MISCELLANEOUS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 45, 2 December 1871, Page 5

MISCELLANEOUS.

Sir Michael Costa is writing a new oratorio. Italy has 28 public libraries, and Switzerland 25. Monogamy is now in the ascendant in Turkey. A large new masonic hall is to be erected in Liverpool. The Irish potato crop " scare" is reported to have collapsed. Scores of families in Cornwall are migrating to Lancashire. Mr John Stuart Mill is suffering seriously from consumption. The Empress Eugenie is in Spain, on a visit to her mother, The Emperor Napoleon has been estate-hunting in Devonshire. 32 violent deaths occurred in London recently in a single week. Mr Richard Bentley, the well-known publisher, is dead, aged 76. The foot-and-mouth disease is reported to be decreasing in Ireland. An international medical congress is to be held at Rome in May next. " Enormous" finds are reported from the South African diamond fields. Italy is at present the great field for the operations of the Internationale. Nearly £4OOO has been collected in Spain ior a monument to Marshal Prim. Dr Hill Burton is preparing a revised edition of his " History of Scotland." A destructive fire has taken place at the Pyramid Cutlery Works, Shefield. Mr Lowe and Mr Goschen have been taking the air on the top of Snowdon. A homceopathist has been elected medical officer to the Southampton workhouse. The Pall Mall Gazette sa} T s it is easier to find ammunition in England than lodging or food. A company for manufacturing sugar from beet-root has been formed at Sleaford, Suffolk. An elephant at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, was instantaneously killed by lightning. Stepney Green, London, is to be converted into a public recreation ground, at a cost of £3OOO. A reaping machine, while cutting a ten-acre field of wheat, near Shrewsbury, killed 72 rabbits. The membership of the churches of the Baptist Missionary Society numbers about 28,000. Upwards of 1000 tons of fruit and vegetables are daily brought to Covent Garden market. Efforts are being made in Glasgow to raise the sum of £50,000, to found a Technical College.

The King of Spain is increasing in popularity, owing to his affable and unaffected manners. Sir Leopold M'Clintock, of Franklin expedition renown, has been appointed a Rear-Admiral. Miss Gee, an actress, aged 19, committed suicide in Jersey by swallowing cyanide of potassium. There are about 4000 building societies in Britain, with an estimated membership of 1,000,000. Borings are being made, with a view to the construction of a tunnel under the Clyde at Glasgow. The railway servants in Scotland are agitating for the reduction of the hours of labor to ten daily. A splendid monument to the memory of the French soldiers who fell at Metz is to be erected there. A barge laden with petroleum took fire on the Thames latety, but burned out without doing damage. I The Bank of Ireland, Dublin, was j robbed of £4OOO through a clerk leav- J ing his desk for a few minutes. i M. Thiers has decided that the statue j of Napoleon I. shall be replaced on the j Vendome Column. I The Guicowar of Baroda has had built for himself a carriage •« consisting largely of gold and silver." Tourists have this season visited the North of Scotland in greater numbers than in almost any former year. The foundation stone of a Seamen's Orphan Institution, to cost twenty thousand pounds, has been laid at Liverpool. The health of the Princess Christian has not improved during her stay on the Continent, as was hoped. The Mayor of Bolton suggests the j revival of the stocks in that town as a fitting punishment for drunkards. It is said that the Duke of Edinburgh is about to undergo a course of instruction in steam at Portsmouth. An edict has gone forth in Constantinople, forbidding the use of donkeys as beasts of burden in the streets. At Oxford three ladies were hurt by the fall of an elm branch, weighing two tons, in New College Gardens. Three hundred policemen were appointed to " protect" the thirty thousand troops engaged in the Hampshire Campaign. A conference, to consider the reform of the House of Lords, is to be held at Birmingham on November 28th. A grand fair has been held in the ruined village of Saint Cloud, for the benefit of the unfortunate inhabitants. Only a third of the potato crop in Scotland is expected to be realised this year, and in many districts much less. The Liverpool School Board find themselves called upon to provide school accommodation for twenty-five thousand children. In a crowded Highland inn lately, a noble lord was obliged to sleep upon a dining table, and two M.P.'s underneath it. A golden bird of paradise, half lifesize, and covered with jewels, was exhibited at the Milan Industrial Exhibition. At the Kelso Annual Bower Union Show, one of Lord Polwarth's Leicester rams was sold, to go to Australia, for £155. During the year ending on the 30th June last, the Glasgow (Corporation) Gasworks yielded a profit of £68,203 4s 4d. Aali Paska, the lately deceased Grand Vizier of Turkey, is said to have been the most learned man in that empire. The French ironclad, Normandie, has been broken up, her framework being rotten, though she was only ten years old. The Society of Bill-Stickers in the United Kingdom numbers about 400 members. " A distressed Churchman," writing to the " Birmingham Post," records the moral shock sustained by him on meeting the street a bishop in trousers. According to Mr Spurgeon, a bazaar is one of the most legitimate, and certainly one of the happiest, modes of • obtaining money for a good cause. The Fraserburgh fisherman have caught more herrings this year than in any previous one. In fact, several nets have been lost through being overweighted with fish. 14,000 bank employes have sub- , scribed £7OO for a testimonial to Sir John Lubbock, in recognition of his

