The Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle. — 1865-05-20 (Stourbridge, West Midlands, England)

LATE ADMIRAL FITZROY.— Our TC:lderB Will be gratified to know that there la every reason to hope that her Majesty's Government will confer on Mr. Glaieher the Superintendence of the Meteorological Department of the Board of Trade, vacant by the death of Admiral Fitzroy (says the Medical Times). Ws believe that Mr. Glaisher at present holds an appointment in the Observatory at Greenwich, under the Astronomer Royal, the duties of which he discharges with zeal and efficiency quite sufficient to merit promotion. But it is the vast amount of extra official and gratuitous labour which he has undertaken for the pure love of science which has rendered his name so truly a household word among us, and which demands some public recognition and reward. Besides doing his own work Mr. Glaisher lends a hand to assist every other meteorological worker by his services in correcting instruments and comparing them with the standards, and by his collation and publication of results. We say nothing of the balloon accents, or of the element of danger to life which they superadd to Mr. Glaisher's other assiduous and interesting labours. But feeling, as all medical practitioners must, how many unsolved problems there are of the influence of weather upon human life, and upon the production of food by agricu,turists. and uron the production and transport of epidemic diseases, we hope that the man who has done no much to advance our little stock of knowledge will be rewarded with a position which we feel sure will be to him an incentive and opportunity for researches still more laborious and fruitful.  W HERE WILL IT END i—A few months ago some minute calculations were made in a fashionable French paper as to what it really cost to dress a lady in the fashion then prevailing (writes a London correspondent). The sum total of a first-class walking dress was something astounding; but, marvellous as it was, it should be much below the figure applicable to the present style. Crinolines in their legitimate expansiveness have departed, Lit the circumference of dresses have enormously extended ; and, in addition, none are orthodox which have not at least half a yard of a train. The ladies have rendered brooms unnecessary on the pavements in the West End. The flags in Regent-street never presented so spotless an appearance as they do now on a fine day. Whether there is any arrangement for the reception and lodgment of the dust in the inside of the trains I don't know, but I should think there must be. The fair creatures would never have it distributed about their anelee and finally deposited in their boots. In a crowded street or room you are in a perpetual fever lest you may fall foul of somebody's skirts. The mishap can scarcely be avoided, and is constantly occurring at the Exhibition of the Royal Academy and in the Crystal Palace. IF trains continue to elongate, and that is their tendency just now, train-bearers must again become an institution. The twopence off the incometax will never balance the additional expenditure which this season's mode imposes on Paterfainilare. But then he will have the consolation of hearing that 'every one wears them ;" one would be a fright without a long skirt," and "the dresses now are mace up in such exquisite material." " They are awfully dear !" exclaims the yielding paymaster. " Well, they are rather expensive, but you know that will prevent vulgar people from wearing them." This is an unanswerable appeal to the lofty mind.  "A  were Of such a nature as to lead to the idea that his death was occasioned by one of these, an impression which is entirely removed by our information. The post mortem examination showed that a tubercular tendency exists in the constitution of a royal family likely to exercise a most imortant influence on the history of Europe and the world. The cane has a more strictly profeasional interest, as illuatrating the occasionally obscure and varied nature of the symptoms by which caries of the vertebra • and pso. abscess are accompanied ; simulating, in turn, lumbago, intermittent fever, and cerebro-spinal meningitis. The facts of the case impress us with the importance of &remark contained in the just published notes of Sir Benjamin Brodie, though admitting of only a qualified application here. Lumbago "is generally supposed to be an affection of the muscles. I am myself inclined to believe that it has a more deep-seated origin, and that the actual seat of the disease is in the lower part of the spinal cord itself, or at least in the nerves which arise from it."  ROMANTIC SUICI in. —On Alonday night a young woman named Mary Little, aged 18 years, the wife of a sailor, committed suicide, at Birkenhead, by drowning herself in the river Mersey. She had been keeping company since quite a girl with a fireman on hoard iine of the Liverpool and NVoitilside ferry boats hut quarrelled with her sweetheart, and in a moment of pique married another man. Iler husband, however, went to sea, when deceased attempted, but unsuccessfully, to effect a reconciliation with her old lover. On Friday night she crossed from Birkenhead to Liverpool at a quarter-past ten, and then re-crossed to Birkenhead in the boat on board which her first sweetheart was employed, and ,1111 again attempted to got into conversation with him, but did not succeed. I:AmdereU desperate by this repulse, she jumiied from the boat when it had reached the NVoodoide landingoitage at Birkenhead into the Mersey, " 1 said I'd do it, and I will." Three tire buoys were thrcwn out to her, but she made no effort to save her life, and sank. On Saturday morning her corpse was found in the river °aside the Rock lighthouse, and was at once taken to the Liverpool deadhouse.  FATHER IfI!,