A Big Hotel In A Cornfield

One of the effects of thepanic of 1873 was to defeat certain railroad projects in Virginia and suddenly check the growth in ita infancy of a grandly-laidout city near Quantico, in Prince William County, in that State, about thirty miles down the Potomac. Anson Bangs and Jesse Iioyt, two wcll-known New York capitalists, tbe iormer the advocate of cheap transit rail and steamer routes, with others, about ten years ago, conceived the idea of a railroad from some point on the Potomaa to the Kanawha Kiver. 1 hey procured a charter for such a road, and after having examined many locntions final-' ly selected the neighborhood of Quantico as the best site for the terminus on the Potomac. Accordingly thev purchased there a tract of land- about seven thousand acres - extending from Quantico Ci'cekto ChapawamsicCreek, on the Potomac Itiver, running back a distauce of about four miles to the Tolegraph Road. This tract they laid out in streets, avenues and squares, and named it Potomae City. Mr. Bangs was so confident of the success of the enterpriso that he iinmediately had erected near the intersection of Potornao avenue and the railroad a large hotel. Tuis is a concrete building of four stories, containing one hundred and tweuty-two rooms, and cost $68,000. IL is well arranged and iinely finished. This building, now occupied only by some one to care for it, has long been a wonder to those who have caught sight of it from passing cars or steauicrs. The enclosure surrounding it having onee or twice been cultivateu in corn gave it a still more singular appearanco- a, hotel in a eornüeid. - Washington Star. --♦-- - An agricultural exchange says, to kill ticks on sheep, throvv in the barnyard a few small, thrifty, secondgrowth fir trees. The sheep will eat the leaves and small twigs greedüy, and often strip off all the bark. The ticks will all leave the sheep in a few days, the strong odor froni the oil of the fir driving them away. - The Mural New Yorker says that ten acres of good clover are worth more than so niuch wheat, if the value of what is left in the ground by the clover is taken into account. When a erop of wheat is taken the ground is exhausted of so much of its fertility, which is carried off in the wheat; but when a erop of clover is taken the soil is actually in better condition than before, and is good enough toyield acrop of wheat or corn.