The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-12-11 00:00:00

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HOME, FOREIGN, AND COLONIAL.

DROWNING OF A NAVAL OFFICER.—A letter from 3
correspondent with the naval squadron front Vigo,
under date November 30th, gives particulars of the
fatal accident which befel Lieutenant Heyland. From
the time they left Queenstown on Tuesday, the 23rd,
of November they experienced heavy weather. On
Thursday morning the ships, the Minotaur the Agin-
court, the Northumberland, and the Achilles were
pitching so heavily that it was decided to send in the
jibboom. During the operation a seaman belonging
to the Minatevur fell overboard from the bowsprit.
Lifebuoys and ropes were thrown to him, and he was
in a fair way of being saved, when Lieutenant
Heyland jumped, from the poop with a line, and,
swimming with it, he gave it to the seaman, who had
succeeded in reaching a lifebuoy. Unfortunately
Lieutenant Heyland, it is thought, by striking the
stern of the ship, was rendered senseless, and sank
and was drowned, to the great sorrow of every one.
The seaman was saved.
PLAYING CARDS.—In the last financial year the
stamp duty of 3d. per pack was paid on 1,094,823
packs, amounting to £13,685 ss. 9d.
THE SUGAR BOUNTIES.—Letters have been sent by
the Board of Trade in reply to the West India Com-
mittee and the Workmen's Committee for the abolition
of sugar bounties. Mr. Evelyn Ashley has informed
the West India Committee that the board of Trade
are not prepared to recommend any remonstrance to
foreign Governments regarding their bounties on the
ground of alleged injury to the trading interests of
their country; but they have proposed to make in-
quiries of the Governments of sugar-producing coun-
tries whether they are willing to enter into negotia-
tions or engage in an international conference for the
removal of their bounties on the export of sugar.

A MILLIONAIRE MAUSOLEUM. The Californian
millionaire, the late Mark Hopkins, left orders
.for
the erection of an enormous mausoleum which has inet
been completed, and which is said to have cost, with
only two or at the most three exception=, more than
any public or private building in Sacramento. It is
built of huge red granite blocks, quarried from the
Sierra Nevada mountains. Some of these blocks
weigh close upon forty tons. The tomb of the
millionaire is twenty feet long, si▪
xteen feet wide, and
twelve feet high.
LUXURIES OF THE LONDON STREETS.—Arnong the
common objects of London streets may be reckoned
nowadays the banana seller (remarks the Daily Tele-
graph). In all the chief thoroughfares of the City the
truck laden with these fruit—called "plaintains " in
the East and "bananas "in the West Indies—is now
becoming a familiar sigh i
t, the rising generation of
street youth, once limited ▪ n their half-penny
luxuries to the indigenous apple or pear, now find
many of the fruits of warmer climes within their
slender means. The " koker-nut," in slices, and the
nuts of Brazil are, of course, old friends, and
"Seville's glowing fruit" a recollection of infancy;
but it is only of very recent years indeed that Alme-
rian grapes have hung within the 'each of London
shoeblacks, or that little crossing sv7eepers have been
able to indulge in the pineapple of Jamaica or the
melons of Spain. Beyond all other exotic fruits,
however, the plaintain delights them most. Its
substance is substance— a trifle fluffy perhaps,
and liable in over-ripe specimens to degenerate
towards pomatum, but still, bulk for coin, it is a
cheap ha'porth. In the countries where it glows the
natives prize it beyond all their other possessions, for
the plant yields them, in Central Africa, at any rate,
every necessary of life—solid food and strong drink,
fibre for rope and matting, and thatch for roofs. It
is to them what the cocoa-nut palm is to the people of
the South Seas. In India, moreover, it affords not
only an important item of food: for the poor, but a
luxury to the rich, for the varieties of the plaintain
are as numerous as those of the apple. They range
from the coarse species, a foot long, that produces huge
cones of a tasteless flannel, substance, to the tiny inch-
long gem that rivals the Cands,har melon in perfume
m i
and the Burmese
angosteen n flavour. Our street
vendors, it is needless to say, never sell the latter, for
India does not produce more than India cacti eat, and
the banana of the truck, so popular with our street
youth, is therefore mostly of the former sort. Yet
even these are acceptable, for they are as toothsome
as they are wholesome.
SHOEING HORSES.—Sir George W. Cox calculates
that the English custom nf horse-shoeing costs the nation
every year on an average nearly nine millions ster-
ling in hard cash, every penny of which might be saved
if horses were allowed to go unshod. The facts and
figures on which he bases this extraordinary conclusion
are published in Fraser's Magazine for December.
Quoting an imposing array of authorities from
Xenophon, whose unshod cavalry "marched from
Cunaxa over the Armenian highlands to the walls of
Trebizond," down to the "Free Lances" of the p-o-
-sent day, Sir George Cox contends that it is safer,
cheaper, and in every way better to let horses go un-
shod over the hardest roads—especially over the
slippery asphalt of London streets. Two millions and
a quarter per annum would then be saved in farriers'
bills alone; hut this is only a fractional part of the
money which would be saved by the trebling of the
duration of equine existence. norses which am now
used up when twelve years of age would, be contends,
last fourteen years longer if they were not shod ;.and
the value of this prolongation of the working life of a
horse he estimates at £135,000,000 in twenty-ono years,
or nearly BUG and a half millions per annum,