The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-03-27 00:00:00

EPITOME OF NEWS.

BRITISH AND FOREIGN.

The Mining Journal anicipates that at no distant
date Indian coal will be the only locomotive fuel used on
Indian railways. This will be a great blow for the English
coal trade.

Three services were held on Sunday in dedication of
the new Baptist chapel which has been erected in Rome.
Large congregations assembled, and English and Italian
ministers ofilciated.

"In the parish of Kensington, a lady ratepayer,
Miss Metington, who has worked amongst the poor for some
time, especially in establishing infant nurseries, is nominated
for the office of guardian of the poor this year."—Daily
News.

The day for the commencement of the free opening
of the Tower of London has been altered from the Ist of
April to tbe 29th of March (Easter Monday).

In the last Parliamentary report the total numbe
of petitions presented up to March 16th in favour of Mr.
Forsyth's Bill to remove the electoral disabilities, of women
amounted to 582 containing 193,498 signature,

The Chancellor of the Exchequer acknowledges the
receipt, as "Conscience Money," of the first half of a £.5
note for Customs, No. 82,677; and of the first halves of two
£5 notes from " M.L.," on aecount of income-tax.

It appears that the accident in the hunting-field to
Lord Galway, M.P for Retford, is of a mare serious nature
than was at first anticipated. His lordship, in addition to
the severe bruises and shaking, has had one rib broken,
besides, as it is feared, two other fractures.
The number of artists and concerts of sacred and
secular music now in Paris is unprece dented ; not fewer than
five complete orchestral performances take place simulta-
neously on Sunday afternoons.

The Wild Birds Protection Act is now in force, and
will remain in operation until the Ist of August next. The
London birdcatchers have been most vigilant during the
month securing cage birds for fanciers, sale, &c. There are
eighty wild birds enumerated in the Act 35 and 36 Victoria
for preservation during the breeding season, but blackbirds
thrushes, linnets, and skylarks, which are some of our bes
song birds, are omitted

A correspoudent who has just paid a visit to Port-
land Prison writes that he had seen William Roupell, the
ex-member for Lambeth, and that he is looking youthful and
well. The hair of his head and beard is still light brown;
and although he has been in confinement nearly twelve
years, he attends to the duties allotted to him in the prison
hospital with all possible activity of body.

- - , -
After the Easter recess a determined attack upon
that most demoralising feature of the English Poor Law, the
outdoor relief, is to be made in each House. In the Peers,
Lord Lyttleton will lead the assault, and in tha Commons
Mr. Fawcett.—Court Journal.

It is worth knowing (says the Athencrum) that if
one volume of castonoil be dissolved in two or three
volumes of spirits of wine it will render paper transparent,
and, the spirit rapidly evaporating, the paper in a few minutes
becomes fit for use. A drawing in pencil or in Indian ink can
thus be made, and if the paper is placed in spirits of wine
the oil is dissolved out, restoring the paper to its original
condition. This is the discovery of Her Fuscher.
A good joke is told of a certain Professor—a stickler
for ventilation. Being put in a room at a hotel with another
guest, he asked the latter to raise the window at night, as
the air was so close. "I can't raise it," said the guest, after
working at the window for a while. "Then knock a pane of
glass out," said the Professor, which was done. After a
while the Professor got up and knocked out another pane,
then he was able to sleep; but in the morning he discovered
that they had only broken into a bookcase.

Messrs. Eyre snd Spottiswoode, printers to the
Queen, are about to publish the "Accented Bible," an edition
of the authorised version of the Scriptures, with all proper
names accented, as a guide to the correct pronunciation of
such words, in the Old and New Testament. The work is
edited by the Rev. Alexander Taylor, M.A., Fellow of Queen's
College, Oxford, and chaplain to the Honourable Society of
Gray's-inn. --!Acculemy.

The Brooklyn Eagle notices the present tendency of
fashionable women to the stage, and in support of its asser-
tion that this tendency is growing it says that in New York
the stage has been lately been crowded by accessions from
the drawing-rooms of society. Since the opening of the
Fifth Avenue Theatre a large number of women of fashion
have made their debuts on its boards.

The Medwal Press and Circular has received news
of the death of Miss Harriet Hunt, who was one of the first
American women to practice the art of medicine. Miss
Hunt was also promoter of the assertion of the rights of
women in a political sense ; and she refused to pay taxes,
declaring that she would pay no taxes so long as she was
refused the exercise of the franchise.