efforts in connection with the Bank Holidays Act. It is stated to be the intention of the authorities, in consequence of Sir Hone Grant's report on the Easter Monday review to abolish all volunteer field artillery. At Ling, in Upper Austria, an Education Congress was lately held, at which 2000 male and female teachersmet to discuss the subject of religious and secular education. Mr Macgregor has been navigating the Zuyder Zee in his Rob Roy canoe. "In a fortnight spent among the Dutch," he says, " I have not seen one beggar, or blind man, or idiot, or shoeless or drunk person." At Kidderminster,' Mr J. B. Edge, a volunteer, firing at a 500 yards range, made 325 points in 100 consecutive shots. He wagered that he would score an average of centres, and won with 25 to the good. Republican clubs now exist in Birmingham, Leicester, Manchester, Newcastle, Dundee, Glasgow, and other large towns. In London a paper entitled the " Fepublican," has been started as the official organ of the movement. At Listowel, Kerry, a panic was caused by a rumor that all the children in the National School were, by order of the Government, to be branded with the letters V.R. The parents, in frantic haste rushed to the school and hurried their children away. Two vessels of the Swedish navy have fetched from Greenland three aerolites, the largest of which weighs nearly 30 tons, and which are to be closely examined. They were floated 25 miles on floats brought from Sweden for the purpose. " Confessions" are heard regularly at nine o'clock nightly at St. Alban's, Holborn, London. The " confessionals" are somewhat novel—banners of violet stuff, fixed in position in the left side aisle, on one side of which is a chair for the " priest," and on the other a kneeler for his penitent. The following mysterious advertisement appeared in the " agony column" of the "Times" on several days in September:—"Wanderer to Crete.— Stay Ha! Stay! Twenty orange and copper twenty lemon blue there then coming brass orange gold. Happy now, be happy too. Shoot when you can; so will I." The entire Russian army has been armed with an improved needle-gun, named, after the manufacturer, the Krinck pattern. 700 girls are employed in the cartridge factory at Woolwich Arsenal, and their number will shortly be largely increased. For attempting to throw his wife and infant child out of a window, a man in London was sentenced to a month's imprisonment. The " Association for Promoting the Reunion of Christendom" has recently celebrated its fourteenth anniversary in London. The " Morning Post'' says the King of Wurtemberg is about to make Prince Teck (husband of Princess Mary of Cambridge), a duke. The centenary of the birth of Mungo Park, the African traveller, was celebrated at Selkirk on September 10, by a public dinner. At the Surrey sessions, a solicitor, named Harvey, was sentenced to six months' imprisonment, for indecently assaulting two young girls. Near Malton, a Mr Lamb swallowed a wasp while taking a drink. The insect stung his throat, and he died before medical aid could be obtained. The Clyde Trust, since its establishment more than a century ago, has spent £5,316,00f on the improvement of the river and harbor of Glasgow. I At the funeral of the I Duchess of St. Albans an immortelle from the Queen was placed on the coffin, 1 containing the words, "A last tribute ! of love."