The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-08 00:00:00

INCENDIARISM IN YORKSHIRE.

At the Epiphany Sessions for the East Riding, held on
Tuesday, the magistrates held a long discussion upon the
subject of the recent numerous incendiary fires in the stack-
yards of the Yorkshire Wolds, not one of which had been
traced to its author. The chief constable stated the measures
he had taken to trace the origin of the fires, one of which
was the employment of detectives, which the Police Com-
mittee sanctioned, and also resolved that the extra expenses
should be paid from the police fund. The appended com-
munication was read, received from the Home-office :
" Whitehall, Jan. 1, 1864. Sir,—I am directed by Secre-
tary Sir George Grey to inform you that, having been in
communication with Lieut.-Col. Woodford, her Majesty's
Inspector of Constabulary for the Northern district, on the
subject of the incendiary fires, which have of late occurred
in the East Riding, he has received a report from that
officer, recommending that a temporary increase should be
made in the members of the constabulary force, and that the
county magistrates should taken into consideration the pro-
priety of further dividing the Riding into police districts,
co-extensive with the remaining petty sessional division of
the Act 3 and 4 Victoria, cap. 88, sec. 27.-4 am, Sir, your
obedient servant, H. WADDINGTON. C. W. Strickland,
Esq., chairman of Quarter Sessions, East Riding of York."
The Hon. Admiral Duncombe said it seemed singular that,
although the first fire of the series occurred in the first week
in October, information was only sent to the Secretary of
State on the 15th of December. The reason was the inabi-
lity of the committee to sanction any measures that might
be adopted for the suppression of the fires. He was of opi-
nion that an extra expenditure should be agreed to, and that
if detectives were employed they should not be subjected to
interference from the police. Lord Wenlock explained that
he wrote to Government on the 16th or 17th of December,
urging the offer of £too reward and a free pardon
to any accomplice. In answer to this request there
were now two detectives employed in investigating the
fires, and he hoped the farmers would aid them as much as
possible. There could not be two opinions about the fre-
quent recurrence of these crimes being a disgrace to the
Riding. His Lordship had undertaken to visit every place
where a fire had occurred, and took the occasion to deny
the truth of the rumour that an ill feeling existed between
masters and servants. From the servants themselves he
learnt that wages were higher, rather than lower, and that
the condition of the working population of the Wolds was
one of comparative comfort. Wages were Bs. per week,
with meat, and 14s. to 15s, otherwise. The Police Com-
mittee's report was then agreed to, and the trials of pri-
soners proceeded. The North Riding Sessions were held
the same day. The only subject of importance was a de-
bate upon the recommendation of the Police Committee to
continue the teasing of oakum in substitution for the
treadwheel. The light but monotonous labour of oakum-
picking was most trying, and some old offenders greatly
preferred to work at the wheel. An amendment was pro-
posed to return to the wheel, but was lost, the report being
carried by a considerable majority.

REGISTERED LETTERS FOR JERUSALEM.,--AS
the regulations of the French Post-office do not
allow of registered letters for Jerusalem being sent via
France, all letters addressed to Jerusalem which the
writers desire to register, will, iu future be sent via
Belgium and Germany, and the rate of postage
applicable to letters forwarded by that route must
bo prepaid upon them, viz. :—Not exceeding oz, is ld ;
above ez, and nut exceeding 1 ez, 2s 2d , above 1 ez, and
not exceeding 2 Las, 4s 4d; every ounce after the first, 2s
2d. In addition to this postage, a registered lee of 6d
must be paid in advance upon registered letters for Jeru-
salem.—By command of the Postmaster-General, ;Row-
LAND HILL, Secretary.

Sin JAMES OuTr-Am.—At a meeting of the Town
Council of Aberdeen, on Monday afternoon, Provost
Anderson suggested that he should be authorised to com-
municate with the committee at present making arrange-
ments for erecting a statue to the memory of Sir James
Outran', pointing out the claims of Aberdeen to be the site
of the monument, seeing that the " Bayard of India" had
received his education in Aberdeen, and spent a good deal
of his early life there. The proposal was seconded by the
Dean of build, and unanimously agreed to.

CONVICTION AND SENTENCE OF FOUR PUGI-
LISTS.--At St. Alban's Sessions yesterday, James
Tyson, Daniel Morris, Joseph Goss, William Evans (other-
wise known as William Broome), and John Coney, pleaded
guilty to an indictment for unlawfully and riotously assem-
bling and disturbing the peace, and were bound over in the
sum of £5O, and two sureties of £25 each, or one surety of
£5O, to keep the peace for 12 months. The necessary bail
was duly entered into, and the defendants left the court,
and soon after the town.

