The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-05-07 00:00:00

EPITOME OF NEWS.

BRITISH AND FOREIGN.

Six hundred Chinese have arrived at Victoria
(British Columbia) in order to work as railway labourers.
Before leaving for England the Duchess of Edin-
burgh spent several hours with the Princess Uriefsky at the
Winter Palace, the consolatory and cheering visit being much
appreciated.
In the United States six thousand persons have
been driven from their homes, owing to the floods at Kansas
city.
In London on Tuesday the annual meeting of the
Church Missionary Society was held at Exeter Hall, the Earl
of Chichester in the chair. There had been received during
the year for the objects of the Society £207,508. Lord
Shaftesbury and the Bishop of Norwich were the principal
speakers.
The Germans have lately taken a hint from acrobats
In furnishing their fire-engine stations with strong nets in
which to catch those unfortunates who maybe so placed
that they must choose between the horrors of tire and the
chances of broken limbs.

Information has been received from Levuka,, Fiji,
of a hurricane which occurred at the end of February, and
caused terrible destruction, though it lasted only a few
hours. The town of Ilan was completely destroyed, all the
buildings being swept away, and the damage to the crops
wus very great. Trees were uprooted, sugar canes levelled,
and coffee plants spoiled, Much damage was done to the
shipping. No lives were lost.

Colonel Forrester, who for twenty•seven years has
held the office of Assistant Serjeant-at-Arms to the House of
Commons, has resigned his post, owing to ill-health. The
place he vacates is worth zaoo a year with a house within
the precincts of the Palace of Westminster.
The Czar is quite perdu at Gatehina. No one sees
or hears anything of him. The greatest of Russian national
faes—Easter-eve and Sunday—passed without the smallest
sign of life at the Court. Hitherto there have always been
receptions at the palace, and ceremonial military parades,
at which the Czar, according to time-honoured custom, gave
the emblematic three kisses to a certain number of his
soldiers. This year darkness and gloom alone prevailed,
and the Imperial Family appeared to have ceased to exist.—
The World.

M. Pauchon, a French observer, has been making
experiments on the germination of beans. Re states that
black or violet seeds absorb more oxygen than white or
yellow ones, though a more rapid germination is observed
in the latter. Carbonic acid is said to be exhaled in greater
quantity from white than from dark seeds. "The more
frequent and pronounced pigmentation of the seeds of
Northern land is, therefore," says M. Pouchon, "a favour-
able circumstance for the growth of these organisms under
the peculiar light-conditions to which they are subject."

Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett, M.P., speaking of the late
Lord Beaconsfield at a Conservative demonstration at Roch-
dale on Monday night, declared hisubelief that the country
was turning round to his policy, and that if he had been
spared for another six monthakthe nation would have made
that reparation which was his due. A resolution was passed
at the same meeting declaring that the abandonment of
Candahar and the peace signed with the Boers tend to im-
peril the safety of the loyal inhabitants, and that Mr. Glad-
stone's home and foreign policy has failed to further the
best interests of the country.

At one of the fashionable weddings this week the
bride carried a bouquet six feet tn circumference.—Court
Jerurnal.

According to the first wugh calculation, the tobal
population of the Lieutenant-Governorship of Bengal, as as-
certained by the recent census, is 68,750,747, being an in-
crease of over 9 per cent. on the previous census.
A mural tablet has been erected in St. Thomas's
Cathedral, Bombay, in memory of the late Majors Wandby
and Le Poer Trench, who were killed in the Afghan war.

A new stamp is being struck for use, either for post-
age or receipt. It does not greatly differ from the penny
postage stamp at present in use, except that it bears the
inscription, "For Postage or Receipt."
Professor Gegenbauer, the well-knownaleidelberg
comparative anatomist, is dangerously ill with blood poison-
ing, contracted while dissecting.

A steamer at Kansas City, on Friday, killed a man
standing on the balcony of the upper storey of a house,
which it ran into.

Last week's receipts of cotton at all United States
ports have been 47,000 bales, and since Ist September
5,323,000 bales. Shipments to Great Britain, 32,000 bales;
and to the Continent and Channel, 30,000 bales; total since
let September, 3,809,800 bales. Stock at all ports, 606,000
bales.

