MISCELLANEOUS.

Inangahua Times, Volume VII, Issue 1186, 23 October 1882, Page 2

MISCELLANEOUS.

A drunken man was picked out of a gutter in Melbourne with JEBI3 in hia pocket. There are 1,100 wine growers in Victoria. Strawberry red is the latest aesthetic color. Some very aristocratic noses are trimmed with it this season. Mr Longfellow himself selected the title of his last book, . " In the Harbour," meaning that it should complete hg works.

The strength of the Royal Irish Con stabulary, which lias already beer raised from 12,000 to 14,200, will be still further increased, and to facilitate this object the standard of height will Le reduced from sft Bin to sft Tin. An lowa judge refused a woman 05 divorce which she wanted because her husband kissed the pretty servant. He said she ought to be thankful that her husband had found a way to keep a servant girL Five new professorships have been added to the Melbourne University. '1 hose of Modern Languages and Engineering should be popular and successful Fourpenny-pieces are disappearing. "The Association of English Country Bankers recommend (observes the Insurance and Banking Record) that all coins of the denomination coming into the hands of bankers should be withxlrawn by them from circulation, and sent to the Bank of England. The Mint has ceased to issue these coins, and the Bank of England receives them, no matter how worn, at their full nominal, value. Those withdrawn in 1881 represented £4000. The similarity to the threepenny-piece renders the fourpenny coin undesirable, and the sooner it becomes obsoelete the better. None have been minted since 1856. The principle suffers are the churches, which through the supplanting of the •coin of larger value by the three-penny-piece, have lost about 25 per cent, of their effertory collections. Mr Frederick Maccabe, the celebrated ■character actor, who has been in Australia for some months past, has just .come in for an unexpected piece of luck. It seems that five years ago he gave £5,000 for some property in Leeds, and at that time he was called : & fool who was throwing away his money. On Thursday last he received -cablegram from his lawyer, telling him that he could sell it for £50,000, and asking him for instructions. Mr Maccabe, who is now in Sydney, -cabled on Monday last telling the lawyer to sell. According to a recent publication by the International Arbitration and Peace Association of England, it appears that in 1881 there were in Europe no fewer than 3,860,000 men actually under arms ; and if the reserves are added and the men who give a portion of their time to the army, the total is not far short of 13500,000. To maintain this enormous body of men and the establishments with which they are connected costs up wards of £160,000,000. During the last ten years (says the Melbourne Weekly Times,) the manufacture of tobacco in Victoria has increased wonderfully, and over 600 tons of leaf are now being made up annually into plugs and figs. We had the climate and soil a few years since, but we had not the skilled labor necessary to prepare the leaf of the manufacturer. We have imported this skill in the shape of experts from the Southern States of America, and now it is just a question of time as to when the importation of tobacco ceases altogether.