MISCELLANEA

Kumara Times, Issue 2579, 10 December 1884, Page 2

MISCELLANEA

An anonymous benefactor has presented the Wesleyan Conference of London with a reference library of 30,000 volumes. It is reported that the Wesleyans in the British capital have gained 3000 members within the last year. A statistician has been calculating anew the mortality of the globe. He has discovered the number of deaths to be 67 every minute, 97,790 every day, or 35,639,835 every year. The births exceed the deaths by three per minute, running to 100,000 every day, and 36,792,000 every year. The Courts in Loudon have decided that a man may not keep in his back yard a dog which barks and howls. Neither is it lawful for hand-organs to play when forbidden,' nor for parties to keep cocks which crow at early morning, or parrots suspended out of windows, or anything which acts as a disturbance to those living near. The largest organ in the world has just been completed by Walck, of Ludwigsburg, and placed in the cathedral church of Riga. The colossal instrument measures thirty-six feet in width thirty-two feet from back to front, and sixty-five feet high. It contains no less than 6826 pipes, distributed among 124 sounding stops. A Victorian grocer was fined £25 the other day for selling hop bitters, he not being the holder of a wine and spirit license. The evidence showed that hop bitters paid the same duty as whisky or brandy, and that while "beer contained from 3 to 7 per cent, nf alcohol, light wines S to 10 per cent., the bitters contained 12 to 11 per cent.