The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-04-24 00:00:00

EPITOME OF NEWS.

BRITISH AND FOREIGN.

The Warrington Guardian announces that Mr. W.
C. Jones, of the Elms, near Warrington, has forwarded a
cheque for £5OO to Mr. Joseph Davies, secretary to the
Warrington Infirmary, in aid of the funds of that institution.
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Herr Palisa, of the Observatory at rola, has dis-
covered another small planet, raising the number of small
planets hitherto known to 216. Of that number 27 were dis-
covered by MM. Palisa and Schuhlof, both in Austria.

The Mitch Dagblad mentions that the well-known
shyness of the rook has been entirely conquered by a Dutch
lady of title, who daily feeds•these birds in the streets of the
Hague.
A meeting of German gymnasts is to take place at
Frankfort in the month of July. There are to be gymnastie
exercises on a grand scale and other fetes. The meeting
will last from the 25th to the 31st of July. Twenty musical
bands have been engaged for the fetes. The cost for setting
up the gymnastic apparatus is estimated at £BOO. The entire
cost of the meeting, it is calculated, will amount to about
£20,000.

According to official reports, the population of the
Sandwich Islands amounted in 1878 to 57,985, showing an
increase since the census of 1872 to 1,088. During the last
five years the number of immigrants had risen from 5,366 to
10,477, while the number of natives had decreased from
51,531 to 47,508. Of the foreigners in 1878, 833 were English,
1,276 Americans, and 5,916 Chinese.

The population of the Netherlands at the end of
1875 numbered 3,924,792,50u15, the inhabitants having in-
creased by 1,300,000 within the last fifty years.
There were .21 British and foreign wrecks reported
during the past week, making a total of 470 for the present
year, or a decrease of 125 as compared with the correspond-
ing period of last year. The approximate value of propert
lost was £630,000, including British £520,000.

The Socialist Bill was read a second time in the
German Reichstag on Monday. Members who hold Socialist
views are not liable now to be expelled from Berlin, and
collections are permitted in aids of diitressed Socialist
families. These are the only alterations made in the measure.
"Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son" have been
adapted to the requirements of Bengali society in a book
called " Nitimala, ' or a collection of moral sentiments.
Another new Bengali work on a European subject is a memoir
of Joan of Arc ; while a fresh Bengali dictionary, "The Il-
luminator of Words,' has been brought out,'ffie works being
arranged, not according to their initial, but to their final
letters.
The following cable message has been received at
the London office New York Herald :—" A disturbance will
arrive on the British and Norwegian coasts between the
20th and 22nd, attended by rains and strong winds.—Another
larger disturbance affecting the north of France, attended by
heavy rains, gales and lightning, will arrive between the
22nd and 24th, and unsettled weather for several days. The
Atlantic very stormy north of lat. 35deg.°:"

There were 2,656 births and .1,519 deaths registered
In London last week. Allowing for increase of population,
the births exceeded by 63, while the deaths were 186 below,
the average numbers in the corresponding. week of the last
ten years. The annual death-rate from aft cause,, which in
tke two preceding weeks had been equal to 24-7 and 21•8
per 1,000, further declined to 21•6. During the thirteen weeks
?tided 3rd instant, the Metropolitan death-rate averaged
27-3 per 1,000 against 23.6, 25-6, and 271 in the corresponding
periods of the three years 1877-8-0.
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On Saturday two fatal accidents occurred to children
on the railway near Wolverhampton. In the first case,
Arthur Williamson, twelve years of age, was crossing the
line after leaving a train at the Wednesfleld Station of the
Midland Railway Company, when he was struck by a goods
locomotive and killed on the spot. In the other case, Albert
Stanley, seven years of age, was playing on the line of the
London and North-Western Railway at Dudley Port, when
he was knocked down by a shunting engine, and his head so
injured that he died soon afterwards. •
Mr. Justice Denman, in addressing the grand jury
at the Liverpool Assizes, congratulated that body upon the
elevation of Liverpool to the dignity Of a city; and referring
to the calendar, expressed his gratification at the small num-
ber of prisoners for trial. The cases were at the same time
vastly less in seriousness than he had before known.
A Bi-Centennial is now being prepared in Phila-
delphia, the Quaker City being proud of her previous efforts
at the Independence Centennial of 1876. November 18th,
1882, will be the 200th anniversary of William Perin's landing
on ttie site of the present city, and the inhabitants propose
to celebrate the date of their founder's arrival with great
ceremony. _

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" Observer " writes to The Times :—" It may be
interesting' to some of youri readers to know that during the
last 15 years 50,000 tons of the Palliser shot have been made
for the fleet and coast defences of England and her colonies.
A Parliamentary return of 1877 shows that their cost then
was £l5 2s. a ton. They .appear to have superseded steel
shot and shell about 1867, during which year a Parliamen-
tary return of May 10 shows that 1,500 tons of the latter were
made, at a cost of £92 10s. per ton. Steel projectiles could be
made cheaper then than now ; still the saving to the country
has been calculated by a well-known civil engineer and
expert to amount to the enormous sum of three millions
sterling." •

The Cologne Gazette announces that the Drachenfels
—the Dragon's Rock—the most celebrated of the mountains
known by the name of Siebenberge, or the Seven Hills, that
mountain immortalised by Byron, where, according to tradi-
tion, the Dragon was slain by Siegfried, one of tile heroes of
the epoch of the Niebelungen, has just been connected with
the village of Konigswinter, on the Rhine, by means of a
telephonic line, which has been laid by the German Adminis-
tration of Post and Telegraphs. This line has been established
for the special use of tourists who, during the summer,
ascend the mountain.

