The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-01-03 00:00:00

A CANNON has been invented on a principle by whicla
heavy ship-Duns can be loaded and fired and brought into
position by' two men five times in a minute, and a field-
piece eight times in a minute. The gun heats very little.
Very successful trials of its efficiency have taken place at-
Birmingham.
ELlza MusnErr, a fine-looking young woman, dressed
up as Jack Sheppard, in full dress, was brought before
Mr. Combe, at the Southwark Police-court, on Tuesday,
charged with being drunk any incapable of taking care of
herself. The prisoner intended to have made her appear-
ance at a masquerade.
DIMINUTION OF CRIME IN SCOTLIND.—We have hem
apprised of a fact which would almost seem to warrant
the presumption of an improvement in the morality of the
people, viz., that there are no cases for trial in the High
Court of Justiciary during the winter recess. This is a—
circumstance which has not occurred during any year
since the commencement of this century.—Ediaburyk
Guardian.

THE FORTH SCBILABINE TSLEGRAPIL—The steamer

Monarch, with the submarine cables for the Forth and.
Tay Ferries on board, having arrived at Granton on Wed-
nesday, the cable across the Forth was laid next afternoon-.
On the junction being effected at Granton, the steamer
proceeded slowly across the ferry, the cable gradually un-
rolling. The operation of submerging the line occupied
about an hour and a half, and was successfully accom-
plished. The telegraph across the Tay will, we believe, be
laid immediately.—North British Mail.
FATAL ACCIDENT. -A man named John Stone has
been killed at the Churchill station of the Oxford, Wor-
ees ter, and Wolverhampton Railway. The deceased was a
besom-maker residing at Bewdley, and had taken a ticket
at the Churchill station for Brettel-lane. While waiting
on the platform, a goods train approached, and the de-
ceased, mistaking it for the passenger train to Brettel-
lane, attempted to cross the line, although remonstrated
with by the bystanders. He could not cross before the
engine struck him, and inflicted such injuries as caused
his death.

EGGS. —lt is estimated that the United Kingdom con-
sumes 1,500,000,000 eggs yearly, of which Ireland pro-
duces nearly a third. The North-Western Railway-
frequently receives a million eggs in a day at Liverpool.
from Ireland, to be forwarded to manufacturing towns.
A Boe.—During the cold weather at the beginning of
last week, the boa constrictor in Wombwell's menagerie,
to protect it from the cold, was carefully wrapped in
flannel, and,two young crocodiles put beside it, with the
view of imparting heat ; on the keeper, however, opening-,
out the flannel to look after his charge, to his utter
astonishment he discovered that one of the crocodiles had`
been swallowed by the boa! This is considered to be a
feat unparalleled in natural history.—Durham Chronicle
_unparalleled
INFANTICIDE.—A few days ago a brick-
layer, employed to repair the fire-place of a cottage in.
Ditchling, a village about a mile and a half from the Has-
sock's-gate station, on the Brighton railway, discovered
the bodies, or rather the skeletons, of five infants. The
house had been tenanted for 14 or 15 years by a woman
who had recently been married to a person named Mait-
land, and who is the mother of two illegitimate children,
still living. The neighbours deposed to a number of very
suspicious circumstances ; but the bodies being too decom-
posed to enable the professional witnesses to state with.
certainty whether the children had been born alive, the
coroner's jury, on Saturday, returned an open verdict
The magistrates examined the woman afterwards, and re-
manded her.

REMARKABLE ACCIDEIST.—A few evenings since, a
servant girl living at one of the shops in the Corridor,
Bath, was directed to fetch a decanter from a cupboard iu
the drawing room. The girl got on a chair for the pur-
pose, when she suddenly fell through a " borrowed light "
in the floor into the room beneath, a height of 20 feet.
The inmates, alarmed by the crash of the glass, rushed to
her assistance, and discovered her in a state of uncon-
sciousness, sitting upright in a chair, with her arm
stretched out, firmly holding the decanter in her hand_
She had, it appeared, fallen into the chair, for the seat had.
sunk several inches, but the decanter was not broken,
neither had she sustained any injury beyond a few bruises
on the arra and head, and a slight scratch on the back of
the head from the broken glass or wirework protecting the
casement. There was another person in the room at the
time of the accident, but it was so instantaneous that she
saw nothing of it, while the girl herself has no recollection

at all of falling. Mr. Kin;, surgeon, was called in, ami-
was of opinion, from the state in which he saw the girl,
that she had been seized with catalepsy. She is now quite
recovered.

