The Sun.
London, England, 1864-07-08 00:00:00

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Yesterday a. meeting of this instintion
at its house, John-street, Adelphi—Thomas
man, Eog., F.R.S., vice-president, in t
There were also present—Captain Sir E :seatel
Perrott, Bart., Colonel Palmer, Admiral Geodon,
George Lyali, Esq., M.P., Captain De S. Croix,
NV. H. Henan, Esq.., Captain Ward, R.N., inspee.
for of lifeboeta to the institution, and Rieeercl
' Lewis, its secretary. The minutes of t::3
previous meeting having been read, a reward of .f.;3
wavy voted to the crew, of three men, of a shore heal:,
for putting off end saving at unsidereh!e riek of
life, two men whese boat was durieg a
Forong weslerly wind in Yarmouth-roads, on the
27th May. The accident naviee: been obeerved
from the shore, the saivore itretnediateiy leoneheil
email boat through the burf,whien was very teeevy at
:he time, and fortunately errived at the spot jeet
,n liras to Save poor fellotwe, who were fowl
in the th e
ese sea. Various other rewards were
also voted for saving life from difilerent wrecks on
the coasts of the United Kingdom. The metoteg
then sanctioned paymeets atreountieg to op warde cf
.£1,903 on vatious lifeboat estaba.eniente of the ia-
stitution. A communication was read from Deer,
Geeeral Knollye, expressing the thanks of his Rue'
Highness the Prince of Wales for a phetogreph
cresented to him by the institution of the Albert
Victor lifeboat, now stationed at Bervvick•on-Tweed.
The boat was the gift of the City of Manclieszer to
the institution. His Royal Highness the Pte:d-
Marshal Commanding-in-Chief and Earl de Grey
end Ripou had given instructions for copies of the
directions of the institution for the Restoration of
the apparently dead. from Drowoiog to be cir-
culated amongst the several stations of the army
at home and abroad. The Hot/. Rustomjee Jam-,
setjee Jjeebhoy, member of the Legistative
Council of Bombay, had presented to the society
'SQO, through R. W. Crawford, E•q., M.P. Durieg
the past month the institution had sent new life-
boats to Teignmouth, Padstow, Holyhead, and
Dover. At several of these towns, and at Merl-
borough, in Wiltshire, the people had turned out in
large numbers to give a hearty welcome to the life-
boats. The cast of each of these boats was the gift
to the society of benevolent persons. The institu-
tion had also about 20 lifeboats building for places
on the coast. A contribution of £2O was forwarded
by the officers of her Majesty's ship Styx, at Ber-
muda, being the proceeds of some amateur enter-
tainments given by them for the benefit of the
lifeboat institution. Dr. Paget Blake, of Torquay,
had reported to the institution that he had recently
successfully treated, by the Marshall Hall method,
as adopted by the NationalLifeb4at Institution, a
man apparently dead from drowning. The patient
was under water ten minutes before he was picked
up. He was then got hold of by a boat hook and
brought on board a small boat and taken to laud.
He was apparently quite dead, but after half an
hour's exertion on shore, Dr. Blake fortunately
restored him to life.

Gunpowder Explosion at Tonbridge.

