Ritortltannin

The General Commanding-in-chief has directed the Colonels of certain regiments, above 1000 rank and file, to select 1000 of their best men, all five feet six inches high ; retaining as many medalists as possible. As there are thirteen regiments whose strength is under a thousand, the re- jected men, where fit, may reenlist in those regiments ; bounty one guinea.

On Tuesday a series of siege-operations were carried on in the lines at Chatham, by the Queen's and the East India Company's troops, in pre- sence of the Duke of Cambridge as Commander-in-chief. The operations included both attack and defence. A portion of them brought out the excellence of the pontoon system now in use ; another portion showed the facility of exploding mines by electricity. Unfortunately, some masses of clay thrown high in the air fell among the men in the trenches. Several were bruised, and the leg of one was broken.

The report of the Select Committee appointed to inquire into the adulteration of food, drinks, and drugs, has recently been published.

The Committee examined a large number of professional and other wit- nesses. They arrive at the conclusion that " adulteration widely pre- vails" ; and they specify the following as "the leading articles proved to be more or less commonly adulterated."

" These are—arrowroot, adulterated with potato and other starches ; bread, with potatoes, plaster of Paris, alum, and sulphate of copper ; bottled fruits

and vegetables with certain salts of copper ; coffee with chicory, roasted wheat, beans, and mangold wurzel ; chicory with roasted wheat, carrots, sawdust, and Venetian red ; cocoa with arrowroot, potato-flour, sugar, chicory, and some ferruginous red earths ; cayenne with ground rice, mustard, husk, &c., coloured with red lead, Venetian red, and turmeric; gin with grains of Paradise, sulphuric acid, and cayenne ; lard with potato- flour, mutton-suet, alum, carbonate of soda, and caustic lime ; mustard with wheat flour and turmeric ; marmalade with apples or turnips; porter and stout (though sent out in a pure state from the brewers) with water., sugar, treacle, salt, alum, cocculua Indicus, grains of Paradise, flux verruca, and sulphuric acid ; pickles and preserves with salts of co per ; snuff with various chromates, red lead, lime, and powdered glass ; t cco with water, sugar, rhubarb, and treacle; vinegar with water, sugar, and sulphuric acid ; jalap with powdered wood ; opium with poppy capsules, wheat-flour, powdered wood, and sand ; scammony with wheat-flour, chalk, resin, and sand ; confectionary with plaster of Paris and other similar ingredients, coloured with various pigments of a highly poisonous nature ; and acid drops purporting to be compounded of Jargonelle pear, Ribstone pippin, lemon, &c., with essential oils containing prussic acid or other dangerous in- gredients." Drugs are " extensively " adulterated ; and as a general rule "the poorer the district the greater is the adulteration" of all kinds. Having stated the nature of the laws for the repression and punishment of adulteration in France, Belgium, Germany, and the United States, and the law as it exists in our own country, the Committee make these recommendations-

" It will be desirable to empower municipal or other local or district au- thorities to appoint an officer, or officers, who, on complaint made, or in cases of reasonable suspicion, shall procure portions of any article supposed to be adulterated, with a view to their examination or analysis by some duly- qualified person appointed for that purpose. On the report of such persons, if it confirm the suspicion of adulteration, a summons shall be issued and the case be investigated before the Justices, who shall have power to inflict summary punishment, by fine or imprisonment, in every case where pecu- niary fraud or danger to health shall have been proved. The Justices should also be empowered to publish the names of offenders It is essential that a right of appeal should lie to the Court of Quarter-Sessions. With regard to coloured confectionary, your Committee recommend thift authority should be given to local Boards of Health, or other governing bodies, to for- bid the use, for colouring, of all mineral matter and all poisonous vegetable matter."

Although not strictly within the scope of the inquiry, the Committee cannot forbear from calling attention to the injurious influence of patent medicines, the unrestricted sale of poisons, and the existence of three distinct and in some important instances widely differing pharmacopoeias for the Three Kingdoms. As to poisons, they think it " well worthy of consideration whether the sale of poisons should not be forbidden, unless under the authority of a medical prescription, or under such conditions, as to witnesses and formal entries of the names and addresses of purcha- sers, as may secure the needful amount of caution."

A profound sensation was created in the Roman Catholic chapels of the Metropolis on Sunday, by the arrival of the news that Bertram Arthur Talbot, seventeenth Earl of Shrewsbury, died on the previous Sunday, at Lisbon. It is a tradition of the family that " no son of Talbot succeeds to Talbot." The late Earl acquired the title by the death of the son and nephew of the sixteenth Earl. He was himself the son of Lieutenant- Colonel Talbot. Born in 1832, he succeeded to the title in 1852, and took his seat in the House of Lords in 1854. Afflicted with a tendency to pulmo- nary disease, he was on his way to Cintra and Madeira, with a view to the benefit of his health, when he died. It is stated that Earl Talbot of Ingcstre Hall, Staffordshire, will succeed to the title, but that the estates will go to the Howards of Norfolk. The claimant is described as " kinsman " to the late Earl, who was seventeenth in descent from the first Earl, the famous Sir John Talbot the terror of France. His kindred consists in lineal descent from the famous Sir Gilbert Talbot of Grafton, who, being High Sheriff of Shrop- shire in Richard the Third's time, did good service to the Earl of Richmond, by meeting him on his way, and, like a stanch adherent, fighting for him at the head of the right wing of his army at Bosworth field. To this same branch of the family the earldom of Shrewsbury was obliged to revert for an heir in the ninth Earl ; the graft then taken to the parent tree has died out, and the title again goes backwards searching for a successor. Of the eighteen Earls of Shrewsbury, the first six were succeeded by their sons, the seventh by his brother, the eighth by his " kinsman," (m whose in- stance the peerage then first reverted to the family of the present Earl—Tal- both of Ingestre,) the ninth by his nephew, the tenth and eleventh by their sons, the twelfth by his cousin, the thirteenth by his brother, the fourteenth by his son, the fifteenth by his nephew, the sixteenth by his cousin, and the seventeenth by his'" kinsman." It is stated that the pedigree of Earl Talbot, in connexion with his relationship to the Shrewsbury family and his right to the title, are likely to be disputed. The extinction of the earl- dom would make Lord Derby the premier Earl of England.

