A very melancholy shipwreck occurred in Mount's Bay on the 22nd inst. An Italian or Austrian brig, whose name could not be ascertained, was seen on Tuesday to be embayed in this deep and dangerous spot; the next morning it was found that she had gone on a reef on the eastern side of Pelgew Cove. She heeled broadside to the breakers, and drifted up the cove on the flood tide. Standing out from the western headland is a detached rock, which rises abruptly to the height of 40 feet, and against this huge mass the vessel was forced, with her deck lying towards it. Mr. Williams, of Angrouse, the nearest farm, hastened to the spot. Fortunately he found a boat hook, and by its means saved the life of one man. A party from Gunwalloe now came up, and, having thrown a line to two poor fellows who were on the rock, they beckoned to them to lash themselves together; but only one made fast the line to his body, and before the rope could again be lowered, his comrade was dashed by a heavy wave with such force against the cliff, as must have instantly killed him, and he was washed out and not seen afterwards. Through the gorge between the cliff and the rock the sea was now running with furious velocity, and between the black and rugged sides of this foaming channel, amid broken timber and tangled cordage, two more of the sailors were carried, and eventually saved. The vessel now began to go to pieces, and two large portions of the hull drifted away landward on the top of the tide. Just after she struck, the body of a fine little boy was washed ashore, having a night dress on, and looking rosy

and fresh. The front part of the poop had been washed away, and the infant must have been in a bassinet, which was shortly after picked up, as also a little flock mattress and quilted counterpane, with a small lace-up boot, which had not been worn. Those who found it, say that it seemed as though the poor child had just been awakened from sleep. The captain's wife was probably on board, as a chest of woman's linen was found, and a packet with several unused wedding cards. From the signs made by the rescued sailors, it is thought that 13 persons perished.

These gales raged with immense fury in the Irish Channel. Near 600 vessels found shelter in Milford Haven; but three perished at the very entrance of that secure harbour. The sea ran mountains high, and overwhelmed them in a moment they perished as they stood, with all hands, and only a bucket or two floated on shore to suggest their names. On the 25th a brig was driven waterlogged into Cardigan Bay. Seven of her crew took to the boat, which was speedily capsized, and all perished. The only survivor of the crew was a seaman, who had not courage enough to trust himself to the boat, and stuck to the wreck, whence he was taken by the Cardigan life-boat.

On the 23rd the iron screwsteamer Kangaroo foundered at midnight between the Isle of Bardsey and the South Stack. Her crew took to two boats. The smaller, with six men, reached the shore in safety; but 14 persons are thought to have perished, the boat in which they had embarked having been found on the rocks

On the southern cost of Ireland there were many wrecks. On the rocks near Waterford a Bristol ship was lost, and seven persons drowned; near Dunmore a ship went to pieces, and all hands perished; a large vessel was driven on Brownstown Head; a large American ship was driven on shore at the mouth of Waterford harbour. The Crisis, of Liverpool, of 1000 tons, was wrecked upon the Arklow Bank; it is thought that one boat, with the captain, mate, and nine seamen, perished.

A schooner was wrecked in Dundrum Bay. A Mr. Redmond and five brave men went out in a private boat to rescue the crew. The boat was capsized, and these six men were buffetted in the waves in danger of perishing where they went to save. Happily, they had brave friends ashore; Mr. Cunningham, the Marquess of Downshire's agent, mustered a crew and went out in a boat, and succeeded in rescuing them all. In the meanwhile the waves were washing away the crew of the schooner; and when the lifeboat arrived, only the captain remained.

The gales were very severe on the Scotch coasts. The communication with the Orkney and Western Islands was so interrupted, as to occasion much inconvenience. On the 23rd inst. the Columbus, of Leith, was totally lost on a rock on North Ronaldshay. Of the crew of 13 men and two passengers, all perished but one

seaman.

