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1. Obelisks in the Nile Delta. 3 FnovsTONE Lighthouse. 5. Stalactite Cavern of Adelsberg. 
 
 2. Volcano in the Sandwich Islands. <, Waterspouts at Sea. 6. Middle Fall of Niagara. 
 
 7. l.f>RD Rosse's Telescope. 8. The Crbmlin Viaduct. 
 
%\9^l, 
 
 THE 
 
 WORLD OF WONDERS; 
 
 A RECORD OF 
 
 Things Wonderful in Nature, Science, and Art. 
 
 ' I WOULD ENTREAT THY COMPANY 
 
 To SEE THE Wonders of the World." 
 
 Two Gentlemen of Verona. 
 
 CASSELL, FETTER & GALPIN 
 
 LONDON, PARIS &- NEW YORK. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 
 A. 
 
 iEolian Lyre, Natural 
 
 Aerial Combats 
 Aged and Curious Trees... 103, 
 Air Hammer and Steam Ham- 
 mer ... 
 
 Alexandrian Library 
 
 Alps, Wonders of the... 
 Animalcules ... ... 311, 
 
 Animal Life, WoiNders of : 
 Alligators, A Lake of 
 Animal poisoning itself by its 
 Town Virus .. 
 
 Ant Life, Wonders of 230, 
 
 Ants, White 
 
 Ass, Singular Taste of an ... 
 
 Beetles, Muscular Power in 
 
 Crab, The Cocoa-Nut 
 
 Crabs Afoulting 
 
 Elephants, Sleep of the 
 
 Elephants, White 
 
 Flying Fox 
 
 Forms of Animal Life 
 
 Gorilla, The... 
 
 Horses, Strange 
 
 Magpie, Amusement of a ... 
 
 Mantis 
 
 Marine Vermin 
 
 Marsupials, Pouch of 
 
 Migrations of Insects 
 
 Monkeys, White 
 
 Natural Clothing of Ani- 
 mals 
 
 Pheasant, Maternal Instinct 
 of a 
 
 Rabbits, Fecundity of 
 
 Raven, Sagacity of a 
 
 Rhinoceros, Two-Homed ... 
 
 Seals, Sense of Hearing in... 
 
 Serpents Changed into Rods 
 
 Solar Eclipse on Animals, 
 Influence of 
 
 Spider Silk 
 
 IS4 
 
 62 
 
 150 
 
 91 
 III 
 
 257 
 335 
 
 142 
 
 282 
 241 
 129 
 27 
 ■58 
 295 
 282 
 
 283 
 346 
 413 
 412 
 
 275 
 27 
 240 
 412 
 282 
 283 
 
 295 
 230 
 
 240 
 
 91 
 143 
 158 
 
 295 
 240 
 230 
 
 27 
 323 
 
 Spider, Taming a .. 
 
 Spiders in Ceylon .. 
 
 Tortoi.se, Gigantic .. 
 
 Trilobite 
 
 White Elephants .. 
 
 Wolf, Tame 
 
 Worm, Wonderful .. 
 
 pag:i 
 ... 91 
 
 ... 274 
 ,.. 274 
 ,.. 275 
 ... 346 
 ... 28 
 •• 323 
 
 Ani.vial Sagacity, Wonders 
 OF : — . 
 Camel's Revenge ... ... 200 
 
 Cats, Wonderful 46 
 
 Counterfeiting of Death by 
 
 Insects 182 
 
 Dog, An Intelligent ... 46 
 
 riogs 39 
 
 Elephants 211 
 
 Fox, Cunning of a 182 
 
 Horse, Intelligence in the ... 235 
 Martin, Instinct of the ... 200 
 Newfoundland Dog, A Saga- 
 cious 182 
 
 Pointer's Contempt 200 
 
 War Horses 46 
 
 Animals, Extinct : — 
 
 Deer, Great Irish 225 
 
 Dinomis and Epiornis ... 207 
 
 Dinotherium 177 
 
 Ichthyosaurus and Plesio- 
 saurus ... ... ... 25c 
 
 Mammoth ... ... ... 23-! 
 
 Antiquarian Curiosities : — 
 Arch, Invention of the ... 174 
 Bee-keeping, Antiquity of ... 342 
 Blind Man's Buff, Origin of 315 
 Cannon, Our Ancestors' ... 84 
 Chronometer, The First 
 Marine ... ... ... j^o 
 
 Draughts and Chess in An- 
 cient Egypt 342 
 
 High Pews, Origin of ... 315 
 Horse Shoe, Order of the ... 315 
 Inheritance, Curious Custom 
 relating to 342 
 
 417 
 
 PAGt 
 
 NurseryRhymes, Antiquity of 143 
 Ships, Our Ancestors' ... 252 
 
 Stale Loaf, A very 315 
 
 Sirloin Table, The 315 
 
 Sun Dial, Invention of the... 343 
 Superstition, Curious An- 
 cient 378 
 
 Tobacco into England, Intro- 
 duction of 378 
 
 Antipathy and Sympathy ... 47 
 A.STRONOMICAL Wonders :— 
 Calculation, Curious ... 103 
 
 Comet, Passage of the Earth 
 
 through the Tail of a ...103 
 Comets ... ... ... ,.Q 
 
 Gas in the Heavens, Globe of 384 
 
 Stars, Ball of 272 
 
 Stars from Earth, Distance of 211 
 Stars, Eccentric Movement 
 
 of Fixed 290 
 
 Sun, Spots on the 323 
 
 Atmosphere, Wonders of :— 
 Air Currents, Power of ... 355 
 
 Air, Spectres of the 371 
 
 Aurora Borealis 262 
 
 Brocken, Spectre of the ... 52 
 
 Cold, Severe 355 
 
 Dragons, Fiery 206 
 
 Frost, Effects of 355 
 
 Mirage, The 52 
 
 Rain, Black 87 
 
 Snow in the Ball-room ... 87 
 
 Snow, Red 87 
 
 Suns, Mock ... ... ... 12 
 
 Ulloa's Circle ... ... 12 
 
 Australian Explorers 147 
 
 Avalanches ... ... ,., 270 
 
 B. 
 
 Bank Notes, Manufacture of... 302 
 
 Barbette, The Moncrieff ... 62 
 
 Bayeux Tapestry 284 
 
 Beggars' Square at Canton ... 191 
 
 Beils go 
 
iv 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Birds, Wonderful : — 
 
 Butter Bird I7S 
 
 Dodo 79 
 
 Frigate Bird 221 
 
 Penguin 3^9 
 
 Talking Birds 395 
 
 Tribunals of Rooks 250 
 
 Births, Wonderful 6 
 
 Bible, MSS. of 115 
 
 Black Death 5° 
 
 Blunders in Art 250 
 
 Boiling Broth in the Andes ... 228 
 Bones, Human and Animal ... 215 
 
 Bore, The 267 
 
 Box Tunnel 298 
 
 Breathing Fire 347 
 
 Brick Buildings Ancient ... 382 
 Bricks, and extraordinary Brick 
 
 Buildings 35^ 
 
 Bricks, Egyptian 81 
 
 Buccaneers 74 
 
 Buildings of the Ancient 
 World :-- 
 
 Coliseum 132 
 
 Colossus of Rhodes no 
 
 Mausoleum 261 
 
 Nero's Golden House ... 119 
 Pharos of Alexandria ... 226 
 
 Pyramids ... ... ... 17 
 
 Statue of Jupiter Olympius 290 
 
 Stonehenge 156 
 
 Temple of Diana of the 
 
 Ephesians 234 
 
 Trajan's Column iSo 
 
 Uriconium ... ... ... 100 
 
 Burial Alive 40J 
 
 c. 
 
 Calculations, Curious : — 
 Air, Consumption of, in 
 Activity and Repose ... 326 
 
 Journey to the Sun 103 
 
 Labour, Value of ... ... 326 
 
 Money, Interest on... ... 326 
 
 Canning, Elizabeth, Story of ...114 
 Cannon, our Ancestors' 84 
 
 Cave, Fingal's... ... , 141 
 
 Caves ;44 
 
 Character, Curiosities of:^ 
 Business, A Man of ... 335 
 
 Methodical Man 335 
 
 Perfection of Politeness ... 335 
 
 ChattertoH, Story of 55 
 
 Chevalier d'Eon, Story of .. 23 
 Chinese Women, Small Feet of 259 
 Cirknitz, Lake of ... ... 90 
 
 Clothing, Fire-proof ... ... 262 
 
 Coffee, Cunosities of 379 
 
 Cold of Canada 396 
 
 PAGE 1 
 
 I 
 
 AGE 
 
 Colorado 
 
 209 
 
 Eel, Electrical 
 
 196 
 
 Colours, Effect of Climate on 
 
 190 
 
 Electricity, Wonders of :- 
 
 - 
 
 Combats, Aerial 
 
 62 
 
 Induction Coil 
 
 295 
 
 Constantinople, Palace of 
 
 
 The Electro-Magnet... 2 
 
 > 3' 
 
 Waters at 
 
 158 
 
 Electricity a Motive Power 
 
 248 
 
 Construction, Wonders of 
 
 : — 
 
 Electric Telegraph : — 
 
 
 Alhambra 
 
 87 
 
 Needle Instrument ... 
 
 71 
 
 Caves of Elephanta 
 
 293 
 
 Recording Signals ... 
 
 47 
 
 Colossal Statue of Bavaria... 
 
 367 
 
 Emotion, Effects of : — 
 
 
 Eddystone Lighthouse 
 
 166 
 
 Death from Joy 
 
 2S0 
 
 Ehrenbreitstein 
 
 126 
 
 Hair Whitened by Grief ... 
 
 280 
 
 Escurial 
 
 149 
 
 Idiotcy produced by Emotion 
 
 135 
 
 Model of the Earth 
 
 274 
 
 Engineering : — 
 
 
 Pisa, Leaning Tower of ... 
 
 61 
 
 Atlantic Telegraph 
 
 391 
 
 Porcelain Tower of Nankin 
 
 409 
 
 Atmospheric Railway 
 
 343 
 
 St. Mark's at Venice 
 
 309 
 
 Expanding Model of a Man 
 
 130 
 
 Silver Fountain, Gigantic ... 
 
 247 
 
 Great Eastern 
 
 102 
 
 Strasburg, Great Clock at ... 
 
 15 
 
 Hydraulic Press 
 
 183 
 
 Copper 
 
 275 
 
 Mountain Railways 
 
 ■36 
 
 Coral Anim.als 
 
 76 
 
 Pneumatic Despatch 
 
 374 
 
 Coral Formations 
 
 145 
 
 Railways, Progress of 
 
 403 
 
 Coronation Stone at Kingston 
 
 196 
 
 Steam-building 
 
 403 
 
 Courage, Wonders of : — 
 
 
 Tunnel through Mont Cenis 
 
 116 
 
 Endurance of Physical Pain 
 
 210 
 
 Escape, A Wonderful ... 
 
 342 
 
 Extraordinary Coolness under 
 
 Escapes of MSS. 
 
 237 
 
 Fire 
 
 210 
 
 Esquimaux Life, Curiosities of 
 
 375 
 
 Fortitude, A Father's 
 
 210 
 
 Exhalations, Poisonous 
 
 301 
 
 Hartley's Coolness at Gib 
 
 
 
 
 raltar 
 
 90 
 
 F. 
 
 
 Winkelried at Sempach 
 
 97 
 
 Fahlun, Miner's Corpse at .. 
 
 75 
 
 Crowns 
 
 306 
 
 Fakirs ... 
 
 161 
 
 Crown, Attempt to Steal the 
 
 260 
 
 Fireballs 
 
 68 
 
 Customs, Curious : — 
 
 
 Fire of London 
 
 330 
 
 Beating the Bounds 
 
 35 
 
 Fire, Power of Resisting 
 
 127 
 
 The Freedom of Alnwick .. 
 
 223 
 
 I'lre Syringe ... 
 
 204 
 
 The Grace Cup 
 
 223 
 
 Fish, Wonderful:— 
 
 
 Cyclones 
 
 . 299 
 
 Catfish, Double 
 
 96 
 
 
 
 Change of Colour in 
 
 242 
 
 D. 
 
 
 Curious Fishes 
 
 410 
 
 De.id Sea 
 
 • 349 
 
 Flying-Fish 
 
 168 
 
 Delusion, Optical 
 
 II 
 
 Fishing-Frog 
 
 125 
 
 Devoe, Richard, Story of 
 
 • 67 
 
 MoUusca or Musical Fish .. 
 
 156 
 
 Diamond Mill 
 
 . 307 
 
 Pike, Gratitude in ... 
 
 172 
 
 Diamond-Washing in Brazil .. 
 
 . 1S6 
 
 Pilot-Fish 
 
 242 
 
 Diamonds, Stories of : — 
 
 
 Sea Porcupines 
 
 397 
 
 Koh-i-noor 
 
 . 26 
 
 Shooting-Fish 
 
 242 
 
 Pitt Diamond 
 
 . 2C8 
 
 Sword-Fish ... 
 
 144 
 
 Sancy Diamond 
 
 . 19S 
 
 Tench, Voice of 
 
 172 
 
 Digestion, Wonders of 
 
 • '3 
 
 Travelling Fish 
 
 377 
 
 Dissection of the Bible 
 
   27 
 
 Whale, Power of the 
 
 96 
 
 Divining Rod 
 
 . 283 
 
 Fleas, Educated 
 
 • 131 
 
 "Domesday Book" 
 
 • 237 
 
 Floating Islands 
 
 . 363 
 
 Dreamland, Wonders of 
 
   42 
 
 Flying Machines 
 
 Food and Animal Energy 
 
 . 265 
 
 E. 
 
 
 Connection between 
 
 • 359 
 
 E.arth Eaters ... 
 
   155 
 
 Fossil, E.arliest... 
 
 • '31 
 
 Earthquakes 
 
 • (5 
 
 Frost, Effects of 
 
 . So 
 
 Echoes 
 
   322 
 
 Frost, Preservative Properties c 
 
 f 80 
 
 Eggs, Gigantic 
 
 . 2;o 
 
 Frosts, Remarkable ... 
 
 . 22 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Geological Wonders: — 
 
 Coal 279 
 
 Chalk 219 
 
 Inside of the World... ... 303 
 
 Sand, a Grahi of ... ■•■179 
 
 Terraces ... 282 
 
 Umbrella Stones ... ... 165 
 
 Geysers ... 44 
 
 Glaciers 108 
 
 Glass Making: — 
 
 Bohemian Glass ... ... 30S 
 
 Curiosities of Glass-making 190 
 Glass-blowing Extraordinary 142 
 Venetian Glass 202 
 
 Goat, Dexterity of a no 
 
 H. 
 
 Heat, Application of 
 
 Heat, Latent ... 
 
 Heat, Power of Enduring ex- 
 treme 
 
 Heidelberg, the Great Tun of 
 Highwaymen, Curious Stories 
 
 of 
 
 He.ids, Speaking 
 
 Horizontorium... 
 
 Horology, Wonders of 
 
 Horse, Arabian 
 
 Human Body, Wonders of 30, 
 
 Humanity, Wonders of: — 
 
 Cannibalism 
 
 Clarke, John, the Postu:-e 
 Maker 
 
 Daniel Lambert 
 
 Dwarfs 
 
 Force of the Muscles 
 
 Giants 
 
 H.aystack, Lady of the 
 
 Human Spiders 
 
 Man with the Iron Mask ... 
 
 Men with Tails 
 
 Queen of the Gipsies 
 
 Restoration of Animal Life 
 
 Skeleton, the Living 
 
 Spotted Doy 
 
 Water, a Man who lived 
 Twenty Days on 
 
 Wild Man in London 
 
 I. 
 Ice, Leeches in 
 Identity discovered by Flash of 
 
 Gunpowder ... 
 Imagination, Wonderful Effects 
 
 of 
 
 Impostors: — 
 
 Joanna Southcott 
 
 Impostors, Wonderful 
 
 195 
 
 214 
 
 166 
 73 
 
 60 
 137 
 
 57 
 258 
 207 
 348 
 
 82 
 
 30 
 
 387 
 
 30 
 
 33 
 
 134 
 
 402 
 
 41 
 206 
 
 99 
 82 
 
 19 
 .•50 
 
 80 
 
 183 
 
 118 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Inscription, Wonderful ... 100 
 
 I.NSECTS: — 
 
 Butterflies ... 337 
 
 Boring Insects ... ... 369 
 
 Destructive Power of Worms 170 
 
 Gadflies 298 
 
 Garden Spider ... ... 146 
 
 Larvoe, Voracity of ... ... 67 
 
 Locusts ... ... ... 263 
 
 Luminous Insects ... ... 7 
 
 Parasites ... ... 367, 407 
 
 Wasps ... ... ... 356' 
 
 Wonders of Insect Life 287,352 
 Introduction ... ... ... i 
 
 Invisible Girl 395 
 
 Jugglers, Indian 
 
 324 
 
 Lake Dwellings 
 
 94 
 
 Lake, Pitch, of Trinidad 
 
 113 
 
 Land Slips and Mountain 
 
 
 Slips 
 
 123 
 
 Lawsuit, A Wonderful 
 
 402 
 
 Leeches attacking Travellers... 
 
 178 
 
 Life, A Wonder of 
 
 28 
 
 Light, Wonders of, 151, 175, 
 
 191, 
 
 201 
 
 
 Literary Wonders: — 
 
 
 Book Fish 
 
 7 
 
 Early MSS. of the Bible ... 
 
 115 
 
 Minute Writing 
 
 7 
 
 Value of in Ancient Times... 
 
 H5 
 
 Locks and Keys 
 
 300 
 
 M. 
 
 Mania, Tulip 
 
 Mascaret, the ... 
 
 Massacre of St. Bartholo- 
 mew ... 
 
 Mechanism : — 
 
 Automata 50, 59, 222 
 
 Calculating Machine 
 Coach, A Fairy 
 Expanding Model of a Man 
 Jewellery, Wonderful 
 Lace Mechanism 
 Magneto-Electric Light 
 Measuring Machines, Whit- 
 worth's ... ... ... 99 
 
 Minute Workmanship ... 163 
 Table-clock ... ... ... 50 
 
 Printing ... ... ... 267 
 
 Speaking Machine ... ... 50 
 
 Steam-Engine ... ... 266 
 
 Stereoscope ... ... ... 267 
 
 Thin Sheets of Iron 98 
 
 123 
 132 
 
 394 
 
 266 
 99 
 ■3° 
 131 
 266 
 267 
 
 Medical Wonders : — 
 
 Disorder, A Wondrous ... 375 
 Italy, Medicine in, Two 
 
 Hundred Years Ago ... 390 
 Lost Voice, Remarkable 
 Recovery of ... ... 135 
 
 Poison, Wonders of ... 39S 
 
 St. Vitus's Dance ... ... 170 
 
 Microscope, Wonders of : — • 
 Microscope, The Most Per- 
 fect 78 
 
 Microscopic Results ... 78 
 
 Mind, Wonders of :— 
 
 Ileinecker's Precocity ... 4 
 
 Memory, Wonderful ... 95 
 
 Mezzofanti, Memory of ... 4 
 
 Monetary Wonders ... ... 71 
 
 Muscular Exertion, Feats of... 5 
 Musicians, Precocity of :— 
 
 Crotch, William 51 
 
 Mozart 51 
 
 Wesley, Charles ... ... 5'' 
 
 N. 
 
 Napoleon's March to Moscow 186 
 Natural History : — • 
 
 Animal Life at great depth in 
 
 the Sea 318 
 
 Ape's Nest 318 
 
 The Aye- Aye 20 
 
 Cockatoo, A Wonderful ... 383 
 
 Crows, Filial Piety of ... 12 
 
 Elephant 60 
 
 Dodo 79 
 
 Fecundity of Life in the Sea 79 
 
 Floating Snail, A Wonderful 318 
 Hunter's Collection of Ani- 
 
 m.als ... ... ... II 
 
 Moles, Voracity of 384 
 
 Musical Mice 100 
 
 Power of the Whale ... 96 
 Recognition of Voice be- 
 tween Ewe and Lamb ... 100 
 
 Spider's Web 186 
 
 Tarantula Spider 227 
 
 Variety of Birds in West 
 
 Africa 383 
 
 Waterton, Story of 318 
 
 Niagara, Stoppage of the Falls 
 
 of 391 
 
 Nile, Rising of 105 
 
 Numbers, Wonderful... 19, 54, 58 
 
 Numeral Figures, Origin of ... 75 
 
 O. 
 Ockan, Wonders of : — 
 
 Barnacles ... ... ... 385 
 
 Deep Sea Sounding ... 58 
 
 Frozen Sea, A ... ... 69 
 
VI 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Ocean, Wonders oY[conlinued): — 
 
 Gulf Stream 370 
 
 Maelstrom ... ... ... 254 
 
 Nautilus 119 
 
 Pearl Fisheries 193 
 
 Portuguese Man-of- War ... 119 
 
 Saltness of the Sea 355 
 
 Sargasso Sea 35 
 
 Sea Cucumbers 304 
 
 Sea Dust ... ... ... 31 
 
 Sea Nettles 49 
 
 Sponge ... ... ... 215 
 
 Opium Eating ... ... ... 313 
 
 Orrery ... ... ... ... 122 
 
 Palissy, the Potter 278 
 
 Panics 378 
 
 Peruvian Mummies 415 
 
 Peter Botte Mountain 169 
 
 Photography, Wonders of S2, 106 
 
 Pictures in Stones ... ... 354 
 
 Pilgrims Bathing in Jordan ... 212 
 Poisoning, Curiosities of:- 
 
 Italian Poisoners ... ... 202 
 
 Poisoning with Thumb-nail 230 
 
 Pompeians, the Disinterred ... 179 
 
 Prejudice, a Wonder of ... 2i8 
 
 Pride, a Wonder of ... ... 254 
 
 Prize Vases from Athens ... 411 
 
 Pyramid, the Second ... ... 287 
 
 R. 
 
