one of the best wheat markets of any inland town in the country, have heretofore purchased largely westward on the line of the railroad, forwarded to and shipped from here, by canal, via Toledo, were this year thrown into competition with buyers from the necessitous districts of Ohio, and were, therefore, forced to share a portion of that business with others, although many of our buyers have been shippers to a large extent over the railroad to eastern Ohio. This accounts for the discrepancy in the shipments of wheat by canal this season, as compared with the last, although the quantity purchased here has this year greatly exceeded the past.

BRITISH RAILROADS.

The following is a summary of the annual aggregate resource of the railroads of the United Kingdom, since 1842, with the number of miles in use at the end of each year :—

The Auditor-General of the State of Pennsylvania recently issued a circular to the managers of the various railroad lines of the State, asking for statistical and other information. The following facts are gleaned from the report on the subject to the Legislature :

Until the opening of the Turin and Genoa Railway, in December, 1853, no railway communication existed between the Mediterranean and extensive country comprised between the Swiss and Rhætian Alps on the north, and the Appenines on the south. Now the fortunes of war have rendered it probable that several of the Parmesian and Modenese provinces will be secured to Victor Em manuel, that sovereign has commanded a survey for a railway from Spezia (50 miles southeast of Genoa,) across the Appenines to Parma. This line, although it will be but about 50 miles long, will be one of great importance, both politically and as a work of engineering. Spezia is one of the very best harbors on the Mediterranean, and it is said to be the intention of the King of Sardinia to establish his national dock-yards there on a grand scale. From Spezia the railway would extend up the valley of the Magra, to the thriving town of Pontremoli, and thence over or through the Appenines into the valley of the Taro, and past Borgataro Fornovo to Parma. As the latter city is but about 400

feet above the level of the sea, and as the Alpe di Succiso, the Orsaio, the Penna, and the Regola peaks of the Appenines, flanking the Cisa Pass, rise from 5,800 to 6,800 feet above the sea, it is evident that the easiest practicable ascent and descent on the two slopes must be incliaed, on an average, at least 1 in 30 or 1 in 35. At present our railway approaches nearer to Parma than that from Verona to Mantua; and the Alessandria and Genoa line is the only railway between the Po and the Appenines. A great trunk line, however, 300 miles long, is likely to be soon made from Milan through Piacenza, Parma, Modena, and Bologna, to Rimini, and thence along the Adriatic coast to Ancona. From Bologna, a line is contemplated over the Porretta Pass to Pistola, whence are the Tuscan lines already completed to Florence, Pisa, and Leghorn. With the completion of a link of 35 miles from Modena to Mantua, the whole system of railways in the north of Italy would be placed in communication, at Verona, with the Tyrolese Railway, a great northern trunk line, to be constructed by the Lombardo-Venetian and South Austrian Company, from Verona, through Innspruck, to the Bavarian frontier. To the Lombardo-Venetian system, and to the extensive lines which is proposed on the north and south of it, the Spezia and Parma line will be the only direct outlet to the Mediterranean; and thus, with such a system of railways behind it, Spezia might attain a commercial importance greater than that of Trieste or Genoa. A wealthy company has proposed also to construct a great line of railway along the Mediterranean coast, from Toulon, through Nice, Voltri, Genoa, and Spezia, to Pisa. This line, which would be nearly

350 miles long, would be among the most costly in Europe, as the forty odd miles along the same frowning coast, from Marseilles to Toulon, are said to have been. The importance of this line of railway, in connection with that from Spezia to Parma, would be hardly, if at all, less than of a line across the Alps, nor, to tell the truth, would it involve much less difficulties of construction.

RAILWAY ACCIDENTS.

