p. 191 | SECULAR NEWS

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jun 27, 1878

SECULAR NEWS.

—Dr. Mary Walker is seriously ill.

—It is proposed to annex Paraguay to the Argentine Republic.

—The wheat crop of California for export this year, it is estimated, will be 200,000 tons.

—The socialistic press of Germany now numbers no less than seventy-five periodicals with 135,000 subscribers.

—Some idea of the headway the socialists are making in Germany may be gathered from the fact that no less than ten thousand of them followed the remains of one of their body to the grave last week iu Berlin, each one openly wearing a party-colored emblem. The coffin was bordered with brilliant red.

—England's naval strength is 599 vessels, of 2,919 guns. Sixty-four of these are powerful iron-clads.

—Queen Victoria has reigned forty-one years, only three years less than the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

—The people of Kansas spent last year eight and one-half millions of dollars for whisky and tobacco.

—There are 358 sorts of cigarettes sold in New York, and they are said to be more harmful than either cigars or pipes.

—It is asserted that Germany has invited the Powers to consider necessary measures for checking conspirators located abroad.

—The German patent office received 6,424 applications for patents during the past year, a greater number than any other country except the United States.

—The American brig Harriet G. Been has been wrecked on the coast of Coro. A steam tug with twenty men from Maracaibo was sent to her assistance and foundered. Seven men drowned.

—South Carolina supplies nearly half the rice produced in this country. Georgia is next, or nearly seven million pounds ahead of Louisiana. Nearly all our rice comes from these three States.

—The coinage at the United States Mints from 1793 to 1874 inclusive, has been of gold, $983,159,695; silver, $208,872,291.40; minor, $12,884,703.55; making a grand total of $1,205,916,389.95.

—The whole number of scholars reported in the State of Maine for 1877 was 217,417; the number registered in summer schools 125,455; average attendance, 100,982; number registered in winter schools, 132,865; average attendance, 107,653.

—Bald Mountain, North Carolina, was shaken as by an earthquake and split in twain, leaving a chasm 300 feet in length, eight or ten wide and of unknown depth. No smoke or lava was thrown up but a strong smell of sulphur pervades the place.

—A petrified wasp's nest has been found near Eureka, Nevada, by blasting in the solid rock forty feet below the surface of the ground. On breaking it open, cells, larvæ, and two perfectly formed wasps were found, also petrified. The rock is a gigantic sandstone of sedimentary formation.

—The University at Athens has 72 professors whose salaries are paid by the State, and 1,500 students. A student's only expense is for subsistence. Men from the other great Universities of Europe go there to study modern Greek. The great work of this University, it is said, is to restore classical Greek.

—A captain in the Austrian army has invented a repeating carbine, which is a murderous weapon, and quite in keeping with the spirit of the times. The chamber holds nine cartridges, and the whole may be discharged in eighteen seconds, while it only takes nine seconds to reload. At this rate the soldier armed with such a carbine could kill twenty-one antagonists in one minute.

—The number of destructive earthquakes recorded in Japan during the past fifteen hundred years, is 149. The ninth century was most prolific in these, reaching 28; in the fifteenth century there were 15; the same in the seventeenth; 13 in the eighteenth; and 16 in the present century. The recorded average is one great earthquake every ten years, but the nineteenth century give one every five years.

—The American Consul at Lambayeque, Peru, writes to the Department of States that the extraordinary rains of the past quarter have been destructive to agriculture, causing the total failure of the rice, alfalfa and fruit crops, and greatly damaging the sugar-cane. The country around Lambayeque has been almost entirely inundated, the railroads being washed away and dwellings leveled. The loss is estimated at $1,500,000.

—One of the late inventions for naval attack is the rocket float. This is a small vessel, which is propelled by a rocket along the surface of the water at a speed of 275 miles per hour, and to the distance of four miles. In the bow of this vessel there is a quantity of gun cotton, arranged with a percussion cap, so as to explode upon striking an obstacle. If one of these rocket floats were started and accurately directed toward a ship at a distance, there is a clear certainty that it would arrive before the ship could be moved out of range. The charge of gun-cotton could easily be made sufficient to sink, on explosion, any ship that can be built.