MISCELLANEOUS.

Inangahua Times, Volume VII, Issue 1070, 5 April 1882, Page 2

MISCELLANEOUS.

The Mechanical Engineer* recommends, in answer to the question, " When a boiler is short of water and a heavy fire is on the grate, what shall prevent the boiler from being burned V that the fire be smothered with wet ashes. To haul the fire would increase the heat for a time. The Royal princes, sons of the Prince of Wales, seem to have a curious passion for tattooing. Prince Albert has just been tattooed on his arm in Japan . with a pair of storks, and Prince George with a dragon. The Mikado presented them with a pair of magnificent bronze vases inlaid with silver and gold. It is now stated that the first man Ito reach the late Czar after the ex-

plosion of the bomb which caused his death, was Iniilianoff, a Nihilist, who held another bomb under his left arm while he supported the wounded monarch with his right, EmilianofF, who has confessed, has not yet been tried. Most distressing accounts come from some parts of Victoria, South Australia and Queensland of^the sufferings of both man and beast for want of water. The cattle are dying in hundreds. The theory that coalbeds are formed simply by the action of great pressure upon masses of wood has received remarkable and unexpected corroboration from a circumstance which happened at a mine in Silesia. A piece of pine wood had lain for two years tinder a heavy steam pipe, weighing about 12 tons and a scientist named Gopport, observing it had been somewhat changed in appearance, tested it and found that it possessed all the qualities of lignite of the tertiary brown coal formation— -in other words it had been nearly converted into coal It had parted with almost all its aqueous constituents, and would no doubt have become a piece of tolerably pure carbon in the course of a year or two. A novel and ferocious duel is to come off shortly at Lyons, unless the authorities interfere to prevent it Miles. Nouma-Hawa and Bidel, both notable lion-tamers, are just now at Silkopolis drawing crowded houses. Miles Nouma-Hawa has challenged Bidel to enter her cage, and offers, in return, to enter Mile. Bidel's case without having preliminary acquaintance with the wild beast in it Bide has accepted the challenge, but stipulates that the struggle shall have additional interest given it by « bet. She suggests that the stakes shall be 2,Q00 dola, and offers on these conditions not only to tame all Mile. Nouma-Hawa's lions and lionesses, but also to teach them a series of entirely new gymnastic feats without any previous preparation. A ghastly picture of life in London slums was unfolded before the Southwark coroner the other day at an inquest on a six-year-old girl, who was killed by tripping in a hole in a rotten staircase of a house in Gunn-street The child's mother, who is the wife of a hard-working general dealer and hawker, said she had asked the landlord to mend the stairs, but the work had never been done. The house, said the doctor, was in a shocking condition, not fit for any human being to live. in. He Miew the family to be straightforward, decent people, who paid five shillings a week for two abominable rooms, which were not worth one-fifth that rent The mother deposed "that she herself tumbled through the floor, and a short time since three of her children lay dead at one time with the measles, and the ceiling was so rotten that it fell down in lumps upon the coffins, and had never been mended yet" The measles, said the doctor, were the result of the bad sanitary state of the house. The jury returned a verdict of " Accidental death," with a rider censuring the landlord, Some honest folk think it would have been more to the point if they had returned a verdict of manslaughter against the landlord, his agent, and the sanitary inspector of the district The Otago Daily Times says : — An occurrence, of what it is not too much to term a disgraceful nature, happened on Sunday in the Roman Catholic portion of the Southern Cemetery. The grave in which a burial was to take place was found not to be large enough to admit of the coffin being lowered into it, with the result that the relatives of the deceased person had to wait for a considerable period whilst the grave was being enlarged. The thing might be pardonable had this been done with anything like despatch, but the person acting as sexton hurried away, leaving two little boys to finish the work; and after a most distressing delay, the boys proving quite unequal to the task, one of the attendants at the funeral had to take it out of their hands and conclude it himself. A heavy shower occurred at the time, so that the mourners had a most uncomfortable wait The scene was a deplorably painful one, and the Corporation, in whose employment the sexton presumably was, should certainly take ' steps to prevent a recurrence of the like.