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FOREIGN NEWS AND GOSSIP.

The slave trade is again very active on the Red Sea.

The Colorada beetle is devastating the potato crop in Prussian Saxony.

The navigation of the river Don is to be greatly improved by the Russian Government.

Eviction is Ireland flourishes. The victims for the three months ending June 30th were 9,140.

The rivers of England are very low, and the fish are dying by hundreds in the small streams. A severe drought prevails throughout Great Britain.

The amount of British money embarked in colonial investments and securities is increasing very rapidly, and is estimated to exceed $744,000,000.

It is reported at St. Petersburg that Grand Duke Michael, son of Grand Duke Michael, uncle of the Czar, will shortly be affianced to a daughter of the Prince of Wales.

A London correspondent reports that colored people are very popular in London, and as there are not many of them the few there are working their color for all its worth.

The newspaper of Paris declare that Coquelin will return to the Comedie Francaise in January, 1889, on the same conditions as before and an annual vacation of four months.

A dead whale ninety fetet long was recently picked up off the coast of Scotland and towed to the Island of Coll. Its circumference was fifty feet and the tail was eighteen feet broad.

Sarah Bernhardt reappeared at the Lyceum Theatre, London, Monday night, after an absence of two years, and was accorded a great ovation. Royalty seems to think she is nearly as good as Buffalo Bill.

Algeria is being ravished by grasshoppers. An attempt to destroy the eggs proved useless. In one district, 50,000 gallons have been collected and burned. This represents the destruction of 7,250,000,000 insects.

Quite lately a man with only one leg swam across the river Clyde in Scotland, between Kirn and the Cloch, a distance of about two and a half miles. He was accompanied by a boat and was quite fresh at the [halsh?].

It is profitable to be the medical adviser of an imperial family. For two visits to the Crown Prince in Germany, and for the direction for his treatment given from England, Dr. Mackenzie hands in a bill for more than $13,000.

At a recent London party all the gentlemen were arrayed in frock coats, white vests, knee breeches, silk stockings and Windsor shoes. The result was that the guests did not call on each other for services, supposing that they were addreassing the waiters.

A young soldier serving as a sentinel at the prison of Karthous, Prague, recently recognized his father among the convicts, having been sent to prison for murder when his son was eight years old, and the discovery so worked upon his feelings that he shot himself through the head.

Passanante, the Neapolitan cook who attempted to assassinate King Humbert and dangerously wounded Prime Minister Carroll, some five or six years ago, is now lying at the point of death. Condemned to imprisonment for life, he was incarcerated in a large circular cell in the Portoferralo Convict Prison on the Island of Elba.

Our Minister of Belgium reports to the State Department that the Belgian Government has increased the import duty of coffee, cattle and meat, and that, after January 1st next, meat will not be permitted to enter Belgium except in the form of whole animals and halves and forequarters of animals only when the lungs are attached.