Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 June 1877 — FACTS AND FIGURES. [ARTICLE]

FACTS AND FIGURES.

Over half a million scholars in the schools of Illinois. The total number of railroad employes in Great Britain is about 285,000. A phenomenon is reported from Naples, Italy. It is that for three whole days in one week there were no births out of a population of 500,000 souls. Careless and indiscriminate fishing is gradually reducing the supply of shellfish on the coast of England, which draws from Norway about 600,000 lobsters a year, and from France about 200,000. Russia has more horses than all the remainder of Europe put together. She has 16,160,000 or 227.05 for every 1,000 of population. It would seem that she should never be at a loss for cavalry. The Bureau of Statistics furnishes the following table showing the exports of bacon, ham and cheese from the ports ot New York, Boston, Baltimore and Pniladelphia during April: Bacon and ham, from New York, 20,649,990 pounds; from Boston, 4,659,356; from Baltimore, 919,962; from Philadelphia,4,37B,o37. Cheese, from New York, 1,209,301 pounds; Boston, 5,262; Baltimore, 7,671; Philadelphia, 1 009. According to a writer in Blackwood's Magazine, the French regular army numbers 455,000 men, most of whom have already seen four years’ service, while the reserve of the active army amounts to about 920,000 men. Then there is a ter* ritorial army, which is set down at 500,000 men, rather more than half of whom are old soldiers of the active army. The total force is placed at 1,800,000, of which 750,000 are really educated soldiers, and about 300,000 have had six months’ drilling. In a recent lecture in Edinburgh on “The Stars," Prof. Grant said that a railway train, traveling day and night fifty miles per hour, would reach the moon in six months, the sun in 200 years, and Alpha Centauris, the nearest of the fixed stars, in 42,000,000 years; a cannon ball traveling 900 miles per hour, in 2,700,000 years; and light, traveling 185,000 miles per second, in three years. Light from some of the telescopic stars takes 5,760 years to reach the earth; from others 500,000 years. These stars, therefore, may have become extinct thousands of years ago, though their light comes to our eyes. Alpha Lyra is 100,000,000,000 of miles from us, and its magnitude and splendor are as twenty to one compared with our sun. The sun is neither greater nor smaller than most of the.stars.

London, England, covers an area of 78,080 acres, or 122 square miles. When the census was taken last year, there were 1,500 miles of streets, 2,000 miles of sewers, 417,767 inhabited houses, and a population of 3,489,428. The inclusion of fifteen miles around makes the population 4,286,607. There are over 100,000 professional men,211,000 of the commercial class, 505,000 mechanics, 65,000 laborers, and 35,000 whose occupation is undefined. There are 1,683,221 males, and 1,866,207 females. Of the women, 892,180 are married, and 226,006 are domestic servants. There are 15,000 tailoresses, 58,000 milliners and dressmakers, 27,000 seamstresses and shirtmakers, and 44,000 laundresses. Twenty-nine thousand are returned as gentlewomen. The number of children reported as attending school is 314,000. London, though much larger in population than New York, is not as. densely packed as the latter. New York, in 1870, with a population of 942,292, had only 64,044 dwelling-houses, and the average number of persons to a dwelling was 14.72. In London, the average last year was 8.38, and this was smaller than the average, according to the census of 1870, in either Brooklyn, Boston, Cincinnati or Jersey City.