GENERAL NEWS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 4904, 9 December 1876, Page 1 (Supplement)

GENERAL NEWS.

The Catholics of England and Scotland have in two years increased the number of • their clergy from 1893 to 2024, and their churches from 1253 to 1294. There are in all the British Empire 108 Catholic bishops and 18 archbishops. The King of Belgium, when opening the Geographical Congress at Brussels, proposed to lay out roads from certain African seaport 3 to the country between the Tanganyika and the Nyanza lakes for the purpose of further explorations. The wool clip of the country in 1875 was nearly two hundred million pounds, whereas in 1860 it was only sixty-five millions. In 1875 the country bought about fifty million dollars' worth of woollen goods and eleven millious' worth of wool.

Bonapartist agents are assiduously circulating in Burgundy letter-paper, envelopes, &c, baaring the watermark medallion-portraits of Napoleon 111., Eugenie, and Prince Louis, and the motto " Faith, Hope, and Charity." Four brothers in Hawkins County, Tennessee, married four sisters about thirty years ago, and now have 54 children, the average family being 13£. The progress of East Tennessee evidently does not depend on immigration. .Mr. Sankey's songs are becoming national hymns. "Pull for the shore," sings the towboy behind his mules on the Erie Canal. " I love to tell the story," whistles the Chicago reporter with his nose in the air. On the 28th September, at Johaunisberg, a tun|of wine, of the vintage of 1861, was sold to the ex-Sultan of Turkey for 56,000 florins, which is at the rate of 80 francs (say sl6) a bottle.

Professor J. H. Stuart, of Indianopolis, recently discovered in a coalmine in the western part of Indianopolis, and at a depth of 200 ft., some fine specimens of fossilised ferns. A New Orleans man announces in a circular that, " h iving returned from a scientific trip through Europe, he is now better prepared than ever for cleaning clothes and carpets." A Russian colonel has discovered a large salt lake in Mongolia, SlOOft. above the sea. It is mostly dried up, the bottom being covered with a layer of salt from 2 to 6ft. thick. The live question among scholars in England at present is, whether cats were domesticated in Ancient Greece. The literary journals are publishing pages of correspondence on the subject. The bones of several persons, whom the Marchioness de Brinvilliers poisoned 100 years ago, have been discovered under the ruins of a house near the Boulevard Henry IV. The house at Peckham, in which Goldsmith lived and wrote the "Vicar of Wakefield," has been sold, and is to be improved beyond all recognition. The ancient practice of tolling the curfew was; discontinued at Stratford-on-Avon recently, but on a general protest from the people, it was resumed. The Agricultural Bureau of Georgia costs each citizen a cent and a quarter per year, and last year saved the farmers 559,000 dollars. In demolishing the lower wall of the castle of Dieppe, in I'rance, interesting relics have been discovered, consisting of coins and pottery of different periods. The workmen have also come upon the foundations of the ancient church of St. lle'my, known by antiquaries to have stood near the castle.

The prisons of Denmark are mostly conducted on the solitary confinement system ; yet the prisoners are frequently visited by the officers, whose influence in theory, if not in practice, is exerted to effect reformation of character. The convicts never see each other, and thus are free from contamination.

The police of Berm;, in Switzerland, are sadly distressed about two wild, red-headed Englishmen, who have been found living in the woods at Nauftzen, not far from the Swiss capital. They had neither money, nor passports, nor papers, and would answer no questions. They lived on herbs and berries, slept under the open, and, so far as appeared, troubled nobody. In an earlier stage of the world they would have been hailed as deities. They have now been locked up as vagrants, and Switzerland advertises for their friends to come and take them away and pay expenses. , Mr. Scott, an iron merchant of Edinburgh, having received an order for 400 tons of iron girders for the new station being erected in Glasgow, is having the girders manufactured in Belgium, and delivered in Glasgow at considerably less cost than he can have them made in England. ','■*■ The Duke of Westminster, a wealthy English nobleman, has fallen into the habit of admitting the working men on Sundays to the picture-galleries and museums of his magnificent residence. He sends tickets to all the workingmen's clubs and trades-unions, which distribute them as they please.