SECULAR NEWS | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jun 13, 1878

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 4, No. 23.

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SECULAR NEWS.

—New York brewers are sending beer to Germany.

—Of the 2,500 doctors in Philadelphia, 500 are homœopathists.

—A Kentucky farmer recently lost three cows which ate some tobacco leaves with their hay.

—The citizens of Chicago are arming against apprehended disturbances from the Communists.

--Texas made 46,000 more bales of cotton, the past year, than any other State in the Union.

—According to the Yuma Sentinel, the condition of Indians on the Colorado reservation is truly deplorable.

—Clarksville, Texas, suffered a loss of $150,000 by fire May 22. Nineteen business houses were destroyed.

—In 1850, the length of the railway lines all over the earth was only 19,000 miles; in 1875, it had increased to 200,000.

—Canada shipped to the United States in 1876, 1,619,206 pounds of butter, and 1,026,995 pounds of cheese.

—The pleasure steamer Empress of India, with a party of eighteen persons on board, capsized over a dam on Grand river, at Galt, Ontario, May 29, and all were drowned.

—There are upwards of sixty public offices in Great Britain which enjoys free postage, and their correspondence would, if paid for, cost more than $500,000 a year, and the weight of it exceeds 450 tons.

—The Shah of Persia has reduced the taxes of his subjects by one-half for the next fourteen years. This is owing to the large amount of gold taken from his recently discovered mines of Ahmedabad, near Tahiji, and to the prospect of further large receipts.

—Constantinople among all its other troubles has been visited with a fire within the precincts of the Sublime Porte, which destroyed the greater portion of the official buildings, including the Ministries of Justice and of the Council of State. The archives were saved.

—Stewart's hotel for women, which was opened not long since in New York, is said to have proved so much a failure that it is to be transformed into a general hotel, the number of boarders having dwindled down from 60 to 15, while the expenses are $700 daily.

—The largest plow ever manufactured has just been turned out of a factory at Stockton, California. The mold-board is eight feet long, and the furrow which is cut is thirty-five inches wide. It is designed for work upon the tule lands, and requires twelve oxen to pull it.

—An exchange says: Advices from Berlin indicate anxiety caused by the discovery of the hold which socialistic opinions have obtained upon the peers. It is said that the whole professional and educational sections of society are honeycombed with these opinions and that they are prevalent also in the subordinate classes of officials.

—The city of London has 50 Richmond streets, 70 Devonshire, 76 Brunswick, 56 Cambridge, 87 Gloucester, 50 East-and-West, 90 North-and-South, 176 New, 129 Union, 95 King, 99 Queen, 78 Princes, 109 George, 119 John, and dozens and scores that has nothing to distinguish them except the district in which they happen to be.

—Silver Springs, one of Florida's curiosities, is a subterranean river bubbling up into a basin nearly 100 feet deep and an acre in extent, which sends out a stream 60 to 100 feet wide to the Ocklahawa river, six to eight miles distant. To this natural inland port run three steamers from St. Johns, and, in the basin, the fish and everything on the bottom can be seen through the crystal waters.

—The Sydney correspondent of the Australian and American Home News writes that the loss in Australia by drouth in 1876 represented about $10,000,000. It was with great difficulty that stockholders could be induced to furnish statistics. The losses in 1877 are known to be very much heavier. Previous prosperous seasons have enabled the colonies to bear up under this heavy blow, but of course, many individuals have gone under.

—Never in modern times has there been such a period of famine as in the last five years. First in Anatolia (Turkey), then in India, and now in China and Brazil. Hundreds of thousands have died from sheer starvation. Last month the deaths from this cause in Brazil were reported to be as many as one hundred a day. Government and individuals have done what they can, but are powerless to deal adequately with the calamity.

—The work on the tunnel under the British Channel is quietly progressing. The experimental shaft at Sangatte is already 330 feet below the water mark, a pair of pumps throwing out the water, which works in plentifully; while in the chalk bed under the channel a trial gallery has been opened perpendicular to the shaft. If no serious obstacles are encountered in this gallery up to a distance of 8,281 feet, the grand tunnel will be begun.

—Japan has a certain advantage in not having been civilized gradually, but by a revolution. Everything in the Government being new, each department can be formed on the best existing models or on the theoretically best models to which older nations in civilization have not yet attained. We have been talking for a long time about forest preservation and the urgent necessity of encouraging the growth of timber, but Japan is already ahead of us in the liberality of its offers to those who plant and cultivate forest trees.

—Among the buildings brought to light at Pompeii, within the last few months, is one supposed to have been a woolen factory, divided into several chambers, the largest of which (probably an unroofed court) contains three ample receptacles, like cisterns, between files of brick pilasters; on one side of these is a corridor, and on the inner wall, bounding the premises at the same side, are painted several small figures—sportive children and other little beings with large heads, quite caricature-like in grotesqueness.

—It was only in the year 1874 that celluloid goods were first put into market, and already there are no less than fifteen manufacturing concerns which use celluloid exclusively in their business, employing from 1,200 to 1,500 hands, and disbursing in wages from $50,000 to $80,000 per month. Each of the companies manufacture some leading specialty, such as jewelry, combs, brushes, knife handles, dental blanks, etc., and they have attained to quite a marvelous skill in the imitation of coral, ivory, amber, turtle-shell, ebony, malachite, and kindred substances.

—An exchange says: "The Khedive of Egypt makes a great show of setting his kingdoms in order by sending for European officials and giving them and their extensive staffs splendid salaries—$20,000 a year the two Comptrollers-General have; but there is one thing which would inspire more confidence in him than anything else among financiers and men of sense all the world over—restrict his expenses to $100,000 a year until Egypt is out of the very thick wood which environs her. It is notorious that his expenses during the past fifteen years have, without any exaggeration, been on an 'Arabian' scale of splendor."