News and Miscellany

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 18, 1873

News and Miscellany.

“Can ye not discern the signs of the times?”

KING Amadeus, of Spain, has abdicated, a Republic has been declared, and a revolution is thought to be inevitable.

A BROAD-STREET (N. Y.) broker puts Jay Gould’s profits on Erie, at $3,500,000 since resigning his position in the company, and his profits on North-western, at $2,500,000.—Boston Traveler.

A Whirlwind of Fire in England.

On Saturday, a most remarkable phenomenon occurred at King Sutton, near Banbury, by which a man had a narrow escape. No less than seventeen trees were torn up by the roots, thirty-six, more or less injured, and 116 yards of stone wall thrown down. About one o’clock in the day the people in the neighborhood saw something in the shape of a haycock of great size, revolving through the air. It was accompanied by fire and a great deal of smoke, and sometimes was seen high in the air, and at others, near the ground. It made a great noise, something like a railway train traveling, and progressed with great rapidity. It passed over the estates of Col. North, M. P., Sir William Brown, Bart., and Mr. Leslie Melville, Cartwright, sixty-one yards of whose park wall at one place has been thrown down from the foundation. It tore up one of the largest beech trees on Sir William Brown’s estate, and about twelve to fifteen tons of earth with it, and the branches were carried about in all directions. A man named Adams, who was breaking stones on the road, says he heard a great noise as if a railway train was coming up. There was a dense smoke, and a tree that he had been standing under a minute before was torn up. There was a heavy rain at the time, and, a few minutes before, a vivid flash of lightning. For a mile and a half there are traces of the destruction caused by the phenomenon, which seems to have traveled almost in a straight line from south to north. It was followed by a whirlwind that swept everything before it; and a pond it passed was dried up. Stones were carried a distance of forty yards, and railings knocked down. Frightened cattle ran about the fields, many of which are strewn with the branches of the trees struck. The people were greatly alarmed—some of them say the noise was terrific—and they thought the earth was about to open and swallow everything up. After traveling for about two miles the fire meteor seems to have expended itself.—Liverpool Mercury, Dec. 6, 1872.