The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-03-06 00:00:00

SATURDAY, MAR. 6, 1875.

concealed its full proportions, and revealed in ever-
widening, ever lengthening vista, backwards into
the furthest memory of the past, and forward to an
endless future! It was our just pride in this country
that the two foremost disciples of this new-borne
science, at a time when it had to fight its way against
prejudice and ignorance towards its present hard-won
position, were both honoured dignitaries of the English
Church. One was the illustrious Professor of Cam-
bridge, whose generous heart and brilliant fancy en-
lightened, a9d warmed his whole being, and continued
to irradiate ,a life prolonged beyond the allotted term of
man's existence • the other was the eager, indefatigable
explorer who left his Oxford chair only to preside over
that ancient Abbey, whose very stones and dust were
dear to him, and examined and sifted as they never
had been before by hand or eye of English layman or
ecclesiastic, and now within those walls, beneath the
monument of Woodward, the earliest of English geo-
logists, had been laid the friend of Sedgwick and the
pupil of Buckland. With him science and religion
were one and indivisible. From his mind the great
religious problems of our time were never absent, and
the infinite possibilities of nature gave him fresh
ground for this unshapen hope in the unknown im-
mortal future. With that one faithful, beloved, and
beautiful soul who, till within the last two years of his
life, shared all his joys, his sorrows, his labours, and
his fame, he walked that lofty path which the vul-
ture's eye hath not seen, nor the lion's whelp bath
trodden—the pathway of the just, brightening ever
more and more towards the perfect clay, in which he
trusted they were now at last reunited in the presence
of that light which they both so sincerely sought.
The sermon was listened to throughout with deep
attention.

A POSTMAN ON ST. VALENTINE'S DAY.—An
old letter carrier in an aristocratic section of New

York stated the other day that were it a valentine
season all the year round he would be half inclined to
work for half pay, on account of the fun it is to see the
boys and girls jumping round him at the hall door,
with such eager inquiries and gladsome spirits. "Not
the less interesting or funny is it," said the experienced
carrier, "to see the old maids at the windows, scanning
me as I go by and looking so melancholy as I pass on,
not leaving them anything. But you should see one
of the old girls when I go up the stoop and hand them
in a package or a letter which has a semblance at all
to the token of the season. They look like grown up
angels, and as for the bow they make me, it makes me

always laugh."
MORE GREAT AUSTRALIAN TREES.—Barcal
Mueller, government botanist, Victoria, in his last re) f;
port gives some interesting details of the results of
recent explorations in the Upper Yarra, Hume River,
and other districts. In the forest regions of the Upper
Yarra and the southern branches of the Goulburn River,

measurements were taken of some of the larger trees
of Eucalyptus amydaglina var. regnans, the highest
being approximately 400 feet, but it is 'believed that
there are higher specimens, which, however, could not
be measured on account of the labour of clearing away
the dense jungle to get a base line. The magnificent
Grass, Festuca dives, first discovered in West Gipps-
land, was found in the same districts. This Grass
grows from ten to twelve feet high, or even as to much
as seventeen feet in the rich soil of the Fern-tree

gullies. A list of new additions to the genera of Aus-
tralian plants during the year numbers fifty.—The

Garden.
ROYAL DITCHIES.—The. annual account of 11,
Her Majesty's Duchy of Lancaster shows that in the r
year 1874 the receipts from rents, royalties, &c.,
amounted to £59,987; and the expenses of manage-
ment, outlay on the estate, and disbursements were
£15,361. The payments made for Her Majesty's use,
to the Keeper of the Privy Purse, amounted to
£42,000, being £l,OOO more than in the preceding yeart
but leaving the balance in hand larger at the end of
1874 than at its beginning. The account of the Duchy
of Cornwall shows receipts in 1874 amounting to
£86,923; and the outlay on the estate, disbursements,
and expenses of management, amounted to £19,818.
Payments amounting to 265,901 were made to the use
of his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, Duke of
Cornwall, being £3,386 more than in the preceding
year, and leaving the balance in hand larger at the
end of 1874 than at the beginning.

