MISCELLANEOUS.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 244, 7 November 1873, Page 7

MISCELLANEOUS.

' Mr. Feraud's orchard at Monte Christo Farm, Dnnstan, , promises a very large yield of fruit this season; every tree is covered with blossom, from the topmost branch to the trunk. The vines are also looking exceedingly well. We trust there will be nothing to mar the growth of the fruit, as the present proprietor has for years-labored under difficulties almost insurmountable, endeavoring to turn a stony desert into a miniature paradise.—' Tuapeka Times.'

The Government, we learn, intend opening a block of land on the deferred payment system near Coal Creek. Another block will be opened on Captain Henderson's run, and one on Cargill and Anderson's run, opposite Eoxburgh, under the agricultural lease system. There is a scarcity of surveyors in the Province, and this cause will delay the opening of the blocks in question ; and the Tuapeka surveys cannot be done sooner than four months. Not more than one block can be legally opened under the deferred payment system, and this impediment has, we believe, led the Government to revert to the agricultural leasing system.— * Tuapeka Times.' Dr. Hector states that the bones of the unknown bird recently discovered in a cave in the Dunstan district belong to the goose tribe. Of "this family, the onlv living representative in New Zealand is the Auser Novce Zealandioe, or Paradise Duck. The specimen which has been obtained from the cave is much larger than the latter bird, and is of greater size than the common goose. This stranger, curiously enough, was unable to swim, and being possessed of only rudimentaxy wings like so many of the extinct birds of New Zealand, it could not fly.

TheHeekmondwike School' Board' ;aet ! on Friday night. It was -reported that I the Finance Committee recommended that j a ladies', committee be appointed to. assist in the management of the new School Board. The Chairman observed that the question was a difficult one, and he thought the best thing the Board could do would be to appoint their wives. He accordingly moved a resolution to this effect, and' Mr. Wood having seconded it, the resolution was carried unanimously amid -much merriment. The Marquis of Bute delivered a lecture in Whitechapel on "Shrines of. the Holy Land, especially those visited lately by me." His Lordskip spoke chiefly of Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Jerusalem, and he insisted that whenever Christians, and especially Soman Catholics, visited the scenes of die Passion, the Nativity, the Re'surrection, and the Ascension, they ' should, as jar as practicable, perform the - journey on foot, that being the more reverent way of doing it. There is now at the Royal Polytechnic Institution, London, an American gentleman (Professor Hutchings), who exhibits some marvellously rapid feats in the addition and the multiplication of figures. He will cast up three,long rows of figures placed upon a board by any one of the audience in the twinkling of an eye, and he is .equally successful in feats of simple and compound multiplication. The results are invariably correct. The astonishing part of this-mental performance is the magical rapidity with which the totals in thousands or millions,' in pounds, shil-. lings, and pence, or dollars grasped and transferred to the board. The Duke of Edinburgh's Marriage. connection with the marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh and the Giand Duchess Marie, it may be interesting to recall the facts, that it is simply impossible, under the Russian law, for. a member of the Imperial family of Russia to change the profession of the G-reek faith ; and that it is equally impossible for any of the descendants of the Queen's sons to be anything but Protestants without surrendering their right of succession. There is no legal, objection to an English Prince or Princess marrying a personage of the G-reek faith, but by marriage with a Catholic the right of succession would at once be forfeited.—' Telegraph.' A Muscatine clergyman is speaking against the re-establishment of the death penalty in lowa. He says he does not want his congregation thinned out too fast. & • S.CHOOLMASTEE REQUIRED. TliO following, is a true, copy of a letter received by a schoolmaster: " Sur, as you are a man of noledge I intend to inter my son in-.yur skull." At the first Melbourne wool sale, animated prices, nearly approaching the London rates, were obtained. An Ex-Clergyman in the Commons. —The London correspondent of the ' Yorkshire Post' writes; —A remarkable Parliamentary circumstance has just occurred. Mr. Yilliers Stuart, who has taken his seat for the county of Waterford, and has been a clergyman of the Established Church, and has been " unfrocked" under a reeent statute which enables ordained ministers of the Church to cast off the liabilities and responsibilities of character imposed on them by holy orders. This is the first instance of , a clergyman " frocked" or " unfrocked," [ sitting in the Commons since Home j Tooke.