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Colonist, Volume III, Issue 255, 30 March 1860, Page 4

Death of a Physician from Ciiloro-FORM.->-The North British Daily Mail 'repdrtSKa ;remarkable case of death by chloroform. Dr. Renwick, a young phyr sician in his 27th year, was suffering from the nail rbf his great toe having grown into the flesh; and he had spoken to one of his professional brethren, Dr. Duncanson, to come and cut away the nail. Dr. Duncanson attended, and found his friend in excellent spirits, and resolved to take chloroform, to which course he made no objection, having administered it to him on a previous occasion without any bad results. A little of the chloroform was poured upon a towel, and he held it to his mouth with his own •hands. After a while, as it did not seem to be taking effect, he asked for some more, which Dr. Duncanson at first declined to give; but after a while, finding that no effect was being produced, some move was applied. Observing that'he was endeavoring to hasten its effect by strained inspirations, he was asked to breath naturally, which he did. As it still, however, seemed to be having no effect, another small quantity, at his own request, was applied to the towel, which after a short time produced, insensibility, and his pulse being found full and regular, the operation, which did not occupy more than a minute or two, was successfully performed. He still remained under the influence of the anesthetic, but his breathing was regular, and all was considered right. Some cold water was then thrown on his face to arouse him; but this not having the desired effect other measures were resorted to, but with a like unfortunate result; and when, after a few minutes, his breathing became less frequent and more labored, and the appearance of his countenance began to change, and his pulse had become nearly imperceptible, serious alarm was felt. Artificial respiration by the modern method was resorted to, and in this manner breathing was kept up for nearly half an hour, but Dr. Renwick was a corpse. Metropolitan Board of Works.— Nobody is quite safe in any corner now-a-days. Our contemporary, the Observer, has from time to time looked in upon this gusty assembly without producing anything differing "from the old sample. Last week, however, something was in debate which really appeared to require some larger publicity than the members or officers of the Board of Works might perhaps desire. It seems "that in that delicate matter of tbe contracts for the drainage of the Thames there is discovered to be a small, mistake, which, if allowed to pervade all the eight contracts for this operation, would cause nearly a quarter of a million of money to pass wrongfully out. of the metropolitan treasury. How much has at present really been thus lost the acute men of business who advise this Board professionally ot who debate this matter with professional information, cannot tell. Some of them say £7000, some £30,000. When a blot of this sort is hit the loss is seldom overestimated at first. If we take what the Observer reports as the highest estimate, we probably shall not be far wrong, and if we multiply that sum by eight (for the loss is only upon one of the eight contracts) we shall have a total waste of £240,000 as the result which must have followed from the unchecked development of a system found to be in regular operation. -The manner in which this singular egarement of so large a sum of public money has arisen is ascribed to the fact of the contractors themselves being allowed to take out the quantities of work they had to do.— \ Times.

Hc^MiN Nature.—How lonely we are in the world; how selfish and secret, everybody! You and your' wife have pressed the same pillow for forty years, and fancy, yourselves united. Psha ! does she cry out when you have the gout, or do you lie awake when she has the toothache? Your artless daughter, seemingly all innocence, and devoted to her mamma and her piano-lesson, is thinking of neither, but of the young lieutenant with whom she danced at the last ball; the honest, frank' boy, just returned from school, is secretly speculating upon the money you will give him, and the debts he owes the tartman. The old grandmother, crooning in the corner and bound to another world in a few months, has some business or cares which are quite private and her own; very likely she is thinking of fifty years back, and that night when she made such ah impression, and danced a cotillon with the captain before your father proposed for her—or what a silly little over-rated creature your wife is, and how absurdly you are infatuated about her. And, as for your wife, 0, philosophic reader, answer and say—Do you tell her all ? Ah, sir, a distinct universe walks about under your hat and under mine; all things in Nature are different to each; the woman we look

