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THE WORLD'S BIG GUNS. Some of the Monsters Built for the ami Forts of foreign Powers. The progress of thirty years in strut ting heavy guns has been dinary. The largest pieces found on vessels in 1800 threw a ball weighing pounds, with an initial velooity of feet per second, and an energy of foot tons. Now initial velocities in power guns have l>een increased to feet; projectiles at the maximum as much as 2,000 Tjounds, and in cases are propelled by charges of nearly half a ton of powder, while the 110-ton guns of the Beiibow reach an energy alxait 00,000 foot tons. Passing over the triumphs obtained by intermediate calibers, which were remark¬ able; in their day, we find that the largest French steel guns, such as are used the armament of the Terrible, completed at Brest; the Requin, built at Bordeaux; the Indomitable, built at L’Orient, and the Caiman, finished at Toulon, weigh each about 70 tons. They deliver a pro jectilc, weighing 1,710 pounds, with a muzzle velocity of 1,789 feet per second and a muzzle energy of 80,000 foot tons. The guns are rifled breechloaders. The French have other powerful guns, those constructed on the Bange system being well known. The Armstrong guns now mounted for service in the Italian armor clads Duilio, Dandola, Italia, and Lepanto, weigh 100 tons each, and throw a projectile of 2,000 pounds. 11 lose have long been familiar, but the later breech loading guns are improvements over the early muzzle loaders. The most powerful of them take a powder charge of about 772 pounds, and have an initial velocity of 1,835 foot per second, and a muzzle en orgy of 51,000 foot tons. Guns of 105 tons have also been made at Elswick for the Francesco Lauria, the Andrea Dona and the Morosini. In these tho weight of the charge is 900 pounds, tho weight of the projectile 2,000 pounds, themuz zle energy 50,547 foot tons. These will undoubtedly prove most formidable weaj tons. The largest ICrupp gun weighs nearly 119 tons. It is over 40 feet long, has a caliber of 15 3-4 inches, and fires a shot weighing 2,814 pounds, with a muzzle velocity of 1,800 feet. The maximum elevation gives it a range of nearly 7 1-2 miles. Its power of penetration into wrought iron is estimated at alxiut 41 inches at tho muzzle, 81 inchesatthe dis¬ tal ice of 1,100 yards and 30 inches at 8,000 yards. At the distance of three miles its striking average is still about 28,000 foot tons. The Italians have two of those guns mounted in a shore battery, for which purpose they are intended. The English 110-ton gun, manufac¬ tured at Elswick, is about 44 feet long, ami its actual weight 247,795 pounds. The screw block, removed in loading, weighs 2 1-4 tons. The projec¬ tile is a bolt weighing 1,800 pounds, and 10 1-4 inches in diameter. With 850 pounds of powder the actual muzzle velocity attained was 2,078 feet, and the muzzle energy 34,000 foot tons; so that with 950 pounds, which the gun is con¬ structed to use, an energy on the projec tile of 02,700 foot tons is expected. The recoil of the gun is very small. The British also have a powerful new gun in their 63-ton steel breechloader, which will lie carried on the Rodney. It is ex pected to throw a 13 1-4-inch shot, of 1,250 pounds, with a powder charge of 580 pounds, and to attain 2,100 feet muzzle velocity. Should these expecta¬ tions be realized, this gun, though much lighter, will be more destructive than the 80-ton gun of the Inflexible, which takes a projectile of 1,700 pounds, with a cartridge of 450 pounds, reaching a muzzle velocity of 1,000 feet. It is said that the next step attempted in heavy gun construction will be that of a 150-ton monster, this project being at tributed to the Essen works It would throw a shell six feet long, weighing a ton and a half. There are also some guns un<Ter construction which are expected accomplish groat results on new theories, as in the case of (he one manufactured for Col. Hope. This is take an enormous powder charge, and j have correspondingly great penetrative effect. But without going into the pos¬ sible successes of the future, those which have already been achieved are suffi ciently astonishing.—New York Sun. Advice to Pall Bearers. When a man is asked to act as a bearer at a funeral, he ought to seek out the other pall bearers before they assume ; their crape and their mournful air, and practice the lockstep with them for fin hour or so, or at least until he can ; confident that they are going to keep i when they lift the coffin and start off with it. I was a pall bearer recently, and my arms and knees pain me now with the recollection. When a party of pall bearers take up a coffin and step out of time, the weight comes principally upon the two end bearers, and it is no j easy thing for two men to sustain by the sharp handles of a coffin the weight of the casket itself and the corpse within.