According to the Frankfurter Zeitung, at Nakkoo,
in the Island of Lapland, an eagle was shot on the 15th ult.,
which measured Bift. between the tips of the wings. Round
its neck it had a brass chain to which a little tin box was
fastened. The box contained a slip of paper on which was
written in Danish, "Caught and set free, again in 1792 by
N. and C. Andersen.—Boetod in Falster, Denmark."

Mr. Parnell has expressed his resolution not to speak
on the Land Bill until the final stage of discussion has been
reached on the second reading. He will then indicate the
course he purposes to adopt in Committee, but he will neither
oppose the second reading nor move any amendment.

According to a telegram from New York, the visible
supply of wheat on April 29 was 19,800,000 bushels; aitto
Indian corn, 12,800,000 bushels. Export clearances of wheat
for Europe during the past week, 1,910,000 bushels; export
clearances of Indian corn for Europe during the past week,
1,200,000.
At Windsor on Sunday the bells of St. George's
Chapel and St. John's Church pealed merrily in honour of
the thirty-first birthday of thelDuke of Connaught. Being
Sunday, the Royal salutes were reserved till next day. His
Royal Highness Arthur William Patrick Albert, Duke of
Connaught, was born on May 1, 1850. He was made Colonel-
in-Chief of the Rifle Brigade on May 29, 1880. Prince Arthur
married Princess Louise Margaret, daughter of Prince
Frederick Charles of Prussia, on March 13, 1879.

A New York telegram states that the total loss
caused by the floods on the Missouri river is estimated at
4,000,000 dols.

The death is announced at Cannes, of Captain Hon.
Arthur Annexley, brother and heir prezumptive of the Earl
Annesley, from heart disease. The hon. gentleman_apd wife
arrived at Cannes a few weeks ago, he having resorted to
the South of France for the benefit of his health. The de-
ceased was formerly in the Grenadier Guards, but ex-
changed to the Effie Brigade in 1863, and finally left the
army in the following year. Re married in 1868 Clara, only
daughter of the late Mr. George Watson, of Norwich, who
was with her husband at his death.

A telegram from Melbourne states that the steamer
Tararua has been wrecked off Otago, and that 80 persons
were drowned.

The arrivals of live stock and fresh meat at Liver-
pool last week from the United States and Canada show a
slight increase in liye stock and a decrease in fresh meat on
those of the preceding week. The total imports were 1,540
cattle, 1,027 sheep, 7,226 quartgrs of beef, 601 carcases of
mutton, and 188 pigs.

Mr. Gladstone replying to the recent letter of the
Roman Catholic Bishops of Ireland on the Land Bill, says
that, after reviewing the numerous and important changes
advised by the Bishops, the Government, while welcoming
any amendment to improve the Bill, "cannot hold out the
expectation of their acceding to any changes which would
give it a new character.
We commend to the notice of good Churchmen the
list of Lord Beaconsfield's ecclesiastical promotiMs which
appears in the National Church for May. Nobody not a
bitter partisan, will, we think, contend that a series of
appointments more fairly representative of the learning,
zeal, and varied gifts of the clergy was ever made by an
English Prime Minister —Globe.

Some curious experiments bearing upon a new mode
of heating furnaces, and apparently sukgested by dust ex-
plosions in coal miqes, have been initiated by Messrs.
Alexandre, of Washington. Coal dust is supplied to the
furnace by means of a perpendicular shaft, at the lower part
of which is a horizontal tube, through which a current of
air urges it into the fire.

At Walsall, on Saturday, Mr. A. M. Sullivan. M.P.,
addressed a large public meeting upon the Irish Land Bill
now before Parliament. He spoke of the measure as a great
and just benefit and a merciful endeavour to redress the
wrongs under which Ireland had so long suffered, and said
he hoped and prayed it might not be too late to set up a
joint system of landlord and tenant in Ireland.

- -
Three thousand three hundred and seventy emi-
grants arrived in New York on four steamers on Saturday.
The Inman steamer city of Chrster brought 1,284, including
1,099 Irish, being the largestiMmber of Irish ever brought on
a single steamer. Many are members of the Land League.
There were immense crowds outside the Castle-garden all
day welcoming them.

