Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1886-04-23
P OF H DAY.

dcncc OF lNTkNTlOSAL FRAUD.
TOPICS OF THE DAY.
A large number of cattle are report
ed to be dying of starvation in various
parts of the Choctaw and Cherokee
Nations. in the Indian Territory.
THE special delivery service of the
post-ofice department is growing in
favor, as the following instance will
show: At Pittsburgh during the past six
months 17,111 letters were delivered;
ST. $40 worth of stamps were sold and
$l,312.73 was paid for the message SER
vice.
NATuRAIIsTs now count no less than
1870 different kinds of fishes in North
American waters, of which 500 live in
the rivers and lakes and $50 kinds be-
long to the Pacific. OF the remainder,
105 dwell only in the deep waters of the
Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, never APP
preaching the shore or the surface.
DURING the first quarter of 1886 there
were S.203 business failures in the
United States, with liabilities exceeding
ss29, OOO, 600 somewhat. Last veal, in
the same period, there were 1868 fail
ures, with liabilities of $40. 900, 900.
The total failures this year involved less
snoney than at any time since 1873.
An official in the Indian bureau gives
figures TO show that the future million
aires will be Indians. They are dccreas-
ing in number at the rate Of five or six
thousand a ycar; the lands they occupy
are increasing in value, and when only
q few thousand Indians remain, he says,
it is natural to suppose they will be
rich.
THERE seems to be no probability of
an early exhaustion of the petroleum
deposits of the United States. Oil has
been discovered in Wyoming Territory,
and a district eighty miles long and
forty wide has already been prospected,
and the indications arc that the oil
fever will for a time exceed the mining
fever.
THE London Lancet gives the pro-
3cssional opinion that "childrcn who are
allowed to go barefooted are altogether
heaithier and happier than those who,
in obedience to the usages of social
2ifc, have their loYer cxtremitics per-
m%anently in~validcd, and, SO to say,
CAREFUL swathed and put away in rigid
cases"
A NEWSPAPER writer suggests that
>'natural gas" is not a good name for
the mysterious new earth product. Coal
gas. he declares, though manufactured,
may Us properly he termed natural gas
as that which rushcs from the holes
drilled into the bowels of the earth.
Terrogcn, or terregen, meaning earth
generated, is suggested as a good name
for the well gas.
A FRENCH physician asserts that he
a,as discovered a soporilic whose effects
car be exactly limited to the time re-
'quired. This will, he says, enable tray
'elcrs to sleep comfortably and conf
s1ently during a journey. He measures
his doses by miles. Thus you can take
a fifty mile" dose before starting on a
railway journey, and open your eyes,
pleasantly refreshed, at your proper
station.
SOME Of the details of the wholesale
sacrifice of bird life on the altar of
fashion are of startling significance.
AT Cape Cod 10000 terms have been
killed in one season by a single agent
of the hat trade. At Cobb's Island, on
the Virginia coast, an cnterprising
business woman of New York has re-
gently succeeded in filling a contract
with a Paris millinery firm for 40, 200
bird-skins of gulls, sea-swallows and
terms, at forty cents apiece.
BILL HIS DCCll laNOIdDl3 reported
authorizing the President to arrange
for a conference with the States of
South and Central America, for the
purpose, among aother things, of inn
proving "the business intercourse be-
tween the United States and these coun-
sries, and encouraging such peaceful
and reciprocal commercial relations as
will be beneficial to all, and secure more
extensive markets for the surplus pro-
ducts of each of said countries"
REV. DIR. MILBURN, the blind chap
lain of the House of Representatives,
whose prayers are creating a sensation,
lis q remarkable mar in more than one
respect. Forty-three years ago he was
told by eminent doctors that he would
bc dead within six months, and since
that time he has travelled by actual
computation 1900. 900 miles in his vo-
cation. He is now physically, although
in his sixty-fourth year, as strong and