General News.

Thames Star, Volume XVII, Issue 5180, 24 August 1885, Page 3

General News.

A Massachusetts correspondent oalls our attention to the publication, about thirty years ago, to a very successful cholera cure, introduced in this way : The captain of an emigrant ship, coming from Europe, had lost many of his passengers by cholera, although freely dosing all who were sick with (he remedies jtben usual. At last be made a prescription^ his own —one teaspoonful; of red pepper and a tiblespoonful of salt to a half pint of boiling water ; lhis to be given as hot as possible to every patient when first taken. It is said that this simple remedy acted as a charm, curing all the cases on board that ship, upd attaining considerable general popularity during the time of that

cholera visitation. Twenty years ago the diamond fields of South Africa were unknown. Now Kirn* berley alone rejoices in a population which takes annually a million sterling in wages, all earned in digging out the precious gems. During the past fifteen years about £40,000,000 worth of diamonds have been won from these fields, representing when cut and offered for sale in the jewellers' shop considerably more than double that vast sum. It is not generally known that nutmegs are poisonous, but Dr Palmer writes to the American Journal of Pharmacy detailing the case of a lady who nearly died from eating a nutmeg and a half, and he points out the fact that the toxic effects of the drug are described in both the National and Uuited States Dispensatories. . A scheme for connecting Pans and Lon don by a pneumatic tube has been devised, by which mails could be, it is said, conveyed between the two capitals in one hour. The tube would be of cast iron, the lengths of which would be connected togetber by indiarubber junctions. The carriage, designed, is a wire receptacle covered with asbestos cloth, and made in such a manner that the friction and the beat arising from such friction would be minimised. The compressed air to give the carriage its motive*power would be generatfd by a thirty-horse-power engine. It remains to be seen whether this last phase of Channel tunnelling will get beyond the paper stage. The Pall Mall Gazette says that Mr Gladstone end Lord. Salisbury are both intensely earnest, high-spirited men, who act from the loftiest motives, and both contrasts in this respect most favorably with the ruck of their colleagues. To Lord Eeaconsfield politics were a mere game. To Lord Salisbury they are as ■eriousas thoDayof Judgment. And Lord Salisbury also resembles Mr Gladstone in one quality of statemanship. He possesses a great fund of civic courage. vMr Herbert Gladstone, M.P, thus describes himself in the new edition of "Dod's Parliamentary Companion":— "A Liberal in favor of just and equal laws for Ireland, and the settlement of purely Irish matters in Ireland by Irish, men." • Since Oldum's fatal leap from Brooklyn bridge, the police hare been kept pretty busy, a number of persons having been suddenly awakened to the fact that there was one last great folly which they bad not y«t commiited. One poor German out of work, and with nine children, saw in it a pleasant means of suicide, and had actually reached the upper railing, when his legs were firmly grasped by a 2001b policeman. His story of distress proved true, and being admirably told in one of the great dailies, within two days he received £130 in cash, endless baskets of provisions and three good offers of employment, According, to a paper read before the Philosophical Society of Glasgow, by Mr A. Williamson,the total area of the coalfields of China Proper js about 400,000 square miles. Both the Shansi and Heenan coalfields are greater than that of the aggregate of the principal coal producing countries of Europe, and in other districts of North China the coalfields are said to be seven times larger than all those of Great Britain. '1 he coal is of various descriptions, and it is said that iron ores are found in all parts in close proximity to the coal. •