MISCELLANEOUS.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2576, 23 June 1881, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

A medical journal ef Munich says that diptheria caught by kissing is likely to assume a much severer form than if the disease were contracted or the contagion imparted in some other way. This should be a warning to married men and hired girls. The difference between the pay of actors in Paris and that in London is indicated by the fact that the average receipts of the Comedie Frangaise in Paris are 5000 francs a night ; in London they were 25,000 francs. The average receipts of Rachel in America were 17,000 francs ; those of Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt have been about 20,000 francs.

The new Atlantic leviathan, the Servia, is expected to make the run across in a week, running twenty miles an hour. She is built of steel throughout, and has an inner hull five feet from the outer one. A hole, however large, knocked through her outer skin would not endanger her. Indeed, if both skins wore perforated the danger would not be great, for the ship is divided into nine water-tight compartments.

At the recent opening of the Nevada Legislature, an eastern minister was invited to perform the religious service. He accepted the call and closed the ceremony with the Lord’s Prayer. When he had finished, State Senator Dolan turned to Senator Hammond and re marked audibly, “He’s stole that prayer, and I’ll bet on it. I heard it almost word for word in Eureka at a funeral over ten years ago.” Sir Henry Bessemer has almost completed the construction, at his house at Denmark Hill, of a telescope at which he has been working for nearly two years. The instrument will he of such power that Sir Henry expects to be able, by means of it, to rend a newspaper placed against tha side of the Crystal Palace, three miles and a half distant.