GENERAL SUMMARY. (Dates from Europe to June 6.)

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 57, 5 July 1884, Page 3

GENERAL SUMMARY. (Dates from Europe to June 6.)

The aquarium at Bishop's Gate, London, was burned on June 4th, with several lions, bears, and other specimens of natural history. Sir Julius Benedict, the composer, has decided to visit the United States next fall, and lecture upon his half century of musical experience. Earl Granville has transmitted a note to Washington in relation to the collection of conspiracy funds within the jurisdiction of the United States. George Hudson, M.P., bequeathed £200,000 for the education and maintenance of orphans in Sunderland. James Russell Lowell, U.S. Minister at the Court of St. James, has announced his intention of resigning that office. A Papal encyclical was read on Sunday June Ist, in the Catholic churches in England, warning the people against joining secret societies, under pain of excommunication. The letter says : Freemasonry, at its inception, was probably merely a friendly society, but if so, it asks, where was the necessity for the blind obedience demanded of its votaries ? It is reported, by a despatch from London May 29th, that since the Cabinet learned through Hubbard, Director of the Bank of England, that the directorate are unanimous in their condemnation of Hon. Hugh Childers's bill for the conversion of consols, the majority of Ministers wish its withdrawal. The organisation of a society is proposed in Great Britain to procure laws to compel the cultivation of all lands suitable for agriculture, and unnecessarily withheld from tillage in England and Scotland, for the purpose of "making Great Britain more nearly self-sustaining and less dependent upon American and other foreign markets for cereals, fruits, and vegetables." The movement is aimed chiefly against the immcnso preserves for deer, grouse, partridges, and pheasants, in Perthshire, Argyleshire, and Invernessshire in Scotland, and in Yorkshire and all over the west coast of England. The Earl of Easton is about to apply for a divorce on the ground of adultery. The Countess's friends say that no evidence can

be procured against her, and that the Earl wishes a divorce to enable him to marry a heiress. The Glasgow Tramway's stables were burned on May 31st. 200 horses were roasted alive. The House of Lords adjourned, May 26th, till June 9th, and the Commons till the sth.

A Brutal Execution. Mrs Leffley, who poisoned her husband last fall, was hanged at Lincoln, May 26th. The circumstances attending the execution, according to despatch from London, were shocking. Hangman Binns was unnecessarily and barbarously brutal in his treatment of the unhappy woman. Eye-wit-nesses state he knocked her down in the pinioning-room, and choked her till her face was livid in order to stop her screaming. The London papers generally condemn the exclusion of tho press, and say this disgraceful scene furnishes another and quite sufficient reason for the dismissal of the drunken brute Binns from his office of hangman. Moody and Sankey (who is ill, and has quite lost his voice) closed their English mission at Croyden on May 26th, and would leave for America on July sth. The present drought throughout England is almost unexampled. No such dry season has been known for fifteen years. Advices from Greatßritain say the number of visitors from that country this season to the United States and Canada promises to be unprecedented. One thousand savants alone, including one hundred members of Parliament, have already applied for and secured tickets for attendance at the meeting of the British Association at Montreal. A large number of these visitors, it is said, propose to make American investments. Lord St. Leonards was convicted on May 23rd for an indecent assault on a servant girl named Cole. The Court reserved decision till the June assizes. The Duke of Marlborough has made an offer to the directors of the National Gallery of eleven of the best pictures in the collection at Blenheim Palace for £367,500.

Extensive Poisoning in London. There was intense excitement in London on May 24th over the poisoning of several people from eating what is known as '• Chicago braun," imported from America. One person died, and three were reported dying. On the 24th the British Admiralty ordered the torpedo flotilla at Chatham and Portsmouth to prepai'e for service. A fire in a coal pit at Porto Bello, Scotland, Ma»y 23rd, caused the suffocation of nine men. Rev. H. T. Edwards, Dean of Bangor, committed suicide by hanging him&elf to his bedpost on May 23rd while insane. At a recent meeting of the watch and clockmakers of London, Sir John Bennett, an eminent man in the trade, acknowledged that unless something effective was soon done to counteract American and Swiss competition, the British article would be extinct in a very few years. The business of making time-keepers in England was in a most desperate state of decline. The American millionaire, Vanderbilt, was in London on May 24. It is said he left New York to avoid the coil about the financial crash in Wall-street and the failuro of ex-President Grant's bank. Reported on May 26th that small-pox was alarmingly prevalent in various parts of London.