Morning journal and courier., 1885-08-17

A polite Ch1naman IS very polite person, but the Chicago Herald ought not to call him 'asort of tea Chesterfield"
 MT Wolfert Nelson of California has been making a careful investigation of the De Les seps canal. He estimates that between $90,- OOO, ,O00 and s125, ,OOO, ,0O0 have been expend- ed and that not one-twentieth of the work is yet completed. He believes it will cost be- tween s40O, 0OO, 900 ond $500, ,OOO, 900 to fin ish the canal and of course no existing ton. mage can pay interest on such a sum.
 The refusal of Secretary Endicott to recog- nize any color line in the army is what might be expected of him and is very creditable to him. Some of the high-toned army officers will turn their noses up at it, but if they raise them too high the secretary will proba- bly find some way to bring them down. He is evidently not going to run the War de- partm snt solely for the purpose of pleasing the fine gentlemen of the army:
 The prohibition campaign il Ohio appears to be rather incorporate affair. The Rev. Dr. Leonard, the gubernatorial candidate of the third party, declares that ''no Methodist can vote the Republican ticket and be true to his church." The zeal of another brother leads him to exclaim that 'sall ministers and churches who don't support Leonard ought
 to be damned" And fellow preacher
 writes to tue Western Christian Advocate to
 learn if it is not his duty to bring to trial every man in his church who votes for any other than the prohibition candidate. Such I stuff this wont help the party much.
 1 An Ohio botanist has been making esti-
 mates of the number of seeds found upon 8 | single plant of several of the most obnoxious | weeds grown in that State, and the result of | his work is impressive. In the shepherds purse he found that the number of seeds in | each seed vessel varied from IS to 34-aver- age about 25, and 1,500 seed vessels were
 counted upon medium sized plant, making l the total number of seeds per plant 37, 800. | Computing in the same manner, he esti-
 mates the dandelion to contain 12 1OS seeds
 in each plant; wild pepper grass, IS, 400;
 wheat thief, 1000; the common thistle, 65,- l 366; camomile. 15, ,920; bitter weed, S,5S7;
 rag weed, 4,366; common purslane, 58S, 800;
 common plaintain, 43, 200; burdock, 3s,Os6. | No wonder weeds spread fast.
 It is to be hoped that bacteria are not such
 dangerous animals as some say they are, for | the air of cities is full of them The propor- | tion of bacteria in 8 cubic meter of atmos-
 pheric air is, according to M; de Paryille, 0.6 1 in sea air, in the air of high mountains, 60 ! in the principal cabin of ship at sea. 200 on | the top of the Pantheon, 360 in the Rue de
 Rivo1i, (, 1000 in the new Paris sewers, 36, 900 | in old Paris houses, 40, 900 in the new hospi- 1 tai of the Hotel Dieu and 79, GOO in the old l hospital of the Pitie. The superiority of London air as compared with the air of Paris
 is shown not only by it's containing fewer
 bacteria, but also by the rate of mortality
 being smaller. The greater purity or lesser 1 impurity of the air of London is accounted 1 for by London being nearer than Paris to the
 sea, by it's covering a greater extent of
 ground in proportion to the population, and by it's houses being lower. Old houses are all, according to M. de Parville, haunted by I bacteria and the ghosts of bacteria.
 That longevity is to a great extent mat ter of physical inheritance is we'll illustrated by some facts compiled by Dr. Nathan AL
 len, of Lowell, Massachusetts, from the rec
 ords of his own ancestry. Jonathan and Nehemiah Allen, brothers, who came of a
 long-lived stock, settled in Barre, Massachu- l setts, in 175O, and reared large families of children. Jonathan lived to be ninety-two