SECULAR NEWS | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 31, 1878

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 4, No. 41.

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SECULAR NEWS.

-England and France have both raised money for the fever sufferers.

-There are nearly 80,000 lunatics in public and private asylums in England.

-It has been arranged to close the Paris Exhibition on the 10th of November.

-It is estimated that 1,721,000 gallons of wine will be made in the Napa valley this season.

-Thirty-seven people were recently suffocated during a panic in the Royal Coliseum Theatre, at Liverpool.

-There are more than 9,600,000 acres of cotton land in Texas, which, if cultivated would yield a larger crop than that produced in the whole United States at the present time. Texas now raises one-fifth of the whole crop, and more than any other one State in the Union.

-The consumption of coal in London is steadily augmenting, both in an arithmetical and a geometrical ratio. Thus in 1681 the consumption was within 200,000 tons; in 1851 increased to 3,500,000 tons, 1861 to 5,073,275 tons, and in 1877 to 9,000,700 tons. For manufacturing purposes alone 1,500,000 tons are used up annually in this city.

-The financial suffering in France, last year, in consequence of political agitation and stagnation in trade, is shown by the fact that the pawnshops in Paris made nearly $8,000,000 of loans on almost 2,000,000 objects—a greater amount than for years before. So much furniture and so many heavy articles were pledged that great warehouses had to be rented to store them in. An unusual number of articles were abandoned—well nigh 200,000—and when sold they brought over $200,000 more than they had been pledged for.

-The agricultural statistics of Ireland for the present year have been obtained by 3,436 members of the Irish constabulary. The various holdings, which amount to nearly 600,000, were visited by the enumerators, and from the facts so obtained it appears that the total acreage under all crops this year, was 5,203,705, against 5,265,901 acres last year, showing a decrease in the extent under crops in the present year of 62,196 acres. It appears from the summaries that, compared with 1877, the increase in the acreage under wheat is 14,714 acres, barley 17,713 acres, bere and rye 315 acres, cabbage 156 acres, and carrots, parsnips, and other green crops 411 acres; meadow and clover increased by 17,799 acres. In oats there is a decrease of 63,535 acres, beans and peas 381 acres, potatoes 26,306 acres, turnips 4,437 acres, mangel-wurzel and beet root 3,761 acres, and vetches and rape 3,312 acres; flax decreased by 11,572 acres. Of the 4,651,527 acres for the year 1878, included under the head "Bog and marsh, barren mountain land, water, roads, fences, etc.," 1,683,836 acres have been returned by the enumerators as bog and marsh, viz., 318,409 acres in the province of Leinster, 311,680 acres in Munster, 373,026 acres in Ulster, and 680,721 acres in Connaught; and 2,107,253 acres as barren mountain land, 173,539 acres being in the province of Leinster, 666,630 acres in Munster, 704,229 acres in Ulster, and 562,855 acres in Connaught. The returns of Live stock for 1878, when compared with 1877, show an increase in the number of horses and mules of 9,953, asses of 3,918, sheep of 106,721, goats of 13,324, and poultry of 143,606, and a decrease in cattle of 12,847, and in pigs of 199,372. In connection with the area under flax, the number of scutching mills enumerated in 1878 is as follows: In the province of Ulster, 1,162; Leinster, 13; Munster, 20; and Connaught, 17; making a total in Ireland of 1,212.

-The year 1878 will be long remembered for the great number and violence of its storms, the intensity of its heat and the frightful pestilence generated by it. The spring opened with a series of hurricanes in the West and destructive thunder-storms in the East, such as no previous year in the history of this country had brought. These were followed by weeks of torrid heat and months of destroying plague, reaching into the late autumn. Then the equinoctial gales, first breaking on the English and Irish coasts with extraordinary violence, and afterwards, on the 12th and 13th of October, along the coasts of New England, where a vast quantity of shipping and numbers of lives were lost, and mourning carried into hundreds of households. Now comes the last chapter (to date) in the strange, eventful history of the year, in the shape of a great cyclone, which, originating in the Gulf of Mexico or Caribbean Sea, has swept along the region between the Atlantic and the Alleghanies, carrying terror, death and wholesale ruin in its path, from Cape Hatteras to Cape Cod. Hundreds of lives have been lost from vessels foundered at sea or blown ashore, and millions of dollars will hardly cover the loss of property.

—S. F. Chronicle.