Untitled

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VII, Issue 12, 13 January 1872, Page 4

Chicago must have been an elysiura for newspaper proprietors. The Tribune's price for a column of advertisements for a year was 22,000d015. One house alone, in Cincinnati is said to spend 40,000d01s a year in advertisiug. A Wedding Indkkd. — It was a notable day in that part of London which ia situated upon tho sea, and which was known to tlie ancients as Brighthelmstonp, when the first weddiug ever celebrated at St. Paul's, West-street, took pluce. The ceremony (or, according to ihe " Horaa Paulinae," the sacrament) was fixed, it was said, for half-past ten a.m.; but before half-past nine the church of Sf. Paul's was, if fishermen speak truth, filled, aud West-street blockaded. Of course, oa

such an occasion " priests'' were abundant; three at least are believed to have had a hand in making two into one. The service was as intricate as the most orthodox or heterodox could desire, and the place of performance thereof was shifted in the most unexceptionable maimer from point to point, until the heathen must have been at their wit's end. The priests shifted (heir garments so as to satisfy tho most exorbitant ; from cope to alb, from alb to chasuble, from chasuble to dalmatic. Tha Holy Eucharist was received by the bride aud bridegroom only, it is reported : — the other persons having, probably, come with the reverential intention of looking on. The "altar was vested in whited frontal," and was ornamented with flowers, which of course were choice, and, equally of course, were arranged with all the grace exhibited by those who would fain be married towards those who are going to be. Lest anybody should fear that things were not altogether " conformable," it should be mentioned that there were "altar candles lighted during both sacraments." A ' glorious weddiog march" concluded the — 'business seems a very poor word uuder the circumstauces, but is perhaps as appropriate as any other. The curious may be glad to know that at different periods there were sung, wholly or in part, Nos. 212, 213, 206, aud 207 from " Hymns Aneient and Modern," aud No. 129 from the "Hymnal Noted."— Pall Mall Gazette. A New Theori' of the Origin or Life. — At the late meeting of the British Association held at Edinburgh, Sir William Thompson, the President, in his opening address, mado the following remarks : — " How did life originate on the earth ? Did grass and trees and flowers spring into existence, in all the fulness of ripe beauty, by a fiat of Creative power ? Or did vegetation, growing up from seed sown, spread and multiply over the whole surface? Every year thousands, probably millions, of fragments of solid matter fall upon the earth- aud it is often assumed that all, and it is certain that some, meteoric stones are fragments which have been broken off from larger masses and launched free into space. It is as sure that collisions must occur between great masses moving through space as it is tint ships, steered without intelligence directed to prevent collisions, could not cross and recross the Atlantic for thousands of years without them. Should the time when this earth comes into collision with another body, comparable iu dimensions with itself be, when it is still clothed, as at present, with vegetation, many great and small fragments, carrying seed, and living plants and animals, would undoubtedly, be scattered through space. Hence we must regard ifc as probable iu the highest degree that there are countless seed-bearing meteoric stones moving about through spac6. If at this present moment no life existed upon this earth, one such stone falling upon ifc might, by what we blindly call natural causes, lead to its becoming covered with vegetation. The hypothesis that life originated on this earth through moss-growing fragments from the ruius of another world, may seem wild and visionary; all I maintain is, that it is not unscientific. From the eanh stocked with such vegetation as it could receive meteorically, lo the earth teeming with plants and and animals which now inhabit it, the. step is prodigious, and I have always felt that the hypothesis of ' the origin of species by natural selection ' does nofc contain the true theory of evolution, if evolution there has been, in biology,"