GENERAL NEWS.

Florida farmers are now planting Irish potatoes.

The St. Charles Hotel, Paducah, Ky., was burned Sunday night.

Another relief party for the Greeley arctic expedition is to be sent out.

Wm. H. Guion, of the Steamship firm of Williams has failed for $2,000,000.

Music Hall, in Whitechapel, London, burned on Monday; loss $200,000.

Ice has prevented the ferry boats from crossing the St. Clair river at Port Huron.

The prohibitionists declare that they will place a presidential ticket in the field next fall.

Lowell manufacturers have given employes notice that there will be a reduction of ten per cent in wages beginning Feb. 1.

An elevated road, adapted both to passengers and freight, is to be constructed along the levee at New Orleans within two years.

There was a railway wreck, caused by a broken rail, on the Wabash road near Macon, Mo., on Monday; several persons were injured.

It is estimated that the United States Senate is the wealthiest deliberative body in the world, the seventy-six members of that body representing $180,000,000.

A rumor is in circulation at Ottawa, Canada, that the Canadian Pacific road has asked the government for additional assistance to the amount of $14,000,000.

A colored base-ball club of professionals has been formed at Chicago, and will be ready to take the road May 1. They are backed by a stock company.

It is claimed that there is at the present time between 100 and 150 foreign vessels engaged in the oyster traffic on the Virginia coast without right or authority.

The people of Ouray, Col., lynched Mike Cuddigan and wife Saturday, on suspicion of having murdered a child whom they took from a Catholic asylum at Denver.

It is said that the buffaloes have come north of the Missouri river, in Montana, and the Indians killed eleven hundred in one day not far from the mouth of the Musselshell.

The horror of the week was the wrecking of the steamer City of Columbus off Martha's Vineyard, January 19th. There were 129 persons on board of whom ninety-seven were lost.

A seal was discovered in the track of the steamer Armstrong, at Morristown, N. Y., on the St. Lawrence river. This was the third or fourth seal seen in that vicinity in the last half-dozen years.

The candle factory of E. L. Schneider & Co., located on the corner of Wallace and McGregor streets, Chicago, was Sunday swept away by fire. The loss is $150,000, and the insurance $57,000.

The friends of Mr. Hintz, the unsuccessful candidate for postmaster at Elgin, Illinois, threaten to defeat the re-election of Representative Ellwood in the next campaign, who is held responsible for his defeat.

Two Irish members of the British Parliament, Matthew Arnold and P. J. Sheridan,—the latter supposed to be the mysterious No. 1 of the Phœnix Park assassination scheme—are in Chicago the present week.

Mrs. Dukes, a sister of the murdered Zura Burns, has left her home in Dakota, in company with her father, to give what she claims is damaging evidence against O. A. Carpenter, before the grand jury at Lincoln, Ill.

The matter of the final disposition of the assets of the estate of B. F. Allen is being heard by a register at Des Moines. A firm which has purchased a large share of the claims at 5 per cent offers $330,000 for the property remaining, but other creditors hold out for $400,000.

Judge Shepard, in the Superior Court of Chicago, Saturday, dismissed three bills for divorce, holding that when a wife separated from her husband her residence as well as her domicile follows his, and that the Illinois statutes excludes from its courts all suits for divorce in behalf of persons not legal residents.

The Onondaga (New York) Indians have held another council, at which it was shown that a majority of the nation is opposed to dividing the lands in severally, but is willing to agree to a division of such timber lands as can not be protected against depredations. The Christian party is to be represented at the next conference with the State commissioners.

Nearly one-fourth of the business portion of Leipsic, O., was burned Friday night, and flames swept away 1,145 bales of cotton at Murrell's Point, La., and twenty-one buildings at Lowell, Mich. A boiler explosion at Cincinnati, in the Corrugating company's manufactory, Saturday, led to the destruction of $50,000 in property.