MISCELLANEOUS.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 380, 19 October 1868, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

The condition of the milk supplied to the inhabitants of London has been investigated by the British Medical Journal, and a second report upon it appears this week. According to the data furnished by a series of chemical analyses by Dr. Divers, F.C.S.,it seems that out of sixteen samples of milk, purchased in Bayswater, Kensington, and Holborn districts, only one proved to be in its original state, all the others being more or less watered' and deprived of cream. One - specimen, for example, proved to be nearly half water ; another to have lost more than half its cream, besides being diluted with water. A charge of fivepence per quart for two of the samples was found to be no guarantee to customers willing to pay the extra penny that they can assure to themselves, by so doing, a supply of pure milk.

Th k American correspondent of the Times states that the present Congress is known as pre-eminently a Congress of jobs. There are now pending, in various stages of unfinished legislation, bills appropriating no less than 268,'250,000 dollars, to various railways and navigation companies, the profit of which is intended to go into private pockets ; and besides these there are also pending bills making all manner of land and money grants for every conceivable object. Every man who visits Washington seems to consider that he has a carte blanche to rob the Treasury. A Census of Queensland was taken on March 2. The returns are not yet fully made up, but the population is over one hundred thousand ; it was only thirty thousand on April 7, 1861. The population of Brisbane, the muuicipdlity, is stated to be fifteen thousand. Ipswich, five thousand and twenty-six ; Rockhampton about two hundredmore ; Maryborough not quite three thousand; The population of the province of Otago, New Zealand, is returned as forty-eight thousand four hundred and eighty, according to the census of 1867: — twenty-nine thousand eight hundred and nineteen luales, eighteen thousand six hundred and sixty-one females ; twelve thousand four hundred and five at the goldfields, thirty-six thousand and seventy-five in the rest of the province. The population of Dunedin city and harbour is returned as twelve thousand seven hundred and seventy-six. The congregation of the ancient church of Wharram Percy, Yorkshire, have been somewhat surprised to find a breed of foxes in possession. An air drain for ventilation from the outside has been used as an earth, and by this means access has been gained to the pulpit, beneath which an old fox and her litter of five cubs are, except when I unearthed during Divine service, com-

fortably domiciled. The novelty has been communicated to Morgan, Lord Middleton's huntsman, who declares that during his forty years' experience he never before heard of such a circumstance, and never met with a finer brood of foxes.