MISCELLANEOUS.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 559, 11 December 1850, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

Prince Albert has recently sent an exceedingly able and valuable paper to the Royal Agricultural Society of England, on " The Sewerage of Towns," in which his Royal Highness developes a plan for filtering the sewers at convenient intervals, thus accumulating in convenient tanks a rich and valuable manure, and liberating the water from all mechanical admixture of impurity. Bishop's Signatures. — The prelates of the Church of England are sometimes accustomed when signing their names to use the old Latin appellations, or abbreviations of them for tbeir sees, instead of the English ; ones. Thus, Ebor. stands for- York ; Cantuar. for Canterbury ; Vigorn. for Worcester; and Evon. for Exeter. Ii is said that an eminent bookseller once received an intimation, per letter, of an author's intention to publish a life of Pitt. It was signed George Winton, and was thrown aside with the most perfect indifference ; the publisher never thinking that George Winton was George, Bishop of Winchester. When the Princess Charlotte was ill, the Bishop of Salisbuiy, sent frequent written inquiries to her Scotch physician, singing himself John Sarum. The doctor, after the receipt of many similar raisI sives, observed to a friend, that he had been much pestered with notes from " Ane Jean Sarum, that he kenned nothing aboot. But," he added, •• I tak nae notice of the fellow !" — Heraldic Anomalies. A Hippopotamus has recently been added to the collection of the Zoological Society. The animal is a present from the Pasha of Egypt, and although under twelve months old his massive proportions indicate the enormous power which will be developed in his mature growth. Several attempts have been made within the last twenty years to obtain living specimens of this great amphibious quadruped,

but with uni/onn ill success ; so that the offer of an American agent at Alexandria to give £5000 for an animal 0/ this species delivered to him at that city, has entirely failed to induce any speculator to encounter the risk and labour of an expedition to the White Nile, with this object. Nothing perhaps more clearly demonstrates the value of the Pasha's gift, and of Mr. Murray's energetic advocacy of the interests of science, than the fact that even in Egypt, in the land of its nativity, the Hippopotamus is now so far removed from the observation of men, that the animal possessed by the society created intense wonder and interest in Cairo, and could only be withdrawn from the curious gaze of ten thousand spectators who witnessed its debarkation from the canal boat at Alexandria by the intervention of a strong body of the Pasha's troops, who accompanied it a? a guard to the spot where the Ripon was moored. — Illustrated News. The Society of Madras has presented the Marquis of Tweddale, Governor and Com-mander-in-Chief, 1842-1848, with a very superb candelabrum, upwards of four feet high, and of the value of £2,000. On the base is represented a stag, boar, and wolf-hunt-ing. The figures are beautiful specimens of the art of modelling statuettes. General Cabrera, the celebrated Carlist commander, has been recently married in London to Miss Marianne Catherine Richards, only child and heiress of the late Robert Vaughan Richards, Esq. The bride, it is said, has a fortune of £25,000 a year. A Paris tailor, named Fabien, has just sent out to Hayti the mantle which the Emperor Solouque proposes wearing on the day of bis coronation. It is of crimson velvet, shot with gold, and is richly ornamented with precious stones. The price of it is £2000. M. de Lamartine has just obtained leave of absence from the French Chamber for two months. He is about to proceed immediately to Smyrna, to take possession of the tract of land which he has obtained *on favourable conditious from the Sublime Porte. He expects being back in the beginning of August. By a decree of the French Cammander-in Chief of the sth and 6th military divisions, the publication and sale of the Mysieres dv Peupte, by Eugene Sue, is forbidden in the departments of the Rhone, Am, Isere, Loire, and Diome. It is announced that Abd-el-Kader is dangerously ill at the Chateau d'Amboise, where he is detained a prisoner. The oldest oak tree in Belgium, which was planted in the reign of Charles V., about 1540 or 1550, was rut down last week, at Rooborst. It measures 36 feet in length and 18 feet in circumference. Planks 2 feet wide may Le cut from some of the branches. This tree was purchased for 800f. by M. Vander Banck, a cabinet maker at Oudenaerde. It is said be intends to send a plank, cut from this tree, from four to five feet wide, to the European exhibition in London, in 1851. A Royal sign manual warrant has just been issued, granting a pension of £25 a year to Mrs. Harriet Waghorn, widow of the late Lieutenant Thomas Waghorn (who established the overland route to India), "in consideration of the eminent services of her late husband." An American paper says : — The friends of Father Mathew in Mobile have presented the rev. gentlemen with a purse containing 270 dollars. In his reply to their address he says the ' the gift was most timely, his pecuniary rescources being exhausted, and the fear of weakening his influence in the cause of teraperence deterring him from making an appeal to defray the expenditure of his mission.' Father Mathew was hospitably entertained at New Orleans on 24th March. It appears that a door-keeper's place in the House of Lords, in an average of eight years, amounted to £1,100 per annum — the perquisites of the highest year reaching above £2,500, " Better," remarks the Literary Gazette, "be a door-keeper in the Lords' House than a dweller elsewhere."

