Flintshire Observer Mining Journal and General Advertiser for the Counties of Flint Denbigh

< CLUB WINDOW. 9' Yr. Samuel Hordcn, i' who has offered 110,000, and another £ i0,000 if necessary, towards the cost of building an Australian Dreadnought, is1, perhaps, the richest man in [Australia. His grandfather was but a poor emigrant, whose passage out is said to have ijeen paid for him. 1 It is related that- when Lord Dalmeny was la. boy he was severely taken to task by the Duchess of Cleveland, who disliked demo- cratic ways, because he signed himself in her birth-day book as "Archie Primrose." Lord Rosebery, who was standing by, said, "Why, mother, the boy is Archie Primrose, isn't he? But the old lady would have her way. "You nave your views and I have mine," she replied. "I am of an older school which does not approve of such mat- ters." She told the boy that he should sign himself" Archibald, Lord Dalmeny." There lives in Berlin a man who has had both lege, and both :arms amputated, not- withstanding which he is able,, by means of ingenious supplementary devices, to mount stairs without a stick in normal fashion, and to sit down, walk, eat, dress, and undress unaided. At a certain West-end theatre, during the run of a successful comedy, the leading man was compelled, through illness, to give notice that he would be absent for a night or two. Delighted at the chance of shining in the leading role, the understudy went to the ro-etaxest telegrapli-offloe,' and seht signed toessages all over London to authors and managers, saying: "I shalh play A's part to- night. Mr. J. M. Barrie acknowledged the information by telegraphing back to him nt once: "Thanks for the warning.—;J. M. BARBIE." '"Grasp opportunity and put it in your pocket," is the favourite motto of Sir Thomas Dewar, who early in life, long be- fore he became connected 'with 'the famous Whisky which bears his name, started in business at home as a rat-killer. A penny for each tail produced as evidence of his skill was the rate of payment allowed, and Sir j.iiomas has since confessed that he earned a good deal of pocket-money at the .business. •" # Prince Edward of Wales is said to be not very fond of lessons,. arithmetic being e-spe- cialj.y distasteful to him. His tutor used frequently to make him stand in the corner" wlien the little Prince did his sums wrong. Oieday our future King, when he saw the arithmetic books being brought out, said in a very quiet voice, "Oh, please, I don't think I'll do arithmetic to-day. I'll go in the cor- ner instead, if you don't mind." The Rev. Dr. Cameron Lees, one of the most popular ministers, in Edinburgh, once had the unique experience of preaching to ja congregation of one. This happened half a century ago, when he was appointed to the parish church of Carnock, in Ross-shirei A heavy snowstorm! prevented the worshippers reaching the church, and the worthy clergy- man-delivered a most eloquent sermon, with the old beadle as his -only listener. If it. "From the cdtttity of broad acres and cricketers comes Mr. Alfred Austin,: the Poet Laureate, who has just celebrated his "seventy-fourth birthday. Mr. Austin's latest appearance in public was' in connection with] the celebration of Shakespeare's birthday. On this occasion, the Poet Laureate recited the verses he had written for the event. j Edison is deaf, but the affliction is not one .of the worries- of -the. great inventor, 'T!li' loss of hfu liefcrifig vvfis oa titled by a 'man who lifted him out of a chair when he was a 'boy by the ears. This foolish proceeding brofie both drums. Curiously enough he is fond of going to the theatre, although he ( cannot hear a. word that is said, King Edward's nearest personal giiard is the Hon. Corps, of Gen tiemen-at-Arms. It' is composed entirely of officers who have, seen active service, all under fifty years of age at the time of appointment. His Majesty personally selects them, and they are called upon for duty on the, occasion of all Courts ceremonies in London or at Wndsor, but are. never taken out of England. The captain of the corps receives £ 1,200 a year. The Mosque of Eyoub, where Mohammed V. was invested with the sword of Osman, is j ■:> sometimes- termed the Westminster Abbey of Turkey," for within dts walls all save one or two- of the long line of Ottoman Sultans have undergone the ceremony which corre- sponds to coronation. The Mosque, though J Pflt .large, is a magnificent example of Orien- tal architecture, built of white marble and decorated with Persian tiles. It is esteemed' the no lies t Mussulman temple in Europe, and remains to this day untrodden by non- Moslem, feet. 4 Bucknam Pasha, the Turkish Admiral and aide-de-camp to the Sultan, is an American. He was sent to Constantinople in charge of a new vessel, constructed for the Turkish 3iavy. At the end of the voyage he so won the regard of the ruler that he was at once taken into the Turkish naval service. M Abdul Hainid II. is a Very keen photo- grapher, but, 'as the Mussulman is not sup- posed to take likenesses of human beings, he confines himself to, photographing landscapes and buildings. He is the, possessor of what is probably the most expensive camera in the world.. It was- made for''him- by • an American firm, and all the metal work is 'of pure gold, while those portions which in an ordinary camera are of wood are constructed of the finest 'ivory. r Mr. Pett Ridge delights in telling of an Z) episode which took place just after the South African war. A solder was relating to a. Crowded carriage his experiences at, the frdrit. "Yes," he cpneluded, "we vfere fight* ing from daybreak till ten o'clock at night." At that point an .old farmer from the north broke in: "It seems all right, but there is one thing' I do not understand about that story," he ventured. "How did you manage about dinner? Sir William Arrol is one of the most re- markable self-made and self-taught men who have hailed from North of the Tweed. lie. started life, in a cotton-mill at eleven, years of age, but the work in the mill did not suit him at all. "I wanted an easier life," he explained later, "so I went to work for a blacksmith in Paisley," and-it was that -clang of the anvil and the. sight of the sparks which inspired him with that love of engi- neering which led him to become the world's 'greatest bridge-builder. Mr. W. P. Frith, the veteran R.A., once entered a picture-dealer's shop, and, notic- ing a portrait of himself, turned to the woman behind the counter and asked: "Whose likeness is that?" "That," said the lady, "ie a portrait of the celebrated artist Frith, painted by himself." "Hum said Mr. Frith, pretending to examine the picture. "What is the price?" "Twenty pounds." "Surely that is a stiff price?" the artist said. "Well," said the woman, "you see, it's very valuable, because the artist is deceased"Deceased!" exclaimed the as- tonished Frith. "Yes, sir. Died of drink.1 He was dreadful Frith was. Well, my bus- hand used to see him when he was doing his painting, always more or less in liquor." ■' j

