Among the distinguished dead of the year may be mentioned Chambord, Gambetta, Gortschakoff, Alexander H. Stephens, Karl Marx, Schultze-Delitzsche, Turgeneff, and Prof.  Anthon.

It is reported that the Salters’ Company, one of the largest and most successful of the London guilds, has decided to dispose of its Irish lands, and is now offering them to tenants on twenty years’ time.

During the year 1883, up to the close of business Saturday night, 7,243,969 gallons of spirits were produced in the Chicago distilleries.  The total receipts of internal revenue in the first district of Illinois for the year were $8,774,890.

The outcry over the houses of the poor has spread to Paris.  Alarming statistics are published of the increase of overcrowding and the consequent spread of disease, and no less than 650 schemes of reform have been presented to the Municipal Council.  The deaths between 1870 and 1883 have increased per 100,000 inhabitants from 48 to 96 in typhoid-fever, from 53 to 101 in diphtheria, from 11 to 74 in small-pox, from 30 to 43 in measles, and from 7 to 18 in scarlet-fever.

Alarm has been created in French commercial circles by rumors that the American Congress will make reprisals for the prohibition by France of the importation of American salted meats by passing a law increasing the duties on French wines or providing for the seizure of French adulterations.  The National, of Paris, says:  “France must expect that the Reprisals bill now before Congress, which was first directed against Germany, will now be turned against France.”

P.T.  Barnum has just made his will.  In order that there might be no question as to his sanity upon which to ground contests after his death, he had eminent physicians examine him, and secured their attestation that he was of sound mind.  The will and its codicils cover more than 700 pages of legal cap, closely written, and disposes of real estate and personal property of the value of $10,000,000 to twenty-seven heirs.  The property is in New York, Brooklyn, Bridgeport, Colorado, and several other places.  Mr. Barnum values his interest in the Barnum and London Shows at $3,500,000.  He gives largely to charitable institutions.

The number of lives lost by the more noticeable accidents of last year give a total of 125,000, or over 342 for each of the 365 days of 1883.  These colossal figures are attained principally through the results of three calamities—­Ischia, Java, and Syria.  Aside from the earthquakes the year was unequaled in shipwrecks, cyclones, fire-scenes, and mining horrors.  Over thirty people were killed for each day in January, the Newhall fire, the Russian circus horror, and the Cimbria shipwreck being the principal of thirty calamities during the month.  Three hundred and ninety-eight people went down in the Cimbria alone.  Two hundred and seventy people burned in the circus at Berditcheff.  The panic later on at Sunderland, England, caused the death of 197 children and 150 workmen were drowned like rats in the tub called the Daphne on the Clyde.  There were 1,697 murders, 107 executions, 135 lynchings, and 727 suicides.