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this year is estimated at $90,000. New Jersey offers a premium of $1 per ton of cane and 1 cent per pound of sugar raised and manufactured in the state. This is quite an item when one company (as the Rio Grande) turns out 1,000,000 pounds of sugar.
The Chinese ambassador has recently visited the Rio Grande works, making a very careful study of the system of sugar-making from the cane. For 2,000 years sorghum has been grown profitably as a cereal in the Flowery Kingdom, and if the clear gain of its sugar can be added to the crop, the fact will be of vast economical importance to the empire.
That China, the oldest nation, should come to the United States, the youngest, to learn how to utilize what it has been growing for 2,000 years, is remarkable.
LOUP FORK FOSSILS.—At the request of Prof. Snow, Mr. Chas. H. Sternberg has made an extensive collection of Loup Fork Fossils, from Phillips, Decatur, and Rawlins counties.
Last year while exploring north-western Kansas for Prof. Agassiz, of Harvard, he discovered a locality where a ravine had cut through a bed of sand containing great quantities of rhinoceros bones. They were indiscriminately mixed, and consisted of bones from young and old individuals.
In his researches in the interest of the University of Kansas, under the direction of Prof. Snow, he visited the Sans region and obtained two skulls and about twenty under jaws, besides great numbers of well preserved bones from all parts of skeletons of many individuals. A number of limbs can be restored.
This rhinoceros, or aphelops, as Prof. Cope calls it, was harmless and unlike recent species; had powerful tusks like canines and small incisors. They also had
three toes on each foot. Their hoofs were small and could not have supported their ponderous bodies, hence they must have had thick pads on the distal ends of the metacarpals and tarsals. They were about as tall as a buffalo and more powerfully built. Their only weapons of offense or defense were their large chisel-like tusks.
Mr. Sternberg also got a pair of under jaws with teeth of a mastodon. These animals were provided with inferior tusks, and the lower jaws are projected into a beak for the reception of the tusks. Prof. Cope calls these remains those of the mas-todon productus.
Mr. Sternberg also found bones and teeth of the three-toed horse; likewise bones of a camel-like animal, and of a large land turtle.
This is the best collection of fossils in the state, and possibly in the country. There are 1,600 pounds of bones.
—H. S. Hamilton of straw lumber notoriety, writes from New York City to the effect that he has been successful in securing the organization of a stock company, for the purpose of manufacturing straw lumber with a capital of $500,000. Their works will be in Lawrence, Kansas, and lumber for railway purposes only will be manufactured. Chas. A. Dana, editor of the New York Sun is said to be one of the incorporators. Engineering News.
—Messrs J. W. Mackey and James Gordon Bennett have signed a contract with Messrs. Siemens Brothers for the manufacture of two transatlantic cables, and they are now being made at the works of these gentleman, near London. The first cable is to be open June 1, 1884; the second a few weeks later. These cables will be owned and operated solely by American capital. Its policy will be to maintain absolute secrecy of messages entrusted to it. These gentlemen evidently mean a lively competition, and the benefits will be wide spread.