at has not the same features, the dish we eat from has not the same taste, to the one and the other. You and I are but a paii^, of infinite isolations, with some fellowislands a little more or less near to us.— Thackeray. Libel.—-With reference to the continued incarceration of Mr. Tarrant, editor of one of the Hongkong, journals, for libel, the Daily Press remarks:—Nothing can justify the severity of his punishment. We know very little of Hongkong, save from the papers. .The Friend of India calls the community of Hongkong, the " most godless " on earth, and thinks that there is not a more notorious English community in the world, for disgraceful squabbles. We are not prepare to endorsed these sweeping censures; but to place an educated Englishman in a British colony, in a common felon's cell with others who were felons, within a room eighteen feet by nine^ to admit air by a port hole in the door; to give him only a loaf of bread in twenty-four hours, and not even water; not to allow him to communicate with his friends, save in the presence of the gaoler; to open all his letters, and not allow him to write, or read, or speak to anyone—are things we thought impossible, under the Queen-s rule anywhere. We believe from what we have read, that Mr. Tarrant isa very imprudent man; we have no desire to defend his vagaries, or his attacks on Colonel Came. Butthe officials in Hongkong have damaged their cause, and dishonored the British name and Government. The Neronian Dracos of the place must have had their training in the inquisition of Goa, and are more fit to legislate in the Cannibal Islands than in a British colony. Let Englishmen say nothing of Kentucky lawyers, and_ the slave drivers of Georgia or the Carolinas, while Hongkong can show such inhuman monstrosities. When the law becomes vindictive, it ceases to be respected and is only another name for the vilest tyranny. Is' Sorghum a wholesome Forage Plant. —We have been favored by some of our correspondents with the result of their experience on the the culture of the above-named recently-introduced forage plant; but, with the exception of an occasional observation that cattle do not refuse it, we have as yet learned little on the subject of its economical value. The sorghum has been cultivated on the continent for a longer period than with us, and some of the statements in foreign agricultural periodicals are anything but favorable. Thus, in the Journal d' Agriculture Pratique for January last, the Marquis de Vibrave, in a communication to the editor, states that it injuriously affects cattle that are fed upon it. He refers 'more especially to an experiment iv which 25 milch cows were fed for a month exclusively on sorghum, in which period, the milk given by them only averaged half the quantity they were giving at the commencement of the experiment. He further states that some of his acquaintances' cows which were fed principally on this plant became sterile; and in one instance he knows of its having caused the the distension of the paunch, known as hoven; and he —with much regret that truth compels him to report so unfavorably of a plant by which of its abundant productiveness promised to prove an invaluable auxiliary to the other means of providing green food for cattle,—cautions farmers against the too liberal use of it, and solicits at their hands renewed experiments with respect to it.— Agricultural Review. . Manure.—A letter addressed by Mr. Alderman Mechi to a contemporary, on the waste of manure which is caused by the system of sewerage in large cities, has induced Baron Liebig, whose opinions were quoted in support, to commence a new series of his. " Chemical Letters" in the Augsburg Gazette. These letters are specially devoted to this vital question. The prospects which Baron Liebig has in store for us, and in fact jfor the whole world if the present waste continues, are very gloomy indeed. He directs our attention to what Babylonia and Assyria once were and to what they are now; and urges upon us to learn in time, from their melancholy fate, which, he is of opinion, we certainly will share one day if we do not provide against it, and which, in the case of those ancient seats of civilization, he seems altogether to ascribe to the gradual exhaustion of the soil by a system of agriculture in which care was not taken to replace every atom of fructifying material taken from the field in the harvest.

Education in China.—lt is rare to meet with any individual in China who cannot read and write. Their social state is remarkably high, and their system of education is. more, advanced than that of any other people in the world, except perhaps the Japanese, who are, I believe, part of the same stock. My reason however for alluding to China is the hope that we may take one grand leaf out of their book. I found there schools in every district, both great and small, and those improvements which have come to us through Pestalozzi and others have been there at all times. A scholar who makes a beginning in a small country village school can, by means of competitive examinations, advance from one place and one stage to another, until at length he comes a member of the Board of Longitude at Pekin, with the prospect of honor and emoluments. I believe there is no country in the world where such a premium for learning exists, and I anxiously recommend something of this kind for the adoption of the Government.— MajorGeneral Chesney.

Suez.—Mr. Cobden attended the monthly dinner ofthe Society of Political Economists in Paris the other day. The conversation turned chiefly on the Isthmus of Su_-z scheme. Mr. Cobden observed thaj the opposition in Parliament was owing in some measure tp the manner in which the question was introduced, the House of Commons almost fancying that it was ex-

pected to take shares in the enterprise. The principal opposition was found among diplomatists, who seemed to think that the concession of lands and the construction of forts might be at some future period turned to the injury of English interests; but that there was no opposition on the ground that any country on the Mediterranean could deprive England by means of that canal of a considerable portion of her trade with the East. The natural advantages of England and her geographical situation rendered any such apprehensions futile. Moreover, too, opposition to the scheme had much diminished in England.

Bishop Selwyn and New Zealand.— But who objects to Bishop Selwyn? Who can say that he is not religious enough, or not secular enough? When consecrated to his work, he was charged to convey the blessings of Christianity wherever he could beyond the bounds of his New Zealand see. He has done this by means of enlarged views and personal qualifications which mark a great advance in missionary action. He steers his own little ship from one: group of islands to another, making a wide circuit of visits every year, and passing through sea accidents which all nativesf suppose to be over-ruled for him by some, special grace. Wherever he lands he climbs higher, swims faster, and walks further than the natives can do, and thus obviates a world of difficulties which would be raised up about his carrying the most promising youths of each settlement away with him for a time, for instruction and training. It is known that he will bring them back to spend the cold, or the hot, or any other unfavorable season at home; and they see that he can and does put them in the way of welfare in this life as effectually as if he had nothing to say to them ot another. In him the Church of England has sent forth, after an interval, another marked representative of its missionary function. Henry. Martyn will long be remembered with a tender admiration and pitying affection as the first scholarly and holy minister sent out by our century to bring the barbaric world into a participation in our best privileges ; but, wherever he is spoken of the name of George Augustus Selwyn will follow—a minister of the same church, with the learning, and the holiness, and the de-' votedness of Henry Martyn, but with no need of compassion or of any sorrowing emotion to be mingled with the admiration with which is career is regarded. As a family man, with his intellectual faculties equably and highly cultivated, and his moral nature as thoroughly exercised as the physical in the service of a waiting multitude, he is that fair and noble specimen of a man of our age which we are proud to send to the other side of the globe,'to convey to the antique nature of barbarism the idea and the impulse of progress.— Once a Week.