MISCELLANEOUS.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume II, Issue 60, 25 March 1870, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

Ex-Grovernor Briggs, of Massachusetts, used to relate tlie following : "In the old stage-coacli days an Irishman was travelling in New England. Arriving late at the town wbere thev were to spend the nigat, Pat discovered to his dismay, that the only chance for sleep was to share the coucli of a colored brother. The natural repugnance of his race made hiin loth to accept the situation, but, being very tired, he submitted with as good grace as possible. In the night some mischievous boys blackened his face. In the inomfifteen miles were to be travelled before breakfast. Our Celtic friend was awakened just in time to spring into the carnage as it was moving off. At their stopping places ho found no convenience for washing. Stepping up to a glass to arrange his hair, he started back in horror, exclaiming,.' Be jabers, you've woke that dirty xtagur, and left me fifteen miles behind!'" "We have heard many stories of the discovery of gold in the gizzards and crops of Australian ducks and fowls, but never did we hear before yesterday that members of the finny tribes were given to secreting the precions metaL AVe were, liowever, informed by an individual in whom the fact seems to have developed a singular affection for the bed of the Thames estuary, that he positively found a bit of gold, as large as a pin's head, attached to the gills of a snapper which he was cleaning. " Oh,'' remarked he, with an envious and yet hopeless sigh, "it's my belief that mo3t of the gold is in the bed of tbat there river." The Thames 'Mining Advocate' says—lt would have done a disciple of the Exeter Hall school's good to have seen as we did, one day last week, a Maori woman supplying the wants of her infant out of one of the latest patented feeding bottles, whether one of Mather's or Maw's we are not quite certain. The woman was seated com plaeently smoking a black pipe, on the doorstep of a public bouse, out of which a ministering sister issued with the aforesaid bottle, and handed it to the mother, who, promply withdrawing the " baccy pipe " from between her lips, extracted the air hj a vigorous suck from the feeding tube, and then popped the latter into tlie child's mouth. The little creature liked it, at least we inferred as much from the extraordinary rapidity with which the contents of the bottle disappeared. After this we shall be quite prepared to hear of the introduction of swinging cots and baby jumpers into raupo whares.