GENERAL NEWS.

Tuapeka Times, Volume II, Issue 100, 8 January 1870, Page 6

GENERAL NEWS.

The reported massacre of Roman Catholic missionaries in Western China has been fully confirmed. Twenty missionaries are said to have fallen victims in the province of Szechuen. France possessed 30,000 more idiots in 1869 than she did in 1856. In 1861 there was one idiot, lunatic, or cretino, for every 444 persons; in 1867 the progress was 1 for every 420. Queen Isabella has fallen into disgrace with her friends at St. Cloud, owing to her having "taken back " the unpopular Marfori. He is now the angel of the household. Mr. Jefferson Davis, the late President of the Southern Confederation, left Southampton for the United States in the steamer Baltimore. The " Dublin Express " says that among the first contiibutions paid to the Irish Church Sustentation Fund were £2000 each from Earl Derby and Mr. H. W. Peak, M.P. The immense numbers of newspapers seized by the French Court are boiled down to pulp, and afterwards made into pasteboard. According to Dr. James Johnston, 800,000,000 of men smoke different sorts of tobacco ; 400,000 smoke opium and its compounds ,- 300,000 hemp and haschisch, 100,000 betel, and 40,000 the American plant cocoa. A terrible conflagration is reported from Siberia. Cuiseyski, one of the principal towns, having 40,000 inhabitants, has been completely destroyed. It is said the disaster originated in the neighbouring forests, which were consumed by the flames, and that the coal mines are included in the general devastation. It is stated that Mr. Gladstone has written a letter to the Limerick Amnesty Association. He says that, while the Government desires to carry clemency to the Fenian convicts to the furthest limit the supreme consideration of public safety permits, it is their decided conclusion that to advise the release of the prisoners would be contrary to their duty* as guardians of the public security and peace. According to the Board of Trade returns for August, the value of British exports for last year was £17,364,000, against £16,427,000 for the same month the year before. The exports for the first eight months of last year were £126,244,000, against £116,770,000 in the same period of 1868. Mr. J. R. Seeley, Professor of Latin in University College, London, has been appointed to the chair of Modern History at Cambridge, vacant by the resignation of Canon Kingsley. Professor Seeley, it is understood, though never authoritatively stated, is the author of "Ecce Homo," the book which created a good deal of controversy some time ago. The " Telegraph considers that Mr. Gladstone has done a bold act in giving the chair of Modern History at Cambridge to Professor Seeley. It is no longer any secret that Mr. Seeley is the author of " Ecce Homo ; " and, in the opinion of Lord Shaftesfyury, "Ecce Homo" is " the most mischievous book that was ever vomited out of the jaws of Hell." A gentleman in the district sends us the following table of weights of a hive in his apiary, which hived on June 11. The weight of the skep on July 17 was SOlbs ,• on July 24, 691bs ; on July 31, 711bs ; on August 7, 691b5 ; on August 14, 66lbs ; on August 21, 68ilbs ; on August 28, 771bs ; and on September 4, 741bs. — not a bad three months' work, we should say, for one hive of bees. — Scotch paper. The Italian papers state that Lord Bute has presented His Holiness the Pope with a tiara, encrusted with diamonds, costing £35,000. The Pope had scarcely need of any ornamental head-dress, as the ex-Queen of Spain lately compounded for some little peccadilloes by a gift of a diamond- decked tiara, which cost £10,000. Some consternation was created in one of the fashionable draper's shops of Melbourne recently, by the entrance of a detective officer, who, proceeding to one of the shopmen, quietly in-

formed him that he was "wanted." The individual in question, who was at the time attending to a lady, at first tried to laugh off the matter; but being informed that he was charged with wife desertion, and seeing his fair helpmate coraing down the shop to identify him, he at once " caved in." The prisoner's name is Newman, and it appears that he deserted his wife in New Zealand several months ago, leaving her entirely destitute. He was lodged in the watch-house, and would make his appearance before the City Bench on the following Monday. The area of land under pastoral occupation in Victoria is 27,034,784 acres, the total rent paid being £174,334 17s, or 1.55 of a penny per acre. Cardinal Cullen's solemn thanksgiving for the passing of the Irish Church Act was celebrated in Dublin, and sermons were delivered on the subject. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, according to the " Court Journal," gets £500 from " Macmillan" for her article on Byron, besides the sum she is said to have received from the " Atlantic Monthly" for an article on the same subject which appeared at the same time. A native wit once, in a happy moment, applied a nickname to Sir G-eorge Grey, which so neatly hit off one of his Excellency's weakness that it stuck to him ever after, and Governor "Wait-a-bit became the common appellation of Her Majesty's representative throughout Maoridom. The barriers against the passage of the water into the Bitter Lakes having been removed, and the required level having been obtained along the whole extent of the canal, a steamer, with M. de Lesseps on board, has made the passage direct, and without interruption, from Port Said to Suez in 15 hours. The "Wallace Monument, erected on the Abbey Craig, Stirling, Scotland, has at last been completed. The building has cost upwards of £13,000. On Saturday, September 11, at a meeting held in the Golden Lion Hotel, Stirling, it was resolved to take_ steps to erect a monument to King Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn. A provisional committee was appointed. The American schooner yacht Meteor, now lying at Cowes harbour, experienced very heavy weather on her voyage across the Atlantic, and carried away her jibboom and foretopmast. She has arrived too late in the season to take part in any of the matches, and it is said to be the intention of her owner, Mr. Loreland, to proceed to the Mediterranean, after the completion of certain alterations and repairs about to be ma.de by one of the Cowes builders. She is to pass through the Suez Canal into the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean, and to visit China, Japan, and Kampschatka, crossing the Pacific Ocean to San Francisco, and reaching home by Cape Horn and Terra del Fuego. She will thus circumnavigate the globe, and will be the first yacht that has performed that feat. A rather long and continuous wave of earthquake, rather than a shock, was felt in Cromwell on Christmas Day. "It lasted," says the " Argus," " for a minute, and our informant says he was lying on the sofa, and thought at first some one was shaking the side of the house next to him. The wave was also felt at Queenstown, and though earthquakes there are common enough, this one attracted attention owing to its duration."