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A Pest of Rabbits. New Zealand lias suffered grievously from these gentlest of furry foes About twenty years ago a colonist brought seven rabbits from the old country to his new home at Invercar gill, in the southern isle. It was thought that to turn these adrift on the bleak sandhills along the coast could not fail to prove a benefit to the colony. For some years this an- joyed excellent shooting on thelinks(as awered capitally, and the colonists en- such a seaboard is called in Scotland). But ere long the rabbits increased to such an extent that they cropped every blade of grass and even devoured *the roots, which alone bound the light sandhills and prevented them from blowing over the better soil in land. Very soon this evil occurred, and the land was greatly injured. Then the farmers on the seacoast be gan shooting and trapping in earnest; but by this time some more rabbits had been imported to Ota<’0, and from these two centres the mischief rapidly spread. Considering that each rabbit breeds eight times a year and pro duces an average of six y«*ung at each litter, it is easy to perceive how rapid must be their increase. On the other hand, their human foes are few, the settlers in the interior living eight or ten miles apart—a lonely life, in truth, where perhaps half a dczm men herd the flocks which ran je over 60.000 acres. It became evident that these shepherds could ever check the progress of the evil without assistance so men were hired to ferret, trap, shoot, or worry the invaders. These men traveled with large packs of dt gs, numbering from one to two dozen. They were paid at the rate of 2d. a • skin. It w r as, however, soon found that the sale of skins fetched less than they cost, while the presence of strange dogs disturbed the sheep and often resulted in their being worried. The 3heep-runs being in general tracts of Crown land, merely rented by the farmer for a limited term of years for the purpose of rearing stock, it was found in many cases not to be worth the expense ot attempting to cope with the mischief. One cure after another was tried, such as stopping the bur rows with cotton-waste saturated in bisulphide of carbon, butall were suc cessively given up as useless efforts to meet so wide-spread an evil. In many cases it was found that the land could no longer support one-fourth of its former number of sheep, so the holders were absolutely compelled to throw up their leases and abandon their runs. The extent of the ravages could hardly be credited were it not for the cut-and- dry statistics ef the Rabbit Nuisance Committee. I may quote a few items from the evidence of many gentlemen owning laree sheep-runs in the Pro vinces Otago and South Canterbury. Many begin by stating how incredu lous they were at first that rabbits would even take to the new country sufficiently to afford them sport. All too quickly their eyes were opened. For instance, in South Canterbury Messrs. Cargill and Anderson killed 600.000 rabbits by poison a year ago, but in the following spring their sheep run was just as densely peopled by them as though not one had perished. Mr. Kitchen states that he kept nearly a hundred men working as rabbit- killers for four months, and succeeded in clearing his land. Now they are worse than ever. Mr. Rees say that he killed 180,000 last year, and his em ployer, Mr. R. Campbell, expended £3000 in one year in attempting to keep down the pest on his runs of 168,000 acres. Still the plague spreads, and the whole land from Waitaki to tFoveaux Strait is more or less infested prith rabbits. Many districts are just Lvast warren, on which it is impossi- to keeD sheep at all. Mr. R. Camp- ^alone has been compelled to aban- ; 250,000 acres, chiefly in South land Wallace counties, and on >rth Marta Lake and Greenstone several other sheep farmers Iso been forced to abandon runs 16,000 to 16,000 acres. Many though less seriously Injured 3e, have still suffered so greatly sir value is immensely dete- Eight runs, which formerly a rental of £1000 per annum, £170. The Burwood Run one which used to carry now barely provides J878 the total num- jlony was upward reduced to iis decrease, checked.has je^exports of per land upward of 5 000,000 rabbit skins— value, £46,759—and in the following year upward of 7,000,000 rabbit skins sold for £66 976. The Church Temporal. It has been found desirable to ap point a speoal committee of the Rt- formed Clsssis of Illinois to assist the large number of Hollanders who have immigrated to Eastern Dakota, in forming churches. The Eastern Primitive Methodist Conference of the United States re ports an increase of 194 members dur ing the year, the whole number being 2,157. The who <e value of its church property is about $270,000. It is proposed to erect a suitable monument over the remains of Hester Arm Rogers and of the Rev. Mr. Thompson, the first president of the Wedeyan Conference after Mr. Wes ley's death, which lie in the church yard of St. Mary’s, Birmingham. The latest heretical tendency dis covered in the Congregational denom ination is one toward ritualism. “Were there not candles on the speaker’s table at the recent festival in Faneuli Hall ?”