"It is curious that at the funeral of the statesman,
orator, and author, who described himself in 1853 as a
gentleman of the press,' who had 'no other escutcheon,' the
press would have been 'out in the cold' had not Lord
Barrington, with his customary good•nature, interceded, at
the last moment, with the executors, who at once yielded
with the best grace."—The World.

The suggestion of a memorial to Lord Beaconsfield
to be subscribed for by Conservatives alone appears to find
favour. A correspondent, who says that his own £5 is ready,
at once, writes proposing that £50,000, which he Valais
might easily be raised by the Constitutional party, should be
expended in establishing a fund forlhe'benefit of the chil-
dren of bond. fide Conservative working-men.—Globe.

The facsimile of an autograph letter of Lord
Beaconsfield to Mr. F. G. Heath will be published with a
fourth edition of Mr. Heath's "Peasant Life," now pre-
paring. The original letter, which has been carefully copied,
occupied seven sides of note paper, and is remarkable fol the
vigour and gracefulness of the handwritifig.
Shakespear's works are being rendered into the
Malo-Russian language by a well-known writer in that
dialect, M. Kulish, who has already completed a translation
of six of the plays.

A movement is on foot amongst the members of
the Upper House with a view to requesting Lord Salisbury
to take the lead of the Conservative pay in that branch of
the Legislature. But, as the Lords nve not yet met, all
announcements of any arrangement are, to say the least,
premature.—Tuesday's Daily Telegraph.

The coal owners of Bengal have memorialised the
Government against the sale of coal by the East Indian Rail-
way Coippany. The memorial shows that the company sells to
the public and to other companies about 72,000 tons annually,
and contends that this is an illegal act on the part of the com-
pany, which was incorporated only as common carriers, and
the otattis of which is not altered by its line having passed to
the Government.

The City of Dublin has been "proclaimed" under
the provisions of the Coercion Act:
Foxes will sometimes show fight, as was discovered
the other day by a plucky hound of the East Lothian Hunt.
While the rest of the pack broke off on the scent of a second
fox, one hound kept to the first unearthed, until the
exhausted fox,-either finding his pursuers reduced to one, or
else fairly irorked off his legs, turned to bay under a furze
bush. A fierce tussle ensued, and, had not a shepherd with
his collie intervened, the hound would probably have been
killed.

The art of burglary has hitherto been inadvertently
taught to a considerable extent in German prisons. Until
lately it was usual to put thieves to work out their sentence
in a department with locksmiths and other workers in iron,
and here they gained such useful knowledge for their trade
as to be perfect adepts on their release. Suddenly the
authorities perceived their mistake, and the Home Minister
commands that no such gratuitous instruction shall be given
at the expense of the State to those desirous to perfect
themselves in their "profession."

The death is announced of Major Janckewicz. The
deceased officer was closely rek.ted to the Royal family of
Poland. He served under Napoleon in the disastrous
Russian campaign, and also fought on his side at the battle
of Waterloo. Major Janckewicz was born in 1793 at Warsaw,
and for some time has been in receipt of a pension from the
British Government.

The British Museum has acquired some interesting
service books in manuscript of the Nestorians of Assyrian
Christians of Kurdistan.

At the annual meeting of the Wesleyan Missionary
Society, held in Exeter Hall on Monday, the Lord Mayor
of London presided, and dwelt upon the urgent necessity
for increased funds for missionary work. The report showed
that the home receipts were slightly in advance of last year,
but the expenditure was largely in excess of income. Last
year there was a debt of £26,187 19s. 7d., and this had been
added to by a deficiency this year of £13,122 7s. 10d. A sub-
scription of £l,OOO from the Lord Mayor was announced,
"in loving memory of Dr. Punshou," towards liquidating
the debt of the society.