FEBRUARY.

o'clock a lamentable accident, causing injuries more or less severe to nearly 30 people, of whom one has since died of the injuries he received, occurred in the Waterloo Road. For some days a sheriff's officer had been posted in 10 of the little houses and shops on the left side of the short row of buildings called Wellington Terrace, running from the south side of Waterloo Bridge to Stamford Street. The occupiers were tenants of a kind of middle-man, named Jeffs, a builder in the Cornwall Road; Mr. Jones, living in the vicinity, being a superior landlord. They had, it is said, in every instance paid their rents, due up to last quarter day, to Jeffs. Jeffs, however, had not paid his rent to his landlord, and the latter put in a distress in every one of the houses held by him, to the great inconvenience and annoyance of the under-tenants. The houses there follow the incline of the roadway leading up from Stamford Street to the bridge, and in front of them there is a space, about 6 feet wide, and in some places 30 or 40 feet deep, covered over with flagstones mostly, with here and there an iron grating to ventillate and light the abyss below. It appears that "the man in possession of the house and shop there of a widow named Clayton, a blind-maker, presuming on her forbearance, had left the place to go to a neighbouring public-house for some refreshment. Hernephew, a young man, occupying apartments in the upper part of the house, taking advantage of the absence of their unwelcome guest, locked the door upon him,

and when the man returned, amused himself by laughing and

windows. The neighbours around and people passing, treated this as a practical joke, and the fun continued all the forenoon. At length the discomfited bailiff, procuring advice and assistance, attempted to break-in the door, using for that purpose, and with much violence, a piece of short, stout planking. With this he stove in two of the panels, and effected an entrance. The nephew of the widow Clayton, rather than allow his and her furniture to be retaken for rent which they conceived they did not owe, began pitching chairs and tables out of the windows into the street. Of course, a scene like that in a great public thoroughfare, attracted the notice of every one passing, and a crowd collected in frout of the house. Most of them unhappily-men, women, and children-stood upon an iron grating, about six or eight feet square, near the adjoining shop. In an instant this grating gave way, and some 25 or 30 of the unfortunate people fell pellmell into the area beneath, a depth of about 35 or 40 feet, shrieking terribly. Several others were caught by bystanders as they were falling with the rest, and so rescued. After the iron grating had given way, it hung by the edge for a moment or two, and then fell with a fearful crash, carrying some of the flagstones with it, upon the people who had just been precipitated into the area below, and also upon two children who were playing there. The greatest consternation prevailed above and below. The people in the street rushed down to the Belvidere Road, which is on a level with the bottom of the area, to render assistance. A yawning gulf appeared in the street above.

By degrees, the people who had fallen were got out through an adjoining house on the lower level. They were in many cases shockingly injured. Some had both their legs broken; others their skulls fractured; all were more or less wounded. The sufferers were conveyed as speedily as possible in cabs to the nearest hospitals, except a few who lived near and were removed to their own homes. One of the sufferers, named James Robbins, a carver and gilder by trade, sank a day or two after, from the effect of the injuries he had suffered. In a few days there was a further fall of the footway, when the massive stone slabs with the iron gratings in front of three other houses, without the slightest warning, snapped in the centre, and fell into the area beneath. Several persons were passing, and some were within a few inches of the spot. Providentially, however, no one was injured.

FALL OF HOUSES AT HACKNEY, AND LOSS OF LIFE.-Two days afterwards an accident of a somewhat similar kind occurred in the Amherst Road, Hackney. On the south side of the road a range of houses, three stories in height and having shop-fronts, the rear abutting on the North London Railway, were in course of construction. The roofs had been covered in, and the carpenters were busily engaged in laying the floors, and plasterers and labourers were occupied on the front scaffolding in cementing the coping and upper cornices, when a sharp, loud, rattling noise was heard, and the next instant the front walls and the roofs and the whole of the floors of the second and third houses from the Hackney end of the road fell with a great crash, dragging with them a

portion of the end or corner building The unfortunate men at work fitting up the interior of the houses fell with the floors, and were buried beneath the mass of ruins. The plasterers and labourers who were on the front scaffold fared but little better. The front wall in falling carried away the scaffolding, and the men who were on it came to the ground on the shattered brickwork. The workpeople from the adjacent premises and a body of police soon arrived, and prompt measures were taken to rescue the sufferers. After great exertion 12 persons were got out, of whom two were quite dead, a third died immediately after, and at least one other appeared to have received mortal hurts. The accident appears to have originated in bad materials, bad supervision, wet weather, and constant jarring by the passage of trains upon the railway.

11. FATAL FLOODING OF A LEAD MINE.-Sixteen Persons drowned. -On the morning of Tuesday, the 11th instant, the water in the disused Hendre Mines, near Mold, Flintshire, broke into the adjoining Bryn Gwiog Lead Mines, and drowned 16 miners, only one of the whole number in the pit making his escape.

