MISCELLANEOUS.

Inangahua Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1299, 19 September 1883, Page 2

MISCELLANEOUS.

Mr Oscar Dickson, the well-known Swedish merchant (of Scotch extraction), who has gained a high reputation for sending out Arctic expeditious at his own expense, is at present on a visit to London, making final arrangements for the new Greenland venture under the command of Baron Nordenskjold, which is to sail shortly* An extensive business is done in the oil of the dog fish, a species of shark found in the waters of Puget Sound and Fuea Straits. The livers yield the | oil, and from forty of them a gallon of oil is procurable. A diver, writiug in the New York Sun, says :— " How deep ? Well, 100 feet's deep enough for me to work at, and 200 is about the greatest depth that a diver ever worked at. That was at the ship Cape Horn, where a man named Hooper went down 27 times' to this depth, stayin' one time 42 minutes. This has never been beat" Lord Wolseley says that drunkenness is at the bottom of every crime, and that if all oil" soldiers wore the ! blue : ribbon we should have the finest ! army ever sent by England into the field. England alone; — where trees are planted along every fence-row ahnost, and over each hill, and carefully protected, so that most of the country appears embowered in foliage; where iron is used in lieu of wood, on a vast scale ; and where the forests of NorthI crn Europe are within easy sail — yet pays annually no less than £20,000,000, it is said, for imported lumber. A company has been formed to purchase the Great Eastern steamship, and occupy it in the coal trade between Qiieeusferry (Firth of Forth) avid the j Thames. It is intended to put 20,000 tons of coal on board, in sacks, at each voyage. The new cotnpauy bids fair to lower the price of coal to the London consumer. From the calculations of the projectors of the new undertaking, the maximum price of coal delivered into consumers' houses will be 15s per ton. The shareholders in the coal company are promised annual divi dends of 50 per cent. The annual production of clothespius in America is estimated at about 1,002,000,000, ai-d what becomes of them all ? No household ever has too many, and the market is not glutted. Rev. Dr Morris, " Cincinnati, has, from the statistics of the Presbyterian Church for the past thirteen years, found that three churches are organized every week in the year, and every week disolves one, while every four days a minister dies. It appears that there are no fewer than 15,024 sawmills in the United States, and 637 in Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba. The figures of the work performed by these mills are almost bewildering, aud during lastyear nearly 750,000,000, feet more timber was manufactured than in the yeai 1881. A t a recent meeting of the American Pish Cultural Assocation in New York, it was again stated that fish in the harbour of that city, were being poisoned and depleted by the kerosene factories thereabout. Lobsters have entirely disappeared, and now oysters are deteriorating, and will soon "be destroyed. In France there are more than half a million Protestants with a thousand Protestant pastors, more than 1200 Protestant schools, and thirty Protestant religious journals. A report of the Belgian Consul at Shanghai shows that the commercial treaties concluded with Chiua by Germany, the United States, and Russia during 1880-81 have led to an enormous increase of business. Of 1015 girls examined for admission to the Normal College in New York this year, 964, or 95 per cent., were successful. The percentage of successes among the boys who applied for admission to the City College was eighty- two. A Melbourne telegram in the Hobart Mercury of September 6, referring to the annual sheep sales, says : " The sensational event of the day was the sale of the first ram of the flock of Mr Cummiug, of Terreniltum. For this fine ram several stud-flock owners had waited. He was started at 200 guineas, and as fast as the auctioneer could take the bids he was run up, 50