Hindoo women are fast emerging from the strict
seclusion of their ancestors, for we now hear of a native
Ladies' Elocution Society being established in Poona, where
the first of a series of lectures will shortly be delivered in
public by a lady' elocutionist. Another sign of feminine ad-
vance, too, is the rapid increase of widow re-marriages, par-
ticularly in Bombay.—Talking of i
weddings, by the way,
there seems to be a perfect marriage epidemic n Poona,
400 happy couples having been united in ene single week.
Sixty thousand emigrants arrived in New York
during the month of April. This is the heaviest monthly
arrival ever known. The total for the year is 105,543, an in-
crease over last year of 25,200. The European agents of the
steamship lines state that the exodus will he even greater
during the present month, especially from the Scandinavian
and North-German ports. Extra steamers are being pre-
pared for the trade.
The two young Princes, sons of the Prince of Wales,
who lately visited Cetewayo, in South Africa, asked to see
his wives. They were shown four women of the royal
household, who have been in attendance on the ex-king
during his captivity, none of his wives having been permitted
to join him.

Mr. Thomas Shaw, of Allangate, Halifax, has sent
a letter to the Halifax School Board announcing that to
celebrate the coming of age of his son, Mr. William Rawson
Shaw, he had decided to preseut to the School Board the
sum of £l,OOO, th& interest of which is to be used for scholar-
ships in the Halifax Higher Bt,ard School, and Heath Gram-
mar School, Haliiax. The scholarships are to be known as
the Rawson Shaw scholarships.

There has been fresh anti-Jewish disturbances at
Argenau, in Western Prussia; and fifteen gendarmes are now
stationed in the town to prevent further rioting. Several
Jewish families have fled from the place.

A meeting of the Illinois Irish Land League Con-
vention, held at Chicago and attended by 386 delegates, has
pledged the members t raise 250,000 dols. for the Irish
cause before the close of the year ; also to devote their
energies, fortunes, and, if necessary, their lives to furthering
the Irish land movements. Speeches were made attacking
the Land Bill. The American public take but little interest
in these proceedings, which are confined entirely to the
Irish population.

It is little wonder that we have been shivering as
we have been the last few months, for the Registrar-
General's quarterly report, just issued, shows that the first
quarter of the year was the coldest since 1855, while January
was colder than any month since 1833. Snow fell on fifty-
three days in the three months. It is an altogether un-
usual circumstance that a very cdrd period should be a
healthy one. In the present •case, however, i appears to
have been so, the death-rate for the United Kingdom being
51 per thousand below the average.

At the Aylesbury Assizes, on Thursday in last
week, Alfred Augustus Payne, aged 16, a butcher, was
indicted for the wilful murder of Ann Revile, the wife of a
butcher, at Slough, on the 11th of April. The particulars of
the case will doubtless be fresh in the recollection of our
readers. The prisoner, when called upon to plead, said in a
firm voice, "Not guilty." The trial extended over Thursday
and Friday, and after a very elaborate summing up by the
judge, the jury retired and deliberated for half an hour. In
the result they Acquitted the prisoner:

- -
The Queen, Princess Louise, Princess Beatrice, the
Duke and Duchess of Connaught, and Trince Leopold at-
tended Divine service on Sunday morning in the private
chapel at Windsor. The Rev. Alfred Ilarry, D.D., Canon of
Westminster, and chaplain in ordinary to the Queen preached
the sermon. -

In Paris on Tuesday a serious accident occurred at
the Magasins du Printemps, the large drapery establishment
destroyed by lire some weeks ago. Four workmen were
engaged in lowering a huge wooden beam, when suddenly
the rope broke and the mass of wood was hurled into the
street below. It fell across the Boulevardilaussmann, smash-
ing two cabs. a handcart, and a lamp-post in the middle of
the read. M Dagnin, formerly President of the Tribunal o
Commerce, and M. Pascal, a director of the Banque
d'Escompte, who occupied one of the vehicles, were both
seriously injured, the latter having since died.of his wounds.
M. Daguiu received a fracture of the skull. An old man who
was pulling the hand-cart was badly hurt, and the two cab-.
men were severely bruised.

Seventy fatal cases of small-pox were registered it,
London.last week.

The Indian tea crop of the sea,son now beginning
is estimated at from 51,000,0001 b. to 53,000,0001 b.
-- -

_
The French official returns of the importation of
nickel into France during 1879 show that 581,568 kilogrammes
of nickel ore came from New Caledonia, where lately large
deposits of this metal have been discovered.