THE FIND OP THE ,CENTURY. An amusing trick was once unconsciously played by a servant upon Mr. J, D. Rocke- feller, the American Oil King, whose "Re- miniscences" make one of the most talked-of; books of the season. The great man had acquired some oil country, and his agent had sent him a sample of the produce of the first forcing in a bottle. Mr. Rockefeller was in a hurry to go out when it arrived, and gave it one of his men to deliver to the analyst with a note he scrawled. Now the servant was also in a hurry. He set out to, visit his wife, and took letter and bottle with him. Later in the evening he saw what he thought was the bottle on the sideboard, and with a guilty conscience hurriedly took it out to deliver it. Judge, of Mr. Rocke- feller's, amazement when, in the morning, he received the following telegram: "Yours is the first find of the century! You've struck paregoric

I, 11 CANADI[AN BISHiOP. r ve There are few Bishops who rule over such an extensive diocese as that over which the Bishop of Calgary holds sway.. The Bishop is now in London, and he is enthusiastic about his diocese, which he says is one of the mbst beautiful in 'the world, "leaning against the. lovely and glorious snow-clad heads of the Rocky Mountains, which inspire high and noble thoughts, and preach through their grandeur a sermon more striking and true than words of man." The Bishop, who rs' in his sixty^fiftH year,; was appointed to his 100,000 Square' miles of diocese in 1888, after holding varieus importasnt ecclesiastical; posts iff Ca'nada. He'has had soine strange experiences. Once he was lost in the prairie for twenty-four hours and was badly frost- bitten. Another time he kept the train wait- ipg while he baptised an, infant at a, wayside station. ,He has performed a marriage cere- monv at one o'clock in the morning and a confirmation two hours later. The arrange- ments made "for his accommodation on some of his episcopal visitations are of a primitive character, and he once enjoyed the experi- ence of robing in a hen-house.