An American paper gives a statement of the value
(in United States currency) in pure metal of the standard
coins of the various nations of the world, as estimated by
the director of the United States mint. The pound sterling
of the United Kingdom is of the value of 4 dols. 8665
cents; the mark of the German Empire, 23•82 cents; the
franc of France, Belgium, Switzerland, the drachm of
Greece, the lira of Italy, and the peseta (of 100 centimes) of
Spain, 19•30 cents; the Austrian florin, 47.60 cents; the
Russian double (of 100 copecs), 7717 cents; the crown of
Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, 26.80 cents; the Nether-
lands florin, 4050 cents : the Portuguese milreis (of 1,000
reis), 1 dol. 847 cents; the Turkish piastre, 4•39 cents; the
Egyptian dollar (of 20 piastres), 1 doL 0.39 cents; the rupee
(of 16 annas) of India, 4584 cents; the dollar of Central
America, 9650 cents; the Brazilian milreis, 54•68 cents;
the silver tael of China, 1 dol. 61 cents; and the golden yen
of Japan, 99 70 cents.

The "Emperor Bell," which has been cast at the
Frankthenal foundry near Worms, is to be transported to
Cologne as soon as the river navigation is fully established
alter the breaking up of the ice. The metal of which this
colossal bell is cast weighed 50,0001b5., and was obtained
from the cannon taken in the French war, and among the
twenty-two pieces of ordnance which have been incorporated
Into it there were seven whose dates proved them to have
been constructed in the time of Louis XIV.

In London, on Monday, Dr. Hardwioke held an in-
quest at University College Hospital respecting the death
of Alfred Coleing, aged 42' a platelayer on the Hampstead
and Tottenham branch of the Midland Railway. On the 17th
inst. deceased was acting as flagman near the Upper
Holloway Station ; while so engaged two trains, an up and
down train, were in sight. The deceased was walking to-
wards the up train on the off side when he was caught by the
buffer beam of the engine of the down train and knocked
down. He was conveyed to the Hospital, where he died
from internal injuries. The deceased was fully acquainted
with the duty entrusted to him, but it is supposed that, in
consequence of having sat up all the previous night with his
wife in her confinement, he was literally exhausted. Verdict,
"Accidental Death."

The gallery of the Louvre has just been enriched by
the portraits of Marie de Medicis and Henry IV. painted by
the elder Porbus. They were bequeathed to the State by
a wealthy amateur of Fontainebleau, named Comairas
Jacotot, and will be placed in the grand gallery.

Palace cars for the transportation of pigs are to be
placed on American railways, provided with comforts be-
yond the descriptive powers of pen.

- - -
Advices from Fiji announce that there is great
mortality among the natives through the prevalence of
measles.

The Exchange Gazette of Berlin says that the German
Government has ordered of the firm of Krupp a gun of
35 centimetres calibre, which, when completed, will be the
heaviest rifled gun in the world.

At a meeting of the Sunday Rest Association, held
In London, and at which Lord Ebury presided, it was stated
that since the foimation of the society, from 1,200 to 2,000
shops had given up Sunday trading.
An admirable little pamphlet, just issued by Sir
Henry Peek, gives a striking picture of the progress made
by British commerce between 1869 and the end of 1873.
Owing to the cold weather the salmon fishings in
the Tweed have been very unproductive. During the last
week the fishings were very poor. In the river a salmon of
291bs. has been caught. Owing to the scarcity, the price)'
salmon has risen to 2s. 2d. per lb. Trout continues at Is. 86.
per lb.
A largely attended meeting of representatives of
iron and steel workers from. all parts of the country was
held at Sheffield on Saturday;when a resolution was passed
condemning the system that has:sprung up in the steel trade
of employing contractors, and urging the men to pass them
by, and engage themselves only to the masters.
"Rural," in a letter to The Times, tells us he has
recently received a list of the residents who are over seventy
years of age in the town of Middlebury, a small and almost
purely agricultural town near the centre of the State of Con-
necticut, U.S. The total population of this town is 695, of
whom four are over ninety, thirteen over eighty, and forty
over seventy years of age. Thus it will be seen that, within
a fraction, every twelfth person is over seventy. " Rural "
says that nearly every one of these old people has great
pleasure in tracing his direct English lineage.
MWho has not heard of the perils which envison the
people who live near poplar trees, when the lightning
rashes to the stall stems, and then, glancing off, commits
havoc in every direction ; M. Colladan, the Geneva physicist
has now published an essay on the subject of turning these
trees into properly constituted lightning conductors, byi n-
serting in the lower part of the trunk a metallic rod, which -
he connects with the earth by a chain, so that the fluid can-
not leave the tree to dart at any object placed within a short
distance, which at present often happens.