Curious Model Machinery. — A coppersmith, named Erskine, living at Alloa, Scotland, has made for the Great Exhibition a working model of a locomotive steam-engine, most beautifully constructed of sterling silver. It is so small that it might be put with ease into an ordinary pocket, and yet it is not only perfectly capable of working, but Mr. Erskine has adapted it to no fewer than six improvements of his own invemion,. some of which ap-* pear to us to be of very great importance,' and will no doubt ere long be introduced in the construction of the ordinary locomotive. — Glasgow Post.

Statistics of "The Times." — Some interesting statistics relative to the printing of the Times were mentioned iv a paper on Printing Machines, read by Mr. Edward Cowper at the Institution of Civil Engineers, on Tuesday, from which it appeared that on the 7th of May, 1850, the limes and Supplement contained 72 columns, or 18,500 lines, made up of upwards of a million pieces of type, of which matter about two-fifths were written, composed, and corrected after seven «

o'clock in the evening. The Supplement was ] sent to press, at 8 50 p.m., the first form of the paper at 4 15 A.m., and the second form at 445 A.M. ; on this occasion 7,000 papers were published before 6 15 a.m., 21,00 papers before 7 30 a.m., or in about four hours. The greatest number of copies ever printed in one day was 54,000, and the greatest quantity of printing in one day's publication was on the Ist of March, 1848 when the paper used weighed 7 tons, the weight usually required Being 4| tons ; the surface to be printed every night, iucluding the Supplement, was 3o acres: the weight of the fount of type, in constant use, was 7 tons, and 110 compositors and 25 J pressmen were constantly employed. The j whole of the printing at the Times office was performed by three of Applegath's and Cowper's four-cylinder machines, and two of Applegath's new .vertical cylinder machines.

Capital Invested in Newspapers. — At the conclusion of a review of Mr. Hunt's work the " Fourth Estate" the Britannia has the following : — We will give our readers and the author a few new facts, illustrative of the curious fluctuations in the value of literary property, and of the enormous expense now incident to a good daily journal. The Post, for instance, which in 1795, with house and " plant," sold for £600, the circulation being 350 daily, fetched, about twenty-five years since £117,000, its net income exceeding £12,000 a-year. Since that period it realised a sum of not less than £20,000 a-year ; and at the present moment, probably its proprietor would not part with it under a very much larger sum. Formerly the expenses of conducting a daily paper were much less than at ths present time. One editor and a subeditor were considered competent to conduct every department ; and in those days there was no " expressing" to run away with yearly thousands. The expenses of working the Times at the present day may be estimated at £26,000 a-year: probable circulation 45,000 copies per day ; profit net, perhaps £16,000. Its popularity, few can doubt, it waning, on account of its inconsistency and want of principle ; nor is it now the earliest with its foreign intelligence, being often anticipated by the Herald, which aunually expends enormous sums in expressing. Of the expense of starting a daily paper, some idea may be formed, from the fact that before the first number «f 'the Daily News was brought out, the proprietors clubbed £117,000, and in a few months £37,000 of that sum had disappeared ; and we much question whether at this moment it yields anything like a profitable return, or answers anything beyond an indifferent political purpose. Of the difficulty of estimating the probable demand for a new paper, " Eliza Cook's Journal" is a curious example. Of the first number 18,000 copies were ordered to be worked off — 3000 countermanded — and 15,000 deemed sufficient to meet the first demand. On the day before the publication, 27,000 were ordered from the country districts alone, and on the day of its appearance, 53,000 additional applied for. Lord Brougham on Cheap Newspapers. — The following evidence was given by Lord Brougham, when Lord Chancellor, before a committee of the House of Commons appointed to consider the stamps on newspaper : «« The people wish to read the news, in which they take an interest, and in which it is fit they should have an interest. In public affairs they are nearly concerned, and it is both their right and their duty to attend to public affairs. lam of opinion that a sounJ system of government requires the people to read and inform themselves upon political subjects, else they are the prey of every quack, every impostor, and every agitator who may practice his trade in the country. If they do not read — if they do not learn — if they do not digest, by discussiou and reflection, what they have read and learnt — if they do not thus qualify themselves, other men will form opinions for them, not according to truth and to the interests of the people, but according to their own individigfc and selfish interests, which may, and most probably will, be contrary to the people at large. The best security for a government like this, for the legislature, for the Crown, and generally for the public peace and public morals, is that the whole community should be well informed upon its political as well as its other interests, and it can be well informed only by having access to wholesome, sound, and impartial publications. Therefore they will and ought to read the news of the day, political discussions, political events, the debates by their representatives in Parliament, and of the other house of Parliament ; and on not one of these heads can any paper be published, daily or weekly, without coming under the stamp law. Consequently, the ptople at large are excluded by the dear form in which alone the respectable publishers can afford it, while they pay the duty. They can only have it in a cheap form by purchasing of publishers of another description, who break the revenue law by paying for no stamps, and also break all other laws by the matter they publish: If,- instead of

