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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 35, 10 February 1871, Page 4

Mention has more than once been made in the English papers of the excellent artillery practice of the French marines. This excellence appears to have been markedly displayed in the second battle of Orleaos, in which the French beat the Bavarian General, Von Der Tann. The special correspondent of the Times, with the German army, writes : — " The French were supported by an admirably served marine artillery. The precision and efficacy of an arm from which, in French hands, of late so little was to be feared,, are the theme of universal remark among the German officers, who, perhaps, had begun to fall into the somewhat natural error, considering their past experience, of underrating their enemy. It is to be remarked that it is to the marine infantry and artillery that the highest praise has been awarded." Brigham Young's Wives — Bean Soup and Harmony. — A Chicago exchange says :— Another lady I met, gave me a long and interesting account of Brigham Young's family. She knew fifteen of his wives, but did not know how many children he had. The wives all have different apartments, but are expected to meet their lord Brigham every night at prayers, after which they all shake hands with him and depart. If they want to see him for a social chat, they make some bean soup (liis favorite dish), which always secures him. The exact number of hi 3 wives it is impossible to tell. I have asked a great number of wellinformed Mormous, but they all say they do not know. At the theatre last night I saw twelve of Ins daughters, and this dozen did not fill up one-fourth of the seats reserved for his family. The handsomest daughter for short is called "Punk" She is a sprightly, handsome, ■well-formed, bri«bt-eyed damsel of seventeen, and now as f he old gentleman is absent, is Laving her full of flirting with the handsnme gen'iiemen around the Gentile Gubernatorial offce. She handled her opera gla^s with grace, and kept dodging about, tits theatre from one seat to another, to the evident disgust of President George Smith's wives, who occupied the lower circle. The other eleven girls kept quiet until the play was half over, when they all retired — a gentleman at ray right said — for prayers. The New York Times has advices from Santa Fe, slating that Governor Amy, the special Indian agent for that territory, has found the Canon de Chelly, "which was explored for 20 miles. The party found canons whose walls tower perpendicularly to an altitude of from 1000 to 2000 feet, the rock strata being as perfect as if laid by the skilled hands of masons, and entirely symmetrical. There they found deserted ruins of ancient Aztec cities, many of which bear the evidences of having been populous to the extent of many thousand inhabitants. In each place there remained in a Btate of good preservation a house of stone, about twenty feet square, containing one bare and gloomy room, and a single human skeleton. In the centre of the room were the evidences that fire at some time had been used. It is supposed that these solitary rooms were the altar places of the Aztec fires; that from some cause the people at a remote period were constrained to abandon their homes, but left one faithful sentinel in each case to keep alive the flame that, according to the Indian traditions of these regions, was to light the way of Montezuma again to his people, their hoped-for Messiah and their Eternal King. A close examination of many of the ruins proved that the builders must have been skilled in the manufacture and use of edged tools, masonry, and other mechanical arts. Some of the ruins are reported to be stone buildings, seven or eight stories ia height, being reached by ladders planted against the walls. Round houses twenty feet in diameter, built in the* moat substantial manner, of cut stone, and plastered inside, were also, found in excellent preservation. It is represented that rich gold and silver regions have also been found , and mines bearing evidence of having been worked aces aeo.

Mark Twain, having beea elected an honorary member of a poultry society, recommends himself in the following style "Even as a schoolboy, poultryraising was a study with me, and I may say without egotism, that as early as the age of seventeen, I was acquainted with all the best and speediest methods of raising chickens, from raising them off a roost by burning lucifer matches under their noses down to lifting them off a fence on a frosty night by insinuating the end of a warm board under their heels. The very chickens came to know my talent by and by. The youth of both sexes ceased to paw the earth for worms, and old roosters that came to crow remained to pray when I passed by."