News and Notes.

Southern Cross, Volume 2, Issue 26, 22 September 1894, Page 5

News and Notes.

Only one man in 203 is over six feet in height. Japanese children are taught to write with both hands. The French army is three times as large as it was in 1870. The United States contains 194,000 square miles of coalfields. The word penknife is one of the words found only once in the Bible. The speed at which a cricket ball is delivered by a fast bowler is a mile a minute. The Queen has taken 447 prizes at English cattle shows for products at her stock farm. The rock of Gibraltar is an exact representation of a lion lying in a resting position.

The Turkish Government has forbidden the importation of all patent medicines into that country. A merchant in Germany has been fined heavily for using a quotation from the Bible to head an advertisement. A sooty chimney can be cleaned by firing a pistol or gun up the flue. The concussion dislodges the soot, and it tumbles down. The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed body of water in the world. It varies between 740 miles in length and 200 miles in breadth. The four-masted ship Palgrave, which was towed into Greenock lately, is to be sold. She is one of the largest sailing vessels afloat. The Western Star designates the Invercargill estuary a huge millpond. After such a dictum, the fate of the New River Harbor Bill is sealed. Steamers can be built cheaply now-a-days. A Clyde firm of shipbulders have received an order to build a steel screw steamer of 4000 tons d.w. capacity, at the price of £20,000. Mr A. Potter, licensee of the Prince of Wales Hotel, takes possession of the Star and Garter hotel, Oamaru, at an early date. Sydney, it is reported, is to have another newspaper, some twenty or so of the compositors who were recently displaced by type-setting machines having formed themselves into a company.

The anti-Chinese Association in Wellington want the further immigration of Celestials, Indians, and hawkers stopped for a time —failing that, the poll-tax to be raised to £I,OOO. The average Japanese god is sixty feet high. That of the young Hew Zealander is the height of his favourite footballer. The destructiveness of a new Gatling gun may be imagined when it is stated that it fires 3,129 shots a minute. When operated on by an electric motor it fires 5,000 shots a minute. How many years have you been dumb ?’ sympathetically asked a gentleman of a beggar who pretended to be bereft of speech. ‘ Five years, sir,’ replied the impostor, completely taken off his guard. In times of scarcity the South African natives sometimes rob the nests of the termites, and as much as five bushels of grain have been taken from a single nest.

Statistics show that there are in the United States more than 6,000,000 farms, upon which dwell over 30,000,000 people, who furnish more than 74 per cent, of the value of exports of that country. While many landlords in Scotland are desirous of disposing 1 of their properties, others are moving in the direction of improving theirs, Mr Robt. Cox, of Gorgie, having erected a picturesque range of model cottages on that estate for his workmen. The roofs of this block are red tiled with overhanging eaves projecting, and balconies half of timber have had carved upon them curious and wise old saws' after the quaint fashion of a less prosaic age. f

Everything is brisk at Alexandra just now, says a writer in the Christian Outlook. Six dredges are working on the river, and two more are coming at Christmas. I saw three young fellows whom I knew out of work in Dunedin for a long time. They went up there, got engaged irt the dredging business, and are on the fair way to fortune. As one of them, put it : A year and a-half ago I was begging the bosses daily for work in Dunedin ; now it is the bosses who beg from me, which is easily understood, when on his last visit to Dunedin he gave an order for £4OO worth of machinery. A girl of fifteen, who was at service in Belfast, and receiving £5 a year, recently recovered damages from her mistress for cruelty. The lady (?) used to beat her with a poker and hold her under a tap of cold water. The following orders were read in court from a piece of paper: —“ Servants’ Work and Orders : You are to he up every morning at six. The range must be nicely polished and fire lit; mats shaken ; parlour, hall, and place in front, and yard brushed, and table laid. When the eight bell begins to ring take the baby then. Bedrooms and stairs finished at 10 o’clock. Have all washed and kitchen clean at half-past ten. Potatoes washed and ready for dinner, and whatever else you are told to do. Then you must he ready to go out with baby before 12 o’clock every day. Wash dinner things then, and take baby. Brush, kitchen every night before bed, and wash your face and neck. Knives, boots and everything else done before then. All windows cleaned on Friday, and floors washed on Saturday.’ * On Sunday, Ist July, the Corporation of Glasgow commenced running its own tramway-cars, and in this respect it takes the lead in Scotland. In England, however, three corporations have already ventured in this direction. Hitherto, the Glasgow Corporation has been marvellously successful in all its municipal undertakings. Its water, gas, city improvements, and financial schemes have all prospered exceedingly, and success in these directions has tempted the City Fathers to efnbark £300,000 worth of capital in equipping a tramway department. Some 3000 horses and 240 cars had to be purchased, and 1,250 drivers, guards, and stablemen engaged, owing to arrangements with the Tramway Company having proved abortive. The tramway lines in the city extend to 84 miles. The chief novelty introduced by the Corporation is halfpenny fares. Scotchwomen, it may be feared, are in danger of having their reputations ruined for honesty by the remarkable careers of one or two of their countrywomen who are unfortunately gifted with marvellous criminal faculties. Mrs Gordon Baillie’s name is still familiar to newspaper readers for the remarkable series of frauds which she perpetrated in her native country, and it has since cropped up in the South, where she has continued to pursue her path of crime. In Miss Margaret Reid, a young lady who has been sent by the Sheriff of Edinburgh to prison for six months, Mrs Baillie (says an exchange) has a successful imitator. Her offence in the capital was that of obtaining money by representing that she was shortly to inherit a fortune. This girl Reid is a native of Aberdeen, where she has connections who have done everything in their power to wean her from the disgraceful path down which once stepped upon she has descended very deeply. She was educated at the Free Church College School in Aberdeen, but after her mother’s death went astray, and since 1891, while out of prison, she has lived by fraud.

At the christening of the Duke of York’s infant son, the Queen took the child from the Princess of Wales, and. handed it to the Archbishop of Canterbury, at the same time giving the following names : Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick: David. Her Majesty must have a good memory.