General News.

Thames Star, Volume XV, Issue 4707, 7 February 1884, Page 2

General News.

It is announced that the largest stake ever run for is to be contested at Sandown Park, England, in July, 3886. The added money will be £10,000, and the distance a mile and a quarter. It is a pity that such a race should be run over so short a distance. If it were intended to test the stamina of the horses of the world, the distance should hare been at least two miles.

The Panama Canal is likely to be con* structed with locks after all, in spite of. Count de Lessepa' determination to the contrary. His own overseer of the works has ascertained that there is a very considerable tide in the Pacific, although.the tide in the Gulf of Mexico is of little account. It so happens, moreover, that when it is low water at one end, it is high, water at the other. The consequence will be, if there is no lock, that there will be a current of from fire to six knots an hour in the.canal, and to render the channel available at all times of the tide it will be necessary to increase its depth by twenty feet. The entire expense will be enormous, and far in excess of what a couple of locks would cost.

An important discovery of asphalt is said to hare been made and practically tested with extraordinary satisfactory results. The deposit is in the nature of a lake in the Isle of Trinidad, on the South American coast. This asphalt, it is asserted, makes a street as hard as a stone, and it does not soften or crack under the rays of the sun. For two years it has been used in Washington, and is found far superior to the old mixture of tar, sand, and asphalt, which the city used some time ago. The lake fills the flat top of a mountain, and is black, smooth, and hard enough to walk on; when a strip is dug out, the bottom gradually rises, and soon the surface is level again. Thousands of tons have been taken away, and the supply seems inexhaustible.

If accounts are to bo credited, there are worse plagues than the rabbits. At Deniliquin (says the Melbourne Leader) the grass is disappearing through the effects of drought and grasshoppers. 11 Although the grasshopper visitation," (he Pastoral Times writes, "has occurred at a later period of the year than usual, it is more numerous and more destructive than the average plague. Out on the plains the grass has been cut down to the ground, and is blowing in clouds with every change of the wind. The grasshoppers are there in myriads, and a horse will not canter against the moving hosts" of insects." In the town the gardens are suffering considerably. Every green thing is attacked—leaves of trees, vegetable climbers, and fruit being vigorously absorbed. Nothing is spared, and the devastation increases day after day. T?rom down the river we learn that t«p vines and fruit trees at Tumudgeries have not escaped the plague; and from out towards Pretty, Pine the same monotonous tale is told of myriads of grasshoppers, and consequent destruction of herbage; similar news comes from Conargo way and the Albury road. The pest ia certainly a great one, and there seems no probability of its decrease until nothing is left for sustenance,"

At Xxupps famous ordnance factory there are 8500 men employed in the cast steel works. The works contain 298 steam boilers, engines with an indicated horse power of 110,000, and 79 steam hammers from 2c*t. to 50 tons each. Three hundred pieces of ordnance are produced every month, and 1800 metric tons of coal are used daily. The worka ! eJ£ mi.\ eß of railway, 24 locomotives, and 700 ra.lway trucks. The fire brigade bas eight fire engines and accessories. Hire thousand three hundred miners are employed in getting coal and iron in the various minea belonging to the firm. , Deecendents of Martin Luther'tyoun*. est daughter, Margareta, have been discovered in Denmark. It was long gupposed that the reformer's family had become extinct.

Canada has the largest national debt of any country in proportion to it 3 people. Fues ASD Bugs, Baetles, insects, ronoiiM, •nts, becMmgs, rats, mice, gopher*, jackrabbit,, cleared out, by « Bough on B»ti.— Moies Me»- & Co., Sydney, General Agenti,