newspapers being sold for 6d. or Is., they could be sold for Id., I have no manner of doubt there would immediately be the greatest possible improvement in the tone and temper of the political information of the people. I hold it to be as clear a proposition as any in finance, that if you abolish the stamps oa newspapers, instead of increasing the facility to set up libellous publications, you greatly lessen it by increasing the number of good publications, and by destroying the monopoly in the hands of reckless men, who neither mind the old law of the land nor a breach of the stamp laws." The present Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench, when Mr. Campbell, expressed a hope that he would live to see the day when newspapers would be sold for a halfpenny.

Science the Wonder Worker. — The general faith in science as a wonderworker is at present unlimited ; and along with this there is cherished the conviction that every discovery and invention admits of a practical application to the welfare of man. Is a new vegetable product brought to this country from abroad, or anew chemical compound discovered, or a novel physical phenomenon recorded ? The question is immediately asked cvi bono ? What is it good for ? Is food or drink to be got out of it ? Will it make hats or shoes, or cover umbrellas ? Will it kill or heal ? Will it drive a steam-engine, or make a mill go ? And truly this cvi bono question has of late been so often satisfactorily answered, that we cannot wonder thai the public should persist in putting it, somewhat eagerly, to every discoverer and inventor, and should believe that if a substance has one valuable application, it will prove, if further investigated, to have a thousand. Gutta percha has not been known in this country ten years, and already it would be more difficult to say what purposes it had not been applied to, than to enumerate those to which it has been applied. 'Gun-cotton bad scarcely proved in the saddest way its power to kill, before certain ingenious Americans showed that it has a remarkable power of healing, and forms the best sticking-plaster for wounds. Surgeons have not employed ether and chloroform as anaesthetics for three years ; and already an ether steam-engine is at work in Lyons, and a chloroform engine in London. Polarization of light, as a branch of science, is the enigma ot enigmas to the public. What it is, is a small matter ; but what work it can perform is a great one. It must turn to some use. The singularly ingenious Wheatstone, accordingly, has already partly satisfied the public by making polarized light act as a time-keeper, and has supplied us with a sky-polariscope ; a substitute for a sun-dial, but greatly superior to it in usefulness and accuracy. Of other sciences we need scarcely speak. Chemistry has long come down from her atomic altitudes and elective affinities ; and now scours^ and dyes, brews, bakes, cooks, and compounds, drugs and manures, with contented composure. Electricity leaves her thunderbolt in the sky, and, like Meicury, dismissed from Olympus, acts as letter carrier and message boy. Even the mysterious magnetism— which once seemed like a living principle to quiver in the compass-needle — is unclothed of mystery and set to drive turning lathes. The public perceives all this, and has unlimited faith in man's power to conquer nature. The credulity which formerly fed upon unicorns, phoenixes, mermaids, vampires, krakens, pestilential comets, fairies, ghosts, witches, spectres, charms, curses, universal remedies, pactions with Satan, and the like, now tampers with chemistry, electricity, magnetism, as it once did with the invisible world. Shoes of swiftness, seven leagued boots, and Fortunatus' wishing caps, are banished even from the nursery ; but an electro-magnetic steam fire balloon, which will cleave the air like a thunderbolt, and go straight to its destination as the crow flies, is an invention many hope to see realized before railways are quite worn to pieces. We may soon expect, too, it seems, to shoot our natural enemies with sawdust, fired from guns of the long range, pointed at the proper angle, as settled by the astronomer-roy-al, which will enable the Woolwich artillerymen (who will hereafter be recruited from the Blind Asylum) to bombard Canton, or whereever else the natural enemy is, and «aye the necessity of sending troops to the colonies. A snuff-box full of the new manure, about to be patented, will fertilize a field ; and the same amount of the new explosive will dismantle the fortifications of Paris. By means of the fish-tail propeller, to be laid before the Admiralty, the Atlantic will be crossed in three days. — Edinburgh Review.

