General News.

Thames Star, Volume XV, Issue 4694, 23 January 1884, Page 2

General News.

A sli^ckins case of assault on' a girl 11 years of. age-is reported from Newcastle (N.S.W.). The assailant was a music master, and he lost his temper because the child did not play correctly. He attacked her savagely, tore the skin off her arms, pulled out handfuls of her hair, and so brutally ill-used the child that it will be some time before she recovers. Nothing will excuse him (says a contem* porary) but the fact of his being a music teaeker... . .-. •,■ V .:-..■.> ■:. ■— ..:■•■.-.•■<.'■.•■■.■>-•■■

Truth gives an extraordinary story of brewers attempting tp "boycott" a teetotal curate at Burton-on-Trent. The clergyman, who has for some timebeen attached to Christ Church in that town, has always been an ardent advocate of temperance principles, and recently he published a pamphlet on the liquor traffic, in consequence of which, one of the "leading brewers'' has- withdrawn his subscription to the Parochial Curates' Fund, and it is stated that others have threatened to withdraw all their subscript tions in the parish unless the obnoxious curate is dismissed. Under this pressure the vicar has given the curate notice that he has been compelled to ask the Bishop's permission to remove him. It will be interesting to learn how the Bishop of Lichfield acts in this case.

A Philadelphia Company is having constructed a large street car with a patent spring motor attached. The car will be put upon one of the prominent city passenger railways rof Philadelphia, within a month. When all the springs are wound and the cat is in a condition to start, the calculation is that there is stored a power capable of propelling a loaded car eight miles with ease, and that this power can be increased or diminished or entirely shut off, as may be desired. The machi* nery by which the motor is controlled and applied to the propelling of the car is rery simple, and easily manipulated by the operator, who is upon the platform aboTe. The power is in eight 'spring shafts, attached to the axle, each shaft having tea coil springs wound around it, and each spring is three inches wide, three thirtyseconds of an inch thick, and -sixty feet long. The experimental car will cost fire thousand dollars.

A century since the Hawaiians were savages and cannibals. Now there are over 300 telephone wires in use in the city of Honolulu, and the application of the telephone is made throughout the island on the plantations. Some of the planters are now cutting their cane at night with the aid of the electric light. New' York swindler* netted £123,000 lately by cutting the telegraph wires between the racecourse and the city and sending telegrams of false results of the running; confederates in the city drawing the money from betting clubs. The police were unable to trace the perpetra* tors of the swindle. ;

To show the progress of foreign navies, it is stated that the Tsukusta, a Japanese gunboat, mounting 25-ton guns, reeentlj touched at Malta, and, if report says true, she could soon have reduced Valette to ruius, and that too at a range of over four miles, at which distance she would her* self be safe from any injury, so far as the guns now mounted at Malta are concerned.

A massive silver model of a Victorian gold mine has been sent to Calcutta.