The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-11-06 00:00:00

EPITOME OF NEWS.

BRITISH AND FOREIGN.

A COmmittee has been formed to constract a people's
opera house in Paris to contain from 10,000 to 16,000 persons,
at prices not exceeding an average of two francs.

The Birmingham Post publishes a list of some of the
collections made in the churches and chapels on Hospital
Sunday, amounting to £4,991.

That flag carrier, Sergeant Bates, is at present
touring Canada with the "star-spangled banner,"

Egyptian troops are reported to have entered
Abyssinia, the King of Abyssinia's forces retreating before
them without offering any resistance.

In the course of a sermon on Sunday the Bishop
of Chichester passed an eloquent eulogium on the late Dr.
Hook, whom he characterised as the greatest of England's
deans.

A duel arising out of a Quarrel between two French
journalists, took place on Sunday, and one of the com-
batants was wounded in the shoulder,

The Jewish Chronicle affirms that Herr Soloman
Rosenbaum, a co-religionist at Ludenscheid, has lately
attained the age of 103 years, and is still in the enjoyment of
great bodily vigour.

-
The Chamber of Agriculture Journal states that of
our home stock ill, the United Kingdom we annually kill for
meat 436,400 veal calves, 528,300 draft cows and heifers, and
970,600 other cattle.

It is proposed by the Victorian Ministry to meet the
deficit in the Budget by an income tax, and the taxation of
landed property, banks, and insurance companies. Customs
duties, are, at the same time, to be remitted to the amount
of £lOO,OOO

A meeting of the Balaklava Banquet Committee
was held on Tuesday evening, at which it was stated that
the whole of the accounts had not yet been made up, but
there was no doubt that a considerable balance remained in
hand. _

---
A Council meeting of the Central Cha'mber of Agri-
culture was held in London, on Tuesday, at which it was
resolved to memorialise the Government with a view of ob-
taining more effectual legislation on the contagious diseases
of live stock. Mr. Disraeli will be asked to receive a deputa-
tion on the subject on Tuesday, the 7th December.
The indiarubber gatherers in Darien have been
attacked by the aborigines and routed, with the loss of 50
of their number—a fatal blow at one of the most lucrative
sources of trade in Panama.

It is stated that one result of the visit of the Em-
peror William to Milan will be to raise the Italian and
German Legations at Rome and Berlin to the rank of Em.
bassies.

The deathi s announced as having occurred on the
27th ult., at St. Petersburg, of the arch-priest Eugene Popoff,
for 34 years chaplain of the Russian Embassy in London.
_

An official notification has been issued to the North-
umberland colliers that after the 20th inst, their wages will
be reduced 20 per cent., and 12i per cent. for hewers and off-
hand men respectively.

- -
A census of the town of Metz, taken on the 15th of
October, showed that 2,754 apartments were vacant. The
civil population, which before the war exceeded 50,00 souls,
is now reduced to about 12,000 former inhabitants.
Latest advices from the East African coast report
the capture of six dhows carrying slaves. Five were seized by
the boats of H.M.S. London, which were away cruising on the
look out, and one by H.M.S. Thetis.

For those in search of unclaimed legacies, there are
sixteen of such in Algiers, awaiting legal claimants since
several years. In each ca.se the amount of property varies
from five to two francs, the law expenses being some hun-
dreds, and they will first have to be paid.—Court Journal.
In the Swiss Canton of Argovia, 436 schoa teachers
have agreed to a kind of strike. They are pledged to each
other by word of honour not to accept any situation the
salary of which is lower than that lately proposed and re-
jected-1,000 francs.
A North Australian paper says that the Chinese are
going in large numbers to that part of the country.
There, is, however, some hope that they may not become too
numerous, as the native blacks have taken to eating them.—
New York Times.

The price of coal at the Black Park Colliery, Chirk,
has been raised Is. Bd. per ton. In consequenee of the North
Wales strike this is the only colliery at work in the Chirk,
Ituabon, and Oswestry districts.

