The Express.
London, England, 1867-01-03 00:00:00

ITALY.

FLORENCE, JAN. 2, E'vekruie.
General Menabrea has been appointed first
aide-de-camp to the King.
His Majesty has decorated Generals Cialdini and
Rossi and Senator Paleocipa with the order of the
Annunciada.
The Gaszetta tr Italia states that the Minister of
War has withdrawn his resignation. The same
journal announces that the negotiations with Rome
are proceeding favourably.
The cholera quarantines having been abolished
in Sicily, the line of railway between Messina and
Catania will be opened to-day.

The Ministry of Marine at Berlin is to be shortly
separated from that of war. The latter department will
probably be confided to General Count de Moltke, head of
the sta.

The Christmas dish in Austria is a goose,of which
immense numbers are slaughtered on that oocasion AtV ie tins
the poultry deaden desorate their shop windows with those
birds dressed up to represent in caricature individual of a
momentary notoriety. This season the majority of geese
figure as Marshal Benedek or General Clam-Gallas. The
great =cocoa on the previous occasion was " a French
romance-writer delivering a scientific lecture," which Alex-
andre Dumas was then doing in the Austrian capital.
A CHRISTMAS POLICE Cunt IN PARIS. —The
hopolice discovered two nights ago a carriage and pair of
rses in the ditch of the fortifications, neer the Porte-
Saint-Cloud, with the coachman fast asleep on the box
from having taken too much drink. Upon waking him
with difficulty all the information they could obtain was
that he was in the sarvice of the BaronessCreuze de Lesser,
and that as he was starting to fetch his mistress home he
fell asleep, and knew nothing further. It seems the horses
must have wandered on without any guide until in the
darkness they fell into the ditch. The coachman was re-
moved to the station to recover from his drunkenness, and
the police anteceded in getting the horses and carriage out,
strange to say, without any injury to either.
IMMIGRATION OP FACTORY GIRLS. —Thirty
women recently arrived in Newark from England, they
having been engaged by Messrs. Clark and Co., thread
miundacturere. They had been chosen from the large
manufactories in England.—Nets York Tranote.

RPM.

Since yesterday mornintil;Zoinetie• have risen rapidly, and
pressure is now nearly uniform over the British isles. Tem-
perature has declined on the coasts or Scotland and In the aouth
of the British isles. In London this morning, at 8 a.m., the tem.
perature was It der. below freezing point. On our northern
coasts the winds are light and variable ; and northerly (N.B. to
N.W.:, light to moderate, on our other coasts.

The Star understands, on good authority, that a
marriage is about to be contracted between Professor
Fawcett, M.P. for Brighton, and Miss Millicent Garrett,
a daughter of Newson Garrett, Esq., of Aldeburgh,
Suffolk.

Yesterday workmen were engaged in repairing and
strengthening in various ways the screen which separates
the nave of the Crystal Palace from what was the Tropcal
Dep►rtment, but is now a mass of ruins. This is being
done in order to make the building weather tight at that
point, and so to promote the comfort of visitors. To
carry out this object the more effectually, an additional,
but temporary screen will be forthwith erected about 25
feet further north than the main screen, thus rendering
the Palace more impermeable to the elements in that
quarter. It need hardly be stated that the havoc caused
by the fire has materially destroyed the general symmetry
of the fabric.

It is supposed to be the intention of Count
lAriseh to kW the mines belonging to the state in Austria.
A commencement has been made with the well-known
quicksilver mines of Idris, which have been fanned by
the banking house of Weickersheim and Brandeis for
a term of ten years. The lessees engage to take the
whole produce of the mines at • certain price, and, as the
demand for quicksilver is very fluctuating, the government
gains the advantage of a fixed revenue upon which it can
depend.
THE RURRIAN-AMERICAN TELEGRAPH. —A tele-
gram from San Francisco dated Dec. 7, says :—" The
Russian-American Telegraph Company's steamer George
Wright, which arrived at Victoria, V. 1., Nov. 30, brings •
collection of 30 boxes of =lrani, vegetable, and other curi-
osities from Ruesian-America for the Smithsonian Insti-
tute. The companies were all well when the George
Wright left, and work was progrisesing satisfactorily.
Houses and stations were built in Pastern Siberia, and
many thousand poles were put up. Winter was setting in
when the steamer left. The Russian. behaved kindly, and
the Eequimaux and Lichutehi tribes were friendly. Every-
thing was ready for prosecuting the work vigorously next
spring."
A modern writer of eminence ventures the
assertion that, with proper care and protection, even in-
arable territory end sandy deserts, as in Arabia and
Africa, might in places be covered with forests, the theory
not being inconsistent either with experience or the
deductions of science. In fact many acres in the &iota
and Miami valleys, in Ohio, are to-day covered with •
thrifty timber growth sufficient for fuel and fencing, which
thirty years ago were entirely destitute. It is stated that
timber is becoming sufficiently abundant for domestic use
in that state, where the land at the period of first settle-
ments was without trees, and, in the ordinary parlance of
the times, was known as the " barrens ;" the process of
timber cultivation being now. in fact, silently going on in
the states of the west as well as those in middle latitudes.
American paper.