General News.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XIII, Issue 1019, 27 April 1869, Page 3

General News.

An English paper says : —“ An instance of the intimate relations between the climatology of a country and its forests is afforded by a change which has been brought about in the climate of Egypt. For a long time, as is well-known, rain has never fallen in Upper Egypt at all. and in the Delta only on five or six days of the year. Some years ago, however, Mehemet Ali planted 200,000 trees on the Delta, and they have now attained a considerable size. The result is that the number of rainy days has gradually increased from five or six every year to forty with the prospect of attaining a still greater proportion hereafter.”

Speaking of beards in the new House of Commons, a writer in the Illustrated Times says “It struck us at first sight that we bad never seen such a mass of rough, rugged, shaggy, unkempt men together before and though the feeling became somewhat mitigated when we came to look more closely at them as they sat in order before us on the benches, we have not got quite rid of our first impression. Much of this apparent ugliness of the members, we suspect, is to be attributed to their hirsuteness. There are no more ugly faces here, we suspect, than would be found in any other average assembly. But then their countenances are so concealed by beards, monstaches, and whiskers, that it takes a long time to discover what their features really are. Time was, and not long ago, when there were no beards in the House. Mr. Muntz, of Birmingham, was the first member who sported a beard ; and for several years that beard was unique and the observed and wonder of all observing strangers. He died in 1857, and up to his death the House was beardless. Soon afterwards, though, beards began to crop out, and every year since they have increased in number — and this year the number is greater than ever. Indeed, we believe that considerably more than half the members are bearded like the pard. And then these beards, as a rule, are not well kept—not clipped and trimmed like your French and Italian beards —but are left to grow as nature wills, loose, shaggy, luxuriant, wild—like oldfashioned hedge-rows, such as we used to see before farmers discovered that good farming required that the hedge-rows should be kept down—and this increases the difficulty of discovering the true features of the men. As we have said, when we come by observation to penetrate these hairy veils, we shall most likely find that the new members are not really specially ugly.”