ANOTHER SKIRMISHING PLOT.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LVII, Issue 6510, 7 January 1882, Page 3

ANOTHER SKIRMISHING PLOT.

(New Tork Time*.) No scientific person has as jet noticed the difference between the European and the American goat. The former never butts except under extreme proTocation, and even then his blow is comparatively feeble. Were Europe to be stocked with the free eoats of the Western hemisphere, whose spirits have not been crushed by monarchical governments, and who have never been brought under the enervating influence of Roman Catholicism, the Europeans would find that they had something to learn about goats. Switzerland is full of mild European goats which furnish rour.d cannon-hall cheese, the hard shell of which is due to the fact that the Swiss goats drink water strongly impregnated with lime. Nobody ever hears of "difficulties" between theee goats and the thousands of tourists who annually visit Switzerland ; ■srhsreas, were Switzerland inhabited by American goats, the loss of life and trousers among the tourists would be appalling. In fact, the sp=ctacle of Englishmen and Americans propelled through the air by blows in the rear inflicted by mountain goats would be a familiar one, and the dangers of mountain-climbing would be so great that the Matterhorn with other eligible places for neck-breaking would be deserted. The blow of the ordinary European goat is so light that he seldom inflicts any serious injury. Indeed, no scientific person has thought it worth while to calcula e the foree with which the average English or Continental goat butt?. On the other hand, our goat strikes with terrific force. Assuming that a full-grown goat weighs one hundred poudds, and that his velocity at the time of contact with a human being is thirty thousand feet per second, we find that the momentum with which he strikes is the same as that of a cannon ball weighing one thousand pounds and moving with a velocity of three thousand feet per second. It is estimated by two wellknown mathematicians—one of whom was butted across a fMd in New Hampshire and the other across a county in Illinois—that the velocity of the goat in each case was rather over than under thirty thousand feet per second, and that the force of the blow delivered was at least ninety tons to the square inch. This gives us some little idea of the terrible character of the American poat and of bis dynamic superiority to the European Bpecies. In the recent excitement ia England caused by the threats of American Fenians of the O'Donovan Bossa varie'y, the fact that unusually large quantities of American goats have lately been sent to England has escaped notice. What these shipments mean, and what the Fenian skirmishers are about to do, may perhaps be surmised from a little incident which has just occurred at Xenophon, Ohio.

There is a vacant field near the village in question which for the last two years has been tenanted bv a large goat of unusual Dowers. Last Monday a local negro—one Cicero Hampton was induced by two Irishmen, whose names for the present are I withheld, but who are understood to have I been present as delegates at the Chicago Dynamite Convention, to cross this field at about ha'f past 6 in the evening. A boy —the youngest son of Esquire Wickham — was watching a watermelon patch in the neighbourhood, with a view, as it is feared, to a raid later in the evening, and saw the coloured man when he was hilf way across the field. The goat was close behind him, with his head lowered for a charge. As he struck the unhappy Cicero, a tremendous report was heard, and when, the dust cleared away not the slightest trace of negro or goat was visible. None has yet been found, but one of the Irishmen, after swearing the editor of a local paper to profound secresy, gave him for publication a statement to the effect that a dynaroit* torpedo had been fitted to the goat's forehead, and that the experiment with the coloured man had been so successful that it was the intention of the Irish skirmishers to blow up the British empire by letting loase on the soil of England hundreds of American goat* with dynamite torpedoes attached to their heads. This scheme is, perhaps, rather more fiendish than that of sending torpedoes to Liverpool to be seized by the Government on the dock. The torpedo goat is liable to attack mere women and children who mav be peaceably walking along the Btreete of English village*, and while he will destroy whatever victim he I may attack he will himself be so completely 1 destroyed that not a shred of him will be left as a due for the British detective to follow. Terrible explosions will occur in various parts of England, and all the publio will know will be that at the moment of each explosion a British citizen has vanished. No I one will suspeot an apparently inoffensive goat of being the instrument of these outrages. It will occasionally be noticed that a stray goat of unknown ownership has vanished at the same moment as the missirg citizen, but in all cases the goat will be regarded as an innocent victim rather than the agent in a scheme of unequalled atrocity. The skirmishing Irishman from whom the Xenophon editor derived hi* facts claims that three thousand goats, by blowing at least three thousand British subjects into another world, will so terrify the British Government that Mr Gladstone will be glad to do anything to pacify Ireland, though neither he nor any one else wiil suspect Irishmen of any connection with the goat outrages. It will hardly be worth while for the steamship owners to take measures to guard against clock-work torpedoes. Their chief oare should be to prevent the shipment of American goats. If it be true that the Irish skirmishers are really determined to send dynamite goats to England, we shall soon know all about the scheme, for they will hold publio meetings for the purpose of keeping it secret. There is only too good reasom to believe that the British Empire is near iU fall, and that a few goats oould easily knock it entirely over.