The Sun.
London, England, 1868-05-29 00:00:00

INCIDENTS OF THE DEBBY D.

Notwithstanding the crowds assembled along the road
to Derby on Wednesday, the.charg,es brought to the
lice-court have been very i:ght, being only •
iourteen, of which eight were cases of drunk:and incapable,
and one for picking pockets.

John Hoyd was charged with assaulting Police-s
constable Saffbill while in the execution of his duty. The
constable said between eight and nine o'clock at night
he was in plain clothes on duty at Clapham Con-Amon,
when he saw the prisoner and several other mcin, one
being on his knees, playing with three cards, and betting,
He took the man into custody, when the prisoner and
several other men took him away. The prisoner kicked
him in trying to trip him up, and also injured his finger.
The prisoner, who denied being connected with the card
sharpers, was committed to prison for fourteen days.
Henry Pithouse was charged with 'assaulting Police-
sergeant IW, while in the execution of his duty. On
Wednesday morning the sergeant was regulating the
traffic in the High-street, Lower Tooting, when the pri-
soner's van stopped opposite a public-house, and caused a
stoppage along the road. On the sergeant attempting to
remove the van, the prisoner struck him a violent blow in
the mouth, he being very excited at the time. The pri-
soner said he was obliged to stop, as the horses were
" licked." The blow on the sergeant was accidental. Mr.
Dayman said it was a difficult matter to regulate the
traffic*on a Derby Day. If the van had gone into the
yard there would have been no difficulty. He fined
him 40s.

A special petty sessions was held at the Court House,
Epsom, at which Mr. Robert Neale, a merchant, was
charged with stealing a watch from the person of a gen.
tleman named Luxmore ; and Mr. George Hawley, an
American physician, and Mr. William Briggs were charged
with rescuing the first-named prisoner from custody and
,with assaulting Police-constable Jones. The case against
Mr. Robert Neale was taken first. As the prosecutor did
not appear, the magistrates asked the police to state what
had occurred. The story told was to the following
effect. A collision between two vehicles—one a cab and
the other a private omnibus—occurred on Epsom Downs
on the evening of the Derby Day. The three prisoners
were on the omnibus, and they got down and joined the
crowd which assembled about the vehicles. There was
great confusion, and when the first-named prisoner had
again mounted the omnibus, the prosecutor pointed him
out, and gave him in custody on the charge of having
stolen his .watch. The defendant stated that just as
they were about to leave the Downs in their private
omnibus a drunken cabmen drove his cab right upon
their fore horses, and backed it upon the wheelers,
causing one of them to be cut very severely. One
of the gentlemen who were on the omnibus got down,
seized the cab horse, and demanded the name of the
driver. The gentlemen who were in the cab jumped out
and rushed at the omnibus traveller, His friends seeing
this, they also descended to protect him. Having rescued
him from the attacks of the three men of the cab, they
ascended to their seats again. In about five minutes
afterwards Mr. Luxmore pointed to the defendant Neale
as lie sat on the omnibus, and gave him in custody. As
the prosecutor did not attend when the case was called,
the magistrate dismissed the charge. Mr. Neale
informed the court that it was nut likely that ho
would rob any man, seeing that he was a well-known
merchant, paying £7OO or £BOO a year rent for the pre-
mises in which lie carried on business. The charges
against the other tw-j defendants were then heard. The
assault was said to have resulted from an attempt made to
rescue Mr. Neale from the custody of the police. This
case was also dismissed. Mr. Luxmore entered the court
before the second case had entered, and asked that the first
one should be reheard, but the magistrates said that they
could not accede to his request.

THE AUSTRALIANS AT KENNINGTON

OVAL.

The " Black Eleven," whose performances in the
-,-ricket-field have scarcely been of the remarkable cha-
racter that the newspapers of the antipodes had led us to
anticipate, changed their programme on Thursday, and, in-
stead of exhibiting such respectable skill in the favourite
English game as might perhaps warrant their being matched
against the second eleven of Eton or Rugby, performed
a series of feats more or less novel to the inhabitants
of these isles. The most interesting, because the
strangest and the most nationally characteristic, of their
exercises were the trials in the throwing of the boomerang
and the spear. For these warlike pastimes the Austra-
lians bad cast aside their cricketing costume in favour of
close fitting black woollen suits, which gave them, at some
distance, the appearance of being clad in strict aboriginal
fashion, with only the short trunks or drawers of kan-
garoo or other kind of skin that a savage would wear.
They affected, beside, a head-dress of two long feathers,
crossed in a peculiar and not ungraceful curve. Standing
in line, they cast their primitive-looking javelins with
great force and skill, sending them, as the archers of
olden days sent their arrows, high in the air, to gain
a longer flight, and a more effectual fall. The mode of
throwing these long, light, tough lances, which are
mere natural spears of sharpened wood, unshod, and
simply winged with a piece of one of the larger grasses,
like bamboo, is rather curious. The thrower holds a
short piece of wood, with a notch in the end farthest from
his hand ; in this notch he places the butt of the spear ;
and in making his throw he thus gains the same momen-
tum that is given by a sling. After competing in line,
the blacks took sides, and threw at each other, often
managing to send their lances into the earth at the very
feet of their opponents, who seemed to know exactly where
the point would strike, and awaited its fall without moving
an inch. The boomerang, though not entirely strange
to this country, having been introduced some years
since as a toy of the most formidable kind, has never
been so skilfully employed in English hands as in the
hands of these natives of Australia, whose untutored
progenitors must have discovered by accident or instinct
a seemingly paradoxical phenomenon in the law which
governs projectiles. The boomerang is a strong, broad,
curved lath, convex on its upper and flat on its lower
surface. It is propelled forwards, skimming and twirl•
ing through the air, with a loud whirr ; and when it
has touched the ground with, one end it instantly rises and
continues to gyrate in the most wonderful manner at a
great height, now sailing like a swallow, now poising
itself like a sky-lark, and now flying in circles like a
pigeon, till it swoops like a hawk, and at last falls, some-
times near the man who has thrown it, and sometimes a
considerable distance behind him. The motions of the
boomerang- are so erratic that one can hardly
imagine how
it can ever be useful as a weapon of warfare or an imple-
ment of the chase ; and its employment for pastime will
need a wider field even than Kennington Oval, where it
came flying twice or thrice among the spectators, cutting
one person's hat nearly into two pieces.

Mr.
or John Bright,
t
M.P., has accepted an invita_
tin
by the Liverpool Reform Associa-
ohim
tion, to attend a breakfast in Liverpool on the morning of
Thursday next.
ATTEMPTED Munnnn.—At the Chichester City
Petty Sessions, William Cook, a shoemaker, aged 39,
has been charged with having attempted to murder a
child, aged 13 years, named Phoebe Cole. - From the evi•
dence of the grandfather of the child it appeared that on
the 21st inst. he was sitting in his room in Orchard.
street with the child. when the prisoner (his son) came
in, and, taking the child by the neck, cut her across
the throat with a shoemaker's knife, saying, " I have done
for you." After that the prisoner went to his father and
seized hold of him, but was prevented from doing any
mischief to the old man by some neighbours who inter-
fered. Corroborative evidence was given, and the prisoner
was committed to take his trial at the Lewes Assizes.
The poor little girl is progressing satisfactorily towards
rangy, -