MAGAZINE EXTRACTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume III, Issue III, 19 September 1891, Page 4

MAGAZINE EXTRACTS.

A German chemist has discovered that, by boiling sawdust with hydrochloric acid, grape sugar is formed. The liquor is fermented and then distilled. From 9 cwts. oi sawdust about 6 gallons of proof spirits were obtained. Apples all t,he Year Round.—This fruit, says a Home contemporary, is to be found on sale in English shops all the year round. And the reason is easily given. No fewer than one hundred and twenty thousand cases of apples have been shipped to the Thames from Tasmania, at the other side of the world, where their summer is our winter. This, too, is in addition to a very large quantity that arrived in London from New Zealand and Sydney. With the surplus from our own orchards, and those from gardens in other countries, apples will scarcely ever be out of season. And it is well, for vegetarians declare that apples and bread yield all that is required for human sustenance. The Lord of Burgiiley. —Julia Cartwright, in the Magazine of Art, tells the story of the romantic marriage of the Lord of Burghley, the subject of Tennyson's famous poem. "In the year 1791, Henry Cecil, then a man of seven or eight and thirty, nephew and heir of the Earl of Exeter, and Lord Burghley of those days, came to live in the quiet village of Bolas, on the banks of the River Teru, in a remote corner of Shropshire. While young he had been led into a marriage which had proved unhappy, and when he came to Shropshire had recently divorced his wife. In a melancholy mood he resolved to hide himself from the world, and, concealing his birth and rank, heassumed the name of Jones and the profession of a travelling artist, and lodged during some months in the house of a farmer named Thomas Hoggins. Here he lell in love with the farmer's fair young daughter, Sarah, and, with her parents' consent, made her his wife. The names of the contracting parties may still be read in the parish register ol the Shropshire village, where the wedding took place on the 3rd October, 1791. Upon his uncle's death, a year aflerwrds. Mr. Cecil succeeded to the earldom : and, without telling his secret, he brought his bride home to Burghley, where she learnt it for the first time." A Rival to the Bagpipes.- Perhaps the most peculiar of Turkish musical instrU ments is that known as Mohammed's Standard, which consists of a brass frame with numerous bells, on the top ol a long pole surmounted by the crescent and streamers of horse-hair. It figures in Janissary or military bands, in concert with various drums great and small, trumpets, horns, and cymbals, which pioduce noise enough to put any foetollight. Thai such a triumph has been obtained by our own beloved national music (remarks C. F. Gordon .Cumming in Jilachwood) we are all aware, for is it not recorded in one of our favourite historic ballads how The Esk was swollen sac red and sac deep, Butshouther toshouther the brave lads keep: Twa thousand swam ower to fell English ground, An' danced themselves dry to the pibroch's sound. Dumfounder'd the English saw. they saw— DumJounder'd they heard theblaw, theblaw; Dumfounder'd they a' ran awa', awa l, From the hunihed pipers an' a', an' a l. 1 am quite sure that no Southron will for a moment question ihe veracity of this incident ! Even a single stand ot pipes has done right good service in puiting to flight the most savage ol iocs, us when, in the Peninsular war, a solitary piper somehow found himself separated lrum his regiment, and in imminent peril lioma whole pack of hungry wolves. With the calmness of desperation he blew up his chanter, and what was his joy when, ut Hie firu skirl of Ihe pipes, the whole i>ack turned tail andjlcd ! Captured Brides —Traces of the primitive custom ot capture, says a writer in an old number of Dlackwoocl, are observable in the marriages of the Miao tribes in South-Western China. The women of one tribe, without wailing for the attack, : simulated or otherwise, ol their wooers, go through the wedding ceremonies, such as they ate, wilh dishevelled hair and naked feet. Other bianches of the same people dispense with every form of marriage rite Wilh the lelurn of each spring the marriageable lads and lasses erect a " devil's stall," or May pole, decked with ribbons and flowers, and dance around it to the tune of the men's castanets. Choice is made by the young men oi the particular maids who lake their fancy, and, if these reciprocate the admiration ol their wooers, the pair stray olf to the neighbouring hills and valleys for the enjoyment of a short honeymoon, after which the husbands seek out their brides' parents, and agree as to the amount in kind which they shall pay them as compensation for the loss of their daughters. Among other clans the young people repair to the hillsides in the " leaping month," and play at catch with coloured balls adorned with long strings. The act ot tying two balls together, with the consent of the owners of both, is considered a sufficient preliminary for the same kind of alfresco marriage as that just described. In the province of Kwang-se a kind of official sanction is given to those spontaneous alliances. The young men and women of the neighbouring aboriginal tribes assemble on a given day in the courtyards of the prelects' yamuns, and seat themselves on the ground, the men on one side of the yards and the women on the other. As his inclination suggests, each young man crosses over and seats himself by the lady of his choice. He then, in the words of the Chinese historian, "breathesinto her mouth"; and if this attention is accepted in good part, the couple pair off without more ado. The act thus described is probably that ol kissing ; but as that lorm of salutation is entirely unknown among the Chinese, the historian is driven to describe it by a circumlocution. In the province of Yunnan the native tribes have adopted much of the Chinese ceremonial, though they still preserve some of their peculiar customs. By these people much virtue is held to be in the bath taken by the bride on her wedding morning, and in the unctuous anointment of her whole body with rose-maloes which succeeds the ablution. But among the KaUhyens on the Burmese frontier, the relics ol capture become again conspicuous. When the day which is to make a Kakhyen young man and maiden one arrives, " five young men and girls set out from the bridegroom's village to that of the bride, where they wail till nightfall in a neighbouring house. At dusk the bride is brought thither by one of the stranger girls, as it were, without the knowledge ol her parents, and told that these men have come to claim her. They all set out at once for .the bridegroom's village. In the morning the bride is placed ur.-.icr a clote canopy outside the briiio n'ro&nvs house Presently there arrives a ' party oi young men from her village, to search, as they say, for one of their- girls who has been 'stolen. Th-y. are invited to look under the canopy, and bidden, if they wish, to take the girl away; but they reply, 1 It is well; let her-remain where she is.'" This practices identical wilh the custom which psv.-.iileri amongthe Maoris of New y.eH)i>.r.\\ Ix 7 lore they learned from ourcountryrr.c!) t!mt there were other and more civilised ways ol envcrlng tha state of matrimony,