— Globe-Democrat. Christine Nilsson’s Apartments. Christine furnished’ Nilsson, the wife of Count Miranda, and decorated her apartments in a stylo that is the talk of the town. The dining room presents a most original appearance. The walls are papered throughout with hotel bills, set tied by the diva on her professional tours, The Tlio drawing drawingroom room is is decorated, decorated, in in lieu lieu G f paper hangings, with the faded leaves G f all the wreaths ever received by the artiste, arranged in the form of scales, The ceiling is entirely covered with gilt foliage. The walls of the boudoir are from floor to ceiling with the musical score and the text of all the airs which Mme. Nilsson is accustomed to sing, The bedroom of the countess is fur nished with extreme simplicity, out the walls are completely hidden from view by Swedish landscapes which three French artists have received a commis sion to paint for the songstress, who has left her country never to return. The billiard room of the master of the house testifies to the anxiety of the prima pnma donna to convince her husband of her great abilities; for here you see affixed to the walls thousands of reports in all lan guages, cuttings from all the newspapers in the world.—Detroit Free Press. Washington's Land Advertisement. Dr. Alfred, of Ocala, Fla., has a copy of The Baltimore Advertiser and Journal, dated Aug. 23, 1773. In it is a graphic land advertisement by George Washing ton, offering 20,000 acres of the finest and richest land in the world and situ ated in the Kanawha valley, W. Va. The doctor purchased it at the sale of the library of ex-Governor Winslow, of North Carolina, thirty-seven years ago, and prizes it highly. He has refused several flattering offers for it by relic hunters.—New York Tribune. “Taking” Conversation. You will be surprised to have me tell you that I think stenographically; that } R > when you say a word I at once imag uie the character that I ha ve used so long to represent it. Conversaiion is one of the things that no honest stenographer will pretend he can take correctly. You can’t indicate the breaks, the flashes of thought and feeling that make up half of it.—Col. E. B. Dickinson. The Longest River. According to the latest authorities the Missouri-Mississippi river is not only the longest in name, but the longest in extent of stream in the world—4,382 miles. The next longest is the Nile—4,000 miles —and the next in order the Amazon and Congo.—Brooklyn Eagle. —— During the past year the national debt of England was decreased $29,199,518. THE FUTURE OF CHICAGO. A Prophecy by \Y. H. II. Murray—Can* nda’s Future Population. Chicago is the commercial center of a surrounding country {00,000,000 destined, within a lifetime, to contain of indus¬ trious, thrifty, and luxury loving people. The population of London is to that of England and Wales as four to twenty-six. And should the population of Chicago ever hold the same relation to the popu¬ lation of the ten great states that encircle and are commercially tributary to her as London holds to England and Wales her census will, as surely as the sun rises over the prairies, show the enormous total of 20,000,000 of souls. Nor is this to be vastly wondered at when one con¬ siders that she is the queen city, the cen¬ ter and outlet of such an agricultural area as can nowhere else be found on the globe; that she is already the third man¬ ufacturing city of the continent; that the total value of her trade is more than $1, 000,000.000 per year, and that 15,000 vessels arrived at and sailed from her wharves last year, with a tonnage of nearly 5,000,000. Very well. Now, over the line which is the boundary between Minnesota and Canada is a section of country as large as eleven lllinoises, whose soil is the best on the earth, and over which si lines a most productive sun. Here is richness of soil; here is plenty of moisture; here is a most growthful climate; here is the last unoc¬ cupied, and, perhaps, the most productive wheat belt on the continent. What else is wanted? One thing. Give me one thing more and I will predict that, in this great Canada and the west, within the length of a healthy human life will be found eleven geographical divisions, as large, as prosperous and as rich as is the great state of Illinois today. What is that one thing? you ask. I answer: Coal. In Illinois two feet in every three of her entire area are underlaid with coal. A poor man in Illinois can get his coal at $3.50 a ton. If there had been no coal there, then could there be no population, or next to none. Coal was wanted as a prime condition of the Canadian future, as measured by the populational possibili¬ ties of this vast area of hers, and coal, coal in abundance, has been found. That solved the problem of the size of Canada’s future population, for it left it contingent only on climate and soil, which are both perfect. The best wheat bearing belt, now unoccupied, on the continent; a healthy climate, popular government and cheap fuel, these are the auspicious con¬ ditions