•ECHO QF POET I Gn February 20, 1908, General Stoessel was sentenced to death by court-martial for having surrendered the fortress of Port [Arthur "before all the means of defence had been exhausfed, for failing to enforce his authority, and for military misdemeanours." This sentence was afterwards commuted by the Czar to imprisonment In a fortress, ex- clusion from the Army, and loss of rank. The Czar has now shown further clemency, and the unfortunate soldier has been released. The evidence at his tri-al showed that the fortress might have held, out longer, but it ve f a miist have fallen in the end, fand it is undeni- able that the earlier stages of the defence w'ere' conducted with great stubbornness. General Stoessel was born; in 1848, but it was not until the outbreak of hostilities with Japan that his name- became familiar to the world. It will be. remembered that he was hailed at first as the hero of Port Arthur, and after the fall of the fortress the German Emperor gave to him, as well as to his valiant foe, General Nogi, the Order Pour la Merite.

Otters are infesting the River Dart in largo numbers, and many fish have been destroyed by them. Bacchus was the name of a man who was fined at the Marlborough-street Court for intoxi- cation. A right of way dispute led to the appearance in the South Molton County-court of forty aged persons as witnesses. Mrs. Mary Taylor, aged 91, on whom an inquest was held at Poplar, received fatal injuries by slipping on a piece of orange rcbl.

CONSTANTINOPLE'S FIRE BRIGADES. In the June number of "Travel and Explora. tion," Captain F. H. Shaw gives some impressions of Constantinople. He gives an amusing descrip- tion of the fire brigades of the Turkish capital. "No motor steam engines here (he says), no noble horses clearing a red-nostrilled way through the flung-back crowds. A few men have a hand engine upon their shoulders, an engine capable of throw- ing water at least as far and fast as a penny squirt. They amble along in white drawers and thin shirts, and occasionally stop to pass the time of day with onlookers. Arrived at the scene of the outbreak, the brigade at once commences haggling with the owner of the burning property This is another curious feature; the brigades— there are many of them—are not municipally con- trolled, but are self-supporting, and the three or four different companies that have arrived on the scene are prone to underbid one another in order to secure the job. All the time the fire blazes merrily, and depredatory pillagers loot here and there with consummate impudence. But it is re- cognised in Constantinople that if a man's house takes fire it is merely a punishment for his sins, and the firemen do not unduly exert themselves even when they have secured the appointment of extinguishers in ordinary.

THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH. Mr. Halliwell Sutcliff's new novel, "PriscjJla of the Good Intent," begins and ends at the village forge of Garth, away on the Yorkshire fells, David the Smith is strong and straight and honest, as a village blacksmith should be, but he is slow of speech, and talks of making a turkey-pen when he ought to be making love to Priscilla. If he he ought to be making love to Priscilla. If he had only been a little eloquent or a thought masterful he might have had his heart's desire, but he lost his opportunities and had the sorrow of seeing another man, less worthy but a better wooer, win the girl he worshipped. This is. a delightful book. There is such an atmosphere I about it of the spacious, quiet- moorland, that it is positively restful to read. And the characters are real people. It would be hard to say which are the better, the descriptons of the scenery or the studies of the people, but both are excellent, and whoever reads this book will be heartily grateful to the author.