 Rainfalls, Heavy, and their 
 
 Causes 285 
 
 Relationship, a Wonder of ... 6 
 
 Relics, Wonderful: — 
 
 Earliest known Fossil ... 131 
 
 Harp of Brian Boru... ... 107 
 
 Mummies 360 
 
 The Oldest Human Relic in 
 
 the World 81 
 
 Prices given for ... ... 107 
 
 Rivers, Wonderful ... 347, 380 
 
 Rotation 305 
 
 Salinas of Iviza 259 
 
 Salt Mines of Cracow... ... 332 
 
 Sahara, The ... ... ... 404 
 
 Savage Life, Curiosities 
 OF: — 
 
 Amazons of Dahomey ... 386 
 Bee Hunting by Natives of 
 
 New South Wales ... 363 
 
 Ceremony among Savages ... 199 
 Esquimaux Daring ... ... 386 
 
 Tahitans, Ingenuity of ... 362 
 Science, Wonders of: — 
 
 Burning Lenses and Mirrors 366 
 
 D.anger of Chemical Experi- 
 ments ... ... ... 398 
 
 Density of Bodies at Different 
 
 Depths 302 
 
 Dew-fall of a Year 398 
 
 Diffusion of Powerful Odours 278 
 Divisibilityof a Grainof Gold 331 
 Earth's Centre, The ... 331 
 
 Gun-cotton ... ... ... 302 
 
 Human Electricity ... ... 398 
 
 Life-Preserving Apparatus... 398 
 
 Light of the Sun 331 
 
 Magnesium Light ... ... 34G 
 
 Magnetic Mountain... ... 279 
 
 Motion of Waves ... ... 331 
 
 Nitro-glycerine ... ... 347 
 
 Phosphorus first made in 
 England ... ... ... 407 
 
 Plymouth Breakwater ... 346 
 Prince Rupert's Drops ... 382 
 Reflection of Sound ... 347 
 
 Sensitive Flames ... ... 250 
 
 Spectrum Analysis ... ... 231 
 
 Speed of Sound ... ... 346 
 
 Spontaneous Combustion ... 331 
 Telescope, Lord Rosse's ... 415 
 
 Velocity of Light 279 
 
 Vibrations of the Air ... 331 
 
 Wonders Revealed by 
 Modern Science ... ... 302 
 
 Shipwrecks: — 
 
 " Birkenhead," Loss of ... 86 
 
 " Kent," Loss of 291 
 
 Showers, Wonderful: — 
 
 Fish, Showers of ... 43, 44 
 Toads and Ice, Showers of... 243 
 Sky, Wonders of the: — 
 
 Afterglow in Egypt 254 
 
 Extraordinary Light ... 254 
 
 Lunar Phenomenon... ... 254 
 
 Table-cloth at the Cape ... 254 
 Sleepers, Extraordinary 122, 220 
 Snake Charmers ... ... 195 
 
 Snow, Wonders of ... ... 63 
 
 Somnambulism ... ... 139 
 
 Sounding Stones and Speaking 
 
 Heads 137 
 
 Sounds Audible in the Night... 294 
 Sound Forms ... ... ... 273 
 
 Sound, Power of ... ... 359 
 
 Speaking Machines ... 50, 334 
 Speaking Trumpet ... ... 235 
 
 Wonderful Echoes ... ... 414 
 
 Statistics, Curious: — 
 
 Arithmetic Hooks, Number of 67 
 Climate in Siberia ... ... 67 
 
 London Charities ... ... 67 
 
 Picture-dealing, Curio iities of HI 
 Railway Mania in 1845 ... HI 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Size of Atlantic Waves ... 67 
 Wealth of Tippoo Sultan... 1 1 1 
 
 Steam Power, Curiosities of: — 
 Glass Blowing Extraordinary 142 
 Steam and Human Body 
 Compared... 142 
 
 Superstition, Wonders of: — 
 Elixir of Life ... ... 339 
 
 Flying Dutchman ... ... 26 
 
 Philosopher's Stone... ... 78 
 
 Proofs of Guilt in Super- 
 stitious Ages ... ... 70 
 
 Temperature, Wonders of ... 227 
 Thames, A Whale Caught in... 22 
 
 Thugs 238 
 
 Thunder 319 
 
 Throne of the Shahs of Persia 289 
 
 Tide, A Wonderful 151 
 
 Torture ... 364 
 
 Trade Winds 163 
 
 Trees, Aged and Curious 103, 150 
 
 V. 
 
 Vase, Portland, Story of ... 171 
 Vegetation : — 
 
 Banyan Tree ... ... 399 
 
 Barometz, or Tartarian Lamb 269 
 
 Caoutchouc ... ... ... 271 
 
 Castle Trees of South Africa 178 
 
 Coal Forest 316 
 
 Compass Plant 292 
 
 Deadly Plant ... ... 139 
 
 Dioncea ... ... ... 204 
 
 Dragon Tree ... ... 401 
 
 Eve's Apple Tree ... ... 126 
 
 Floating Island on Derwent- 
 
 water 38 
 
 Food of Plants ... ... 393 
 
 Germination of Seed Long 
 
 Buried 38 
 
 Gigantic Trees of California 271 
 
 Green Rose ... ... ... 38 
 
 Hunger Plant ... ... 140 
 
 Hygrometers, Natural ... 292 
 
 Itch-Wood Tree 388 
 
 Ivory Plant ... 281 
 
 Lattice Plant ... ... 329 
 
 Lemon Grass of Ceylon ... 17S 
 
 lAiminous Vegetation 46, 188 
 
 Minute Plants 249 
 
 Mountain Cabbage Tree ... 162 
 Oldest Rose Tree in the 
 
 World 127 
 
 Radlesia 159 
 
 Rice Paper Plant 297 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Seeds of Mushrooms and 
 
 Toadstools 361 
 
 Snake Nut 163 
 
 Tenacity of Vegetable Life... 102 
 The Smallest Flowering 
 
 Plant 345 
 
 Thistles of the Pampas ... 39 
 Toadstools, Resistless Force 
 
 of Growing ... ... yzS 
 
 Trees, Falling in Primeval 
 
 Forests ... ... ... 39 
 
 Trees struck by Lightning... 271 
 
 Tropical Vegetation ... 92 
 
 Upas Tree 223 
 
 Vegetables, Wonderful 
 
 Weed, a Wonderful 
 
 Welwitschia ... 
 
 Yeast, a Plant 
 
 Vehmgerichte 
 
 Vendetta 
 
 Volcanoes 
 
 W. 
 
 Watch found in a Shark 
 
 Water: — 
 
 Diversity of Colour in 
 Expansive Power of 
 The Heaviest 
 
 25 
 121 
 
 173 
 
 40 
 
 246 
 
 307 
 
 .188, 217, 242, 321 
 
 375 
 
 366 
 
 339 
 320 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Waterfalls 
 
 
 236 
 
 Waterspouts ... 
 
 
 229 
 
 Wells and Hot Springs 
 
 
 353 
 
 Wind, Effects of Violent 
 
 ... 
 
 240 
 
 Women, Wonderful:— 
 
 
 
 Davis, Christiana ... 
 
 
 9 
 
 Grace Darling 
 
 
 153 
 
 Maidservant, Heroism 
 
 of a 
 
 30 
 
 The Female Pirates... 
 
 
 37 
 
 Wood-carving by New 
 
 Zea- 
 
 
 landers 
 
 
 212 
 
 Yard-measure 
 
 310 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 TACB 
 
 AnacTims alsinastrnm ... 121 
 
 Animalcula; 312 
 
 An Ant-hill 241 
 
 Ants, White, and their Dwell- 
 ings 129 
 
 Attesi.an Well 353 
 
 Aurora Borealis 185 
 
 Tlie Aye-Aye 21 
 
 B-inyan Tree 400 
 
 Barnacles ... ... ... 385 
 
 Barometz, The 269 
 
 Bayenx Tapestry ... 28)., 285 
 
 Bell, Great, at Moscow ... 89 
 
 Bicycle Velocipede ... ... 305 
 
 Birds' Nests 276, 277 
 
 Boring Insects, Ravages of ... 369 
 British Lemnas ... ... 345 
 
 Cannon, Our Ancestors' 84, 85 
 
 Canons of the Colorado ... 209 
 
 Carved Monument in New 
 Zeahand ... ... ... 213 
 
 Catfish, Double 96 
 
 Climbing Perch ... ... 377 
 
 Coal Forest ... ... ... 317 
 
 Coliseum, Ruins of the ... 133 
 
 Comets ... ... 340, 341 
 
 Coral Animals ... ... 76, 77 
 
 Dead Sea ... ... ... 349 
 
 Diatoms in the Microscope ... 249 
 Dinotherium, Skull of ... 177 
 
 Bionaea... 205 
 
 Dragon Tree of Orotava ... 401 
 Drilling Machine used at Mont 
 Cenis... ... ... ... 117 
 
 Earth Pillars of Botzeu ... 165 
 
 Effect of Eruption of Vesuvius 
 
 on the Sea 321 
 
 Elephanta, Entrance to Caves 
 
 of 293 
 
 Efuption of Vesuvius ... ... 217 
 
 Escurial, View of . .. ... 149 
 
 Falls of the Zambesi {to face) 236 
 
 Fata Morgana ... ... ... 372 
 
 Female Pirates, The ... ... 37 
 
 Fingal's Cave 141 
 
 Fishing Frog 125 
 
 Floating Raft on the Mississippi 381 
 
 Flying Fish 168 
 
 Flying Machine 265 
 
 Food of Plants 393 
 
 Forest Scene in South America 93 
 
 Frigate Bird, The 221 
 
 Frozen Sea, Scene on... ... 69 
 
 Fungi, Minute 36 r 
 
 Geysers in Iceland ... 44, 45 
 
 Glaciers 108, 109 
 
 Grace Darling 153 
 
 Gymnotus, or Electric.il Eel ... 197 
 Hall of the Abencerr.ages ... 88 
 Heidelberg, Great Tun of ... 73 
 Horizontorium... ... ... 57 
 
 Indian Fakir ... 161 
 
 Indian Jugglers . ... 325, 326 
 
 Ivory Plant ... 281 
 
 Lagoon Island ... ... ... 145 
 
 Lantern-Fly, The Great ... 8 
 Lattice Plant ... ... ... 329 
 
 Leaning Tower of Pisa ... 61 
 
 Lisbon after the Earthquake ... 65 
 Locks and Keys ... 300, 301 
 
 Mammoth Cavern in Kentucky 245 
 Mammoth, Discovery of the ... 233 
 Man with the Iron Mask ... 41 
 Mausolus, Tomb of ... ... 261 
 
 Migratory Locust ... ... 264 
 
 Mock Suns ... ... ... 13 
 
 Mummy Case ... ... ... 360 
 
 Nilom-ter 105 
 
 Oldest Human Relic ... ... 81 
 
 Oliver Cromwell's Porter ... 33 
 Opium Smokers ... ... 313 
 
 Pearl Diving ... ..» ... 193 
 
 Penguins ... 389 
 
 Pepper's Ghost ... ... 201 
 
 Peter Botte Mountain 169 
 
 Pitch Lake of Trinidad ... 113 
 
 Porcelain Tower of Nankin ... 409 
 Portrait of the Chevalier d'Eon 24 
 
 Portrait of Old Parr 29 
 
 Portuguese Man-of-War ... 120 
 
 FAGS 
 
 Pyramid, The Great 17 
 
 Rafflesia Arnoldi ... ... 160 
 
 Rice Paper Plant ... ... 297 
 
 Rotifer, The, or Wheel Insect 336 
 St. Mark's at Venice ... ... -;o9 
 
 Salt Mines of Wieliezka ... 333 
 Sand Storm in the Sahara ... 405 
 Sea Cucumber ... ... ... 304 
 
 Sea Nettles ... ... ... 49 
 
 .Sea Porcupines ... ... 397 
 
 .Sempach, Battle of 97 
 
 " She had to F'ight a Duel with 
 
 a Rival " ... ... ... 9 
 
 Shell of the Pearly Nautilus ... 120 
 Ships of War (Ancient) ... 253 
 
 .Skeleton of the Dinornis ... 208 
 Skeleton of the Great Irish 
 
 Deer ... 225 
 
 .Skeletons of Plesiosaurus and 
 
 Pterodactyl 256 
 
 Spectral Ships ... ... ... 373 
 
 Spectre of the Brocken ... 53 
 
 Sponge 216 
 
 Statues of Memnon 137 
 
 Stonehenge (re.stored)... ... 157 
 
 Strasburg Great Clock 15, 16 
 
 Swallow-tailed Butterfly ... 337 
 Sword-fi.sh ... ... ... 144 
 
 Throne of the Shahs of Persia 289 
 Topham's Great Feat .. 5 
 
 Torture, Instruments of 364, 365 
 Trajan's Pillar ... ... ... 181 
 
 Tree Wasp, Nest of the ... 357 
 
 Tsetse Fly 288 
 
 UUoa's Circle... 12 
 
 Upas Tree, The ... ... 224 
 
 Uriconium, Excavations in ... 101 
 Vegetables, Wonderful ... 25 
 
 Volcano in Java ... ... 189 
 
 Walking Le.af-Insect ... ... 413 
 
 Waterspouts at Sea ... ... 229 
 
 Welwitschia mir,abilis ... ... 173 
 
 Wetterhorn, View of the, from 
 
 Rosenlaui 257 
 
 Yeast Plant, The 40 
 
 DIAGRAMS. 
 
 Action of the Geyser ... ... 46 
 
 Atlantic Cable... ... ... 392 
 
 Atmospheric Railway..: ... 344 
 
 Balls of Stars ... ... ... 272 
 
 Britannia Bridge ... ... 328 
 
 Construction of the Pyra- 
 mids ... ... ... ... 17 
 
 Echoes ... ... ... ... 414 
 
 Electricity as a Motive Povirer 248 
 
 Electrical Organs of the Gym- 
 notus 197 
 
 Electric Telegraph 47, 48, 71, 72 
 
 Frost, Effects of 80 
 
 Globes of Gas 3^4 
 
 Heat, Power of Resisting ... 128 
 Hydraulic Pressure, Wonders 
 
 of 183, 184 
 
 Induction Coil 296 
 
 Light, Velocity of 
 
 192 
 
 Light, Wonders of 
 
 176 
 
 The Magnet ... 
 
 3. 4. 31. 32 
 
 Optical illusion 
 
 II 
 
 Snow Crystals... 
 
 64 
 
 Sound Forms ... 
 
 273 
 
 Spectrum Analysis ... ... 232 
 
 Telescope, Lord Rosse's 415. 416 
 Waves of Light 152 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 WONDER AND OBSERVATION. — SOME FEW WONDERS OF THE UNIVERSE. 
 
 HE wise man only wonders once in his 
 life, but that is always : the fool never. 
 The education of the wise man begins 
 with wonder, and ends with devout 
 admiration ; but the fool " doth not 
 ^ consider," and shuts his eyes to things 
 around him. Strictly speaking, wonder 
 is not a vulgar nor a foolish attribute. 
 " All wonder," said a dogmatic writer, " is but the 
 effect of novelty upon ignorance." Nay, we answer, 
 you cannot Ijc ignorant if you would feel the greatest 
 effect of wonder. Thus it is that Coleridge, the 
 most cncyclopa;dic of men, declares, " In wonder 
 all philosophy began, in wonder it ends, and admi- 
 ration fills the interspace ; but if the first wonder is 
 the offspring of ignorance, the last is the parent of 
 adoration." 
 
 It is to e.xcitc this latter kind of wonder, and to 
 teach, while informing, the first, that this work is 
 written. While relating, so far as our space will 
 permit us, all that is most wonderful in history 
 and philosophy and the marvels of science, the 
 wonders of animal life revealed by the glass of the 
 optician or the labours of the chemist, we shall 
 intersperse our narrative with relations of Siege and 
 Battle, Perils of Sea and Land, of the Dreams and 
 
 Fancies, the Ambition, the Wisdom and the Folly 
 of Man, so as to avoid in every possible way the 
 charge of dulness ; for the effect of wonder too 
 often repeated in the same circle, is to deaden the 
 mental energy instead of wisely and freshly ex- 
 citing it. Carefully interspersed with that which is 
 scientific, in our pages will be found, it is hoped, 
 subjects of vivid interest. And truly our scope is 
 so wide that it will be hardly possible to fail. 
 
 Let us consider shortly one of the commonest 
 wonders about us — SPACE. Gaze up into the skj' 
 from off the page you are reading, and try to pierce 
 as far as your eye can reach, and then as far as your 
 mind can conceive. Our globe — the speck of dust 
 on which we stand— is 8,000 miles in diameter, or 
 24,000 in circumference ; but with its sun, planets, 
 and satellites, and those "less intelligible orbs called 
 comets," it occupies space, which, calculated only by 
 the uttermost bound of the orbit of Uranus — and we 
 know that beyond Uranus there are worlds — is not 
 less than three tlwusand six hundred millions of 
 miles in diameter. The mind, it has well been said, 
 fails to comprehend so vast an area. " Some faint 
 idea of this," says an eloquent writer, " can be ob- 
 tained from the fact that, if the swiftest racehorse 
 ever known had begun to traverse it at full speed at 
 
THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 the time of llie birth of Moses, or nearly four thou- 
 sand years ago, he would as yet have accompUshed 
 only half his journey !'' 
 
 The sun, which so many have worshipped, and 
 which is, humanly speaking, the source of Kfc to- 
 us all, is another perpetual wonder. Its circum- 
 ference is about 2,770,000 miles. Its distance from 
 the earth is so great that a railway train moving at 
 32 miles per hour would take three millions of hours, 
 or three hundred and forty-two years and three 
 months, to travel from London to the sun, supposing 
 that it could travel incessantly night and day during 
 that time. A cannon-ball, moving fifty times faster 
 than such a train, would expend seven years in 
 reaching it. To make a globe like the sun, it would 
 take 1,400,000 glebes like the earth rolled into 
 one ! Or, to make these facts simpler, and yet 
 more stupendous, the bulk of the sun is five hun- 
 dred times greater than the aggregate bulk of all 
 the other bodies of the solar system of which 
 night only reveals to us a small part— that which 
 appears above our hemisphere, and abo\e our parti- 
 cular stand-point. The centre of the sun is a dark 
 mass covered with a garment of flame. But in this 
 luminous matter there are vast rents. We talk of 
 spots in the sun ; spots indeed ! the space occupied 
 or laid bare by the principal spot is 928,000,000 
 square geographical miles. Arago, by a ph)sical 
 test, proved that this garment of flame, this lumi- 
 nous matter, must be gaseous ; so that the sun 
 floats in an ocean of flame, and this is so power- 
 ful that the strongest blast furnace yet ignited by 
 man, at its highest power, is seven 'times weaker 
 than the sun's heat at its surface. If the heat be 
 electric, how great is the wonder ! How is this 
 electricity maintained, if, according to a later 
 theory, the heat is derived from perpetual combus- 
 tion of matter flying into the sun as coal is pro- 
 jected on a furnace? What millions of tons must 
 every year be consumed ! — the heat being dis- 
   persed over space so great that the earth's surface, 
 at a distance of 95,000,000 miles, notwithstanding 
 the alternation of night, receives in a year sufficient, 
 if uniformly diffused, to liquefy a crust of ice 100 
 feet in thickness. 
 
 But if we confine ourselves to the wonders of this 
 world, and do not soar to the three thousand worlds 
 in the sky visible to the naked eye, nor to the fifty 
 thousand stars "that passed," says Sir William Hcr- 
 schel, " over a field of view two degrees of breadth 
 in a single hour," we shall have enough to do, and 
 what we are about to endeavour we have, perhaps, 
 sufficiently indicated to the reader. In all cases 
 we shall give as far as possible the authorities on 
 which our statements are based, though for the 
 credibility of the facts related we cannot of course 
 undertake to be responsible. The purely scientific 
 wonders v/ill be treated of by writers of eminence 
 in their respective spheres. 
 
