The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-09-08 00:00:00

LATEST FOREIGN AND COLONIAL NEWS.

THE FRENCH IN TAHITI.

The Boston Advertiser publishes the following im-
'portant intelligence from Tahiti. The latest accounts we
have previously seen reported the fact of a collision
having occurred between the natives and the '7; I,llt-
the statement now given adds, it will be cbserved, that
the town bad been evacuated alike by English and
French :

"FROM THE SOCIETY ISLANDS.
" By a recent arrival at New Bedford, advices have
been received from Tahiti to April 15th. The natives
had made a vigorous assault upon the French garrison,
and had driven them from the land. The European resi-
dents bad been compelled to flee with their effects on
board the French vessels of war. After the evacuation
of the town the French vessels opened a fire upon it."
T

_HE .-AFFRE WAR.—The South African Commercial
Advertiser of the 20th of June, received by the Guard,
Captain Paine, arrived at Liverpool, which on her voyage
from Zanziber called at the Cape, contains the following
official despatches relative to the late engagements with
the Caffres on the frontier. This paper, which is five days
later than previous advices, gives no other intelligence of
consequence than special reports from the chief districts.
THE CANADIAN TRADE.—Considerable anxiety if;
evinced by some of the Canadian papers as to the great
and growing disproportion between the exports and the
imports of the province. The Toronto Globe of a recent
date has an article upon the subj ct, from which it ap-
pears that in 1841 the aggregate imparts of Canada fell
not far short of X 5,000,000, as follows :
At Montreal £2,153,520
At Quebec..
At other ports ...

£4,015,666
In 1845 they were still greater, amounting to about
£5,300,000. This does not include the freights, charges,
interest, &c., a small portion only of which remains in
the country. and it is stated that at least £7,000,000 must
be annually paid to the foreign creditor. But on the
other band the exports of the province by which this large
sum should be paid, have not, in either of the two years
mentioned, reached £2,000,000. The value of produce
exported from Canada in those two years is set down,:in
1844, at £850,000; in 1845, at £550,000. In this way a
large deficit has annually accrued against Canada—a por-
tion of which, the Globe says, has not been paid, but it is
still standing on the account current between the English
merchant and the colonial trader. The business of the
country is mainly done upon credit, and the settlement of
the account, which must come ere bin, is looked forward
to with no little apprehension. This is certainly a most
unpromising- presentation of commercial affairs in Canada,
but the best authorities agree in deeming it accurate.
The next ten years will offer many problems, political and
commercial, for the Canadian authorities and people to
solve.—American Paper.

A SECOND BERNARD CAVANAGIT.—Lord J. Man-
ners visited at the workhouse John Harden, a pauper of
diseased mind, who is now for thirty-three days without
tasting a particle of solid, food. The unfortunate man is
little altered in person, except about the regions of the
stomach, which is sunk in, and quite reduced. He is
compelled, with great difficulty, to take a noggin or two
of broth in the twenty-four hours.—Limerick Chronicle.
1101 V TO MARE GUANo.—A gentleman walking on the
beach in the vicinity of Harwich observed a man busily
engaged with a pickaxe, raising a material from the lower
part of the cliff, and on asking the man his employment,
was told "he was raising stones for manure." This rather
puzzled our friend, who became more minute in his in-
quiries. The man observed, " These, which look like
stones, are crystallized fish, and, although very hard now,
will, when put through a mill, crumble to powder. My
master ships a great quantity of it to London, there to be
ground, and then mixed with guano to give it weight."—
Bury Post. _

