The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1884-02-16 00:00:00

EPITOME OF NEWS.

BRITISH AND FOREIGN.

According to advices from Catania, Mount Etna
has commenced throwing out ashes from the central
crater. Earthquake shocks were felt before the out.
break all over the Etnean region.

A Warsaw telegram, published in Berlin, says that
all foreigners employed on the railways in Russia
will be dismissed pending their naturalisation within
three months,

The new flour mill of Messrs. Spiller and Co., at the
top of the West Dock, Cardiff, has been burnt down.
Tile mill was a huge building erected on the site of
one burnt down several months ago, when damage
was done to the amount of R 30,000. It is thought that
the de-truction wrought will reach a much larger sum
on the present occasion.
Mr. Triffit, the Governor of York Castle, has re-
ceived an official communication from the Home Office
annonncing that her Majesty had been pleased to re-
spite the sentence of death passed upon James Low-
ther, a miner, at the recent York assizes for the murder
of Thomas Metcal, game-watcher to Lord Zetland, at
Lo ftus• in-Cleveland.

Forty farmers from the district of Inniscarre, where
a National League meeting was preclairned a short
time ago, have signed a declaration stating that they
will not permit foxhnnting over their lands, and that,
If necessary, they will poison their lands.

A donation of 41,00-0 has lately been presented to
St, George's Hospital, London, by an old governor,
after a minute inspection of the hospital, as a mark of
his satisfaction with all he saw as to the condition of
the wards and general comfort of the patients.

_
Professor Garaventa has delivered at the German
Arcbmllogical Institution at Rome an important lec-
ture on the discovery in a well at:Chiusi of an Etruscan
pair of scales, which is the first example hitherto dis-
covered of the Etruscan system of weights.

A New York telegram reports that thirteen mills at
Fall River have been closed by the proprietors. Seven
thousand workmen, including a number of weavers,
are thrown out of employment.
The London and North• Western Railway Company
are building an extensive laundry at Stechford, near
Birmingham, at which is to be performed all the wash.
ing in connection with the various hotels of which
they have obtained the proprietorship. The company
alsb intend to commence pig farming in the same
neighbourhood.

A fire, resulting In the complete detruction of the
Calvaniatic Methodist Chapel, together with the
contents, occurted on Sunday morning, at Adwyr-
clawdd, three miles from Wrexham. Every effort
was made by the fire brigade to arrest the progress of
the flames, but to no purpose, The chapel was built
in 1861, and enlarged at a cost of £lOOO in 1878.

The funeral of Herr Julius Schmidt, Director of
the Athens Observatory, who died suddenly a few
days ago, took place at Athens on Saturday, the
ceTemony being of a public character. The King
and Queen were present at the residence of the
deceased during the delivery of the funeral oration.
Her Majesty afterwards placed a wreath upon the
coffin.

While two boatmen, Daniel Trotter and John
Blench, belonging to South Shields, were being
towed behind a screw steamer in their boat, and when
two miles off Ctillercoats, the back of the steamer's
propeller smashed the boat, throwing both men into
the water. Blench saved himself by clinging to the
oars, but Trotter sank and was drowned.

The Warehouseman and Drapers' Trade Journal, in
an article upon trade in the City of London, states
that business continues to be very dull in all the
City houses wherein the different branches of the
wholesale drapery trade are carried on.

The Dublin authorities are making arrangements
to have street telephone stations, to which admission
will be gained by a private key, so that every house.
holder will have command of a telephone, and com•
munication between the various police stations in the
city and the suburbs, where burglaries recently have
been very frequent, will be established.

An inquest was held on Saturday at Birmingham
on the body of a little girl who in December swallowed
a piece of glass about half an inch long. On the Bth
of January the glass came up again, but on Wed-
nesday in last week the child died from thickening of
the membranes of the larynx. A verdict of "
dental death was returned.

The imports of merchandise into the United States
awn g the past week amounted to 7,460,000 dole.
In Paris no fewer than 30,000 women find their
living by making artificial flowers. At present a great
number of flower makers are out of work, owing
partly to flowers being out of fashion, and partly to
the enormous competition in England, Germany,
Switzerland, and America, which increases with every
season.

The Naples Municipality has decided to erect an
equestrian statue in bronze of Victor Emanuel at a
cost of three hundred thousand francs.

Strong efforts are, it is said, being made in Canada
to Fecu r e a British team to attend the Canadian Wim-
bledon next year.

A Sheffield constable named Laurence was convey-
ing a prisoner to the lock-up on Saturday, when he was
thrown down and rendered insensible. The prisoner
escaped, but was soon afterwards recaptured.
Joseph Mutter, the master of the tugboat-Bulldog,
W&8 on Saturday night drowned in the gutway at
Cardiff whilst crossing from one boat to another.

-
The total addition to the permanent Civil Service
establishment in connection with the appointments of
official receivers in Bankruptcy is a little over £7OOO.

An International Congress of Ornithologists will
meet for the lint time at Vienna on the 16th of April
next.

The telephone continues to make rapid progress on
the Continent. The Bourses of Berlin and Magde-
burg have just been placed in telephonic communica-
tion with complete success despite that the distance
is 142 kilometres. The cities of Leipsic, Berlin, and
Hamburg will shortly be connected in the same
way.
The Clepington waste works, Dundee, four stories
high, took fire on Monday morning. The front wall
fell, killing four firemen, and several others were
injured.
A Dundee gentleman, cruising on the Tay the
other day, counted ninety seals on the bank opposite

The American Woman has a new grievance (says
the Echo). Mrs. Mary A. Miller, of Louisiana, has
applied for a certificate of licence as "Master of a
Steamboat." The Solicitor of the Treasury being
called upon to give opinion, whilst admitting that
there is no express rrovision of the law to prevent a
woman hemming a master-m;riner, considers that as
a matter of propriety such a thing should not be done.