MISCELLANEOUS.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 554, 23 November 1850, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

The Exhibition of 1851. — Objections are being started to the erection of the Pavilion in Hyde Park, for the Exhibition. It is said the building will cost £100,000, that it will take six mouths to build, and three months to remove it. Battersea Fieliis is named as a site better adapted. The Times, which has taken up the subject, states — "The case against ibe appropriation of Hyde Park as the site of the buildings for the intended Exhibition becomes stronger as the plans of the projectors are developed. We are not to have a "booth," nor a mere timber »hed, but a solid, substantial eiMce of brick, and iron, and stone, calculate,! to endure the wear and tear of the next hundred years. In fact, a building is about to be erected in Hyde Park io the full as substantial as Buckingham Palace ; and, while employing the illustration we have serious doubts that we are not doing much injustice to the proposed building at Knightsbridge. Not only is a vast pile of masonry to be heaped up in the Park, but one feature of the plan is, there shall be a dome of 200 feet in diameter — considerably larger than the dome of St. Paul's. From this fact alone, were more positive evidence wanting, the scale upon which the building is planned may be imagined. This huge edifice is to be fire-proof, and first and last the cost of it will certainly swallow up the about which there has been so much talk. We reserve for last mention the crowning nuisance of this gigantic scheme. A furnace-house will be erected, with boilers, a tall chimney, and all the usual appliance for generating the steam requisite tor driving the machines of the various exhibitors ; and this is to stand opposite the Park entrance of Kensington Gardens! By the stroke of a pen our pleasant Park — nearly the only spot where Londoners can get a breath of fresh air — is to be turned into something between Wolverhampton and Greenwich Fair."

Precocious Crime in France. — The Journal de Haute la Loire relates a horrible act of cruelty committed by a child four years old on an infant of ten months. The little monster, being left alone with the infant, seized a knife, and, while it was sleeping in its cradle, cut off its nose and inflicted several severe wounds upon its face ; and after thus mutilating it, covered it with a mask of woodashes mixed with water, in order to stanch the flow of blood and stifle the cries of the helpless little sufferer. Meanwhile the mothers of the two children, who were at work in front of their dwellings, attracted by the screams, ran to the spot, and beheld with horror the spectacle before them. The guilty urchin had made his escape, but was soon af-

tei wards found, his hands dyed in the blood of his victim.

London Eggs. — Making a reasonable estimate of the number of foreign eggs, and of Irish and Scotch eggs, that come into the i port of London, and putting them together at 150,000,000, every individual of the London population consumes sixty eggs, brought to his oven door from sources of supply which did not exist thirty years ago. Nor will such a number appear extravagant when we consider how accurately the egg consumption is regulated by the means and the wants of this great community. Rapid as the transit of these eggs has become, there are necessarily various stages of freshness in which they reach the London market. The retail dealer purchases accoHingly of the egg met chant, and has a. commodity tor sale adapted to the peculiar classes of his customers. The dairyman or poulterer in the fashionable districts permits no cheap spa-borne eggs to come upon his premises. He has his eggs of a snowy whiteness at four or six a shilling, " warranted new laid;" and his eggs fiom Devonshire, cheap at eight a-shilling, for all purposes of polite cookery. In Whttechapel, or Tottenhamcourt Road, the bacon-seller, " warrants" even his 24 a shilling. In truth, the cheapeat eggs from France and Ireland are as good, if not better, than the eggs which were brought to London in the days of bad roads and slow conveyance — the days of road waggons and packhorses. And a great benefit it is, and a real boast of that civilization which is a consequence of free and rapid commercial intercourse. Under the existing agricultural condition of England, London could not, by any possibility, be supplied with eggs to the extent of 150,000,000 annually, beyond the existing supply from the neighbouring counties. The cheapness of eggs through the imported supply has raised up a new class of egg consumers. Eggs are no longer a luxury which the poor of London cannot touch. France and Ireland send them cheap eggs. But France and Ireland produce eggs for London, that the poultry-keepers may supply themselves with other things which they require more than eggs. Each is a gainer by the exchange. The industry of each population is stimulated ; the wants of each supplied. — Dickens' Household Words.

Mexican Currency. — A correspondent of the Mobile Register, of the 26th uh., writing from Mexico, says : — Madam Anna Bishop having, by her splendid vocal powers, turned all the heads in the Mexican capital, Mr. Bochsa was applied to by several musical amateurs of a town in the interior of the Republic for Madame to give a concert. Accordingly, he wrote to the proprietor of the only place in the town where a musical performance Gould at all be given, viz., an open cockpit arena, to ascertain terms, &c. When the answer came, and with it a contract in due form, xVlr. Bochsa was not a little puzzled at finding, aftei the amount of hire of theNational Theatre was named, a clause stipulating that the said sum should be paid in genuine Mexican piastres, and not in pieces of soap, nor in segars, nor in poultry, alive or dead ! However, Bochsa signed the contract, but only obtained the clue to this strange proviso after Madam Bishop's peiformance, when the gallery, or gradin money takers, brought him, on account numberless pieces of yellow soap, segars, and two fighting cocks alive ! Mr. Bochsa remonstrated, but the Mexican cobreradores said that these commodities were what they generally received as small money, and he tried to prove to the enraged director, that if the soap was weighed and the segars called by the name of Anna, he would realize a handsome profit from them. To quiet Mr. Bochsa and reconcile him to these vendibles, the money-takers gave a glowing description of the musical taste of a family who, to hear the great prima donna and wonderful harpist, did not hesitate to part with two of the most cela—j brated fighting cocks in the town for six gradin tickets. Mr. Bochsa, in acknowledgment, h la Mexicam, of this little bit of flattery, paid the moneytaker's salary for the night with four pieces of soap and a packet of segars, and had the cocks cooked for supper." — New York Herald.