre of some forty-two men, women, and children at Poverty Bay by a brigand named Te Kooti, we can recollect no indignation and no sympathy. The New Zealand Government was not told that if it could not suppress brigandage other aid must be called in. On the contrary, every soldier in the locality was immediately ordered away, lest they should by any chance come iuto^collision with the brigands. A Roman, whether a Claudius in Britain, a Paul of Tarsus before Agrippa, was always a Roman. His appeal lay to Csesar. But obviously one Englishman is different from another. All cannot command the sympathies and support of the English Government, or even the English people. There is a solution to the problem no doubt, and there would be much practical interest in working it out. Mr Herbert and Mr Lloyd had about as much business on the plains of Marathon as Mr Butters, M.L.A., and Councillor Reed have on the highlands of Fiji. King .Thakombau, of Fiji, say's its "all right," as King George, of ' Greece, did per Ministers. If Councillor Reed and Mr Butters should be cut down notwithstanding, will England forget them, like Capt. Biggs was forgotten, or avenge them like Mr Herbert is to be avenged ? A new telegraph line is now being constructed between New York and Washington, forming a small section of wires that are intended to ramify in all directions through the country, by which cheaper and more rapid telegraphy is expected to be realised. The instruments used are the recently patented telegraph improvements of George 'Little, of New Jersey. The messages to be sent axe prepared by punching slots and circles through a strip of paper, which, on being drawn through the telegraph instrument, transacts corresponding electric signals. These are received and made visible upon strips of chemically-prepared paper. Copies of messages may be dropped at all stations upon the line without interfering with the working of the instruments. The machines for preparing the messages are quite simple, and are operated by girls. Mr D. H. Craig, one of the most experienced telegraph men in the country, states that as much business can be done with the Little instruments, using only one wire, and 32 girls to prepare and copy messages, at a total expense of 48dols per diem, as can be accomplished by means of 15 wires and first-class Morse operators at an expense of 120dols per diem. There is also a difference of 15 to 1 in favor of the new system in the prime cost, and maintenance of wires. Next to cheap postage and quick mails, the people want cheap telegraphy ; and we therefore welcome any thing that promises to bring it about. — Scientific American. Just after the adjournment of the M'Farland trial a lively passage occurred between the two leading counsel on either side. The crowd was gradually leaving the court-room and the Recorder. The City Judge, and many professional gentlemen within the bar were preparing to go to ex-Judge Russel's funeral, when Judge Davis made a remark to the Reorder with regard to Mr Graham's conduct of the -defence, saying that the latter had stated something in one of his bitter speeches that he could not prove. Mr Graham, who stood ne.-tr, talking to the prisoner, and Mr Gerry, overheard him, and, rushing up to Judge Davis shouted, "Do. you mean to Bay. anything I have said is false ?" >, Before Judge Davis could reply, Mr Graham continued, shaking his

clinched fist in Judge Davis's face, "Yon country pettifogger! you are not fit to associate with gentlemen ! you ! I could undress you and spank you like a child. You have insulted every witness I brought on the stand, and you've been paid money to hang this man ?" Mr Gerry and several others rushed up to Mr Graham, and Recorder Hackett stepped up and interfered, when Mr Graham pushed him aside, saying, "Don't interfere ; you have no right to ; yon helped this man to insult me by your rebuke from the bench." Officers then came between the parties and they were separated, and this ended the matter. The expletives which Mr Graham vised were not very choice. The crowd became j highly excited, and one man proposed three cheers for John Graham, which were loudly given. When Mr Graham went out he was loudly cheered by hundreds who had assembled on the staircase. The jury had departed before this passage between counsel occurred. To show how wonderfully engineering skill and appliances have increased during the last 50 years, we need only compare the time spent and the expense incurred ' in making the old Thames tunnel with the time spent and the expense incurred in making the new Thames tunnel, lately opened between Towerhill and Vine street, Tooley street. The former cost half-a-million of money, aud was eighteen years in construction ; the latter