 THE WONDERS OF THE MAGNET. 
 
 How true it is that familiarity with the strange and 
 marvellous soon reduces it to the level of the un- 
 interesting and commonplace ! Only come in con- 
 tact every day with a phenomenon which at first 
 excited our attention and aroused our wonder, and 
 we soon cease to be astonished ; in time the oft- 
 repeated experiment, or oft-observed phenomenon, 
 does not even attract our attention, and no longer 
 causes us to halt in our path to ask Why ? or even 
 to satisfy our unquestioning curiosity. 
 
 We all know what a magnet is ; dozens of the 
 little red horseshoes hang side by side in the 
 window of every scientific shopman. The eye is 
 attracted by their bright colouring, but one sees 
 at once they are only magnets ; perhaps we 
 notice the price, and may think sixpence cheap 
 or dear, but there the thought ends. Is it th.it 
 magnets are not worth thinking about ? or is it that 
 there is nothing after all so very curious or mysteri- 
 ous about them — they are well understood, and we 
 have possessed ourselves of their whole history and 
 relations ? No! one passes on unattracted, because 
 we have seen hundreds of magnets, and long 
 familiarity with the phenomenon of magnetism has 
 caused us to cease wondering. The writer re- 
 members once a j-outh, from the depths of the 
 country, coming into his laboratory. A magnet was 
 lying on the table, he took it up, and touched the 
 armature — the bright piece of iron at the end — which 
 nioved backwards and forwards as though it were a 
 hinge ; and yet, when he was told to use a little 
 force, he could pull the armature completely off. 
 His astonishment was unbounded ; again and again 
 he returned to the magnet, and the magic influence 
 under which the armature seemed to come, upon 
 approaching the horse-shoe, had for him a greater 
 charm than anything else \\hich was shown to him. 
 Familiarity h.ad not rendered him incapable of being 
 wonder-struck with what is truly a wonderful phe- 
 nomenon. 
 
 All attraction is wonderfuL Why should a stone 
 fall to the ground when not supported ? The answer 
 that the earth attracts it only expresses the fact, 
 it by no means explains it ; and to say that it is the 
 nature of things to exercise an attractive influence 
 upon each other is no further resolution of the 
 difticulty. 
 
 We are able to take one step nearer to the answer — 
 Why does a magnet attract a nail?— but th.at step 
 only shows us a greater wonder, and leaves us more 
 mystified than ever. But to produce wonder is the 
 object of this paper. 
 
 If a person, with an ordinary horse-shoe magnet, 
 tested all substances within his reach, he would find 
 the magnet would attract none save iron. Experi- 
 ments more delicately conducted have, however, 
 shown that there .are four other elements slightly 
 
THE WONDERS OF THE MAGNET. 
 
 to 
 
 drawn to the magnet, while there are some which 
 are repelled ; but the action with all, save iron, is 
 so feeble that we may dismiss them from our con- 
 sideration. 
 
 Pursuing our investigations with substances of an 
 iron nature, we shall find that only one of the iron 
 ores which occurs in the earth's crust in any 
 quantity is attracted by the magnet. This is very 
 singular, because a piece of kidney iron ore is so 
 solid and heavy that the inexpe- 
 rienced would at once pronounce it 
 to be iron, and yet it has not the 
 slightest effect on a magnetised 
 needle. The one ore thus influenced 
 is the best of the iron ores; from it 
 is reduced the celebrated Swedish 
 iron. It is the lodcstoiie, every mole- 
 cule of whicli is composed of three 
 ato'.iis of iron and four atoms of 
 oxygen. Magnetism seems first 
 have been 
 observed in 
 lodestone 
 which was 
 found near 
 the town of 
 Magnesia, 
 in Asia 
 
 Minor, and from the name of the town came the 
 name of the property the ore possessed. How the 
 ore became possessed of its property we shall in 
 our next paper learn. 
 
 The experiments, and who performed them, by 
 which it was discovered that the peculiarity of the 
 lodestone could be imparted to iron, are lost in the 
 miits of distant times. But 
 long before even this the Chi- 
 nese had a knowledge of mag- 
 netism ; it is said they have 
 had compass needles for 3,000 
 years. We have long since 
 given up using the lodestone 
 for producing magnets, and now 
 we can multiply magnets from 
 any single magnet ad libitum. 
 
 The process is simple 
 enough. Take a knitting- 
 needle and pass it over the ends of a magnet, 
 being careful to bring the end of the needle upon 
 one leg of the magnet first, then slowly slide it to 
 the other, and so pass the whole needle over the 
 poles or ends of the magnet, and repeat this eight 
 or ten times. Or the needle may be laid upon a 
 tible, the magnet placed upon it as in Fig. i. The 
 magnet must be placed down upon the centre of 
 the needle, and slid backwards and forwards quite 
 to the end of the needle each time ; and the magnet 
 must be removed when at the place where it first 
 touched the needle. If instead of a needle a piece 
 
 of iron wire were used, it would be found that a;; 
 soon as the magnet were removed the wire would 
 lose its magnetism, because soft iron is incapable 
 of permanent magnetisation — of steel alone can per- 
 manent magnets be made. Now take the needle 
 which you have magnetised, and dip it in some 
 iron-filings. If you have '' touched " it properly, you 
 will find that the filings gather in clusters near the 
 ends, seeming to show that the magnetic power is 
 concentrated there ; very probably 
 the filings will also be found in 
 bundles at several intermediate 
 points — these places are termed 
 "consecutive poles," and prove that 
 the needle has been badly " touched.'' 
 But what has the needle acquired ? 
 Not weight — it weighs precisely the 
 same before and after the touching. 
 Xo magnetism has left the horse- 
 shoe, for, singular to say, it is a 
 stronger 
 magnet, 
 most pro- 
 bably, for 
 ^ having 
 
 magnetised 
 the needle. 
 Another 
 peculiar fact may be easily ascertained. From the 
 accumulation of filings at the extremities of the 
 needle, it might be supposed that the magnetism 
 had concentrated there ; but if now the needle be 
 broken into two or three pieces, and each piece 
 dipped in the filings, the filings cluster at the 
 ends of each piece, just as they did in the whole 
 needle, showing that whatever 
 magnetism is it is not a fluid, 
 like electricity, which can run 
 about and accumulate here or 
 there. And while we have the 
 filings at hand, take a piece of 
 cardboard or stiff paper, and 
 placing it upon the poles of 
 the horse-shoe ; sift the filings 
 over it, and by gently tapping 
 the paper they will arrange 
 themselves as in Fig. 2 ; and 
 if the magnet be moved beneath the paper, the 
 filings will rise and fall as if an unseen wave 
 passed through them ; and a little observation will 
 convince you that there are curved lines of magnetic 
 action passing from one pole to the other, and the 
 filings really follow these curves. 
 
 The magnetic atmosphere which surrounds the 
 poles has more powers than iron filings can make 
 apparent. Baron von Reichenbach found that there 
 is always amongst fifteen or twenty persons one at 
 least who can feel a very singular sensation when a 
 strong magnet is moved down the back without 
 
\ 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 touching the clothes. The feeling resembles a cool 
 or tepid current of air, and in some instances it was 
 accompanied by a pricking and dragging sensation ; 
 and not only this, but other persons could see with 
 more or less distinctness flames of light or a lumi- 
 nous halo round the extremities of the magnet. 
 
 Suspend the needle you have magnetised, and you 
 will find that it places itself north and south. But it 
 docs not point, as is generally supposed, to the north 
 pole of the earth, but if you followed its leading, you 
 would at length arrive at a point upon tlie shore of 
 Hudson's Bay, many hundred miles from the north 
 pole ; and what is utterly inexplicable is the fact 
 that this point to which the needle always turns is 
 not stationary, but it is constantly moving in a circle 
 about the earth's north pole, which it completely cir- 
 cumnavigates once in 600 years ' 
 
 There are two of these points — another on the 
 eastern coast of Siberia. So, near the south pole 
 there arc also two magnetic poles ; not opposite the 
 two northern poles, but on the same hemisphere 
 with them ! 
 
 When philosophers first sought for an explana- 
 tion why t'ae needle always was attracted to the 
 north, it was suggested that a large quantity of 
 lodestone was to be found in the arctic regions. 
 This supposition was the result of observing that 
 when the one pole of a magnet was brought near to 
 the suspended needle, that it attracted one end and 
 repelled the other. A north pole is found to at- 
 
 tract a south pole (Fig. 3), while it will repel a north 
 pole. So we say, " Like poles repel, unlike poles 
 attract." The Arctic lodestone was supposed to be 
 one pole of a mighty magnet, which was, indeed 
 the axis of the earth, and the other end of which 
 was somewhere in the Antarctic regions, and these 
 two poles attracted all the magnets on the surface 
 of the earth, and made them all point in one 
 direction. But if this were the case all magnetised 
 needles would not only turn towards the north, but 
 be attracted thither. Now, if a magnetic needle be 
 balanced on a piece of cork, and placed in a basin 
 of water, it will be found that the needle will turn 
 north and south, but will exhibit no inclination to 
 leave the centre of the basin and approach that 
 side nearest the north ; thus plainly proving that 
 whatever force induces the needle to place itself 
 north and south, it has not an attractive but liircc- 
 tive force. 
 
 '®onb«vs Df Itiiii^, 
 
 Wonderful Memory oi-- Cardinal Mezzo- 
 FANTL — Mezzofanti was the son of a carpenter, and 
 was intended to be brought up to the same trade. 
 A priest, however, saved him from a position, out 
 of which he would inevitably have raised himself, 
 and had him educated for the priesthood. He 
 acquired, before the completion of his university 
 career, the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Spanish, 
 French, German, and Swedish languages. At the 
 age of twenty-two, he was made first professor of 
 Arabic, and afterwards of the Oriental languages, 
 at the university. In 1841, Guido Gorrcs, the great 
 German scholar, wrote of Mezzofanti, that he was 
 familiar with (ircck, Latin, Italian, French, Ger- 
 man, Spanish, I'ortugucse, l-:nglish, Dutch, Danish, 
 Swedish, Russian, Polish, Bohemian, Servian, 
 Hungarian, Turkish, Irish, Welsh, Wallachian, 
 Albanian, Bulgarian, and Illyrian. He also stated 
 him to be master of Sanscrit, Persian, Koordish, 
 Georgian, Armenian, Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, 
 Samaritan, the Chaldee, the Sabaic, Chinese, 
 Coptic, Ethiopic, Abyssinian, Amharic, and Ango- 
 lese languages. Mezzofanti would detect the parti- 
 cular county from which an Englishman came — in 
 fact, he was acquainted with all varieties of dialect, 
 patois, and provincialisms. Cardinal Wiseman 
 asserted that to his certain knowledge Mezzofanti 
 was once taken by a Portuguese for a fellow-country- 
 man, and again was supposed by an Englishman 
 to be a native of England. Before his death, which 
 happened on the 15th of March, 1849, Cardinal 
 Mezzofanti must have been thoroughly acquainted 
 with from seventy to eighty languages. 
 
 A Wonder OF Precocity.— Christian Heinecker 
 was born at Lubeck on the 6th of February, 1721. 
 When only ten months old he could repeat every 
 word that was said to him ; at twelve months 
 he knew the principal events in the Penta- 
 teuch by heart ; at two years he learned the his- 
 torical parts of the Old and New Testaments ; in 
 his third year he could reply to most questions on 
 universal history and geography, and in the same 
 year he learned to speak Latin and French ; in his 
 fourth year he employed himself in the study of 
 religion and the history of the church, and he was 
 able not only to repeat what he had read, but also   
 to reason upon it, and express his own judgment. 
 The King of Denmark wished to see this wonderful 
 child, so he was taken to Copenhagen, there ex- 
 amined before the court, and proclaimed to be a 
 wonder. On his return home he learned to write, 
 but his constitution being w-eak, he shortly after- 
 wards fell ill. He died on the 27th of June, 1725. 
 There is one account of this child published by M. 
 Martini, at Lubeck, in 1730, and another by M. 
 de Schoneich, who had been liis tutor, 
 
FEATS OF MUSCULAR EXERTION. 
 
 FEATS OF MUSCULAR EXERTION. 
 
 Many wonderful stories have been told as to feats 
 of bodily strength performed by individuals both in 
 ancient and modern days. The legend of Milo, 
 the Greek, who felled an ox with his fist, and after- 
 wards carried it on his shoulders, has been made 
 credible by the execution of similar feats in times 
 comparatively re- 
 cent; andhisgreat ^^ ;_:,__-,,-, ^-_ 
 strength was per- 'f 
 haps even sur- |l 
 passed by that of 
 Francis of Vi- 
 vonne, a courtier 
 of Francis I., who 
 is recorded to have 
 caught a charging 
 bull by the horns, 
 and stopped him. 
 More nearly akin, 
 however, to the feat 
 of Milo was that, 
 mentioned by Frois- 
 sart, of Ernaulton 
 of Spain, in the four- 
 teenth century. It 
 is related of this 
 hero that, one bit- 
 terly cold Christ- 
 mas-day, he ob- 
 served the hall of 
 the Count de Foix's 
 castle was but in- 
 differently warmed, 
 and looking down 
 into the courtyard, 
 he espied some 
 asses laden with 
 wood which had 
 just arrived for the 
 service of the house. 
 He soon descended 
 into the yard, and 
 placing one of the 
 animals on hisback, 
 wood and all, he 
 returned up a flight 
 of steps with this 
 
 heavy load, and 
 donkey and wood upon the fire. 
 
 Of Maurice of Saxony, son of the Elector Au- 
 gustus II., it is recorded that his strength of finger 
 was so great that he could snap iron horse shoes 
 between his fingers like pieces of glass ; and on one 
 occasion, finding himself in want of a corkscrew, he 
 took a long nail, and with his fingers twisted it 
 round into the shape of the implement he required. 
 
 In the last century there lived in England a man 
 named Thomas Topham, who was renowned for 
 
 TOniAM's GREAT FEAT. 
 
 threw both 
 
 his muscular power. He could with ease roll up in 
 his fingers the pewter platters which were in fashion 
 at that time, or strike an iron poker upon his arm 
 until he bent it at a right angle. He took a bar of 
 iron, and placing it behind his neck, holding the 
 two ends in his hands, he brought those ends for- 
 ward until they met in front ; then — a feat which 
 required still more dexterity— he brought it straight 
 
 again in a similar 
 = V -^^ .J " manner. He is 
 
 said to have lifted 
 with his teeth, and 
 held out for a time, 
 a wooden table six 
 feet long, and with 
 half a hundred- 
 weight attached to 
 one extremity. 
 These perform- 
 ances are recorded 
 by Dr. Desaguliers, 
 a French scientific 
 writer, who made it 
 his business to in- 
 vestigate the sub- 
 ject personally, 
 while collecting 
 materials for one 
 of his works. 
 
 Topham's most 
 celebrated feat, 
 however, was that 
 of which we give 
 an illustration on 
 this page. In 1741, 
 being then thirty 
 years of age, he 
 went to Derby, and 
 obtained permis- 
 sion of the authori- 
 ties to display his 
 prowess in pubhc. 
 A stage was erected 
 for him, and on 
 this stage, among 
 otherperformances, 
 he raised three 
 casks filled with 
 three being 1,836 
 
 water, the total weight of the 
 pounds. The manner in which he accomplished 
 this feat is shown in our engraving, and it will be 
 observed that in doing it he brought the muscles of 
 the neck and shoulders particularly into requisition. 
 The muscular strength of his legs had been affect-ed 
 by an injury he sustained during an incautious ex- 
 periment. He had undertaken to pull against two 
 horses from the trunk of a tree, but being unscien- 
 tific in his mode of operation, and placing himself 
 disadvantagcously, he was defeated, and his knee- 
 
THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 pan was fractured. It was the opinion of Desngii- 
 liers that, had he gone properly to work, Topham 
 might have pulled successfully against four horses 
 instead of two. 
 
 The two-horse feat was accomplished in the last 
 century by another powerful individual, a German, 
 named Van Eckoburg. This man sat down on an 
 inclined board, with his feet stretched out against a 
 fixed support, and two strong horses were then 
 unable to remove him from his position. Standing 
 upon a platform, like Topham, he sustained the 
 weight of a large cannon round his waist ; and at 
 another lime, bending his body in the form of an 
 arch, he allowed a large stone of more than a foot 
 in thickness to be broken upon his abdomen by the 
 blow of a sledge-hammer. 
 
 Such are some of the feats which the human body 
 is able to accomplish by muscular exertion. 
 
 WONDERFUI^ BIRTHS. 
 We propose to give here a notice of some of the 
 most remarkable instances of numerous births 
 \\hich from time to time have been chronicled. 
 It will appear almost incredible that so many as 
 twenty children should have sprung from one 
 mother, but among the cases enumerated here 
 will be found some very much more remarkable 
 in point of number. There is a singular instance 
 of numerous births to be found in the English 
 Causes Culibrcs, where Colonel James Turner, in 
 his defence, speaking of his wife, says, " She sat 
 down, being somewhat fat and weary, poor heart ! 
 I have had twenty-seven children by her, fifteen 
 sons and twelve daughters." Some remarkable 
 instances of this have been chronicled at dif- 
 ferent times in the Gentleman'' s Magasine. In 
 the year 1736 we find a notice of the birth of the 
 thirty-fifth child by one husband of a woman in 
 Vcrc Street. In 1743 is recorded the death of 
 Agnes Milbourne, aged 106, who had been the 
 mother of thirty children. In 1738, we are told of 
 a " Mr. Thomas Rogers, a change-broker, who had 
 by his wife twenty-nine children, born and chris- 
 tened." On July 31st, 1781, it is mentioned that 
 a man and woman at Kirton-Ie-Moor, in Cum- 
 berland, together with their thirty ehildren, the 
 youngest of whom was between two and three years 
 old, walked to church to the christening of their 
 thirty-first child. In the Collectanea Topographica 
 is noticed the case of Thomas Grcenhill, surgeon 
 to the Duke of Norfolk, 1698, who petitioned the 
 Earl Marshal, " that in consideration of your 
 petitioner being the seventh son and thirty-ninth 
 child of one father and mother, your grace would 
 be pleased to signalise it by some particular re- 
 mark or augmentation in his coat of arms, to 
 transmit to posterity so uncommon a thing." It 
 may be observed that the confirmation of the arms 
 
 contains no reference to the fact. A still more 
 wonderful instance is gi\en in the same work, of 
 a weaver in Scotland, who had by one woman 
 sixty-two children, of whom four daughters and 
 forty-six sons lived to grow up. This account is 
 given on the authority of several credible wit- 
 nesses. In each of these cases it wU be observed 
 that the children were all born of the same parents. 
 Two other cases are recorded slightly different : 
 one of a man who had eighty-seven children by 
 two wives, of which sixty-nine were by the first, 
 eighteen by the second ; another who had seventy- 
 two children by two wives, one of whom was the 
 mother of thirty-two children. 
 
 Perhaps still more wonderful are the cases on 
 record of the number of children which ha\'c 
 been born at a single birth. It is stated in the 
 Gentleman^ s Magazine for March, 1798, that in the 
 commune of Verchoq, department of I'as-de- 
 Calais, the wife of Pierre Fran(;ois Duisain had si.x 
 children at a birth, three boys and three girls; 
 they were all born alive, but died soon after. Dinora 
 .Salviati, wife of Bartolomeo Frescobaldi, a member 
 of an old Florentine house, gave birth to fifty-two 
 children in all, of whom never lcs5 than three were 
 born at one time. 
 
 In Aubrey's Natural History of Wiltshire we 
 find an account of an inscription at Wishford 
 Magna, to Thomas Bonham and Edith his wife, 
 who died in the years 1473 and 1469 respectively. 
 Mrs. Bonham had two children at one birth the 
 first time, and after an interval of seven years she 
 had as many as seven children at once. There is 
 a tradition, which is recorded in the parish register, 
 that all the se\'en children were brought together 
 to the font of the church and there baptised. 
 
 A WONDER _OF_JlELATIONSHIP. 
 
 The following remarkable genealogical curiosity 
 appeared originally in Hood's Magazine, and is a 
 singular Diece of reasoning to prove that a man 
 may be his own grandfather. There was a widow 
 [Anne] and her daughter [Jane], and a man 
 [George] and his son [Henry]. The widow 
 married the son, and the daughter married the 
 father. The widow was there- 
 fore mother [in law] to her 
 husband's father, and grand- 
 mother to her own husband. 
 By this husband she had a 
 son [David], to whom she was 
 also great-grandmother. Now, 
 the son of a great-grandmother must be grand- 
 father or grand-uncle to the person to whom his 
 motherwas great-grandmother ; but Anne was great- 
 grandmother to him [David], therefore David is 
 his own grandfather. The accompanying diagram 
 will enable the reader to follow this more easily. 
 
