General News.

Thames Star, Volume XI, Issue 3626, 10 August 1880, Page 2

General News.

The first of the new street "fire alarms " was erected in London recently under the provision of the Metropolitan Board of Works. The "lire alarm" consists of an iron column, about a foot in circumference, not quite as high as a pillar letter-box, and surmounted by a circular box which will contain an electric apparatus. The column is placed after the manner of the pillar-letter boxes in the pavement of the footway, and is painted red. Convenient places, especially points most remote from a fire brigade station, will be selected for the erection of " fire alarms," on which are displayed the words on the iron rim round the circular disc of the box. The key of the latter will be always in the possession of the constable on duty, and on the breaking out of a fire he can, by opening the dial and handling the instrument within in a certain way, communicate instantaneously with the nearest fire station, indicating the street in which the outbreak of fire hat occurred.

There was a neat trick carried out at one of the recent Home elections. During the time polling was going on at Kettering, it was hardly safe to display Tory colours, for if the wearer himself did not suffer, it was odds on the ribbons being torn off. One old-fashioned Tory, though, walked into the middle of the Rads with a good stout piece of oak and a blue rosette as big as a cheese plate. He had not been there three minutes before a couple of roughs went for the ribbons. No sooner had their fingers got a good hold than a couple of howls and a volley, ofstrongish language arose, for old True Blue had carefully mixed up four or five good strong fishhooks with the Tory ribbon, Nobody tried to collar his rosette again that day. It has been stated that the late interview between the Sultan and Mr Laurence Oliphant had reference to a project of English colonization in the Valley of Jordan. The project which is under Bis Majesty's consideration, and to which the interview had reference, is one for the colonization by Jews of a district to the east of Jordan, in the territory formerly occupied by the tribes of Gad and Reuben. This scheme has been under the notice of Turkish public men, who see in it a means of obtaining for the treasury a considerable sum of money, and of bringing at the same time a valuable tract of land under cultivation.

The late Professor Faraday adopted the theory that the natural age of man is one hundred years. The duration of life he « believed to be measured by the time of growth. Id the camel this takes eight, in the horse fire, in the lion four, in the dog two, in the rabit one year. The natural termination is five removes from these several points. Man being twenty years in growing, lives five times twenty years —that is one hundred; the camel v eight years in growing, and lives forty yean; and so with other animals. The man who does not die of sicknes lives everywhere from eighty to one hundred years. The Profeisor divided life into equal halves—growth and decline—and these into infancy, youth, virility and age. Infancy extends to the. twentieth year, youth to the fiftieth, because it is in this period the tissues become firm, virility from fifty to seventy-five, during which the organism remains complete, and at seventy-five old age commences, to last as the diminution of reserved forces is, hastened or retarded.

Intelligence has been received from Constantinople to the effect that the Turkish Government experience, io mnoh d:fficulty in recruiting the ranks of the army that they are releasing criminals from the gaols on condition of their serr* ing in a war against the Greeks in Thessaly and Epirus. Mr Gosoheh and other representatives of the Great Powers have s'rca;;.]- protestedagainstthisaction on the part of the Sultan's advisers..