has been made in twelve months, and the total cost has been about L 200,000. The. new tunnel is 7ft 3in in diameter, and has an inclination on either side towards the centre of the river of Ift in 30ft. It is approached on each bank by a perpendicular shaft of sufficient depth, passengers being letdown from the top by steam power. There is a railway in the tunnel on which runs a small omnibus capable of accommodating fourteen persons, and which is hauled backwards and forwards by a steam-engine placed on the Surrey side of the river. An explanation has appeared this week of a phenomenon which has often puzzled us. Every one knows that, like the secondary rainbow which gives a reversed imaje of the primary, there occurs about this season of the year a phantasmal new potato, which in external show mimics the new potato admirably, except that it is fainter (less yellow) in color, and quite the reverse of it in flavour — pasty, with a taste like an exhausted constitution. Ifc seems thai: this phenomenon 13 really due to a spurious anticipation of nature by renovators of old potatoes, who put them through a process to make them look like new. It appears that these manufacturers in Paris pick out carefully the smallest old potatoes that can be obtained, put them into tubs half full of water, and then churn them with their bare feet — as the grapes used to be pressed in the wine vats— by stamping upon them till the dark skins are rubbed off, and they have obtained the satin-like surface of new potatoes. They are then dried and wrapped in paper, and sold in small baskets for five francs the basket. These ingenious persons are called mfistoleurs de pommes de terre, and make no secret of their process, plying it in public by the Seine ; and we suppose there are similar persons in London, as the spurious new potato is common enough here, and curiously nasty — -we suppose because by suggesting roal. new potatoes tothe«ye, they get themselves tried by an higher ideal of taste than those superannuated roots which do not put forth any false pretences. Prussia haa been the favourite theme for the eulogy of English economists ; yet what does Mr Howard tell us that he found near Cologne? "The men, as in France and other parts of the Continent, sleep in the stable with their bullocks and horses. The wages to farm labourers am paid all in money, and are from Is 2d to Is 6d per day, and Is to Is 3d in winter ;" and after this a rise to 25 to 30 par cent, within the last 25 years, and amidst agricultural operations on a splendid scale of expenditure. On another Prussian farm, where beet is largely grown, and additional quantities bought for the distillery, the wage 3 throughout the year are 14d a-day ; in the summer months the working honn are from half-past 5 a.m. to 8 p.m.. The women get lOd a-day ; and in this district of Germany, bo it carefully observed,, "there are a great number of small holdings." 1 In Prussian Silesia life uses the wretched labourer still more cruelly. In winter he has 4d a-day, the spring raises him to an additional penny, and he attains his climax in summer, when 7*d to 10d constitutes his share of the rewards of the harvest.

The Chief Commissoner of London Police is a dreadfully ill-used man. Thieves generally are considerate people, and rob the middle-class, who do not matter ; but a burglar has appeared in London who only attacks the very rich people, whose representations are heard even in the House of Commons. He likes jewels, as at one portable and valnable, and he has taken those from four or five ladies known in good society. Last week he took those of Lady . Margaret Beaumont, value LIO,OOO. He is believed to be an ex-acrobat, ---now perhaps a t working jeweller in or about Soho^and his mode of operation seems to be to fix on a house, learn all he can about it, — say from discharged servants,— watch the inmates, and then at night ascend by a rope to the balcony, and thence enter the room where the jewels are kept, force the boxes open with some strong instrument, and decamp as he came. In the latest instance the police seem to have suspected something, for they warned the two . Rothschild familes in the neighbourhood, but not the house attacked. No clue has been obtained by the police, who, it is said, are very very much harassed with drill, who are underpaid, and too few, and whose chief resides in a remote back settlement named Wands worth, where Mr Bruce explaius, he has a telgram in his room, and whence he issues severe orders against poor people who, not being members of the Portland, have the audacity to play cards or skittles for money. Just fancy Pietri living at Sevres, and Napolen's remark if he heard of it, " He likes to be en retraiie that man. Put him there. "