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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 25, 1866

Home News.

Texas. Major-General Sheridan, of the Department of the Gulf, speaks of matters in Texas as anomalous, singular, and unsatisfactory. The Governor wants all the troops moved from the settled portions of the State, asserting that the civil law is all right, and that justice would be done. Two soldiers were shot a few months ago in Benham. They were unarmed and offered no provocation. The grand jury refused to find a bill against their would-be-assassins, but found a bill for burglary against Major Smith who broke into a house in an attempt to arrest the men. The trial of a white man for the murder of a freedman in Texas would be a farce. It is strange that over the killing of a white man by the Indians on the remote frontier the greatest excitement will take place, but over the killing of many freedmen in the settlements, nothing is done.

Marine Disasters for 1866. The Detroit Tribune of Dec. 19, reports an aggregate of 621 disasters to vessels on the Lakes during the year 1866, being an excess of two hundred over any previous year.

Public Lands. The whole public domain now contains nearly 1,500 millions of acres, of which only about one-third have been surveyed. Upward of four and a half millions have been disposed of in the year, of which only about 388,000 acres were sold, while nearly two millions of acres were taken up by settlers under the homestead act, nearly a million and a quarter of swamp lands were conceded to the States (making over 43 millions in all), and the rest were absorbed by railroads, military warrants, and agricultural colleges. Measures are recommended for promoting the planting and growth of timber on the public domain.

Patents. There were 14,039 applications for patents in 1866; about 3,000 more than in any previous year. Of these, 10,130 were granted, of which 8,716 have been issued.

Consumption of Postage Stamps. Twenty tons, or, by superficial measurement, forty-eight and a half square miles, of postage stamps, have been used during the year: enough to roof a large township, with all its houses, barns, churches, gardens, forests, and farms; or, if you choose to make a ribbon of them, enough to reach nearly from the equator to either pole, or twice the length of the Mississippi river. So that if everybody would be obliging enough to use the government stamp on the envelop itself, the mere omission of these little extra bits of paper would lighten the mail-bags by more than forty thousand pounds, and save in paper fifteen or twenty thousand dollars. The Postmaster General does not impart this information in so many words, but he assures us that nearly 350 millions of stamps have been sold in the year past, besides nearly forty millions of stamped envelopes; and a simple calculation reduces the story to the more tangible form we have given it.

Distribution of the Bible.—In the last half century the British and Foreign Bible Society has appropriated $2,375,000 for circulating the Scriptures among the unevangelized nations, and the American Bible Society has expended for the same object $800,000. The two societies have issued 80,000,000 of the sacred volumes, and 6,000,000 of these have been given outside of Christendom.

Abandoning Missionary Stations.—The Presbyter says, “In the last number of the Foreign Missionary we have the astounding intelligence that our missionaries in India are gravely considering the propriety, or rather the necessity, of abandoning some of the stations now occupied, in order to obtain men to re-inforce others where the brethren can no longer sustain their burdens! In the same paper we are told by one of the Secretaries, that the Board, as yet, has been unable to find a single man to send either to India or China this year.”

BREAD, beer and buttermilk (and the same is partially true of butter), directly after being made, make a rapid exchange of carbon for oxygen, with a proportional improvement in wholesomeness. Bread, when thus ripened, is computed to contain twenty per cent. more of nutriment than when hot from the oven. The change in both taste and texture is very marked. It is important to have all these articles ripen in a pure, clear atmosphere, as they absorb very freely the ill savors and unwholesome ingredients of the air around them.