It is reported that M. Jules Ferry has declined to form a new French cabinet.

One hundred thousand marks has been voted by the German Reichstag for explorations in Central Africa.

Forty thousand Cuban slaves, not liberated by their owners in 1870, are to be treated by the government as free men.

The Senate yesterday finished consideration of the free-list portion of the tariff bill, adhering to its action of Wednesday placing books thereon.

Messrs. Davitt, Healy and Quinn, the Irish agitators, who refused to give bail for good behaviour were arrested in Dublin yesterday and conveyed to Kilmainham jail.

John C. Ralston of Milwaukee, foreman of a soap factory, has received notice that he has fallen heir to a fortune of $3,000,000, left by his great-grandfather in Scotland.

It is believed in New York that the Western Union and Mutual Union Telegraph companies have settled their differences, and that the former has obtained control of the latter.

In consequence of a failure of Congress to appropriate money for the payment of salaries of such officers, the Secretaries of the War and Navy Departments are without much-needed assistants.

The Ohio river is still rising along its entire length, and hundreds of families have been driven from their homes at Pittsburg, Wheeling and other towns. Pomeroy, Ohio, is completely under water, and its whole population has been compelled to seek safety on the hilltops.

A banquet was given in Washington last night in honor of Gen. W. T. Sherman's sixty-third birthday and approaching retirement from the army, at which speeches were made by Chief-Justice Waite, Justice Miller, Gen. Sheridan, Senator Hawley, Senator Logan, Mr. Henry Watterson and Gen. Sherman.

THE WEATHER.WASHINGTON, D. C., Feb. 9, 1. A. M. For New England, generally fair and slightly warmer weather, southwest to northwest winds, slight rise, followed by falling barometer.