Condition and Capabilities oi .London Gbave-Ya*ds. — The escape of noxious effluvia from the surface of grave-yards is under any circumstances inevitable ; but so long as they are allowed to 6ontinue in the midst of crowded populations they are specially injurious. In hardly any instance is jt possible to enlarge the extent of the burial-% ground, while the population, and with it the

rate of mortality, are daily increasing. Hence a time must arrive when the grave-yard becomes overcharged, and from that period it becomes a hot-bed of infection. The time has arrived for the closure of the great majority of the metropolitan grave-yards. It is j I vain to deny thai which is matter of the most | simple calculation. It requires no logic to prove that it is impossible to lodge fifty individuals in a room 10 feet square ; and common sense must tell you that it is equally impossible to inter in a safe and decent manner 3,000 dead bodies in an acre of ground which can only hold 136. Upon this point I must enter into a few details, for though infinitely disgraceful and disgusting, they are all-important. Calculations, for the correctness of which I pledge myself, show that an acre of ground which contains 43,560 square feet, or 4,840 square yards, will decently and safely inter about 1,360 adult bodies. As we have a right to presume that the dead body is committed to the grave, there to mingle with its parent earth, we must allow ten years for this process ; and, hence the number of adult bodies that an acre of ground will annually receive, is 136. — G. A. Walker's Lectures on the Actual Condition of the Metropolitan Grave-yards. "The Good Old Times." — The Rev. Sidney Smith, late prebendary ol Saint Paul's, after exclaiming — The good of ancient times let others state, I think it lucky I wai born so late, goes on to remark :—": — " It is of some importance at what period a man is born. A young man alive at this period hardly knows to what improvements of human life he has been in1 troduced ? and I would bring before bis notice the following eighteen changes which have taken place in England since I began to breathe the breath of life — a period amounting now to nearly seventy years. Gas was unknown ; I groped about the streets of London in all but the utter darkness of a twinkling oil-lamp, under the protection of watchmen in their grand climacteric, and exposed to every species of degradation and insult. I have been nine hours in sailing from Dover to Calais, before the invention of steam. It took me nine hours to go from Taunton to Bath, before the invention of railroads ; and I now go in six hours from Taunton to London ! In going from Taunton to Bath, I suffered between 10,000 and 12,000 severe contusions, before stone-breaking Macadam was born. I paid £15 in a single year for repairs ; of carriage-springs, on the pavement of Lon- ' j don ; and I now glide, without noise or fracture, on wooden pavements. I can walk, by the assistance of police, from one end of London to the other without molestation ; or, if tired, get into a cheap and active cab, instead of those cottages on wheels, which the hack-ney-coaches were at the beginning of my life. I had no umbrella ; they were little used, and very dear. There were no waterproof hats, and my hat has often been reduced by rains to its original pulp. I could not keep ray smallclothes in their proper-place, for braces were unknown. It I had the gout, there was no colchicum ; if I was bilious there was no calomel; if I was attacked by ague, there was no quinine. There were filthy coffee-houses, instead of clubs. Game could not be bought. Quarrels about uncoramuted tithes were endless. The corruption of Parliament before Reform was infamous. There were no banks to receive the savings of the poor. The poor-laws were gradually sapping the vitals of the country ; and whatever miseries I suffered, I had no post to whisk my complaints, for a single penny, to the remotest corner of the empire ; and yet, in spite of all these privations, I lived on quietly, and am now ashamed that I was not more discontented, and utterly surprised that all these changes and inventions did not occur centuries ago. I forgot to add, that as the basket of stagecoaches in which luggago was tUe,o,,car.r l iedJiad no springs, your clothes were rubbed all to pieces; and that even in ttie'best society, one-third of the gentlemen, at least, were always drunk.*' Matoisid, physician to the King of France was ao fond of administering medicine, that, seeing all the phials and pill boxes of his patient completely emptied, and ranged in order on the mantlepiecei he said, " Ah, sir, it gives me pleasure to attend you — you deserve to be •ill;" ' ' The neat old lady in "Virginia, who scrubbed through the floor and fell into the cellar, «s but one among many'of the very nice females with which our country abounds. We know a good lady iv New Jersey, who whitewashed ■ all the wood she burnt; and another in Connecticut, who used three times a-day to scour the nose of her lap dog, to keep him fiom soiling the dish out of which he ate his meals. The same old lady took her own food through a napkin-ring, to keep it from coming in con- , tact with her lips.— N. Y. Trans. j