There were no fewer than 209 ejeetments entered on
Monday at the Longford Quarter Sessions, of which 66 are
defended.

Arrangements have been completed for the visit of
an Australian football team to England during next winter.
Arriving at the end of October, they will play a series of
matches in the United Kingdom, under Rugby Union rules.
There were 2,829 births and 1,550 deaths registered
in London last week. Allowing for increase of population,
the births exceeded by 182, whereas the deaths were 35
below, the average numbers in the corresponding week of
the last ten years. The annual death-rate from all causes,
which in the two previous weeks had been equal to 23 and
25 per 1,000 further declined to is. During the past
four weeks of the current quarter the Metropolitan death-
rate averaged 22'2 per 1,000.

The chief journals of St. Petersburg still appear
with mourning borders.
Hundreds of Easter eggs, containing copies of
Naglist manifestoes were lately scattered about the streets
of Moscow.

"We understand that Mr. Fawcett intends to make
an experiment in the General Post Office which will be
watched with great interest and sympathy by the public.
He has decided to give employment to a number of deaf-
and-dumb persons in the department devoted to the sorting
of newspapers."—Daily News.

A return was issued on Wednesday morning of the
number of telegraph clerks who have resigned their appoint-
ments since the issue of the classification of 1872. This
shows that between September, 1872, and February, 1881,
there were 2,341 resignations-866 females, and 1,487 males.
Many of these had been in the work for periods varying
from seven to fourteen years.

The Agent-General for New South Wales has been
Informed by telegram of the arrival in Sydney of the ship
Blairgowrie, which sailed from Plymouth with emigrants in
January last.

In the House of Commons on Monday evening
replying to Mr. Buxton, Mr. Childers said :—" I have Her
Majesty's authority to state that she hopes to hold the
review of the Volunteers in Windsor Park either in the last
week of June or the first week of July; and as soon as the
exact day is fixed I will make it publicly known."

When the division was taken on Monday night, on
the motion of Mr. C. Lewis, for the adjournment of the
House, Mr. Bradlaugh was seated under the gallery, and
had to withdraw with the other 'strangers" near him.
The principal work of the American mint nowi
coining gold. Nine million dollars were coined during
April. A considerable amount of gold is appearing in active
circulation.

TL Temperance Act was enforced at Sarnia,
Ontario, on Monday, when the publicans closed their
establishments and refused to entertain travellers while the
Act remains in force.

Japan, which has of late years been remarkably
quick to adopt the best ideas of Western civilization, is now,
according to the JapanWeeklyMail, taking up with vacci-
nation as a preventive of sm 11-poz.

The ship Peterborough, 1,080 tons, Captain Gardiner
chartered by the Agent-General for New South Wales.
sailed from Plymouth for Sydney on Friday in last week,
with 395 emigrants, unaer the supervision of Dr. IL Dawes,
as surgeon-superintendent, with Miss-Chicken in charge of
the single women.

There is a movement in Liberal circles below the
gangway in the House of Commons to raise opposition to the
proposed memorial to Lord Beaconsfield. The opposition is
based on the unusual character of the memorial, and it is
likely that some oounter scheme will be put forward.
The Cologne Gazette publishes a dispatch from St.
Petersburg stating that General Loris Melikoff has renewed
his previous request to be relieved of his functions, but that
the Emperor has not yet agreed to his demand. It is
reported that should he in reality retire, Count Ignatieff will
be selected as his successor

It is reported that Indian opium is losing ground in
the north of China, and that it will soon become a luxury in
which the opulent chines only can indulge.

A despatch published by the Journe des Debats an-
nounces that the Panama Canal works are now proceeding
with great activity. A broad road already connects the two
oceans, and the engineers conclude from the surveys that
have been made that the construction of the canal will be a
comparatively easy matter.
On the 9th of June next the centenary of the birth
of George Stephenson will be celebrated at Chesterfield.
The birthplace of the father of our railway system was, as
most persons know, in the Northumbrian village of Wylam ;
but Chesterfield as his chosen home, where he spent so
many years and lived to the last, happy among his dogs,
his rabbit, and his birds, and, whe,n not engaged about
the works of his collieries, very Rill, in the favourite
pursuits of his later life—horticulture and farming.
Stephenson died in 1848, and his remains were deposited in
Trinity Church in that town.

