SECULAR NEWS | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jan 3, 1878

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 4, No. 1.

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SECULAR NEWS.

—Egypt has forty-two obelisks left.

—The diphtheria is prevailing in San Jose and Santa Clara.

—Eleven saloon-keepers are members of the Boston city council.

—Prince Leopold, Queen Victoria's youngest son, is dangerously ill.

—Some of the new Representatives in Washington are liquor dealers.

—The Cuban revolution has cost Spain two hundred millions of dollars.

—Oregon's exports for the last six months amounted to over six million dollars.

—The recent violent rain on the Colorado desert broke up fifty miles of the railroad track.

—Holland has a population of 4,000,000 persons, and has not had a bank failure in forty years.

—In India last year 19,273 persons and 54,830 cattle were destroyed by wild animals and poisonous snakes.

—Great Britain now cultivates nearly one million less number of acres of wheat than she did twenty years ago.

—There are 150,000 idle people in Philadelphia. In consequence crime and pauperism has increased at a fearful rate.

—The Jubilee singers have recently gone to Germany to continue the work they have for six years been doing in the United States, Great Britain, and Holland, in the interest of the education of their race in Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn.

—It is estimated that 20,000 oil wells have thus far been dug in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, at an aggregate cost of $192,000,000. They have yielded about 88,000,000 barrels of oil, valued at the well at $300,000,000, or $400,000,000 at the seaboard.

—An exchange says: "There is much concern on the part of medical men in Great Britain concerning the evident increase of lunacy. In 1850 there was a mean of one lunatic in every 534 persons, and it is estimated that the proportion is now one in 369."

—The total assets of the city of Boston, actual and nominal, are placed at $54,677,633.06, and the total debt amounts to $43,590,497. The amount of property devoted to religious and charitable purposes, exempt from taxation, located within the municipal limits, amounts to $19,943,200.

—Electricity has been applied to a novel use in the East Indies. A platinum wire connected with the poles of a battery is stretched around a tree, and becoming red hot, is gently see-sawed, until it burns its way through. It is thought that a tree can be cut down without any waste of timber in about fifteen minutes, that would require two hours to fell the ordinary way.

—Quite an excitement has been made in Springfield, Mass., by the refusal of a council of fourteen Congregationalist ministers to install Rev. James F. Merriam as pastor of ward 8, Congregational society, on account of his believing that, if the punishment of the wicked is eternal, it is eternal indeed, though he promised not to preach upon that point. As Mr. Merriam is highly esteemed, the society unanimously voted to accept him as their pastor despite the disapprobation of the council.