Tits NORTH DEVON RAILWAY.—An inquest was held
at Barnstaple, on Saturday, on the bodies of John Mutable
and Samuel Mitchell, who have been for some time past
emplOyed in blasting the rock by the side of Sticklepath,
hill, contiguous to the Barnstaple station of the North
Devon Railway. About one o'clock on Thursday last, the
poor fellows were in the act of putting some gunpowder
into a hole, when it suddenly exploded, and both men
were thrown down the cliffs with considerable violence..
They fell from a height of between thirty and forty feet,
which was alone sufficient to kill both of them on the

spot. Hustable was taken up for dead, but, as he showed
signs of life, he was conveyed on boards to the infirmary,
The neckcloth and the bosom of the shirt of Mitchell
were found to be on fire, and his whole appearance was of
the most distressing and pitiable character. He was also
conveyed to the infirmary. Mr.: Forester, the house-
surgeon, found Huxtable in an insensible state when

brought in ; he had a lacerated wound on the head, but
the skull was not fractured, and he expired on Friday
morning. Mitchell was very much charred about the
face, and be expired the same morning. After a length-
ened inquiry a verdict of accidental death was returned.
Cnxsi GRISS.—The Rheea plant, or the true Chinese
grass, is already cultivated by natives of Assam, to make
fishing lines and nets. Its shoots can be cut down seve-
ral times a year, and its fibres theyknow how to separate.
Major Hannay has been able to improve the process, by
the assistance of the Chinese in Assam. Capt. Thompson,
of the house of Thompson and Co., ropemakers, of Cal-
cutta, found the Rheea fibre from Rungpoore to be three
times stronger than the best Russian hemp, and the
wild Rheea everything that could be desired for rope-
making, though the cultivated kind, probably from a
difference in the preparation, he thought a little too rigid.

for the running ii,,rg-ing of ships. But as there is no doiibt
of the strength and flexibility of their fibres, it is to be
hoped that they will, when more generally known, be
more extensively employed for ropemaking both in India.
and England, especially as they can be produced at a
price under that of Russian. hemp. Neither the royal
nor mercantile navy need, therefore, be restricted to Euro-
pean sources of supply, for this essential part of their
equipment ; but as the Rheea of Assam, like the Chu-Ma,.
of China, produces fibres of different degrees of fineness,
according as they are taken from the later or the earlier
crops, so may they, though rivalling those of grass cloth
in fineness, exceed those of Russian or of Polish hemp in
strength.—Journal of the Society of Arts.
MODERN PATRIOTISM.-When an Hungarian exile,
newly escaped from the gaols and gibbets of Austria,
lands on English ground, he is received with profuse and
enthusiastic sympathy. Town councils entertain and_
listen to him ; his speeches fill the papers ; and we feel a
glow of generous exultation as we reflect that Great
Britain is the home of liberty, and that here at least the
outcast has reached a refuge where tyranny is detested
and oppression practically unknown. Singularly enough,
the result is precisely the same when a run-away Irish
convict sets foot in New York. There is the same out-
burst of generous feeling ; the speeches, though flavoured_
ivith an extra dash of extravagance, are much in the same
strain ; and the ovations prepared for John Mitchell by-
the American municipalities bear a sufficiently dose re-
semblance to those accorded to Louis Kossuth at South-
ampton, Birmingham, and London. The government.
from whose hands these gentlemen have escaped—a pretty-
good proof in itself that those hands were not laid on.
them very heavily—is in their opinion and in that of their
entertainers not a government at all, but "a band of'
knotted tyrants and enemies of the human race," "cruel..
and rapacious," " a gang of conspirators, robbers, an&
murderers." They curse its charity and abhor its
blasphemy." Their hearers sympathise and applaud. Is
it the Government of Austria they are talking of ? No,
the Government of England. Stuff ! you ejaculate,.
throwing down your paper with a contempt in which your-
would be ashamed to allow that there was any particle of
anger. Stuff indeed—but not so considered at New York.
It is the settled conviction of three-fourths of Europe that
O'Connell was the purest patriot and the greatest man of
his day. We take another and a juster measure of him ;
but numbers are against us, and the history of the- age
will not be written exclusively by English pens. Should.
it not temper slightly the peremptory judgments we form.
of other nations, to find that lies pass for truth, and a.
mischievous incendiary is honoured as a hero and a martyr,

