p. 18 | News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 1, 1915

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— Up to the present time 1,105,000 acres of forest lands have been purchased under the direction of the National Forest Reservation Commission, which was created in 1911 to promote the watersheds of navigable streams. These purchases are mainly in the White Mountains and the southern Appalachians. The Department of Agriculture estimates that the country must ultimately own 5,000,000 acres in the South and 600,000 in New England in order to afford full protection.

— Over $18,000,000 is annually wasted in the United States by the traveling public on tips.

— The Lackawanna railroad successfully has sent for a distance of twenty-six miles a wireless telephone message from a moving train.

— A mine explosion, wrecking the Layland mines near Hinton, W. Va., occurred on March 2. The lives lost will number about 180. The origin of the explosion is unknown.

— The deposits in the postal savings bank are increasing at the rate of nearly $3,000,000 a month. More than 100,000 persons have been added to the list since the European war began. The total deposits on the last day of the year were $59,200,000, to the credit of 497,000 persons.

— An anarchistic plot, said to have involved the assassination of Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and other wealthy men, and the destruction of banks and other public buildings, was discovered by the New York police on March 2. The discovery followed the arrest of a man who had just placed two bombs in St. Patrick's Cathedral, where several hundred persons were assembled at a religious service.

— The Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company is making strenuous efforts to extinguish the fire which has been burning for sixty-two years in the mines of the Panther Creek Valley. The owners of the mines have spent millions of dollars in efforts to extinguish the blaze. Powerful pumps were for many years kept constantly working at enormous cost, pumping water into the mines in the hope of getting control of the fire. Recently the owners of the burning mine thought they had it under control, but the flames have begun to belch forth again, and it seems impossible to conquer the blaze which has raged for more than half a century. Millions of dollars' worth of coal has been reduced to ashes during that time.

— The people of Nicaragua are preparing a reception for the return to his home in Managua this month of Ruben Dario, the leading poet of the world in the Spanish language. Not without honor in his own country, for he wrote his greatest poem, "Azul," while a youth and before he had been out of Nicaragua, except for a visit to Chile, Dario has come into the world prominence during his recent trip to the United States, where he has been feted in every city he visited. He developed his literary talent when sent to Madrid as minister to Spain, but he rose to fame throughout Spanish-speaking America while stationed at Buenos Aires, where the Argentine capital expects to erect a monument in his honor. The poet is now in Buenos Aires, gathering a company of literary men for the purpose of visiting the United States and forming an acquaintance with the writers of this country.