* * * * * CURRENT COIN OF CHINA.--The only coin made in China is the tchen, or _cash_, as it is called in Canton. It is composed of base metal, having the date and reigning emperor’s name stamped on it. According to Gutzlaff, they had coins of this description a thousand years before our era. It is nearly as large as an old shilling. There is a square hole in the centre, to admit of a number of them being strung on a bamboo. From seven to eight hundred of these, according to the exchange, may be had for a Spanish dollar. Silver is the commercial medium of barter; it is not coined, but passes by weight, after being purified, when it is called sycee silver. It is then cast into lumps of one tael, or Chinese ounce, each, the value of which in English money is about six shillings. When decimal parts are required, it is cut. Spanish dollars are current in Canton, and they are also cut when required for lesser portions. Whenever one of these gets into the possession of a Chinese, he stamps his name on it; hence in a short time the Spanish marks become quite obliterated, and then they are called chop dollars, and are melted into sycee silver. Gold is like any other article of trade, and is not used as a medium of barter.--_Dr Fulton’s Travelling Sketches in Various Countries._ EXTRAORDINARY ANOMALY. BERNARD CAVANAGH. In the hope that the narration of the following singular circumstances may attract the attention of medical and scientific men towards its extraordinary subject, we lay it before the readers of the _Irish Penny Journal_:-- Bernard Cavanagh is about twenty-four years of age, and now living with his parents at nearly a mile distant from the little town of Swineford, county Mayo. The parents are respectable, of reputable character, and in comfortable circumstances. They assert--indeed they have made affidavits before a magistrate of the county--that for nearly the last four years he has existed without tasting sustenance of any kind. They state also that from the 2d September 1836 to the 2d July 1840, he neither spoke nor rose from his bed except to allow it to be arranged, during which operation he never opened his mouth; and this portion of the statement is borne out to a considerable extent by the fact of his having been visited frequently, and at various periods, by persons of high respectability as well as of the lower class, on all which occasions he was observed invariably in the same position, with his hands on his breast and his eyes fixed on the window. The night before he betook himself to bed, he knocked at the door of the priest’s house, and stated that he wished to communicate something to him; but the reverend gentleman declined admitting him, in consequence of the lateness of the hour, saying that he could impart whatever he wished to state on the morrow. “But I will not be here to-morrow,” responded Cavanagh; and he was right: the next day he took to his bed.