MISCELLANEOUS,

Tuapeka Times, Volume V, Issue 228, 13 June 1872, Page 8

MISCELLANEOUS,

The gold obtained from a crushing of 211 tons by the Star of the East Company was lodged at the Cromwell Bank on 80th nib. when the quantity was ascertained to bo 12S ozs. 16 dwfcs. Cromwell " Argus."'

The " Wairai'apa Mercury " is responsible for the following :—": — " A marriage ceremony was fco take place at Mr. Liicena'ss dairy station, Feafcherston, on Tnursday last. The guests were all present — the bride was dressed according to the latest fashion — the breakfast was ready — the prisst was there to perform the ceremony without delay, but no bridegroom. They waited and waited, but he proved to be a ' a laggard in love,' and tlie ceremony w:us not psrf ormed . However, the guests were not going to be deprived of their fun, and so they had a dance, etc., and did not adjourn till an early hour of the following morning."

A full share in Beard's claim, Ilawkin's Hll, Tambaroora, New South Wales, has been sold for £10,000. C. ivoll's dividends are said to have been something likej6Ls,ooo.

A copy of the " Constitution of the French Republic of 1794," about to he sold in Paris, is said not to be unique as regards its bind'ivj;. A public library iv Bury St. Edmunds containing an octavo volume consisting of a full report of the trial and execution of of one Corder, who murdered a younsr woman named Martin, at a spot called Red Barn, in a neighbouriu j village, about forty years ago, together with an account of his life and other cognate matter. This volume is bound in the murderer's skin, which was tanned for the purpose by a surgeon in the town. The skeleton was prepared for the Suffolk General Hospital, and is still to be seen there. The human leather is darker and more mottled than vellum, of a rather coarse-textured surface, with holes in it like those in a pigskin, but smaller and more sparse. A good deal of interest attached to the murder at the time, as its discovery is mainly owing to a dream. English books with this kind of " hilling" are much. less rare than is popula"ly supposed. A correspondent informs us that about twenty ypars ago he happened to be in a bookbinder's shop on St. Michael's Hill, Bristol when he was shown several volumes which had been sent from the Bristol Law Library lor repair. Those were all bound in human skin, specially tanned for tho purpose; and some curious details were furnished of several local culprits executed in that oitv, who were flayed after execution to furnish forth the leather for binding together some contemporary legal lore.

It is satisfactory to notice, pays the Waikouaiti " Herald," that arrangements are now progressing to work the reefs in the Dunback ranges in an earnest and spirited manner: Messrs. G-eo. Puncau and Glover's party have already placed machinery on the ground, find there is quite an accession of population in the neighbourhood, who havn taken up claims and have sot in to work zealously. All impediments to working tie prospectors' claim of the Shag Valley Quartz Mining Co. am now removed, and we understand that operations will be commenced afc once by machinery being placed on the ground.

Thu following anecdote, told by an American writer, 'may be aptly quoted : — A friend, of tho writer's was travelling oub in the West, and was, as he expressed \t { tf ratbep dry after a. ha.r4

day's ride," aud stepped into a tavern to get a glass of liquor. "What was my surprise, sir, when twelve men, who were sitting around, stopped up, unasked, and " 'lowed they.would take sugar iv thar'n. 1 '" My friend paid for the twelve " drinks," as he found it was in strict accordance with the custom of the country, but he never went back to that tavern again. A jocular old Californian judge had a. much more effectual way of getting clear of those troublesome hangers-on. The judge was not inimical to a "horn," aud was" therefore frequently in barrooms with his friends iv all parts of San Francisco, where — -in early times even more than now — drinking customs were very prevalent. On " step-ping-in " he would meet a large party of noted "loafers," who, of course, a la American, hailed the judge with a view to be asked to " step up." Nor were they disappointed. In a rich husky tone of voice his Honour would call out, " Let's all take a d.ink," and all did so ; and then, after finishing, he would add in an equally hospitable tone, " And now let's all pay for it ! " Then, as he laid down his bit, he would walk to the door, chuckling at the blank dismay of the numerous thirsty souls who expected to drink at his expense. The "Birmingham Daily Post" contains the following : — '* A funny little society has just been started in Birmingham — a society of Jews to resist being converted by the society which exists to try to convert them. Which society, in this ludicrous contest, will pull with the greater force we cannot tell ; but it will evidently be what the Americans call ' a good time ' for the Jews over whom the two societies fight. For the Jews' society alleges that its enemy converts poor Jews by feeding them, and therefore it proposes to feed them too — good news for the objects of charity, who may expect to be fed with two spoons instead of one. We should have thought that there would be rather a competition to get rid of such easy-going proselj tes than to retain them ; but there is no accounting tor -taste ; and upon this matter of taste, both the conveiting society and the society for resisting conversion are agreed. Only wo can hardly see how a poor Jew can be expected to make up his mind, for as long as he halts between two opinions he will be the object of tender solicitude and the recipient of bouuty, while as soon as he announces that he has fixed his faith, the interest in him will die away, and the bounty go to operate upon the heart and conscience of some other oscillating individual. If such a contest; could be seriously kept up, we should expect to see a race of professional convertites, similar to the repulsive little Moor whom Epusseau describes as going through the process of conversion from the errors of Mahometauism in all the monasteries of Italy. The Christian society is, however, anything but flourishing, and the Jews' society promises to die of inanition." "Poor, weak, and erring man," says a religious newspaper, <k Vlmt is he ! " In this country he is either a Democrat or a Republican. Very frequently also a canting journalist of the pious sort. — " San Francisco News-Letter."

Tho business of writing introductory letters for persons designing to visit Europe, is about to be started by an enterprising New Yorker.

Haytiens are waiting until their coffee. crop is harvested, so that they may have money enough to engage in another insurrection.

An lowa damsel having offended a gentleman at a leap-year party, ho }'s about to send his big sister to demand an apology.

An ingenious peddler follows a revivalist through Kansas, and after the latter has collected and addressed a large crowd, mounts the rostrum and sells his prize candy. A filial Detroit negro bought a coffin and cemetery lot, and then, in order not to waste his money, undertook to provide business by dosing his father with a poisoned whiskey-sling.

The Apaches are making numerous attacks on trains in central Arizona, and have run large quantities of stock from the Hassiyauipi Valley. Several of the Indians have been killed while on these raids. There are few, if any, schools or institutions the curriculuon of which comprises astronomy, in which the students of that science are not taught that thero is no evidence whatever that tha earth's motion around its axis was ever faster or slower than at the present time. In a very interesting and instructive article* entitled. " Our Chief Timepiece Losing Time," Mr. Proctor combats this proposition "It is no idle dream," he says, " but a matter of .absolute certainty, that though slowly, still very surely, our tenestial globe is losing its rotattory movement." This fact has been ascertained by a comparison of the times when ancient eclipses actually occurred with the times when they ought to have occurred, if in former ages the moon moved at the same rate as it does now. '■ The length of day," says Mr. Proctor, " is now more by about l-81th part of a secoud than it was 2,900 years ago. At this rate of change, our day would merge into a lunar month in the course of thirty-six thousand million years. But, after a while, the change will take place more slowly, and a trillion or so of years, wiil elapse before tho full change is effected,"