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Lyell Times and Central Buller Gazette, Volume VI, Issue 304, 18 December 1886, Page 4

While excavating in Eome, a house declared to be of the third century has been discovered. The Colonial and India Exhibition shows a surplus-something between £7OOO and £50,000. During the past twelve years the number of Christan converts in Japan has increased from 150 to 10,000. The clock in a Philadelphia church tower is the heaviest in America. It takes two mem over an hour to ;wind it up. The Pope is opposed to cremation and a decree has been issued forbidding any Catholic to take part in the burning of a human body, According to an American paper, a deacon in a Greenville church has a string of buttons half a yard long, taken from the contribution plates within a year. Serpent skin is coming into use as a covering for books, and on account of the high degree of finish it will take is likely to be popular amongst connoisseurs. Tobacco, moistened with the jui° e of the watercress, is, it is said, deprived of its deleterious effects. This is good news for young smokers, but it is doubtful if it will find much favour with the older ones. The threats of fine and imprisonment not proving efficacious, the Kirk Session of Monifieth, in 1643, is recorded to have given the " bedall ss. to buy ane pynt of tar to put upon the women that held the plaid above their heade in the church." It is not generally known that in Watford Churchyard there is a big growing out of a tombstone, which it has split in half. There is a tradition whicn is well auteenticated that a lady asked that a fig seed might be put in her coffin. The tree is now a large one. and bears fruit. Luther shaved to remind him of his sins, which he thought in this way to mow down every day ; Beau Brummell to give himself something to do; Napoleon that he might not be like other monarchs who had barbers to reap their chins ; Scipio shaved every day that he might be clean without as he wished to be within. An authenticated story comes from the Scotch Highlands to the effect that a donkey recently died, belonging to Mr Ross, of Cromarty, in whose family it has been for 108 years. It can be traced back to the ffear 1779, when it passed into the hands of the then Eoss of Cromarty; though what was its age at that time no one can say.