The Missouri River carries more silt than any other large river in the United States, except possibly the Rio Grande and the Colorado. It gathers annually from the country that it drains more than 123,000,000 tons of silt and soluble matter, some of which it distributes over the flood plains below to form productive agricultural lands, but most of which finds its way at last to the Gulf of Mexico. It is by means of data of this kind that geologists compute the rate at which the lands are being worn away. It has been shown the Missouri River is lowering the surface of the land drained by it at the rate of one foot in 6,036 years. The surface of the United States as a whole is now being worn down at the rate of one foot in 9,120 years. It has been estimated that if this erosive action of the streams of the United States could have been concentrated on the Isthmus of Panama, it would have dug in seventy-three days the canal which has just been completed after ten years’ work, with the most powerful appliances yet devised by man. Boy’s Life Like Fiction. Like a romance reads the tale of Benny Wittig, picked up as Eddy Sires by the police several days ago, and the happy climax of the story came in his restoration to his mother, Mrs. Frank Hitchcock, of Peoria, Ill. The story begins with the death of Judge Wittig, near Latham, Ill., eleven years ago. His wife was sick, and misfortune had followed him, so that all he had was mortgaged and seized for debt. His two sons, Benny, aged six, and Louis, aged nine, were placed in the Lutheran Kinderfreund. Benny was adopted by a family named Sires, while Louis was taken by a family living near Nashville, Ill. The Sires family went to Kentucky, tired of the boy, and abandoned him in the town of Somerset. The youngster beat his way by hook or crook to the Far West, and his first recollection of places he visited is of Los Angeles, Cal. Afterward he lived for over a year in Salt Lake City, where he attended school. He found other friends in Denver, and attended school there, also. It was while beating his way back to Kentucky to find his supposed parents--Sires--that he happened into Peoria. The police suspected that the handsome seventeen-year-old boy was a runaway, and detained him while investigating. His story, though it seemed improbable, interested Chief Rhoades, who communicated with the police at Somerset and is awaiting a reply. Meantime the story got into the city papers, and Mrs. Inez Ware and Miss Josephine Hitchcock, sister and half sister of the boy, called at police headquarters and identified him as Benny Wittig. In the good old storybook way, a scar on his neck established his identity, although the striking resemblance between the ladies and the boy is so great that it alone is convincing.