General News.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 4014, 9 November 1881, Page 3

General News.

The wife of an artillery officer lately sent to Shyet Myo in Burmab, describes the climate by narrating an incident which sounds like a bint for Baron Muncbausen or Jules Verne, but is gravely told as a fact in natural history : " A friend gave my lmsbund some owl's eggs, which he left in a plate in the drawing-room, the coolest place in the house, being in the centre and surrounded by other rooms. The eggs were on a table in the corner of the room, and were forgotten. Some days after I was sitting there working, and, hearing an extraordinary noise, looked round to Bee what it could be. It came from the plate in the corner, and I saw One of the eggs moving, and sliglilJy chipped. Presently out came a little owlet! The other eggs followed suit, till they were all hatched. It does seem ludicrous, and impossible to any one who has not Hvpd in such a climate, when the thermometer at the time I write is never under 100 deg., and generally 105 deg." About the eighteenth century a West India captain brought some mahogany logs as ballast for his ship, and gave them to his brother, Pr Gibbons, an imincnt physician, who was then building a house. The wood was thrown aside as too hard for the workmen's tools. Some time after his wife wanted n candle-box. The doctor thought of the West Indian wood, and out of that the box was made. Its color and polish tempted the doctor to have a bureau made of the same material, and this was thought so beautiful that it was shown to all his. friends. The Duchess of Buckingham, who came to look «t it, begged wood enough to make another bureau for herself. Then the demand arose for more, and Honduras mahogany became a common article of trade.

The pins used in the United States are made entirely by fourteen factories, some-g what scattered as to locality, but cbieflj in New England. There annual pro'duclion for several years past has been 7,000,000,000 pins. This number has not varied much for some years, the demand remaining about the same. A few of this great number are swallowed by children, a number are bent up in schools and placed in vacant and inviting chairs, and some get into crocks of floors, and the rest for the most part are scattered along the byeways and highways, where they hare dropped from dresses, and been left to work their way into the earth. Ihe raw material—the brass and iron wire from which American pins are made—is made by the iron mills of that country, and much of the machinery of their manufacture is of American invention and patent. To the minds of young ladies about to marry, the wedding dress unquestionably presents itself as a consideration of the utmost importance, and we can well believe that the prospect of any shortcoming in the material or make of that essential garment is especially calculated to appal the female soul. Some-.&nch dreadful apprehension must have inspired with dreadful resolve the fair yonng German maiden who was recently arraigned before the District Court of Dortmund, for! stealing a watch from a youthful handicraftsman of that city. The person she had robbed proved to be her own affianced lover, who, upon discovering his loss, had forthwith notified it to the Dortmund police, without the faintest notion that the theft bad been committed by his betrothed bride. Due investigation resulted in the discovery of the stolen property in a pawnbroker's shop, where the damsel in question had pledged it for a trifling sum. When brought, to trial she avowed her guilt with many tears and sobs, alleging that, unable to purchase her wedding dress, and being ashamed to confess her poverty to her future husband, she had purloined his watch with the object of realising,a sufficient amount by its hypothecation to equip herself decently for " the happiest moment of her life." It is pleasant to know that this piteous confession was responded to it) a gallant and magnanimous spirit by the despoiled bridegroom, who spoke up like a man in Court, declaring that " the prisoner was and would ever te his only love, and that he would marry her out: of hand if the Judge would consent together at liberty." Without a moment's delay Ibe tribunal annulled the arraignment, and the generous lover carried off his liberated larcenist in triumph. She was a little girl who wasn't fond of her arithmetic. She took it into her head to read the Bible; she got along very well for awhile, but suddenly threw the book down, saying : "There, 1 don't want to read any more of it." " Why, what's the matter P" asked her mamma. " Because they had to study arithmetic there," was the reply. " Just hear this, ' And the Lord commanded them to multiply on the face of the earth.'" And there was no more Bible for her.