MISCELLANEOUS.

Inangahua Times, Volume II, Issue II, 13 May 1881, Page 2

MISCELLANEOUS.

How benches are packed. The Melbourne Daily Telegraph draws attention to the fact that previous to the hearing of the Munro-Sergeant assanttcoee at the City Court, and while the case was going on, there were seventeen magistrates upon the Bench , including the police magistrate Mr Call % directly after the decision fourteen out of the seventeen magistrates left tho Bench, thus leaving only three Messrs, Call, Craven, and Manna, to conduct the remaining cases, which were exceptionally heavy.

The Victorian Government issued 10,000 handbills to put the people nu the qui vive that the census was coming off. The Registrar General expects to give approximate results in a montl>, but the details not before eighteen months.

To mike shoo pegs enough for American use consumes annually 100, 000 cords of timber and fo mnkc our lucifer matches, 300,000 cubic feet of the best pine are required every year. Lasts and boot trees take 200 000 cords of birch, beech and maple, and the handles of tools 500, 000 more. The baking of our bricks consumes 2,000 000 cords of wood, or what would cover ' with forest about 55 000 acres of land. Telegraph poles already up represented 800,000 trees, and their annual repair con*sumes about 300 000 more. The tifs of our railroads consume annually thirty years' growth of 75.000 acres, and to fence all our railroads would cost 45,000,000 dols wi*b a yearly ex* penditure of 15,000,000d01s for repairs. These are some of the ways in which American forests are going. There are others ; packing boxes, for instance, cost, in 1574, 12,000.000 dols. while the timber used each year in making waggons and agricultural implements is valued at more than 100,000,000 dols— FishkillStaidard.

The export of wbeat from the district of Canterbury this season is fully one third more than last. Tho large increase in the grain export is due to two causes — partly to the heavy crops wlrch prevailed throughout the district this year, and partly to new ground being cropped with wheat. The Government after male* ing great exertions to meet tho demand for freight carriages, still find the farmers crying out for more. Already 20 ships, loaded with groin, principally, havo left the port of Lyttelton for Home this season, and 14 more are now loadiug for the same market. During tho last mouth Tiinaru sent awny two 2000 ton ships full of wheat, and grain still continues to come in a mighty stream. This year

a great many of the farmers wno formerly shipped their wheat through agents, having become dissatisfied with the charges, took the matter into their own hands and looked after their owa exportation. The result is said to be so satisfactory that the experiment will be continued and ultimately become the rul e rather tbaa the exception.

Taxidermists have more fun^in tin's worli than some people seem to think. One of them told a New York Sun reporter how he once filled nn order for a eea-Berpent, lo be lOOIt long, 4ft thick, and to have an 'authentic history/ The taxidermist, whoae name was Roome, sent to a big)riiark fishers and offered a cent for every square foot of sharkskin he* could get, As the skins would othen?is9 havefbeen thrown away, he got all he wanted, built a wooden frame for the skeleton covered it with canvas, softened the Bquares of sharkskins jind stuck them on, lapping over each other like pcales ; made jaws like (lose of alligators, but much larger and put in whale'n teeth, lining the mouth with fishskin painted red. The California showman made a good deal of money with it, as the jaws could be opened nnd shut, and he used to hire a girl to stand in the mouth. Among Roome's other exploits was the manufacture of a gorilla 15ft high, out of six black bears' skins, but be hadn't maie gorillas for a good many years. He had a skin out reading ' Mermaids made and repaired/ TThis work' had to be dene very earehtfly to escape detection. He would kill %nd stuff the upper part of a femafe monkey, than take the lower half of a fish called grouper, skin it, join them together, and put on the scales one by one, and then treat it with acid to make it look old or natural. Then he had to arrange the pedigree. He gave it to a friend, master of a vessel going to China. At Yokohama the crew were made drunk ; the alleged mer* maid was thrown over board on the Bly, and then fished out with a great hurrah by the deluded crey, every one of whom singed a paper saying they saw it swimming about the boat, and saw the mate kill it and haul it aboard.

Regarding Lordßeaconsfield as an orator, a writer in Harper's Magazine makes the following comparison between (he deceased statesman and his two greatest Jiving rivals in the art— G lades tone and John Bright :

— ' Gladstone is unquestionably the most; brilliant orator of tbe present day— taking voice, manner action and all into account, as we must in judging of a public speaker ; for impetnous force, flow of varied and vivid expression, quickness in argument, depth of conviction, there is not bis equal perhaps, in any country. But to most thoughtful men, who have listended more than once to the splendid elocutionary outbursts of Mr Glad* atone, and habituated themselves in a way to the magnetism of his glowing words, the calm clear eloquence of John Bright would be more convino ing. Lord Beaconsfield is hardly to be rauked as an orator, but rather as a subtle statesman, who quietly rises up and presents the most masterly augn« ments and unexpected shafts of rbeU oric with the unconcerned manner of everyday talk.' To this we may add says a contemporary, that although as an orator Lord Beaconsfield may have bad his superiors there can be no question as to the immense amount of influence which he was always able to command — influence oftentimes of a strange, mysterious kind, that it was utterly impossible altogether to analyse or fathom. Ha was, io fact, as has often been said, a perfect sphynx in his political life, and (his it was perhaps which gave him a great deal of bis marvellous power as a diplomatist.

The Turkish war preparations against Greece were on a scale ot great magnitude. A quarter of a million of excellent soldiers were once more mustered under the Crescent and few military judges think tbe Greeks would have tbe slightest chance unless bicked up by Europe: The cost to Turkey of her present armament is just £32,000 a day. In one sense it might as well be thirty-two mil* lions, but, although the charges are met by new debts, even Turkish ingenuity must some day be exhausted.