at so short a distance from Temple-bar, and among an
English-speaking people, familiar with English literature
and English news ?—Guardian.
PURIFICATION OF TIM AIR.—It is known that sulphur—
ous acid, or the fumes of burning sulphur, constitute an_
excellent disinfectant in typhus fever ; and such " hydras
dire" as sulphimtted and phosphuretted hydrogen must
be completely neutralizable by these fumes, the oxygen of
the one uniting with the hydrogen of the other, and.
utterly destroying them. For this reason we strongly.

recommend frequent fumigations of dwellings, areas ,
court-yards, and gardens, simply with the fumes of burn-
ing sulphur, as a very cheap as well as assuredly effectual
disinfectant, of all such noxious miasmata, at least, as are
likely to infest the precincts of human dwellings. 'Sul-
phurous acid fumes will hang in the air for a long time,,
and meet the enemy there face to face in deadly strife,
without anything particularly disagreeable to the nostrils,
except when held inadvertently above the chafing-dish or
other utensil in which the sulphur is burning, and in_
which, by the way, it may be readily kept burning, event.
in the coldest weather, by help of a red-hot poker. lit
cases of typhus fever, Dr. Graham has found such fumes
to be more effectual as a disinfectant than anything else-
It is a singular circumstance, too, that while sulphuric
acid has been quite recently discovered to be actually an.
important cure for cholera itself, either sulphurous or
sulphuric acid will be found to have been highly esteemed
by the medical faculty of the last two centuries as a cure
for plague ! We maT also mention the fact, as an interest-
ingif
one, corroborative of the idea that thefumes
sulphur might be of essential service as a protective
~ against cholera; that although from recent causes greatly
I intensifying to predisposition to cholera in one particular.
I
bonnet trade, in
i quarters or capital of the straw-plait annvde _,
ited in most a
01932 and again in 1849.
all who have ever
, pwahirtchofstuhlephthurwnmusoftLbuetocno,ntshataitltthlywn, which is the bead—
fe°sulphurOus acid, was
, the private dwellings, into fumes
perfectly
Moreover,
freethe
transmuted through countries or-
I had correspondence trarunin
fromfact
mchusoletrabeboloith friar_ to
districts infected with
e (at least it used to be so).
la,
11 rues smelt strongly of sulphur-,
that letters, &c., in such
• long been used as a disinfectant
its fumes, in fact, ha:4lga,, .n
our lazarettes. As for in-
jurylin plague—a.s, for instance,
articles
other within a dwelling,nl
to metallic or 0 s -
phurous acid be
must much injurious IL less than chlorine,
tant and it is much cheaper as well as
Builder.e
practically more effect al
NERVOUS DEBILITY AND DETERMINATION OF BLOOM-
TO THE DEAD.—Extract of aletter from Mr. John Lloyd,
L:i.w.wen, Ilarlech, Merionethshire.—To Professor Holloway,
"ir,—l think it my duty to inform you that for a long time L
was afflicted with giddiness and swimming in the head and
eyes. attended by loss of appetite and generally impaired
health. Every means had failed to give me relief, and at
length it became so alarming that I was afraid of going out
without an attendant. Mr. Hughes, chemist, Harlech, ad—
vised me to try your Pills, which I immediately did, and ant
happy to say they effected a perfect cure, and restored me for
, health sad strength."