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Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2614, 25 May 1877, Page 2

These was a fair attendance at the Academy of Music last evening on the occasion of the fourth exhibition on the

Tliames of the Hibernica. The views elicited frequent tokens of admiration from tjie audience. The comedy " Kitty O'Connbr " was substituted for " Barney Callaghan," the one that has been performed on the, previous nights. Miss Poinier and Mr Cohan were as good as ever, and the former was loudly applauded for her rendering of the song, ,";The Beautiful Girls of Killarney." .....Mr ■Dtfn Howard's .wooden shoe dance" was loudly applauded, as was his rendering of the " Dutch Policeman." Mr Harry Nicholson was, immense in " Jepsey Gee,"-V Old Sarah Walker," and. "Uncle Joe." Mr Hyde's performances on the piano were of no mean order. At the conclusion of the performance a grand allegorical representation of the" Origin of the Harp " was exhibited. -■■>There will be a change of programme this evening, and to-morrow an afternoon performance for the benefit of ladies and children will be given, to which children will be admitted, for 6d and adults for Is. r ~

A notification appears in another column from Mr C. T. Wren, that he has resumed business as a seedsman in premises next the Bank of New Zealand, Queen ,stree.t, Auckland. Mr Wren is well known as a '■, highly successful: .nurseryman and seed-grower as well v as' importer; and his name; is-a.guarantee! that seeds purchased from him will b.e of good quality. .He lias.been appointed agent for Anrie's patent chemical manures, the merits of which as fertilisers are pretty well known. The advertismebts in another column give full, particulars; .

To-day a rather serious accident happened to; a young man named James Walker, who is one of the tributers in Le Manquais' section of the Kurahui Hill United, and the son of Mr J. W. Walker, the manager of that mine, '_ • It appears that Walker was running out a track of quartz, and when on the tramway leading from the long tunnel^ to the tip the truck got., off the rails and fell over on its side, jamming his leg under it. The leg was completely broken. Some men employed on the tramway picked tip the unfortunate man, and conveyed him to his father's house, which is close by, and Dr Payne was soon in attendance.

The N. Z. Herald states that on Wednesday there was a clean sheet at the Auckland Police Court, and that the day will be remembered in after ages and by future generations as a red letter day in the. Court's annals. Mr A. Beetham, the presiding magistrate; congratulated the Police upon th*e fact, which he considered highly gratifying. The Clerk of the Court (Mr Cunningham) had endeavoured to" procure a pair of white gloves, but was unable to get a pair to suit. After these little amenities Mr Cunningham said he had been connected with the Court for twenty years'*, and -during that period a blank docket had not been presented more than four or five times at the outside. : .. ■

The last fiction, says, the Home News, which the Papal party have shaped into language is that England is meditating armed intervention on the part of the Holy Father, in the hopes of getting Sicily, and that Queen Victoria is on the eve of conversion :to the Russian Church!

A caxogram: from Melbourne of May 23rd says :—The'Assembly was adjourned for re-election of the Ministry. Sir Gavan Duffy has been elected Speaker. It is stated that Sir James McCulloch intends taking a seat on the Opposition cross benches. Mr D. Gillies leads the Oppo sition. ■:.;"'.'•

A weiteb in Truth, a new; journal recently established in Londen in opposition to The World, says r-r-The barbarous practice of requiring ladies to wear low dresses at Her Majesty's Drawing-rooms, is, no doubt, the cause of many deaths from consumption, and cannot be defended on the score of either health or beauty. There is, however, no reason why gentlemen should go to levees in "short dresses," and I was both shocked and amused the other day at St. James's Palace to see a youthful member of a well known banking firm attired in a kilt, for no reason that I am aware of, except that some of his ancestors were born in Scotland. The Prince of Wales does not, so far as lam aware, require any gentleman attending his leve.es to come in a scanty costume of this nature, and as a decent levee dress may be purchased at a small cost, there really is no excuse for naturelised Englishmen who appear before His Royal Highness without their trousers, however appropriate the dress may be to those who have a national right to wear it. .

