Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 January 1880 — FACTS AND FIGURES. [ARTICLE]

FACTS AND FIGURES.

California has 60,000 acres devoted to grapes. There are sixteen tons oi gold in the New York hanks. In the Cornell University library of 40,000 volumes there is not & single work of fiction. Within the past five years the acreage of cereals m the United States has increased from 74,000,000 to 96,000.000. For the year ended November 1 $160,000 were paid out for sponges at Key West, Fla., and December will add $30,000. Since 1830, when the Georges fishery first commenced, there have been lost from the port of Gloucester, Mass., 2,118 men, and 405 vessels, valued at $17,696,899. Apropos of the .English Methodist Wesleyan “Thanksgiving fund,” thefol- ' lowing recent donations are significant of the wealth of the body: One of $50,000, one of $20,000, two of SIO,OOO, one of $10,500, seventeen of $5,000. The sum already promised exceeds $1,000,000. It may safely be asserted that not a single one of these wealthy donors is, in English fashionable parlance, in society. - The weight ot registered packets, supposed to contain diamonds, which passed through the general post-office, Cape Town, m 1878, was 1,149 pounds 13J ounces. Allowing one-half of this weight to have represented the actual weight of the stones themselves —the other half being the weight of the paper, etc., in which they were packed —this would give a total of 1,006,260 carats, or 20,125 diamonds, of an average weight of fifty carats each. Gastronomers assert that the merits of the truffle were very early recognized. and there is an Egyptian tradition that it found a place on the tables of the Pharaohs. Volatiles truffee, ala Perigord, was, in Talleyrand’s opinion, the ne plus«ultra of culinary accomplishment, and his chef was unexcelled in its production. Dogs are better for truffle hunting than pigs, who are supposed to be special adepts at it, ana, moreover, don’t eat the dainty; pigs invariably do it if they get the chance. Bridge-Building in France.—According to statistics published by the Ministry of Public Works there are at present 1,982 bridges in France which may be regarded as important ones. Of these 861 were built previous to the nineteenth century, 64 during the First Empire, 180 during the Restoration, 580 during the reign of Louis Philippe, and 297 since 1848. Nine of them are of iron only, 14 of wood, 20 of iron, wood and masonry and 854 of stone. The principal bridges are 11 in number, and their construction cost in all 47,888,553 francs. The troubled state of the relations between China and Japan gives interest to an estimate of the strength of the land forces of the former country, contributed to a German paper by a well-informed writer. He estimates the total strength of the armv at 662,000 of all ranks. Of these 87,000, in round numbers, are cavalry; 195,000 form the field infantry and artillery, while the remaining 320,000 constitute the garrison of the two latter arms of the service. Although, however, the Chinese army may have this strength on paper, its actual numbers are much fewer. In making any calculation, also, of the armed strength of China, it must be remembered that such troops as really exist are dispersed over an immense area, embracing some 4,000,000 of English square miles, which is traversed by very few good roads; while there are no railways to facilitate the concentration of large masses of men.