The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-02-05 00:00:00

' SIMULTANEOUS DEATH.

The loss of two several sets of sibters in the late
terrible collision furnishes a melancholy and fortu-
nately rare illustration of a famous doctrine embodied
in the Code Napoleon. - This is the so-called doctrine
of the "Commorientes," relating to -"co-heirs who.
have perishecji Um) same event without any possi;
bility ol Concluding which of them cited firBLr
According to the law of. intestate succession pre;
vailing over the greater part of the Continent.
it is often very important to decide which of
all the persons- killed was the survivor. It would
perhaps have been more simple -if . the framers of
the code had allowed it to be held that the deaths
in all such cases were absolutely simultaneous. But
instead of this they proposed to allow a survivorship of
even a few seconds to be material, and for the purpose
of inferring such survivorship, established a record of
intricate and artificial presumptions, which to an
Englishman will perhaps seem puerile. They are
founded upon the rational but rather far-fetched as-
sumption that where the cause of death was identical,
the stronger of the persor a destroyed struggled longer
against his fate than the 'weaker. Thus, if each of
them was of very advanced age, the elder was always
to be supposed to have perished first. On the/other
hand, if both were of a very tender age, the elder,
although his seniority was only that of a day, was consi-
dered the survivor, and so far was this principle pushed
that even if the co-heirs happened to be twins, the
elder was still reputed the survivor. The other pre-
sumptions were tounded upon similar reasoning, but
they were all allowed to be rebutted by medical
evidence sm the circumstances of the cases. Thus, if
one brother was serving in the vanguard of an army
• and the other, in the rear-guard, and ,both were found
dead at the same time, it was presumed that the
former had been killed before the latter. So in the
present case, if one of the sisters killed had been
travelling in the lore 'part of bile RI the trains, and
the other in one' of the hinder carrlekesi there would
probably be an assumption that the lamer had died
before the latter.—Globe: s.

• (mita iol.Pftvi
va
A 'S.- PELLING
(From the Globe.) • •',-'•••: •i 4 -
Spelling•bees and skating rinks have both crossed
the wide Atlantic to be warmly received on English
soil, and have generously presented us with two new',
amusements, and our language with two new words:
The very term " Bee " proclaims Yankee origin, and -'
introduces us to a fresh root. Bees will be very
busy before the season is over, and efforts in public
may reveal deficiencies in the mastery of the wilti-
plication table as well as of •the spelling-book,
through an "Arithmetic Bee." While members of
Parliament are assuring their constituents that the
schoolmaster is abrcad, he turns up most unexpectedly
at home, and is found where he is very welcome, and
perhaps a little wanted—in the drawing-room. The
attractions to attend his class are various, and one of
them is the novelty. Now that our children are
becoming biases, it is satisfactory to find that their
elders are.cnntent to be young'again. Little boys and
girls may enjoy ices and programmes, may have, '
mastered the skate waltz, and know the attrac-
tions of " Manola " as dance music, but their
elders will be content to assemble punc-
tually at half-past eight, and yield them-
selves to the influence of the very latest „American in-
novation. There is something strangely:no_vel in the
notion of grown-up, people solemnly meeting in order
to be solemnly; discomfited; and thotighAliti` mis-
fortunes of our best. friends bring always something
with them which leaves us not wholly inconsolable,
still the pleasure of witnessing a defeatis consider-
ably diminished by the certainty of enduring one.
And this, perhaps, will explain the embarrassment
of the earlier part of the evening. Every one feels
that he is going in for an examination, competitive,
public, ',int race. 'ln Such a case your friends become
zour enemies, and greeting a mere mockery. The
.:most familiar objects suggest themselves in the disa-
-ireeable form of having to be Spelled, and an excellent
cup of coffee becomes bitter to the taste when you re-
member that a4chool7fellow once wrote it k-a-u-p-h-y.
Everything reminds you of your college days, and it is
merely a reminiacence -of old experience to find
that you have forgotten nearly everything you
knew, and are hazy on the very points on
which you thought yourself most distinct. A.
piece of Madeira cake, thoughtlessly, almost un-
consciously assumed at this juncture, only increases
your embarrassment by suggesting a doubt whether
the eor the i comes first in " Madeira." Trusting to
fortune to protect you fronedeciding this question in
public, you put down the cake and join your friends
in the drawing room:— The company are ranged in a
crescent, and proceedings are forthwith eommenced.
The president, supported by Richardson's Dictionary
and a disagreeable-looking sheet of paper containing a
list of very tough words, opens the meeting by an-
nouncing its object. In a few well-constructed Ben-
'tences he explains that words ambiguOus in their spell-
ing have been rejected, that the English rather than
the American standard -is to be observed, and that in
any case of- doubt theh. will 'be are appeal to the
dictionary. The Audience are then supplied with num- •
ben, and learn,(with unspeakable•relief) Viet the first' •
round will consist of monosyllables alone. It-becomes
almost comic to see an eminent clergyman reduced to
a number—as if he were an auction lot—and chal-
lenged in public to spell s-t-a-r-c-h. It is felt that with
the second round business has indeed commenced, and
before it is concluded the number of competitors is
abridged. As the words grow more difficult the anxiety
increases, and with the anxiety the interest. Every
one experiences a curious facility for spelling any word
except his own, and the gentlemen are at a decided
disadvantage. The ladies have fans and pocket handker-
chiefs with which they may affect to busy themselves,
but there is no fashionable buffer which can be inter-
posed between the sterner sex and the polysyllables.
Before the evening concludes it is found that certain
words are the subject of very general misapprehension.
"Fuchsia," as a flower, possesses the singular pro-
perty of having no perfume, and, as a word of being
invariably spelled wrong ; while soeiety seems inclined
to endorse the opinion of the late Lord Palmerston,
and allow only one m to accommodation. Of All .the
natural sciences, botany has managed to get on longest
in open contempt of the dictionary, and many people
are surprised to learn that " borage " may be written
in a recipe for claret cup without either a u. and i, or
a d. How little seaman are to be trusted in the matter
of pronunciation we ,may learn from "gunwale" and
" haulyard," while we suspect that many veterinary
"surgeons would be at a loss how to spell the "hough "
of one of their own patients. When the president
Oyes out words like these from that disagreeable list
it is no wonder that the tale of competitors should
grow shorter; and every round of his paper bullets
produce-a horrible carnage amongst the ranks. A lady
who could not be taken in by mere " rodomontade," at
length succumbed when called upon to spell "touchy,"
and a university man was caught out by an " ichthyo-
saurus." After the sixth or seventh round the draw-
ing-room is converted into a mere hospital for the
wounded, and the president, supported by Richardson
and a pair of candles, seems almost to realize the con-
ception of the poet :

