Miscellaneous Items.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XI, Issue 1608, 14 January 1886, Page 4

Miscellaneous Items.

A tutin'et' lias just been completed on the Great Western Railway beneath the. In pad estuarj from Bristol, to Cardiff by an. hour and a quarter, and saves a nasly rough sea passage.: The tunuel is four miles and lialMong, twenty „ feet high, and a twenty-six feet wide. About, two .. miles and 4 half of it are under the bed .of Jhe_£iyer,^but it is perfecty dry. It passes through hard sandstone^ conglomerate, red marl, ahale and icoal-i—sotne' seams of coal which it cuts twelve inches thiek — -lrat it is bricked throughout, and is as clearv and pleasant as a room. It is ventilated by a Guibal fan, capable of discharging 24.0,000 feet of air per minute, and passengers travelling through it at^the ; rate of only ten miles an hour suffer no inconvenience. The ordinary rate, however, will be nearly thirty miles an hour. As regards ; excavatiou ■ and provision against water, this is a much more difficult work, than the nrojecteb Channel Tunnel, .which would pass through a solid bed of dry chalk; and its complete success is : expected to lead to many simitar works being undertaken m various parts of the world. ; v A correspondent of the Canterbury Times forwards the following to that paper: — Sny-^The : most ' effectual manner m which sparrows can be got rid ofis-first plough a deep furrow m" a paddock a little distance from the hpmesteadi Thjßn procure a quantity 1 of small wheat or coarse flour/ made from maize, similar to that used for feeding horses. Wash the wheat m: clean , water •with a handful of : sugar. This will take away any f aatiness there may be. The farmer at sunset should sow down the furrow : a quantity of corn j gradually increasing the amount until he finds that every sparrow about the ?place gojestci > the furrow for his breakfast. On the fifth or six morning before jt is light, he should pub down as much corn prepared with strychnine . as.., the sparrows will eat. The farmer should stay on guard himhell; < and hot trusts the duty to any other person, m the interest of poultry pigs, Ac, When the birds are well satisfied^ the furrow must be filled m with the hoe, and every corn covered. The birds* should >be afterwards? gathered md buried m a 'deep hole. The farmer may then rest assured that his crops will not suffer much for one year at least. If this operation is done m about the time the earliest corn is coming into eat- a pretty clean sweet* may be madeol the sparrows. ' As the Princess Beatrice and her husband are- to five with her Majesty, there will be little or no diminution m the intercourse between mother and daughter; but, as a matter of fact, the relations between mother and daughter have never' been of the close and confidential nature which people appear to think. They have always got ou as well as possible, although the princess has occasionally "kicked" ac the preposterous restrictions which hay been placed upon her so far as her going into society and attending tlieati «s were'eoncerend; and theiQueen has allowed her to exercise a certain amount of power m small matters about the Court; but for people living under the same roof, the Queen and her daughter have seen wonderfully little of each other, seldom meeting, indeed, except ' for dnves and at lunch; and, dinner, r Tie people with ; whom the Queen really, live--, m whom she thjM ouglilv cpnhMes, who, underfltand^lrer, ar^heri four favorite ladies; especially 'the Downger MarchioneHs of Ely (who comes Jixt) and the Dowager- J)uc,i\ess pf JRoxbargb,-^-Truth,