Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 November 1894 — NOTES AND COMMENTS. [ARTICLE]

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Too little advertising is like sowing too little seed. A farmer in sowing grain puts a number of seeds into each hill, and is satisfied if one healthy stalk comes from each planting. It is said that in the near future it will be possible, by tbe aid of the telautograph, to draw weather maps in all of the large cities on the globe at one and the same time. Of course, this involves setting apart a certain hour and minute when all of the lines are in the service of the government. As such an arrangement is actually in existence in this country, the extension of it would seem to be no very difficult matter in order to make it international. Comparisons are sometimes odious. But there is more truth than poetry in the following facts, which are taken from good authority. We have spent nearly $470,000,0CX) in building churches in this land, and $500,000,000 in building jails. It costs $50,000,000 a year to run tho churches and $400,000,000 to run the jails. The interest money on our jails amounts to two and one-half times as much per year as the whole church raises for home and foreign missions. We pay out eight times as much for running our fellow men down and jailing them as we do in trying to make thorn better so that they will not need jail. A somewhat famous Frenchman who has devoted himself to the promotion of freer trade between this country and his own, estimated nearly twenty years ago that the population of the United States would reach 100,000,000 at twentyfour minutes after 5 p. m. on July 24, 19011. He has recently, however, revised his estimate, and he now gives himself a wider range. He believes that |tho 100,000,000 will bo reached between the years 1915 and 1020. All calculations on this subject for the last fifty years have been absurdly out, and the Frenchman’s estimate may have to bo revised again should emigration remain at its present low obb for fivo years longer. One of the most striking things to the educated Metropolitan visitor is tho lack of monuments in and about New York. Probably no groat war in tho world has been loss commemorated by monuments than the war of the Revolution. There aro battle grounds in and about New York where thousands of heroes have died that uro remembered only by the students of history. There is not a monumonton Fort George or Fort Washington or Fort Tryon, and the old earthworks aro still there, mute evidences of the mighty labor that wrested the country from the grusp of England, but there Is absolutely nothing to commemorate tho struggle. It Is all well enough to say that great deeds wljl always livo in the memory of man, but granite is far more immutable and more pleasing. Odessa, which is frequently described as tho Liverpool of Russia, and which in point of trade and prosperity ranks as the most Important city of the Empire, has just boon celebrating the centennial anniversary of its foundation. Built on territory ceded to Russia by Turkey in 1792, the foundations of the present city were laid in 1794, and when, at tho beginning of the contury, tho French emigre, tho Due de Richelieu, arrived upon tho scene to assume his duties as Governor-General, a post to which he had been appointed by Emperor Alexander, there wore only 400 houses and about (1,000 inhabitants in the place. To-day the population is over 500,000, of whom no less than 150,000 aro Hebrews, and there is no city in tho Empire more bountifully endowed with magnificent public buildings or where tho inhabitants are possessed of greater wealth, mostly amassed by commerce.

The interest among scientists In aerial navigation appears to be incensing rather than the contrary, especially in France. Capt. Renard, Chief of tiie Military Aerostatic Department, ‘at Chalais-Moudon, lias nearly completed a largo dirigible balloon, culled theGonerul Meusnier. which is designed to keep up a speed of about 25 miles an hour for 10 hours. The balloon proper is 2110 feet long and has a capacity of 1201)00 cubic feet. It is driven by u very light gasoline engine operating a propeller wheel, nearly HO feet in diameter, at 200 revolutions a minute. If this balloon is a success it will be a quite important matter, for the car is IHO feet long and can curry a comparatively large number of men. Borne interesting experiments have also been made in France with an ordinary bulloon fitted with a small screw placed horizontally, to produce motion in a vertical direction, so as to avoid the usual wasteful process of discharging gas and sand alternately. The screw is seven and one-half feet in diameter, and by means of light hard machinery it could be revolved at the rate of 100 revolutions a minute. By this apparatus the balloon, of 28,000 cubic feet capacity, would be raised about 825 feet in a minute. General Armstrong, acting commissioner of Indian affairs, says that the annual reports received from the various Indian agencies show that on the whole the Indians were reasonably prosperous during the last fiscal year. The death rate has not boen large, nor does there appear to be any decrease in the number of Indians in the charge of the government. The year was one of peace, there having been very few disturbances or troubles usually occurring among the the Indians. It is evident, from the reports received, that the tribal relations of the Indians ure becoming less binding, and the individual Indianff are becoming more independent of tribe and more selfreliant. The allotting agents of the government have been kept busy the past year, many of the Indians evincing desires to own their own land. The Indian authorities believe tbit in allotting tracts of land to individual Indians the longest step has been made toward civilization, and that the Indians are more easily governed by the agents and the bureau when each has a personal and individual interesMn his home. The reports show that Indian education

Is progressing quite satifactorily, and that the Indians show greater willingness than heretofore to avail themselves of the school advantages offered by the government. The Chicago Herald says that the father of the Weather Bureau Service was Increase A. Lapham, a modest and retired, but ripe scholar, who lived in Milwaukee. He was the first to note by telegraph the progress of the wind currents and storms, and to predict their appearance in specified neighborhoods. On the strength of a weather dispatch from Omaha, in 1869, or thereabouts, he announced the first storm on Lake Michigan that ever was heralded twelve hours in advance of its arrival. The first work of the Weather Bureau was under his charge in Chicago. It was on the small beginnings of Dr. Lapham that tho entire system of the Signal Service was based. Dr. Lapham was a native of Palmyra, N. Y., and began life as a stonecutter for canal locks, but went in 1836 to Milwaukee, where he became a register of claims and a real estate dealer. He was eminent in many branches of science botany, eonchology, geology and archaeology and he contributed nearly fifty papers to scientific publications. As the result of the observation of many years, he was the author of a work on the “Antiquities of Wisconsin,” published bj' the Smithsonian Institution. He and Congressman H. E. Paine, of Wisconsin, framed the law of 1870, under which the Weather Bureau was established, but Cleveland Abbe, who had already begun sending out weather reports from the Cincinnati Obset vatory, is also entitled to a large share of tho erodit for originating the system. Dr. Lapham died in 1875.