Miscellaneous Extracts.

Hastings Standard, Issue 203, 22 December 1896, Page 4

Miscellaneous Extracts.

KILLED BY WASPS. While ploughing a field in the parish of Tierce, near Angers, in France, a laborer named Gilbert had the misfortune to overtime a wasp's nest. Immediately the swarm rose and settled on Gilberd, whose head, neck and arms were covered with the pestilent insects. The man's wife, who was working by his side, was also badly stung, and rendeed quite incapable of going to her husband's assistance. When the wasps were finally driven off it was ascertained that the peasant had ceased to live, and it is thought that one of the swarm must have entered his mouth and stung him, so that he died from suffocation.

THE USE OF THE CYCLE. Tne Cardinal Archbishop of Paris has issued a circular to his clergy, correcting the rumor that he had forbibden them the use of the cycle. Cardinal Richard, while preferring that in Paris, where other facilities of locomotion exist, priests should not yield to the enticement of mere pastime, strenuously exorts the rural clergy to utilise tricycles or bicycles to visit their parishioners, especially the sick and dying, to whom they can bring not only the consolations of religion, but medical or other requirements, where the question of time is of immeasurable value to the soul and body. In other dioceses the cycle, as a parochial adjunct, is not only permitted, but approved. THE DESTRUCTION OF HOMELESS DOGS. To the sacrifice of homeless or starving dogs at the Battersoa Dogs' Home there is no end. The poor creatures are being captured by the police at the rate of nearly 1 •">() a day, which is about 100 a day more than were captured before the muzzling order came into force. Altogether 000 dogs have been picked off the streets under the muzzling order, and after a detention of a day or two have been consigned to the lethal chamber. This is vastly in excess of preceding years, and it indicates the extent to which the streets of the metropolis have been infested with useless mongrels. Many of the captures have been that of dogs whose owners cared so little about them that they would not incur the cost of the fee required to redeem them, or run the risk of a line in the police court for leaving them at large unmuzzled. While the captures continue the council will not relax the muzzling order, to which the canine race that still survives in London is now meekly and patiently submissive.

A SNAKE SCAIIE. Some excitement has been caused in Melbourne because some tiger snakes escaped from the collection of " Professor " Davis, a. snake charmer. " Professor" Davis spends most of his time in the backwoods catching snakes, and then, having extracted their fangs he forwards them in hundreds to his houso in Nicholas lane, oIY Burke street east, where his wife receives them, and takes charge of them. The poison which he extracts from them is in due course forwarded to Europe for scientific experiments, and the snakes are retailed to " charmers," collectors of natural history specimens, etc. Mrs 1 >avis inadvertently let some of the reptiles escape, hence the present scare. Seven were captured and killed, but others were not caught, and it is not definitely known how many of the " pets " are at large. The neighbors of the "Professor" have learned with horror that his collection numbers hundreds, and sometimes reaches thousands, and the police and the Town Clerk have been appealed to for some remedy. The Town C'lerk is puzzled to know what jurisdiction he has in the matter, and the poilce promise with some trepidation that they will arrest all the snakes they see!

CHEAP AND NASTY.

Those who expect in these days of cheapness to get a complete suit of clothes for a pound sterling or thereabouts, will do well to read the following from Pearson's Magazine on the cloth of Leeds : " This cloth," said the cutter to me, " is made of anything and everything except cast iron. It is sized with manure, so that w r hen we put the iron to it we get choked with stinking gas." This extraordinary statement was afterwards confirmed to me by a Yorkshire snuire, whom I met at Newcastle, and who told me that in this district large quantities of pig manure were purchased annually by the cloth manufacturers, who supply the Leeds tailoring firms, for sizing the cloth. The cutter added that string, cork, feathers, wire and stones are found in quantities in this kind of cloth, and when the circular steam-driven knife, with which 20, 30, 40, or 50 double thickness of cloth are cut out according to the pattern chalked on the top piece, comes in contact with stone or wire, the danger of its breaking is very great. "And when one of these endless bands break, as happens very often, you never know where it's going to fly to." This particular man was not dissatisfied with his wages. He was in a good shop, he said, and made 80s a week for 70 hours' work. But he complained of the exhausting nature of his employment. It's very heavy work pulling 56 double thicknesses of cloth under the knife," he said, " and men as good as me are only earning 24s a week at that game, and some much less." He told me that the cutters at a notorious sweating shop were only receiving 18s a week, for 12 hours' work a da v. The cloth is something diabolical," he said, " I never can wear a watch in the factory because the dust from the cloth gets into it, so you may be sure it gets into the luoga.

If I hang my coat up it is covered with muck in two hours." He was responsible for any damage done to cloth so rotten that " if yon gave it a pull it comes to pieces; " cloth " that you can stick your finger through."

A LAND OF ROSES

Opportuue to the present season, when the roses are at their best, appears an article in an American contemporary describing the gorgeous display made by the queen of flowers in Southern California. It is written in somewhat extravagant language, but it must be rather difficult to restrain enthusiasm when dealing with such a subject. California in March and April must be a riot of loveliness. Roses are everywhere in thousands. They swarm up trees, hide the imperfections of old barns and stables, to say nothing of covering every house with a wreath of flowers. And they are not common roses —common, that is, in our estimation—but beautiful kinds which hold cherished places in our gardens. The most delicate roses, Marchiel Neil, Marie Van Houtte, Jacqueminot, Niphetos, and many others, abound in the most careless luxuriance and are thought little more of tiffin is the dog rose which grows in English hedges. In some of the older towns the tall trees which line the public streets are used as supports for Cloth of Gold and Devoniensis roses, and these have grown so rankly that in the flowering season they envelope the trees in a mantle of blossoms. In one wellknown garden there are 178 varieties, and in that land, where frost is never known, it is hard to say which does the best. In Santa Barbara there is a climbing rosebush twenty years old, which covers au area of over 2000 square feet, and its four main branches are loins, in circumference a yard above the ground. At Ventura there is a white La Marque rose, of the same age, which is said to bear annually more than 1 1,000 blooms. Its main stem is 2ft Gin round just above the earth, and higher up two branches are the giants of the race, but there are others of scarcely smaller dimensions, and one could hardly imagine a more delightful paradise for a rose lover than some of the fertile valleys of Southern California in the flowering season.