GENERAL NEWS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4472, 20 July 1875, Page 3

GENERAL NEWS.

A regatta by electric light formed part of the rejoicings on the occasion of the late visit of the Emperor of Austria to one of the Italian sea-coast towns. A battery of Royal Artillery marched, one Saturday, from Ashford to Sheerness, a distance of thirty-four miles. Two horses dropped dead on the road, and several men fell ill and had to fall out. The Echo du Parlcmcnt says that at Coire a marriage has just taken place where the bride was 103 years old and the bridegroom sixty years of age. The bride has had four husbands besides the present one. According to statistics from Protestant sources, 30,000 Spaniards have been converted to Protestantism since the Revolution of 1868. The Protestant chapels in Madrid and the principal towns of Spain continue open for public worship. A lady of wealth and piety is said to have remained single until the age of forty years, refusing many offers, because she had resolved to marry no man except a clergyman. A short time since she was wedded to a penniless but devout pastor of a little church, and the honeymoon was hardly over before ho resigned his charge and set up as a stockbroker with her money ! During April the officers of the Fishmongers’ Company seized at Billingsgate market and destroyed nearly seven tons of diseased and putrid fish, which had arrived there for sale. The fish numbered 37,461, of which 35,437 came by rail and 2024 by water. They included 24,800 smelts, 8 brill, 42 cod, 13 crabs, 8010 haddocks, 1200 herrings, 32 lobsters, 1570 plaice, 14 salmon, 4 skate, 194 soles, 1060 thombacks, 5 trout, 9 turbot, and 500 whiting, besides 2 bushels of cockles, 12 of periwinkles, and 1 of whelks.