Chapter C: N. Warren

_Answer._—The enormous but ill-constructed bridge across the Tay at Dundee, Scotland, was authorized by an act passed in 1870. Work was begun in June, 1871. It was much injured by a gale Feb. 4, 1877, but was pushed forward and declared to be completed Aug. 30, 1877. It was tried on the 25th of the following month, and opened for business on May 31, 1878. Twenty lives were lost in its construction, and it cost £350,000, or about $1,750,000. It was 10,612 feet long, and rested on 85 spans, some of which were 90 feet above low tide. At about 7:15 p. m. on Dec. 28, 1879, less than seventeen months after it was first opened to traffic—while a North British mail train was crossing in the midst of a fierce gale—the structure gave way, leaving a gap of 3,000 feet. The train plunged into the surging sea, and not one of the ill-fated passengers escaped. There were between 75 and 90 persons on board; exactly how many was never ascertained. Forty-six bodies were recovered up to April 27, 1880. After the official inquiry Mr. H. C. Rothery declared that “the bridge had been badly planned, badly constructed, and badly maintained.” A new bridge, of a much more substantial character, is now in process of construction.

CAN A SOLDIER ENTER A HOMESTEAD.

FORT PEMBINA, D. T.

Can a soldier in the regular army take up a homestead or
pre-emption claim, and get some other person to make the
improvements required by law on either of said claims? By answering
this question you will settle a dispute and greatly oblige,

HENRY BROWN, Serg’t Co. B, Fifteenth Inf.

_Answer._—Soldiers now in the regular army may perform certain preliminary acts relating to homestead entries, but they cannot perfect title to such land until their terms of service have expired. See instructions in “Copp’s Land Owner,” vol. 2, p. 133, and case of Charles Harris, “Land Owner,” vol. 6, p. 190. The soldier or his family must reside on the land at least one year, under any circumstances, before he can acquire title.

POPULATION OF PEKING.

CHICAGO, Ill.

Please state what is the population of Peking, China, and settle a
dispute.

DAVID MCGOWAN.

_Answer._—According to the “American Almanac,” which in turn refers to the famous “Bevolkerung der Erde,” of Gotha, edited by Messrs. Behm & Wagner, the population of Peking in 1880 was 500,000. Until within a comparatively recent date the estimates of the population of that city never ranged below 1,000,000. Cyclopedias generally estimated it at 1,500,000, and some of them as high as 2,000,000. Messrs. Behm & Wagner have carefully revised their former statistics of China, and have reduced their estimate of the total population of the country fully 55,000,000. The Almanach de Gotha gives the population of Pekin as uncertain, estimates varying between 500,000 and 1,650,000.

HEBREW NOT A LIVING LANGUAGE.

RAPID CITY, D. T.

A Jewish gentleman and myself have had an argument, he asserting
that Hebrew is a spoken language at the present time. I am of the
impression that Hebrew ceased to be a spoken language during the
seventy years’ captivity in Babylon, while he declares that he has
seen a Jew, directly from Jerusalem, who could talk nothing but
Hebrew. Can you give us any light on this subject?

H. H. J.

_Answer._—Hebrew, like Latin and classic Greek, is a literary, and not a colloquial language. The precise time when Hebrew ceased to be the living, vernacular language of the Jews is not known. Some learned Hebraists maintain that they lost the living use of the Hebrew during the Babylonish captivity, but the weight of argument is in favor of the belief that they retained the partial use of it for some time after their return to Palestine, and lost it by degrees. No decisive evidence, however, shows exactly when it became a virtually dead language; although there are satisfactory reasons for declaring that it gave place to a corrupted form of the Aramaic language, a mixture of Syrian and Chaldean or Babylonish speech called the Syro-Chaldaic dialect, several hundred years before the Christian era, and that more than a century before this era it ceased to be used even as a written language and was thenceforth studied only as the language of the sacred books, by the learned.

ABANDONMENT OF HOMESTEAD.

OWATONNA, Minn.

To settle a dispute, please state whether a person who has “filed”
on a quarter section of public land, under the homestead laws, and
has let it go back to the government, can make another homestead
entry?

OLD SUBSCRIBER.

_Answer._—According to “Copp’s Public Land Laws,” as the law allows but one homestead privilege, “a settler relinquishing or abandoning his claim cannot thereafter make a second entry; but where an entry is canceled as invalid for some reason other than abandonment, and not the wilful act of the party, he is not thereby debarred from entering again, if in other respects entitled, and may be allowed credit for fees and commissions already paid, on a new homestead entry.” Such a claimant must be prepared to show that he did not voluntarily abandon his first entry.

