GENERAL NEWS.
(From our Exchanges.) A horrible affair has just been occupying the attention of a jury in the department of the Somme, France. An old peasant named Roussel has a daughter Delphine, whose mind about two yaars ago became troubled in consequence of an unhappy attachment. Instead of looking after his child as be should have done Roussel, through avarice and fear of the doctor’s bill, made a wooden cage in which be placed her, and there the unfortunate creature remained until April 25, when she was liberated by the gendarmes. When released, the unlucky Delphine was in a pitiable state, and 'although she has been caicfully tended ever since, her reason seems to have vanished for over. Roussel has been condemned to five years imprisonment only, the jurors having found that there were extenuating circumstances. It is never too soon to go into the house when a storm is rising. When the clouds are fully charged with electrict/ they are most dangerous, and this fluid obeys a subtle attraction which acts at great distances and in all directions. A woman told us of a bolt which came down her mother’s chimney from a rising cloud when the sun was shining overhead. N. P. Willis writes of a young girl killed while passing under a telegraph wire on the brow of a hill, while she was hurrying heme before a storm. People should not be foolhardy about sitting on porches or open windows, whether the storm is hard or not. Mild showers often carry a single charge which falls with deadly effect. It may or may not be fatal to stay out ; it is safe to he in the house, with the windows and doors shut. The dry air of a house is a readier conductor of lightning than the damp air outside, and a draught of air invites it. A hot tire in a chimney attracts it, so to speak. The Cork Constitution of August 27th says : —“ About the last thing that people would have thought that glass would be applied to was railway sleepers. Nevertheless, experiments in that line are being made. Mr Seimens, of Dresden, has discovered a new powei, which revels even toughened glass, and with the use of which in railway sleepers the North Metropolitan Railway Company is now experimenting. The glass sleepers are moderately strong, cheap, and practically indestructible.” If suitable for sleepers, why not also for telegraph poles in places frequented by white ants, or where iron standards are now used, the non-conducting property of glass would be a valuable element ? In .reference to the Taranaki iron sand the New Plymouth correspondent of the Wanganui Herald writes:—“ Mr Vivian cast at In’s foundry this ‘morning a number of articles from the metal obtained from the Taranaki iron sand. The first pouring was commenced at 11.10 and was completed in four minutes, when two bogie engine wheels were cast. In the second pouring a bell and an ornamental door-weight, with a lion on it, were cast. In the third pouring ornamental plates of Napoleon crossing the Alps, a set of moulders’ tools, (Snider breech lock, rifie lockplate, and hammer. Fourth pouring three smoothing irons, a magnet for the Telegraph Department, and one or two small articles. The whole casting was performed in a little ever half an hour, and the metal ran out very freely from the furnace.” A Glasgow minister was recently called in to see a man who was very ill. After finishing his visit, as he was leaving the house, he said to the man’s wife, “My good woman, do you not go to any church at all?” “ Oh, yes, sir, we gang to the Barony Kirk.” “ Then why in the world did you |send for me? Why didn’t you send for Dr Macleod?” “ Ah, na, deed na; we wadna risk him Do ye ken it’s a dangerous case of typhus?', One of the presents Lord Galway, M.P., received on the occasion of his wedding consisted of a silver paper-knife the handle of which was formed by the pad of the fox killed on the 1 st May (the first May fox hilled by his Lordship since he became M.P.). On one sileof the blade are engraved the words “ Killed May Ist, 1879,” and on the reverse side, “ He was at last himself caught.” This juke will, doubtless, be enjoyed by the members of the hunt. An exchange thinks the time will certainly come when men wiU go flying through the air. And so do we. It will come when three or four men handle a keg of nitro-glycerine as a baggagesmasher bandies a trunk. But they will go flying through the air so rapidly and in so many pieces that they won’t enjoy the trip worth a cent.
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Temuka Leader, Issue 200, 18 November 1879, Page 3
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799GENERAL NEWS. Temuka Leader, Issue 200, 18 November 1879, Page 3
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