A WAITRESS DETECTIVE. "Triumphs of Women's Wit" is the title of an interesting article in Cassell's Magazine," by Charles Tibbits, who relates the following among other inicidents. « "Above all," a Paris anarchist chief advised a young member who was coming on a mission to London, "beware of women." I That was excellent advice, but it was not so easy to observe it. The anarchist had a landlady. He had an appetite that drove him to a restaurant, where he was waited on by one of the simplest ofigirls,, who did not understand a word of any language save her mother tongue. She was charmingly simple—so simple that one day when she "spilt some grease over his clothes he was almost induced to let her have his coat to. remove the stains from it. Prudence, however, stayed him from such an indiscretion, but he gratefully accepted her efforts to make him smart with some hot water and a cloth. He was arrested that night! He did not go about with a revolver and a dagger ready to his hand for nothing: an examination of his room disclosed he was engaged in the manufacture of bombs. The simple waitress—a lady specially paid to play the part. in her enthusiasm to remove all the marks of her carelessness from him, had discovered the sus- picious articles concealed about him.

PROBLEM OF SMALL TRADESMEN. On the whole, it must be said that the day is dark for small tradesmen. Any Considerable multiplication of small businesses is precarious, because the conditions are unfavourable. But small businesses (says a writer in The Magazine of Commerce ") can still be made and lifted to Buecess. Keep the rules and learns the tables,; the Bum can be done. The diminutive trade increases the worth of a penny. There is an element of Eathos, even of tragedy, in the remorseless process i y which the big manufacturer'or trader uses sheet economic force to crush the smaller, weaker com- petitor, and take away his business. All the fun is all the greater when a mouse nibbles the rope that binds the lion. A capable tradesman in the( right, place can still have the laugh at the big competitor., His Dreadnoughts can only attack five miles away, and. cannot coast near the shore.

DIVORCE IN AMERICA. The Divorce Law of, America has been the theme of, much unfavourable comment and criticism, in America as well as elsewhere, and it is the theme of Mrs. Humphry Ward's powerful novel," Daphne, or iN] a, age a la Mode," (Cassell, 6s). Daphne Floyd, an nnniean heiress, becomes the wife of an Englishman, Roger Baines. Daphne's jealous disposition and her complete misunderstanding of her husband make shipwreck of the happiness of the pair. Mistaken jealousy distorts Daphne's view, and turns to hate the love she bore her husband. ,He married her for her money she thinks^ while he is really in love with "the other woman." She determines to divorce him, and with that object in view, she sails for America with their little daughter, leaving Roger in England. Divorces are easily procured in ^Dakota, especially when'there is plenty of mojipy, as in Daphne's ease. Evidence quite sufficient for the purpose, is "manufactured," and Daphhe gets her freedom. Roger, however, remains bound, for Daphne is still his wife in English law. The story moves swiftly. Roger makes an effort to gèt possession of his child, whom he loves devotedly. The effort fails, and soon afterwards comes the news of the little girl's death. It is the last blow of fate, and Roger, always rather weak, goes from bad to worse. When we take leave of him he has two years to live. Before that, however, Daphne, in the boolc' persuaded by one of the other people in the book, has made an attempt at reconciliation. But Roger sees the impossibility of joining the broken threads again, and Daphne is left crushed by the realisa- tion of the pitiful tragedy of which she has been the cause. The story is told with the art which long a«o placed Mrs. Humphry Ward in the front rank of present-day novelists, and it is instiribtwith a great sympathy with and Understanding of human nature. All the characters in the book are drawn with a sure hand, and Daphne is a remarkable study, the analysis of whose character by the author is a notable piece of art.

Mr. J. Tippins, N.R.A., was posted as the winner of the silver medal in the first stage of the Astor competition at the miniature rifle meeting in the Agricultural Hall, having made 271 of a highest possible score of 280 at 25 and 50 yards. Summoned at Westminster County-court, for a debt incurred in dinners at the Hotel Cecil a man without dependants, who was said to be earning £ 250 a year, was committed for seven days, the warrant to be suspended as long as he pays 92 a month..

