16 " THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 



a single medical or scientific advantage is yet announced as the result of the cholera 

 conference at Dresden. The object there sought has been solely how to mitigate 

 the commercial evils of the epidemic. 



FEARFUL SHIPWRECKS. 



" Over in Hydrographic Officer Burnett's corner of the Merchants' Exchange is a 

 chart that seems to have been drawn by somebody who had a nightmare of mean- 

 dering red streaks, little red and blue dots and crosses, and red and blue representa- 

 tions of the bows of partially submerged vessels. It is a wreck chart showing the 

 vagarious driftings of the derelicts on the North Atlantic during the past five years- 

 ana to the mind of a nautical man is the publication chef d'oeuvre of the office 

 since Commander Glover assumed charge. The best statistics obtainable show an 

 average annual loss of 2,172 vessels and 12,000 lives in the marine commerce of the 

 world, entailing monetary losses amounting to $100,000,000. In the period of five 

 years covered by the chart there were 956 vessels wrecked on the Atlantic coast,, 

 and in the same time 1,096 vessels were abandoned and left to drift about the ocean 

 and menace the safety of navigators whose courses might lay in the way of the drift- 

 ers. Of this thousand and odd eraft there were 625 unknown; 332 have been located 

 once or more, and 139 have been sighted so often as to permit of their drift tracks- 

 being charted.'* 



FIERCE FOREST FIRES. 



[Special to the EXAMINER.] 



CINCINNATI, April 9. Dispatches from Vanceboro, Lewis county, Ky., on the 

 Ohio river, seventv-five miles from Cincinnati, says that fires in the forests in that 

 country broke out several days ago and have spread over the whole country. Last 

 night, from Clarksville, in Lewis county, to Sugar Loaf mountain, the whole country 

 was one vast sea of flames. Fences have been destroyed everywhere, and the houses- 

 of many farmers have been burned. A dispatch from Chillicothe says that exten- 

 sive fires are raging in the hill forests near Bainbridge, Ross county, and are spread- 

 ing in the hills of Pike and Highland counties, near by, doing great damage. 



PORTSMOUTH (O.), April 9. For the past two weeks very strong and dangerous- 

 forest fires have prevailed west of the Scoto river. The hamlets of Union Mills and 

 Friendship were surrounded by fire, but rain saved them. At present the fire i 

 smoldering and another rain will quench it. The loss, it is estimated, will exceed 

 $200,000 in timber, etc., that was burned, not counting a score of farm buildings; 

 swept away. 



I have thus fully quoted a few of many such like newspaper reports 

 relating to awfully disastrous atmospheric troubles which of late years 

 have caused wide-spread ruin through very many portions of this great 

 country and on the sea, the former to show the special necessity which really 

 exists for a whole-hearted restoration and preservation of forests because of 

 "the unique position of the new world" so graphically detailed by the writer, 

 and the others to illustrate the dreadfully savage and increasingly erratic 

 nature of recent storms which compel long-suffering agriculturists and 

 others to burrow through underground caverns so as to escape being 

 swept away and destroyed with their homesteads ! Surely such atmos- 

 pheric conditions are the very reverse of normal ? 



Professor J. E. Buchanan, M. D., of New York, who published a book 

 some years ago pleading for the establishment of ethical and industrial 

 education, and who has further published a manual of psychometry in 

 which he made several predictions, which have been verified, published 

 in the Arena for August, 1890, a most alarming paper, entitled, " The 

 Coming Cataclysm of America and Europe," leading up to terrible 

 devastating torrental storms, earthquakes and almost general barrenness, 

 extending over vast regions, making special mention of American and 

 continental deforestation as a primary cause. 



