MISCELLANEOUS.

Inangahua Times, Volume IX, Issue 1372, 10 March 1884, Page 2

MISCELLANEOUS.

» In London recently, the Rev. Stopford Brooke, at the request of the Municipal Reform Leaguo, of which he is a member, lectured on " London Poor." Taking for his text St. Paul** words " When one member suffors, all the mombers suffers with it," the preacher began by likening this city tf> Queen Lucifera's palace in the " Fairy Queen," which was a stately edifice nicely garnished, bat having behind it a foul dungeon, where wretched thralls languished, the victims of wicked pride. London said he, was preeminent in this respect. No city in the Christian world contained behind its fair proportion so great a mass of squalor and degradation ; neither was there any other country boasting a responsible Government where for many years the laws had so unmistakeably taken the side of wealth, and rank, and power as against poverty, weaknea, and ignorance. Philanthropic endeavor* could, he contended, do hardly anything while society was content to deal with only tho secondary causes of th* existing evils. Overcrowding led to drink, vice, and nameless horrors j. but overcrowding itself was a second and not a first cause. The first cause of that herding together of the poor, of which so much had of late been said, was, he boldly declared, the possession of the land of this country by a few individuals who drive out from their estates all parsons not needed as laborers. So the peasants .drift into the cities in search of work ; and here, again, they are met by the land question. Ground rents are so high that* by the time he who lets the single lodging eotr.es to make his profit the price of decent living is prohibitory, and th« man elbowed out of the rural disti'icts who oomes to London that he. may live, wanders wearily from street to court till he is fain to put up with a garret or cellar in a seething slum. Municipal reform cannot grapple at once with the stupendous problem herein involv«-d r but Mr Stopford Brooke thinks that a representative government for London would accomplish something in the right direction. It would b« acted upon by public opinion and indirectly forced to resort to partially remedial measures, such as throwing upon rich landlords the burden of having the poor dislodged by local improvements, and supplying abundance of good water at a fan: price. A scene of great excitement occurred on January 2, in Edmunds, late Wombwell, Eoyal Windsor Oastlft Menagerie, which was exhibited in Bolton. Delmonico, the Arabian lion chief, was about to enter a cage containing a group of young lions, when one of them sprang past him as he opened the cage and -alighted on the floor of the menagerie in'^ke njidat of the people. The latter rushed frantically for the exit, and a serious panic ensued. Meanwhile the young lion, as much frightened as the people, ran round and among the spectators-, pursued by the attendants, who ultimately managed to secure it in an empty barrel. As the people were rushing about, a woman named Mary Jan© Butterfield, was forced against a cage containing a large full-grown lioness. The animal extended its paw beneath the bars of her cage and clutched at the woman's head. The attendants seized bars of iron .and forks, and struck the enraged lioness repeatedly before she would release her hold. When this was effected the woman, bleeding and terrified, was conveyed to the police-station, where a piece of the scalp was found to be torn away.

autumn 19,897,284 pounds of honey *nd 5,691,598 pounds of wax, have been taken, the value of which amounts to £93,850. One of two very sad cas«s of suicide recently here brought into prominence the question of seduction. Atßallarat a poor girl named Lizzie Murphy, aged about 16, drowned herself to avoid the shame of becoming a mother. She left behind a pathetically-worded letter, in which she accused her employe?, a toasketmaker, named Pnlchard, with being the cause of her downfall. He <did not deny his relfltious with her but insinuated that her character generally was anything bnt good. Public indignation hounded him out of the town, and at a very large and influential meeting resolutions were carried declaring the necessity of an alteration of the law to provide more ■stringent punishment for the preveution of the detestable crime of seduction. The meeting was called for married men only — a restriction which <Irew from the Sydney Bulletin the caustic observation that the reason was probably they were by experience best acquainted with the subject Some of the speakers at the meeting were impelled by indignation beyond the bounds of common sense. ■> The Bishop (Dr 'Thornton) hinted, as if with approval, that in some countries conduct such as Pulchard's would have resulted in a resort to Judge Lynch, while a member of Parliament declared that he would render such wretches physically incapable in future of committing such an offence. It is probable that next session wilt ' see an attempt made to render the law more strict, and possibly to make seduction a penal offence. The danger of. such a course lies in the opening "that would be given to designing woman to extort money, and in the fact that the criminality of seduction is of very varying degree. There is no question (says the San Prancisco Bulletin) that the Pope's authority ever the church is greater to-day in* France and the United States than it is in either Spain or Italy. In New York the magnificent cathedral in Ffth Avenue, situated in the very heart of inillion*iredom, far surpasses that of any •other church edifice oh the continent, rot excepting the noted cathedral of Mexico, while the notable institutions ■of charity spread over the Union, under Catholic influence, far surpass both in number and excellence those of any other denomination. At a receafc microscopic exhibition, the point of a tine needle was shown upon a screen, magnified to a bluntness of five inches' across. En a can of peas sold in Liverpool •recently the public analyst found two grains of crystalized sulphate of copper, a quantity sufficient to injuriously affwet human health. The defendant urged that the public insisted on having green peas, and that artificial means had to be resorted to to secure the -required colour. It has been so prosperous a year in Bengal that the number of coolie «migr.*n ts who left was fewer by 3600 than those of last year. The northwest provinces of Oude, where the struggle for existence is the hardest in India, supply the greater portion of emigrating coolies. Those who returned last year brought back on an average £40 apiece. Out of a population of 16,333,276 in Spain, 11,978,168 can neither read nor write. In England there is more land lying idle in sporting grounds, game preserves, and landlords' parks than the whole kiugdo m oE Belgium, which supports in happiness and prosperity 4>,000,000 people, and sends large food exports to London. An income of £35,000,000 a year is received by 5142 landlords as rent on 46,500,000 acres of land. The official returns show that the healthiest class of people in Great Britiari are the inmates of prisons, were simple diet, regular hours, and ■exercise are compulsory. But the <cases of insanity among the 'convicts are put of proportion to the number of «ilment& To commit a crime a man I must be more or less mad. An officer of a school in Boston for the blind says that sightless persons may become the most expert piano tuners. Through the constant exercise the faculty of hearing becomes so «.cute that intervals in the scale of sounds, which are so slight as to be unnoticed by ©ther persona are readily detected by the blind. The slightest imperfection in unsions is discord to them. Pruit3 are prepared by the. process of ripening, for really and easy digestion by the stomach and other digestive organs. Nothing digests more quickly than a ripn apple. This is not true, however, of grains and vegetables. The nutritive elements ot these classes of food require the action of heat to bring them into the same condition which is brought about in fruits by the process of ripening. How the world has progressed within a century ! George Washington, the first President of the United States, never saw a steamboat. John Adams, the second President of the United States, never saw a railroad. Andrew Jackson, the seventh President, knew ao'.Ung about the telegraph, Abraham jLirrioln, the seventeenth President, ritiY'-sr dreamed of such a thing as the telephone. The other day a clergyman near Coventry", England, on visiting a woman who got her living by mangling , clones, found her sick in bed and greatly troubled because she could not attend to the clothes she had on hand. The reverend gentleman at once began operations at the mangle, and after completing his self-imposed task, apprised the woman of the fact, and left