 Jane, 
 
 Henry 
 
LUMINOUS INSECTS. 
 
 %\Uxnx^ Monb^rs. 
 
 The Book-Fish.— On the 23rcl of June, 1626, a 
 cod-fish was sold at Cambridge market which, when 
 it was opened, was fovmd to contain a book in its 
 maw. The book had been covered with sail-cloth, 
 but it was much soiled. It was written by John 
 Frith, and contained treatises on religious subjects. 
 Mr. Mead, of Christ Church, Cambridge, wrote to 
 Sir M. .Stutevillc as follows : — " I saw all with mine 
 own eyes — the fish, the maw, the piece of sail-cloth, 
 the book — and observed all I ha\e written ; only I 
 saw not the opening of the fish, which not many did, 
 being on the fish-woman's stall in the market, who 
 first cut off" his head, to which the maw hanging, 
 and seeming much stuffed with somewhat, it was 
 searched, and all found as aforesaid. He that 
 had had his nose as near as I yester morning, 
 would have been persuaded there was no im- 
 posture here without witness. The fish came from 
 Lynn." This letter is now in the British Museum. 
 Frith, the author of the book, wrote it while in 
 prison. Curiously enough, he was confined in a 
 fish-cellar at Oxford, where many of his fellow- 
 prisoners died from the impurities of the fishy 
 exhalations. The book was reprinted by the autho- 
 rities at Cambridge, under the title "Vox Piscis," 
 with a woodcut representing the fish-stall, the book, 
 and the knife. 
 
 Remarkai!LY Minute Writing. — Disraeli, in 
 his " Curiosities of Literature," records the follow- 
 ing, among other instances of wonderfully minute 
 writing : — Peter Bales, a celebrated caligrapher in 
 the reign of Elizabeth, exhibited the whole Bible in 
 an English walnut-shell no bigger than a hen's egg. 
 The Harleian MSS., 530, gives the following account 
 of it : " The nut holdeth the book ; there arc as 
 many leaves in his little book as the great Bible, 
 and he hath written as much in one of his little 
 leaves as a great leaf of the Bible." This " un- 
 readable volume M'as seen by many thorfSands." 
 Huet proved that the "Iliad" in a nutshell, which 
 Pliny states Cicero to have seen, was by no means 
 an impossibility ; in fact, he demonstrated that it 
 could be done. A piece of' vellum about ten inches 
 in length and eight in width, pliant and firm, can 
 be folded up, and enclosed in the shell of a large 
 walnut. It can hold in its breadth one line, which 
 ean contain thirty verses, and in its length 250 
 lines. With a crow-quill the writing can be perfect. 
 A page of this piece of vellum will then contain 
 7,500 verses, and the reverse as much ; the whole 
 15,000 verses of the "Iliad." And this he proved by 
 using a piece of paper, and with a common pen. 
 The thing is possible to be effected ; and if on any 
 occasion p.'iper should be excessively rare, it may 
 be useful to know that a \'olume of matter may be 
 contained in a single leaf. 
 
 LUMINOUS INSECTS. 
 
 One of the most beautiful features of the savannahs 
 in the tropics of the Western World is the fire-fly. 
 When the stars shine forth, the broad grassy mea- 
 dow becomes illumuiated with a thousand glittering 
 lamps, almost as if it reflected the vault of heaven 
 from its surface ; and the thicket and the forests are 
 often full of their tiny but brilliant lights, flitting 
 from flower to flower through the air, or shedding a 
 mild refulgence over the surrounding foliage. 
 
 This insect is not a fly, however, as its name 
 implies, but a species of beetle, the head of which is 
 lengthened out in a remarkable way into something 
 not unlike a bladder. It is here that the interesting 
 little creature carries its lantern, the light of which 
 is so brilliant that the smallest type may be read by 
 moving it along the lines ; and it is said that the 
 Indians, when they travel at night, attach several 
 of them to their hands and feet, instead of carrying 
 a lantern, whilst their wives use them for candles in 
 the performance of their evening household duties. 
 Madame de Merian has related the fright she 
 experienced on opening at night a box tenanted 
 by a number of fire-flics, which came pouring out 
 like a stream of light. 
 
 Many of the Indian tribes regard them with quite 
 a childish pleasure, not only using them to adorn 
 the hair of the girls, but decorating their holiday 
 attire with them, as well as the trappings of their 
 horses, for which purposes they often collect large 
 numbers on feast days, when they amuse them- 
 selves in quite a theatrical fashion, dressing in the 
 most fantastic costumes, with masks and skins, to 
 represent various animals. In our illustration on 
 the next page this particular species of luminous 
 insect, the Great Lantern or Fire-fly, is represented. 
 
 There are a great many species of fire-fly known 
 — perhaps more than a hundred — most of them indi- 
 genous to the New World, and distributed over the 
 whole continent, from Virginia to Chili. A vast 
 number of non-luminous insects, very closely allied 
 to them, are found in the Old World. These are 
 called skip-jacks, from their peculiar manner of 
 regaining the upright position when they are placed 
 or fall upon their backs. The shortness of their 
 limbs renders it extremely difficult for them to 
 recover their feet ; and they are endowed with a 
 special power of doing this not found in any other 
 tribe of insects. The joint between their thorax 
 —which is, as it were, the chest of the insect— 
 and abdomen is provided whh a stiff, elastic spine, 
 which acts as a spring when the thorax is bent for- 
 ward by muscular power; this presses both the 
 thorax and abdomen back, as soon as their muscles 
 are suddenly relaxed, so that the head and tail 
 strike the ground at the same time and jerk the 
 insect into the air, when it usually falls upon its 
 feet ; but if not successful it repeats the attempt. 
 
8 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 Neither is the Old World altogether destitute 
 of lamp-bearing insects. In England wc have 
 the glow-worm, seen so frequently on banks and 
 under moist hedges. In China there is found 
 a species of lantern-fly not unlike the fire-fly of 
 the American savannahs, but differing from it, to 
 a certain extent, both in form and colour. 
 
 insects become luminous whicli are not ordinarily 
 light-bearers, and that these have sometimes been 
 the cause of the very unusual and curious phenome- 
 non known as the Will-o'-the-wisp, or Ignis fatnns. 
 The Ignis fatims — in plain English, fool-fire — is an 
 earth-meteor, resembling a flame, which floats above 
 the ground at the distance of a few feet. It is ob- 
 
 TlIE GREAT LANTERN-FLY. 
 
 Luminosity has been ascribed to many other 
 insects at different times, especially to the American 
 and Chinese lantern-flies, neither of which are 
 usually possessed of the property of shining in the 
 dark, at least under ordinary circumstances. It 
 seems probable that their reputed power of doing 
 so must be set down as a mere traveller's tale, told 
 simply for the sake of exciting the universal and 
 insatiable love for the marvellous. It is possible, 
 however, that under some peculiar conditions many 
 
 served at night over marshes and burial-grounds, 
 hence it is called the Meath-firc, Corpse-candle, 
 or Will-o'-the-wisp, ?>., Will with the torch-light. 
 Derham, in 1729, saw "a decayed hurdle give out 
 a flame, which receded as he approached." In the 
 Philosophical Transactions of 1694 there is an 
 account of hay-ricks being burnt by a fire wliich 
 came out of the sea. Herr Trcba, in 1794, saw one 
 which went back 500 paces as became near, departed, 
 and again became visible at the end of half an hour. 
 
thp: bravery of woman. 
 
 "she had to FrOHT A DUEL WITH A RIVAL"—/. lO. 
 
 THE BRAVERY OF WOMAN. 
 
 CHRISTIANA DAVIS. 
 
 The Gentleman's Magazine for August, 1739, records 
 the death of one Christiana Davis, on the 7th July 
 of that year, who served with great valour in the 
 Inniskilling Dragoons, &c. To this extraordinary 
 woman we would call attention. She did not serve 
 in the Inniskillings, but in the 2nd Dragoons, now 
 the Scots Greys, and her history is indeed a wonder. 
 She was born in Dublin, in 1667, the year after the 
 great fire of London. When her father, who was a 
 maltster and brewer, was in arms for William III, 
 the Papists blocked up the church door of Leslip, 
 
 while her mother was at church, with blocks and 
 other lumber. " Fearing my mother would recci\e 
 some hurt," she adds, in her own account of it, 
 " I seized a spit, and sallied forth to force my 
 way; but being resisted by a sergeant, I ran my 
 spit through the, calf of his leg, and removed the 
 things which blocked up the door, and called to 
 my mother, bidding her come away, for the dinner 
 was ready!" 
 
 This was a good beginning for a brave life. Not 
 long afterwards her aunt died, leaving her a tavern, 
 to which she removed, marrying one Richard Welsh, 
 who proved a tender husband to her. It would 
 seem that the first overtures were made througli 
 
lO 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 a female friend. One day Welsh was persuaded to 
 take farewell of a schoolfellow, and having been in- 
 duced to share a bowl of punch on board a vessel 
 laden with recruits, was made intoxicated, and car- 
 ried over to Holland — a very usual trick in those 
 days. Here he was made to enlist in Lord Orrery's 
 regiment of foot, now the 5th Royals. Then began 
 the wife's trials and her heroism ; and truly her life 
 forms a very wonderful story. Determined to find 
 her husband, she left one child with her mother, 
 and one, born after her husband's departure, with 
 her nurse. She cut off her hair, dressed herself in 
 her husband's clothes, and finding Ensign Lawrence 
 beating up for recruits at the " Golden Last," she 
 enlisted under the name of Christopher Welsh. She 
 was soon after at the battle of Landen, where she 
 was wounded above the ancle, and "heard the 
 cannon play, and the small-shot rattle about me," 
 she wrote, "which put me in a sort of panic." Her 
 wound laid her up for two months, and after that she 
 was taken prisoner and much urged to enlist in the 
 French army, in which, at that time, many Irish were 
 serving. She was shortly exchanged, and sent back to 
 duty, and in one of the towns occupied by our troops 
 won the love of a burgher's fair daughter — which, by 
 the way, was not wonderful, as Christiana made a 
 very pretty soldier. What follows, however, was more 
 remarkable. She had, in accordance with the mis- 
 taken ideas of honour then prevalent, to fight a duel 
 with a rival, a sergeant in the same regiment, and so 
 wounded him that, his wounds being thought mortal, 
 she was imprisoned. Even there she was troubled 
 by the sweetheart whom she had won ; but hor wit 
 was equal to the occasion. With many tears she 
 parted from her love, telling her she sacrificed her 
 because " she was only too sensible that her father 
 would not bestow her hand on a poor foot soldier." 
 Proposing, therefore, to work her way upwards by 
 bravery to a commission, she cut herself free of her 
 too fond sweetheart. 
 
 Her term being out as a foot soldier, she tried the 
 cavalry, and served with honour in Lord John Hay's 
 Dragoons, now the Scots Greys, being present in 
 1695 at the siege of Namur. After the peace of 
 Ryswick, Christiana, not having found her husband, 
 returned to Ireland, unknown and unrecognised, so 
 much was she bronzed and altered by exposure. 
 She visited her children, but being too poor to pay 
 the expenses she had incurred, was glad to pass un- 
 known. War again breaking out, she joined her old 
 regiment, was engaged at Nimeguen, at the siege of 
 Venloo, and at the second attack at Schellenberg, 
 where she received a ball in her hip, which was 
 never extracted. Although taken to hospital, her 
 sex escaped detection. Convalescent, but still carry- 
 ing the ball in her wound, she was, at the glorious 
 battle of Klenheim, set to guard the prisoners, and 
 there by chance she met with her husband, who, 
 having thought her long dead, was consoling him- 
 
 self with the attentions of a Dutch woman. At 
 once Christiana's love forgave   all ; she made 
 herself known to him, and finding him to be 
 in Lord Orkney's regiment, resolved to serve 
 with him and pass as his brother ; then she left 
 him, giving him a piece of gold as a token of her 
 love. 
 
 All through the great war, conducted by the 
 greatest captain of that age, or, perhaps, of any 
 other, the Duke of Marlborough, this heroic woman 
 fought. At Ramillies she went through the thickest 
 of the battle unhurt ; but unhappily, when the fight 
 was done, a piece of shell from a steeple, exploding, 
 struck the back of her head and fractured her skull. 
 She was trepanned, and suffered immensely for ten 
 weeks ; but this did not trouble her so much as the 
 discovery of her sex. The news spread far and near, 
 and Lord John Hay, her colonel, said she should 
 want for nothing. Brigadier Preston made her a 
 present of a new silk dress, her husband was brought 
 to her, and she was set free from the service with a 
 handsome present. Nor was this all ; the chaplain 
 of the regiment declared that there should be a new- 
 wedding, all the officers being invited to the cere- 
 mony, and with much fun and jollity this took 
 place ; the bride's stocking was thrown according 
 to old custom, and, on taking leave, all the officers, 
 commencing with the colonel, begged permission, 
 with the solemn politeness of tire times, to kiss the 
 lips of the bride. 
 
 At a battle near Ath she wounded one soldier in the 
 hand and killed another. At the same time a shot 
 wounded her in the chin, and knocked her down. 
 Her husband ran to pick her up, thinking her dead, 
 but found her only stunned. At (ihent, the Dutch 
 woman before spoken of inveigled her husband into 
 a public-house, on which Christiana fought with her, 
 and cut her nose off with a case knife, close to her 
 face. At the siege of Ghent she followed her hus- 
 band in the forlorn hope, and, eluding the vigilance 
 of the colonel, who would have stopped her, found 
 him and gave him " a bottle of brandy, which was 
 a great comfort to him." He was killed at the 
 hot battle of Malplaquet, and the fond wife came 
 up just as his body was being stripped by a 
 marauder, whom she beat off. Throwing her 
 husband's body across her mare (she then acted 
 as a sutler), she took it to the rear, buried it, and 
 would have thrown herself into the grave with it 
 had she not been prevented. 
 
 This singular woman was married twice after- 
 wards ; she was presented with fifty pounds by 
 Queen Anne, and a shilling a day for life, which pen- 
 sion Lord Treasurer Oxford reduced to fivepence ; 
 but Mr. Secretary Craggs, the friend of Pope, 
 replaced it at its original sum. She marched 
 with other soldiers — and with streaming eyes and 
 a heavy heart — at the funeral of the great Duke 
 of Marlborough, under whom she had fought so 
 
WONDERS OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
 
 II 
 
 long and so well ; and died loyally at last, full of 
 the same courage and love she had ever shown. 
 Har husband was taken ill, and, though sinking 
 herself under old age and wounds, she insisted on 
 sitting up to nurse him, by which she caught a cold, 
 and then fell into a fever, by which she died, on the 
 7th of July, 1739. She was buried in the burial- 
 ground of Chelsea Hospital, a detachment firing 
 three volleys over her grave as for a brave comrade 
 and fellow-soldier. 
 
 Wonderful Performances with the Mouth 
 AND Foot. — The following is extracted from the 
 "Diary of John Rous" (Camden .Society) p. 84 : — 
 ".Some years since I saw in Holborn, London, near 
 the bridge, an Italian, who with his mouth did lay 
 certain sheets of paper together, one upon another, 
 lengthwise, between the right hand and the left ; 
 and then he took a needle and ])ricked it through 
 the one end, and so then the other, so that the 
 paper lay sure. Then he took a short text pen, 
 and dipped it in a standish or ink-horn of lead, and 
 therewith wrote Laus Deo semper, in a very fair 
 text hand (not written with his hand, but with his 
 mouth) ; then with another pen he flourished daintily 
 about these letters in divers forms. He did, 
 with his mouth, also take up a needle and thread, 
 pricking the needle right down, out of which he 
 pulled the thread, and took another by (fitter) and 
 put it into the needle. Then, therewith he took 
 three stitches in the cloth with a linen wheel (pre- 
 pared with a turner's device for the foot). He did 
 spin with his mouth. He wrote fair with his left 
 foot. He used a pencil and painted with his mouth. 
 He took a pretty piece, or gun, with his toes, and 
 poured in a paper of powder, pulled out the scouring- 
 stick very nimbly, rammed in the powder, put up 
 the stick, pulled up the cock with his toes; then 
 another short piece, charged (that had a Swedish 
 firelock), being put in his mouth by another man, 
 he held it forth and discharged it, and forthwith 
 with his toes he discharged the other. He gathered 
 up four or five small dice with his foot, and threw 
 them out featly. His hands were both shrimped 
 and lame." 
 
 Curious Proverbs kegardixg January.— 
 If the grass grows in Janivecr, 
 It grows the worse for 't all the jear. 
 A January spring 
 Is worth nacthing. 
 Under water dearth, 
 Under snow bread. 
 March in Janiveer, 
 January in March I fear. 
 If January calends be summerly gay, 
 'Twill be winterly weather till the calends of May. 
 The blackest month in all the year, 
 Is the month of Janivecr. 
 
 WONDERFUL OPTICAL DELUSION. 
 
 The accompanying cut exhibits a somewhat singular 
 optical delusion with which it is possible some of our 
 readers may be imacquainted, though it is frequently 
 made use of by practical builders, in arranging 
 their courses of stone for arches and other curves. 
 
 If we take two pieces of cardboard and cut and 
 arrange them as Figs, i and 2 are here shown, it will 
 appear to any one who looks at them that Fig. 2 is 
 considerably larger than Fig. I. If, again, we alter 
 
 the relative position of the two pieces, putting 2 in 
 the place of i, we shall find that their relative size 
 also appears to be altered, and i appears larger 
 than 2. If, however, the one be placed so as to 
 cover the other, they will be found exactly the same 
 size. The deception arises thus : — We can see that 
 the right boundary line of i would, if extended, cut 
 through 2 ; hence we fancy 1 is shorter than 2. To 
 measure the length of the curves properly, we 
 should take a point in the centre of each. We shall 
 then find that it is impossible for the same per- 
 pendicular to pass through the centres of both, and 
 that the reason I does not extend to the right as 
 far as 2, is because it is just that distance out of 
 centre. 
 
 John Hunter's Collection of Animals.— 
 The variety of birds and beasts to be met with 
 at Earl's Court (the villa of the celebrated John 
 Hunter), is a matter of great entertainment. In 
 the same ground you are surprised to find so many 
 living animals in one herd, and from the most 
 opposite parts of the habitable globe. Buffaloes, 
 rams and sheep from Turkey, and a shawl goat 
 from the East Indies, are among the most re- 
 markable of these that meet the eye ; and as they 
 feed together in the greatest harmony, it is natural 
 to inquire what means arc taken to make them 
 so familiar and well acquainted with each other. 
 Mr. Hunter told me that when he has a stranger 
 to introduce, he does it by ordering the whole herd 
 to be taken to a strange place — either a field, an 
 empty stable, or any other large outhouse, to which 
 they are all alike unaccustomed. The strangeness 
 of the place so totally engages their attention, as 
 
12 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 ULLOA S CIRCLE. 
 
 to prevent them from running at and fighting with 
 the new-comer, as they most probably would do in 
 their own field (in regard to which they entertain 
 very high notions of their exclusive right of pro- 
 perty). And here they are confined for some hours, 
 till they appeared reconciled to the stranger, who 
 is then turned out with his new friends, and is 
 generally afterwards well-treated. — Middleton's 
 '■^Survey of Middlesex^' page 432. 
 
 Filial Piety of Crows. — In Escameron it is 
 said that the mildness of the crowe is wonderful ; 
 for when the old crowes in age be both naked and 
 bare of covering of fethers, then the young crowes 
 hide and cover them with their fethers, and gather 
 meate and feed them. And sometime when they 
 waxc old and feeble, then the young crowes underset 
 them, and reare them up with their wings, and 
 comfort them to use to fly, to bring the members 
 that be diseased into state again. — From a booken 
 by Barthclmew Glatitvile, a Franciscan Frier, 
 1360. Translated by Stephen Batman, Professour 
 in Divinitie. 
 
 ulloa's circle.— mock suns. 
 The intensity of the colours of the rainbow has 
 been found to depend in a great measure on the 
 size of the drops of water from Vifhich it forms itself. 
 When a rainbow is seen in a fog, the colours of it 
 arc always remarkably faint, owing to the minute- 
 ness of the drops of water on which the sun's rays 
 fall ; so, on the other hand, when we see a rainbow 
 
 following, as it were, in the wake of a pelting April 
 shower, we are always struck with the vividness 
 and intensity of its hues. The remarkable appear- 
 ance represented in the illustration is a very pecu- 
 liar rainbow which was observed by MM. Ulloa 
 and Bouguer during their stay in the Pichincha, 
 and called by them, from the singular faintness of 
 its tints, the white rainbow. It is also known 
 as Ulloa's circle, from the name of one of the 
 travellers who witnessed it. 
 
