Ashtabula weekly telegraph. (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1880-1886, 1880-05-14
GENERAL.

M. DE FREYoINET, the pilot Of the
French ship of State, is a practical en-
gineer. He used to be a railroad man.
A BERKs COUNTY (Pa.) cat caught
seventeen young chickens in one day,
and was shot with the eighteenth in It's
mouth.
In one house In Wilton, Conn, reside
boy, his father, grandfather, great
grandmother, and great-great-grand-
father.
THE City of Ottawa, Canada, COM
plains of hard times. There arc said to
be seven hundred vacant tenements
there.
A FURNISHED house in Philadelphia
has been presented to Francis Murphy,
the temperance lecturer, and he win
make that city his home.
JAMES FISK, of Brattleboro, VT,
father of the late James Fisk, Jr., in
tends soon to begin tour through the
country with a tent and show.
JAY GOULD has purchased, on the
Hudson, the magnificent white marble
mansion of the George Merritt estate,
short distance south Of Tarrytown, for
$4,000.
Mrs. II. NJ. BOLTON, who lately died
in Bonneville, KY, was married in
Virginia at the age Of thirteen, and has
living descendants numbering over 14O
persons.
THE Empress of Russia is ffty-six
years old, was married at the age of
seventeen, and is the mother of seven
children-six sons and one daughter
the last being the Duchess of Edin-
burgh.
The wholesale lager beer brewers of
New York have decided to advance the
price of beer from eight to nine dollars
a barrel. The increase in the price of
hops, malt, ice, and other materials,
the brewers say, has compelled this
advance.
The coffee and sugar industries of
Mexico, it is confidently expected by inn
porters of those stables, will be immense
ly profited by the construction of the
Mexican Central Railway. American
consumers will also reap an advantage
from the formidable competition thus
opened with the chief products of Cuba
and Brazil.
THE cold winter has done great dam
age to the exotics in the public gardens
of Paris. Over 10000 trees and shrubs
have been wholly or partly killed in the
Champs Elysees, 100000 must be re-
placed in the Bois de Boulogne, and the
new park at the Trocadero must be en-
tirely replanted. The sum of S2OO,O00
will hardly pay for the damage done.
A REPORT to the British Colonial Of
fee from Labuan contains an account
of the edible birds nests included among
the articles imported there for export to
Singapore. These nests are found in
the walls of caverns in limestone and
sandstone hills, the greater part coming
from the eaat coast of BOrneo. The
nests are known in the trade as white,
red and black. They are produced by
a species of swallow. The white are of
a semi-transparent white substance re-
senbling isinglass or gelatine. The red
are supposed to be made by the same
bird at a different season Of the year.
The white fetch Sl1.25, the "catty, " the
red 50, the black 81.
A MEMBER of the New York Assembly,
named Wren, formerly an actor, de-
clares that the day before Lincoln's as
sassination he got into a quarrel with
John Wilkes Booth and agreed to fight
a duel next day. In the morning he
met Booth, who made a gesture as If he
intended to draw on him, 10 which Wren
responded by seizing his pistol with the
idea of shooting Booth by firing his
pistol while still in his pocket. But
Booth extended his hand and apologized
for his conduct the day before. Wren
thinks that the salvation of Mr.. Lin
coins life depended upon that brief
moment that morning; and that but for
Booths change in his mood toward him,
he, instead OF Mr.. Lincoln, would have
died that day.
CAPTAIN CHASE, of Portland, Me-,
is regarded as ordinarily a truthful man.
He commands the brig Ysidora Rionda,
and writes from Matanzas that he has
seen sea serpent. " 1t was few min
utes before noon," he says, when
saw, about two hundred yards ahead of
us, the monster rear his head and part
of his body, about fifty feet in all-its
head being about sixteen feet out of
water, at an angle of about sixteen de-
grees-and suddenly dip it again, which
operation 1t repeated three times ere
lost sight of it. Judging from the por-
ton which saw, the animal could not
have been less than one hundred feet
long, and about the size of molasses
hOgshead in the middle. Its head and
jaws had fiat, square appearance, and
by no means an inviting look for very
near approach
The number of different kinds OF
postage stamps which have been hith
erto issued all over the world is estimat-
ed, in round numbers, at six thousand.
Among them are to be found the effigies
of five emperors, eighteen kings, three
queens, one grand duke, six princes,
one princess and a great number of
presidents, etc. Some of the stamps
bear coats of arms and other emblems,
as crowns, the papal keys, and tiara,
anchors, eagles, lions, horses, stars, SER
pents, railway trains, horsemen, mes
sengers, etc. The collection preserved
in the Museum of the Berlin post-offices
included, on July 1, 1879, 4,49s speci-
mems Of different postage stamps. OF
these, 2,462 were from Europe, AL from
Asia, 25l from Africa, 1,l43 from Amer
lea and POI from Australia.