Useful Knowledge. — It is not what we earn, but what we save, that makes us richr It is, not what we eat, but what we digest,Hbat makes us fat. - It is not what we tetd,

but what we remember, that makes us learned. All this is very simple, but it is worth remembering. Predestination. — "Do you believe in predestination V said the Captain of a Mississippi steamer to a clergyman who happened to be travelling with him. "Of course I do." 11 Well, I'm glad to hear it." " Why ?" "Because I intend to pass that boat a-head in 15 consecutive minutes if there be any virtue in pine knots and loaded safety valves. So don't be alarmed, for if the boilers ain't to burst they wont." Here the divine began putting on his hat, and looked very much like backing out, which the captain observing said, "I thought you said you believed in predestination, and what is to be will be. " So I do; but I prefer being a little nearer the stern when it takes place." " She does the Chemistbt Herseij." — Sir Henry Bulwer is very popular at Washington ; and, moreover, Lady Bulwer, the first lady that has been here with Our embassy for years, has won all hearts. She is a pleasant agreeable woman, and of the most captivating manners. She has established the good old English style of dinner and tea. At the latter meal she presides at her table, and does the chemistry herself, and hands over to the guests. Her dinner parties are more pleasant and easy than anything we have seen, for 20 years. — Washington correspondent of tne 1 Montreal Pilot.

A Safe Challenge. — We are authorised to say that Mr. John Macdonald, of Mansfield Woodhouse, who attained his hundredth year last November, will run any man in. England, his own weight and age, for any sum. N. B. — No hurdles. — Nottingham Guardian. Methinks to kiss ladies' hands after their lips, as some do, is like little boys, who, after they eat the apple, fall to the paring, out of love they have to the apple. — Selden. Resignation op Soyer. — Considerable excitement has, for some time past, been occasioned at the West End, by the rumour of its being the intention of Mons. Soyer to resign his position as Chef of the Reform Club. A few days ago the melancholy rumour was changed into frantic certainty, and it became generally known that Soyer had resigned the basting spoon of office, into the hands of the oommiuee, and had put his spit at their feet. On the first announcement of this intelligence, the enquiries were general whether Lord John would go out with Soyer, whose retirement, It was said, bad shaken the cabinret to atoms. But on inquiry, it was ascertained that the cabinet shaken to atoms, was a cabinet pudding, which was being prepared at the moment, when in a state of pitiable agitation the Chef resolved on throwing up the office he has so long adorned. Various causes have been assigned for the step that has been taken, Imt nothing" is positively known. By some it is intimated that there has long been a coolness over the kitchen fire, and that Soyer has vacated liis office, in the hope of finding a much wider range for his abilities. Some insinuate that he was dissatisfied with his subordinates, and that on seeing a sirloin of beef going round on the spit with improper velocity, he expressed his horror at things taking such a turn. In some quarters it is whispered that there are certain provisions contained in a bill which the Chef thought necessary to the maintenance of his government; but those provisions requiring a bill of enormous magnitude, were objected to in committee as extravagant, and not in accordance with the moderate tastes of the members, but Soyer declared it impossible to carry on th.c culinary government on a paltry scale of eco- . nomy. Many of his plans required very early peas, and the latter refusing to shell out, the Chef had no alternative. Others give out, with an air of some authority, that Soyet's schemes were so gigantic, as to require a supply, of five -b.undred«-new- sWEpaaai.hnt.. the requisition having been characterised by an " exquisite" belonging to the Committee as something "really stew-pan-dous," the pride of the Chef was offended, ag,d, he resolved at once on retirement. This affair will cause much embarrassment, as it will require the filling up of several offices which the genius of Soyer was enabled to combine. There must be a minister of foreign affairs, including all the French dishes, and none but a successor of the President dv Paty could hope' to preside over the peas. As to the puffs, the loss of Soyer will not be so severely felt r as most of i the puff* he was so famous for manufacturing wete for his own use. — Punch.