The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1850-10-08 00:00:00

MISCELLANEOUS

On Friday'Mr. Wigram, Q.C., was elected member for
Cambridge University without opposition.
Mr. Hudson visited Sunderland a few days since, and
was very warmly received by his constituents.
The Kentucky Yeoman thinks that the use of the big
fiddle in the church service is a base viol-ation of the
sanctuary.

Near the pulpit of Dunstable church there is a monu-
ment to the memory of a matron who bore 19 children at
5 births, thrice three and twice five.

In Deeping Fen, Lincolnshire, there formerly I:ved
three men who plighted their troth and led to the altar
between them no less than thirteen wires. Two of these,
viz., William Smith, who had five, and William Pat"het,
four, were highly respectable farmers ; the other, Thos.
Myat, who had four, for very many years, kept the toll-
gate.
A PLIZZ LE. —ln a house, not 100 miles from Boothtown,
are living at present-1 grandfather, 1 grandmother,
1 father, 4 mothers, 3 sisters, 5 brothers, 6uncles, 3aunts,
5 ntphews, 6 nieces, 8 cousins, 5 sons. 6 daughters, 1 sis-
ter-in-law, 1 brother-in-law, 3 granddaughters, 1 widow,
and 1 widower—total 61 ; and there are only 13 persons
in the whole.—Halifax Guardian.
THE " CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY."—With a loud and
boastful flourish the Freeman's Journal annonnces that
the initiatory step has been taken towards the carrying
out of that clause in the synodical address which called
upon " the faithful" by their allegiance to the Holy See
for their aid towards the founding of a purely
" Catholic University," and thereby setting at rest all
controversy with respect to the merits, or rather demerits,
of the Cullen-"ondemned colleges.

" AFFAIR OF HONOUR."—The Sligo Journal publishes
a hostile correspondence between a Mr. L. Peyton Gra-
ham, acting in the capacity of "friend" to Mr. John
Patrick Somers, M.P. for that borough, and Mr. E. 'H.
Verdon, the proprietor of a local paper (the Champion),
which, although of kindred politics with those entertained
by Mr. Somers, has for some unexplainable reasons always
opposed his return to Parliament. A " meeting" to de-
cide the deadly feud seems to have been agreed upon by
the belligerents, but by some strange mistake on one side
or the other it would appear from a letter from Mr. Gra-
ham, bearing date the 28th of September, that up to that
period the parties had not " met."
HANOVERIAN RICHES.—For some things the magnifi-
cence of Hanover is proverbial, and its plate-room, for
instance, is amongst the finest in Europe. You go from
chamber to chamber through absolute masses of silver
and gold, wrought into a thousand curious shapes and
forms. There is ancient plate and modern plate; there
candelabra reaching to the ceilings, and golden basins
spreading over the floors; knights in armour tilting with
burnished lances, under frosted trees, and huge cisterns,
wherein you might drown a couple of Clarences ; " butts
of malmsley," forsooth ! why they would scarcely do
more than fill those gigantic wine coolers, that stand in
the window, looking the very Sir John Falstaffs of silver
buckets.— Germania : its Courts, Camps, and People.
PROFESSIONAL REMIINERATION.—The following new
provision respecting" professional remuneration" in the
County Courts, which is about to come into force, ap-
pears in the new act extending the jurisdiction to £5O :
" And be it enacted that the fees to be taken by barris-
ters-at-law and attorneys practising in the said courts, in
cases brought within the jurisdiction given by this act, shall
be as follows :—An attorney shall be entitled to have or re-
cover a sum not exceeding £1 10s. for his fees and costs
where the debt or demand claimed in any plaint in
covenant, debt, detinue, or assumpsit shall not exceed
£35, or £2 in any other cause within the jurisdiction
given by that act, and in no case shall any fee exceeding
£2 4s. 6d. be allowed for employing a barriseer as counsel
in the cause, and the expense of employing a barrister or
an attorney either by plaintiff or defendant shall not be
alloyed on taxation of costs unless by order of the judge,
and the judges of the said courts respectively -shall from
time to time determine in what cases such expenses shall
be allowed•"
ACOUSTICAL PHENOMENA AT BRITANNIA BRIDGE.—
Some of the acoustic effects produced by the bridge are
interesting. The report of a pistol fired beneath the
bridge is repeated three or four times. The rapid repeti-
tion of echoes from each of the T irons on the side of the
tube gives rise to a shrill, whirring musical note. When
any violent-noise is produced on the adjacent shore, the
note is the same whether produced by the blows of the
rivetters or the report of a cannon, and corresponds to a
low Don a concert flute. " The cells of the top and
bottom," says Mr. Edwin Clark, in his 'interesting work
on Tubular Bridges, " form excellent speaking tubes,
and conversation may be carried on through them even in
a faint whisper. By elevating the voice, persons may
converse through the entire length of the bridge, a dis-
tance of more than 500 yards. If one end of the cells be
closed they return a powerful echo, but although a whis-
per is thus distinctly repeated, the loudest whistle does
not appear capable of returning any echo.
SEPULCHRAL. URN OF THE ROMAN-BRITISH PERIOD.
—A workman, in the employ of A. W. Williams, Esq.,
M.D., of this town, has this morning (Friday) discovered,
in afield about 150 yards south-east of Llanbeblig church -
yard, a sepulchral urn, or rather two urns, which evidently
had been placed within each other when interred. The
urns are a mixture of sand and clay, of a bluish gray co-
lour, without any lead glaring. They contained a consi-
derable quantity of calcined bones, a few pieces ,of char-
coal, besides two or three pieces of iron, (one piece very
much resembles the head of an arrow, such as have been
frequently discovered in the interior of Carnarvon-Castle,)
also a small piece of pottery, which appears to be a frag-
ment of Saurian ware. The urns were unfortunately bro-
ken by the workman : but Mr. Williams being on the
spot at the time, took every pains to secure the pieces,
and with a very little trouble they may be restored to
their pristine symmetry. If the bit of iron is a portion
of an arrow head, we may safely infer that these urns are
of an earlier period than the Romans, simply because the
Roman sepulchres and urns are particularly distinguished
by the absence of weapons, whereas implements and
utensils are frequently found in those belonging to that
renowned people.—Carnarvon Herald.