CANADIAN MAIL.—The Canadian mnil steamer
Damascus sailed yesterday from Liverpool for. Portland
with the Canadian mails. Besides these she also took out
about 70 passengers and a fair amount of cargo.
BLACKBERRIES IN JANUARY.—It is a remark-
able fact that ripe blackberries are now frequently
to be found in the hedge-rows in this part of Devonshire
and the borders of Somerset. On the last day of the old
year a youth called Nelder, of this town, picked a very
fine bunch of ripe blackberries oa Exeter-hill ; and on
New Year's-day several blackberries and a fine bunch of
ripe ones were also found in the hedge-rows near the
Ottery-road station of the South-Western Railway Com-
pany.— Tiver ton Gazette.
OUTRAGES ON THE YORKSHIRE WOLDS.—In
addition to the alarm experienced from the fre-
quent incendiary fires the Wold farmers seem to be threat-
ened with the additional danger of burglars. On Monday
night Mr. Pinder, of Linton Wold, was aroused by an alarm
of " A man in the house I" Mr. Pinder at once proceeded
to the dairy, armed with a revolver, where he found a man
looking through the window. Although in his nightdress,
Mr Pinder, after assuring himself that the man was not the
watchman from the stackyard, gave chase, and on the
fellow refusing to obey the summons to stop, fired at him,
and, judging by the blood left on the ground, hit him. The
shot, however, did not hinder the burglar, or whatever he
was, from escaping into the darkness. The adventures of
the night were, however, not at an end. Early on Tuesday
morning the servants, who were astir early, were alarmed
by a man looking through the kitchen window. This
fellow, finding they were giving a second alarm, fired a gun
into the house, smashing the glass of the window to atoms.
This second nocturnal visitor is believed to have been an-
other man. On Tuesday and Wednesday nights the visit
of these marauders were repeated, but, as Mr. Pinder and
all his men were astir, the ruffians had no chance of opera-
tion, and it is to be regretted that, favoured by the dark-
ness, they have contrived to elude pursuit in each case. On
Thursday Mr. Pinder gave notice of these strange events
to the police. The watchman at the stackyard, some dis-
tance from the house, heard nothing.

A DERELICT VESSEL SECURED.—A large ciis-
masted vessel, supposed to be. derelict, had been
repeatedlyseenfloating between the Scilly Isles and the main
land. On Tuesday some of the pilots from Scilly again
descried the ship and determined to board her. They did so,
and found that she was the brig Minna, of Hanover, about
300 tons register, laden with deals. No living creature was
on board, and it is conjectured that the Minna, being dis-
tressed, was abandoned by her crew, the fate of whom is
not known. The brig, it is believed, was outward bound.
The pilots, :after much labour, succeeded in towing the
Minna to land at Scilly, and on Tuesday evening Lloyd's
agent at Penzance, W. D. Matthews, Esq., received infor-
mation of the circumstance.

Mrs. Butt, the wife of Mr. Butt, auctioneer,
Sheffield, was garotted about nine o'clock, on
Tuesday evening as she was returning from the town, and
when within a short distance of home. She was followed
and attacked by three men, one of whom threw his arm
round her neck and held her tightly until the others broke
her watch-guard and possessed themselves of both watch
and chain. One of the scamps then struck Mrs. Butt a
violent blow on the face, knocking her down and breaking
several of her teeth.--Manchester Guardian.
PLLNETAItY THEORY.-It is well known that
there exists between the distances of the planets
from the Sun a certain arithmetical relation constituting
the irregularly increasing series 4,7, 10, 16, 52, 100, 196,
388, and that the reason why astronomers decided that
there must be some unknown planet between Mars and
Jupiter was, that this eerier), commonly called Bode's law,
from its discoverer, presents a singular interruption between
16 and 52, the terms corresponding to those two planets.
Whether correct or not, this law led observers to look for
the missing planet, and the result has been, as we all know,
the discovery of 78 telescopic planets, the mean distance of
all these being very nearly the missing term in Bode's series,
viz., 28. But now comes the fact that the real distances of
the planets do not in any instance exactly agree with the
terms of Bode's law, the actual distances being in integers
4,7, 10, 15, 27, 52, 95, 192, and 300: The immense differ-
ence of 88 between the real distances of Uranus and its theo-
retical one, which is 383, ought to have led astronomers to
suppose, as is the case with Mars and Jupiter, that there
must exist an unknown planet, or a belt of asteroids between
Uranus and Neptune; but this is not the case, and all their
efforts have been hitherto directed towards finding a law or
series which may agree better with actual facts than Bode's
law. Thus, at the last meeting of the British Association,
Mr. R. S. Brown proposed a series which reduces Neptune's
difference to 55, but which on the other hand produces
much more divergent terms fur the other planets t and iu
the Philosophical Magazine We now find a paper by
Mr. E. Vensittart Neale, in which the author endeavours
to grapple with the difficulty, by dividing the planets
into two groups; the first commencing with Venus,
and the second with Jupiter. The series of the first group
is then made by multiplying 2 by 3,6, and 12 successively,
giving the numbers 2,6, 12, 24; the serious of the second
group is obtained by multiplying the last term 24 by 3,6,
and 12, which gives the series 24, 72, 144, 288. In this
hypothesis we must now add to each term of the first group
the theoretical distance of Mercury, which is 2; and to
each term of the second group the same nu:uber 2, and then
24, whereby the whole series becomes 2,4, 8, 14, 26, 50,
98, 170, and 314. Comparing these numbers with the
actual distances given above, we do not see that much is
gained ; for although in the case of Neptune the difference
is reduced to 14, great discrepancies exist between the first
terms,
law.v
,‘hieh on the other hand are very nearly given by

PLYMOUTH, Jan. 6.—Wind N.E.—Sailed—Roman,
screw steamer, for the Cape of Good Hope—Caransius, for
Hong Kong.
FALMOUTH, Jan. 7.—Wind N.E.—Sailed—Marian, for
Mexico.

QUEENSTOWN, Jan. 7.—Arrived—City of Washington,
from New York.
HOLYHEAD, Jah. 7.—Wind S.E.—Sailed—Anna, for
Matamoras.