The New York _Herald_ is led to pronounce against capital punishment because in many cases the law against murder is a dead letter, and produces the following historical reference to confirm the statement: “It appears that from 1860 to 1882 a hundred and seventy persons were tried in Massachusetts for murder in the first degree. Of this number only twenty-nine were convicted, and only sixteen paid the extreme penalty of the law. Of those convicted one committed suicide, and twelve got their sentences commuted. Here, then, during a period of little more than twenty years were a hundred and seventy murders in one State, and only sixteen executions.” * * * * * They have one hundred and fifty miles of electric railway in operation in Europe. Active preparations are making by rival inventors and corporations in New York City to introduce electricity on a large scale as a safe, rapid, and cheap motor. As in lighting houses, towns, and cities we have passed from the tallow candle to kerosene, and then to gas, and on to the electric light, so by many steps and advances we are almost ready to accept electricity as the moving power of railway trains. * * * * * The pardoning power of the general government is liable to work pernicious results in the regular army. Cases of embezzlement and fraud among army officers have been growing in number since our civil war, and laxity in the enforcement of the laws against these offenders is a growing evil. General J. B. Fry, an officer of repute, and a graduate of West Point, thus points out the evil: “The interposition of higher authority in favor of offenders has been so frequent since the war, especially from 1876 to 1880, as to be a great injury to the service. Many of the evils which have been exposed recently are fairly chargeable to executive and legislative reversal of army action. * * * When the strong current of military justice is dammed by the authorities set over the army, stagnant pools are formed which breed scandal, fraud, disobedience, dissipation, and disgrace, sometimes even among those educated for the service.” * * * * * Cable intelligence, received September 3, shows that the Baron Nordenskjöld, as a Greenland explorer, has accomplished a large part of his original purpose. The expedition entered West Greenland in latitude 68°, and proceeded 220 miles inland, attained an altitude of seven thousand feet above the sea level. In 1878 Lieutenant Jansen, of the Danish navy, penetrated fifty miles from the coast, and reached an “icy mountain, in lat. 62° 40′, five thousand feet high.” But no explorer has since done anything worth mention toward solving the mystery of Greenland’s interior physical geography. The expedition with Professor Nordenskjöld has gone farther and seen more of the “immense desert of ice;” and the latest telegrams claim that some important scientific data have been obtained.