p. 104 | News and Miscellany

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 5, 1867

News and Miscellany.

Can ye not discern the Signs of the Times? Matt. xvi, 3.

—Murders and other outrages by the Indians are reported in Montana.

—Of the Fenians confined at Toronto, 22 have been convicted, 20 acquitted, 49 dismissed for want of evidence, 13 discharged on bail, and three remain to be tried; total 107.

—The Governor of Nova Scotia, in his message delivered on Thursday, deplores the amount of pauperism existing in the province, and attributes it to the failure of the fisheries and the loss of the potato crop.

Extravagance.—The Roman Catholic Bishop of Three Rivers, Lower Canada, in a pastoral letter, expatiates on the intemperance of the men and the extravagance of the women in his diocese. He says, too:

“Extravagance leads to what in the sight of God constitutes another crime, namely, the indecent fashions of certain dresses which too great a number of women and girls permit themselves to wear, to the detriment and contempt of Christian modesty and chastity. The modes have certainly made a serious inroad upon the proverbial good manners which our pious ancestors have handed down to us as a legacy.”

For these and other sins, he thinks, the incessant rains, the threatened approach of cholera, and the Fenian invasion, have been permitted by Providence.

Price of Religious Newspapers.—The National Baptist has the following pertinent paragraph in regard to the price of religious newspapers:

“There is no article which has advanced so little on the price prior to the war, as the religious newspapers. The secular papers, which before the war were two cents, are now four; and those who used to pay twelve cents a week for their daily, now pay twenty-four without grumbling. But when an advance not half as large is asked on their religious weekly, why, they do not exactly see the need of it. A religious weekly does not cost the farmer half as much of his produce as it did before the war. In paying his subscription to a religious journal, an honest old farmer said that it used to take two bushels of wheat to pay it, but now it takes but one. That is the right way to look at this matter.”

Adulteration.—“Terra Alba. The extent to which this fine white earth is employed in adulterating pulverized sugar, confectionery, flour, prepared cocoa, spices, milk, etc., is incalculable. Dishonesty gives the law to many a traffic and manufacture in these days, and compels those who would rather be honest (so they imagine) to “do as others do.” A chalky taste in the delicate white cracker, a tastelessness in bread, a whitish scum in the tea cup from a spoonful of snowy sugar, with many another uncomprehended indication, betray the presence of the ever-present adulterator. Two-thirds their weight of terra alba has been obtained from lozenges. This comparatively new ingredient is imported from Ireland, and that largely, costing only about one dollar and a quarter per cwt.—Sc. Am.

Hell.—A tract upon “Hell,” by Rev. J. Furniss, a Catholic priest of London, gives more definite information than has hitherto been obtained on the subject. Mr. Furniss states, among other items, that hell is 4000 miles from the surface of the earth; it is a

boundless plain of red hot iron, with an atmosphere of fire and rivers of seething filth and sulphur. The book is specially intended “for children and young people who are often lost for want of being smitten by terror.”

“Wonders in Heaven.”—Messrs. Editor: On the night of January 1, 1867, at about 11.15 P. M., I noticed a strange appearance in the heavens. This remarkable phenomenon consisted in a bright bar of light, connecting two stars, which lasted several minutes. On consulting the atlas, I placed the position of the phenomenon in the constellation Eridanus. A star of the fourth magnitude, near Theemin, was connected with another of the same magnitude (about five degrees southwest), by a bright light resembling that of a comet. From the upper one of the two there was a bright light turned off a little more toward the northeast. The color of the light was about the same as that of the star Aldebaran. I wish you would inform me through your columns of the cause of this phenomenon. J. JULIUS CHAMBERS.—Sci. Am.

Anything for Gain.—A number of Parisian seamstresses have been suffering from violent colics from putting the silk they use in sewing into their mouths. This is attributed to sulphate of lead, and the presence of that deleterious substance is explained by the fact that, as the silk is sold by weight, some manufacturers mix the sulphate with it to make it heavier.

Paris, Jan. 23.—Information is received that the workingmen are riotously assembling in the streets of Madrid. The clamor is for bread. A serious outbreak is anticipated, and the government is taking measures to meet it.

How Geologists Differ.—A controversy has arisen between Professor Hall, of the New York State Geological Museum, and Edward Maguire, of Saratoga Springs, touching the bones recently exhumed at Cohoes; the former holding them to be the bones of a mastodon and the other that they are the bones of a large show elephant that died nearly forty years since. Professor Hall thinks the bones have lain in the earth 25,000 years—a slight difference.