—quietly remarks The Congrcgationalist. The 156th anniversary, on June 4th, of the birth of Philip William Otter- bein, the founder and first Bishop of the United Brethren Church, was ap propriately observed in all the churches of that denomination. The Presbyterian General Assembly, recently in session at Springfield, had among its members a Dr. Hornblower and a Dr. Stillman. The :ormer was rarely heard in the discussions, while the latter made some of the longest speeches. A London paper says; “In the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland there are abo .t 40,000 places of religious worship ; while it appears to be a well ascertained fact that for every 1,000 persons attending the house of God above 2,000 are to be found on Sunday in the public-house.” St. John’s Episcopal Church, Hagerstown, Md., was consecrated on June 7th. In some respects it is con sidered one of the finest church build ings in Maryland. The corner-stone of the edifice was laid in 1873, and the building first occupied iu 1875. The memorial tower and spire were erect ed at a cost of upward of $20,000 by Mr. C. C. Baldwin, of this city, in memory of his wife, Sallie Roman Baldwin. The Examiner recently offered The New-York Christian Advocate $100 if it would “prove to the satisfaction of three scholarly men, standing in Evangelical denominations, that the Christians of the apostolic age under stood the word baptizo to have any other meaning than dip, plunge or immerse.” The Advocate thought the sum not big enough, and suggested $20,000. The Christian Register takes both papers to task for betting on the meaning of the word, and thinks it somewhat odd to decide a matter ot scholarship after this method. The Congrcgationalist regrets that the Pilgrim Society at its late annual meeting in Plymouth voted to return to the use of the false date for its an niversaries. A little persistence in favor of the 21st of December as "Fore fathers’ Day,” it thinks, would have carried it, and secured a self-coneis tent and honest arrangement for all coming time. “With all respect to the society, and its tenderness for the error of the past and the fathers walk ing therein, we think they have made a mistake which, in its consequences, will be a sad one. Truth iB always best—and surely history furnishes no exception to that rules. The conflict between Cburch and State in Baden has continued for nearly thirty years. It arose from the refusal of Mgr. Vicari, the then Arch bishop of Freiburg, to celebrate a Re quiem Mass in the cathedral for the repoBe of the soul of the Grand Duke Leopold, who had died a Protestant. Upon the death of Archbishop Vicarl In 1868 the Government interposed a minus grains to the election of a suc cessor. The suffragan bishop, was compelled to reside outside his diocese died last year, and the Government have quietly acquiesced in the elec tion of bis successor, Mgr. Obin, lately vicar-capitular of Freiburg. The assessed value of property In Texas is $303,000,000, an increase of $40,000,000 since 1880. General Longstreet has luduced three hundred Germans and Swiss to form a ly near Gainesville, Ga. Some New Hotel Rules, Rates $3 a day. Any hints about slop-coffee will be charged at the rate of twenty- five cents per hint. No extra charge for damp sheets. Rheumatism always on hand. Our beefsteak is cast to order at one of the largest foundries iu the couutry, and can always be depended on as fresh. Our meat cook is an old, experienced miner and sapper, and is provided with picks, crowbars, torpedoes, fuses, etc. Guests who wash their shirts in the waterbewl will be charged twenty- five cents each. We cannot encour age cleanliness in this hotel. Children will not be allowed to play in the hall. A beautiful mill pond will be found two blocks below to drown them in. We call special attention to our beds. The mattresses are made of the best quality of scrap iron, and the pillows are warranted to be of hard wood and thoroughly seasoned. The carpets in the bedrooms have been use upwards of twenty-five years. We can therefore recommend them without reserve. Parties who look as if they might find fault with our particular brand o butter will please pay in advance. To call a servant—press the button qu:ckly. If you don’t get one under an hour and half you may know that the bell is out of order. The towels furnished guests are the invention of a Wisconsin man. They are warranted superior to any other shingles in the market. There Is a safe in the office for the storage of money and valuables, bill in case the night clerk skips with the pile the hotel is not responsible. Sour oranges, cheap raisins, am wormy apples carried to rooms will be charged extra! Guests desiring hay seed mixed with their tea will please give notice at the office. Otherwise it will be all hay seed. Please report any inattention of set vants. We expect you to fee the por ter, steward, chambermaid and waiters, to pay double for boot-black ing and barbering, to put up with flies, dust, dirt and other trifles, to pay fifty cents to ride up and as muct more to get back to the depot, but in attention of servants is somethiug v> can’t permit. Tramps and Their Houses in England. All regular tramp-houses—there aie irregular ones with peculiar and note worthy features—are licensed taverns, spirit houses, or, as the phrase goes on the road, “ bingo kens ” (from Jftaiian bianco, white, the color of gin ). Most of these licenses are very old indeed, and some are the oldest in the kingdom. Every one of these houses is known far and wide. No tramp, let him come from where he may, ever enters a town without very definite ideas as to the house where he is to put up. He has learned all about it—ay, a hundred miles off; and he goes to it as readily, and, when inside, conforms as smoothly to all its ways, as thougft he had been born whhin its precincts. The custom cf such a house is con stant. Tne tramp stream thither is perennial, and maintains about the sa ne level season after season and year a ter year. This kind of people, indeed, will halt here and nowhere else so long as the house continues to maintain its reputation among them ; and they are a much more profitable company than most people would imagine. In a great many instances the tramp-house is managed by the same family for age after age. There is one—the Goat, or, as the genuine tramp prefers to term it, the Welsh Buffalo—at W , which has been held by the same people sinoe the days of the Long Parliament, as re cords in the possession of the landlord show. They are just the sort to con duct such a house successfully. In stature the family has always been gigantic; a little too stolid and surly, perhaps, but in temper and tastes tramp all over. For one thing, no body ever heard of a regular marriage taking place among them. The eldest son takes over the house during the “ old man’s ” life. The younger sons, as a rule, join the police in their native town or elsewhere, but by preference in London. Wherever they settle, however—and the fact is worthy of notice—they remain to the last lu^he ull confidence of the fraternity among which they have been brought up. It is the landlords of these tramp- houses who keep up the vagabond organiz itlon, and who renew and cir culate its signs and passwords from j time to time. The vagabonds them selves could not do it, and never think of doing it. It is difficult to give an idea of the beggar password and sign system ; but we will do the best we can. It has no confmon cen tre and uo uniformity. There may be, and probal ly there are, fifty differ ent sets of them in use in England. Each has its own domain, and these domains intersect one another in curi ous fashion. These landlords form small circles among themselves according to contiguity ; and a dozen to twenty of these small circles will form one great one. A great circle of tramp land lords—perhaps it were better to call it oval—may spread fifty miles along one of the great highways and ten to fifteen miles on each side of it. And so far the set of signs and passwords in use therein are good for three months, when they are regularly changed. A free tramp pays three pence for the sign and password every t me they are renewed. All he has to do on these occasions is to go to any landlord of the right sort, give in the old sign and password in due form, and pay his pence. And he has to pay again eve y time he enters a new circle. Experience teaches him very well the precise bounds of each. How ever, when he manifests ignorance on this point, he is very toon set right by the landlord, and must purchase the freedom of the new circle in the usual way. He meets with little difficulty here, provided the pence are forth coming. For the tramp landlord can tell in an instant, by the word and sign given by the tramp, whether the latter is one of the right sort or not. Password and sign, indeed, serve, among other things, as a means whereby tramp landlords levy a tax upon vagabonds all over the country. The uses of this vagabond free masonry are manifold. It teaches the vagabond whom he may safely con sort and traffic with every wheie. The man who gives the right response to mystic word and sign is invariably the one in whom confidence may be safely reposed. On the roadside the exchange of these tokens is immedi ately followed by a free exchange of recent experiences, to the benefit of both parties. Nor is this all The vagrant out of luck is entitled to all the assistance his more fortun ate brother can render, and invari ably receives it. A fortunate vagrant never objects to picking up a brother in bad plight and treating him to sup per, bed and breakfast, besides start ing him on his mxt day’s journey with a few pence in his pocket. The uninitiated vagrant Dotices, as he can not help noticing, the constant use o the,.e signs and countersigns on the road, and the effects that follow them in numerous instances. He often sees a fellow as bauly off as himself picked up and made much of by a perfect stranger, and for no reason on earth tha 1 ; he can see, except that one ad dresses another with an apparently unmeaning catchword. He picks up tbe word and employs it on all occa sions, in the h»pe that some time or other it may bring the like fortune to himself. Other silly ones catch it from him, and use it, for no reason at all that they can give, a3 a salutation. Thus spread over the country such phrases as; “ Have you seen Simp son?” “ Is Murphy right?” “ Is your father working ?” The Causes and Cure of Old Age. L. Langer has recently been en gaged iq the comparative analysis of human fat at different ages. He finds that infants fat is harder than that of adults or old men, that there are oil globules in our fat but none