MISCELLANEOUS.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 889, 18 November 1871, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

Twenty-two fires occurred in London lately in 28 hours. A woman's foot has been fouud in the Mersey. Mosquitoes have troubled Londoners this summer. A shower of small green frogs fell at Cardiff lately. M. Louis Blanc is writing a history of the siege of Paris. An anti-German conspiracy has been discovered in Roumania. It is said that a sixpenny telegram rate will soon be adopted in Britain. A new journal, to advocate cocontemplated in England. The grouse shooting in Scotland tbis year is the best for many years past. The ship-building trade on the Clyde continues to be generally prosperous. The Communist prisoners at Versailles are fed on bread and preserved meats. It is reported that a Shaker community is about to be formed in England. It is calculated there are 60,000 " Reds" in Lyons, armed and ready for mischief. In four towns in Alsace, out of 20,000 electors, all but 43 abstained from voting. Extensive fortifications are being erected in Russia, especially in Poland aud Lithuania. Strong feeling is being manifested in England against the abolition of the half-crown.

The manufacture of Irish poplins gives employment to about 1000 persons in Dublin.

The Cordish tin miners are emigrating in hundreds, owing to the low wages they receive. It is now definitely ascertained that the wonderful clock in Strasburg Cathedral is uninjured. Of 700 students of the Berlin University who served during the late war, 28 were killed. At Yarmouth a maiden lady, named Bull, died in a bathing machine from heart disease. The King of Siam has 300 wives, and considers himself moderate, his father having had 700. " Father Ignatius " is bringing out a tale entitled " Leonard Morris, or the Benedictine Novice." The London Financial Review says the name of official liquidator is now " a hissing and a reproach." A large demand for railway navvies, at wages of 3s 6d a day and upwards, exists in the north of England. Herr Krupp, the well-kDown Prussian manufacturer of heavy ordnance, has taken a house at Torquay. A splendid English tabby, four years old, and weighing 22£lbs, won the first prize at the Woolwich cat show. Silk gloves coloured with aniline dyes, are found to be as poisonous to the hands as coloured stockings to the feet. It is confidently asserted that the Speaker of the House of Commons, the Right Hon. J. E. Denison, is about to resign, and that he will be raised to the peerage. The public executioner in Paris has patented a new kind of guillotine out of which he expects to make his fortune. A correspondent of the " Church Times" states that in a church in Lincolnshire, brandy was on one occasion used instead of wine at the sacrament. The following is an old lady's recipe against undue alarm in time of cholera: —" Eat plenty of mutton chops, my dear, and read the 91st Psalm every day. At Liverpool assizes, a woman was sentenced to a fortnight's imprisonment for bigamy, and a man for the same offence to two months' imprisonment.

At an international pigeon shooting match at Baden Baden, the first prize, an ivory tankard and 1380 francs, was won by the Duke of Hamilton.

There are occasions every now and then on which radicals think it a moral duty to talk solemn nonsense. The appointment of Military Attache at St. Petersburg was vacant, and as the attache there to be of any use must be a good officer, a good linguist, and an aristocrat, Lord Granville gave the berth to Captain Wellesley. Thereupon he is accused of having sanctioned a job in favour of a scion of a great house. It is the merest nonsense. The first necessity in these appointments is not to secure a man acceptable to the House of Commons, but a man acceptable to the Court, whose Army is to be studied, for if he is not acceptable he will hear nothing. The Eussian Court likes well born men, and if it liked red-haired men, Lord Granville's duty would have been to hunt for the cleverest, best educated, carroty-headedest man he could find. We should have thought that the true Eadical principle was to utilise any quality found useful, and especially

one so worthless as birth, but everybody thinkp of everything except the advantage of the State. What is the use of sending the ablest blue-eyed man under heaven to extract information out of a society which persistently ostracizes blue-eyed men? Is it our business to teach them wisdom 1 At Sheffield, cottages for the reception of cholera patients have been erected outside the town. Three elopements took place at Port Glasgow in a few weeks recently, two being by one woman. At Bolton, a young man died on the evening of his marriage day, by the rupture of blood-vessels. At Spittlegate, the Rev. James Hildyard was fined £2 and costs for brutally beating a little boyl There are 943 science schools in Britain under the direction of the Science and Art Department. The death-rate of Folkestone is less than that of any other of the leading English watering-places. At the Leeds assizes a juryman fell asleep, on which the Judfje adjourned the Court as soon as possible. Three steamers, each of 5000 tons, are being built on the Clyde for the Inman line of Atlantic packets. Along the Scotch coast from Aberdeen to Wick, inclusive, 3000 boats are employed in the herring fishery.The centenary of the birth of Beethoven was celebrated at Bonn on Aug. 21st by a grand musical festival. The debentures of the London and North-Western Railway Co. amount to fifteen and a half millions sterling. Among the trips undertaken by the Emperor and Empress of Brazil while in England, was one to the bottom of a Yorkshire coal-pit. Glass-blowing is one of the most flourishing trades in Paris. It employs 20,000 workmen, who receive wages to the amount of 18,000,000f. if we exclude St. Petersburg and Moscow, in Russia wooden houses are the rule. There was one exhibitor at the Russia nNationalexhibitionwho quoted as low as Is 4d. per 1000 for fir shingles, hand made. Roofs are covered by contract with this article at the rate of only 3s Bd. per square fathom of 7 feet and are very durable. European Russia is covered with 372,000,000 acres of forests. Drainage in Russia for all purposes is still in its infancy.