AMERICAN NOTES.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 183, 10 August 1871, Page 3

AMERICAN NOTES.

The ]>opulation of the State of Wisconsin is now almost purely German. An old steam boiler is used for a gaol in Arkansas. A process for ringing bells by machinery has been invented in America. The "Artery" is the name of an Illinois paper of sluggish circulation. I Mrs. H. B. Stowe has been very ill ] lately. The Baptist churches of New York claim to have 1,563,630 communicants. 26,000 children are now learning music at the Boston public schools. There are two co-operative shoemaking companies in Philadelphia. A merino ewe in California has produced a fleece weighing 401bs. Sixty-five per cent of the members of Cougress are lawyers. Tbe construction of railroads is being pushed on in California with 'great vigour. A Masonic temple is being erected in Philadelphia at a cost of 1,500,000 dollars. The Connecticut Legislature was opened the other day with a prayer of 43 minutes' duration. The latest novelty in funerals in the United States is to lay Brussells carpet round the grave. The pine forests of Maine are nearly all destroyed, having been recklessly cut down, right and left. A Michigan wife gets money ont of her husband by clapping a revolver to his forehead. The fences in the United States are said to have cost rrore than anything else in that country, except railroad?. The census shows that half the Mor nions in Utah Territory come from England. A deposit of petrified whales' bones has been found on the top of a hill in California. Sir Walter Scott's Centenary will be appropriately observed in New York and Washington. The manufacture of glycerine from hogs' lard is carried on in Cinciuatti on a very large scale. The single state of fowa expects to produce a hundred million bushels of corn this year. The recent census shows the number of coloured people in the United States to be 4,895,264. Juries in San Francisco are taken to the theatres by the Sheriffs during the night recess of the Courts. A Tennessee lady, Hged 70, is cutting a third set of real teeth, and has cut her false ones in consequence. Captain Hall refused to take fat men on his artic expedition, as they cannot stand cold so well as lean men. Immigration companies are being formed in the Southern States on the joint stock principle. The crop of Presidential candidates in the United States was never so promising as at present. The cotton crop of the South this year promises to be the largest, with one exception, that it ever produced. At a recent breach of promise suit in Vermont, the fair one exhibited 763 love letters. The only manufactory of hair pins in the United States turns out 50 tons of those useful articles per month. The Guardians of the Poor in Philadelphia <;ave away 1,018,101 loaves of bread last year. Sylvanus Cobb, the chief continued story writer of the "Philadelphia Ledger," is said to have written 25 miles of printed matter.

The area of timbered land in the United States ia estimated at fifteen and a half millions of acres, or twenty years' supply at the present rate of consumption.

„ "Is it wrong to cheat a lawyer?" was a question recently discussed by a debating society. The conclusion arrived at was that it was not wrong, but impossible. A movement for reducing the hours during which children are confined in school to three daily, has been commenced in Kentucky.

At a wedding reception recently given in New York, over 1000 red and white camellias were used in the decoration of the rooms.

The great Humboldt salt mine, Nevada, is a lake 20 miles long and 18 wide, covered with a layer of salt six or seven inches thick.

Cats are in demand in California as manure for vines, having been recommended for that purpose by an agricultural p^per.

Thousands of houßes are unoccupied in New York, while in the Canadian cities more house accommodation is urgently required,

It is said that for every situation advertised as vacant in Chicago, there are from 50 to 500 applicants, and the same in the other large cities in the Union.

A kitchen is now a common adjunct to churches in the United States but a church at Templeton, Mass., has not only a kitchen, but a ladies' parlour, a library, and a lecture room attached to it.

The following notice appeared lately on an American meeting-house:— " Anybody sticking bills against this church will be prosecuted according to [|ayr or any other nuisance." % The .managers of a Philadelphia fcemetery tiave built a mov^bta cbapd to protect those attending funerals from tiie fani during fche service at 'the* graVe. Ifc will accommodate seventyfive mourners. ' '

. John Hatfield, the first maker of lucifer matches in America, has just died at Troy, N.Y. A block of granite weighing 70 tons, has been quarried in Rhode Island for a fountain in New York. Ladies' fashions in the States are said to be rapidly approaching those I of the first French Empire. i A prominent New York physician states that bruised pumpkin seeds are an effectual cure for tapeworm. According to the " Scientific American," it is now impossible to construct a burglar-proof safe. Over 200 women are now working farms on their own account in the States of lowa and Indiana. 500 gamblers were arrested in Chicago last year. Nevertheless, gambling flourishes there. Solidified beer is now sold in Chicago. It is so concentrated that a small piece of it is enough to intoxicate an ordinary drinker. A controversy is going on in lowa as to whether a Professor of Homoeopathy should be appointed to the State University. There is hope yet for Alaska. Coal abounds there, and iron, copper, and gold have also been found in " Walrussia." A French printer in New York has lately been married to the Princess Editha, daughter of the late King of Bavaria and Lola Monies.