་ plication of a motion, or moving force, which is still greater. The man who carries a hundred weight, carries his own body at the same time. The horse that is yoked, and the arms that bend and draw the bow, are fatigued to a far greater extent than the swiftness given to the coach or the arrow. Gunpowder can send a bullet unseen through the sky, or rend the hardest rock in pieces; but in order that it may do so, we must burn it; and then, great as is the effect produced by the burning, to collect all the parts, and obtain powder again, is beyond the power of man. He must wait till nature works for him, in the formation of nitre and sulphur, and the growth of wood for charcoal; and nature makes all these substances out of the common air, or of matters dissolved in it, so as to be insensible to the touch and invisible to the eye. The powers of nature are, on the other hand, independent of both weight and measure. One life produces millions of lives, each of which is as productive as the first one; and they are productive without end. There are few more striking instances of this fact, than the Ephemera, or Day-Flies, which are, in the heat of summer, ever sporting over rivers, pools and streams, so thick, that they, in some instances, absolutely darken the sun, or make its light fall red upon the ground, as during an eclipse. The cut represents the female of the common day-fly, (ephemera vulgata.) The cut will shew the form of the insect; and at the present time, (August) any one who walks by the water-side when the air is still, especially towards morning or evening, may catch them by thousands. They have four wings, of a beautiful transparent membrane or film, spread out upon a fine net-work, of a substance very similar to horn. These fibres in the wings are called nerves, and the insects which have such wings are by naturalists called neuroptera, which is the Greek for " nerve-winged;" but these are not nerves. Nerves are understood to be organs of feeling or sensation; whereas, the fibres in the wings of those insects, merely support the membrane, just as the arm-frames of a windmill, or the masts and yards of a ship, support the canvas. The eggs of the day-flies are all laid in the water, and hatched there; so that they so far partake of the nature of the eggs, or race of fishes, that they "come into active life" in less heat than land eggs, and do not need any incubation, or sitting, of the mother. Each female lays from 700 to 800, and she does it in less time than it takes to speak the words. The eggs are expelled in two portions, one of each at a time; but so fast, that the eggs seem two little knotted rods; but they separate and sink to the bottom undiscovered by the keen eyes of the fish. The female instantly dies, exhausted by the effort, which appears to be the only labour of her winged state of existence; if, indeed, she is not captured in the midst of her maternal duty by some darting fish, or skimming swallow; both of which prey upon countless thousands of the day-flies. When the fly lights to deposit her eggs, she raises her wings over her back, till they are nearly touching; and, at the same time, she elevates the hinder part of her body, and erects the three seta, or bristles, in which it terminates. The wings and these bristles support her so that she barely touches the water, and so rises and falls with the ripple. The moment that the females are in a condition to lay their eggs, they hasten to the waters, so that they are not so often seen as the males, whose only occupation is to sport in the air, in the neighbourhood of the cradle of their future offspring. Of these the little day-fly, which is born after dawn, produces her eight hundred, and is dead and gone, before the first gleam of the sun breaks over the eastern hill! The following cut shows the natural position of the female fly on the water, and also the artificial fly made in imitation of it, for catching trout. That fly is most successful when it just touches the water, and when the line does not touch the water at all. The hook keeps it in the proper position, and, being under the fly, is not seen by the fish. How long the eggs remain in the water before they are hatched, is not known; but possibly it varies with the season and the weather. The larva or young, in their first state, not only burrow, or make holes in the mud, but live on it; they are consequently not so numerous in sand and gravel as in places that are fat and oozy. They are of the following form : In summer the ponds, brooks, and ditches, are full of these larvæ, and so are water tanks, cisterns, and butts, if they are not kept clean. They (with the larvæ of other speLarva of the Day-fly. cies (are among the chief summer impurities in the water at London and other places. If the water is not settled, they may come from the river; but the mud and sediment will enable them to breed in vessels, and the parent flies are every where. In themselves they are not unwholesome; and, as they are alive, they cannot render