(of Christiania, Norway,) has recently received from Consul-General Carl Book in Shanghai a large collection of pressed plants (5 large cases) from the province of Szechuan, China, bordering on Tibet, and which are hitherto unknown in botanical respects, These plants were gathered by natives under a scientific expedition equipped by Consul Buck and Mr. von Ros-thorn, and are very handsomely prepared, The Eastern World of the 14th of October says:—'the convocation of the Japanese Diet has been fixed by an Imperial Rescript for the 25th of next month, and the plans of the Government for admit ye reforms will be made public and carried out, Then "the grand privilege which a free newspaper press secures tu a free people," as the Mail has it, will probably give some Japanese editors the grand privilege to freely look at the free people through an iron frame work of emall rectangular squares, and after all, who knows but that the Japan Government may not be right, in cases at least, to make them focus things in that way. A child may set fire to a city, but it takes many men, horses and engines to put it out again, The Chicago correspondent of the Japan Mail writes:—It is stated (on the authority of the newspaper despatches from Washington), that the report of ex-Minister Blount of the Hawaiian question will be an expose of political intriguing, into complicity with which we were steeped; and that President Cleveland, in his message to Congress, will recommend ''home-rule" for Hawaii with the protection of the U.S. Government during the process of reorganisation there. Meantime, a bill has been introduced into the House of Representatives by McCreary, of Kentucky, to authorise Celso Cmsar and associates to construct and maintain a cable to Hawaii. There is no government grant or guarantee provided but government privileges are specified.
The cable line must be completed within five years, "Home Rule" may prove as interesting and difficult a question with reference to Hawaii as concerning Ireland, To the large number of Japanese and Chinese upon the islands, it would be a very important matter. The details of the "home rule" plan will be awaited with great interest.
Under the heading " Blessings in Store for Foreigners," the Eastern World of Yokohama has the followin, At a meeting of the Jiyulo (Radicd Party) at Osaka the following programme was adopted with regard to mixed residence 1.—Extraterritorial Jurisdiction is to be abolished.
The settlements are to be abolished within two years from the date of the new treaties, and the ground formerly occupied by foreigners is to be taken back.
Mixed residence is to be granted upon the abolition of the settlements, but foreigners are to be prohibited from holding mortgages on real estate, shares in mines, railways, banks, docks, shipyards, water: works, canals, and from becoming officers in any auch' companies as those. Mixed residence in the Hokkaido is to be permitted under special restriction 2.—Tariff autonomy is to be recovered.
3.—Foreigners are not to participate in the coasting trad As far as the foreigner is concerned then, the entire programme is a series of "thou shalt not," so that, stripped of its verbiage, it amounts to nothing but an anti-mixed residence proclamation in another form, since a passport at present gives foreign residents nearly all the privileges conferred by mixed residence on such terms. The Japanese wish to develop their industries and trades in their own leisurely way, keeping appointments and agreements when it suits them, and forgetting all about them when it does not suit them to do so, and they do not wish to be disturbed. To live by the clock and the calendar, and to be stirred up to extra activity by departing mails is utterly distasteful to them; in the foreigner, therefore, with his hurry and bustle, his punctuality and his regularity, they see nothing but a disturbing element that neither fits nor will accommodate itself to their happy-go-lucky way of doing things, that has answered them very well ay far as they can look back, and if a day, or a week, of & month makes no difference to them, they cannot conceive why it should do so to a foreigner. The foreigner. therefore, is to be kept at safe distance from any point from which he might be able to exercise a pressure in any direction. This policy may be a narrow-minded and selfish one, but it will be readily conceded that in a way it is a prudent one also. The foreigner may run a race with the Japanese, but for prudential reasons his hands and feet are to be tied first; the only question is: Will he submit to it? We think not. Japanese politicians of certain order seem to think that we will have to, and on this minor point they will find themselves mistaken, We ourselves and a great many others have not the slightest objection that the greater part of Japan should be kept strictly for the Japanese. But a trial to open the treaty ports and Tokio, Osaka, and Kioto to the full extent of the treaty limits, isa step that may be taken without much danger, it is a step that should be taken, and which, before the opening of the entire country, will have to be taken, The following extracts are made by home paper from a translation, sent by its Paris correspondent to the Standard, of the official report of the forcing of the Menam river on the 13th of July by the French men-of-war l'Inconstant and Cométe:—
On the 13th July, at half-past four in the evening, the Inconstant, in command
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.