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r NEW-, MUSEUM DIRECTOR After having been -vacant for more than a year since the resignation of Sir E. Ray Lan- kesfcer, the post -of director of the Natural History Mus^ara^or as it is officially called the Natural History; Department of the British Museum, hay been filled by the appointment to it of Air. Lazarus Fletcher, F.R.S. It will be: remembered that a public protest was rotate, by -a number b £ eminent scientific me:r on the undesirability, of" leaving this im- portant-post vacant for so long a time. Mr. Lazarus Fletcher, ti«.Qew director, is a geologist and a mineralogist, and. thus the pre- cedent of the-appointment of -a zoologist, like Sir William Flower or Sir E. Ray Lankester, to this,^important post is reversed./ ,¡ ,op'

CHARGE AGAINST A BOOKKEEPER. :tl, Forgeries to the extent -df'^no less than £ 29,200 were .alleged; to 7]ka-T4_!p been committed by John Jay "Williams, of Moorfiekls, a book- keeper in the service of Messrs. Raphael Tuck and Sons, New York, Ltd., who was remanded at the London Guildhall on a charge of forging the signature of one of the directors of the firm. Itr wis* asserted tliat _be had.forged 45 cheques ifndfe"i9Wf aliajfrkjifafifea' the'working' rights of a colliery in Wales', vtjHicH': had been fairly successful. He had offices' in the* City, although Mes-Srs." Tuck 'were hot1 aware of the fact. "When inquiries were made,, he told Mr. Adolph Tuck that he had used the funds as a loan to himself. "• The-American company of Raphael Tuck and Sons is alone concerned in the case.

OUR INTEREST IN WHEAT, The United Kingdom has a special interest in the production of wheat in the world, as it is by the. largest imperjier of this product. If we go Kack iwo audi a-half centuries we find that Great Britain not only grew enough to supply its own wants, but wa-tt able also to export. consiJerable quantities. Then followed a period of about a century during which the imports were compara- tively small, that is to say, the production was but little below the, consumption. At the present time (says "The Magazine of Commerce,") scarcely more than one-iitth of the Annual supply is grown at home, the remainder being imported trom abroad, mainly froin the United States, Argentina, Canada, India, Russia, and Australia, the relative contribu- tions of each varying according to good or bad harvests arid other circumstances. On the immense cornfields of the Far West the Americans have for some time been successfully using gigantic, Very ingeniously constructed machines, called harvesters," which, drawn by twenty-four to forty horses, travel through the miles of corn, cutting out a track up to twenty feet wide, reaping, cleaning, and threshing the wheat and putting it into bags, a long line of which it leaves behin a. portable factories we might well call these huge machines, besides which the self- binding machines, look like toys. Still larger harvesters are drawn by huge traction engines, and, as giving an idea of their capacity, some of those in use in California cut over forty feet at once, and harvest and leave in sacks ready for export the crop from as much as 120 acres in one day. Eight men are required to work such a machine.

IRISHMEN AS STORY-TELLERS. Admiral Lord Charles Beresford was the guest of the Irish Association in London at their banquet at the Holborn Restaurant. In reply- ing for the guests, he said that in a man's life, especially when he had a great deal to do and xather an uphill game to fight, it was a very good thing occasionally to go and have a cheery evening with his fellow-countrymen and women. He never yet remembered a Beresford who had any miseries. Irishman, continued Lord Charles, were ex- cellent hands at telling stories, and he had heard many good ones, some of w't;h he repeated. There was the man who told him that the first bird he ever shot was a squirrel, and that the first time he hit him he missed him. (Laughter.) The second time he hit him in the same place— (laughter)—and then he threw a stone at him, knocking him- into the river; that, said his I friend, was the first bird he ever shot. (Laughter.)

A NAVAL CRITIC. One of the most persistent critics of the Naval policy of the Government is Lieu- tenant Carlyon Bellairs, M.P. for King's Lynn, and Mr. McKenna submitted the other day in the House of Commons to a fusilade of inquiries relating to the printing of a con- fidential document in which certain uncom- plimentary references were made to Mr. Bellairs. It is possible that this is a matter of which more will be heard. The member for King's Lynn was formerly a naval officer, but' retired owing. to ëdefeotive eyesight. He has, however, kept himself1 aw fait with Naval matters, and has written upon his favourite subject in the magazines, as well as spoken upon it in the House of Commons and on the platform. Mr. Bellairs invented an electric float-light which has been adopted in the Navy, and he "is also the inventor of a graphical system of plotting light and dark- ness for each day of the year, on which he re'Jd a paper before the Royal Geographical Society. He was born in 1871.

