MISCELLANEOUS.

Inangahua Times, Volume VII, Issue 1058, 8 March 1882, Page 2

MISCELLANEOUS.

♦ A special telegram to the Sydney Morning Herald, dated London, February the 10th, announces the death of Jacques Offenbach, the celebrated French composer. As M. Offenbach departed this life in October, 1880, the information vouchsafed to the Sydney people oan scarcely be called news. ! In connected wilh the Bill which M. Jules Roche and eighty-five other depties introduced into the French Chamber for " the secularisation of the property of religious congregations and the separatipn of Church and State," it is stated of the amount (£2,134,634) paid by the State for purpose of religious worship, the whole

[ with the exception of about £80,00t) was received by the Roman Catholics. There, arc only sixty-one Jewish officiating ministers paid by the Stair, and the highest salary is thtt of the Grand Rabbi in Paris, who receives LGOO a year, and the lowest £24. Altogether, the Jewish relgion receives only £8, 880; while the Protestant Church, which has 722 State-salaried elegy, receiving from £160 to £64 a year, gets £27,164. The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church comprises 87 archbishops and bishops, 11 canons of the chapter of St. Denis, 1 92 vicarsgeneral, 722 cathedral canons, 68 archpriests, 565 first-class incumbents (cures) 2,761 second-class incumbents, 31,347 villiage incumbents, 6,462 curates (vicaires), 10 cemetory chaplains, 3 bishops' chaplains in Algeria ; making a total of 45,068 members of the clergy receiving pay from the State. More than half of the 31,347 villave incumbents do not however, get more than £36 per annum ; the maximum being £52 for those who are seventy-five years of age. The Archbishop of Paris received £2,500. Like the sand of the sea, the stars of heaven, says Sir John Lubbuck in his opening address at the recent meeting of the British Association for the advancement of science, have ever been used as effective symbols of number, and the improvements in our methods of observation have added fresh force to our orginal impressions. We do not know that our earth it but a faction of one of at least 75,000,000 worlds. But this is not all. In addition to the luminous heavenly bodies* we cannot doubt that there are countless others, invisible to us from their greater distance, smaller size, or feebler light ; indeed, we know that there are many dark bodies which now emit nolight or comparatively little. Thus in the case of Procyon, the existence of an invisble body is proved by the movement of the visible star. Again I may refer to the curious phenomena presented by Agol, a bright star in the head of IViadusa. The star shines, without change for two days and thirteen hours : then, in three hours and a half, dwindles from a star of the second to one of the fourth magnitude ; and then, in another three and a half hours, reasumes its orginal brilliancy. These changes seem certainly to indicate the presence of an opaque body which intercepts at regular intervals a part of the light emitted by Agol. Thus the floor of heaven is not only "thick inlaid with pantines of bright gold," but studded also with extinct stars — once probably as brilliant as our own sun, but now dead and cold, as Helmholtz tells us that our sun itself will be some seventeen millions of years hence, — New York Tribune.