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Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 18, Issue 1130, 26 September 1871, Page 2

At Charleston, on the 7th inst., an education meeting carried resolutions to the effect that the provisions of the Nelson Education Act aie working ad; mirably, and should be preserved intact in any act of the General Assembly, with the addition that education shoukj be compulsory. The "Good Templars" in Scotland now have 530 lodges, with 50,000 members. 700,000 skilled laborers in Great Britain, according to Mr Mundella, M.P., are Trade Unionists. Four "fortune-tellers" in London haye been sentenced to three monthsimprisonment with hard labor. Medical evidence has satisfactorily proved that explosive bullets were not used by either side during the late war. The Chinese are paying great attention just now to their coast defences. All the coast forts are being strengthened. Do animals commit suicide and infanticide after the manner of Cato anil Medea? This question is being discusser lin England. The London Echq says :—Mr Wood assures us that many experiments have proved that scorpion will sting themselves to death whetf hemmed in by a ling of fire. A correspondent now asks for further information regarding the popular belief small birds will always poison thei? young when the nest is left in a cage to which they haye access. A promising young brood of bulfinches has just beeu thus destroyed in the garden of Milton Bryant Rectory, in Bedfordshire. F° r several clays after the removal of the nest to a cage, the parent birds cavefully supplied their young with food, on which they evidently throve, until able to fly, At this crisis they gave tln'ijj some other seeds, which caused them aj. to be found in the morning stone dead, and with their mouths open, as K choked. Are such cases as common «J asserted, and if so. do they imply knof ledge of the nature of poisons ?