"We have authority to state that the report of the
intention of his Royal Highness the Prince of 'Wales to visit
India at the close of the current year is well founded, and
that his Royal Highness will leave England for that purpose
—should no unforeseen obstacles arise—in the month of
November. Sir Bartle Frere will accompany the Prince of
Wales at the express wish of his Royal Highness."—The
Times.

The Jews of the City of Safed, in Palestine, who
number about 3,000, have forwarded to the Lord Mayor of
London, through Colonel Gawler, keeper of the Crown
jewels, an illuminated memorial beautifully written in
Hebrew, begging his lordship to use his influence in giving
effect to the proposals made last year for the encouragement
of agriculture and industry in Palestine. They have also
addressed Colonel Gawler, thanking him for his efforts, and
entreating him in a most pathetic appeal not to allow the
proposals to fall through.
When the late Duke of Newcastle was in America,
a citizen of Cincinnati, who had managed to get introduced
to the Duke, thus introduced his wife at Pike's Opera House:
"Duke, let me introduce you to my wife, Mrs. Judge-, the
cousin of Mrs. Abraham Lincoln, and the daughter of Major-
General--, of Kentucky, who was brutally massacred by
the British and Indians while gloriously fighting for his
country at the battle of the river Raisin."
A curious bet has been made between Count Ester.
hazy and Lieutenant Bischoff of Vienna on one side, and M.
Soleillet, the explorer of Sahara, on the other. The latter
engages to walk from Vienna to Paris in fifteen days. He
is to start from the former city on the 15th September next,
and in order to gain his bet must arrive at the Place St.
Etienne in Paris at or before midday on the Ist October. He
will be followed in a carriage by an umpire chosen by his
adversaries. M. Soleillet thinks little of the feat of covering
eighty kilometres in a day, and claims to have often walked
120 kilometres in a day in Africa.
Mr. Barnum's latest novelty at his Hippodrome in
New York has been a race for fat ladies, eight of whom
started for a purse of 100 dole. They are described as coming
up to the starting-post smiling, and in their own clothes
and on the dropping of the flag the competitors darted off
with a plunge, which for a graceful velocity has never been
surpassed in the annals of fat men's races. Miss M`Carthy
took the lead, but was quickly dropped on to by Miss
Williams, who knocked pieces out of the turf in her frantic
desire to be first. They were, however, quickly left in the
cold by Miss Mary Harper, who, gathering up her skirts,
broke into a hand gallop, and won cleverly by fourteen
necks.

---
A Sydney correspondent, talking of Fiji, says :
"Nothing will make the country go-a-head but an influx of
capital, and this is hardly likely to take place until, at all
events, a good land law suitable to the conditions and cir-
cumstances of the colony shall have been passed. Provisions
are excessively scarce and dear, house rent is very high, and
all the available land for building purposes, in and about
Levuka, is already in the hands of private individuals, who
will not sell except at enormously high prices, or let only on
short building leases at heavy ground rentals; and as there
Is no brick or stone fit for building purposes, there is no work
or very little to be obtained for either masons or bricklayers."
The large elephant in the Zoological Garden at
Hamburg has met with a tragical death. A year and a half
ago, as it was found that the wooden floor of his stable often
needed repair, it was replaced by a flooring of stone. Since
that time the animal had refused to lie down, and slept
standing. Gradually his limbs became stiffened, and he
lost the power of rising when once upon the ground. Last
Sunday he had a fall upon the slippery floor. Ten men„
with the aid of some apparatus, tried to raise him up, with-
out success. The poor beast had to remain day and night
In the same awkward position, spending its strength in the
vain endeavour to get upon his legs, so that next morning
It had become so exhausted that it refused to take its wonted
food. More powerful apparatus was now employed, but
unfortunately a strap connected with it got round the
animal's neck and strangled it.