MISCELLANEOUS.

Inangahua Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1311, 17 October 1883, Page 2

MISCELLANEOUS.

Scotland, out Of a population of 4, 000,000, sends 6500 students to her universities, while the two great English universites have but 5000 students. Germany out of a population oi 48,000,000, has 23,600 university students. The French Republic has insituted a new order of Knights of Agricultural Merit, and the first batch is gazetted. Fifteen green recipents ribands have been bestowed. Their recipients comprise a nursery-man, a veterinary surgeon, a colonial sugar-planter, a poultry breeder, two agricultural teachers, and nine prize-winners at shows. The first year's nominations are not to exceed 200, but there are 1500 candidates. Education (says the Spectator) is already telliugjbn the vagabondage and the morality ofc children. In Birmingham the average ihumber of juveuile offenders wasiritne five years ending with 1875 * 1373 ; while in the five years ending with 1882 it had fallen to 842. In England the maximum number of juvenile offenders was reached in 1866, when it touched the number of 10,314. In 1875 it had fallen to 7212, and now it was 5480. Education, therefore, though it has not yet had time to tell much on the adult criminal classes, has already nearly halved the number of our juvenile offenders. This is truly a beam of light in a darkroom. " Wamba," a contributor to the Mount Ida Chronicle, affords the following information ; — "I have lately come across an account of the assays of New Zealand gold and its different values. Mount Ida and St. Bathans head the list at £_ 2s and £4 Is 8d respectively, and the average of 13 places in Otago is £4 0s 6d per ounce. The banks buy at £3 15s j duty, Is 6d; profit, 4s— £4 0s 6d. As up to the end of last year about £40,000,000 worth of gold was produced, and taking into account the low pi*ioes which were paid on and afl|j*--^erfi_'S- discovery, as against the ;_olr_ei£-_mount of duty - viz., 2s 6d,i it follows that a profit of £2,000,000 must have been pocketed by some parties other than thejproducers." A Boston paper's idea of what it calls an aesthetic cup of tea is a mixture of the best English breakfast tea with a handful of Orange Pekoe to give fragrance and the delicious and indescribable flavour that is the soul of a^ cup of tea. Have the water boiling, and use it the instant it boils ; pour it over the tea and let it stand precisely three minutes. If it steeps