the water putrid. The mud that breeds them, is putrid; however, as it contains dead animal and vegetable matter; and thus, though the young flies are not in themselves unwholesome, they are accompanied by substances that are so. The larvæ remain in the mud two or three years, but in that they probably vary. The banks of rivers,. in some parts of the continent, are so full of them,. that to the depth of some inches, they actually contain more living matter than dead. They are all, however, lower than the surface of the water, and they breathe water, like fishes, by means of little gills on their sides. At length they attain their full size,, and change into nympha, which are not unlike the larvæ, only they have wings folded up under their coats. of which they still have two, and must get out of both before they appear as flies. The time that they remain nymphs is uncertain, and must vary, as the weather is one element in bringing about their last change. When that is to take place, they come out of the water, in vast numbers, and leave their old coats so abundant as to cover the water like a scum. After a little while they cast their inner coat; their wings stretch and become firm, and they mount into the air, to spend the hour, or the day, which is to them the whole period of air-breathing life. That period is short; but that is necessary: for, in some places, if they were to live long, there would absolutely not be room for them. They eat nothing, and so destroy nothing; but there are places in France and Germany where, if they lived but for a month on the wing, they would build up the air solid to the tops of the trees. As it is, they sometimes fall on the ground near the rivers in showers like snow, and the people collect them in heaps as manure to the fields. Altogether, they are curious and interesting little creatures; and those who wish to know more about them, will find a collection of the best accounts in the thirty-second part of CUVIER's Animal Kingdom, by GRIFFITHS. KNOWLEDGE, when wisdom is too weak to guide her, NATURAL MAGIC.* T, T, T, T, with their mouths outwards. T A Fig. 2 have occupied any other part of the room. When one of the spectators was requested by the exhibitor to propose some question, he did it by speaking into one of the trumpets at T. An appropriate answer was THESE letters, which, as we have before said, form then returned from all the the newly published number of the Family Library, trumpets, and the sound issued contain a comprehensive and highly interesting acwith sufficient intensity to be count of the circumstances, in nature and art, which heard by an ear applied to any are calculated to raise impressions of supernatural of them, and yet it was so weak that it appeared to come from agency. Accustomed to derive our knowledge of the a person of very diminutive size. Hence the sound was supmaterial world, chiefly from our faculties of sight and posed to come from an invisible girl, though the real speaker hearing, we are little aware of the extent to which was a full-grown woman. The invisible lady conversed in these faculties deceive us. The eye gives to objects different languages, sang beautifully, and made the most forms and colours different from those they usually lively and appropriate remarks on the persons in the room. wear; and the cheats of the fancy are so vivid as through which sound could be conveyed. The spectator "The ball M and its trumpets communicated with nothing not to be distinguishable from the real views of satisfied himself by examination that the ribands b, b, were sight. We are, too, constantly liable to be deceived real ribands, which concealed nothing, and which could by the imagination into the belief that we hear sounds convey no sound; and as he never conceived that the ordiwhich either do not exist at all, or are of a totally dif-nary piece of framework A B, could be of any other use than ferent nature from what we suppose them to be. Human ingenuity has availed itself of these illusions, and heightened their effect by a thousand contrivances, which, though used in former times to work on the superstitious belief of the world, now contribute only to the harmless amusement of a more enlightened age. Dr. JOHNSON has often been ignorantly sneered at, for his tendency to a belief in apparitions; but it is impossible to read this book without being convinced that that great man reasoned as soundly on this as on other subjects. He maintained that there were cases of apparitions, which were proved, according to the strictest laws of evidence. This opinion is fully confirmed by Dr. Brewster; who, however, explains away, upon scientific principles, unknown in the days of Dr. Johnson, many cases of the supposed appearances of ghosts which were well authenticated at the time. His belief therefore, under the circumstances, was in truth more philosophical than the general unbelief of other men in his day. its apparent one of supporting the sphere M, and defending it from the spectators, he was left in utter