GENERAL NEWS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5218, 12 December 1877, Page 3

GENERAL NEWS.

Birds killed on the Western prairies, packed closely with paper in barrels, and without any freezing or other artificial process of preservation, now go regularly to Leadenhall, and are. sold and eaten in the dining-rooms of London and the West side by side with the much more expensive partridges and fowls which are reared in England. A Russian engineer has invented a bombproof tower which is moved about by steam, and in which artillerists sit and pelt the enemy with destruction. By the time the next war breaks out the warrior will sit in a rockingchair in the front parlor of a hotel and talk his enemies to death with a revolving telephone. A subscription has been opened in France for the erection of a statue to George Sand. The committee, under the presidency of Victor Hugo, contains the names of. almost all the literary celebrities of the day, including George Eliot. The committee have asked permi-sion to place the statue in the square St. Michael, near the Luxembourg. Queen Victoria has. just attained, her, fiftyeighth birthday. Only twelve others of the reigning sovereigns of Christendom (out of thirty-eight in all) have attained to this age. The oldest on the list is the Pope, who was eighty-five on May 13. Of temporal princes the German Emperor has seen the greatest number of years, his eightieth birthday having been reached a few weeks ago. The Czar is older than the Queen by about a year, having been born on April 29, 1818. The King of Italy is some ten months younger than the Queen, the date'of his birth being March 11, 1820. The Emperor Francis Joseph is not yet forty-seven. He was born in the' year of revolutions, 1830, and ascended the throne in the year of revolutions, 1818. The youngest reigning sovereign is Alfonso XII., King of Spain, who is not yet twenty. An undoubtedly true experience of resuscitation is that of Margaret Dixon, of Musselburgh, who was hanged at Edinburgh for child murder in 1728. There seems to have been great doubt as to her being guilty of the offence of which she was charged, and therefore her narrow escape is as satisfactory as strange. At the place of execution, while owning to many sins, she avowed her total innocence of the crime in question, and her husband—who hud much to forgive—implicitly believed that statement. After the body had been suspended the usual time, it was delivered to her friends, who put it in a coffin, and sent it in a cart, to be interred in her native place. The persons in charge stopped to drink at a public-house on the way, and while they were refreshing themselves, Mrs. Dixon gave indications to the bystanders that she should like to take a little something, or, at all events, to get out also. Most of them ran away in terror, but one had the presence of mind to bleed her, and got her up to bed ; and by the following morning she was well enough to walk to her destination. By the Scottish law it seems that a’ person upon whom judgment has once been executed cannot suffer a second time, while the marriage of the party supposed to have been executed is held to be dissolved. All that the King’s Advocate could do, therefore, was to file a bill in the High Court of Justiciary against the unfortunate Sheriff for omitting to fulfil the law, which was accordingly done. The husband of the revived lady married her publicly within a few days of her resuscitation, and she was living so late as the year 1753. The Lamas or priests of Lakak are only washed twice in their lives —once after they are born, and again before they are buried. Hundreds of our young doctors, it is rumored, are applying for positions as surgeons in the Turkish army. This is, indeed, help for Russia from an unexpected source.