MISCELLANEOUS.

Kumara Times, Issue 176, 27 April 1877, Page 2

MISCELLANEOUS.

The other day one of the clerks in the Front-street office found the porter jammed among the boxes down the cellar, with pen, ink, and paper before him, “ Writing a letter, eh ?” queried the clerk. “Yes, writing to the old man in Buffalo.” He handed him the half-written letter for inspection, and presently the clerk remarked. “ I see yon spell jug ‘ g-u-g 3’ that isn’t right.” “Of course not,” replied the porter, “ but you see I am writing to the old man, and he always spells it that way. If I put another ‘g’ to it be would think I was putting on style over him and forgetting that I was his son. He’s good-hearted, and I don’t want to hurt his feelings,” The letter went with only one ‘ g’ at the end of “ gug.”

E. Moon, of Sittinghourne, has challenged a Professor Poplin to have a match at picking up bricks with his mouth ! Delicate undertaking ! Moon says he will pick up fifty bricks placed a yard apart, with his mouth, and throw forty half hundred-weights over his head from behind him, in eighteen, and a half minutes.

One of the most wonderful pieces of natural masonry, probably, in this part, of the world is to be witnessed only a few miles from Green Island, and in a direct line with Saddle Hill. Overlooking the mouth of the Kaikorai River is a lofty eminence, known as Round Hill. For a considerable time it has supplied the main road in the neighbourhood with basalt of a very, fine and durable description. The hill appears to be built of a whole mass of solid kerbstones, chiseled out in longitudinal blocks, and dipping at an angle of about 45 degrees. Ho masonry executed by the human hand could display greater neatness. The blocks vary from the size of ordinary street pitchers to three, four, and five feet in length, and they measure about 12 inches in thickness and depth. They are cut with mathematical accuracy, and built together with such wonderful neatness that the joints can hardly be detected. The phenomenon of such a mass of ready-made building material rivals the singular formation of the Giants Oause--way and Staffa. Referring to the British Volunteers, a London paper of recent date says;— “ That the strength of the volunteers is steadily increasing is notorious ; but it is not equally well known that the. quality is also improving. The returns for the year show that of 185,501-—the largest number yet recorded—93.B9 per cent., or 174,184 are efficient members. The result which we have stated is far in excess of all reasonable expectations formed in 1859. There is no reason why in a few years the mass of volunteers should not be, as those of Berk-? shire and Sterling already practically are, all efficients. Of course when this comes to pass, the problem of national defence enters into a different region. If it is once admitted by competent military men that our volunteer regiments, are, for ordinary warfare, little, if at all inferior to militia regiments, apd superior in some respects, England will justify her claim to possess a military force which, regard being had to her population, -is not so much below tho proportion between the civilian and military populations on the Continent as fa generally assumed. We may talk of these unwar!ike times, but it would he easy to name several Scotch counties in which the muster-roll of the local volunteer corps is ten times as large a* the list of fighting men when the Fiery Cross passed through their valleys. Inverness, and one or two adjoining counties have more volunteers than the Pretender’s army at Culloden ; and the whole kingdom musters seven times as many men as we had at Waterloo. If it be recollected that we have hitherto paid for this large force considerably less than half-a-million, it will be felt that the figures which we have quoted from the ann ual returns are in many ways satisfactory.”