The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-03-13 00:00:00

A NEW INDUSTRY FOR IRELAND.

tamii

• The Freeman's Journal writes :—Oat of the visit
of the Irish deputation to the Royal Agricultural
Show at Kilburn last year has sprung an idea which
may prove of much advantage to Irish agriculturists.
Tao British Beekeepers' Association—a body which
has done much to encourage b3e culture and honey
cultivation in England stre about to send their
travelling tent over here, in order to instil a better
knowledge of this useful art into the minds of our
countrymen than they at present enjoy. The first
appearance of the " tent " will be at a flower show i
near Belfast on the 2nd S•ptember next. It s accom-
panied by "anumerous staff of operatives and exponents,
and will be certain to evoke a large amount of public
intereat. At a recent meeting of the Beekeepers'
Association, the president, the Baroness Burdett-
Carats, made a statement regarding the proposed
visit of the "tent" to Ireland, in which the deep
interest taken by that lady in Irish affairs
was strikingly reflected. She is very sanguine as to
the results of the introduction of this comparatively
new industry into Ireland, and has taken practical
steps, by means of communications with Colonel
King-Harman and Canon Begot, for the realisatioh
of the project. Whether her expectations be realised
or not, however—and there seems no present ground
for anticipating anything but a satisfactory result—
the. good wishes which prompt them should be grate-
fully appreciated.

NO ACCOUNTING FOR TABTE3,—'Bus Driver (to
Regular Rider), "You 'ear them 'ere Forriners on
the gnifeboard, Sir? Ain't it wonderful as they don't
get Wed o' Jabbering away like that the 'ole journey
and not an intelligible wora from fust to last I"
rum*

FATAL ACCIDENT TO VOLUNTEERS.

A sad accident oecurred on Saturday to a party of fifteen
Volunteer ofilcers who had gone from Glasgow to their bat-
tery at Irvine, some SO miles distant, for gun practice.—
The Times of Monday gives the following particulars of the
occurrence :

The officers of the Lanarkshire Brigade of Artillery,
to which the party belonged, have for some tune been
receivii g instruction in the new regimental drill
applicable to 40-pounder breechloaders, and desiring
to test their proficiency, they went on Saturday te
their battery at the sea coast. On their arrival at
the battery the officers took their posts at the gun.
The sergeant-instructor, Mr. Kirker, of the Royal
Artillery, proceeded to load a shell about 20
paces to the rear of the gun platform. In
order to fix the fuse in the shell it requires
to be gently forced home with a mallet, but the
sergeant incautiously struck sharply. This caused the
fuse to ignite and the shell burst. Right of the officers
were struck by the fragments. Kirker, the drill-in-
structer, had his left leg blown off and was severely
injured about the head and body. Dr. Beateon, an
officer of the brigade, who happily escaped, at once
proceeded to the aid of his wounded comrades. He was
joined soon after by Drs. Wilson and Pringle, from
Irvine. The sergeant-instructor was conveyed to the
Burgh Hospital, while the officers were taken V) the
Eglinton Arms Hotel, On examination it was
found that Lieutenant Colonel Watson was dan-
gerously wounded in the left knee, Major Mathie-
son had sustained a severe concussion in the
abdomen, Captain Reid had his face and knee injured,
Captain Shew was wounded in the left thigh, sap
*in Bayne on the left arm, Lieutenant Brown had
sustained a serious scalp wound, while Captain Marsh,
R. A., had his right wrist injured, and Captain Wilson,
R.A., was struck on both legs. On the alarming
extent of the injuries being ascertained, a message was
telegraphed to Glasgow, and Professors Macleod and
Buchanan left by the first train, reaching Irvine about
eight o'clock. Attention was first turned to Lieutenant.
Colonel Watson, who had ia the interval lost a great
deal of blood. The left leg was at once amputated, but
the physicians had little hope of his recovery, and be
expi red on Sunday morning at seven o'clock. The wounds
of the sergeant-instructor were from the first seen
to be mortal, and he died during the night. He was
sensible till shortly before his death, and made a
statement, in presence of a magistrate, taking upon
himself the entire responsibility of the melancholy
occurrence. With respect to the other officers, though
their injuries are of a somewhat serious character,
good hopes are entertained of their recovery. It is
believed that, in addition to the shell which Kirker
was preparing for loading, one or more shells lying in
the neighbourhood exploded; but this will be fully
ascertained by the examination into the circumstances
attending the accident."

