MISCELLANEOUS.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2620, 13 August 1881, Page 2

MISCELLANEOUS.

It is consoling to read in a report of the,grand ball in Melbourne that “the young Princes must have been very favourably impressed with Melbourne society on that evening, for there was a wealth of refinement and beauty present.”

“ I’m afraid you'll be late at the party,’* said an old lady to her stylish granddaughter, who replied, “ Oh, you dear grandma, dont you know that in our fashionable set nobody ever goes to a party till every one o-ets there.” “ As for newets,” wrote Charles I. to the Duke of Buckingham, in 162 G, “I can say but litell yet, Ireland being the onlie egg we have yet sitten upon, and having a thike shell we have not yet bached it. ” And England has been sitting on that egg ever since.

The Fish Commission of Maine have adopted the plan of marking salmon to obtain data with regard to the development and migration of these fishes. Several hundred salmon lately set free in the Penobscot River have been labelled with light metal tages, the number of each being recorded. The Commissioners ask that whoever catches a labelled salmon in any waters of the State, will forward them the fish, for which they will pay an extra price. A correspondent of the English Journal of Horticulture says that a little unattractive weed which grows on the south coast of England—Brassica olcracea—is the parent of all our cabbages, cauliflowers, broccolis and kails, and that by natural effort for th# most part, without hybridising and without the usual tendency to revert toward the plain original type. •

A curious story is told in connection with the disaster which has lately devastated Scio. Some months ago a Turkish mollah named Khodja Admet was condemned to prison for life for having aided Dr Koehle to translate the Bible And certain Protestant prayers in Turkish. The sentence was to be carried out at Scio, where the Khodja was accordingly imprisoned. The earthquake was for him quite a providential dispensation, for the prison literally fell to pieces, and in such a manner that he was unhurt. As may be supposed, he did not waste time in seeking for the terror stricken authorities to inform them of what had happened, but, profiting by the general panic, found his way on board an English steamer lying in the bay, which conveyed him safely to London,