The Duchess and Princess Mary of Cambridge have gone to Germany for a sojourn of two months. Sir Alan M'Nab, late Prime Minister of Canada, is on a visit to this country. After their return from Bantry Bay to Cork, the Lords of the Admiralty proceeded to Dublin and Kingstown.

The Princess Anna of Saxony, fourth daughter of the King, has been betrothed at Pillnitz to the Hereditary Grand Duke of Tuscany.

The Dowager Empress of Russia returned to St. Petersburg on the 16th.

Advices have arrived from Gibraltar announcing the arrival there, on the 9th, of the Prussian frigate Danzig, bearing the flag of Prince Ailalbert, High Admiral of Prussia, which had left the port a few days previously, bringing an account of a collision with the Riff pirates. Prince Adalbert, being desirous to see the spot where a Prussian vessel had been plundered some years before, attempted to land in one of the ship's boats, but on reaching the beach was fired upon and prevented from so doing. The Prince then returned to the frigate, manned and armed the boats, landed, and charged the Riffians gallantly up a hill : but the Prussians were surrounded by the pirates, and compelled to retreat to their boats under the frigate's guns. The Frince received a ball in his thigh ; his aide-de-camp (flag- lieutenant) was mortally wounded, and died soon after getting on board the frigate ; a mate of the Danzig was shot through the elbow-joint, seven men were killed, and seventeen wounded ; three of the men were left on the field, and could not be got off. The remainder of tho killed were buried at Gibraltar with military honours, and the wounded removed ashore to the military hospital. The Prince's wound was going on favourably.

Major Robert Stuart, "special service, Asia Minor," Major Aliek Fraser, the Reverend Walter Thursby, Mr. James Theobald junior of Winchester, and Mr. John Evans of Darley Abbey, ascended Mount Ararat on the 11th and 12th July. This is the first time that any one has planted his foot on the summit. The mountain is regarded as sacred. When the Kurdish chief guarding the party saw one of them on the summit, he cried out- " What wonderful people these English are ! a few of them come here, and without any difficulty walk to the top of that holy mountain, a thing that never was done by man before. Wonderful, wonderful ! " The Russian Professor Abich had tried to accomplish the feat, in 1846, but failed.

Provisions have reached an exorbitant price at St. Petersburg : it has been deemed necessary to open the reserve stores, and a Government ordinance has fixed the price of gram 10 per cent below the market rate.

Numbers of labourers have been hired in Ost-Preussen for three years, to rebuild the South side of Sebastopol.

Said Pasha, the Viceroy of Egypt, has resolved upon running steamers,' carrying the Egyptian flag, all round the Red Sea, from Suez to Cosseir, Mas- sawah, Aden, Mocha, Jedda, Tambo, and to extend occasionally to Bussorah• and Bagdad. The Pasha has requested a number of Europeans to not as directors of the steamers ; for this scheme purports to be a company formed by the Pasha, with a capital of 600,0001., of which his Highness is to sub- scribe one-half at once. The Pasha has promised to have docks made at Suez ; which, if carried out, will prove of great use to our communication. with India.

At the last advises a regular system of steam navigation of the river Murray from Goolwa, near Adelaide, to Albury in Victoria, had been or ganised, the boats to run monthly.

The wheat crop in the United States has been gathered in ; but the In- dian corn crop has suffered greatly from drought, and rains which fell re- cently are supposed to have come too late to do much good.

Some of the London daily journals have been unfortunate of late in tlie

publication of " interesting journals

news. Recently, Lord Drumlanrig was made

to die suddenly, while he was really still in the enjoyment of robust health. This week "another double murder near Dover" has been perpetrated—by. a penny-a-liner. And a very remarkable case of seduction—almost too re- markable to be true—has conic before a visionary "Master" in the Court of Exchequer for the assessment of damages, and the concocter of the report was moderate in giving only 5001. damages. The same number of the Times which chuckles over the fact that itself was not taken in by the ingenious authors of these fabrications, has this little paragraph—" The advertise- ment in the Timm of last Tuesday, announcing the death, at Boulogne-sur- Mar, of Lady Mary Anne Nugent, described as the ' daughter of the Mant- quis of Westmeath, aged ten years,' has been contradicted, on grounds which certainly appear conclusive, namely, that no such person ever existed."

The will of the late Mr. Samuel Gurney, the great bill-broker, has been proved under 800,000/. He also possessed very extensive landed estates.

Duncan Douglass, formerly a carman, has died at Greenock at the gresit age of one hundred and four. - He was a sober-living man; he had been- married thrice, and his third wife survives him.

The steamer Northern Indiana was recently burnt on Lake Erie : when the life-preservers were required to save the people on board, it was found that many. had been rendered useless by the lady passengers having used them as pincushions

The High Sheriff of Suffolk has been unbending from the stiffness of dig- nity : at a dinner recently given to the soldiers of the Royal Horse Artil- lery, at which he presided, he sang "Villikins and his Dinah " and another comic song !