AN OUTSPOKEN BISHOP. Dr. Percival, the Bishop of Hereford, whose Cruelty to Animals Bill has been causing so much interest, is one of the cleverest and .most versatile of .English 0 ,t, Churchmen. A strenuous worker, he is also extremely outspoken, and never hesitates to speak his mind on any subject that may awaken his interest. As. a schoolmaster (says -A.P.") he has had few equals, and he was fir many years headmaster of Clifton, and also of Rugby. The Bishop has caused 1 a great deal of "criticism by his tirade against betting; and temperance is another of his favourite subjects. While at Rugby, he did a great deal to improve the standard of cricket there, and presented the school with a completely equipped shed for playing the i game in th6 winter or in bad weather. Dr. Pereival is something of a wit.One day he was passing through a town noted for its beer, and he observed many signs of brewing and also of mourning. "Why is that flag half-mast high?" he inquired. He was told someone well known in the town was dead. "Ah, how sad," he replied. "I observe that even the barrels are in tiers!" I j

LORD ROBERTS'S STRATEGY. Some time ago Colonel Weston Jarvis told an interesting story of Lord Roberts and his strategy in connection with the relief of Mafeking. He said that early in February, lf0Qj/ his commanding officer told him that Lord Roberts had fixed the date of relieving the beleaguered;; garrifem for May 18. The town was relieved, as everybody knows, on May 17. When' latOr on, Colonel Weston ■{ Jarvis' ask^d''f.L*6Sd :tRybirts*' how h<^ eiijne to fix a da £ e? •'$>$•); Commander-in-Chief referred -j him tto, tfcp Story £ f Stonewall Jackson, and "wived; in South Africa in "V January he began to think'what thal-, famous general would have done tinder the circum- stances then prevailing. Whenever there was a similar deadlock in the Americati War, Lord Roberts said,, Jackson, invariably* made a dash at Washington. People of all nations have a sentimental reverence for their capital, and always fall back to protect it when threatened. That is what 'auvaym happened in the American' War, and the strategy of Jackson, invariably set everything going again. 11 Lord Roberts, therefore, de- cided to attack Bloemfontein. He" made his calculations to occupy the capital in March, and judged that by the time he had made good his lines of communication and would be free to relieve Mafeking, May would be in. He selected May 18, and everything hap- pened as he had expected, not only at Mafe- king but elsewhere as well. Kimberley was relieved, Cronje was caught, and the fact of Boer. forces, flying westward to the help of Cronje was a considerable factor in bringing about the relief of Ladysmith^; i

A STORY OF MRS. ASQUITH. An interesting anecdote of Mrs. Asquith is told by Mrs. R. Niall, in an article on "The Political Salon of To-day," in the June Lady's Realm." It relates to a visit which Mrs. Asquith paid to the Torrey-Alexander Mission, and illustrates her self-possession and force of character. Witli two other women and a man she was one night in a box at the Albert Hall. During a hymn the party were studying the house through the opera-glasses. Mr. Alexander perceiving this cried from the plttform 41 There are people in that box who are not singing; I must ask them to join in." A few minutes later he stopped the singing; and said Those people are still silent: now I ask them to stand up and sing the last verse by themselves—just those people in that box." The three women at once stood up and bravely sang the verse through, while the man shrunk out of sight at the back of the box.

A Baltimore firm of accountants is offering to undertake the auditing of the accountis of any municipality in the United States without fee, asking only that it shall receive a fixed per- centage on the defalcations discovered. At Christie's a set of the thirteen "Cries of London," after F. Wheatley, R.A., printed in colours,realised £7ffl 10s. They were bought by Messrs. Colnaghi and Co., who published them over a century ago at 16s. apiece. The cornet spoken of in the Psalms was not the kind of cornet played ion brakes at Sunday school treats," Sir Frederick Bridge told an audience at Gresham College. "It was a cornet without mechanism, like the trumpets used at the King's coronation."

