MISCELLANEOUS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1998, 23 January 1890, Page 4

MISCELLANEOUS.

TLe Honorable Ralph Abercromby managed during his recent voyage in the Tongariro to measure the height of ocean waves by floating a sensitive android on the water. The highest wave encountered was in 55deg. S. lat. and 104 W. (between the Cape and Australia). It was 46 feet high, 765 feet from creßt to crest, and it reached

a velocity of 47 miles an hour. As the weather was not unexceptionable, Mr Abercromby concludes that waves must occasionally reach a height of 60 feet. Pitcairn Island, according to an exchange, must be a very Garden of Eden to husbands of wives and fathers of daughters. A great scarcity of clothes preyails, particularly of feminine apparel, and there are no shops there to supply the deficiency, i'hink of that, ye hapless Nes Zealanders! No plate-glass windows resplendent with all the latest fashions alluring, ticketed with a big Is and a microscopic coaxing her stiagy hubby to buy her that love of a bonnet, or that just-too-«weet-for-anything Paris costume! iSTo daughters eager to annihilate ?very rival Pitcairn belle with a duck of a dress to be given away and the tri timings thrown in ! But this state of Arcadian simplicity has its drawbacks. "We learn that the Pitcairn ladies are obliged to wear the Sunday suits of their masculine relatives, and when the women take to wearing the br . Whew ! !

Queen Marguerita of Italy possesses a necklace which sho always wears day and night. If the Queen wears a dress with which the ornament does not harmonise she keeps her necklace on, although hidden. The following story is told in connection with the necklace :—Five years ago the Italian Orown Prince, Victor Emmanuel, was out walking in Venice with his tutor. He noticed some corals m a jeweller's •.vindow which pleased him very much. 1 1 shall buy those for my mother,' he snid ; and, so saying, he entered the sb.ip to ask the price of the corals, On hearing the sum, he naid, ' I have not so much money at present, but I will make you an offer. I will buy five corals to-day, and you keep the reat for me; and as often as I have saved some money I will send it to you, and you will send to me as many of the remaining corals as the money will buy.' The bargain was concluded, but it was two years before the prince had the pleasure of presenting his mother with the necklace. The Queen, on hearing the circumstances of the purchase, was very much affected, and said to her son : ' This is now the most precious of all my jewels, and I will never cease to wear it, for it will always remind me of your tender love for me.' It is well known that the blind Postmaster-General, Mr Fawcett, advised everybody who suffered under the same affliction to engage, as far as possible, in the same occupations as people enjoying the blessing of sight. He himself acted up to this advice by skating, angling, and even, we believe, riding to hounds. Another illustration of what may be done in the aame direction was afforded the other day by an account forwarded to the Standard of some cricket matches played by people deprived of eyesight. The matches, it appears, are played by the students of the College for the Blind at Worcester, who use a wicker ball with a bell in it, and are guided entirely by ear. Behind the stumps a wicket-keappr claps his hands, and the bowlers, guided by ear only, sometimes hit the wicket three times out of six. The battiag is usually inferior,

the ball only being heard when it 1 touches ground; but one lad often J makes seventy runs off his own bat. 1 An experiment, it is added, was tried of a match after dark between the blind crieketers and some friends who could see, and, of course, the latter were nowhere. There is something pathetic, of course, in this narrative, and yet one cannot help feeling how much better it is for the blind to amuse themselves in this way instead of mepmg over their affliction in sadness and solitude. " If there was ever an abomination in the eyes of all decent and sensible people," eaya the Detroit Free Press, it ia the custom, which has continued to hold its own with singular tenacity in certain portions of. the west, of visiting upon newly-rnarried couples, especially if there is in the wedding something unusual or displeasing to those of the vicanage, a " charivari." This consists of a "serenade" with horns, tin pant, cow-bells, and other din creating instruments, a horrible rackat being kept up until the victims buy off their tormentors with money or refreshments. This is the least objectionable form of the matter, which is often taken as a means of satisfying real enmity and becomes something much more serious than a mischievous personal annoyance. A judge at Des Moines, la., has just rendered a decsion which must have a aalutory effect in repressing the abuse. A farmer who had been annoyed beyond endurance by an outrage of this kind, discharged his gun and killed one of the serenading party. He was arrested, tried, and although he asserted that he fired simply to frighten the men, and there was no evidence to show that he intended to harm any of them, he was convicted and sentenced to a term of seven years in a State prison. The present decision, upon appeal, reverses the result, the judge speaking of the provocation as extreme, and evidently believing that it would have justified a deliberate killing. In Cashmere 30,000 shawls are made yearly. It takes three men a year to weave a pair. It takes ten goats to furnish the material for one and a-hali yards square.