A London paper says:—" Thanks to the sympathy which Mr Valentine Baker has received in very high quarters, , his endeavour; to obtain officers in England for the service of the Sultan has been very successful. Not less than 150 half-pay English officers have offered their services in the event of war breaking out between Russia and Turkey,, and Abdul Hamid has expressed his willingness to give commands to several of them. Six of them have recently left London to take command of Turkish cavalry regiments. We presume that, like Hobart Pasha, they will no longer receive pay from this country."

' Owing to the recent scandal the name of Madame Patti has been in every paper. "Atlas" in the World asks :~What is Madame Patti's age, and to what country ;does she belong? There would seem to be considerable doubt on both these subjects. It has been frequently stated, since, the recent scandal, that the diva is in her thirty-seventh year; but this does not seem to be correct, as Vapereau and all the biographies agree that she was born in the spring of '43, though somewhat at variance as to the month. She is generally believed to have been born of Italian parents at Madrid, although there are not a few Americans who are firmly convinced "the American nightingale" first raw the light in the States. The last story I have heard is that the Marquise—we must not say the ex-Marquise yet, I suppose—is really the daughter of a Jew dealer in Houndsditch, and that she was sent to spend some years in America in order to efface the East«end connection, and to give her that exotic air English people so much approve ,of in singers, it being a well-known fact that no Englishwoman can hold a candle to a foreigner on. .'the operatic staged What countrywoman, then, is Madame [ Patti—Spanish, or Italian, or American ? Her marriage certificate—she was married at the French Consulate herein London, I believe — would clear up the matter, French law being very much more particular than our own in such matters.

A TLA.N is, according to the Now York Tribune, on foot for providing a place for ex-President Grant, which promises to

secure him a dignified position, and t° keep him still in one sense, in the service of the country. It has long been desired, when the rest of the national debt came to be refunded, that the syndicate assuming the work should be under A mericaii control. It is now proposed that some strong New York bank be reorganised as a national bank, with a capital of from ten to twenty millions, for the purpose of conducting the further operations for refunding the national debt, with representatives in the board of directors all the members of the present syndicate, and also from the houses .of some- wellknown mercantile and financial firm. The plan proceeds upon the idea that General Grant could be chosen and^ would/accept thei presidency of this bank;'' This would give him an assured income, with an occupation "sufficiently dignified •■rid agreeable."

It was John Brown of Edinburgh, it is said, who, referring to literary stimulants, altered Johnson's celebrated recipe of " claret for boys, port for men, brandy for heroes," into " Scott for boys, Thackeray for-men, Shakespeare for heroes."

It is noted in a Scotch paper that " on Sunday instrumental music was for the first time introduced -into the West United Presbyterian Church, Alloa. This is the''first Presbyterian church in" Clackmannanshire into the Service of which instrumental music has been admitted."

Professor Guthrie, F. 8.5., recently gave a free science 'L lecture at South Kensington Museum, his subject being "Waves."" After a clear exposition, with experiments, of some of the principal facts known, with regard to the wave motion of water and air (in relation to sound), he went on to speak of a subject in connection with this, which, he said, has occupied his attention for someyears, He floated a thin indiarubber, ball filled with air and water. Kear this he held a large tuning-fork, set in vibration. The floating ball followed .the fork. The question he raised was, "Is. this the at-i traction ? ", His reply was; a decided negative. He had in the course of the lecture explained how each oscillation of a wave was followed by a reflection. Here, he argued,-the reflection pushed on the further side of the ball. Me'jjelieved that soon we shall learn there is no such thing as attraction—that the apparent pull will be found to be a push in the opposite direction. The approach, as in the case of the ball, need not necessarily be called attract ion, and it was better in all cases to substitute the word approach, which was a fact, for attraction, which was a theory Times. .