amazement respecting the origin of the sound, and his surprise was increased by the difference between the sounds which were uttered and those of ordinary speech. "Though the spectators were thus deceived by their own reasoning, yet the process of deception was a very simple one. In two of the horizontal railings, A, A, Fig. 2, opposite the trumpet mouths T, there was an opening communicating with a pipe or tube which went to the upright post B, and descending it, as shown at T A A, Fig. 3, went beneath the floor ff in the direction p, p, and entered the apartment N, where the invisible lady sat. On the side of the partition about h, there was a small hole, through which the lady saw what was going on in the exhibition room, and communications were no doubt made to her by signals from the person who attended the machine. When one of the spectators asked a question by speaking into one of the trumpets T, the sound was reflected from the mouth of the trumpet back to the opening at A, in the horizontal rail, Fig. 2, and was "The surprise of the auditors was greatly increased by the circumstance, that an answer was returned to questions put in a whisper, and also by the conviction that nobody but a person in the middle of the audience could observe the circumstances to which the invisible figure frequently adverted. This ingenious contrivance suggests to Dr. Brewster the following remarks on the subject, the deceits of the sense of hearing. sound, indeed, seemed to come in a different direction, and from a greater distance. "When sounds so mysterious in their origin are heard by persons disposed before-hand to a belief in the marvellous, their influence over the mind must be very powerful. An inquiry into their origin, if it is made at all, will be made more in the hope of confirming than of removing the original impression, and the unfortunate victim of his own fears will also be the willing dupe of his own judgment. We shall, in a subsequent Number, continue our extracts from this interesting work. CROPS IN ENGLAND. Although the performances of speaking heads were generally effected by the methods now described, yet there is reason to think that the ventriloquist sometimes presided at the exhibition, and deceived the audience by his extraordinary powers. There is no kind of deception more irresistible in its effects than that which arises fromthe uncer- THE quantity of corn raised per acre varies of course tainty with which we judge of the direction and distance according to the soil. The produce of wheat at some of sounds. Every person must have noticed how a sound spots amounts to 6 quarters, but in others to only 14 in their own ears is often mistaken for some loud noise mode-quarter per acre; but 2 quarters for wheat, 4 for rated by the distance from which it is supposed to come; barley, and 44 for oats may be considered a fair averand the sportsman must have frequently been surprised at the existence of musical sounds humming distantly in the age. The average weight of a bushel of good English wide heath, when it was only the wind sounding in the wheat is about 58lbs; in bad seasons it does not exbarrel of his gun. The great proportion of apparitions that ceed 56 or 57, but in good years it sometimes weighs haunt old castles and apartments associated with death, from 60 to 62, and in some places 64lbs. The bushel exist only in the sounds which accompany them. The ima- yields 43lbs. of flour, for standard wheaten bread ; or gination even of the boldest inmate of a place hallowed by 46lbs. for household bread. The culture of rye and superstition, will transfer some trifling sound near his own person to a direction and to a distance very different from buck wheat in England has of late years been much the truth; and the sound which otherwise might have diminished. The quantity of hops raised is very flucnothing peculiar, will derive another character from its tuating, but may be computed at an annual average of new situation. Spurning the idea of a supernatural origin, 20,000,000lbs. he determines to unmask the spectre, and grapple with it in its den. All the inmates of the house are found to be asleep -even the beasts are in their lair-there is not a breath of wind to ruffle the lake that reflects through the casement, the waning crescent of the night; and the massive walls in which he is inclosed, forbid the idea that he has been disturbed by the warping of panneling or the bending of partitions. His search is vain; and he remains master of his own secret, till he has another opportunity of investigation. The same sound again disturbs him, and, modified probably by his own position at the time, it may perhaps appear to come in a direction slightly different from the last. His searches are resumed, and he is again disappointed. If this incident should occur night after night with the same result; if the sound should appear to depend upon his own motions, or be any how associated with himself, with his present feelings, or with his past history, his personal