ITEMS BY THE MAIL.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 4925, 5 January 1877, Page 3

ITEMS BY THE MAIL.

Mr. Henry Ward Beecher's lecturing tour in the United States this season has been a failure.

The trial trip of the Boxer, composite gun vessel, has failed, and she has returned to Chatham to have her machinery repaired. An oyster thirteen inches long and seventeen inches through was, according to Forest and Stream, October 5, recently taken from the bed at Green Bay, on the Massachusetts coast.

The experiments at Spezziawith the 100-ton Armstrong gun were most interesting and important. The targets in all cases had a strong backing, and a skin about 30in. thick, faced with different plates, two of Schneider's steel, one of Cammel's wrought-iron, and one of Marrell's wrought-iron. All the plates were solid, and 22in. thick. Each plate weighed about twenty-two tons. Not one of them could withstand the shot of the Armstrong gun fired with 3411 b. of powder; but Schneider's steel plates, though they broke up, stopped the projectile from quite piercing the backing, whereas the targets covered with wrought-iron plates were completely pierced, leaving large ragged holes. The shots had enough velocity remaining to have knocked out plates on the other side of the ship, and would have carried complete ruin into the interior. Those which failed to pierce the steel-clad target would have shaken the whole structure and -caused a leak. The highest velocity was 1500 ft., and the heaviest blow was equal to 31,250 foot-tons. Parker, a lion caught near Oran, when about four months old, by one of the agents of the agents of the Zoological Society, and first pxhibited in 1859 in Cook's Circus, where, on the scond night of his appeai-ance, he killed W. Rosbert, his keeper, is dying, if not now dead, at the Central Park, New York. Old Parker seems to have been quite a man, aye, and woman-killer too in his day, for after the exploit above narrated, he slew another keeper, R. Stuart, at Glasgow, and mangled another man shortly afterwards elsewhere. Sands, Nathan, and Co. next got him, when, after a few performances, he killed Miss Hardy. Barnum then bought him, and finally he was lodged at the park, as it appears, for life. A telegram from Ragusi, says Mr. Jainin, the Russian representative in Montenegro, has started for St. Petersburg in obedience to summons. The insurgent chief Muroeh has been interned by the Austrian authorities at Slavo.

The Financier says : It is understood the German Government will sell no more silver in this market under 55d. per ounce. It is stated that Captain Allen Young, who commanded the Pandora in her recent trip to the Arctic regions, will next spring attempt again the north-western passage in that vessel. °Thomas Carlyle writes to a friend on the Eastern question, endorsing to the fullest extent recommendations in Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet for the expulsion of the Turkish governing classes from Europe. A memorandum furnished the Foreign Office by the President of the British Iron Trade Association states that a large proportion of furnaces are out of blast, and a still larger proportion of the forges and mills for the production of malleable iron are closed. Thousands of workmen have been discharged, and the wages of those retained have been materially reduced. The distress is greatest in the remaining districts of South Wales and the north of England, but is also very great in Staffordshire and the Midland Counties and Scotland. The depression is not confined to England, but is felt on the Continent with great severity. Germany and Belgium are the greatest sufferers. France is not so badly off, but even there prices are extremely low, and trade is in a critical and unsound condition.