MODERN COMPETITION.- Our very distant
relatives, the apes, are beginning to find useful em-
ployment in rural economy. A correspondent of a
Ceylon newspaper states that large apes are now
regularly employed in the Straits settlements to gather
Cocoanuts. These monkeys are imported from Acheen
in batches, like coolies, and are marched round the
plantations by their owners, who let them out on hire. /
A line is first attached to each of these peculiar
labourers, and he is then sent up a tree, where he is
said to select suitable fruit with great discrimination,
and to twist the nut round and round until it falls to
the ground. Each successive fall of a nut is hailed by
the hairy operator above with a chuckle of satisfac-
tion. We are afraid the human natives will like
this competition as little as the American workman
liked the introduction of their Chinese brethren. As

yet, we believe, they have not struck for higher wages.
—The Garden.

THE FOUR QUEENS OF SPAlN.—There are
at the present time no less than four Queens orSpain,
and if the rumours of King Alphonso's approaching
marriage are based upon fact, there will be the fifth.
The four ladies who have succeeded to the precarious
dignity of Queen of Spain are :

Queen Christina, born April 26th, 1806, married Ferdinand
VII., December 11th, 1829; widow, September 29th, 1833.—
Queen Isabella 11., daughter of Ferdinand VII. and Princeso
Christina of the Two Sicilies, born October 10th, 1830 ; suc-
ceeded to the throne on the death of her father; deposed
September 29th, 1868. —Queen Marguerite, wife of Amadeus
I, Duke of Aosta, who accepted the Spanish Crown October
20th, 1870, and abdicated February 11th, 1873.—Queen Maria,
married February 6th, 1847, to his "Most Sacred Majesty,"
Charies VII. (Don Carlos).
SOMETHING LIKE DUCK SHOOTING !•—•" Speak-
ing of shooting ducks," said an old Chesapeake sports-
man named Selby, in that soft and searching way for
which he is so justly celebrated, "speaking of shoot-
ing ducks puts me in mind of the great storm that
occurred when I was down the bay last year. An
awful storm arose, and was so fierce that it drove all
the ducks in the bay into a pond, covering about an
acre, near our house. In fact, so many ducks crowed
into that pond that I could not see a drop of water-
went into the house, and got my double-barrelled
shotgun, and discharged both barrels right in the midst
of them; but, to my astonishment, they arose in the
air,l leaving not a solitary duck in the pond. It
astdnished me at first: but as soon as the ducks rose a
few hundred yards in the air and commenced to
separate a little, the ducks began to drop, and whether
you believe it or not, I picked up twenty-nine barrela
of ducks, and it was a poor season for ducks, too. You
see the ducks were wedged in so solid in the pond that
when they rose they carried the dead into the air with
them, and when they separated down came the
twenty-nine barrels of dead ducks.
A TINY SPECIMEN OF HUMANITY. —" We
know a bright intelligent little miss (says the Boston
Journal), now residing in this city, who is eleven years
old and who weighs about sixty pounds, who, when
she opened her eyes upon this world, weigheness than
one pound and a-half. She was the tiniest piece of
humanity which we ever heard of. The nurse, ill
washing and dressing her, used to lay her in the paint
of her bhand ; and the first few days of her life were
mostly spent wrapped up in cotton-wool and placed in
a basket beside the stove to keep her warm. Her
head would go into a small-sized tea-cup. Can any
one tell of a smaller edition of humanity' that lived
and grew to be a bright and promising little lady ?"
PITY THE POOR POSTMAN.—Pity the poor
country postman—that is what our local contemporary
the _Richnzond and Twickenham Times asks us to do.
And, in Booth, we feel very much inclined to do it.
The village Mercury is, as a rule, a most civil
and respectable public servant. He works hard.; he
gets poorly paid; and then, unlike his fellows in great •
towns—whose lives, goodness knows, have by no means
fallen in pleasant places—he has to be at his post on
Sundays as well as week-days. For him there is no
day of rest ; life with him is one constant round of toil.
Surely this is not as it should be; surely if the great
towns can get on without a Sunday delivery, our
villages can also do without one. This delivery it is
that our little contemporary is endeavouring to vet the
inhabitants of the districts in which it circulates to
put down. We wish it success. The thing can be
easily done, it appears : three-fourths of the dwellers in
any given locality have but to send a requisition to
their postmaster against the present system, and the
point is at once carried. Let Sunday be a dies non for
the village postman.—Pictorial World.
RAILWAY PROSPECT IN 1875. The recent
firmness of the market for railway stocks is, the Finan-
cier thinks, justified by the real position of that vast
interest. There is a degree of solidity about this kind
ofinvestment to which no other industrial enterprise
can lay claim. A substantial increase may be ex-
pected in railway receipts during the current year,
and if in addition there is a diminution in the ratio
of expenditure, the general result will be one on which
the ordinary shareholders may well be congratulated.
No matter, however, what may be the outcome of
any particular period, the investor in railways may
always assure himself that he is a partner in a great
and substantial property.
UNITED STATES' LABOUR MARKET. The
American Iron and Steel Association report that at
least a million of skilled and unskilled working men
and working women in the United States are out of
employment because there is no work for them to do;
and that fully one-fourth of these are iron workers, or
coal and iron miners and other mechanics and labourers,
directly dependent upon the iron trade for daily bread.
"The world has had its iron hunger satiated for the -T
present, and another famine like that of 1872 is an inr
possibility. The capacity of the ironworks of the world '1
is to-day far in excess of present requirements."