guineas at a time, till he stood at 1000. Here there was a momentary pause, and from this point the contest lay between Messrs W. dimming and Sou and the Hon. Thos. P. Cummings. The bids gradually came on faster, till, amid the greatest excitement and loud cheering, he was knocked down to the Hon. Thos. F. Cummiugs at 3100 guineas, more than double the price ever paid before for any ram in Australia. After this a ram which had been sold at 390 guineas was resold at 1000. Some physical results of the Java disturbance help us to understand how small the world is. Take a bowl of water, agitate the fluid in the centre, and the undulations you excite propagate themselves in smooth-swelling concentric rings till they lap against the sides of the bowl. There they break, and slop up in mimic tidal waves. This is an exact illustration — magna componere parvis — of the oscillations of the sea reported from both hemispheres this week. The tidal irregularities, as might be expected, were most violent on the north-western soa' a >rd of Australia, which lies right opposite the scene of the Java disturbances. On that coast the sea retreated and advanced a hundred yards. A day or two later oscillations appeared on the Atlantic seabaord of America. The particular undulation which, on the fifth day out, slopped up on the East coast of New Zealand, must have come by way of the Cape of Good Hope and Gape Horn, and had nearly completed the circuit of the globe. Australia lies as a breakwater between us and Java by the direct route. It gives one a new conception of the littleness of what Henry Ward Beecher calls " this fipenny-ha'penuy world" when a man can stand on the Oce*an Beach at Dunedin and watch the ripples from a splash made in the Strait of Sunda. The Southland Times is very severe on the resolution come to by the House to pay the travelling expenses of members'wives. It says: — "These men., receiving such a sum (£210) as payment of their expenses for less than three months, and having had their own passages paid to and from Wellington, have had the inexpressive meanness to accept, if they did not demand, the payment also of the passages of their wives 1 The thing is almost incredible, and shows a sordiduess and demoralisation that oughu to make everybody blush. What plea on earth there can be for such a charge on the country is what puzzles everybody to make out and it is inconceivable ho <v the Government could have made itself a party to admitting it. it is sheer robbery of the Treasury, without excuse or defence.' What are th ; people to think of a transaction of this kind ? The country is groaning under taxation, and there is straitness and hardship in the great majority of homes. And it is when this pressure is felt that we see money voted away for which the country is not getting one farthing of return, and debts made public debts with which the public has not the remotest concern. We suppose the next thing we shall hear of will be that, the cab hires and milliners* bills of the members' wives in Wellington have been sent in to the Treasury to bo disuhared." A terrible memorial (says the London Telegraph) of the recent dreadful loss of the steamship Navarre was fished up a few days ago by a smaslc, whose people found in their trawl tho l>odies of a man and woman tied together, with their eyes bandaged. Probably the mysterious deep never yielded up a secret more shockingly suggestive than those corpses. Whether the man and woman were a married couple, or sweethearts, or brother and sister, we know not; but their bodies fastened together in death tell a moving story of devotion, just as their bandaged eyes convey a most patheticpicture of resolution and anguish. la the wreck of the Cimbria it will be remembered that the survivors spoke of seeing some of the emigrants at the last moment cutting their throats to shorten the final struggle. Most narratives of disaster at sea contain passages of this kind, telling how those of a shrinking and timid nature when all was well stood forth roost noble and perfect types of heroes when danger was supreme ; how the swaggerer, the tyrant proved an abject cur, casting himself down upon the deck in his terror, alternately praying and shrieking in the agony of his fear ; how some, unable to await the approach of the last moment, destroyed themselves,, while others, with folded arms and contracted brows, stood motionless upon the sinking hull going to their death like men lost in thought. The Paris correspondent of tho Melbourne " Argus" says : — " Miss Booth, though young, and, it is said, not at all ugly, does not allow of marriage. . Marriage is a vanity, and her mission is to thunder out agaiust vanities of every kind. She has taken refuge in France, -with the bulk of her army, after her misadventure in Switzerland, and is now giving in Paris public lectures of a somewhat theatrical stylo, in which the Protestants are no better treated than the Catholics, and in which she professes a course of transcendental morality. She lives with her sister "the Colonel," not far from the heightsof Belleville, on the third story of a house, ihe private soldiers of the army, the. Salvationists — those, at least, who have sufficient fortune of their own — live as they j>leage ; the others dwell together, and are supported by voluntary gifts and collections. Miss Booth is, indeed, one of the attractions of the moment, and for the time has thrust Louise Michel into the shade." " Rough on rats." — Clears outrata, mice, roaches, flies, ants, bed-bugs, beetles, insects, skunks, jack-rabbits; gophers. 7£d. Druggists. Moses, Moss aud Co., Sydney, General Agouta.