. .
RATING OF CHRONOMETERS.-It has long been sus-
pected 'that chronometers do not keep the same time at
sea as on shore. This change of rate has been attributed
to magnetic attraction, the motion of the ship at sea, and
to other causes. I explained to the Observatory Com-
mittee, soon after the erection of the Observatory, that
.change of temperature affected the going of some chro-
nometers very greatly; and further experiments, with
the very convenient means placed at my disposal, shewed
that the difference between the land and sea rates, in all
well established cases, was due almost entirely to change
of temperature, and,imperfect compensation. That when
a chronometer had-been exposed to a tropical climate and
returned to the Observatury in the winter, a great change
of rate might take place, but that if the same chrono-
meter was exposed to a temperature of between 80° and
.900, 'produced by artificial means, the rate which it had in
the tropical climate would-be restored with an astonishing
degree of accuracy. lam satisfied that change of tem-
perature produces a greater change of rate in chrono-
meters employed in the merchant service than any other
known cause ; still I am not prepared to say that local
attraction, or the motion of the ship, do not produce a
change of rate which might be detected, if experiments
of a still more careful description were made. For such
experiments it is necessary that all the details relative to
the method of obtaining time and of rating the chrono-
meters on shore should be preserved for discussion.
Such details will be furnished by the chronometrical ex-
pedition now in progress between this country and
America. Already 143 chronometers have passed be-
tween this ,Observatory and the Observatory at Cam-
bridge, United States. The main object of this expedi-
tion is to obtain the chronometrical difference of longi-
tude between this port and Boston, United States, but
the expedition will supply us with many interesting par-
ticulars relative to the performance of chronometers,
.under various circumstances, during their passage across
the Atlantic.—Mr. Hartrup's Report on the Liverpool
Observatory.

AMERICAN WOODLANDS.—The forest lands of America
preserve to the present hour something that is character-
istic of their wild condition, undisturbed for ages. They
abound in ruins of their own. Old trees, dead and dying,
are left standing for years, until at length they are shi-
vered ,and broken by the winds, or they crumble slowly
away to a shapeless stump. There was no forester at
hand to cut them down when the first signs of decay ap-
peared.; they had no uses then, now they have no value.
Broken limbs and dead bodies of great trees lie scattered
through the forests ; there are spots where the winds seem
to have battled with the woods. At every step one treads
on fallen trunks, stretched in giant length upon the earth—
this still clad in its armour of bark, that bare and moul-
dering, stained by green mildew—one a crumbling mass
of fragments, while others again lie shrouded in beautiful
mosses, long green hillocks marking the grave of trees
slowly turning to dust. Young trees are frequently found
growing upon these forest ruins; if a giant pine or oak
has been levelled by some storm, the mass of matted roots
and earth wilt stand upright for years, in the same position
into which it was raised by the falling trunk ; and occa-
sionally a good-sized hemlock or pine, or beech, is seen
growing from the summit of the mass, which in itself is
perhaps ten or twelve feet high, We have found a stout
tree, of perhaps of twenty years' growth, which has sprung
from a chance seed, sown by the winds on the prostrate
trunk of a fallen pine or Chesnut, growing until its roots
have stretched down the side of the mouldering log, and
reached the earth on both sides, thus holding the crum-
bling skeleton firmly in its young embrace. The decay of
these dead trees is strangely slow; prostrate pines have
been known to last fifty years undecayed, still preserving
their sap ; and upright grey shafts often remain standing
for years, until one comes to know them as familiarly as
the living trees. Instances are on record where they have
thus, remained erect in death for a space of forty years.
Amid this wild confusion, we note here and there some
mark left by civilised man ; the track of wheels, a rude
road, sprinkled over by withered leaves, or the mark of
the axe, sharp and clean, upon g stump close at hand, re-
minding us how freely and how richly the forest contri-
butes to rho Mt/ CM' TAPO,--Afire Cooper's Rural

MIDNIGHT FRIEND.-A medical gentleman in Ply-
mouth has adopted the excellent plan of fixing a gutta
percba mouthpiece by the side of his bell handle at the
street door, and attached to the mouthpiece is a long
gutta percha tubing, which reaches to his bed. In the
night, when the bell is rung, the tube, which hangs sus-
pended by the bedside, is immediately resorted to, and a
conversation is carried on without the necessity of the
doctor even rising from his pillow. This is a very great
convenience, and prevents exposure to a cold atmosphere.
which must frequently prove very prejudicial to medical
men.—Plymoulh Journal.

A CLEVER STARLING.—Mr. Rothwell, of Southpor
is one of the best ornithologists in the counts,

been reading in Sterne abOut the starlin

termincd to make the experiment of training One.AC.-
cordingly, having procured a young starling, he taught it
to whistle " Rory O'More" quite through, and to repeat
its own name, " Poor Je..cob." After a while it would
say, " Poor Jacob, give us Rory," and then it would
repeat its favourite tune. Being once attacked by some
boys, it flew away from home, but its master, by coaxing,
and calling " Poor Jacob," made it return, alti.ough it.

had reached the shore. It was sold for flirt), sbilli
but its master has never been able to teach otl

ler star

lins (or" shepsters,

with t:uch success as " Poor J