The Sun.
London, England, 1863-02-17 00:00:00

, TUESDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 17, 1863.

SPORTING INTELLIGENCE.

TIM

,TES,

BETTING AT MANCHESTER.-MONDAY.

The members were occupied to-day with selecting their
Committee of Management, and other purely local matters
The few offers made upon racing business indicate no
change since Saturday. Closing prices:--

LIVERPOOL STEEPLECHASE.
Bto 1 agst Satellite (offered)
100 to 8 agst J ralousy (offered)
25 to 1 agst Lincoln (taken)
WATERLOO CUP.
100 to 8 agst Mr. Blackstock's nomination (wanted)
25 to 1 agst Mr. Gregson's nomination (taken)
40 to 1 agst Mr. Knowles' nomination (taken)

RAILWAY INTELLIGENCE.

1863-64.
Wages to seamen and marines 12,921,951
Victuals and clothing for ditto 1,416,986
Admiralty-office.. 165,322
Coast Guard Service, Royal
Naval Coast Volunteers,
and Royal Naval Reserve 299,69
Scientific Branch
Her Majesty's establishments

WEST MIDLAND.

The directors report that the aggregate net receipts of
the West Midland and Great Western Companies, includ-
ing the South Wales and Shrewsbury Railways, after pay •
men t of rent charges to South Wales, Worcester and Here-
f rd, Severn Valley, and other companies, amount to
£705,743, which, in conformity with the agreement between
the companies, are divided in the proportion of 17i per cent.,
or £123,505, to the West Midland, and 82i per cent., or
£58z,238, to the Great Western Company. The above
amount of £123,505 is divisible between the Oxford and
Newport section. in the following proportions, viz., Oxford,
78 per cent., or £96,334, and Newport, 22 per cent., or
127,171. Ihe result to the Oxford section will be that,
alter payment of interest on debentures, amounting to
£41,710 ; dividend on Chipping Norton Railway capital, at
the rate of 4 per cent. per annum, £480; dividend on the
first guaranteed.stock, at 6 per cent. per annum, £25,439
and dividend on the second guaranteed stock (including the
portion held by the company), £14,577, there remains a
balance of £14,127.

at hoine -
Her Majesty's establishments

183,316

36,370

abroad
Wages to artificers, &c., em-
ployed in her Majesty's
establishments at home.. 1,121,878
Wages to artificers, &c., em-
ployed in her Majesty's
establishments abroad
Naval stores for the building,
repair, and ou fit of the
fleet; steam machinery, and
ships built by contract :
Section I. Storekeeper-
General of the Navy.... 1,334,051
Section 11. Controller of
the Navy ..
New works, improvements,
and repairs in the yards, &c 433,298
Medicines and medical stores 66,000
Miscellaneous services

69,957

867,349

Total for the effective ser-
v 9068,604
ice

Half-pay, reserved halt-pay,
and retired pay to officers
of the Navy and R)yal

Marines

719,341

M ilitary pensions and allow-

483,106

ances

pensions and allow•

194,932

ances ..

MENT.

Army department (conveyance
of troops)

The navy estimates for the year 1863-64 were
published yesterday. It appears that the Govern-
ment is able to reduce the expenditure by more than
a million (L 1,058 273) without injury to the effective
service. The number of seamen is 39,000, against
40,000 last year; of boys, 9,000, as last year; of
coast guards, 9,000, being 1,150 more than last year;
of marines 18,000. The naval coast volunteers are
taken at 8,000, and the royal naval reserve at 16,000
—making, with the men, boys, and marines, a total
of 100,000 ; exactly as in the year 1804.
The following is an abstract of the particular votes
which will be asked, with the corresponding votes
for the last year expended, showing the increase or
decrease under each head :

1862-63.
£3,078,121
1,362,093
170,832

297,602
68,045

176,624

33,610

1,147,678

66,08:

1,774,184

1,453,56

464,170
66,000
98,708

£10,228,029

702,308

481,036

194,282

Total for the naval servioe.. £10,465,882 £11,605,(
FOR THE SERVICE OF OTHER DEPARTMENTS OF GOVERN

£270,150 £188,650

Grand total £10,736,032 £11,794,305
It will be observed that the principal decrease has
taken place in the Storekeeper General's Depart-
ment and that of the Controller of the Navy, which
have to do with timber, steam-engines, and iron-
plated ship-building.
There is a large increase in the cost of convey-
ing troops between Great Britain and the colonies,
which must mean, we hope, the return of regiments
at present out.

The Murder at Kingswood Parsonage.

