The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-11-07 00:00:00

Rlistclimicous

HOME FOREIGN, AND COLONIAL

A LIKELY JOKE.—Nana Sahib, or bin per-
sonator, says that when he made his confession, he was
under the influence of Bhang. Did that, then, pos.
seas him with a wish to be blown from a gum—Punch.

STICKING TO THEIR POSTB.—A railway disaster
occurred in Ohio, near Cincinnati, on the 18th of
October, which shows the bravery with which some
railway servants meet death. A passenger train,
owing to a misplaced switch, plunged through a bridge,
the driver and stoker being instantly killed, but all the
others on the train being saved through their heroism.
These men might have saved themselves by jumping,
as the train was going only at 12 miles an hour, but
they remained at their posts, the driver applying the
air brake when he discovered the misplaced switch, so
that the passenger coaches were stopped before they
reached the chasm, and the passengers saved. The
driver was found crushed to death in the locomotive
car, by the tank, his hands grasping the throttle.

Ti PRECIOUS METALS. —An American paper,
citing an estimate of Dr. Linderman, the director of
the United States Mint, that the stock of gold and
silver (in use in the world) is from 410,000,000,000 to
812,000,000,000, and the present rate of production
alsout lh per cent, of the existing stock, observes that,
supposing the population of the world to be about
1,300,000,000, there is about 86 46 to each man, woman,
and child on the face if the globe; or, deducting
savages, who make almost no use of the precious
metals', be within boundA to say that there are
at least ten ,dollars to each man, woman, and child in
those portions of the globe where g,4d and silver are
used to any considerable extent either as money or for
ornament or in the useful arts. The United States,
although containing little more than 3 per cent, of the
population of the globe, and lees than 4 per cent, of the
inhabitants who may be stipposed tones Ihe precious
metals, yet rupply 40 per cent, of the 3180,000,000,
the estimated animal product of those metals. The
amount of specie actually in the United States, e6ti-
mated at 8.167,000,090, it only ablout 44 per capita, ,a•
40 per cent. if what it would he if there were an equal
distribution of the world's total stock.

Con an) WHALBS.—The inhabitants of the
extreme north of Norway---that is to say, of East
Finmark—and especially of the shores of the Varanger
Fjord, have been so loud and bitter in their complaints
that the newly.instituted.whale fishery of that coast
was destroying their natural means of subsistence, the
cod fishery, that the Norwegian Government has sent
Professor G. 0. Sara up to the district in question to
look into the facts (says the Acculemp). The chief
complaint was that the capelan (Ma/(otes archeua),
unless they were driven into shore as food by the
whales, kept out in the deep seas, and that the cod
were so sensitive to impurity that the least suspicion
of blood or fatty substance on the water drove them to
a distance. According to MorgenUndet, Professor
Sara has made a report which does not hear out these
sensational surmises. He has spent the whole summer
in the district, chiefly at Vadso, the centre of the trade
of East Finmark, and alniost every day he has been
able to examine the bodies of freshly-harpooned whales.
He finds these to be almost without exception blue
whales (Balonoptera Sibl.otldii), • species that is per-
fectly innocent of hunting capelan as food. Sara finds
scarcely anything in the stomachs of these temperate
monsters but the remains of a tiny crustacean, Th !mono-
pods inenni• The failure of the cod fishery seems,
therefore, to have no connection whatever with the
massacre of whales.

MASKS ASID FAI I.S.—When lovely Woman
stoops to the fully of endeavouring to enhance the
charms of Nature by the appliances of Art, her mind
and manner often are affected by the circumbtance,
and her demeanour 10 as artificial as the bloom upon
her cheek. When she smiles on you, she does fit, with
a semblance of constraint, as though her face were in a
mask; yet she can hardly speak a word without a
simper or a ire irk. For fear of hurting her com-
plexion, she dare hardly blow her nose, an. seems
afraid to trust herself to the convulsion of a sneeze,
lest the enamel or the pigroenti on her visage should
be cracked. Beauties of this nature are certainly re-
markable, viewed as clever works of Art; but in the
eyes of connoisseurs they never can be comparable to
beauties without paint.—Pench.