_
Sunflowers are recommended for planting round
houses in low•lying feverish and malarious districts. They
have, on a smaller scale, many of the good effects of the
Eucalyptus trees.

At a meeting it the Chicago branch of the Land
League held on Sunday a resolution was adopted pledging
the members to raise 25,000 dollars before the new year in
aid of the Irish cause. Another resolution, threatening
with Boycotting all Irishmen who did not join the League,
provoked much opposition, and was filially withdrawn.

The Prince of Wales will, it is expected, visit Pesth
for the races after the Vienna wedding festivities. The
National Club of Nobles intends to offer him a splendid re-
ception, and there will be jete4 every night.

Among the latest manifestations of sympathy
towards the peopleof Ireland is a movement lately set on
root in the capital of Japan for the collection of subscrip-
tions. The promoters of the fund declare that, as their
foreign brethren in Ireland are in a most unfortunate con-
dition, it is desirable to bestow a portion of the fruits of
labour upon them, and that donations ase invited on the
principle "that it is not heroic to abandon faithfulness
when it is present befere our eyes."

Another historical 'festival takes place in Bavaria
this summer. Rothenburg on the Tauber intends to com-
memorate the 250th anniversary of its siege by Tilly during
the Thirty Years' War, and a play, introducing the celebri-
ties of ilia time, with strt attention to all historical and
archwological details, is Ilready being rehearsed with great
energy.

The death c.f Mr. Edward Miall, which took place
late on Friday night in last week, rem yes a very charac-
teristic if not a very prominent figure f um English politics
(remarks the Daily News). Mr. Mail -lad been compelled
by declining health to withdraw from public life some years
since, and at the last triennial conference of the Liberation
Society, with which his name waslso long connected, he was
able only to appear on the platform without addressing the
meeting H s strength had failed while he was in Parlia-
ment, an., e finally retired at the election in 1874. He was,
however, still regarded by his nmnerous friends in all parts
of the coun.ry as a political Mder, though the party of
"religious equality 'with which he was so long identified
has fallen under the Parliamentary guidance of younger
men.

News reached Lerwick on Tuesday that while a
large fishing boat from the island of Whelsay, Shetland, was
proceeding to the deep sea fishing, one of the crew, George
Anderson, was knocked overboard by the boom of the main-
sail. John Jamieson, another of the crew, a powerful and
skilful swimmer, immediately jumped overboard to his com-
panion's assistance. Anderson, however, caught hold of
him, and both were drowned. Anderson was 24 years of age
and unmarried. Jamieson leaves a widow and two young
children.

Intelligence from St. Petersburg states that a hand-
bill, dated the 20th of March, has been distributed at
Dorpat, calling upon the inhabitants of the Baltic Pro-
vinces not to swear allegiance to the Emperor until he has
conferred upon them laws and land rights equal to those
already possessed by the Russian people. When this was
done, loyalty to the death would be sworn to his Majesty.
The appeal concludes by urging the people to remain united,
but to avoid open rebellion.

We hear so much of the difficulties of the Church,
that it is pleasant to encounter an ecclesiastical dignitary
who does not believe in them. Such an one is Archdeacon
Darby, who, in his charge at Chester, characterised as
chattering alarmists the people who are always crying that
tho Church is in danger. "The Church's present difficul-
ties," said the Archdeacon, "bear the same proportion to
those of former times as the squibs and crackers of the
sth of November bear to the enterprise of Guy Fawkea."—
Globe.
"Milk from the 'Crown Prince's Dairy" is now
being sold in Berlin, where the good housewives are eager
purchasers, in consequence of the great purity of the flilld.
The Crown Prince furnishes the milk from his domain at
Paretz, where the choicest cattle are reared, and which was
the favourite seat of his grand-parents, Frederick William
111. and Louise. A similar plan was followed by the first
wife of the Great Elector, who had the in-a:tact of her dairy
near the Spandau Gate sold in the Molkenraarkt.