courage will give way, a superstitious dread, at which he himself perhaps laughs, will seize his mind, and he will rather believe that the sounds have a supernatural origin, than that they could continue to issue from a spot where he knows there is no natural cause for their production. "I have had occasion to have personal knowledge of a case much stronger than that which has now been put. Á gentleman, devoid of all superstitious feelings, and living in a house free from any gloomy associations, heard night after night in his bed-room a singular noise, unlike any ordinary sound to which he was accustomed. He had slept in the same room for years without hearing it, and he attributed it at first to some change of circumstances in the roof or in the walls of the room; but after the strictest examination no cause could be found for it. It occurred only once in the night; it was heard almost every night, with few interruptions. It was over in an instant, and it never took place till after the gentleman had gone to bed. It was always distinctly heard by his companion, to whose time of going to bed it had no relation. It depended on the gentleman alone, and it followed him into another apartment with another bed, on the opposite side of the house. Accustomed to such investigations, he made the most diligent but fruitless search into its cause. The consideration that the sound had a special reference to him alone, operated upon his imagination, and he did not scruple to acknowledge that the mysterious sound always produced a superstitious feeling at the moment. Many months afterwards it was found that the sound arose from the partial opening of the door of a wardrobe which was within a few feet of the gentleman's head, and which had been taken into the other apartment. This wardrobe was almost always opened before he retired to bed, and the door being a little too tight, it gradually forced itself open with a sort of dull sound, resembling the note of a drum. As the door had only started half an inch out of its place, its change never attracted attention. The CHOLERA. The wrath of God rides on the rushing gales, One life one day;-ah! never then neglect By the Author of THE NATURAL SON. INFANT EDUCATION. It has been supposed that Infant Schools have a tendency to produce a too early separation of children from their parents-weakening, on the one side, the due sense of parental care, and hindering, on the other, the growth of natural affection. It will be useful to examine practically the weight of this objection. For this purpose, let us place before us the case of a mother who puts her child to an Infant School, and see what occurs. The mother has to bring the child to the school, neat and clean, by nine in the morning. There she leaves it till twelve, when she takes it home to dinner. At two the child is brought back to the school, where it remains, in summer, till five, in winter, till four, when it again returns to the mother's care. Parents who cannot conveniently take their children home to dinner, are permitted to leave their food with them in the morning, and the children are allowed to remain in the school. It will be seen, therefore, that the actual amount from five to eight hours per day. of separation varies, according to the respective cases, Under what circumstances does this separation take place? The mother has her daily labour of one kind or other to perform. During those hours she is * glad to be relieved from the charge of her child. She knows she has left it in a safe place; she perceives that the child likes the school, because it always goes willingly; she sees an improvement in the habits and temper of her child; she finds it easier to manage; fewer conflicts arise between them; she parts with it in the morning with satisfaction; she sees it come home with pleasure. Is there any thing in this to weaken the bonds of natural affection? Now let us see what happens where Infant Schools are not found. The mother has her daily task to encounter, sometimes at home, sometimes abroad. The child is in her way; she does what she can to amuse it; but she finds it a hard matter to attend to her work and her child too: she lets it run out into the alley or street in which she lives; the child gets into some trouble or difficulty, which vexes and irritates the mother; or, at best, it comes home covered with dirt, and any thing but the better for the manner in which it has been passing its time. When the mother does not follow this plan, she joins with a few neighbours (and this particularly occurs in the case of those who have out-door work) in hiring a girl, who, for six-pence a-week, takes charge of as many children as can be crowded together into a small room, her duty being to keep the door shut and the children out of harm. In this, however, she is not always successful. An eminent medical practitioner stated, when infant schools were first established, that he would support them, if for no other reason, to prevent the dreadful accidents that are continually