NEWS IN BRIEF.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 232, 19 January 1877, Page 2

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Dion Boucicault's real name is Lardner. A Spanish woman's mantillo is held sacred by the laws of Spain, and cannot be sold for death. George IV. left, as part of his estate, 300 whips and 500 pocket-books. The gentler sex can now practice the law in five States of the Union. - ->g The cost to the War Office of the Ashantee war medal has been under £I,OOO. In the poetry of the Tamulians, in India, the rhyme is invariably at the commencement of the verse. Spanish epicures in tobacco have a habit of placing their daily cigars between two lettuce leaves ; this they believe renders them more narcotic. Mustard is one of the simplest and handiest of emetics. A teaspoonful mixed in a glass of water will seldom fail to produce sickness. Along the course of the Amazon and ! Madeira rivers the inhabitants have the deplorable habit of clay-eating. Even the animals partake of this peculiarity. The college of cardinals now contains three En cardinals, a_ thiug unprecedented sines the time of Ilenry VII 1.. AiL.-_.rt Smith's famed Ldking fish has been equdi d r=y an _lep a-at in the Paris Jardhi Ue j.-'i.;:::.-_*, winch has been taugat to artd-rda..; "i\i;>a" most distinctly According to statistics recently public, led i:L t.ie iiriiinh- .JxdU'-'d- Journal, iouv ;.'_r cent, of ti.e people cue a violent T.:_ k-e_per of a Paris rc-sduiraut went iiit-> his ciiar, wii-jre lie had a moment's vertigo, and fainted, and before ho could be rescued, he wrs iiaii ea'.e.i uy rats. A copy of the first, or Kilmarnock, Udieers of the British army are no longer alio'.vud to exchange from one regiment to another in order to escape service in coi'ps ordered abroad. As a quick relief for apply a layer of common salt, and ;. ""late it witjw laudanum. Hold it in one s.tort time, and the smarting will leaver™ almost instantly, while- the sore will get thoroughly well in the time mentioned. The presence of fowls in an orchard is said to be one of the preventives to the ravages of insects. - " ™ A man lias died in Ohio who wasiosfee . offered the laud upon which that city stands for one dollar per acre. Parents of children who are in the habit of straying from home should adopt the Persian system of attaching a label, with their name and address, to their girdles. Those girdles are supplied at the police stations. The only manufactory of wooden skewers in the world, it is supposed, exists at Toledo, Ohio, whence millions of them are shipped to England. They are made by machinery from hickory blocks. Between 80,000 and 100,000 are turned out every day. The Chinese have names which, correspond in frequency to the Browns and Smiths of Anglo-Saxon Christendom. Those most frequently occurring are Ohing,- Chang, Wang, and Sing, which are the equivalents of "gold," "long," "pumice," and "stone." A bronze half-penny is exactly one inch broad, and therefore gives us a very convenient measure. Laid on an Ordinance map of an inch scale, the half-penny covers 000 acres. The third of an ounce is now the postal unit, and a penny is precisely that weight. The old story according to wlvch glass was accidentally discovered by some Phoenician merchants is a complete fable, for glass was known long before the Egyptians or Assyrians. Lady Burdett Ooutts certified from personal knowledge that one Parisian milliner used 40,000 humming-birds in the season. It is estimated that the national sport of bull-fighting in Madrid costs every man, woman, and child in the Spanish ■- at least ten shillings per annum. It has been proved by a long series of observations, extending over centuries, that females enjoy greater longevity than males in every country. A patent has been obtained for conducting water from the "rim of umbrellas in such a manner that it shall not pour down from any tip, but only from one part, at the will of the person using it. One of the severest penalties to which criminals in Holland, in ancient times, was to be deprived of, was the use of salt. There are 30,000 lawyers in the United States.