SAN FRANCISCO MAIL NEWS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 202, 16 February 1877, Page 9

SAN FRANCISCO MAIL NEWS.

(From our Exchanges.) The Russian police profess that they have discovered a plot in Poland. The Catholic bishop of Zytomierz, in the province of Volhymiacow, and several Polish curates have been thrown into prison at Warsaw. A wrecked balloon was recently found in Iceland, and in the car were human bones and a travelling bag, with papers so mouldy that they could not be read. It is thought the balloon was that in which the balloonist Price ascended at the siege of Paris. The 'Odessa Messenger' reports the fortification works at Sebastopol to be making rapid progress. New guns for mounting the batteries arrive daily from St. Petersburg. The total area of Ireland is 20,810,947 acres (of which, according to the census of 1871, the land measured 20,192,186 acres, and water covered 627,764 acres). The total area represented by the land owners' return is 20,1 59,678 acres, or within 38,508 acres of the whole extent of land. The total number of owners is 68,758, of whom 32,614 are large owners, possessing 20,150,613 acres, valued at .£12,052,809. The small owners number 36,144, their aggregate holdings are 9,065 acres, valued at £ 1,366,449. The total valuation is therefore £13,419,258. In a recent larceny case at the Police Office, Cork, Patrick Doyle, night-watchman, was examined, and stated that he heard some persons inside the stable, and he said to himself — " Begor there's something up ;" myself and Mr. McNamara went there, and may it please your worships, we heard a rush j I up with a pitchfork that was near my hand, and says I "if any one comes near me, I'll give 'em a taste of Irish steel ;" I advised them for their own safety to remain as they were (laughter) ; I had them hemmed in, gentlemen, like Bazaine at Metz (great laughter) ; after being on duty for some time I sent for assistance, and Head-Constable Shea came to me, and we found the foxy boy behind a barrel. The police in Ireland are more numerous than the criminals, there being 22 constables to every 10,000 inhabitants, and only 19 criminals, In England and Wales the police are less numerous. According to Mr. Justice Keogh, there is no government in Ireland. Commenting one day this week on the large number of disorderly "beer-houses," or so-called " refreshment houses," which flourish all over the city, he said he did not think it would be impossible to put a stop to such a state of things if there were a government in the country. If this means anything, it moans that the state of things in question exists because there is not a government in the country. This will be news to some people, who, if it be true, have long been laboring under the delusion that this country has the finest government under the sun. Next to the surprise that such a law should exist as that relating to the removal of the Irish poor resident in England is that there are guardians of the poor sufficiently inhuman to enforce it. To the disgrace, it must be said, of British charity, there are not alone guardians disposed to act upon such a law, but to do so with a rigor that is perfectly astonishing. A remarkable case in point was that in which the Nottingham magistrates figured the other day. Those gentlemen issued an order for the deportation of a woman named Slattery from Nottingham to Limerick, whereHppon, at the instance of the Guardians of Limerick, an appeal was by the Local Government Board. This appeal has had the effect of having the order reversed. And no wonder. The woman had resided thirty years in Nottingham. Last year she -went over to Limerick for a few days, and shortly after her return to Nottingham the deportation order was obtained on the ground that her visit to Limerick involved the loss of her settlement in England. So much for charity by Act of Parliament. The latest attempt of Irish proselytisni has been an effort to convert Dalkey Island (in the Bay of Dublin) into an abode for the " Arabs " of the Irish metropolis in order to rear up young sailors for her Majesty's fleet. The plan has been started by a committee of Protestant gentlemen, and for some time there was some reason to fear that they would succeed in their design. There now sesms, however, every reason to hope that the government will not complete the intended arrangement. No Catholic can Bafely enter the navy as long as Catholic naval chaplains are so few and deprived of equality with Protestant chaplains. The project thus stopped would have robbed mauy a Catholic boy of his faith. We hope that the Catholics of Dublin will soon take steps towards a much better plan, and that those poor Catholic boys who may prefer a sea life will be able to enter on it without -danger to their religion.