 M. Ulloa was with his fellow-travellers, one morn- 
 ing at day-break, on the summit of the Pambamarca. 
 The whole of the mountain-top was covered with a 
 dense fog, which gradually dispersed as the sun 
 rose. By degrees the atmosphere became tolerably 
 clear, with the exception of a few liglit vaporous 
 clouds, so filmy as to be scarcely perceptible. While 
 they were noticing these gradually disappear, one 
 of the travellers, on turning round suddenly to that 
 quarter of the sky which was exactly opposite to 
 the rising sun, perceived an image of himself 
 reflected in the air as distinctly as in a mirror, and 
 standing, apparently, at about the distance of twelve 
 feet from him. The figure appeared to stand in the 
 centre of three concentric rings, which were shaded 
 with different colours, while around the whole was 
 a fourtn ring, tinted with one colour alone. The 
 outermost edge of each of the three interior rings 
 was crimson, the next colour was orange, which 
 shaded off through yellow into a pale straw, while 
 the innermost tint was green. The figure, with 
 the surrounding rings, followed e\-ery movement of 
 the observer, the rings always keeping the figure in 
 
THE WONDERS OF DIGESTION. 
 
 13 
 
 MOCK SUNS. 
 
 their centre. It will be observed in the illustration 
 that the spectral figure is imitating the exact atti- 
 tude and gesture of the observer. When first seen, 
 they were somewhat oval in shape, but they became 
 gradually more and more circular, and increased in 
 size as the sun rose in the heavens. When they 
 had become nearly perfect circles, the colours gra- 
 dually grew fainter, the figure more and more 
 shadowy and indistinct, till the whole apparition 
 faded away altogether. It is a singular thing that 
 though each of the travellers saw precisely the same 
 appearance, he saw it only as happening to himself, 
 and could hardly believe that his companions were 
 observing each the reflection of his own figure, 
 while he could see nothing but his own. 
 
 Another very singular atmospheric effect is pro- 
 duced by the rays of the sun, and sometimes those 
 of the moon, striking, not upon drops of water, but 
 upon minute crystals of ice. Clouds formed of 
 such crystals are stated by aeronauts to exist in the 
 higher regions of the atmosphere, where they con- 
 stitute those clouds which are known among 
 meteorologists by the name of cirrus. 
 
 The most frequent phenomena of this kind seen 
 in temperate climes are what are called halos, such 
 as we so often see round the moon on a slightly 
 misty night. Sometimes, however, they assume 
 the peculiar form shown in the illustration ; but 
 this is of comparatively rare occurrence, and only 
 happens under peculiar conditions of the atmo- 
 sphere, and when the sun or moon is near the 
 horizon. The circular rings of light are divided 
 by a luminous diameter cutting them horizontally. 
 
 On this line, a little outside each circle, brilliant 
 patches of light are seen to form, vhich are called 
 mock suns or mock moons {parhelia or parascleno'), 
 according as the sun or moon happens to be the 
 centre of light. Those just outside the inner circle 
 are beautifully coloured with the diflcrent hues of 
 the prism, while those altogether outside arc nearly 
 colourless. Frequently, also, arcs of circles are 
 seen touching the principal halos, and these, espe- 
 cially at the point of contact, are brilliantly coloured. 
 These arc most perfect round the inner circle ; 
 when they are seen touching the outside one they 
 are usually faint and indistinct. The illustration 
 shows this interesting phenomenon in the most 
 perfect form in which it is known to have appeared. 
 
 THE WONDERS OF DIGESTION. 
 
 The visitor to that "World of Wonders," the South 
 Kensington Museum, can hardly have failed to 
 notice a remarkably interesting collection, showing 
 the relative quantities of the various substances 
 that compose the human body. The case contain- 
 ing these specimens forms one of the chief attrac- 
 tions of the Food Department, and is generally 
 surrounded by numbers of visitors, old and young, 
 who marvel to find that their bodies are made 
 up of several pails of water, a mass of charcoal 
 sufficient to cook a good dinner, a quantity of 
 hydrogen that would float a small balloon, a piece 
 of iron large enough to make a pocket-knife, and a 
 lump of phosphorus that would ser\e for half a 
 
14 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 dozen boxes of lucifer-niiitches. In addition to 
 these substances, the visitor will also find various 
 proportions of soda, potash, lime, magnesia, oxygen, 
 chlorine, and nitrogen. Every time that he has 
 made a step, or even .turned o\er a leaf of his 
 catalogue, he has worn out a portion of his body. 
 If he has eaten a hearty breakfast, and is in good 
 health, this wearing out of the body may go on for 
 some time without his perceiving it, owing to there 
 being a superabundance of material to \\ ork upon ; 
 but as soon as the call for fresh blood is unanswered, 
 the sensation of hunger is experienced, and the 
 desire to supply new material for consumption 
 becomes imperative. If he is pressed for time he 
 takes a glass of wine and a biscuit, or possibly a 
 jelly, and ^^•aits until he reaches home for a more 
 substantial meal. As soon as he has swallowed 
 the jelly or other light food, the sensation of hunger 
 disappears, and almost before he leaves the refresh- 
 ment room he begins to use the fresh material that 
 has already passed into his blood. The effect is, 
 as it were, magical, he can now walk upright and 
 briskly, whereas only a few moments ago he could 
 hardly drag one leg after the other. This marvel 
 has been performed by the aid of those wonderful 
 natural processes, digestion and assimilation. 
 
 In repairing the waste that is constantly going 
 on within our bodies we have to consider two 
 processes, each of which is entirely distinct from 
 the other, one of them is digestion, the other assi- 
 viilation. Instead of endeavouring to give precise 
 definitions of the exact meaning of these two words, 
 it will be much more easy and pleasant to pass 
 once more into the South Kensington Grill Room, 
 and trace the various steps by which an ordinary 
 luncheon is converted into blood, muscle, and bone. 
 The process of digestion may be said to begin long 
 Ijefore we even see our food, for the sheep-faimer 
 has taken good care that the mutton-chop before 
 us shall be juicy and tender, and the cook has 
 seconded his endeavours by using his utmost skill 
 to preserve and increase these good qualities ; and 
 this is just precisely what it should do, for we 
 should find mastication extremely difficult, nay, 
 almost impossible, except our mouths were filled 
 with an abundant supply of saliva, which not only 
 assists us in chewing our food into a pulp, but also 
 in tasting and swallowing it. At one time it was 
 supposed that the saliva was a powerful solvent 
 of the food we take into our mouths, but numerous 
 experiments have proved that in the case, at any 
 rate, of animal substances, its action is merely me- 
 chanical. It begins the digestion of vegetable food, 
 however, in rather a singular manner. If we take 
 a piece of stale bread and chew it into a pulp, we 
 shall find that it gradually becomes sweeter the 
 more it is mixed with the saliva. This peculiar 
 action is hardly to be explained without going more 
 deeply into the chemistry of the subject, but it may 
 
 be mentioned that bread, potatoes, and, indeed, most 
 vegetable foods contain a notable quantity of starch, 
 part of which is transformed into sugar by the action 
 of the saliva. In sight of this fact there will be no 
 difficulty in understanding how an invalid will be 
 able to digest a hard piece of dry bread, whereas, 
 a basin of thin arrowroot will throw him into an 
 agony of indigestion. The drier the bread the 
 greater the quantity of starch converted into sugar 
 by mastication with the saliva. But to go back 
 to our mouthful of chop. Having crushed it into 
 a pulp with our teeth, the natural juices of the meat 
 escape and pass into the stomach, where they find 
 themselves in a large bag, the .whole of whose 
 surface is covered with a series of tiny finger-like 
 projections, from every part of which a thin fluid 
 is pouring out. I'resenth', down comes a mass 
 of masticated chop, potato, and bicad, washed 
 down with a draught of water or ijcer. The fluid 
 secreted by the little finger-like bodies at once 
 begins to act on the chewed food, and is assisted 
 in its work by the muscular coating of the stomach, 
 which, by a series of involuntary contractions, pro- 
 duces a rotary movement of the food, somewhat 
 analogous to that caused by the tongue during the 
 operation of mastication. The fluid acts on it 
 chemically, and it becomes more and more liquid 
 until, at last, it assumes the consistence of a thin 
 pulp, known technically as ch}me. The time taken 
 up by this process varies considerably, according to 
 circumstances. The gastric fluid contains a large 
 proportion of acid, and a peculiar animal principle 
 called pepsin. The combined action of the acid 
 and the pepsin, which is a kind of ferment, to- 
 gether with the churning movement, reduces the 
 animal portion of the food to the state of soft pulp 
 with great rapidity, provided that the meat has 
 been tender and juicy in the first place, and pro- 
 perly chewed in the second. 
 
 The food having been reduced to ch)me, let us 
 now follow it in its further transformations. The 
 pulpy mass that we have already examined passes 
 into that portion of the body known to anatomists 
 as the small intestines. Shortly after it quits the 
 stomach, and while still in the first of the small 
 intestines, the duodenum, the liver pours out upon it 
 a secretion of a peculiar character, known to all the 
 world as the bile. The part played by the bile in 
 the digestion of food, is a somewhat difficult one 
 to describe, seeing that the highest physiological 
 authorities are at variance as to its action. One 
 great use of the bile appears to be in its power of 
 stimulating muscular fibre, by which it keeps the 
 small intestines in a continual state of movement. 
 
 We now come to that portion of the powers of 
 digestion when the food is acted upon by the 
 secretion formed by the sweet-bread or pancreas, 
 which is poured into the small intestines just after it 
 has received its modicum of bile. The pancreatic 
 
THE CLOCK AT STRASBURG. 
 
 IS 
 
 fluid appears greatly to resemble the saliva in its 
 properties. It transforms the starch globules that 
 have passed through the stomach undigested into 
 sugar, and also dissolves the muscular fibres 
 which have hitherto only been masticated. Another 
 very important function of the pancreatic fluid is 
 its po\ver of forming an emulsion with fats and 
 oils that is capable of being absorbed by the system. 
 The pancreas is greatly assisted in its action by the 
 intestinal fluid which is secreted by certain portions 
 of the small intestine itself, which appears to have 
 a solvent action on those portions of the food that 
 have escaped the power of the other fluids ; in fact, 
 it may be looked upon as being a universal solvent. 
 The milky fluid now formed, is 
 termed the chyle, and is absorbed 
 into the system by the vessels of 
 the intestinal walls by which they 
 are conveyed into the blood. 
 These vessels are known as the 
 absorbents, and form the connect- 
 ing links between the digestive 
 and sanguinifcrous systems. As 
 the chyle is absorbed it changes 
 its character. First the presence 
 of fibrin begins to manifest itself, 
 then it gradually becomes coloured, 
 white corpuscles, apparently iden- 
 tical with those of blood, being 
 formed in great numbers. The 
 temptation to follow it farther on its 
 course now becomes very strong, 
 but we must remember that it is digestion and not 
 assimilation that we arc considering. 
 
 We have merely attempted here to describe as 
 simply as possible the ordinary every-day action of 
 our digestive organs, which in itself is sufficiently 
 wonderful ; the eccentricities of digestion would 
 alone fill many pages. The ostrich is said to be 
 able to digest iron ; but if we consider the 
 wonderful process continually going on in our 
 own bodies, the difficulty of performing such a 
 feat will not appear so remarkable. A piece 
 of iron introduced into the stomach would in 
 time be dissolved by the acid contained in the 
 gastric juice ; in fact a case is on record where a 
 conjuror, in performing the trick of swallowing a 
 sword-blade, accidentally allowed it to pass too far 
 down the gullet, so that it was impossible to 
 withdraw it. The unfortunate man was ordered 
 acid drinks in abundance. These gradually dis- 
 solved the steel, and would no doubt have effected 
 their purpose had not a foolish medical man 
 ordered the conjuror horse exercise towards the 
 end of his treatment. The portion of the sworjl- 
 blade remaining undissolved was forced against the 
 coats of the stomach by the motion of the horse, 
 and the result was what might have been naturally 
 expected, a severe internal wound and death. 
 
 ?ffiIonb^rs of Consfniftion. 
 
 THE CLOCK AT STRASBURG. 
 About the middle of the fourteenth century the 
 canon of Strasburg wished mightily for a clock 
 which should be worthy of the magnificent cathedral 
 wherein he would place it. With this end in view, 
 he invited the most learned astronomers and the 
 most skilful mechanicians to vie with each other in 
 producing a clock which should astonish the world, 
 and be no shame to the mighty cathedral. A man 
 came forward ; and in 1352 the clock was finished. 
 The whole of the Chapter was convoked to behold 
 the first movements of this mar- 
 vellous machine, which surpassed 
 the most sanguine expectations. 
 A cock perched at the top of a 
 tower flapped his wings a few 
 minutes before the striking of 
 each hour to warn the faithful 
 against the suggestions of that evil 
 spirit, which the chief of the 
 apostles himself had no power to 
 resist. Then Death came and 
 struck upon a sounding bell as 
 many strokes as the hour required, 
 and an equal number of apostles 
 passed in a lowly attitude before 
 Christ, who placed his hands upon 
 them in the attitude of blessing. 
 P'inally the chariot of the sun 
 showed by its course round the dial the months 
 and the seasons ; and the hands pointed out the 
 different parts of the day, the days of the week, the 
 days of the month, the age of the world, and the 
 year of our Lord. 
 
 When the canons saw all this their first feelings 
 were of amazement and delight ; then they thought 
 within themselves that this man who had been 
 clever enough to make a wonderful clock for them 
 might make many more, and deprive their dock of 
 its celebrity. They immediately determined to 
 deprive the unfortunate man of his sight, and bar- 
 barously executed their sentence, not informing 
 their victim until afterwards of the cause for their 
 wicked cruelty. When he learnt it he cried out, 
 " Oh ! foolish men, what have you done ? The 
 clock is not finished ; one piece is still wanting which 
 I alone can supply, and without which it is quite 
 useless." The man was instantly led to his work, 
 when he seized the main wheel which set the whole 
 mechanism in motion, broke it, and thus stopped 
 the movements of the clock for ever. This is the 
 legend of the first .Strasburg clock. 
 
 But in 1550 a new clock of Strasburg was to be 
 made, and the most noted mathematicians of the 
 time-were called upon to preside over its manufac- 
 ture. The work was interrupted by the death of 
 
i6 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 some of these. In 1560 it was left solely in the 
 hands of one Conrad Rauchfuss. He joined his 
 friend David Volkenstein, an astronomer of Ham- 
 burg, and entrusted the execution of the different 
 parts of the mechanism to the brothers Habrecht, 
 of Schaffhausen, and the decoration to Tobias 
 Stimmer, of Strasburg. This clock was finished 
 
 a double dial, one showing the hours, and another 
 devoted exclusively to the calendar, showing the 
 month, the date, the Dominical letter, the saint's 
 day, &c. Two winged beings are seated on each 
 side of the small dial. At each quarter of an hour 
 the right hand one strikes upon a bell. Immediately 
 the stroke is repeated on all the dials by automata, 
 
 on the 28th of June, 1574. Rauchfuss' work was 
 
 restored in 1669 by Michael Habrecht, and again in 
 
 1 732 by Jacques Straubhar. It ceased to act in 1 789. 
 
 The present clock, the most interesting portions 
 
 one representing Childhood, one Youth, another 
 Manhood, and a fourth Old Age. Death, placed 
 upon a pedestal by the side of the Old Man, strikes 
 the hours, and ever)- time he fulfils this grave rnis- 
 
 of which our engravings represent, was commenced 
 by a clever artist of Strasburg, M. .Schineque, on 
 the 24th of June, 1838, and finished on the 2nd of 
 October, 1842. 
 
 The central motive-power, which is in itself a 
 clock of wonderful precision, serves to indicate upon 
 a dial-plate placed on the outside of the church the 
 hours and their subdivisions, and the days o£ the 
 week, with the signs of the planets corresponding to 
 them. These indications are repeated inside upon 
 
 sion the second of the two winged figures of which 
 we have spoken reverses an hour-glass. 
 
 At mid-day, at the striking of the hour, a proces- 
 sion of apostles passes before Christ, wlio places his 
 hands over them in the attitude of blessing ; at the 
 same time the cock perched on a tower flaps his 
 wings and crows thrice. On the ground in frc-nt of 
 the clock stands a celestial globe, demonstrating the 
 daily and annual motions of the heavens, stars, and 
 planets with great exactness. 
 
WONDERS OF CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 17 
 
 Fig. I. 
 
 S^onbtrs of €onBinxdion. 
 
 THE GREAT PYRAMID. 
 
 On the Nubian or desert side of the river Nile, and 
 within a short distance of the city of Cairo, stands 
 one of the wonders of the world, a vast pile of 
 
 stone, by means of which travellers are able to 
 mount to the top. Its base is hidden by the sand 
 which drifts in from the desert, and it is owing 
 to this fact and another circumstance, which will 
 be mentioned directly, that so many different 
 accounts have been given of its height and dimen- 
 sions during the last three thousand years. 
 
 Fig. 2. 
 
 masonry which has been known for many ages 
 past — indeed, ever since the age of Herodotus — as 
 the "Great Pyramid of Egypt." It is one of a 
 remarkable group of pyramids, situated on the verge 
 of the desert, overlooking, on the one hand, the 
 barren waste of sand, and on the other, the fertile 
 valley of the Nile. It is built on the solid rock, 
 more than 100 feet above the plains of the sacred 
 river, and in its ruined condition appears like a 
 pyramid of steps, formed of immense blocks of 
 
 3 
 
 Less than a thousand years ago, the rude lime- 
 stone blocks which form the steps of the Great 
 Pyramid were concealed from view by a casing of 
 polished marble, which must have given an appear- 
 ance of dazzling brightness to the vast sides of the 
 mysterious pile. Herodotus, who saw the pyramid 
 in its glory, explains that it was built in steps, every 
 step, as it were, forming the scaffold for the next, 
 as seen in Fig. 2, until the builders reached 
 the top. Then the finishing process commenced 
 
i8 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 from the top downwards, by fitting in angular 
 blocks of marble, antl polishing the surface to one 
 jjcrfect level, as represented by the dotted line a b. 
 Once finished, ascent would be impossible, unless, 
 for any purpose a narrow space was left uncased, 
 like a ladder, in one of the sides, liut that this 
 was done is hardly probable. 
 
 So the Great Pyramid stood, " foursquare to 
 every wind that blew," in the pure atmosphere of 
 Egypt, a sight to astonish every beholder, until the 
 caliphs of Egypt began to despoil it of its marble 
 casing for the construction of their mosques and 
 palaces. This extremely senseless work of destruc- 
 tion began about a.d. iooo; but this, unfortunately, 
 was not the only outrage it was fated to undergo. 
 M. Jomard, of the French expedition, remarks that 
 European tourists always seemed to feel an inveterate 
 longing, when they stood on the top of the Great 
 Pyramid, to detach some of the stones, and send 
 them thundering down the sides. In this way the 
 height of the Pyramid has been lessened, and the 
 area of the top enlarged. As a consequence of this, 
 and of the elevation of the ground at the base by 
 the accumulation of drifting sand, the various 
 measurements of the Pyramid have differed very 
 considerably from each other. Still there was 
 always a possibility of ascertaining the dimensions 
 by a mathematical calculation founded on the base 
 line and the angle of inclination of the sides ; and 
 this has been done in recent times. The length of 
 the line b c (Fig. 2) is now known to be about 
 764 English feet, and two of the marble casing- 
 stones having been discovered, the angle at which 
 the sides incline has been computed at 51° Si'- 
 The vertical height of the Pyramid, resulting from 
 these data, must have been 486 English feet, or 
 nearly 100 feet higher than St. Paul's Cathedral. 
 Its square base, covering, nearly thirteen acres, 
 may be roughly estimated as equal to the area 
 of Lincoln's Inn Fields. The area of one of its 
 triangular faces is about five acres. The courses 
 of stones vary from two feet two inches to four feet 
 ten inches in height, and many of them measure 
 thirty feet in length. The total quantity of masonry 
 has been estimated at more than 89,000,000 cubic 
 feet. " Suppose," says Mr. Sopwith, " a block of 
 solid masonry, the length, breadth, and height of 
 a moderately-sized sitting-room — say, for example, 
 twenty feet by fifteen, and ten feet high — of such 
 blocks more than 28,330 would be required to 
 make the Pyramid, and if placed lengthwise 
 they would extend over more than 107 miles." 
 Pliny states, in agreement with Herodotus, that 
 the Great Pyramid was twenty years in building, 
 and that 366,000 men were employed in its con- 
 struction. This, however, is but traditional. 
 
 A more important question is that of the use for 
 which it was designed ; this problem has exercised 
 the ingenuity of men in all ages, from the time of 
 
 the ancient Greeks to the present hour, when the 
 work of Professor Piazzi Smyth— doubtful and even 
 fantastical though some of his conclusions may be 
 — has thrown so much light on the question. In 
 olden times some were of opinion that the external 
 surfaces were meant to be covered with hiero- 
 glyphics recording the history of Egypt ; but this 
 ingenious supposition is open to a hundred objec- 
 tions. Others thought it was one of the vast 
 granaries built by the Israelites, but this notion, 
 hardly worth mentioning, has been utterly dis- 
 credited by what we know of the interior structure, 
 which is nearly solid. It was a more general 
 belief that some astronomical purpose was intended ; 
 and there is an Arabian tradition that a certain 
 king named Saurid put in it divers celestial spheres 
 and stars, and the mysterious records connected 
 with them. This theory was superseded by the 
 conviction that the Pyramid was nothing more 
 than the tomb of one of the great kings of Egypt. 
 Finally, Professor Smyth has devoted himself to 
 the solution of the problem, and gi\ en to the world 
 one of the most remarkable books of modern times 
 — "Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid" — 
 published about four years ago. 
 