It may be remembered that in June, 1861, Mrs.
Halliday, the wife of the parish clerk of Kings-
wood, near Reigate, was murdered at the par,
sonage-house there, of which she had charge in
the absence of the incumbent's family. In the room
where the poor woman was murdered there was
found a package of papers, which proved of the
highest importance. There were several letters
in a foreign language, bearing date so recent
as the Friday before the murder. These letters
were in a pocket-book, which also contained
the names of several persons, and the name of
the person to whom the letters belonged—Johann
Carl Franz. There was also a letter from the cele-
brated vocalist, Mdlle. Titiens, which, it appeared,
had been written by that lady, in reply to an
application for money, from a distressed German,
who wanted assistance to enable him to reach his
own country. After a time the police succeeded in
apprehending this man Franz, and he was committed
for trial at Croydon assizes, when it was proved
that he had been seen near the parsonage-house on
the day of the murder, along with another foreigner,
and that some cord which it was proved that they
had previously purchased of a Mrs. Pitcher at
Reigate, resembled the cord with which the legs of
Mrs. Halliday had been tied. When the Superin-
tendent of Police showed Franz the package of
papers which had been found in the room he for a
moment turned paie, and then hung down his head,
seemingly absorbed in thought. Some days after,
he made a statement to the effect that while travel-
ling in the company of two Germans from Hull, they
robbed him of a bundle containing his clothes and
the papers in question. The inference which the pri-
soner wished to be drawn from this was, that the
men who had robbed him:ihad committed the murder.
At the Croydon assizes, held on the 6th of August,
Franz, who was described as a native of Saxony,
was placed upon his trial and acquitted. Here the
matter rested, and the police did not succeed in
gaining any further clue until Saturday last,
when a supposed accomplice in the murder
was apprehended at Hull. Two months
before the commission of the murder, a
foreigner, named Edward Schmidt, came to
the house of Johann Pifer, a German
lodginghouse keeper, residing in Myton-street,
tiull. He remained there eight days and then
went away. Before going he gave Pifer an old
coat in lieu of payment for his lodgings, as he had
no money. Two days after the man Schmidt had
left a person named Franz came to lodge at the
house. Pifer had pi eviously observed in Schmidt's
possession a faded brown pocket-book. Schmidt
and Franz appear afterwards to have met at the
village of Cave, and here while asleep it is supposed
Schmidt took Franz's papers from him and put them
in his own pocket-book. When Franz was tried for
the murder Pifer stated that he believed that the
pocket-book which was found in the room where the
murder had been committed was the same he had
seen in the possession of the man Schmidt. On
Saturday last, Pifer saw Schmidt in High-street,
Hull, and passed him. He afterwards met him
again about half-past four o'clock, near the Wilber-
force monument. Pifer stopped him and said,
" Why did you steal the papers from Franz ?"
Schmidt replied, " I am the man who committed
the murder, but you cannot prove it." Pifer then
seized him and held him until the arrival of a police
constable. Yesterday, Schmidst was placed at the
bar of the Hull Police Court, and was remanded
until today.

The Fish in " The Field" Window.

Mr. Frank Buckland, 2d Life Guards, in a letter
to the Field, sa) s:—" The young trout, salmon
and salmon trout, are growing very fast ; is many
of them the umbilical bag is nearly absorbed, and
they will in a few days begin to feed by the mouth.
It is interesting to observe how, as the bag de-
creases, the form of the fish grows into shape and
assumes the proper fish colour. My bridge experi-
ment has succeeded well, but for plates of zinc I
have substiti.ted bits of common slate, such as are
used for roofing houses. These, supported by four
stones, form capital " hides" for my young fish, and
it is most amusing to see them all run away fright-
ened when I lift up the slate. I have found from
painful experience that the quantity of water
sufficient, say for five hundred eggs, is not suffi-
cient for 500 live fish. When born from those eggs,
the actions of hundreds of tiny gills soon absorb the
oxygen from the water, and I have been obliged to
increase the stream and thereby the labour in sup-
plying the water. We are rearing fish under con-
siderable disadvantages, A warm sun during the
day, and gaslight during the night (to say nothing
of the heat of the steam engine below, which is used
for printing off the Field) are not the most fa-
vourable conditions for young fish ; notwithstand-
ing all these most un-salmonlike conditions, I have
a merry nursery of baby fishes, though, of course, I
have to pick out the dead ones every morning. Ido
not, however, think I lose more than about 15 or 20
per cent. of the number, but the little wretches re-
quire a great deal of care and attention. Our friend,
Mr. Ponder, thinkieg, I suppose, that I must be a
fish as well as a human doctor, has kindly sent me
up a bottle full of cripples from his apparatus, at
Hampton. I have already hatched out a most
curious specimen myself, viz., a trout with two heads,
and one umbilical vesicle. This double fish is alive
and well. Mr. Ponder has sent me not only a simi-
lar specimen (also alive), but also a fellow with one
tail and two heads, which are joined together; also,
a charr with four eyes, a trout with body twisted
like a bell spring ; besides this, a trout with body
as round as a ring, as well as numerous other
patients fit for the Orthopaedic
HosPiteanhormous
Allies, of Worcester, has sent
salmon, which he found dead,_
Waorncester. He has a
the banks of the Teme, near Ind
ratheran high, on
nose which places Punoch_!
ifshisnlOwer jaw. Of him
and the skin se'quite in the shade,
a P t to the British Museum,
I propose to misakwoorn ost-mortem to-morrow, pre-
vious to his being sent .fi
thless carcase.
where Dr. Gunther has scientific designs upon his
apparently wor _
Through the kindness of S. Gurney, Esq., M.P.,
T. Hibbert, Esq., of Chalfont Park, I have been
andape-
enabled to restock my glass rods with some fine spe-
cimens of trout ova, some of which I took from the
fish, others I took from the fishes' nests—rather cold
work—but all giving good promise of future life.
It will be curious to see whether town or country Will
be able to batch these dish out first.