Si fractus illabatur orbis
Inpavidum ferient mime.
As one round succeeds another, the roll call displays
wholesale slaughter in the ranks, and the number of
combatants—a word, by the way, which itself seems
to possess the property of overthrow—miserably
dwindles down. A stage of phraseology is then
reached where language fails to convey ideas, and
the president speaks Greek. Metempsychosis, Pa-
limpsest and Synaeresis, are almost easier to spell
than to synonomise ; and, if their sense were at
all an echo to their sound, would have very terrible
meanings'. At last the battle is reduced to two war-
riors; and a happy suggestion, that the combatants
should choose their own arms, is at once acceded to.
In the internecine conflict that follows, very terrible
language indeed is use, and, perhaps, " hypothenuse,"
if it had been thought of, would have been as effectual
as in a recorded case where Daniel O'Connell was-once
disputaiit„ The ilnerisslpp pplpanfully for a few
• minuta:— • .
"• h •
While ords of 1 earned lengt , and thundering sound,
•• Aniaid the piing gueits'assemlled found ;
And still they gazed, and stilt the wbnder grew
That two small heads could carry all they knew.
But, as Shakespeare says., if two mess -ride upon a
horse, one must ride . behind the other, BO of two
spellers„ however eminent, one must be the better.
The victor is proclaimed, and the.company
.arg not
only amused; but instructed.. e. 4
•

. , .
- HOW TO GET EGGS IN WINTEn,
. •
. . . .
We will not say . that the farmer who leaves his
poultry to roost in the apple-tree at the corner of the
barn, and to pick up their living DI the pigs' trough
and in the barnyard, may not occasionally get an egg
in winter. But (says an American contemporary) as
a thatter of fact there is on most farms a great dearth
of eggs from November to March. With a warm
shelter, and suitable feed, pullets that begin to lay in
the fall will continue to lay through the winter. It
is mainly a question of feed. Thu staple feed is Indian
corn, especially in the ctrest, because it is the most
plentiful and the most convenient It furnishes plenty
of fat, and keeps up the heat of the fowlA, but is poor
in albumen and the phosphates. They Want a variety
of grains and vegetables, and to.do their best one feed
daily of wag", cooked meal and vegetables. Most
farmers have milk, and if this can be added, it will be
all.they need. Butchers' scrap cake is good, and may
safely be kept in the poultry-yard where the fowls can
help themselves at pleasure. Boiled potatoes or
turnips, mantled and mixed with Indian meal, make
an excellent feed for laying hens. Fowls are par-
ticularly fond of cabbages and turnips at all stages
/
of their growth, and eat them r %,,,v greedily every
day, if they can get them. We have found so
good results from feeding cabbages to laying hens,
that we always lay in a large supply for the winter.
Refuse from the butchers, and offal from the fish mar-
ket, also furnish good material for making eggs. These
are accessible to most villagers, and can be had at