NEWS IN BRIEF.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 196, 6 December 1876, Page 3

NEWS IN BRIEF.

It is stated that tiie Chinese are about to introduce silver coinage. Tf".fr new Thames subway at Woolwich will .;• ;t £70,000. Tui-; year the declared value of petroleum imported into England was £523,310; last year, £331,114. In 3lelhournc upwards of £I,OOO has been raised for the purpose of erecting a statute to Daniel O'Connell. Two hundred stonemasons have sailed froi" New York for Glasgow, under a contract with a Scotch builder. Arctic whilibniie has been sold by auction in London at £B3O per ton. Southern is worth £043. " Lunatic fringe" is the name given to the fashion of cropping the hair and letting the ends hang dawn owr the forehead. The air of " Hold the Fort" has been introduce! into soma new lancers, and is very popular. It is now thought that, as the Liberal party in England go with the Russians in supporting Servia, the British Government will give no support to Turkey. It is stated that if, in the case of fire in buildings containing horses, the harness he put on. however roughly, the horses will quit their stable without difficulty. In a work entitled the "Queen of the Colonics," a narrative is given of how a squatter, whose cattle were constantly s;> ar„-d by th<2 blacks, gave them a bag of pois »ned flour. A very significant fact in connection with the exports of New Zeal ind is, that the woo! shipped from thenca promises, in a year or tw<> to equal, if not exceed, that from Victoria. The Paris GavJoix shows that Russia, whi»:h in 18-53 (a I an army of GO.OOO men, now has 1.313,00J as a peac. armament, a;ul 2,33.), 333 '•'! thiu of war. The yield of gold at Bendigo, Victoria, for the*we -k ending October 13, amounted to about 3,000 ouiicjs. In dividends £0 313 lis. has been divided, against £1.230 calls. L>rd Russell has entered upon his 85th year, having been born in Hertford-street, August IS, 17U2. The noble lord has been a member of Parliament since 1313. Neatly all the post-o;iice3 in Texas are in charge of females. It works so well, that tiie males now arrive and depart every hour in the day. The 'Catholics of Rome have been warned against signing a programme that :st being circulated amongst them, which is nothing more nor liss t.ian a scheme for making the election of tiie Pope by popular sua rage. Dr. Hector ha 3 jusc received a photograph of the snppos.-d moa's head, three fee" in Lngti, iatoly lour.d at Tauranga. It proves to be the skull of a goose beak whale. G. Winthrop made a balloon ascension at Paxton, Illinois. At an elevation of Y0) Krjt tic balloon collapsed, the a?rowas thrown out and fell 300 feet. He was instantly killed. The Rev. Henry Ward Beec'ier has engaged to lecture eighty nights nsxfc season in New Yolk and other place 3, for which he is to receive £IO,OOO.

h\ 1873 the Catholic Church is England ami Scotland had 1533 clergy of all ranks, and 1,253 churches, chapels, and stations. In IK7-3 tiic.se numbers increased to 2,025 and 1.2. W. The Paris Exposition of 1878 promises to be grandest aliair of its kind ever f eh!. Already the leading crowned heads of Europe have signiiied their intention of attending. A subterranean forest has been found in London of oak, elder, and willow trees, moat of them standing. Bones of t.ie fossil ox were Sound in t.ie peat. T!:c Viceroy of India 1 as summoned an of more than 800 princes and vajaUt in .January. Tile decree creating (Jite-un Victoria Empress of t.ie Indies will be read to the potentates. Th« H'anyttHHi Chronicle is informed that New Zealand supplejacks are sold in the L-fjidoti fancy gooits emporiums at the fancy price of half a guinea each. T.to importation of clocks into England increased in number for the first seven mouths of last year from 293,508 to 300,871 tin's year" The declared value in 1:7.3 was* 1212,018, and this year i*2i 1,031. In a city where unlicensed dog 3 are rapidly bving disposed of by the revolvers of tt.e police, a' little girl who had heard of the irerpieiit deaths and their cause, asked her mother, when a gentleman died next door, " What Mr. die I Wasn't he licensed I" Mr. Robert Kennedy, Wigtown, has in his possession a green parrot of the unprecedented age of ilfty-one years. It \va3 brought from trie Br.tz.ls in tne year 1823, and cm sp.ak and eat well. The Salt Lake Tribune asserts that when Uie Mormon bis : .iop3 of San Pete heard that General Custer and his gallant soldiers had been massacred by t'ie Sioux, they sent a band of music to ser_nade a few lodges of Indians campjd near by. At IJallarat two novel societies have recently been formed—an anti-smoking society, and an early-rising society. Both have already a large membership. The early-rising gentlemen are allowed eight hours* sleep, but any member who, in good heaitli, sleeps longer than the prescribed time is lined Is. In 1875 the United States had in operation 74,658 miles of railroad, costing $4,G33,2J3,030, and earning $4a3,32.),70i a year. T.iey transported that year over toii3, and numbering more than five times the population of ; the country.

A correspondent (says the Jewish World) writes from Syria, that about 12,000 inhabitants of the city and suburbs of Damascus have been carried off by cholera during tiie last three months. Mr. Ca%-ill, who started from Dover to s'vim to Calais, had been eleven hours in the water, and was five and a half miles from Calais, and five from the nearest land when he gave it up, and was taken on board the attending steamer.