The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1868-03-28 00:00:00

EPITOME OF NEWS°

BRITISH AND FOREIGN.

At the present time the gardens of the Zoological
Society in London contain a very good collection ef monkeys
in the new nionkey house. Unfortunately the larger anthro-
poid apes are not represented, the last chimpanzee having
periblied during the winter.

}ler Majesty, through Lord Stanley, haa written a
letter ot somielence to Mrs. No,. and made kindly inquiries

A letter from Cannes, dated the 14th of this month,
says, Oar weather is lovely. We have no fire, and the
windows yesterday were open till a quarter to sit o'clock.
bores aid i oil sorts of beautiful flowers are lii NOW.; among
others, the Westeria and scarlet passion Bower."

Play is running high at the Paris Club. A young
man recently married lost, at a fifteen-hours' sitting, last
week, ai.20,00U!

The colony of strangers now residing at Dresden
includes 109 British families. 189 Amerioan, 525 Hessian, 03
from the North, Italy, and !do

• ..
The Prince of Wales is expected to review the
Norfolk Volunteers in the course of the summer.

Siegert, the umbrella maker of Dresden, who at-
tempted to shoot the Prince Royal of S +son!, has been
declared, after a careful medical examikation, to be insane.
In consequence, he has been ordered into permanent con-
filltinent in a lunatic asylum.

Hot Excellency the United States Minister and Mrs,
and Miss Adams leave England for America next month.

The Otago 2'iato mays :—"Captain Fraaer and Mr.
Herbert Julius have been despatched to Melbourne, with a
special invitation to his Royal Highness the Hoke of Edit,.
Wrgh to visit (Otago, And Mr. Carrick has rroceeded there
with a like invitation from the Mayor and City Council of

Ibloicings have taken place in the neighbourhood
of Shane's Castle, county of Antrim, .111w:count of the re-
storation of the barony of O'Neill, in the person of the Rev.
Witham O'Neill, the inheritor of the O'Neill estates. Ran-
dalstown was illuminated.

A sad occurrence took place on Friday last in the
Norwich lunatic asylum. One of the inmates of the asylum,
named Susan Calver, asked a female warder for a black
draught, and was told to so and help herself to some from a
enrolment Instead of taklns the draught, the woman took
up by mistake a bottle Containing some disinfectant fluid,
and she died shortly alter drinking a portion of its contents.

In Venezuela, according to a recent statement, when
a young man asks for the hand of a young girl, the father
gives the supplxant a very bard stone to pierce. It usually
takes about three years to pierce the stone, and then the
lather grants the young noin's request, and hands over his
daughter Marriaues are rear,e in Venezuela perhaps. It
is odd that the matter was never before mentioned the
fashion may become popular in England !

An Irish paper displays its anitnnsitT to England in
a picture representing a skeleton in the garb of a cavalry
soldier, toiling onwards with the aid of a staff, while behind
him, stretching in a long line that is lost in the horizon, are
seen the corpses of horses and men, with birds of prey hover-
ing over them. The cut has the words printed over The
Abyssinian Expedition: the last survivor, or what we may
expect to corns of it."

The Pope has just given a private audience to the
American philanthropist, Mr. Peabody, and invited him to
he seated—an honour which his Holiness very rarely accords
in the Pontifical receptions. Pius IX. also gave his portrait
to the kindhearted citizen of the United States, with a Latin
quotation, containing an eulogium on benevolence, written
with his Holiness's own hand.