That dangerous compound which Lord Byron
ironically described as " Thy humane discovery,
Friar Bacon," has been the cause of a great cala-
mity near Tonbridge. The gunpowder mills of
Maesrs Curtis and Harvey are situated about a mile
from that town, in the midst of a dense thicket;
and several branches of the river Medway serve as
canals to convey the materials used in their factory
to and from the works. For the different processes
of the manufacture there are separate mills, built at
some distance from each other, to lessen the fearful
danger of the operations. It was in the glazing
mill that the recent disaster occurred. On Wednes-
day evening this factory was blown up, the concus-
sion shaking every house in the town, while the
effect was felt throughout the whole length of the
\Sreald of Kent. A policeman on duty at the time,
at least three miles distant, asserts that a column
of hot air rushed past him ; and similar evidence
gives corroboration to the statement. Toe men
employed during the day in the glazing mill had
lefz off work et six o'c:ock, and another relay
had taken their place for the night. At half-past
seven one man and two lads were in the
mill, a fourth person having gone away
with the intention of Bonn returning. It
was during his absence that the explosion occurred,
leaving nu human being alive to tell the origin of
the cataslrophe. Nor is it probable that, had one of
these unfortunate people been by a miracle spared
from destruction, he would have been able to give
any aceeunt of the matter. The bulk of powder
that exploded was about thirty hundredweight, and
the mill itself was simply 'obliterated from the spot
on which it had stood, leaving nothing but a few
charred pieces of wood on its site. Neighbouring
fields were strewn with the fragments of beams and
planks, and the trees in the thicket were blasted as
by a simoom. The only human remains that have
been found, with the exception of one terribly dis-
figured body, have been portions of flesh and bone,
with here and there a hand or a foot that could be
known for what it was. A punt on the river, laden
with hay, was injured and sunk, the hay damming
up the little river. The boy on board the punt had
an almost miraculous escape. The punt was towed
by a man named Henry Hill, who was blown into
the river, and his body not found until Thursday
morning. The boy, though only a few feet distant,
escaped almost unhurt. The explosion would have
been but ore of a series but for an excellent adaptae
tion of an invention by Messrs. Curtis and Harvey,
This, which is called a tipping machine, is so con-
trived that the shock of an explosion in one mill
immediately saturates the powder in all the others
with water. But for this excellent provision,
which is only one of a long list of elaborate pre
cautions taken by Messrs. Curtis and Hervey, who
spare no cost in providing against accidents, the
whole of the mills would undoubtedly have
been destroyed, and the mischief fearfully increased.
Mr Gray, the manager of the works, lives at a
short distance, and the front of his house is
greatly damaged. He and Mr Dance, the super•
intendant of police, were exceedingly active in
their inquiries among the cottagers who suffered
by the explosion. Most of these poor people, in-
habitants of a small village near the mills, are in
the employ of Messrs. Curtis and Harvey. Win-
dows were driven in, and other mischief caused to
the dwellings of the labourers; but the loss of life
was confined to the glazing mill itself, the names
of those persons kilted being W. Lidiow, a married
man, 60 years of age; H. Hill, 19; E. DiY, 19 ;
and W. Day, 17—the latter three unmarried. The
scene presented in the romantic valley occupied by
these mills will not readily be forgotten by those
who have witnessed it. The windows of numerous
cottages and dwellings are shattered by the ea plc).
the bee
sion, even in the town of Tunbridge itself;
grimed and blackened appearance of the buildings
in the neighbourhood of the mille, the torn beams
scattered over the fields, the water of the river and
its tributory streams, usually clear, black with
powder; the air thick and he
--Avy with a su'phuric
taint;
the wives of the men employed in the mills
weeping and didrac.'ed ; the air of confusion and
all combined to render its
detoiation, features at
once melancholy and terrible.

FINANCES OP NATAL.--Twenty years ago, when
Natal first. bzortme British territory, its revenue at
the end of the first year amounted to £B3O. Five years
later it was £9,268; in five years more £28,618; at the
end of another five years, £12,800; and in 1863 it reached
£123,059-=an excess of more than £6,000 over that year's
expenditure. The growth of the revenue is in a great part
due to the population drinking and smoking more. It is
calculated that the European population paid in 1863 taxes
to the amount cf about £5 per head. Yet the expenditure
for reproductive purposes—such as education, roads and
bridges and public works, immigration, and mail carriage--
barely exceeded £20,000. But few families maintain such
a costly official staff as Natal.—Natal Mercury.

A letter from Cnamounix, in Swirz2rlaud, st.tes
that another discovery of human remains hat; just
a
been made on the Glacier des Bossons. One of the Kaides,
named Frederick Balmat, was passing near a crevic from
which a body was recently recovered, when he obs erved a
small piece of black silk staff projecting from the ice This
proved to be the extremity of a cravat around the n eck of a
corpse. The guide, with an axe extricated the hod: y, which
was remoVed to Chamounix for interment. Thi sis sup-
posed to be the last of the three unfortunate victim is lost in
1820, the remains of the others having been pt 7eviously
recovered.