General News.

Thames Star, Volume XVII, Issue 5255, 20 November 1885, Page 2

General News.

Attention has been prominently drawn to the fact that an unusually large pro* portion of colonial students are alumni at ene or other of the home universities. At Edinburgh, for instance, it is stated there are 351 men from India and the colonies, including close upon 100 from Australia. The most remarkable characteristic of colonial students is their splendid physique. They are almost to a man magnificent athletes, and they count among their number some of the best walkers, foot runners, swimmers, cricketers, and footballers in Scotland. It has been observed that while Australian students do not enter actively in University political warfare, yet at rectorial elections their rote is usually giren pretty solidly for the conservative candidate. It appears that the law on divorce is more liberal iv Switzerland than in any other country; and the authorities of Zurich, alarmed at the rapidity with which married people are unmarrying themselves, have adopted a practical plan of reconciling partners who ask to be freed of the matrimonial yoke on the usual ground of incompatibility of temper, which plan is declared to be almost always successful. A husband and wife demanding divorce on this ground are now ordered to be confined for a fortnight in a town on an island in the lake, where they are quartered together in one bed, one chair, one knife, one plate, one cup, &c, so that in their rising up and down, in their eating and drinking, in their seeking of the recreation of "balmy sleep," they are absolutely dependent upon each other's courtesy and consideration. It is declared that in nearly every such ease, the quarrelsome couples who submit to this regime became reconciled to one another by the end of the first week of their incarceration. Neither Austria nor Switzerland has yet intimated any intention to join in the general scramble for the Pacific Islands, but both exhibit symptoms that the colonising mania has seized them. Money is being subscribed to fit out exploring expeditions with an eye to colonisation. Austria will most probably, in the first instance, try the dark continent. In Switzerland the movement has not yet reached a stage sufficiently advanced to reveal its probable direction.