All the wonnded passed a good night on Sunday,
and on Monday there were hopes of speedy recovery
In nearly all the cases.

"OUR" SIGNS OF SPRING.
( Not the "Loeksley lical" ones.)
In the Spring the fierce North-Easter strikes a chill in
many a breast:
In the Spring the hardy Briton buys himself another vest:
In the Spring coughs, colds, bronchitis, do their office of
disaster:
In the Spring a young man's bosom finds relief in mustard
plaster I —Punch.

AN EXTRAORDINARY WAIF.
The followinrr is a translation from the Norwegian news-
paper Norgenbladet, dated Feb. 27
"By private letter from Mime, an island on-the
western coast of Norway, is communicated to Dappos-
ten the intelligence that on the 12th of Feb. some
fishermen pulled on the Firth to haul their nets, and
had haroly finished their labour when they sighted an
extraordinary object some distance further out. The
superstitions fears of sea monsters which have been
written a great deal about lately held them back for
some time, but their curiosity made them approach
the supposed sea monster, and, to their great surprise
they found that it was something like a building. As
the m was calm they immediately commenced to tow
it to shore, where it was hauled up on the beach, and
was then found to be a damaged railway waggon. The
wheels were off, the windows smashed, and one door
hanging on its hinges. By the name on it, Edin-
burgh and Glasgow Railway,' it was at once surmised
that it must have been one of the waggons separated
from the train which met with the disaster on the
Tay Bridge. In the carriage was a portmanteau con-
taining garments, some of them marked P. B.'
The waggon was sent to liangesund, to be for warded
thence to Bergen."

In noticing the above, the Evening Stlndlrd remarks :
The story of one of the railway carriages that went
down in the Tay Bridge disaster having been towed
ashore by some fishermen on the west coast of Norway
is an illustration of the adage that truth is stranger
than fiction. Still such a proof of the power of winds
and currents, and the unexpected course which
their caprices may force flotsam and jetsam to take,.
is not unique nor yet the moat remarkable: on
record. During the siege of Paris, when communi-
cation had to be attempted with the outer world by
means of aerostatics, one balloon was swept onwards
to Norway with its devoted occupant, a Breton
sailor, and the precious contents it carried in the shape
of despatches for the Tours Government ani letters
from the beleagured inhabitants to their friends with-
out. The mail-bags, we believe, did ultimately reach
their destination in safety, although in a very round-
about way. Another balloon, with a portion of the
narrative of Oar Special Correspondent within the
City, was last seen scudding off the wild headlands of
Cornwall. That balloon was never heard of more, but
a great part of the letters came to hand, havirg
been flung out in order to lighten the basket and
help ascension, when the aeronauts realised
the hazard of dropping into a cauldron of furious
billows. The paper was saturated with a briny ooze,
but by the aid of chemical appliance and much hub-
editorial ingenuity the sentences were deciphered with
sufficient accuracy to make sense and convey the
coveted information. But the most extraordinary
instances of the romantic voyagings of an ocean waif
which ever occurred, or is likely to occur, is related
by a brother of Felicia Hemans, who was an officer
on board the ill-fated transport, Birkenhead. At
the moment the foundering of the ship was foreseen,
when this gentleman considered his fate inevi-
table, he went below, wrote a message to his
friends, placed it in a bottle, which he corked and
sealed, and committed to the waves. He was one of
the rescued. A few years afterwards, while he was
stationed on one of the West Indian islands he hap-
pened to be walking on the beach when a bottle was
thrown ashore at his feet. He took it up and examined
it, and, to his amazement, discovered that it was the
identical bottle he had cast over the bulwarks of the
sinking ship off the coast of South Africa. If a
novelist were to invent an incident like this, he would
be scouted for drawing too largely on human
credulity,