A Dublin correspondent Btates that the statistics of Irish crime, compiled by Dr. Neilson Hancock, the Government statistician in Ireland, show that agrarian outrages decreased in number during the eleven years from 1864 to 1875, and were fewer by seventy-seven in 1875 than in 1874. During the first seven months of 1876, however, there has been an increase to 139 as compared with 82 in the first seven months of 1875. The agrarian outrages are in many instances of the minor class, but the fresh outbreak of this class of crime is so far an unsatisfactory indication, The general condition of Ireland as to crime is in no way alarming. The amount of serious crime over the whole country has diminished for five years in succession ; the number of crimes in 1875 is less than in any year since 1864. The tables of reference to the Dublin police district record a startling exception to these decreases. In the City of Dublin crime is seriously on the increase. While the average for all Ireland of indictable offences not disposed of summarily is twelve, crimes in the Dublin district reached 110 in the 10,000 of population ; and of the 6,598 indictable offences not disposed of summarily in Ireland, 3,725, or more than half, occurred in the Dublin district, which contains only one-sixteenth of the population of Ireland. "The great problem indicated by the statistics of Irish crime in 1875," says Mr. Hancook, "is how to deal with town crime." A large amount of crime in Dublin is referable to drunkenness.

A large audience has been attracted to the Brooklyn Academy of Music to hear John O'Connor Power lecture on "Wit and Humour." On the stage were a number of clergymen and wellknown Irish-Americans. Rev. Father McGuire, of St. Paul's Church, for the benefit of which the lecture was delivered, introduced Mr. Power in a short speech. Mr. Power began his lecture by defining wit and humor, during which he quoted from Harlet, Thackeray, and Webster, giving the latter credit for the best definition of the terms — Webster describing wit to be "a felicitous association of objects not usually connected, so as to produce a pleasant surprise, also the power of readily combining objects in such a manner;" while he defines humor to be "that quality of the imagination which gives to ideas a wild or fantastic turn, £hd tends to excite laughter or mirth by ludicrous images or representations."' Mr. Power argued that a man without wit or humor in him was like him who had "no music in his soul -," he was fit only for " strategems and spoils," as Shakspeare says. Whatever produces cheerfulness and drives away melancholy is a blessing to mankind, and hence the benefit conferred by wits and humorists on the world at large. After a brief introduction of his subject in this way, the lecturer proceeded to give numerous striking illustrations of wit and humor, quoting with telling effect from such noted wits as Curran and Dean Swift, as well as the sayings of his own colleagues in Parliament.

A report of a most remarkable circumstance comes from the western part of Hamilton, N.Y. In fact, the circumstances concerning the story are such that they would receive but little credence were it not for the fact that the report comes from a reliable source. It appears that in the wilderness of this country there lived a sturdy countryman named John Dunning, with his family, in a rude hut of his own construction. Recently, Dunning saw a bear passing near hia house, whereupon he immediately prepared himself with a rifle and hunting-knife, and with his dog started in pursuit of Bruin. Night came on and he did not return to his humble abode. The following day passed and yet he did not return, much to the disappointment and fears of his wife. The third day she went to a neighboring settlement, and related the circumstances of Dunning's starting in pursuit of a bear and of his continued absence. She enlisted the assistance of a couple of men, who plunged into the wilderness in search of the missing man. After a most fatiguing search, lasting several hours, they came upon the mangled remains of Dunning and his dog, while near them lay three dead panthers. Two of them, young ones, bore marks of having been shot by Dunning, while the mother met her death when fighting Dunning, who had plunged his hunting-knife into her vital parts, where it was found sticking by the searchers. Dunning, while following the bear, had probably been intercepted by these more voracious animals, and met his death while protecting his person from the gnashing jaws of the mother whose young he had slain. Dunning ha 9 a brother living at Foster's Mill, in Fulton County, who is responsible for this statement of a most unusual result of a desperate encounter. A valley has recently attracted attention on King's River, Fresno County, Cal , which is forty-five miles long from east to west, and averages half a mile wide at the bottom. The Fresno •Republican' says: — "It lies 5,000 feet above the sea, and its walls, which are about 3,000 feet high, are very precipitous. In this valley a new grove of colossal redwood trees has been discovered. One of them eclipses all that has been discovered on the Pacific Coast. Its circumference, as high as a man can reach and pass a tape-line around, is a few inches less than one hundred and fifty feet. This is beyond the measurement of any tree in the Calaveras grove. The height is estimated at one hundred and sixty feet, and a part of the top lying on the ground is over one hundred feet in length."

There recently died in the Trappist Monastery of Sept Fonds, in France, a monk called Brother Jerome, who had been in that austere order for sixty-eight yeaw, having joined it at the age of twenty-two. During that long period of monastic asceticism, Brother Jerome had never occupied any position, such as porter, lector, or overseer «f a workshop, that would occasionally justify brief conversation on business affairs. Thus, in accordance with the rigid rule of perpetual silence which his order enjoins, he is presumed to have passed nearly seven decades of years without using the faculty of speech, save at devotions. In that time he also daily viewed his open grave, according to the practice of the Trappists, and had not eaten flesh, fish, nor eggs, his diet having been exclusively vegetable.