 Before we can gi\'e the reader an idea of Professor 
 Smyth's remarkable conclusions, it should be stated 
 that an entrance into the Great Pyramid was known 
 even before |,the Christian era ; and it led into a 
 chamber cut in the solid rock, exactly under the 
 apex of the pile. The entrance (d. Fig. i) and the 
 chamber (a) to which it conducted were re-dis- 
 covered in 1820, and there were letters found upon 
 the roof which prove that it had been entered by 
 the Romans. The passage was not built up, but 
 only closed by a sliding block of stone worked by 
 simple machinery ; and Professor Smyth has no 
 doubt that it served as "a safety-valve to the 
 Pyramid curiosity of early times, which was thus 
 admitted on rare occasions, and under very impos- 
 ing circumstances of form and state, to see the 
 interior of the greatest of all the pyramids j and 
 then they saw and made acquaintance with — what .'' 
 Tlie descending entrance and the subterranean 
 chamber, but nothing else." 
 
 In the age of the Caliph Al Mamoun the secret 
 of the interior was partially disclosed, though only 
 to be lost again for ages, under circumstances 
 which make a tale of almost romantic interest. 
 The caliph discovered an ascending passage (d) 
 leading into a chamber (c) containing a polished 
 granite coffin without a lid. It had probably, at 
 one time, held the body of an Egyptian king. 
 Arabian poets drew on their imaginations for a more 
 glorious result of their master's enterprise, and sang 
 of " a dead man with a breastplate of gold, an 
 emerald vase a foot in diameter, and a carbuncle 
 which shone with a light like the light of day, and 
 a sword of inestimable v,-ilue." Subsequent caliphs 
 
WONDERFUL NUMBERS. 
 
 19 
 
 showed their practical appreciation of all this 
 romancing, by commencing the work of destruction 
 to which we have already alluded, and eight cen- 
 turies rolled by before the attention of the learned 
 was once more called to Egypt and its archteolo- 
 gical treasures by the expedition under Buonaparte 
 in 1798. 
 
 If the mystery of the Pyramid is solved, its solu- 
 tion confirms one of the most ancient traditions 
 concerning it. According to Professor Piazzi Smyth, 
 it is a stupendous monument of the wisdom of 
 antiquity, and its construction shows an exact 
 knowledge of astronomical science, in some parti- 
 culars not to be surpassed by the science of the 
 nineteenth century. For example, the passage 
 leading from the chamber (a b, Fig. i) served as a 
 tube which enabled observations to be made of 
 the then Pole Star at its lower culmination, about 
 the year 2500 B.C. ; and a parallel passage (c) 
 leading from the chamber C, is supposed to have 
 existed, commanding the star in its upper cul- 
 mination. 
 
 It should be stated that there are in Egypt an 
 immense numljcr of pyramids about which there 
 is little or no mystery at all, as they were obviously 
 designed for sepulchral purposes. They are mostly 
 built of brick. 
 
 THE LIVING SKELETON. 
 
 In the year 1S25, there was exhibited in Pall Mall, 
 one of the most singular freaks of nature the world 
 has ever seen. This was Claude Ambroise Scurat, 
 commonly known as the living skeleton. He was 
 born at Troyes, in France, in the year 1797, of 
 respectable but poor parents, neither of whom were 
 in any way deformed, or remarkable in their ap- 
 pearance. At his birth, Claude Seurat was as other 
 babies are, plump and fleshy, but in proportion as 
 he grew, his flesh gradually wasted away, until by 
 the time he had attained his full stature, he was little 
 more than a skeleton clothed only with skin, and a 
 few imperfectly developed muscles. The texture of 
 the skin was of a dry parchment-like appearance, 
 though it was, nevertheless, singularly sensitive, 
 and on being touched with the finger, especially 
 on the left side of the body, would contract 
 and roughen with an involuntary chill. The 
 ribs were capable not only of being distinguished, 
 but of being clearly separated, and counted one 
 by one, and even handled like so many pieces 
 of cane. 
 
 A writer in the Times described the trunk as 
 " having the appearance, more than anything else, 
 ^ of a large bellows — a mere bag of hoo)5s covered 
 with leather, through which the pulsation of the 
 heart was distinctly visible." Sir Astley Cooper, 
 who examined him, found that his heart was as 
 much as its own length out of its usual position, 
 
 while the action of the lungs appeared to proceed 
 from the lower part of the body. He stood 
 about five feet seven inches high. His countenance 
 is described as by no means displeasing, though 
 somewhat pensive in its expression, his complexion 
 was swarthy, and on his cheeks there vas sufficient 
 flesh to prevent him from looking remarkable, 
 when dressed in padded clothes. On the day be- 
 fore his first public exhibition, he walked through 
 the streets with the gentleman who had brought 
 him from France, without in any way exciting 
 attention. His mental powers were at least re- 
 spectable, better far than those of many a man 
 better formed in body. 
 
 The great wonder of Scurat's case appears to 
 lie not so much in his extreme emaciation, as in 
 the fact that such a degree of decay should be 
 compatible with life, and even the enjoyment of 
 life in a moderate degree. He always ate and 
 drank with an appetite, though sparingly ; those 
 dishes which afford most nourishment appearing 
 to satisfy him most quickly ; and his digestion and 
 general health were good. 
 
 Many efforts were made to have him presented 
 to the French king, but these his father always 
 evaded, considering, and probably with good reason, 
 that his son miglit be consigned to some wretched 
 asylum, depwudent only on a miserable pension. 
 To use his own words, he was "wandering about 
 France making but little by exhibiting himself," 
 when he met the gentleman who brought him over 
 to England, and of whose kindness he always 
 spoke in the very highest terms. 
 
 WONDERFUL NUMBERS. 
 
 Some very curious properties in numbers have 
 been noticed, which are well enough known to 
 arithmeticians and mathematicians as the necessary 
 result of certain laws, but which at first appear 
 utterly mysterious. The best known of these is 
 the singular property of the number nine, when 
 muUiplied by any of the digits, to reproduce itself 
 in the product. Twice 9, for example, is 18, and 
 these two figures, 8 and i, make 9. If this hap- 
 pened to one or two multiples only it would be less 
 marvellous, but it happens in all, with one equally 
 remarkable exception, thus : — 
 
 9 X 2 = 18 and 3+1=9 
 
 9X 3 = =7 .. 7 + 2 = 9 
 
 9X 4-36 „ 6+3 = 9 
 
 9X 5 = 45 » 5 + 4 — 9 
 
 gx 6=54 ,, 4+5=9 
 
 , 9X7=63,, 3 + 6 = 9 
 
 gX 8 = 72 ,, 2 + 7 — 9 
 
 9 X lo — 90 ,, + 9 = 9 
 
 And here we come to the exception, 9x11 equals 
 99, and the product of these figures is 18, but then 
 8 + I equals 9, so thus the law holds, but a step is 
 
THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 interposed, and that step consists of two nines 
 instead of one. To proceed : — 
 
 9 X 12 s» io8 and 8 + 0+1=9 
 
 9Xi3=;ii7 ,, 7+1 + 1=9 
 
 9x14 = 126 ,, 6 + 2+1=9 
 
 9 X 15 = 135 „ 5 + 3+1-9 
 
 9 X i6 = 144 ., 4 + 4+1-9 
 
 9 X 17 = 153 „ 3 + 5 + 1 = 9 
 
 9X18=162 ,, 2 + 6+1=9 
 
 9 X 19-= 171 ,, I + 7 + I - 9 
 
 9X20=180 ., + 8+1=9 
 
 There is in, fact, no hmit to this, and another 
 property of the same digit is equally curious. Take 
 any number of two figures and change the order 
 of the digits. Then subtract the one from the 
 other, and the remainder will always be 9. Let the 
 number for example be 89 ; transpose the digits 
 and it becomes 98 ; then subtract 89 from 98 and 
 you have 9 left. In high numbers it will be some 
 multiple of 9. Thus, 365 transposed becomes 563, 
 and the lesser taken from the greater leaves 198, 
 which is 9 times 22 ; or if we add the digits together 
 8 + 9 + I, the sum is 18 and 8 + i equals 9. Any 
 one who choses to exercise himself in experiments 
 of this kind, will hardly fail to hit upon some sur- 
 prising results. 
 
 Another number which falls under somemysterious 
 law of series is 37. If multiplied by 3, or any 
 multiple of 3 up to 27, the product which results is 
 expressed by three similar digits. Thus : — 
 
 37 
 
 X 
 
 3 
 
 = III 
 
 37 
 
 X 
 
 6 
 
 = 222 
 
 37 
 
 X 
 
 9 
 
 = 333 
 
 37 
 
 X 
 
 12 
 
 = 444 
 
 37 
 
 X 
 
 IS 
 
 = 555 
 
 37 
 
 X 
 
 18 
 
 = 666 
 
 37 
 
 X 
 
 21 
 
 = 777 
 
 37 
 
 X 
 
 24 
 
 = 888 
 
 37 X 27 = 999 
 
 It will be observed that the products also succeed 
 each other in the order of the digits read down- 
 wards, I, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 ; and these again being 
 multiplied by three (their number of places), re- 
 produce the multiplicand of 37 from which they 
 resulted. Thus : — 
 
 I X 3 = 3 
 
 2x3 = 6 
 
 3 X 3=9 
 and so on. 
 
 Another, and quite distinct class of coincidences 
 is represented by the following table of the periods 
 in which five successive presidents of America were 
 born and went out of office. 
 
 John Adams, born 1735, retired 1801 
 
 Thomas Jefferson ,, 1743 ,, 1809 
 James Madison ,, 1751 ,, 1817 
 James Monroe ,, 1759 „ 1825 
 
 J. Quincy Adams ,, 1767 „ 1829 
 
 Each of these distinguished men was born eight 
 years after his predecessor, and each went out of 
 office eight years after his predecessor. All but 
 John Quincy Adams were sixty-six years of age 
 when they retired, and three out of the five died 
 alike on the Anniversary of Independence. 
 
 WONDERFUL NATURAL CON- 
 STRUCTION. 
 
 In the British Museum there is to be seen a fine 
 stuffed specimen of the little nocturnal, grub-eating, 
 climbing quadruped of the Island of Madagascar, 
 called " Aye-aye," most difficult to be obtained 
 there, as the accomplished missionary Ellis tells 
 us in his "Three Visits to Madagascar." The 
 curious name it bears is said to be owing to 
 the cry of astonishment which the natives uttered 
 on beholding for the first time so strange a little 
 creature. 
 
 What a strange ph)siognomy is given to the skull 
 of the little rarity by the enormous, curved, chisel- 
 shaped pair of teeth at the fore part of the upper and 
 under jaws ! What can be the meaning of that 
 long, shri\elled middle finger on each of the hands ? 
 It looks like a bent probe, only there is a hook at 
 the end. In short, the singularities offered by both 
 skin and skeleton excite the strongest wish to learn 
 more about the little Aye-aye of Madagascar. Dr. 
 Sandwith, of Kars celebrity, was made in 1S58 
 Colonial Secretary at the Island of Mauritius. In 
 the following year the energetic doctor was able to 
 write that he had got from Madagascar the co\etcd 
 Aye-aye, and desired to know whether it should be 
 transmitted to the British Museum dead or alive? 
 To this the superintendent replied, knowing that 
 he was addressing a medical man who had been 
 familiar with anatomical procedures, " It might be 
 more advantageous to science if the animal were 
 killed by chloroform, and properly preserved." In 
 that state the specimen reached the Museum, 
 where its stuffed skin, its skeleton, its brain, and 
 some other parts in spirits, are evidence of the use 
 made of the opportunity. 
 
 But why, some reader may be disposed to ask, 
 should not the Aye-aye have been forwarded to 
 England alive in a cage instead of a cask ? The 
 main cause of the failure of every opportunity of 
 supplying Europe with an Aye-aye, was due to the 
 attempt to send home the animal alive. Cuvier, 
 we may be sure, was as anxious to get a specimen 
 as Owen. Twice or thrice his appeals to his 
 countrymen in, or trading with, Madagascar, led to 
 their getting possession of the coveted animal. In 
 each case, before the opportunity of shipping it off 
 arrived, the box, no matter how thick or hard the 
 wood, was empty, and a large round hole showed 
 how successfully the captive had applied its strong, 
 chisel-shaped incisors to effect its escape. The very 
 same misfortune befel Dr. Sandwith. " I am gra- 
 dually," he writes, "lining his cage with tin, as I 
 observe he attacks the wood-work every night." 
 But not long after the dispatch of the letter in which 
 this precaution is mentioned, the Aye-aye had 
 gnawed its way out. Most fortunately and unex- 
 pectedly, the little animal was re-captured in a 
 sugar-plantation, some distance from Port Louis. 
 
WONDERFUL NATURAL CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 THE AVE-AYE. 
 
 This quadruped is stated to sleep during the 
 heat and glare of the tropical day, and to move 
 about chiefly at night. The wide openings of the 
 eyelids, and the whole construction of the eye, 
 are arrangements for admitting to the retina, and 
 absorbing, the utmost amount of the light which 
 may pervade the forest at sunset, dawn, or moon- 
 light. Thus the Aye-aye is able to guide itself 
 among the branches in quest of its hidden food. 
 To detect this, however, another sense had need 
 to be developed in great perfection. The large 
 ears are directed to catch and concentrate, and 
 the large acoustic nerve, and its ministering 
 "flocculus," seemed designed to appreciate any 
 feeble vibration that might reach the tympanum 
 from the recess in the hard timber through which 
 the wood-boring insect on which it feeds may be 
 tunnelling its way by repeated scoopings and 
 scrapings of its hard little jaws. How safe from 
 . bills of birds or jaws of beasts might seem such a 
 grub in its oak or ebony-cased burrow ! 
 
 Here, however, is a remarkable animal in which 
 the front teeth, by their number, size, shape, implan- 
 tation, and provision for perpetual renovation of sub- 
 stance, are especially fitted to enable their possessor 
 to gnaw down, with gouge-like scoops, to the very 
 
 spot where the ear indicates the grub to be at work. 
 The instincts of the insect, however, warn it to 
 withdraw from the part of the burrow that may be 
 thus exposed. Had the Aye-aye possessed no other 
 instrument — were no other part of its frame specially 
 modified to meet this exigency — it must have pro- 
 ceeded to apply the incisive scoops in order to lay 
 bare the whole of the larval tunnel, to the extent, at 
 least, which would leave no further room for the 
 retracted grub's further retreat. Such labour, how- 
 ever, would have been too much for the reproductive 
 power of even its strongly-built, wide-based, deep- 
 planted, pulp-retaining incisors ; in most instances, 
 we may well conceive such labour of complete 
 exposure of the burrow to be disproportionate 
 to the morsel so obtained. Accordingly another 
 part of the frame of the A)e-aye is modified in a 
 singular and, as it seems, anomalous way, to meet 
 this exigency. We may suppose that the insect 
 retracts its head so far from the opening gnawed 
 into its burrow as to be out of reach of the lips, 
 teeth, or tongue of the Aye-aye. One finger, how- 
 ever, on each hand of that animal has been ordained 
 to grow in length, but not in thickness, with the 
 other digits. It remains slender as a probe, and is 
 provided at the end with a small pad and a hook 
 
22 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 like claw. By the doubtless rapid insertion and 
 application of this finger, the grub is felt, seized, 
 and drawn out. But for this delicate manoeuvre 
 the Aye-aye needs a free command of its upper or 
 fore-limlDS ; and to give it that power, one of the 
 digits of the hind foot is so modified and directed 
 that it can be applied thumbwisc to the other 
 toes, and the foot is made almost like a hand. 
 Hereby the body is steadied by the firm grasp of 
 these hinder hands during all the operations of the 
 head, jaws, teeth, and fore-paws, required for the 
 discovery and capture of the common and favourite 
 food of this nocturnal animal. Thus we ha\'c not 
 only obvious, direct, and perfect adaptations of 
 particular mechanical instruments to particular 
 functions — of feet to grasp, of teeth to erode, of a 
 digit to feel and to extract — but we discern a cor- 
 relation of these several modifications with each 
 other, and with modifications of the nervous system 
 and sense-organs — of eyes to catch the least 
 glimmer of light, and of ears to detect the feeblest 
 grating of sound — the whole determining a com- 
 pound mechanism to the perfect performance of a 
 particular kind of work. 
 
 WONDERFUL FROSTS. 
 
 It may not be out of place to record a few of the 
 most remarkable instances of severe frost which are 
 chronicled as having occurred in this country. We 
 are informed by a paper on this subject, which ap- 
 peared in the Express of January the 1 1 th, 1 86 1 , that 
 the Thames was frozen over for fourteen weeks in 
 the year 1063, and below bridge to Gravesend, from 
 November the 24th to February the loth, in 1434. 
 In 151 5, carriages passed over from Lambeth to 
 Westminster. In 1607, fires were lighted on the 
 river, and all sorts of diversions were carried on. 
 In 1684, the frost was so severe that nearly all 
 the birds perished ; the Thames was covered 
 with ice eleven inches thick ; at a fair held upon 
 it, printing-presses were ereitcd which struck off 
 verses and inscriptions commemorative of the 
 event, several of which memorials are still extant. 
 A private letter of the date of February the 9th 
 of that year, mentions the appearance of a great 
 deal of ice in the Channel, adding, that it was 
 reported that the ice between Dover and Calais 
 was within about a league of joining. In 1715-16, 
 a fair was again held upon the Thames, and oxen 
 were roasted. This frost lasted from November the 
 24th to February the 9th. After this, the next severe 
 frost was that which set in on December the 26th, 
 1740. The cold was intense, many who had lived 
 for years at Hudson's Ray declaring that they had 
 never felt it colder in those parts. The Thames 
 floated with rocks and shoals of ice, and when fixed 
 they represented a snowy field rising everywhere in 
 hillocks and huge rocks of ice and snow. Booths, 
 
 stalls, and printing-presses were erected, and a 
 Frost Fair held on it. Several people perished with 
 cold in the streets and fields in and about the city. 
 All navigation being obstructed, coals rose to ^3 10s. 
 per chaldron ; and the damage among the shipping 
 between the Medway and London Bridge was com- 
 puted at ^100,000. Flocks of ducks, widgeon, and 
 coots were found on the ice on the Kent and Essex 
 shores, perished with cold or starved to death. 
 Vast quantities of fish, especially eels, were found 
 frozen to death on the banks of the Severn, near 
 Thornbury, in Gloucestershire ; and flocks of crows 
 resorted there to feed on them. In Suffolk, wild 
 geese and other birds devoured the winter corn 
 close to the earth for the space of many acres. In 
 Hertfordshire numbers of oaks were riven by the 
 frost, which made clefts in the solid timber as deep 
 as a case-knife could be thrust. The rivers Severn, 
 Lyne, the Avon by Bristol, the rivers Forth, Tay, 
 &c., in Scotland, and the Lififey by Dublin, were 
 all frozen up like the Thames ; and by all advices 
 from Holland, France, Germany, &c., the cold was 
 extreme. In Poland and Lithuania the inhabitants, 
 besides what they suffered by the frost, were very 
 much incommoded by the bears and wolves, which 
 ranged about devouring men and cattle. In Podolia, 
 whence the Russians in their march had carried off 
 all the forage and most of the provisions (though 
 they left money for it), the inhabitants were perish- 
 ing both with hunger and cold. The streets of 
 London were so clogged with snow and ice that 
 hackney-coaches went with three or four horses, 
 and coal carts were drawn from the wharfs with 
 eight horses : and Fleet Street was so long neglected 
 and so dangerous, that scores of men were at work 
 on Sunday, the 27th, to clear the way. 
 
 In the " History of the City of Glasgow," by James 
 Denholm (Glasgow, 1804), we are told that the end 
 of 1784 and the beginning of 1785 were remarkable 
 for a long-continued frost; it lasted four months -- 
 till the 14th of March, when the ice upon the Clyde 
 broke. Upon December the 21st the cold was so 
 intense that the thermometer showed twenty degrees 
 below the freezing point. In London, the con- 
 tinuance of the frost was still longer, being no less 
 than five months and twenty-four days — in all, one 
 hundred and seventy-six days — the longest con- 
 tinuance of frost on record. 
 
 From November, 1788, to January, 1789, the 
 Thames was frozen ox'cr opposite the Custom 
 House sufficiently firm for passing over. The year 
 1 8 14 is, we believe, the last occasion on record on 
 which this occurred. 
 
