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Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 762, 12 January 1871, Page 3

Wages op Fakji Laborers. Austria, in 18(>7, the average wages of the farm laborer were £5 a year. The Dutch laborer rarely tastes meat, aud seldom gets as much as 25 cents a day. The Paris workman never has grandchildren ; yet there is a constant influx of boys from the country willing to exchange slow death in the city for slow life in the fields. In Prussia the wages of the farm laborer by the year is from £2 to £3, with board. His food consists of peas, porridge, potatoes, sour milk and vegetables. Meat he gets on holidays, and occasionally of a Sunday. In Saxe-Coburg, the male day laborer, who lives in the house and is fed, receives from £0 to £8 a year; a woman farm worker, from £3 to £4. A few have a hut, and ground enough to grow potatoes for a pig. In Denmark the laborer receives from 7s to 9s a week, works thirteen hours a day, and supports himself. If the employer feeds him, the wages may run from 2s 8d to -Is per week. In Belgium the day laborer earns about lOd a day, and pays a day's work for the weekly rental of his cottage. If fed by the employer, he expects nothing more than sour milk, boiled potatoes and rye bread. In Portugal, a woman works all day for eight cents, a man for ten, living on greens, onions, rice, and chesnuts. In Westphalia wage's are high and liviug sumptuous. The laborers get meat ouce a day, two cups of iager-beei', and coffee at breakfast. Besides his £0 a year, the man gets a pair of boots and three shirts. A woman's wages are £1 a year, a pair of shoes, and cloth for three chemise?. In other German States the laborer is paid in kind or in money ; that is, he can have £1 or a quarter of an ox ; he may take half a lean pig in lieu of 12s, and choose between Bs, or his herring, his salt, and his pot-money for a year. In Prussia, there are two millions of men who work and live in this way. In the whole of Europe there are thirty or forty millions in just this condition. The Gatling Gun Experiments. —The small Gatling gnu of fortytwo one-hundredths of an inch calibre was tried. The gun has ten steeled rifled barrels, and is made of any proper calibre to suit the musket cartridges used by different Governments. It was fired at the high rateof:3so shots a minute. Next day the oneinch gun was tested. This is the largest gun, and is made with six, sometimes with ten, barrels, and discharges solid lead balls half-a-pound in weight. It discharged 255 halfpound balls iii one minute and eighteen seconds, and riddled the target at 14-00 yards. The small gun was again discharged at 1100 yards, and fired about 375 shots a minute. There were 136 dummies, 99 of which wouhl have been killed. The average hits were four in each man. All on the ground seemed, to agree that they had seen the operation of a weapon of unprecedented power.

Something Like a Potato.—The following, ou the American " Early Rose " potato, is from a Leeds paper received by last mail: —The Yorkshire farmers, who have grown this new vanety for two seasons, sneak in glowing terms of its extraordinary merits as a good user and immense cropper. Of the many reports, perhaps that of Mr Kodwell, of York is the most remarkable. In ISG9, he planted Ilb and obtained (Mlbs, produce. This year he planted 271bs, and has obtained 110 stones of the new potato, all sound. In a subsequent issue of the same paper we find the following:—in our report given last Saturday of the growth cf this potato we mentioned the case of Mr llodweU, of York, as being the most remarkable, as he produced 641bs from lib in 1569, and this year 110 stones from 27ibs, which would be at the rate of 571bs. We have, however, to report the case of one more extraordinary still, as Mr Green, of Elwood Farm, Scarcroft, near Leeds, has produced this year 231 bs 2oz from one potato which weighed a quarter of a pouud; this would be at the enormous rate of lbs from lib. The potatoes were all sound, aud the largest one weighed exactly lib. It is estimated by some mathematical genius that it would require a canal five miles long, fifty feet deep, and 200, feet broad, to hold the beer annually consumed in Europe. "We are not prepared to dispute these statistics.

The following notice recently appeared in a London journal: "To be sold on the Btb August, 151 suits in Jaw, the property of an eminent attorney about to retire from business. Note —The clients are rich and obstinate."

A young lady says : " If the course of true love does never run smooth, why don't they water it, and roll it regularly so many 'hours a day, until they get the course so smooth that any donkey can run upon it ?" There are two reasons why some people do not mind their own business. One is that they hav'nt any business ; aud the second that they would have no mind to bring to it if they had. This kind of humanity, is as common as three meals a day. The oldest revolver—The earth.