The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-03-08
FACTS OF GENERAL INTEREST.

During the present century $50, 900, 900 copies
of the Bible have been printed in 226 different
languages The United States contributes an
nually $75, 600, 900 for sustaining the churches
and ministry, and $31, 900, 900 for purely benevo-
lent purposes.
Great excitement prevails at Eagle. a little
place in Waukesha county, Wisconsin. over the
reported discovery of a rich diamond find in
that village. The diamond found was worth
9oO0. 1t "as in the rough, and was picked up
in a pile of dirt where a new web was being
dug.
The Common Pleas Court sitting in Toledo,
o., has decided that slaves, being property,
could not make a legal marriage contract, but
that slave marriages were made valid in all
cases in which the couple continued to live as
husband and wife after the proclamation Of free
dom took effect.
A jury at Kingston, N. Y, being unable to
agree upon a verdict in a case submitted to
them, it was proposed to settle the matter by
prayer. Therefore, passages Of Scripture were
read and prayers offered, after which a brief dis
cusslon of the case soon led to a verdict upon
which all agreed tremendously.
The supposed germ of Observation-Disclosures
to the class of microscopic organisms known as
micrococci-has been discovered by DR.. Fried
lander, and exhibited to the medical societies Of
Berlin. When the germs were introduced into
the bodies of mice, either by incubation or inhal-
alton, true croupous pneumonia was invariably
produced.
The annual rainfall in this country, according
to the Weather Signal, is W e in New Mexico, IL
inches, and California, IS inches. and highest in
Oregon, 40. and Alabama, So. The annual rain
fail in the British islands among the mountains
Is II inches; on the plains, 20 inches; DO inches of
rain falls on the west side of England, q on the
east side.
The government cigar factory at Seville.
Spain, is 700 feet long, and gives employment to
$500 women. 5000 of whom are in a single
room, packed like sardines, and accompanied in
some instances by babies not amonth old, whose
wailing in the sitting atmosphere interrupts the
buzz of conversation. The women receive 80
cents for a days work of twelve hours, and their
demeanor is not highly spoken of.
A Franciscan priest, Bernardino Gonzalez, has
just completed some daring explorations of tho
head waters of some Of the higher tributaries of
the Amazon. He reports that he has discovered
an easy route for a railroad from the central
province of Peru to a navigable tributary of the
Amazon, and an abundance of rubber, ivory
nuts, flax, valuable woods, etc. He met rubber
gatherers on the Palcazu rivera stream which
a few years ago was seldom visited by civilized
man.
Edison INDUCES in the following prediction:
IS TO the changes which will be effected by cleo
tricity within fifty years in the city of New
York, | would say that | believe electricity will
prOpel the cars of the street and elevated rail
roads, light the city within and without its
buildings. furnish power for all purposes, work
telephones and burglar alarms. deliver the
opera, convey parcels, detect and signal fires,
operate fre-engiues and possibly displace ami
NAL locOmotion for vehicles.
A widespread civil-rights organization among
the colored people Of Ohio is reported. New
leagues are springing up daily, and it is esti-
mated that within a few months there will be
two hundred leagues in existence, as one will be
founded in almost every township. The leagues
will be permanent. and will be devoted to the
general interests of the colored race. A new
civil rights act will be demanded of the Legisla-
ture, and the leagues will insist on the repeal of
the black laws on the Ohio statutes; the law
making it a penitentiary offense for a negro to
marry a white woman; the section permitting
separate schools, and the use of the word white
in the constitution.
George r. Graham, the founder of Graham's
Magazine, of which Edgar Allen Poe was once
editor, and i'll which were first printed the early
poems of Longfellow, Lowell, Bayard Taylor
and others since famous, is at present in q hos
pital in New York city, poor, and nearly blind
from cataract in both eyes. He is seventy-one
years of age. OF the many who knew him in
his days of prosperity, who dlned at his board
and fawned i'll his presence and prohted by his
enterprise, there are not more than half a dozen
left who honor his memory and are willing to
pity his sorrows. Too many only recall him to
remember ''his improvidence' or his ''unfortun-
ate speculations, or some small sums he may
have borrowed and failed to return.
Nh. Richard Proctor, in a recent letter, says:
''The strange sunsets and sunrises, with long
lasting. ruddy t~wilights, greenland blue sun and
strangely-tinted moon, continue deservedly to
attract attention. The s~trangest thing of all is
that they continue still to be seen. \ l
have nothing to add to the various suggestions
which have been offered, except to note that if
the whole earth has been peppered with volcanic
dust from Krakatoa, the evidence respecting
meteoric dust on which the views recently ac-
cepted have been chiefly based must be recon
sidered; for it becomes clear that one large vol
canic outburst can do more to bring matter sim
ulating the appearance of meteor dust to the
earth's surface than would suffice for fifty years
of meteoric supply as hithereto calculated. The
smaller volcanic explosions taking place every
year would, therefore, quite easily account for
every particle of supposed meteoric dust hitherto
collected"