 CAPTURE OF A WHALE IN TIHi 
 
 THAAIES. 
 
 A CURIOUS old tract in the British Museum, 
 
 bearing the date of 1658, gives an account of a 
 
 wonderful capture of a whale in the Thames, not 
 
A WONDER OF INTRIGUE. 
 
 *3 
 
 far from Greenwich, in tire montli of June of that 
 year. The sailors in the river were, of course, 
 an.xious to secure the huge monster who had been 
 so rash as to invade our shores ; but they found 
 no slight difficulty in despatching it. All sorts of 
 swords, axes, and hatchets, and even guns were 
 brought into the service ; but nothing effectual 
 could be done till some one's ingenuity suggested 
 striking a couple of anchors into the creature's body. 
 By these it was held fast, and very soon bled to 
 death-. Hundreds of people flocked to see the 
 monstrous stranger, and among others went 
 Evelyn, author of the " Diary," who has left us a 
 curious account of it. It was of no contemptible 
 size, being fifty-eight feet long, twelve feet high, 
 fourteen feet broad, and measured two feet between 
 the eyes. 
 
 A WONDER OF INTRIGUE. 
 
 In the year 1771 an extraordinary case was tried 
 in the Court of King's Bench, Guildhall, by Lord 
 Chief Justice Mansfield. The question was, whether 
 a distinguished person, known as the Chevalier 
 d'Eon, at one time ambassador from the Court 
 of France to that of England, was a man or a 
 woman. The case was brought into court in con- 
 sequence of certain heavy bets that had been made 
 as to the point at issue. A great deal of evidence 
 was given. Lord Mansfield, one of our most acute 
 judges, summed up carefully, and the jury, without 
 hesitation, found for the plaintiff, thereby solemnly 
 recording their belief that D'Eon was a woman. 
 Nevertheless, in 18 10, when the chevalier died, at the 
 advanced age of eighty-two, it was proved that he 
 was a man. At any time between those two dates, 
 and for some years previous to the earlier one, 
 public opinion was divided on this strange pro- 
 blem, though latterly the verdict of the juiy had 
 been received as a sufficient settlement of the 
 question. How the mystification originated, and 
 why it was carried on, will appear from the fol- 
 lowing account of D'Eon's career. 
 
 Charles Genevieve Louis Augustc Andro Ti- 
 mothee d'Eon do Beaumont was born in 1728, at 
 Tonnerre, in the Province of Burgundy. The 
 family is enrolled in the genealogical books of 
 France as an ancient and illustrious one. His 
 father and grandfather were both intendants of 
 their municipality, and his mother, Franyoise de 
 Charcnton, was the daughter of M. de Charenton, 
 commissary of the French armies in France and 
 Italy. It may be said, under these circumstances, 
 that Charles d'Eon was born to good fortune. He 
 was educated in conformity with his prospects, 
 and took his degrees as doctor of civil and of canon 
 law, became advocate of the Parliament of Paris, 
 and was appointed Censor of Belles Lettres and 
 
 History. He was besides an extraordinary adept 
 in riding and fencing. 
 
 While engaged in all these employments and 
 studies, and also making a name in literature by 
 his occasional publications, D'Eon became known 
 to the Prince of Conti, and was introduced by 
 him to the Court of Louis XV. At that time, 1755, 
 the king was anxious to reconcile the Court of St. 
 Petersburg to his policy, and secure its alliance in 
 the war against Prussia. In order to negotiate with 
 success, secrecy and easy access to the sovereign 
 of Russia were essential. How it was brought 
 about, and what strange circumstances had pre- 
 ceded the daring attempt we know not, but D'Eon, 
 disguised as a woman, went to St. Petersburg as 
 reader of the French language, and secretary to 
 the wife of the great Chancellor Woronzoff, who 
 had married a Russian princess nearly related to 
 the Empress Elizabeth. The intrigue succeeded 
 so well that he was sent again the following year 
 in his proper character as a man, in conjunction 
 with the Chevalier Douglas, and with an avowed 
 diplomatic mission. As a consequence of these 
 negotiations, Elizabeth joined the armies of France 
 and Austria with 80,000 men, who were to have 
 taken the field in aid of the King of Prussia. 
 D'Eon, returning to Paris, was dispatched to Vienna 
 to communicate the plan of operations agreed upon 
 by Russia, and the famous battle of Prague was 
 fought while he was in that capital. He hastened 
 with the news of victory to Paris, and the king 
 rewarded him with a commission as lieutenant of 
 dragoons. 
 
 In 1759, after a third visit to the Court of Russia, 
 D'Eon joined his regiment in Germany, with the 
 rank of captain, and with an appointment as aide- 
 de-camp to the Count and Marshal de Brogho. 
 In the engagement at Ultrop he was twice wounded ; 
 and at the siege of Ostervitch, with only fourscore 
 dragoons and forty hussars, he completely routed 
 a Prussian battalion, and took the commanding 
 officer prisoner. In 1762 he was on the point of 
 going as ambassador to Russia, when the death of 
 Peter III. changed the relations between the two 
 courts. So great, however, was the king's con- 
 fidence in D'Eon, that he w^as sent to London, 
 in September of the same year, as secretary of 
 embassy to the Duke de Nivernois. The circum- 
 stances which followed proved the wisdom of this 
 appointment ; for it is doubtful if the Peace of 
 1763 would have been ratified if D'Eon, by his 
 address, had not rescued the minister from the 
 very serious dilemma in which his dishonourable 
 conduct had placed him. On the duke's return to 
 Paris, he showed his sense of the value of D'Eon's 
 services, by procuring for him the appointment of 
 Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Great 
 Britain. Somewhat later, the king also granted 
 him a handsome pension. 
 
24 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 About the time of the first election which took 
 place after the Peace of 1763, doubts began to 
 be circulated about the sex of the Chevalier d'Eon. 
 From that period to 1771, when the trial took place 
 to which we have alluded, there was much specu- 
 lation afloat on this subject, both in the press and 
 in society. One day the Chevalier d'Eon was found 
 mysteriously wanting, and it had been given out 
 by himself that a conspiracy existed against him. 
 His name was continually before the public in 
 some enigmatical shape. The rage for betting on 
 the question, whether he was a man or a woman, 
 took possession of the public ; and after six years 
 of ridiculous anxiety on this point, Mr. Hayes, a 
 surgeon in Leicester Fields, brought an action 
 against one Jacques, a broker 
 and underwriter, to recover the 
 sum of ^700. The plaintiff 
 alleged that Mr. Jacques had 
 received premiums of fifteen 
 guineas per cent., for every one 
 of which he stood engaged to 
 return one hundred guineas 
 whenever it should be proved 
 that the Chevalier d'Eon was 
 a woman. This proof, Mr. 
 Hayes contended, he now pos- 
 sessed ; and, after a good deal 
 of hard swearing, he gained his 
 cause. Other sums, to an im- 
 mense amount, depended on 
 this suit ; and we now know 
 that the witnesses who decided 
 it were perjured. 
 
 It cannot fail to strike the 
 reader that D'Eon himself had 
 it in his power to settle the dis- 
 pute at once ; but he remained 
 in the background, allowed the 
 secondary evidence full power, 
 and otherwise acted in an equivocal manner. All 
 this is easy to understand on the hypothesis that he 
 was interested in the bets and policies ; but this 
 he absolutely denied in writing, and owing to his 
 denial, the winners of the cause never touched a 
 farthing of the money. The reason of this would 
 require a legal explanation which it is not necessary 
 to enter upon. 
 
 From the period of this extraordinary trial to 
 the end of his life, D'Eon was placed in a more 
 equivocal position than ever by the action of the 
 French Court. Affecting to believe that he was 
 really a woman, that Government continued his 
 pension on condition of his wearing the apparel 
 becoming to his sex. The reader may imagine the 
 daily awkwardness of this to a man of the highest 
 accomplishments, moving in the best society. The 
 curious engraving, of which we here give a copy, 
 was meant for a caricature of his double character 
 
 by the wits of Paris ; and all sorts of anecdotes 
 were circulated in illustration of his equivocal 
 character and position. Some may think he might 
 have manfully declared the truth, and released 
 himself from his ignoble bonds. But it was com- 
 monly reported in Paris that he had only the 
 choice of obeying, or of ending his days in the 
 Bastile. It is very possible that he had compro- 
 mised the honour of many noble families in his 
 assumed character, and it was only so long as he 
 was willing to pass for a woman, and so put an 
 end to the scandals connected with his name, 
 that he could be allowed to remain at large. 
 Those were the days, be it remembered, of the 
 tyrannical lettres-de-cachct, and many, with less 
 reason, had been consigned to 
 the dungeons of the Bastile. 
 
 Until the French Revolution 
 broke out, the Chevalier d'Eon 
 lived in obscurity for several 
 years with Lord Ferrers at 
 Staunton Harold, and allowed 
 the world to believe that he was 
 a woman. Sometimes he would 
 exhibit his skill in fencing, and 
 on one memorable occasion he 
 engaged in a match with the 
 celebrated Chevalier de Saint 
 George, before the Prince of 
 Wales, at Carlton House. The 
 destruction of monarchy in 
 P'rance and other occurrences 
 had deprived him of his sole 
 means of support in old age, and 
 the English papers of 1791 and 
 subsequent years contain adver- 
 tisements of his exhibitions of 
 fencing. These entertainments 
 seem to have been very attrac- 
 tive, as the chevalier retained 
 which he had so long been 
 accustomed. Sometimes, indeed, he came out in 
 character, as at Ranelagh and the King's Theatre, 
 when he appeared upon the stage dressed in armour, 
 with a casque and feather, representing Minerva, or 
 the Maid of Orleans. In spite of his exertions in 
 this way, old age and distress overtook him, and he 
 died, after having been bedridden for two years, in 
 1 810. Then the discovery was made which reversed 
 the verdict of 1771, and the public interest of 
 forty years before was renewed. Without a doubt 
 the career of the Chevalier d'Eon is one of the 
 strangest on record. That a man learned, elegant, 
 and polite ; a soldier, a statesman, an ambassador ; 
 in fine, a man of superior accomplishments, should 
 have .passed one half of his life in the character 
 proper to him, and lingered away the other half in 
 that of an obscure and neglected old woman, is a 
 case, perhaps, without a parallel. 
 
 the costume to 
 
WONDERS OF VEGETATION. 
 
 2? 
 
 WONDERS OF VEGETATION. 
 
 Some striking rGsemblance in vegetation to the I 
 human form is by no means an uncommon pheno- j 
 menon, and many are the legends to which wonders ; 
 of this kind have given rise. There is the story of j 
 the mandrake, for example, which is said to shriek i 
 when it is pulled out of the ground. Avicenna 
 relates that a Jew at Metz had a mandrake pre- 
 served in spirits which had a human head, and the 
 legs and body of a cock. This may have been, 
 for a book might be filled with similar marvels ; but 
 
 effort of imagination, the entwined roots will be 
 thought to resemble arms and legs ; and the whole 
 bears a very close resemblance to a female figure 
 adorned with a head-dress, sitting cross-legged, 
 with her arms folded. 
 
 The radish represented in Fig. B grew in a sandy 
 soil at Haarlem, and was painted from the life by 
 Jacob Penoy, whose friend, Zuckerbecker, pre- 
 sented the picture to Glandorp, in 1672. From 
 this picture an engraving was made by Kirby, 
 from which, again, our copy is taken. Another 
 radish, exactly resembling a human hand, was in 
 
 Fig. A. 
 
 what shall we say when the same authority informs 
 us that the mandragore of Metz lived five weeks, 
 and was fed on grains of lavender and earthworms? 
 
 The accompanying sketch represents three of 
 the most remarkable vegetable oddities which have 
 been noticed, and it will be seen from our account 
 of them that there is no reason to believe that the 
 representations, which are copied from old prints, 
 are exaggerated. 
 
 The turnip with a human face, represented in 
 Fig. A, grew, in 1628, in a garden at the village of 
 Weidan, between Bonn and Juliers, in Germany. 
 For the original record of the fact, the curious may 
 consult the volume entitled "Miscellanea Academiaj 
 Naturae," for 1670, page 139. It will be observed 
 that the leaves resemble hair standing up, or feathers 
 such as ladies wear when attired in court costume. 
 On the round part of the root there are marks re- 
 sembling eyes, nose, and mouth. By a very slight 
 4 
 
 the possession of Mr. Bissct, secretary to the 
 museum at Birmingham, in 1802. He declared 
 in his letter that the fingers were quite perfect, 
 and that a large sum had been offered for it and 
 refused. 
 
 Mr. Kirby mentions a large radish, the thickest 
 part of which resembled a three-legged stool ; and 
 the writer has seen a parsnip to which the same 
 description would apply. More remarkable, was 
 the root of the parsnip shown in our engraving. 
 Fig. c, which represented the back of a hand so 
 perfectly that it could not be surpassed by the 
 best painter. This root was bought of a market- 
 woman in the usual way, and passing from one 
 person to another, at 'last fell into the hands of an 
 engrav^. Dr. Menzel testified to having seen 
 a parsnip which exactly resembled a man, but 
 the writer is not aware that any drawing of it was 
 ever published. 
 
26 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 THE FLYING DUTCHMAN. 
 
 As an instance of the wonderful things which 
 sailors see, or believe they sec, in their voyages 
 over the ocean, it is recorded that a vessel 
 homeward bound from Batavia in the winter sea- 
 son being distressed, bore up for the Cape of 
 Good Hope. It was during the Dutch occupa- 
 tion of the Cape, and there was a rule forbidding 
 vessels to enter Table Bay in winter time. The 
 batteries fired on the offending ship and obliged 
 her to put to sea, where she was lost, but where 
 she is still beating about and will do so till the 
 end of time. Another account has it that a Dutch 
 Indiaman being baffled continuously for several 
 weeks in its endeavours to get in-to Table Bay, the 
 captain swore with a dreadful oath that he would 
 get in though he tried till the judgment day ; that 
 he was taken at his word, and was condemned 
 to beat up incessantly for the bay, which, however, 
 he may not enter. The Flying Dutchman is seen 
 in the worst weather, when other ships can scarcely 
 show a yard of canvas to the wind, car^'ing a press 
 of sail ; and in calm weather he is seen, when other 
 ships have everything set scudding, under bare poles. 
 To see him is deemed unfortunate ; to answer his 
 invitation to lie to while he sends a boat on board 
 with a letter to be sent home, is considered fatal. 
 
 The following wonderful narration is from the log 
 of H.M.S. Lcven, employed with the Barraconta in 
 1823 in surveying in the neighbourhood of the Cape. 
 The Levcn was off Point Danger between Algoa and 
 Simon's Bay, when she saw the Barraconta about 
 two miles to leeward of her. Some surprise was 
 expressed on board the Levcn, as the Barraconta' s 
 orders required her to be far distant from the spot 
 at the time. There was no doubt, however, in the 
 minds of any as to the vessel, and the Lcven 
 tried to close with her but could not. The stranger 
 lowered a boat, but night came on and nothing more 
 was seen of ship or boat. A week afterwards, when 
 the Barraconta rejoined her consort, it was found 
 from the log that she was, on the evening in question, 
 three hundred miles from the Levcn, and could not 
 possibly have been seen. It was further ascertained 
 tliat she had not lowered a boat during the whole 
 of that day. On another occasion the Levcn 
 witnessed a similar phenomenon, the mystery of 
 the boat being repeated, and being taken by the 
 sailors as an undoubted proof of the stranger being 
 the Flying Dutchman himself. Tlie Leveti did 
 not wait for the boat, but ho\e away and went on 
 her voyage. 
 
 At another time a homeward-bound vessel being 
 caught in a gale near the Cape, saw coming down 
 towards her under a press of canvas, a large, old- 
 fashioned ship, which seemed to be indifferent to 
 all the winds that blew. In spite of the weather, 
 the stranger made straight for the Indiaman, which 
 
 had been made snug, and steered as though she 
 would pass under her quarter. Her decks were 
 seen to have men upon them, and she herself flew 
 with the rapidity of lightning. The people of the 
 Indiaman were preparing to hail, when the stranger 
 disappeared as suddenly as she had shown herself, 
 and was seen no more. There are many like 
 stories, but the above is given on the authority of 
 Mr. Montgomery Martin, who had made many 
 voyages, and was too much practised in sea sights 
 to be taken in by appearances. For myself — 
 
 • I know not how the truth may be, 
 I say the tale as 'iwas said to me." 
 
 THE HISTORY OF A WONDERFUL 
 DIAMOND. 
 
 THE KOH-I-NOOR. 
 
 The Koh-i-^oor,'or Mountain of Light, is stated 
 by the Hindoos to have been discovered in the 
 mines of GoJconda, more than three thousand 
 years ago, and to have been originally in the pos- 
 session of Kama, King of Auga. Another version 
 states that it was stolen from one of the kings 
 of Golconda by a treacherous general named 
 Mininrola, and presented by him to the Great 
 Mogul, Shah Jehan, the father of Aurungzebc, 
 about the year 1640. It was then rough and 
 uncut, and about twice its present size ; but Shah 
 Jehan gave it to a diamond-worker, who cut it so 
 badly that he wasted half of it, and did not display 
 its lustre to good advantage. The Mogul — who 
 was in a justifiable rage — instead of paying the 
 jeweller for his work, fined him ten thousand 
 ducats. About two hundred years ago, Ta\'ernicr, 
 the French traveller, saw the Koh-i-noor in India, 
 and described the admiration and amazement it 
 always excited. From that time until it came into 
 the possession of the Khan of Cabul, at the com- 
 mencement of the present century, the Koh-i-noor 
 changed hands very often. Runjcct Singh obtained 
 it from the Khan in a mean and abominable 
 I way. He had heard that the Khan of Cabul had 
 , the finest and purest diamond ever seen, and 
 I he determined to possess it. The Khan was 
 invited by the intending thief; he arrived at tlie 
 court of his host with — not the diamond, but a 
 clever imitation. Once in Runjeet Singh's power, 
 that despot immediately demanded the gem. It 
 was reluctantly given up, and sent to the court 
 jeweller's to be cut. Runjeet Singh soon received 
 intelligence that the stone was comparatively worth- 
 j less. He was so enraged at this, that he ordered 
 the Khan's palace to be ransacked from top to 
 bottom, to find the missing treasure. At last a 
 slave betrayed his master, and showed the diamond 
 lying under a heap of ashes. Runjeet carried it off 
 in triumph, and subsequently decked himself, and 
 occasionally his horse, with its splendid brilliancy. 
 
WONDERS OF ANIMAL LIFE. 
 
 27 
 
 When he died, the gem passed into the hands of 
 
 his successors ; and in 1850, when wc conquered 
 the Punjaub, the Koh-i-noor was among the spoil. 
 It was brought to England in the Medea, and pre- 
 sented to Her Majesty the Ouccn by the East 
 India Company. 
 
 The Koh-i-noor was pronounced to be badly cut, 
 and the court jeweller entrusted it to Messrs. Coster, 
 of Amsterdam, to re-cut — a work that occupied 
 the labours of thirty-eight days of twelve hours 
 each. The late Duke of Wellington became an 
 amateur diamond-cutter for this memorable occa- 
 sion, and gave the first touch to the work. The 
 wonderful stone was exhibited, re-cut, in 1862, and 
 a model of it may be seen in the British Museum. 
 
 CURIOUS DISSECTION 
 OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. 
 
 SHOWING THH NUMBER OF BOOKS, CHAPTERS, VERSES, WORDS, 
 LETTERS, &C. 
 
 In the Old Testament. 
 
 Books 39 
 
 (Chapters ... 929 
 
 Verses 23,214 
 
 Words 592,439 
 
 Letters 2,728,10a 
 
 In the New Testament. Total. 
 
 Books 27 ... 66 
 
 Chapters 260 ... 1,189 
 
 Verses 7,959 ... 31,173 
 
 Words 281,258 ... 773,697 
 
 Letters 838,380 ... 3,566,480 
 
 Apocrypha— chapters, 1 83 ; verses, 6,08 1 ; words, 
 152,185. 
 
 The middle chapter and the least in the Bible is 
 Psalm c;;vii. 
 
 The middle verse is the 8th of Psalm cxviii. 
 
 The middle line is in i6th verse, 4th chapter, 
 2 Chronicles. 
 
 The word and occurs in the Old Testament 
 35)543 times ; in the New Testament, 10,684 
 times. 
 
 The word Jehovah occurs 6,855 times. 
 
 OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 The middle book is Proverbs. 
 
 The middle chapter is Job xxix. 
 
 The middle verse would be in the 2nd of Chroni- 
 cles, 20th chapter, between the 17th and i8th 
 verses. 
 
 The least verse is the 1st of Chronicles, ist 
 chapter, and 25tli. verse. 
 
 NEW TESTAMENT. 
 The middle book is 2 Thcssalonians. 
 The middle chapter is between the 13th and 14th 
 of Romans. 
 
