The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-12-12 00:00:00

glisitliantous

HOME. FOREIGN, AND COLONIAL.

A telegram sap that the steamer Elizabeth Martin,
01 the Donald Currie Line, which sailed from London

IRISH HUNTING TlPPLE.—Englishman (haring
partaken of his Friends Flask, feels as if he had swal-
lowed melted lead): "Terribly strung! Pure Whisky,
is it not ? "—lrishman "Faith ! not at all ! It's
greatly diluted with Gin I "—Punch.
EARTIIQTJAKE IN MASSACHTSETTS.—New York
papers report the occurrence of a serious earthquake in
.Essex County, Massachusetts, at five in the evening
of the 25th ult. The New York Herald says it was no
insignificant affair, but an alarming " shaking up" all
along the Cape and coast, causing quite a panic among
all classes of the coin- unity. In Gloucester both
wooden and brick buildings were violently rocked to
and fro; crockery was smashed, doora and windows
sprung, and everything portable seemed to be die-
turbe . In Danvers and Manchester and other towns
in that direction there was the same general expe-
rience. Men, women, and children, frantic with fear,
ran into the streets in the utmost excitement. Every-
where the sound was a low but violent roar, which
appeared to gather in force and strength until it
seemed finally to culminate in a heavy explosion in the
vicinity of hewburyport and Topsfield. Some of the
citizens describe it as if heavy cannon had been fired in
rapid succession. The weather was fine at the time of
the earthquake, but two days previously a terrific
tornado, already reported by telegraph, paased over the
Southern and Western States, nearly annihilating
Tuscumbia, in Alabama.
A BISHOP ON FEMALE REFUGES. The
Bishop of Ely on Monday presided at a meeting in
Cambridge in connection with the female refuge there,
and in the course of his speech his lordship said they
could have no sympathy with either those who, with
supercilious and almost affected ptirity,were determined
to Ignore the exiatence of that which none could I ieny ;
or with those who had no belief in the possibility of
reclaiming the fallen. The Church of God could not
refuse to see the evil ; nor could they allow that the
Gospel WWI unable to contend with and conquer it.—
The Secretary stated that inmates were received from
all parts of the diocese, and even beyond its limits.
His lordship subscribed Lii, the Vice-Chancellor of the
I rniversity sent £5, and Archdeacon Vesey (Hunting-
don), a like sum.

UNITED STATES POST OFFICE.—Mr. Barber,
third Assistant Postmaster-General, has completed his
annual report for the year ending June 30, 1871. It
shoes that during the year there were issued to post-
masters, for sale to the public, 632,733,000 adhesive
postage stamps of the value of 617,273.242; of plain
stamped envelopes. about 6i,ii00,000, valued at
$1,027,952; of stamped envelopes hearing a retuan
request, 52,000,000, valued at 81.733,738; of news•
paper wrappers, coins 19,000,000, valued at $220060;
and of postal cards, 91,000,000. The increase in
value of the ordinary issues over the preceding year
was $1,688,148, or over 8 per cent. These figures re-
present the cost of manufacture added to the postal
value.
CREMATION IN THE EAST ArND WEST,—It
would indeed, remarks the North China Herald, be a
fantastic vagary of fashion if the practice of cr.-mation,
long familiar in China and Japan, and since the pre-
valence of Christianity discontinued in Europe, were
to come once more in vogue in the West, just as it had
been voted a blunder by the nations we choose to call
barbarians. The Chinese we know occasionally prac-
tise cremation. The Japanese have been in the habit
of doing so for some centuries, but are now abandoning
the practice in favour of burying. Just at this time
Europe and America—as they have taken to Japanese
fashions in dress when the natives of the land of the
rising sou are arraying themselves in the habiliments
of the West—affirm by the voice of the intellectual
minority that they desire to burn their dead, and that
interment is a disgusting and abusrd custom.

THE BITER BIT. —The Aquarium of the Zoolo-
gical Station at Naples was, last autumn, attacked by
a great number of r-sts, which not only did considerable
mischief to the wood work, but even caught and
devoured a number of the animals kept in the tanks.
In an attack on an octopus, however, one of these
depredators got by far the worst of the battle, as next
morning nothing remained of the four-footed gourmand
but the bones and a part of the skin. Though this
achievement cannot be compared to the exploits
related by M. Victor Hugo, it is interesting as showing
that even in captivity a healthy cuttle-fish is well able
to take care of itself.

FRIGHTFUL ACCIDENT AT • WEDDLE° PARTY.
—ln London, on Monday night, a very sad catas-
trophe happened in the Lambeth road to a young
lady named Alias Ann Clementina Frogg, aged seven-
teen years, daughter of a ship broker. It appears
that a brother of Miss Frogg bad been married in the
morning, and a party were spending the evening at
the residence of the bride's parents. Mies Frogg was
passing the fire when her dress became ignited, and
she was instantly enveloped in flames. The un-
fortunate young lady, becoming greatly excited,
rushed out of the room, and was followed by a gentle-
man who succeeded in seizing her just as she had got into
the passage and was about to rush out into the street.
He threw around her a rug which was in the passage,
and thus managed to extinguish the flames. Miss
Frogg was much burnt all over the upper part of the
body, and her fare was den much wonted.

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