The Hickman courier., 1878-07-19
ESTABLISHED 1859.

the next $500, and 40 per cent. on all
in excess OF S40e.
In the Mariners Family asylum at
Clifton, N. Y, there are about forty old
women, wives, widows and sisters of
sailors, varying in age from sixty to
ninety years One has reached the age
of ninety-nine, and plays with cups and
saucers and her dolls like child.
The cheapest railroad in the world is
said to be in East Friesland, come citing
| the village of Westertede with the Old
enberg-Leer railway, Germany. 1t is
five miles long, of two feet fve-and a
half inches gauge, and was built by the
rural population of the district at cost
of about fifty thousand dollars.
A national nsrfow-g gauge railroad con-
vention has been called to meet in Gin
cinnati, July 7 and 10 next. The
questions to be considered embrace every
thing relative to the construction and
Operation of narrow-gsuge lines, ard
comparison with The standard gauge in
economy and practical efficiency.
On the 10th of May a conference of
delegates from the Protestant missions of
Japan met at Toxic to take measures for
securing a translation of the entire bible
into the japanese language. The YER
sion of the New Testament will be COM
pleted in 1879. The delegates provided |
for the translation Of the Old Testament. !
The recent calculation says that the
demand for lumber increases in the
United States at the rate of twenty-five
per cent per annum. The forests de-
crease at the rate of seven million acres
a year. The fences alone are valued at
one billion eight hundred million, dol
lars, and they cost each year ninety-eight
million dollars.
There were twenty thousand shares of
Keelemotor stock issued originally at
800 face value, selling first at $50, then
going up to $500. Now no one will
touch them. In the construction of the
machinery $3.50, 600 have been expended,
and the company has spent all its funds
and $4,000 of the directors money
TChicago Tribune,
The first instance on record where a
Chinese man has given a collection of
books To an American institutions has
Just occurred in New Haven, where
Yung Wing, graduate of Yale College,
has given to the college library valuable
collection of Chinese books, numbering
about / $50 volumes, embracing classical,
historical and poetical works, encyclo-
pedias, etc.
Sir Henry Thompson, the eminent
British surgeon, has discovered that by
he aid of the microphone he can dis
cover accurately the existence of even {
he smallest obstructing substance which /
may be in the body. He imagines, too.
hat by the same instrument he can ,
earn the exact position of small bull j
ct. In fact the microphone will be
-ra11d eIiseSsvere1 not e--ly- - a-.-p-ieaI .
ases, but in physiology. t
General LIE Due, the commissioner of c
agriculture, is experimenting on new
DOT called chufa. 1t grows in hills like {
he potato, is about the size of walnut
md has the flavor of an almond. It is !
10 trouble to raise, and the experiments
made demonstrate that hogs and chick I
ms fed on it are of the most superior
luality, not only in their size, but in s
he luscious sweetness OF. their hssh. 1t
s predicted that chufa will become a s
taple crop among farmers in few years
Mr.. Edward Young has contributed
ome valuable statistics to Financial
Opinion, an Euglish periodical, the gen~
raj conclusion Of which is that the
oreign Indebtedness of the United States
at the present moment to
e10 900, 600. There were no national
securities held away from home at the
of the civil war, the only
securities held abroad being some state
bonds and some railway shares and bonds.
An estimate of s10, ,0OO, 900 is believed to
be ample allowance for these ante-bellum
securities, so it follows that e200,000,-
300 of the whole Indebtedness has been
incurred during the past fifteen years.
A correspondent of an English peri
odical incidentally gives some figures
the expenditure of Americans
abroad He estimates that from twenty
to twenty thousand Americans visit
Europe annually, expendiDg on an
average from el60 20 e200 each. The
total annual expenditure, therefore, of
citizens of the United States residing or
in Europe ammounts to
s4,0O0,O00. This large sum, annually
in Europe, is, however, coun-
in part by the expenditures
of foreigners in the United States, on
business or pleasure, and in part by
bought by the large number of
who make America their
home. Ofthese two classes, four million
three hundred and seventy nine thousand
four hundred and thirteen persons have
arrived in America during the last
fifteen years. The average ammount OF
money brought by immigrants is stated
at from s1S los to e2O, and taking this
as a correct estimate, it follows that dur
ing the last fifteen years the aggregate
sum taken to America by immigrants
and other alien passengers amounts to
ESQ SGT, ,016--a sum almost exactly equal
to the estimated expenditure of citizens
of the United States in foreign countries.