An interesting ceremony has taken place at Nantes
(France),—the christening of the steamer Adamawa, in which
the Comte de Seinelle is about to undertake an exploring
excursion up the Niger. The exploration will be made rather
on commercial than scientific grounds.

Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone visited Chester on Monday
afternoon, having driven from Ilawarden Castle. A number
of gentlemen from Llandudno paid their respects to theiright
honourable gentleman whilst he was waiting in Chester
Railway Station, prior to his leaving for London by the 1.55
p.m. train. Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone entered the train
amidst loud cheers. The right honourable gentleman and
Mrs. Gladstone arrived at Euston Station at 6.20 in the
evening, and, accompanied by Mr. Herbert and Miss
Gladstone, and Lord Wolverton, drove to Harley-street. Mr.
Henry Neville Gladstone, third son of Mr. and Mrs. Glad-
stone, arrived at the same time from India, after a long
absence abroad. A large crowd assembled at Euston Station
and cheered Mr. Gladstone. Earl Granville called upon Mr.
tiladstone shortly after his arrival in London.

At the annual meeting of the Yorkshire Church of
England Scripture Reader's Society, held on . Monday at
Leeds, the Bishop of Ripon said if such societies were better
supported the result would be that irreligion would receive a
blow greater than it had yet had. The day had gone by
when it was necessary to defend the employment of lay
agency, and there were few who would now say that it was
unlawful to do so. The report showed that 25 new subscribers
had been added during the year.

The Netherlands Indies Colonial report, December,
1878, returns the strength of the Dutch Indian army at 1,466
officers, 36,610 non-commissioned officers and men, with
1,281 horse. 9f the officers only two were native. The In-
dische Genootschap, which held its latest meeting last month
at the Hague, touched upon the question whether a colonial
army with a contingent of 70 per cent. ef foreigner*, most of
them Germans, were at all a desirable institution, and
whether Article 185 of the Constitution of 1848 could nottbe
so modified that conscripts might be told off for Indian as
well as for home service.

The council of the Workmen's Peace Association
on Saturday night adopted the following resolution :—" That
this meeting congratulates the Right lion. W. E. Gladstone
on the results of the general election, which have proved
that the eountry is strongly opped to war, and to the
policy of Lord Beaconsfield's GovMment, which MS alike
menacing to freedom abroad and constitutional government
at home, and that this council will cordially support the in-
coming Government, pledged as it is to the principle§ of
peace, retrenchment, and reform." It was also resolved to
bring all the influence. of the associatibn to bear on Mr..
Richard's international disarmament motion, and the council
expressed a hope that Mr. Gladstone would lend his power-
ful aid to the motion when it came to be submitted to the
new House of Commons.

.The iron ship Bay of Biscay, of Liverpool, 1,611 tons,
which left Rangoon for London on the 30th of October last,
with a valuable cargo of rice, ttc., is now given up as lost,
with her crew of forty men. She was due in the Channel in
the middle of February, but is supposed to have foundered in
the Atlantic during the terrible hurricane of the 20th of that
month, when so many vessels were wrecked. The vessel with
her cargo was valued at upwards of £40,000.
Dr. Chervin, the physician charged by the Frendh
Government with the cure of stuttering recruits, has just
published a lecture on his method in Paris which will be
interesting to those who are afflicted with that distressing
malady. Dr. Chervin traces the history of the cures pro-
posed for it, and all the trouble it has given down to his own
cure, which putting aside operations and all complication,
seems to be simply reading aloud, by which he attains com-
plete results in a few weeks.
One of our Paris Correspondents writes (says the
Pall Mall Gazette) of Tuesday :—Yesterday Father Ittonsabre
preached an eloquent sermon on behalf of the Poor in Ire-
land, and elicited a great deal of sympathy on the part of
aftei cOokiit her' dinner, sold
his, congregation. by relating pqr duruig the sufferings of
France in 1871 an Irishwoman,
her cauldron and sent the proceeds to France. Father
Monsabre reminded his hearers that no fewer than 500,000
Irishmen had perished fighting for Franca in former times ;
and a good many of these, like the unfortunate Lally, had
reason to repent having changed their nationality and
having turned their swords against England. Mduie. Is
Marechale ...ile3lahen was present, and it is said that there
were a great taffy ebreerful givers.