A New York physician, who recently died, cuts off
his two sons from any share in the increase of his estate
after they get to be twenty-four, "believing that when a
man arrives at the age of twenty-four, and particularly when
every facility has been rendered him to obtain a good educa-
tion, he ought to be able to take care of himself without any
other aid."

Mr. E. Y. Yeas, of the Cascade Nursery Company,
Richmond, where roses are a speciality, in a letter to the
American Agriculturist, mentions that in April last he sent
roses by mail to Honolulu, Sandwich Islands, and that they
arrived sal ely, and have since grown welL

The frog trade in the United States appears to be a
very lucrative line of business, if we are to believe the Troy
Press. One man alone caught 1,600 pounds of frogs near
Troy in a month, and sent them to the New York market,
where they sold for £9O, and a few weeks ago he captured
5001 b. in one week.

The Admiralty have issued another Circular with the
object of securing increased uniformity in the dress of naval
officers. Gloves are this time the subject of regulation.
Hitherto all colours of gloves have been used, according to
the individual taste of the wearer; but it is now ordered
that only white gloves, as in the case of the Army, shall be
permissible to naval officers in uniform.

The recent heavy rainfall at Toulouse created a
panic among the inhabitants lest the disasters which
occurred in spring should be repeated. The Garonne,
which rose to a great height, fell suddenly, and those who
had, in a moment of terror, fled to the upper town for safety,
were enabled to return to their homes.

It appears from the report of the Head Constable
of Liverpool that the number of indictable offences com-
mitted and known to the police up to the end of September
was 4,723, against 4,636 in 1874, and 3,838 in 1873. The number
of drunken cases was 7.1,694, being an increase of 1,364. The
number of persons who were intoxicated when apprehended
for other matters, and those against whom informations for
drunkenness were laid, brings the total number to 24,956,
being an increase of 1,653.

The receipts on account of revenue from the let
April, 1875, when there was a balance of £6,265,322, to the
30th nit. were £40,990,597, against £40,114,154, in the cor-
responding period of the preceding financial year, which
began with a balance of £7,442,854. The net expenditure
was £45,850,629, against £45,578,251, to the same date in the
previous year. The Treasury balances on the 30th ult.
amounted to £1,745,711, and at the same date in 1874 to
£1,375,025.

Mr. Serjeant Simon, M.P., opened the winter session
of the London Jewish Working Men's Association on Sunday
evening. He urged upon his co-religionists the importance
of placing themselves on a level with the people among whom
they live, and deprecated the tendency of Isolation in habits
and manners which too many of the Jews affect.

The Elcho Challenge Shield, won by the Irish team
at Wimbledon this year, arrived in Dublin from London on
Saturday evening, and on Monday morning, after having
been triumphantly paraded through the principal streets,
was deposited in the City Hall, being received in state by the
Lord Mayor and the Corporation.
A decree has been issued by the Russian Govern.
rnent ordering all donations and subscriptions raisedwithin
the Empire in aid of Turkish Slays to be paid without
exception into the hands of the Central Slavonian Committee
at St. Petersburgh, which will distribute them among
orthodox Russian Christians suffering want in consequence of
the insurrection in the Herzegovina.

The Cape mail has brought details of a wholesale
destruction of pirate villages in the Congo. The work was
accomplished almost without resistance by the crews of the
Active, Encounter, Spiteful, Merlin, Foam, Ariel, and
Supply. _Kings Plenty, Medaw, and Antonio, the chief
princes in the Congo, have declared war against the pirate
King of liangeala.

The trade accounts of India for the financial peat
1873.4 show a continued increase in the produce and manu-
facture of tea. The quantity exported in that year reached
19,185,0001 b., being an increase of 9 per cent. over the pre-
ceding year, which in its turn had shown an increase of 3 per
cent. There were in 1874 more than 85,000 acres under tea
cultivation in Bengal and Assam.

