General News.

Thames Star, Volume XV, Issue 4946, 15 November 1884, Page 3

General News.

It is said that glass is gradually beginning to take the place of wood and iron in the constructiou of bridges in England. The inventor makes blocks of glass which he hardens by a special process. In solidity it is said to leave nothing to be desired The experiments already made hare given surprising results, and the cost is below that of bridges of wood or iron. More over the glass cannot be injured by insects as wood can, nor rusted like iron. The Chinese were the first inventors of printing, the first inventors of gunpowder, and the magnetic needle. They were the first to hatch eggs artificially ; the first to hare chain pumps and artesian wells. Their great wall and great canal were made in the remote ages of the past. Their penal code in two thousand years old, and their Civil Service examinations, which we are just learning to imitate. they have had for the last two thousand yean. When our barbarian forefathers were wandering about the northern coasts of Europe, ignorant of letters or any of the fine arts, the literary Chinaman dressed in silks and satins, was lounging on his sofa drinking tea from painted porcelain cups. The steamer Betriever, says a late num ber of the Panama Star, was engaged in repairing a break in the West Coast of America Telegraph Company's submarine cable, when a whale measuring from 70 to 75 feet in length foaled itself in the wire. In its struggles to get free the cable cut into its right side, the entrails and large quantities of blood issuing from the wound and floating round the ship. In the last dying struggle of the captive it parted the cable and floated away to windward of the steamer. Some days afterwards the EetrieTer returned to pick up the piece of cable in which the whale had been entangled. It was then found that the whale bad drifted away, and that the cable was twisted up in a most carious fashion. In no fewer than six different places it had been bitten through sufficiently to stop all communication.

In the republic of Guatemala, Central America, they have a happy way of making railways without borrowing money or alienating land which should recommend itself to the Government of this colony. A railway is projected between the capital and the port of St. Thomas at a cost of 12,000,000 dollars. To secure its construction the Government has decreed every adult male in the republic a shareholder, the cost of the shares being 40 dollars each. In case a man is too poor to pay cash dowD, the Government will permit him to pay 4 dollars a year for 10 years. The Government collects the money and guarantees the payment of expenses as rapidly as the road is completed.