SECULAR NEWS | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Aug 2, 1877

SECULAR NEWS.

—Over 1,250,000 people are still receiving relief in India.

—The New England Colleges have over 140 Chinese students.

—A copious shower of sand, wafted over from the deserts of Africa, recently fell in Rome and Naples, nearly obscuring the sun.

—The California warehouses and lumber yards on Beale-street wharf, San Francisco, were destroyed by fire, caused by rioters, July 25. The value of property destroyed is estimated at half a million dollars.

—The official statement shows the coinage of the United States mints during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1877, to have been as follows: Gold $44,078,199; trade dollars, $8,162,900; subsidiary $9,387,935; minor, $62,165. Total $61,691,199.

—France, not much larger than Pennsylvania and Ohio, boasts of 38,000,000 population, nearly as many steam engines as the United States, with manufacturing products of $2,400,000,000 per annum, and an import and export trade nearly double that of the United States.

—The number of wolves in Russia is increasing, since the serfs have become unwilling to act as drivers in the wolf hunt, which used to be the great national pastime. No less than 161 persons lost their lives by the wolves in 1875, and the loss in domestic animals is estimated at $12,500,000 yearly.

—On the 10th instant, Joseph, the Indian chief, surprised a party of thirty-one Chinamen, who were coming down the Clearwater river in boats for recreation, and killed all but one. These are the first Chinamen who have been molested by the Indians. Many of them are now leaving the upper country.

—Judge Allison, of Philadelphia, who has been upon the bench now more than a quarter of a century, said recently that of the hundreds of murder trials which had come before him in that long period, the cause of the crime in fully ninety-five out of every hundred cases was the use of intoxicating drinks.

—The first and only railway in China, the line from Shanghai to Woosung, recently built by English capitalists, turns out to be a great success. There is a regular traffic, and a rush for the cars at the stations. The Chinese themselves have now undertaken a line to run from Woosung to Soochow, and English capitalists are not indisposed to advance the funds on an enterprise which promises to pay.

—There are in this country 19 libraries containing each 50,000 or more volumes, as follows: Congressional Library, 300,000; Public, Boston, 299,869; Mercantile, New York, 160,613; Harvard College, 154,000; Astor, New York, 152,446; Mercantile, Philadelphia, 125,668; House of Representatives, 125,000; Boston Athenaeum, 105,000; Library Company of Philadelphia, 104,000; State Library, Albany, 95,000; Yale College, 78,000; Public, Cincinnati, 71,405; New York Society, 65,000; American Antiquarian Society, 60,497; New York Historical Society, 60,000; Peabody Institute, Baltimore, 57,458; Apprentices, New York, 53,000; Mercantile, Brooklyn, 50,257; Public Library of Kentucky, 50,000.