In London last wedr 2,566 births and 1,477 deaths
were registered, the former having exceeded by 217 the
average number, while the deaths fell short by 6. Of the
latter there was only 1 from small-pox, while there were 128
from scarlet fever. These 128 deaths were equal to an annual
rate of 1 9 per 1,000. against 1 6 last week in the seventeen
provincial towns furnishing returns, which have an aggregate
population nearly equal to that of London. In the metro-
polis the disease showed the greatest fatality in Westminster
Islington, Mile-end Old Town, Bermondsey, Rotherhithe,
Lambeth, Battersea, Peckham, Camberwell, and Deptford.
A youth who is to be interested in history, (the
Saturday Review says), should he made to feel that history is
really continuous. lie should understand that the existing
parish constable, the actual visible and tangible phenomenon,
from his staff to the buttons on his coat is only explicable as
a product of a long series of generations. He should be made
to feel that he cannot understand fully the Parliamentary
debates which fill the newspapers side by side with the
accounts of imports and railway accidents, till he has some
acquaintance with &mon De Montfort, with Cromwell and
Pitt, and the late William Cobbett.

A shocking accident has occurred in the armour -
plate shop at Portsmouth Dockyard. A mechanic named
Glttins had charge of one of the powerful planing machines,
and had occasion to do some work under the machine while
It was in motion. In getting from underneath he thought-
lessly chose the moment when the platform was coming
towards him, and was caught by it across the breast and lite-
rally crushed to death. His cries brought assistance, but
some minutes elapsed before the dead body could be extri-
cated.
The Herefordshire Chamber of Agriculture on Satur-
day unanimously expressed an opinion that all fat cattle
coming from abroad should be slaughtered at the port of
landing, and that all foreign live stock imported into Great
Britain and Ireland should be placed in quarantine for at
least fourteen days before being exposed for sale, and that
the said store cattle should not be allowed to leave their
places of quarantine without a clear bill of health from the
appointed officer.
The ship Indus, chartered by Messrs. Taylor,
Bethell, and Roberts, Fenchurch-street, London, to Her
Majesty's Government of Queensland, left the East India
Docks, on Monday, with upwards of 500 emigrants, bound for
Maryboro' and Brisbane, Queensland. The emigrants are
chiefly from the West of England. They consist of 140 mar-
ried men and their wives, 120 children, 125 single women,
under the care of a qualified matron, and 120 single men.
The men are under the supervision .pf Dr. Hickling, ap-
pointed by the Queensland Government.
The Paris correspondent of the Globe writes—"A
touching ceremony took place this morning at the Carme-
lite convent in the Rue d'Enfer. Mademoiselle Labb6, a
charming young lady just budding into womanhood, the
daughter of one of our most eminent magistrates, took the
veil and pronounced those vows which renounce all the
pomps and vanities of this world, and separate the person
littering them from friends and family. A great many of
the friends of the novice were present at the imposing cere-
mony, and some regrets were expressed that society had lost
one of its ornaments in the person of the young lady. An
eloquent sermon by the Abbo Gay added considerably to the
solemnity of the occasion."
•
It will be remembered that during the siege of Paris
a good deal was done in the sending of photographically-
reduced despatches by balloons. The inventor or the method
of reduction, M. Dagron, has lately applied it to the prodic•
tion of maps. In this way the whole official map of France
is brought into a form that can be easily carried in a porice,t-
book ; and maps of all the countries of Europe are arranged
to be carried on a cartridge-belt along with the magnifying
apparatus (telemetre mierographique), a joint invention of
Dagron, Dallemagne, and Riboulet. The reduction of the
maps can be on any required scale; the smaller this is, the
more convenient the magniacation. The telemeter has the
caallntbhee
edaestail
size and form of a stereoscopic apparatus. By means of it
yilsstoufdtihede. th original
even the glowing of a cigar, suffices to enable one to read off
lightgreatlyef a enlarged,mate match,
or
the map at once. The French anticipate these maps will
glis
ndaal rkmoaeps s, are
th
e
prove very serviceable in case of war, as also for educatiosaal
purposes. —.Enh Mechanic.

the'

The sum of £8,627 Is. 2d. was received in the late
financial year asfees for brands on herring barrels, under the
Act 21 and 22 Vict., c. 69, in Scotland.