longer it is bitter, and the exhilarating element is gone. Then pour it into the dainty cups, cream and sugar to taste, and have a beverage fit for the gods. To leave the making of tea to an ordinary servant would be like expecting to get pictures from the house painter. The making of perfect tea is an art, not a trade, to be either learned or taught, and it requires a lady to do it to perfection. It is only a comparatively short time ago that life was supposed to be impossible in the depths of the. sea, and that the waters were condemned to obscurity, solitude, and immobility. The pressure 6f the water, the absence of light, the slowness of the renewal of the water, the want of algse or other vegetable materials, the experiments of Prof. Edward Korbes upon the diminution of animal life with increasing depth in the Egean sea, were supposed to prove that life could not exist at a greater depth than 492 yards. When Captains Ross and Wallich found some animals upon their sounding lines, which had descended to a depth of more than five-eighths of a mile, it was thought that they had either been entanglf-d near the surface or that they had fallen » othe bottom after their death. In 1860 the cable between Sardinia and Algiers was broken, and numerous animals were found upon the gutta-pecha insulating surface. M. A. Mine Edwards was consulted upon the subject, and he found conclusive evidence that they had been born and developed at a depth of move than 1,248 miles. These discoveries awakened great interest, and led to the preparation of the steam cutter Travailleur in 1880 for a scientific exploration of the sea depths. The cutter has been employed in oach of the three past suramers in the Gulf of Glascony, on the shores of the Iberian peninsula, Corsica, Algiers, and Morocco, in the Strait of Gibraltar, and at the Canary Islands, yielding an immense number of animals, which were previously unknown, many of which were drawn from depths of more than 3*l miles. A painful scene took place at the Quarter Sessions in Sydney recently. A very young married woman was convicted of obtaining 2s by false pretences. As there was no previous record against her, the Judge, in passing sentence, said that he would pass upon her the lowest sentence which the law allowed. Under one section of the Act the lowest sentence he could pass was five years' penal servitude. " How much ? " exclaimed the prisoner, evidently thinking that the term men--1 tioned by the Judge was the term ol ' her sentence. "Five years' penal servitude," replied his Honor. The prisoner threw her clasped hands over 1 her head, cried, •'Oh, my God !" and I fell senseless on the floor. With great • difficulty and delay she was restored to > partial consciousness, and the Judge then proceeded to say that at the time ■ he was inteirupted by the prisoner he • was about to mention that under - another section he had discretion to alter a five years' sentence of penal ; servitude to one year's hard labour. : That was the lowest sentence which the law allowed him to pass for this offence, but as he was of opinion that the charge might have been brought under the Vagrant Act, which would have admitted of a light punishment ! being inflicted, be would promise that if she conducted herself well, and petitioned the Executive at the end of j? three months for a remission of the r sentence, he would support that petition. We are informed that the reason the case came before a jury was ' that the prisoner declined to be tried I by a magisirate, and elected to be tried • by a jury. J The West Coast Times says :— The r sixth yearly meeting of the Westland Permanent Building and Investment | Society was held at the office of the . society yesterday, at 4p. m. The fol- " lowing report was read and adopted : k — " Your Directors have the honor tc lay before the members the accompanying audited balance-sheet for the twelve ' months ended 30th Sep ember, 1883, ' which they consider highly satisfactory, ■ inasmuch as they are enabled to declare ! a divideutd on the A and B shares ol ■ 15 per cent, and also to add to the 1 Guarantee Fund, thus leaving it with a ' credit balance of £105 16s ld, being an ■ amount of more than 10 per cent on ' the capital. The amount lent out on mortgage by the society is perfectly 1 secured, and your directors do not • consider there is a bad or doubtful loan ' on.the books. The meeting will have ' to appoint three directors, vice Messrs Dignan, Rich, and Johnston, who retire by effluxion of time, but the two : former gentlemen are eligible for reelection. The auditors also retire but ! are eligible for re-election." The Shapiro manuscripts (so named from the alleged discoverer), which professed to be the original copies of the. Books of Deuteronomy, and for which one million sterling was asked, have been conclusively shown by a French savant (M. Clermont-Ganneau) to be a fraud. The Temps concludes an article on the subject as follows ; — " We are glad that the merit of having unmasked this colossal imposture has devolvedonone of our countrymen. The English are to he congratulated on having been warned in time. They are luckier than the Germans, who had already paid 18,000 thalers for their collection of Moabite pottery when M. Clermont-Ganneau succeeded in demonstrating its spurious character. There is something piquant in the fact that it was this same inhabitant of Jerusalem, the owner of the Biblical manuscript, who sold the pottery to the Germans. This honest manufacturer ought decidedly to stick to terra-cotta and discard Lather Don't use stimulants, but nature's brain and nerve food — Hop Bitters. See.

A " Dynamite Scare in an Assize ' Court" is thus described bytheSt. i James 1 Gazette : " During the trial of Richard Hoduett, at the Cork Assizes, on a charge of sending**, parcel of dynamite to the Lord-lieutenant, it became necessary, on the examination of the clerk in the post-office, to produce the parcel of dynamite for identificati n. A head constable approached the table on which the witness sat, and putting ; his hand into a capacious wallet at his side, drew out a dirty-looking bundle containing between four and five ounces of dynamite. The judge asked whether the dynamite had been' deprived of is dangerousqualities. The constable replied that it had not, whereupon his Lordship directed him to take it away at once. When the examination of the witness was aiout to- be resumed, someone directed attention to a number of particles resembling fragments of bricks lying on the table almost baneath the witness' feet. The constable, in rolling up the dynamite had spilled some of it, and several persons on seeing this mad c a hasty mo ye, and something akin to panic seemed likely to ensue. His Lordship directed that no one who did not understand how to handle dynamite should attempt to remove the grains off fhe table, and ordered the constable to be sent for, but to leave his parcel outside. The foreman of^lie jury suggested that the Court should adjourn for five minutes, and to this proposal the judge readily assented. Sub-inspector Royse then swept off the particles with his handkerchief on to a sheet of paper and them conveyed out of court, and the trial was resumed." Mothvr Swan's Worm Syrup, — Infallible, tasteless, harmless, cathartic ; for feverishness, restlessness, worms, constipation. Ir. at druggists. Moses, Moss& Co., Sydney, General Agents.