MISCELLANEOUS.

Inangahua Times, Volume VII, Issue 1120, 23 August 1882, Page 2

MISCELLANEOUS.

. . «_ ■ An English gentlemen has exhibited a hyacinth which, in consequence of being under a stone, had blossomed 6in below the sui face of the ground. The leaves were white, but the flowers were a deep purple. The Turks have a fixed belief, founded on some ancient prophecic b, that this present year, 1882— the year 1300 in their calendar — will be a year of kismet (destiny) for Islam. Their students of the lost book of the New Testament calculate that 922 (dato of the Turkish epoch) added to the mystic numb, r 12G0, makes up 1882 exactly. Further,- there is a tradition that on the night of the capture of Con stantinople, the conqueror, Mahmond the Magnificent, dreamed that the city would continue to be the seat of tho empire he had founded for exactly 430 years less one. Now 1453 (the date of the fall of Constantinople), plus 429, makes exactly 1882. Sir Horatio H. Wraxall died in an insane asylum the other day completely destitute, a charge upon a Loudon parish. The title goes to M. N. W. Wraxall, whose son, now heir to a baronetcy, was educated at a workhouse school in Brighton and was afterwards apprenticed to a pawnbroker. A case of horrible cruelty on the part of a father was heard at the Prahran Police Court, Victoria, recently. A retired publican named Knott, bn . the 20th ultimo, ordered his son, aged 1 1, to assist in preparing the breakfast ; and something the boy did having displeased him, he seised a pot of boiling fat from the fire £__. poured it over the little fellow's head. A constable soon afterwards arrested Knott, whom he described as drunk and violent at the time. The boy has been under medical treatment ever since for the burns received about the head and arms. The Bench bound Knott over to keep the peace for six months from the expiration of a month's imprisonment, to which he was sentenced without the option' of a fine.