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Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 3, Issue 926, 16 November 1881, Page 1 (Supplement)

Recently a loud noise was heard in the mountains near Missoula,- Montana, U.S., the report resembling the firing of cannon and reverberations. The noise was caused by the falling of a high peak on one of the mountains, and was heard some distance off. Thousands of tons of rock, the foundations of which had been crumbling for ages, came down in the grand crash.

Ex-soldiers are largely employed on the railroads in Franco. A return issued by the Minister of Public Works shows that 182,983 persons are employed on the railways in France, of whom 67,579 live men who have been \\l the army. The companies prefer former sokljers, from their habits of discipline and punctuality. In the total are 13,534 women. There is a lively notation jn Saxony against civil marriage, based upon its dptrjmental effects upon the manufacture of black cloth. Under the religious regime it was fashionably imperative upon all guests at marriages, baptisms, and burials to be encased in black, but, with the absence of religious ceremony, this necessity has been coritespowlmgly ignored, Hence this religio-cominercial antagonism to the spread of civil marriage.

A curious action has just been decided in the American Law Courts, A member of a church in Indiana subscribed by a written promise to give £lO to a collection on a Sabbath day in the church, but ultimately refused to pay the subscription. The matter was taken fo Court, and it Jias been (jepided that the church could make pllfiCtions on the Sabbath, but could pot hold a man to a contract made on that day.

A pigeon race from Spain to Belgium tpok place lnsfc July, 380 boipg liberated at Bilboo (situated on the poast of the jay of Biscay, and distant from Brussels as the crow flies about 700 miles), at-5 o'clock in the morning, the wind blowing from the south-east, and the weather,very favourable, The winner of-the first prize arrived at 13 minutes •■past 10. on tho following morning, and the last prize-taker (38th), was registered at 12 minutes to C,p,m. Tho -velocity attained by, the highest winner was rather more than 800 yards, and that of the last was about 600 yards per minute, h