" HATS OFF !"—At the Spittlegage (near Grantham)
petty sessions, a few days ago, the question about " hats
off" for " God save the Queen" came before the magis-
trates. It seems the Foresters Court of Woolsthorp (the
birthplace of Sir Isaac Newton) had assembled in a tent
to celebrate their anniversary, and, when the band played
tee national anthem, the chairman called for all parties to
be uncovered ; this request three visitors (not members of
the fraternity) refused to comply with. One man's hat
wits taken off. and he put it on again. The order was
given to turn them out, which they resisted, and in the
scuffle the disloyal guests had their clothes torn. As-
sault warrants were taken out, which, however, the ma-
gistrates dismissed, deciding that visitors at a festival of
that kind are bound to comply with the reasonable re-
quirements of the chairman.
Ma. ISAAC'S CONCERT.—This recherche" affair came
off on Tuesday night, and seldom have we seen the walls
of our Amphi!beetre so respectably encircled as on this
occasion. The orchestra was good, but not powerful;
excellent in talent, but not great in number. It was most
effective, however; and the overtures, Beethoven's Fidelio
and Rosini's William Tell, were very finely played. The
first part of the concert was very pleasing, although not
very striking, Mr. Isaac's fantasia on the piano-forte being
the most attractive performance. We notice considerably
greater proficiency in this gentleman's performance than
when last we had the pleasure to Lear him. It would be
a work of supererogation to remark upon the singing of
such artistes as Grisi, Lablache, John Parry, and others.
The latter gentleman, we were sorry to observe, was out
of sorts; and had to apologize for what he imagined was
a shortcoming. His memory, in fact, failed him. But
when memory fails John Parry, he is sure to remember
something which delights us even more than what he for-
gets would have dane. As a whole, we have rarely at-
tended so delightful a concert as this with which Mr.
Isaacs has presented us.
Tun HARVEST Mousa.—The smallest of British
quadrupeds is supposed to be the harvest mouse, hitherto
found only in Hampshire, and which is so diminutive that
two of them put into a scale just weighed down one cop
per half-penny. One of the nests of these little animals
rw,laasitepdro,cuarne(di
cboympAolrse.aWohrite;kelatt
bwleasidems,ost
round, about the size of a musket ball. It andw was
i:erofeoecmtly.
pact and well filed that it would roll across a table. with-
out being discomposed, though it contained eight young
ones. This wonderful cradle was found iu a wheat field
suspended in the head of a thistle.
gbuyiSatPthineyNiTallnaueNsiter-iittusiNs,oe
fSoof thet(
hNens
much-disputed
utiadi
IRONdiu
emittedt ela
ptDrsouSpnTe:ri tsNyeL .b—y affirmedS;
the°-
statue of Memnon in Lower Egypt is the singular phe-
nomenon of sound occasioned by the vibration of soft
iron produced by a galvanic current. It was first disco-
vered by Mr. Sage, and since verified by the observations
of a French philosopher, M. Marian. The experiments
were made on a bar of iron which was fixed at the middle-
in a horizontal position, each half being enclosed in a
large glass tube, around which were wound spirals of cop-
per wire. A cord of copper wire was afterwards substi-
tuted for the two helices, and placed with its axis coinci-
dent with the axis of the bar. On completing the circuit,
longitudinal sound, although feeble, could be distinguish-
ed, the bar of iron being a little lengthened or expanded
in the direction of its axis. The origin of the sound has,
therefore, been attributed to a vibration in the interior of
the iron bar, or a new arrangement of the molecules, an
explanation which has been more than once advanced for
the mysterious phenomenon of the same kind connected
with the history of the Mernnonian statue.
ORIGIN OF THE QUARREL BETWEEN FRANCE AND
ALGIERS.—In relating the well-known incident that gave
rise to hostilities between France and the Day of Algeirs,
Count St. Marie goes back to the remote cause, which,
by his account, was a lady. In the time of Napoleon the
Bey of Tunis had a favourite female slave, for whom he
ordered, of an Algerine Jew, a costly and magnificent
head-dress. The Jew, unable to get it manufactured its
the country, wrote to Paris ; the nead-dress was made,
at the expense of twelve thousand francs, and the modest
Israelite charged it thirty thousand to the Bey. The
latter was too much pleased with the bauble to demur at
the price, but not being in cash, he paid for it in corn.
There chanced just then to be a scarcity in France; the
Jew sold his grain to the army contractors, and managed
so well that be became a creditor of the French govern-
ment for upwards of a million of francs. Napoleon fell,
and the Bourbons declined to pay ; but the Jew contrived
to interest the Dey of Algiers in his cause, and remon-
strances were addressed to the French government. The
affair dragged on for years, and at last, in 1829, on the
eve of a festival, when the diplomatic corps were ad-
mitted to pay their recpects to the Dey, the latter ex-
postulated with the French consul on the subject of the
long delay. Tho answer was unsatisfactory, and the con-
sequence was the celebrated rap with a fan or fly-trap,
which sent its giver into exile, a,,d converted Algeria into
a French province. On visiting the Kasha, or citadel, at
Algiers, Captain Kennedy was shown the little room in
which the insult was offered to the representative of
France. It is now used as a poultry-yard. " Singularly
enough," says the captain, "as we entered, a cock, strutt-
ing on the deserted divan, proclaimed his victory over
some feebler rival by a triumphant crow—an appropriate
emblem of the real state of affairs." But the conquered
cock is game ; and although sorely punished by his ad-
versary's spurs, he returns again and again to the charge.
—Blackwood's Maga:ine.
INTERESTING CONFLICT.—A singular circumstance
connected with a kestrel occurred at Dover some time
since. The common guillemot (uria /roue) breeds in
considerable quantities in the cliffs to the eastward of the
town, where they are rarely disturbed, excepting by some
adventurer lowering himself from above to take eggs, or by
some gunner, anxious to try his dexterity, from below. In
the present instance a kestrel, soaring along the surface of
cliff, bore off a squab guillemot trom its nest in one of
the ridges. This, from the weight of the young bird, was
a matter of some difficulty, and enabled the old one, which
had taken the alarm and become desperate in defence of
its young, to come up to the kestrel, when a sharp con-
test began between them. The hawk, burdened as he was,
and determined to keep his prey, was bent on retreat; the
guillemot, therefore, notwithstanding the awkwardness of
its flight, was enabled to push him hard and annoy him so
much, that, in self-defence, he was compelled to drop the
h its
s s
ha mastership, s t
bill,ers iap,
sad
by
apparentlycharging
withth e
young one, which fell unhurt ou the beach below. Then
began the battle in good earnest : in a straight line the
somegu hawkiguillemot
e in?ot
success,ha posterioridtheas
s the w decidedit
flying
feathers indicated. But these
attacks always finished by the hawk soaring upward and
then stooping at its opponent. The watchfulness with
which the guillemot avoided these charges and availed it-
self of the hawk being again undermost to renew the en-
gagement, was highly interesting, and, from the vigour
with which it pushed the foe on these occasions, the victory
seemed to he safe ; but, at last, one unlucky stoop made
by the hawk, from a considerable height. struck the poor
guillemot with such violence that it could not recover its
flight, and came tumbling to the beach alive andunhurt,
but so much exhausted that it was picked up, and now,
with its ytune one, forms a
portion of my cabinet.—.Noit
Book of a Naturalist.

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