X .:■>■ ■■■\>-> -a- c or the " 4ustra'H"<\ ii.' 'Vi i '' csntly visit d St. Denis, the capital of Reunion, writes : • : «« In the harbour there was a ghastly toil for hvoi: ajoing on — as unproductive and wearisome as the task of the Danaides or of Sisyphus. Tke harbour is in reality a miniature breakwater, devised for the shelter of small boats, and would soon be choked by the sand cashed in by the great waves from without Bat when I saw it, about 30 hideous black heads appeared ab ye the surface of tb« water. These were the criminals ander life tfenrtences, whose daily task it is to scoop up and carry away sand from the breakwater. For twelve hours a day they stand up to their waists or armpits in the sea, which their memories, weighted like Macfeeth's, well might transform into ' one red.' Women are engaged in the work as welL It made an uufly contrast to the free ships, with their sails spread to catch the travelling winds to soe these Convicts at work, and to reflect that there was na freeflam and no escape for them. It was tise * nearest approach to the paiips of a mythological^ hell that * have seen pat into practice." The New York Herald reporter interviewed Mrs Langtry on July 24. **I am off to day," she said, "by the Alaska, I have cleared from my American season over 12'5,00'1d01., *>ut I have in\ ested nearly all of it in INew York in bonds and mortgages. I think I hold niort-?ag«3 on about half tfhe houses on Fiftk Avenue. 1 have haa, oh 1 such a happy time. I Tiave Been tnuch of this beautiful and wonderful country, met many uic« people, and received much kindness^ from pivblic audiences aad private audiences. My next American season opens in Montreal, October 29. I shall bring toack many of my old company, including F. W. Cooper as leading man, and "Hodson. I shall also have several new people in the company, among tlu*m Mr »nd Mrs Weaver, well known in London. I will have a new play written by Bolton Rowe. The season will, last 3G weeks. Then Igo to Australia." ' Among the curtosites at the mechanical exhibition is a flying-machine, invented and exhibited by an American. The machine is like a gigantic wooden ■velod -icde, with a screw in frrnt, and ■& canvas tail or rudder behind. The side • wheels and screw are moved by treadles, and it is calculated that when «peed enough is obtained the machine will rise from the ground, and the propulsion will then be carried on by the «crew alone. The upward inclination is given by a number of canvas fins or blades, fixed on each side. It is imDossible to say whether the machine -will fly or not, as it has not yet been tried, owing to the difficulty of getting a long enough and wide enough course. The inveutor says it requires a long •slope to gflt it up into the air; but, no •doubt a shorter slope will suffice to fcring it to the ground again. There are also drawings — only drawings, Ainfprtunately— of another and much, in'ore ambitious aerial con veyance, ■which is snppased to be worked by *team. It is like the hall of a vessel, -with a screw at one end, and a great <?loud of canvass overhead. According to the plan, the vessel is intended for long flights, as there are cabins, •dining-saloons, aad otlter conveniences on board, Pity it is only a dream ! At the late Dublin Exhibition a -novel plan, which was bofch amusing and attractive, was adopted of selecting hy ballot at each concert the music to %>« pm-formecl at the n«xt. This has "been imitated with great success by the manager of the (Glasgow Theatre, who has introduced the ballot principle in the selection of twelve comedieft to be To show the great advance which railroads are making in the development of traffic, a speaker at the late public meeting mentioned that whereas in 1 842 the London, Brightou and South Coast carried only 18,000,000, in 1831 it carried noless than 623,000, ©00 passengers, Mother Swan's Worm Syrup, — Infallible-, tasteless, harmless, cathartic ; for feverishness, restlessness, worms, (Constipation. Is. at druggists. Moses, Mossi Co., Sydney, Gfeneral Agents.