FACTS AND SCRAPS.

Southland Times, Issue 1770, 22 July 1873, Page 4

FACTS AND SCRAPS.

In a recently published book we find this practical hint : — " The disagreeable clicking nois9 caused by overreaching horses will be prevented if the blacksmith in shoeing cuts off the toe or crust of the shell of the hoofs of the fore feet, instead of on the hind feet, as is the frequent practice." Mr Goorge Smith, the leader of the Daily Telegraph expedition to Assyria, telepraphs, under date Mosul, 26th April, an announceoient of successful explorations and important discoveries. He states that he has obtained upwards of eighty new inscriptions. One is an important stele of Merodach-Baladan, King of Babylon, period 1300 B c. ; another dated 1320 b c, gives the particulars of the restoration of the causeway to the great Temple of Assur ;and there are also tablets of curious and aucient Babylonian legends, as well as historical memorials • of Sargon, Esarhaddon, Assurbanipal, Nebuchadnezzar, Nobonidus, Cambyses, j and Darius. Mr Smith says he has also excavated Nimroud withimportant results, and one of his most recent discoveries is that of a perfectly new text of the annals of Tiglath- Pileser. At Constantinople a number of old rusted helmets deposited in the Church of St. Irene were lately sold to a Jew as old iron, at about 12c. or 15c. the pound. There were about 600. The purchaser commenced cleaning them, and then discovered that they were of fine steel, and adorned with Arabic inscriptions, showing that they dated from very ancient times. He began by selling them at 20 piastres (25 centimes each) the piece, then 35, 40, and even 50, until at last an Armenian bought up all that were left at 22f. 50c. each, and put them up to sale in the bazaars. The government has repurchased them at from £2 to £3 apiece. The flood of correspondence drawn forth by the proposal to establish the Anglo- Australian Steam Navigation Co , with a capital of £8,250,000, to carry passengers and freight to Melbourne via the Cape in forty-two days, by a monthly line, demonstrated the lively interest with which the question was regarded. One of the writers insisted upon the perfect practicability of the voyage in the time contemplated; another enlarged upon the general objections to the scheme in its commercial and financial aspects. The correspondence was published in the Times. Since then the company has resolved to suspend operations for the present. Serious complaints are made in France relative to the extension of the new potato malady, whereby a tuber, to all appearances sound, puts forth no healthy sprouts, but germs resembling long delicate threads. Being sterile, such potatoes arecalled" mules." Many fanciful accounts are published respecting the cause. The remedy, however, lies in obtaining seed tubers from a distant district, planting only such as possess healthy shoots, and never to strip off the germs before planting. Others expose the seed to the influence of air and light for a fortnight before planting. A worse disease lies in the partly ripened tuber becoming soft, waxy, and unfit for human food. This infirmity is attributed to the seed potatoes sent from England as a donation after the termination of the war, and is most peculiar to precocious varieties. M. de Behagne, one of the first stock breeders in France, has presented the Agricultural Society with 12,000 f., the interest of which is to be allocated every second year to a prize for the best essay on the improvement in the fattening ©f stock, or to whoever shall have rendered the most signal service to breeders. He is a gentleman who has doubled an immense fortune acquired by agriculture alone. A visit to his farm at Darapierre would be well repaid. His object is to produce a race of sheep of a rapid growth, a precocious development, and fit for the market when eight or ten months old. The mutton from his farm is in request in Paris. It does not consist of suet, but of a tender and juicy flesh, possessing an exquisite flavor — not that kind of precocious mutton fitted rather for the melting pan than the table. He produces not only true meat, but good meat. His breed of sheep is a cross between a pure Southdown ram and a Cerrichonne ewe, the best to be found. From the mother fecundity only is demanded ; the male transmits the grand qualities of assimilation, and a scientifi cally arranged aliment does the rest. The Mob op Madbis. — There is, perhaps, no mob in the world that can be graver or more orderly, when it so pleases, than a Madrid mob. When, in the revolution of 1868, some 80,000 rifles were showered down at random out of the Arsenal windows to anybody and everybody who, in the general scramble, could get hold of one (not a few receiving severe injuries from the points of the falling bayonets, the first thing this extempore army of ragamuffins did was to form itself into detachments and march off to post sentries over the public buildings — notably the Palace and the Bank. Barefooted loafers, from the worst " back shuns" of Madrid, who, if they had owned a cuarto, would probably have not had a sound pocket to keep it in, shouldered arms with hyper-military solemnity outside the doors of the Bank, allowing no one to enter without a formal order from the recognised authorities. Imagine the feelings of the Governor of the Bank of England if, on driving down, he found himself bound to prove his right of entry to the satisfaction of an armed picket of Whitecbapel roughs, or imagine — an easier task — the state of the Bank coffers next day ! But here, in Madrid, not a coin was missing, not an ornament filched even from the Palace — the concrete symbol of the Government the people had just overthrown. — or a window smashed. The mob was quite content with having achieved its object in getting rid of Queen Isabella ; and its worst excess was the lynching, not wholly unmerited, of a few police spies. — Times Correspondent.

! Pebmanent Whitewash. — The annual inquiry for a good whitewash has commenced, and the following, says the Scientific American, may be found useful :— Take half a bushel of freshly burned lime, slake it with boiling water ; cover it during the process to 'keep in the steam. Strain the liquid through a fine sieve, and add to it 71b of salt, previously well dissolved in warm water ; 31b of ground rice, boiled to a thin paste, and stirred in boiling hot ; £lb of powdered Spanish whiting, and lib of clean glue, which has been previously dissolved by soaking it well and then hanging it over a slow fire, in a small kettle within a large one filled with water. Add five gallons of hot water to the mixture, stir it well, and let it stand a few days covered from dirt. It must be put on quite hot. For this purpose it can be kepi in a kettle on a portable furnace. About a pint of this mixture will cover a square yard. Watebpboof Coating fob "Walls. — The following coating has proved very effective in preventing the penetration of moisture on the weather side of walls : — Pitch, 501 b ; rosin, 30 lb ; red ochre, 61b ; fine brick-dust, 12 lb ; all boiled together, with constant stirring, and then sufficient oil of turpentine — about one-quarter the volume of the above — added to cause it to spread readily. It is to be laid on as thin as possible with a bristle brush.