MISCELLANEOUS.

Inangahua Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1219, 12 January 1883, Page 2

MISCELLANEOUS.

The present King of Siam, though a Buddhist, is favourably inclined towards

missionaries.

Thenty grocers were recently indicted in England for selling coffee adulterated with chicory. The authorities failed to show that the adulteration was injurious, and the prosecution fell through.

The richest man in Spain was said to be the Marquis of Magzanedo, who has just died. His fortune wag about £4,000,000, acquired chiefly by land purchasing in Madrid. He owned nearly all the fashionable quarter of that capital.

A Massachusetts law makes t'ie owner of a house liable for treeble any

loss that may be sustained by gambling therein with his consent A salloonkeeper of Lowell has just been compelled to pay 1800dol, the money going to a man who had lost only 600dol in playing poker on the premises.

The contract for the construction of the Forth Bridge has been given to Messrs W. Arrol and Co-, Glasgow, and Sir T. Selby Tancred, C.E., at a price amounting to about £1,600,000. The work is to be completed within five years.

The Japanese Government have resolved upon establishing public libraries in every provincial capital throughout the empire. It is stated that the Government has decided to discontinue subsidising'newspapers because the plan has proved useless as a means of suppressing liberalism. One or two of the Japan papers have in consequence suspended publication.

A European engineer, C, Hemrich, has invented a new apparatus, instead of a sand box now in use for preventing locomotive wheels from slipping. It consists of a narrow tube, running from the hot water reservoir to the drivers, so that a small jet of hot water can be placed upon the track cleaning and drying the track at the same time thereby giving the drivers their full power to propel the tram. It has been used with most satisfactory results on the Motan road, of Reschetza, Hungary.

A handsome mural tablet and bas relief, executed by Count Gleichen, to the memory of the 189 officers and men ■who were lost in the wreck of H.M.S. Orpheus, has been erected by private subscription in the chapel at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, and was unveiled on October 9.

Mr Roland Ward sends The Times the following list of fossils found in the course of excavations made in building Messrs Drummond's new bank in Charing Cross: — Bones of the cave lion, tusks and bones of the mammoth, tusks and bones of extinct elephants, remains of extinct Irish deer, remains of red deer, remains of a species allied to the fallow deer, remains of rhinoceros, remains of extinct oxen from the pleistocene gravels ; bones of the horse, the sheep, and the shorthorn (Celtic), from recent deposits.

A parish with over 600 inhabitants, in a south-western country of England, has just passed under the spiritual direction of a reverend gentleman who has been admitted to a priest's orders only a few weeks. The living, wtnch is -worth £1100 a year, became vacant four years ago, and as the younger son for whom it was destined was than an undergraduate at Cambridge, the patron discovered a " warming-pan " in the shape of a clergyman aged 78, who has now resigned in the convenient plea of "increasing infirmities," receiving the quiddam honorarium of a retiring allowance of £350 a year. It is difficult for a dispassionate lay mind to discover any distinction between those transactions and simony.

The Chemical Review regards it as a lamentable fact that the workmen employed in the lead trade neglect or refuse to avail themselves of the precautions devised for the protection of their health. They will not drink the sulphuric lemonade which is given them to counteract the poison; they lay Aside the respirators which would prevent the dust and fumes from being inhaled ; and after all, a certain class of newspapers persist in blaming the employers, in denouncing modern science for not devising a remedy.

The Dublin Gazette again publishes a proclamation offering a reward of £ 10,000 to any person who within six months shall give information leading to the conviction of the murderers of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr Burke, and £5000 for private information leading to the same result, and a free pardon to any accomplice, not one of the four murderers, who shall give information. A further reward of £1000 is offered to anyone concerned in the murder giving private information ; and £500 for private information leading to the identification of any person concerned in, or privy to, the murder, or to the identification of the cab and horse used on the occasion. The Government promise that every effort shall be made that the names of private informants shall not be disclosed to the public.