which, joined in happy conjunc¬ tion, make an otherwise dark and uncer¬ tain future suddenly flame with the splendor of a summer sunrise when it comes to the flowers :md grasses of the vast prairie land of which I am speaking, for they surely and on the instant en¬ larged the possibilities, nay, the certain¬ ties, of Canada as to her future popula¬ tion being beyond any fixed measure¬ ment. The question may be asked, whence is this great Canadian population to come? How is the real Canada to be peopled? But the Canada that has been, nay, that is today, is not the real Canada. Americans should not forget this. The real Canada of the future lies not east and north, but west of Ontario. Winni¬ peg, and not Montreal, is the geograph¬ ical center. Its commercial center is not Toronto, but Chicago. North and west of Lake Superior lies a vast area of terri¬ tory as productive as to the nature of its soil, and as attractive to civilization as any equal extent of territory on the face of the globe. lrom it eleven states as large as the great state of Illinois can be carved. Here more than 20,000,000 of people will, in a few years, compara¬ tively, find their home.—W. H. H. Mur¬ ray in Chicago Herald. Steel framed cabs are now being manu factured in England, with a view to light ness and greater durability than if wood were used for Lie » arpodc. A Counterfeit 8500 Bill. As an example of slight differences be tween the spurious bills and the as to tax to its utmost even a eye, the following description of a terfeit $500 is cited: t 4 Unquestionably one of the most gerous counterfeits in existence. engraving and workmanship nearly to the genuine; the lathe work is lent, numbering of the work fair color good. The star on the right of treasury number is somewhat The portrait of J. Q. Adams is but the lobe of the ear is very indistinct In the counterfeit, the button upon coat nearest the lapel is almost in the genuine it is round. The vignett of the figure of Justice is finely engrave* J with the exception of the following points* As the scale is held aloft in the left liam the upright holding the beam is crooked and is larger in the counterfeit than in the genuine—in the genuine the uprigli shows only to the lower part of the hand second while in finger the counterfeit from the base; it shows the to whitl th] curve genuine, in the while arm in is the a counterfeit perfect oval it in is not! thj The left foot of the vignette, as it extendi from the garment, in the counterfeit, presents a clubbed while tlJ ajJ pearancc cl toes are short and not half the length the genuine. The parallel ruling is exl cellent; tlio note is printed on fiber papej teiQ and is signed John Allison, Register, F. E. Spinner, Treasurer. Bankers anq others should receive these notes witl great care, as it is only by a comparu son with the genuine that the majoriti of experts can positively decide as to till genuineness of a note of this class. ’ ’ I No one will doubt the last statement in tion the above to whether description. have When $500 the in ques] as you yoiu pocket, or a fifty cent chromo, depends on the somewhat distinctness of a star,, the shape of a button, or the indistinct¬ ness of an ear, matters are being drawn pretty fine.—Chicago Herald. { Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. The original of this is written common official paper, and is in the hand of President Lincoln, save the and third paragraphs, which are printed. Tho printed paragraphs were cut the previous proclamation of Sept. 22 and pasted upon the sheet by Mr. coin himself, to save the labor of writing them. The attest is in the hand of Secretary Seward—a handwriting greatly unlike that of the president, that it is larger and rather more regular, When the secretary of state started pen the attest there appears to have a raveling in his pen, for as far as sixth word, ‘‘hereunto,” the lines heavy and partly blurred. The signature of the president is more tremulous the body of the document, and pears poor as a specimen of among the straight lines of Mr. Scwarjjj firm hand. The tremulousness was^M not to nervousness, signed l ut to proclamatio^| the fficBJlf Mr. Lincoln the New Year’s day, after having shaken hands By with singular several incident hundred there people. feall ^ a exists today two original copies df th emancipation proclamation. Th/C iua dent consists in the fact that Mr. coin, at the request of the British museum, made, with his own hand. Thisjj aJ second copy of his great paper. unlike that the that attest preserved is filled out at Washington^ by hanilJ a that of either the president or the s9 of state. The paper used -warn parchment about twenty™ thirty-six inches. It is now elegant and may be seen hanging in oi the library rooms in the Biitii News. High, But We Must Have It. The old man sat by the sea alone And scanned the hotel bill, so stiff, And sighed as he said, “I've bought ozonq At the rate of £2 a v.-hiiT.'* —Washington critic.