J QUEEN'S SACRIFICE Queen Alexandra has given another evidence- of her deep interst in naval and military chari- ties. Her Majesty had arranged to accompany the King to Epsom to witness the race for the Oaks, but on learning that the promoters of the Naval and Military Tournament were this year making a special effort on behalf of the funds of the Service charities which benefit from th& display, she generously determined to give upv the race meeting and to attend the Tournament. j The fact that ht<r Majesty had generously- cancelled the Epsom arrangement at the eleventh hour appealed to the popular imagina- tion, and the Queen (drove through streets lined with cheering crowds. With her were Princess Victoria, Princess Mary of Wales, and the third and fourth sons of the Prince and Princess of Wales-Prince Henry and Prince George. ) Bluejackets, under Lieutenant Lacklan Mac- Kinnon, R.N., formed a guard of honour on the carriage-way from Hammersmith-road to the entrance, and from there to the royal box, with its draperies of green and its garlands of [roses, surrounded by a golden crown, the- | Queen's path was lined by a dismounted party of the 3rd (Prince of Wales's) Dragoon Guards. I When tile royal party entered the box a guard of honour of the 2nd Battalion Coldstream Guards, with the King's colour and the bamt of the regiment, formed up in the arena and gave the royal salute.

ALL THROUGH A COCKCHAFER. A girl named Craske, a maid in the employ- ment of the Rev. T. P. Wigan, in Gloucester- shire, was sitting sewing at the open window one evening last summer when a cockchafer flew in. To frighten it away she put up her hand, and in so doing struck her eye so seriously that cataract ensued. In view of the injuries that resulted she ap- plied to the county-court judge for compensa- tion under the domestic servants' sectn of the Workmen's Compensation Act, but the judge refused to make an award, upon the ground that the accident did not arise out of her em- ployment, although in the course of her employ- l ment. The Court of Appeal upheld this decision.

WORLD'S COAL SUPPLY. "Jf the output of coal continued to increase at the present average rate, the world's supply would be exhausted within the next 500 years," said Dr. R. T. Moore at the fiftieth general meeting of Mining Engineers. Long before that period, however, he had no doubt that some way would be found of doing without coal. The world's output of coal in the early years of the nineteenth century was under 15 million tons, in 1907 it was 1,080 million tons, a 70-fold increase. It had been estimated that in 1898 the follow- ing were the figures of the amount of coal that existed: United States, 684,000 million tons; Great Britain, 198,000 million; Germany, 112,000 million France, 18,000 million; Austria Hungary, 17,000 million Belgium, 15,000.

SERVANT GIRL'S CRIME. A young servant-girl, named Annie Tomlin, walked into the police-station at Hitchin and confessed she had drowned her illegitimate daughter, aged one year and eight months, iu the river a short distance off. Not knowing what to do with the child she walked with it from Luton to Hitchin, a dis- tance of nine miles, in the storm. Her father- had refused to keep both her and the child. At the inquest the jury returned a verdict of "Manslaughter in a fit of desperation." They censured the girl's father for his callous conduct.

DEATH OF SIR J. COLOMB. The death has taken place at his house in Belgrave-road, London, of Sir John Colomb. Sir John sat as Conservative member for the Bow and Bromley Division of the Tower Hamlets- from 1886-1892, having been defeated there in 1885, and from July, 1895, to January, 1906, he represented Great Yarmouth in Parliament. He was chairman of the Appeals Commission under the Local Government (Ireland) Act, 1898, a. member of the Royal Commission on the Supply of Food and Raw Material in Time of War from. 1903 to 1905, and a member of the Roval Com- mission on Congestion in Ireland in 1906.

Nicaragua's dispute with the United States is to be referred to arbitration. Mr. R. J. Wynne, United States Consul- General in London, has resigned. Sir Richard Dansey Green-Price died at Knighton. In view of a threatened lock-out in the Welsh, coalfields, Admiralty officers have given large, orders.