During the year 1859, 12,356,657 passengers were carried over the Massachusetts railways; of which number, seven were killed, and every one of those through their own carelessness. The whole number of miles traveled was, in round numbers, 190,000,000, or a distance equal to 7,600 times around the world; this makes one person killed for each 27,000,000 miles run; whence if a person travels one hundred miles he runs one chance in 270.000 of being killed. Besides the deaths resulting from traveling in the cars, there are many fatal results connected with the system, for which railways are not accountable; for example, 23 persons were killed in Massachusetts during the past year while walking or lying on the track. There appears to be no place so comfortable for a drunken man to take a nap, as upon a railway track. The accidents in the State of New York upon the railways, are thus returned by the State Engineer for the year 1858-killed while walking on the track, 38; lying on the track drunk, 11; all other sources, 51; by fault of the company, 30. Upon the Western road there were carried during 1859, 577,770 passengers; upon the Eastern, 1,415,594; over the Providence. 1,021,958; and over the Lowell, 624,944; in all, 3,630,266, without a single fatal accident.

STATISTICS OF AGRICULTURE, &c.

EARLY CULTIVATION OF COTTON IN THE UNITED STATES.

A correspondent of the New York Journal of Commerce states that, a few years since the late Denison Olmstead, Professor of Natural Philosophy in Yale College, sent to me a memoir of Eli Whitney, of Northboro', Mass. Mr. Whitney was the inventor of the cotton gin. In that memoir it is mentioned incidentally that the first export of cotton from the United States to England was in 1784, when a vessel arrived at Liverpool with eight bags of cotton on board as part of the cargo, and was seized by the custom-house officers under the conviction that it could not have been the growth of America.

Old newspapers furnish the following account of the shipment of cotton from the United States in the first four subsequent years:

A friend has loaned me an old newspaper, the Newport Mercury, or the Weekly Advertiser, of December 19th, 1758, which contains an advertisement in the words following:

JOSEPH GARDNER,

of Newport, Rhode Island,

On his passage from the Island of Jamaica to Rhode Island, on the 25th of October last, picked up at sea five bags of cotton. Whoever claims the same and proves his property, may receive them after paying the salvage.

It would seem from this advertisement that cotton in bags was afloat upon the ocean more than a century ago.

Within the bounds of my memory, which reaches back almost to the cradle, the white cotton goods in common wear in the United States were imported in bales of ninety pieces each from the East Indies. These were of the kind called Baftas, Gurrahs, Emerties, Saumas, Long cloths, etc. The Baftas and Gurrahs were coarse cottons of about a yard in width.

The cotton gin was invented in 1792.

The Newport Mercury, mentioned above, is on a sheet measuring twenty inches long and fourteen inches wide. It was printed by James Franklin, "at the printing office under the town school, by whom subscriptions and advertisements are taken in."

WEEDS AND THEIR SEEDS.

A prize essay before the Royal Agricultural Society of England contains the following very interesting account of the source of weeds :

The third source of weeds is that they are sown with the seed for the crop. It has been demonstrated that almost every common article of sale is sophisticated by dishonest dealers. It was not, therefore, to be supposed that agricultural seeds would escape. The unsuspicious farmer long went on buying them with scarce a question as to their purity, notwithstanding that weeds were constantly seen to spring up in fields where they had been previously unknown. He is somewhat warier now, but both rogues and dupes are likely to exist as long as weeds themselves. All that is required for the detection of the fraud is a pair of sharp eyes, and the occasional aid of a lens, conjoined with some little patience to separate the trash which is often mixed with the seeds. A Leeds buyer of cloth is never without his pocket-microscope for the examination of the wares in which he deals; and though an old-fashioned farmer would stare at the notion of looking at a sample of seeds with which he calls a "multiplying-glass," he may become reconciled to the test when he reads in such lists as that which follows what noxious stuff he buys in the place of grass and clover, and observes how the original imposition inflicts upon him in its consequences an ever multiplying injury:

:

TABLE OF WEED SEEDS TO THE BUSHEL OF THE FOLLOWING CROP-SEEDS.

It is no wonder that we should be told, in a paper read before the Croydon Farmers' Club, in 1847, by Mr. Wood, that "weeds are increasing rather than diminishing, and that thistles are much more numerous than they were." Even if the seeds first sown do not, from some accidental cause, increase and multiply, the original growth will often be sufficient to stock the land. Take this table for an example:

TABLE OF WEEDS SOWN WITH ORDINARY OROP-SEED.