PHARMACY LAWS AND TRAINED DRUGGISTS.

HODGES PARK, Ill.

What States have pharmacy laws, and what is the proportion of
trained druggists in this country?

A SUBSCRIBER.

_Answer._—Probably all the States have pharmacy laws; that is, laws regulating the compounding and sale of drugs, but these are loosely administered in most States, the laws themselves being radically defective. Most prescription clerks pick up their knowledge of pharmacy between errands and “by practice,” as it is called, without even an elementary knowledge of chemistry or any systematic course of training. There are in all fourteen schools of pharmacy in the United States; 1 in San Francisco, 1 in Chicago, 1 in Louisville, 1 in New Orleans, 1 in Baltimore, 1 in Boston, 1 in Ann Arbor, Mich., 1 in St. Louis, 2 in New York City, 1 in Cincinnati, 1 in Philadelphia, 1 in Pittsburg, 1 in Nashville, and 1 in Washington. All told, they had only 1,347 students in 1880, of whom they graduated but 186. There are 284 retail drug stores in Chicago, and it is estimated that there are more than 1,600 in the State and about 25,600 such stores in the United States with twice that number of persons compounding medicines; so that it is a clear case that comparatively few druggists and prescription clerks are properly educated for their duties.

AGNOSTICISM.

ARTHUR, Ill.

Be so good as to define the word “agnosticism,” as used in
theological or religio-scientific discourses. I have examined
several dictionaries and one encyclopedia, and have failed to find
the word.

E. J. A.

_Answer._—Agnosticism is a sort of supernatural knownothingism. It is true that this word is not defined in either Webster’s or Worcester’s unabridged dictionaries, except in the supplements to the latest editions, and does not appear in the regular order of subjects in the popular encyclopedias. It is derived from a Greek word that signifies “to know not.” Agnosticism then, as used by Herbert Spencer and his disciples, is the doctrine that, professing ignorance of the supernatural, neither asserts nor denies the existence of a personal Deity, and claims that such doctrine can be neither proved nor disapproved, because of the insufficiency of the evidence furnished by rational and material nature to warrant a positive conclusion: or, as others say, because of the necessary limits of the human mind. Agnosticism is opposed both to the positive assertion of the skeptic, who denies the existence of a personal God, and the opposite declaration of the Christian church, or dogmatic theism, affirming such existence.

PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS.

Give a brief sketch of Ptolemy Philadelphus, a celebrated King of
Egypt, often referred to in books and lectures.

F. F. SLOAT.

_Answer._—He was the son of that able general of Alexander the Great who, after the death of that monarch, became King of Egypt under the title of Ptolemy I. Ptolemy II., surnamed Philadelphus, was distinguished for his love of learning, patronage of men of letters and artists, and encouragement of trade and all the arts of peace. He founded the famous library of Alexandria, the greatest treasury of ancient learning, and through his efforts the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek by seventy eminent Hebrew scholars. This is what is known as the Septuagint version of the Holy Scriptures. He reigned from 285 to 247 B. C., a period in which the Egyptian Kingdom reached the highest point of military glory, prosperity, and wealth.

AN INCUBATOR SUCCESS.

VESPER, N. Y.

For the benefit of readers of THE INTER OCEAN I will give my experience with an incubator that I built last June, the materials of which cost $5.50. It holds 234 eggs at a hatching. It took me three days to build it. As a test trial, about the 15th of June I placed nine dozen of eggs in the incubator, and in due time I obtained 86 per cent of chicks as the result, which I considered extremely satisfactory. About the 10th of July I made another trial, using this time eleven dozen of eggs, and the result was 87 per cent of chicks. About 6 per cent of the eggs from these two trials which did not hatch were found on examination to be unfertile, leaving 7 per cent with dead chicks in the various stages of maturity. These two trials proved satisfactory, even beyond my most sanguine expectations. On the 15th of January I procured 204 eggs from the farmers, and placed them in the incubator for my third trial, but, owing to the extremely cold weather during the time the eggs were laid, they had become chilled before being gathered, and, as the result, I only succeeded in getting forty chicks, or a little less than 20 per cent. To avoid a second failure, I determined to wait until the cold weather was over before securing eggs for my next hatching.