happening from fire to the children of the working classes. Who that duly considers the subject can remain under the impression, that such a limited separation as that which is effected by Infant Schools between parent and child, can be injurious to either one party or the other? In what condition of life is it expected that parents are to spend every hour of the day in the society of their children? And with respect to the great mass of the population in crowded cities, how is it possible for them to do it? We may regret that the state of things is not otherwise; we may earnestly desire that less of labour might suffice to satisfy earthly wants; but, until that time shall arrive, our business is to deal with things as they are, and to seek, by every wise and good method, to mend them. An objection has been taken to some Infant Schools, and with reason;-that the system followed in them is not sufficiently simple. This is a mistake which ought to be avoided. It gives a fanciful character to that which is in reality solid and substantial. There is room enough for discipline and instruction (the first being by far the most important of the two in these institutions) without teaching trigonometry, or the signs of the Zodiac. At the largest school in London, the " City of London Infant School," in Liverpool Buildings, nothing is attempted that can not be made intelligible to the capacities of the children. In cases of sickness, the mothers state that the children's greatest grief is, that they cannot get to the school. TO THE RAINBOW. BY T. CAMPBELL. Triumphal arch, that fill'st the sky, To teach me what thou art- Betwixt the earth and heaven. When Science from Creation's face To cold material laws. And yet, fair bow, no fabling dreams, When o'er the green undeluged earth, And when its yellow lustre smiled Nor ever shall the Muse's eye Be still the poet's theme. O'er mountain, tower, and town, As young thy beauties seem, Heaven still rebuilds thy span, LINES IN PRAISE OF A GOOSE-QUILL, BY BISHOP ATTERBURY. The words of the wise man thus preach to us all, Despise not the worth of those things that are small. THE quill of the goose is a very slight thing, THE BIRTH-PLACE OF LOCKE. which has made it the matter of duty and of a profession, but a man may lead the continual pursuit of JOHN LOCKE was born at Wrington, in Somerset-it without loathing and satiety. The same shop and shire, in a house adjoining the churchyard, of which we give the following sketch. It is now divided View of the house in which Locke was born. "In their own quiet glade should sleep And wild flower wreaths from side to side What ruthless time has wrought." The entry of Locke's baptism still remains in the Parish Register of Wrington. It is as follows: Anno Dñi 1637, Julie 16. John the sonne of Jeremy Locke & Elizabeth his wife. He died in the year 1704, aged 73. Locke was to the philosophy of mind what Newton was to the philosophy of matter. His opinions at the time were mistaken, and it was thought that they led to the overthrow of Christianity. Later times have shewn that they confirm the truth of religion; and, indeed, Locke was himself a convinced Christian, and author of a commentary on St. Paul's Epistles, and a Common-Place Book to the Bible. The last years of his life were spent in the study of the Holy Scriptures. trade that employs a man in his youth, employs him also in his age. Every morning he rises fresh to his hammer and anvil; he passes the day singing; custom has naturalized his labour to him; his shop is his element, and he cannot with any enjoyment of himself live out of it. Johnson thought the happiest life was that of a man of business, with some literary pursuits for amusement; and that in general no one could be virtuous or happy, that was not completely employed. "Be not solitary, be not idle," is the conclusion of BURTON'S Anatomy of Melancholy. THE OTTER. WE passed to my surprise a row of no less then nine or ten large and very beautiful otters, tethered with straw collars, and long strings, to bamboo stakes on the bank. Some were swimming about at the full extent of their strings, or lying half in and half out of the water; others were rolling themselves in the sun on the sand-banks, uttering a shrill whistling noise as if in play. I was told that most of the fishermen in this neighbourhood kept one or more of these animals, who were almost as tame as dogs, and of great use in fishing, sometimes driving the shoals into the nets, sometimes bringing out the larger fish with their teeth. I was much pleased and interested with the sight. JOHN WILLIAM PARKER, 445, (WEST) STRAND. And by the Publisher's Agents in the following places :- Aberdeen... THE PLEASURE OF AMUSEMENT COMPARED WITH .Swinborne & Co. Wilkins and Son. Exeter.... Hull Lancashire and Cheshire Leeds Leicester. Liverpool Bancks and Co. .Robinson. ..Combe. Newcastle-on-Tyne, Finlay & Charl ..Hughes. ton; Empson. Nottingham Wright Oxford .Slatter. C. RICHARDS, Printer, 100, St. Martin's Lane, Charing Cross |