The mines are near the high road connecting Mold and Denbigh, and four miles from the former town. The old Hendre Mines, which were formerly very productive, had not been worked for some years; and, as the country is hilly, and there are many streams in the neighbourhood, these mines have been filled with water for a long time. About two years ago a new company was formed, called the Bryn Gwiog Company, for the purpose of working the same bed

The

of lead ore higher up the mountain than the Hendre Mines. On Tuesday morning 17 men descended the mine, and, after working for some time, they penetrated the wall dividing the new workings from the Hendre levels. water rushed through the aperture, and the men had no chance of escape. One alone got to the shaft, the water being up to his chin, and there he seized a rope which was hanging down from the mouth of the pit. By means of the rope he reached the top, passing several times through torrents of water on his way. When nearly at the top he became quite exhausted, and was only saved by being dragged up by the hair. He states that he fancies he heard some one else climbing up the rope after him; he was the only one, however, that arrived at the top. As the water in the mine was 240 feet deep, and would be constantly supplied by the floods from the adjacent mines and springs, it was stated that a very considerable time must elapse before the mine could be so cleared so to allow of search for the unfortunate sufferers. Some days after the accident the engine had reduced the water in the shaft, and one corpse had been recovered.

A DERELICT SHIP-THE "SULINA."-A strange story of the abandonment and recovery of a valuable merchant ship is told. The Sulina was a fine iron barque, of 228 tous register, the property of a firm at Liverpool. On the 5th January she sailed from that port for Vera Cruz, with a cargo of coals. The ship encountered heavy weather at starting, and the master reported badly of her qualities as a sea-boat. On the

26th February, the master and crew abandoned her in mid-ocean, alleging that she was unsafe, although at that time she had suffered no injury beyond the loss of a top-mast and some sails. The crew got on board a passing vessel. How little occasion there was for this shameful desertion may be seen from the fact that the abandoned vessel drifted about the ocean, without injury to her hull and little to her spars or rigging, for nearly three weeks. She was then descried by a colonial barque, whose commander put on board her a mate and four seamen; by whom she was brought in safety into the harbour of Kinsale.

FIRES IN LONDON IN 1861.A return has been made of the fires which occurred in London in the year 1861. In the whole year there were 1183 such mishaps. Of these, 53 resulted in the total destruction of the buildings in which they broke out, 332 caused considerable damage, and 798 were of slight importance. Four were proved, and 14 were suspected, to be wilful. The firebrigade, which is maintained at the expense of the insurance companies, costs no more than 25,000l. a-year; and excepting the useless parish engines, is the only body to which the safety of this vast metropolis, its millions of inhabitants, and fabulous wealth, is entrusted.

19. FEARFUL COLLIERY EXPLOSION NEAR MERTHYR. A month only had passed since the terrible accident at the Hartley Colliery, and the 204 corpses had hardly been withdrawn from the depths of the mine, when the public feelings were again lacerated by the intelligence of an

other colliery disaster, which, but for the overwhelming horror of that event, would have seemed frightful indeed.

The Cethin Colliery is situated about two miles from Merthyr Tydvil. It is the property of Messrs. Crawshay, and, like all the undertakings of that great firm, is conducted with the utmost care. The shaft is 126 yards in depth, and the works extend underground for a mile and a-half in the furthest direction. They are so subdivided, and the arrangements are so excellent, that, in the event of an explosion, it would be confined to the place in which it originated. The supply of air was also arranged on so ample a scale, that the miners sometimes complained of the cold. These precautions had proved so effectual that, although the pit was subject to great effusion of gases, only one considerable explosion had happened, about 10 years since, and then no one perished.

It is supposed that on Wednesday the 19th inst., about 250 men were employed in the different workings. Between 1 and 2 P.M. a loud explosion, followed by several smaller reports, was heard by the men engaged at the mouth of the pit, and almost immediately a body of smoke and flame issued forth from the shaft. As it was at once apparent that a great disaster had occurred, the miners assembled from every side, and some experienced men heroically descended the shaft. But the insidious choke-damp and the noisome smell of singed bodies and burnt horses overpowered them, and they were with difficulty withdrawn alive. By forcing down quantities of water the air was at