in that of babies ; the microscope shows one or two oil globules in every fat cell of the adult, while very few have fat crystals. The fat cells of the infant contain no oil globules, and nearly every cell con tains fat crystals. “Infant fat forms a homogeneous white, solid, tallow-like mass, and melts at 45° C.,” while adult fat standing in a warm room sep arates into two layers ; the lighter and larger is a transparent yellow liquid which solidifies below the freezing point of water, the lower layer is a granular crystalline mass melting at 36° C. Infant fat contains 67 75 per cent of oleic acid, adult fat 89 80. In fant fat contains 28 97 per cent of palmitic acid, against 8 16 in the adult, aud 3 28 of stearic acid against 2.04. These latter, the palmitis and stearic acids are the harder and less fusible, while the oleic acid is the softer and more fusible constituent of fats. No attempt is made to explain the reason of these differences, or to sug- gist any means by which we may reharden or repalmitlze our fat, and thus regain our infant chubbiness, Old age is evidently due to changes of this kind, not only of the fat, but also of the other materials of the bo ly. The first step toward the discovery of the elixir of life, the “aurum potabile” of tbe alchemist, is to determine the nature of these changes,the next to as certain their causes, and then to re move them. If, as we are so often told, there can be no effect without a cause, there must be causes for the organic changes constituting decay and old age. Remove these, and we live for ever. The theory is beautifully simple. Marshes and Malaiia. The opinion formerly so prevalent, that malaria exists only, or chiefly, in marshy soil, appears to be success fully combatted by Professor Tom massi, who sites as evidence not only th at the Cam pagn a of Rome is not really marshy, but that, speaking roughly, two- thirds of the malaria-stricken dis tricts of Italy are situated on heights. He refers to the well-known fact, that sometimes the surface of these dis tricts is completely dry during the surnmea, but the production of mala ria in them goes on just the same, pro vided they are kept moist below the surface by special conditions of the subsoil, and the air can reach the moist strata by pores or crevices in the surface. The investigations made by M Tomtnassi and others further show, that the direct action of the oxygen of the air is so neoessary to the development of the mlcrosoopic plant to which the malaria is due, that the most pestilential marshes be come innocuous when the soil is com pletely covered by water; pavements, buildinge and the like, may act in the same way, and arrest the development of the plant by cutting ofl the neces sary supply of oxygou- but if, even after the lapse of yours or of centuries, communication with the outer air is restored, while the o'.h< r conditions remain the ea i.r, the soil recover Us noxious pioperilcs. The Pleasant Mozo. The “Mozo” is a personal servant or valet, and a very useful appendage to have in traveling around over the country away from the main lines of travel. He takes all the care of the camp, taking care of the animals, cooking, etc., off his master’s mind, and in passing through the settle ments he can save the price of his wag‘s (which is generally four bits a a day) in buying eggs, chickens, etc., for food, and feed for the animals at the regular rates where the ignorant foreigner accustomed to American ways would get cheated and worried on all occasions. Then Mexico is a country in which appearances go a long way toward se curing consideration and comfort. The man with a mozo is supposed to be a man ot business, who understands the ways of the country, and can’t be imposed on with impunity. All mozos are supposed to be honest and trusty to a certain extent; of course, all Mexicans of the lower class have a limit to their pride of honor, though one can generally be sure of those qualities (with a limit) if the mozo has been secured by a responsible business man, who has lived some time in the country, it spoils a mozo to treat him as an equal, and it is much better for both master and ser vant if the man cannot speak half a dozen words of English. No mau should go rambling around over the country without a knowledge of tbe Spanish language. Some Americans in traveling with their mozo give him all the money they take on the trip, and let him so understand it that he may be put more on his professional pride, and at the same time, if he is not to be trusted, it saves him the disagreeable necessity of killing his master while he sleeps, if he intends to rob him, as he can leave with the funds at any time. We know of cases where it was made a rule, when a party of two or three Americans was traveling with a trusty mozo, that at no time should all the Americans go to sleep at once, especially at the midday siesta. While they trusted they didn’t intend to tempt. It was only last October that an Amerioan and his wife, traveling from Inde to Durango, with a mozo they had brought with them from El Paso, were both murdered by the trusty mozo while they slept aud that was the end of it. The mozu took all the money they had and escaped. The authorities took, but little interest in the matter. No reward was offered, and he has not yet been captured.