INFINITESIMAL HONESTY. - The following
simple but curious incident happened in the City last
week. It is worth recording only because it is true. It is
some twenty years since a gentleman from the country
purchased a book of a second-hand bookseller in Great
Queen-street, for which he should have paid ss. ad.
The purchaser had but ss. in his pocket, and the book-
seller, feeling sure he was dealing with a gentleman, ,
accepted the ss. on the understanding that the ad. "
should be paid on the next visit. Two years elapsed
before this country gentleman passed the shop, when 1"
he found it closed, and could obtain no tidings of the '
absent bookseller. Since then (for 18 years) he inquired
for the whereabouts of the bookseller or his successor.
At last he found a clue, and, not fourteen days
since, he, although totally blind, at considerable) ;
trouble and expense found a son of the old book-
seller in Paternoster-row, and, on learning of the ei
decease of his old creditor, insisted (it needed pressure
,c,f
to receive such a small donation by the ri-dug firm) on
the sixpence being sent to the widow, with a royal in-
terest added.—City Press. •••'-..- ; •i-',-- 4-- .
i MESSRS. CHILD'S BANK.—Among the curious
papers recently discovered on the shelves of Messrs.
Child and Co., in the upper room over Temple-bar,
are Several of historic interest. One file of ancient *
documents contained, inter alia, several receipts A
signed by the executors of Sir Peter Lely, who lived JV
hard, by in Covent-garden. With them was one of
Nell Gwyn's doctors bills, which runs as follows : 1
" Received by the hands of Mr. Child the summe of .‘I
one hondert and nine pound yn full of all remedes and 1
medecins delivered to Mrs. Ellin Gwyn, deceased, I
say received by me this 17 of November, 1688;
Christianus Harell, £109.. 00,, 00 .." In the same , 7
parcel was discovered an acknowledgment for the sum
of £2OO, received from the Duke of Bolton, signed by
Lady Rachel Russell, the widow of William, Lord
Russell, who was executed in Lincoln'e-inn fields in
1864.

INDIAN GANEs- —The correspondent of the
Bombay gazette thus describes some feats of skill per-
formed at Bhopal, on the occasion of the Royal mar-
riage, by the S-..kh Cavalry. Four small sticks about
four feet in height each were placed perpendicularly on
the ground in a line at equal distances, and each man
as he galloped past at full speed made four cuts ,• Most
of the men sliced a couple of oranges, and what elicited
great applause was that one of the Begam's officers
slashed in half every one of the five oranges. A sheep
was then suspended on a sort of a gibbet, and the men
were to ride fast and cut at it. Captain Buller, t}
commandant of the Central India Horse, divided the
sheep in one single cut; but although nearly 100 cuts •
were made at another carcase by the men at various 1,
times, not one succeeded in severing it. Captain Buller
was destined to perform the coup de grace, which he ,
did in fine style, and the lower end of the carcase
dropped at one single cut with his peculiarly shaped
Sikh scimitar, —lAfter this.another very clextemusLiest•
which is common to the Sikhs was Performed. This
consists in throwing circular-shaped steel quoits at
anything. The old Sikhs throw these quoits with
deadly aim, and have been knowfl to decapitate scores
of their enemies at night without making the slightest
noise. They generally throw with their lefthand, And
the quoit whirrs at an awful speed with as straight and
precise a course as a bulle4.l ,