 The middle verse is the 17th of Acts xvii. 
 The shortest verse is the 35th of John xi. 
 
 The 2 1 St verse of the 7th chapter of Ezra contains 
 all the letters of the alphabet. 
 
 The 19th chapter of the 2 Kings, and the 37th 
 of Isaiah, are alike. 
 
 It is stated that the above calculation took three 
 years to complete. 
 
 Influence of a Solar Eclipse on Animal.s. 
 — During the annular eclipse of the sun in 1764, 
 the agitation and cries of domestic animals con- 
 tinued for a great part of the time, notwithstanding 
 its light was not more diminished by it than it 
 would have been by the interposition of a dark, 
 thick cloud ; the difference of the heat of the atmo- 
 sphere was scarcely sensible. What impression, 
 then, can animals have of the nature of the body 
 which eclipses the sun ? How are they able to 
 divine that it is a different circumstance from the 
 sun's being veiled by a cloud which intercepts the 
 light ? The writer of this paragraph confesses to 
 have had very considerable doubt of the veracity of 
 this statement up to 1857 or 1858, in one of which 
 years a partial eclipse of the sun occurred, and he 
 witnessed precisely the same phenomena. He was 
 in the public room of an inn in the country, which 
 was situated on the border of a common. In front 
 of the inn were a horse-trough and railings, and a 
 large number of fowls, ducks, and pigeons collected 
 about ; on the common beyond, horses, cows, and 
 sheep grazing. Several minutes before the eclipse 
 took place, and while the light had in no degree 
 diminished, all the animals exhibited symptoms of 
 languor and bewilderment ; the fowls, ducks, and 
 pigeons perched languidly on the railings around ; 
 the sheep and cattle in the distance suspended 
 their meal and appeared stupefied. In a few 
 minutes the eclipse passed away, and the animals 
 resumed their ordinary state. — Dolomieu, in the 
 " Dissertation on the Earthquake in Calabria." 
 
 A Strange Horse.— There is at present a fine 
 horse in the menage of the Earl of Pembroke, at 
 Wilton House, which, when worked, sweats ex- 
 ceedingly on one side, whilst on the other he is 
 perfectly dry and cool ; and this extraordinary 
 operation of nature is so exact, that it describes a 
 palpably regular line from the top of the nose up 
 the middle of the face, between the ears, and along 
 the back to the tail. — Oracle, Nov. 1789. 
 
 There is at this present time at Brussels, a 
 horse fond of flesh, and particularly of raw mutton. 
 A short time ago it got out of its stable, and de- 
 voured two breasts of mutton hanging up at a 
 butcher's shop. — Times, Sept. i6th, 1836. 
 
 Singular Taste of an Ass. — There is now in 
 the possession of Mr. Walton, farmer, of Great 
 Lever, near Bolton, a male ass which is known to 
 be nearly fifty years of age. He is named " Billy," 
 and prefers tobacco to any other luxury ; he is like- 
 wise very fond of a pinch of snuff. Our informant 
 has within these few days seen Billy masticate 
 a large quid of pigtail with as much gusto as any 
 Jack tar in Her Majesty's service. When he had 
 finished the tobacco, a pinch of strong rappee was 
 
28 
 
 THP WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 administered, which Billy snuffed without the least 
 demur, and curling up his olfactory organ, delivered 
 one of those charming solos so peculiar to his 
 species. Billy is chiefly employed in carrying 
 milk from his master's farm to Bolton ; and if Mr. 
 Walton has any other business to transact in the 
 town, he can leave Billy with security at the door of 
 any customer, whence he will not budge an inch 
 until he hears his master's voice. Billy is in- 
 variably accompanied on his journeys to Bolton by 
 a sm;ill cur dog, which is so attached to him, that 
 in the absence of Mr. Walton, he takes his station 
 close to Billy, and will not suffer any stranger 
 to come near him.— A foni/i/y Review, vol. xxii., 
 p. 156. 
 
 A Tame Wolf.— M. de Candolle, Lecturer on 
 Natural History at Geneva, related this story: — 
 "A lady near Geneva had a tame wolf which seemed 
 to have as much attachment to its mistress as a 
 rpaniel. She had occasion to leave home for some 
 weeks. The wolf evinced the greatest distress 
 after her departure, and at first refused to take 
 food. During the whole time she was absent he 
 remained much dejected. On her return, as soon 
 as the animal heard her footsteps, he bounded into 
 the room in an ecstacy of delight. Springing up, 
 he placed one paw on each of her shoulders, but 
 the next moment he fell backwards, and instantly 
 expired." — O'Brien's '■'■ Rou.id Towers of Ireland" 
 fr.ge 468. 
 
 When wolves cross a river, they follow one 
 another directly in a line, the second holding the 
 tail of the first in its mouth, the third that of the 
 second, and so of the rest. This figure was chosen 
 by the Greeks to denote the year composed of 
 twelve months following one another, which they 
 denominated Lycabus, that is, the march of the 
 wolves. — Abbe Pliiche. 
 
 THE WONDER OF LIFE. 
 
 To ascertain how long all can live, MM. Buffon, 
 Cuvier, Flourens, and the rest of those savans who 
 have turned their attention to the all-important 
 problem, proceed to reason by analogy. The dura- 
 tion of life with the horse and with other animals 
 of the higher species, is proportionate to the time 
 expended in their growth. " Man, who takes four- 
 teen years to grow," says Buffon, " may live six or 
 seven times as long." This idea is doubtless correct, 
 but Buffon's statement as to the period of growth in 
 man is not so. Man grows for more than fourteen 
 years. If he lived seven times as long, the ordinary 
 hfe would be only ninety-eight, which, always sup- 
 posing a state of perfect health, is not, even in this 
 sophisticated age, extraordinary. 
 
 M. Flourens has, in our opinion, improved on 
 the working out of Buffon's idea. All the larger 
 animals, he observes, live Jive times as long as 
 
 the time expended by them in reacliing maturity. 
 Thus :— 
 
 Tlie camel grows for 8 years, live=; 40 years. 
 „ Horse ,, „ s ,, ,, 25 ,, 
 ,, Ox ,, ,, 4 ,, ,, 15 or 20 
 
 ,, Lion „ „ 4 ,, ,, 20 „ 
 ,, Dog ,, ,, 2 ,, ,, TO to 12 
 ,, Man ,, ,, 20 „ ,, 100 or more.* 
 
 By a physical analogy, therefore, the ordinary life 
 of a man should be one hundred years at least. 
 The term fixed by David, threescore years and 
 ten, wants thirty of this ; the average life of men of 
 the upper classes, fifty ; of tradesmen, business men, 
 and hard-workers, fifty-five ; of the labouring classes, 
 sixty-five ; of the factory- workers, seventy. Man in 
 a purely unsophisticated state is clearly fitted to 
 live to a much greater age than he commonly 
 attains ; but nature, ever wise, in shortening his 
 
 j existence does not deduct from any one term, but 
 
 , from the whole, in nearly equal proportions. It 
 used to be an old saying amongst brainless wits 
 that " a short life and a merry one is the life to 
 live." Nothing can be more absolutely untrue. A 
 short life in their sense is scarcely a merry one ; the 
 
 ! pace kills. If we live fast, if wc exhaust ourselves 
 in any one period, that period next succeeding is 
 shortened. In short lives, puberty and maturity 
 are reached early, then comes old age, and then 
 
 ' exhaustion and death. Knowing how fast these 
 succeed each other in our manufacturing districts ; 
 how girls become women at thirteen, mothers at 
 fourteen, and grandmothers at thirty, if they attain 
 that age — it is quite refreshing to read and belie\e 
 M. Flourens' scale of the development of the periods 
 of man's life. 
 
 The various apparently authentic instances of 
 age which we have, will also, when combined, form 
 an almost unanswerable argument in our favour. 
 They are not simply the exceptions which prove the 
 rule. They are sufficiently numerous, and accom- 
 panied by circumstances so similar each to each, 
 that they form a rule themselves. 
 
 Galeria Capi'ola, an actress, whose age at her 
 debut is not exactly known, appeared upon the 
 stage ninety-nine years after, at the dedication of 
 the theatre by Pompey the Great, as a wonder of 
 longevity ; and this was not all, for she was shown 
 a third time .at the solemnities for the life and 
 health of Augustus. William Postel, a Frenchman, 
 
 ' lived to nearly 120, and the hair on his upper lip 
 showed not the least sign of changing colour, but 
 remained coal-black to the last. It is not uncom- 
 mon to see the moustache and eyebrows black, 
 while the hair is grey. 
 
 In the times of Vespasian, father and son, Pliny 
 tells us there were found in the roll at one of the 
 taxations fifty-four persons of 100 years of age, 
 fifty-seven of no, two of 125, four of 130, as 
 
 * Flourens, '* Sur Longevite Humaine." Paris, 1862. 
 
THE WONDER OF LIFE. 
 
 29 
 
 many of 135 or 137, and last of all, three men of 140. 
 The great physician Galen, who flourished about 
 the time of the Emperor Antoninus, is said to 
 have lived 140 years. From the time he was 
 twenty-eight he was only seized with a sickness 
 of a day's duration. The rules he observed were, 
 not to eat or drink his fill, not to eat anything 
 raw, and always to carry some perfume about 
 him. James Sands, of Horborne, in Stafford- 
 shire, of whom 
 Fuller makes 
 mention in his 
 "\Vorthies,"lived 
 140 years, and 
 his wife 120. He 
 outlived five 
 leases of twenty- 
 one years, each 
 made to him after 
 he was married.* 
 
 Raleigh, in his 
 "History of the 
 World," says, " I 
 myself knew the 
 old Countess of 
 Desmond of 
 Inchequin, in 
 Munster, who 
 lived in the year 
 1589 and many 
 years since, who 
 was married in 
 Edward IX'.'s 
 time, and held 
 her jointure from 
 all the Earls of 
 Desmond since 
 then ; and that 
 this is true all 
 the gentlemen 
 and noblemen in 
 Munster can wit- 
 ness. The Lord 
 Bacon casts up 
 her age to be 
 140 at the least, 
 adding withal, 
 Terpervicesdeti- 
 iisse, that she 
 recovered her teeth (after the casting of them) three 
 several times." 
 
 Thomas Parr, whose portrait we give, son of John 
 Parr, born at Alberbury, in the parish of Winning- 
 ton, in Shropshire, was born in the reign of King 
 Edward IV., a.d. 1483; at eighty years he married 
 his first wife Jane, and in the space of thirty-two 
 years bad but two children by her, both of them 
 short-lived, the one live d but a month, the other but 
 
 * This seems an undoubted proof of age. 
 
 a^e Oi^ci 
 
 r./r^ 
 
 
 
 a few years. Being aged 120, he fell in love with 
 Katherine Milton, by whom he had his last child. 
 He lived to about 152 years. Two months before 
 his death he was brought up by Thomas, Earl of 
 Arundel, to Westminster ; he slept away most of 
 his time. Change of air and diet, neither of 
 which apparently agreed with him, added to the 
 trouble of many spectators, are supposed to have 
 hastened his death, which happened at Westmin- 
 ster, No\'ember 
 the 15th, 1635, 
 and he was in- 
 terred in the Ab- 
 bey church. The 
 portrait with in- 
 scription which 
 we annex, is 
 copied from a 
 ver)- old engrav- 
 ing. 
 
 There is a cu- 
 rious story told 
 of one Henry 
 Jenkins, of the 
 parish of Bolton, 
 in Yorkshire, 
 being produced 
 as a witness 
 at the assizes 
 there, to prove a 
 right of wa)- o\er 
 a man's ground. 
 He then swore to 
 nearly 1 50 years' 
 memory ; for 
 at that time he 
 said he well re- 
 membered away 
 over that ground. 
 And being cau- 
 tioned by the 
 judge to beware 
 what he swore, 
 because there 
 were two men 
 in court, each 
 above eighty 
 years of age, who 
 remembered no 
 such way, he replied that, " Those men were boys 
 to him." Upon which the judge asked those men 
 how old they took Jenkins to be ? They said they 
 did not know, but that he was a very old man when 
 they were boys. Dr. Tancred Robinson adds con- 
 cerning him that he could remember Henry VIII. 
 and the fight at Flodden Field, at which time he 
 was twelve years old. He died on the 8th of De- 
 cember, 1670, at EUerton-upon-Swale, aged 169 
 years. 
 
 Of^^m or 7/ioms Par. t/ic 
 
30 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 an)itx& oi Piimanifw. 
 
 The Spotted Negro Boy.— The spotted boy 
 was born in 1808, in the island of St. Vincent. His 
 father and mother were Africans, and both perfectly 
 black. Not only the child's skin but his hair were 
 spotted dark brown and white. Ho was brought to 
 Bristol at the age of fiftceen months, when Richard- 
 son entered into an engagement to exhibit him. 
 The showman became very fond of the child, and 
 had him christened George Alexander Grattan. 
 He died before he reached his fifth year, and was 
 buried at Great Marlow in Buckinghamshire. 
 
 A Mountain of Fat. Lambert's Exhibi- 
 tion ^WA..—" Exhibition. Mr. Daniel Lambert, 
 of Leicester, the heaviest man that ever lived ; 
 who, at the age of thirty-six years, weighs upwards 
 of fifty stone (fourteen pounds to the stone), or 
 eighty-seven stones four pounds, London weight, 
 which is ninety-one pounds more than the great 
 Mr. Bright weighed. Mr. Lambert will see com- 
 pany at his house. No. 53, Piccadilly, next Albany, 
 nearly opposite St. James's Church, from eleven to 
 live o'clock. Tickets of admission one shilling 
 each." The date of the bill is 1806. Lambert died 
 suddenly on July the 21st, 1809; he went to bed 
 in perfect health at night, and died early the next 
 morning. 
 
 In the year 171 1 there was brought to London a 
 tall, black, wild man, who had been taken savage 
 in the woods near Bengal in the East Indies ; he 
 was stark naked, and he ran very swiftly ; he was 
 covered all over the body, arms, and hands, with a 
 very thick, long black hair ; could never learn to 
 speak, read, nor write. He was sold to a company 
 of rope-dancers, and learned of them to dance upon 
 the straight rope with a pole in his hands. He 
 outdid his masters in capering, and leaped upon a 
 rope without a pole ; he walked upon a small rope 
 no bigger than a penny cord, and swung on it, 
 holding to it by his hands and toes. — Sloane 
 MS., 5246. 
 
 St. Jerome states that lic saw Scotchmen in the 
 Roman armies in Gaul, who fed on human flesh as 
 a delicacy. 
 
 Cannibals who have tried both, assure us that 
 white men are finer flavoured than negroes, and 
 Englishmen than Frenchmen. — Langsdorff. 
 
 The Human Body.— The muscles of the human 
 Jaw exert a force of 534 lbs. The quantity of pure 
 water which blood contains in its natural state is 
 very great, it amounts to almost seven-eighths. 
 Kiel estimates the surface of the lungs at 1 50 square 
 feet, or ten times that of the external body. The 
 blood is a fifth the weight of the body. A man is 
 taller in the morning than at night to the extent of 
 half an inch or more, owing to the relaxation of the 
 cartilages. There is iron enough in the blood of 
 
 forty-two men to make a ploughshare of twenty- 
 four pounds or thereabouts. The human brain is 
 the twenty-eighth part of the body, but in the horse 
 the brain is not more than the four-hundredth. 
 
 HEROISM OF A MAID-SERVANT. 
 
 The following story of heroism in humble life, 
 and in circumstances by no means calculated to 
 inspire romantic feelings of devotion, is not sur- 
 passed by any occurrence that we can recal to 
 mind in the histories of princes and kingdoms. 
 Nothing but real greatness of heart, combined 
 with the most tender sympathy, can account for 
 an act which is almost without a parallel. 
 
 A common sewer, of great depth, had been 
 opened at Noyon for purposes of repair, and was 
 carelessly left unprotected during the night. Four 
 men, passing that way in the dark, fell in, and 
 it was near midnight before tho-ir perilous situation 
 became known. Among all who crowded to the 
 opening, not one was found courageous enough 
 to descend to the assistance of the unfortunate 
 wretches, who appeared already in a state of suf- 
 focation from the poisonous vapour they were com- 
 pelled to breathe. The wives and children of the 
 men in vain besought the bystanders for aid, until 
 Catherine Vasseur, the daughter of a French pea- 
 sant, and at that time only seventeen years of age, 
 appeared on the scene. Moved by sympathy, and 
 careless of the danger to herself, the young girl 
 insisted on being lowered into the sewer, and, 
 having taken a rope with her for the purpose, 
 she succeeded in fastening it round two of the 
 men, and, assisted by those above, she had the 
 happiness of restoring them to their wives and 
 famihes. Again she descended, and now her 
 breath began to fail her. She succeeded, how- 
 ever, in fastening the rope round the body of a 
 third man, and, in a fainting condition, had suf- 
 ficient presence of mind to knot up the end with 
 her own luxuriant tresses. We may imagine the 
 astonishment of the dastardly fellows abofe when 
 they drew the man to the surface, and found the 
 all but inanimate body of Catherine swinging by 
 her hair to the end of the rope. Fresh air and 
 stimulants soon restored the brave girl, and the 
 third man lived also ; the fourth perished. 
 
 So great was the admiration excited by Catherine 
 Vasseur's devotion, when the news spread through 
 Noyon, that a solemn Te Deum was ordered by 
 the bishop, and the members of the corporation 
 marched in procession to the church. Nor was 
 this all. The Duke of Orleans, the Bishop of 
 Noyon, and the magistrates, tendered her the pubhc 
 thanks of the town, and she was presented with a 
 civic crown, and an emblematic medal commemo- 
 rative of her heroism and self-devotion. 
 
THE WONBER OF THE ELECTR0-MAGNF:T. 
 
 31 
 
 SEA-DUST. 
 
 People laughed at the man who said that the fish 
 he had hooked "kicked up such a dust in the 
 ■water." Perhaps they will laugh at the heading 
 to this article; but there will still be "sea-dust," 
 nevertheless. 
 
 We have heard of water-spouts, of showers of 
 fish, of salt rain, and many other curiosities which 
 present themselves in the atmosphere, but to 
 assert that there is such a thing as sea-dust is to 
 transcend all reasonable bounds. The evidence, 
 however, in favour of its existence is exceedingly 
 powerful — indisputable, in fact — and this is the story 
 told by eye-witnesses. They say that in certain 
 parts of the world, notably about the Cape do Verde 
 Islands, there are constantly met at sea, several 
 hundreds of miles away from land, thick, yellowish- 
 red fogs, not unlike London fogs in November. 
 These fogs obscure the atmosphere, and arc very 
 injurious to navigation, but they have not the bale- 
 ful odour of their London prototypes, nor do they 
 affect the breathing in the same way. Whilst 
 sailing through them, it is found that the ship, 
 sails, and rigging are covered with a fine, impalp- 
 able powder, which falls as dry rain, and covers 
 the surface on which it falls sometimes to the depth 
 of two inches. In colour, it is of a brick-dust hue, 
 sometimes of a light yellow, and it feels between 
 the teeth like fine grit, such as might be blown into 
 the mouth on a windy day in March. No place 
 is free from its presence, its fineness giving it 
 power to penetrate everywhere. The sea, while 
 the dust is falling, looks as though it had been 
 peppered, and is discoloured for some distance 
 down. Sometimes the dust comes in a shower, 
 and passes off again. The fogs arc nothing but 
 vast quantities of the dust suspended in the air. 
 
 It is not only in the vicinity of the Cape de 
 Verde that this wonderful dust is seen. In the 
 Mediterranean, on the northern parts of Africa, in 
 the middle of the Atlantic, it has been reported. 
 It is invariably the same in kind and appearance, 
 and examination under microscopes has proved 
 the identity of say Cape de Verde sea-dust with 
 Mediterranean sea-dust. All this is very remark- 
 able: dust falling in clouds, no land within some 
 hundreds of miles, nothing visible which could 
 possibly account for the curious phenomenon. 
 Sand-spouts there are in sandy deserts, and 
 showers of sand taken originally from spots where- 
 on the carrier wind has left its mark ; but here 
 there is no desert from which the sand can be 
 rapt, and the wind, so far from being boisterous, 
 or disfK)scd to play whirlwind pranks, is light and 
 steady, blowing ships along at a calm five knots 
 an hour. 
 
 In connection with these facts, hear what 
 Humboldt says of the sight he saw in the dr>' river 
 
 beds and sandy valleys of Central America;— 
 "When beneath the vertical rays of the bright 
 and cloudless sun of the tropics, the parched sward 
 crumbles into dust, then the indurated soil cracks 
 and bursts, as if rent asunder by some mighty 
 earthquake ; and if at such a time two opposite 
 currents of air, by conflict moving in rapid gyra- 
 tions, come in contact with the earth, a singu- 
 lar spectacle presents itself. Like funnel-shaped 
 clouds, their apexes touching the earth, the sands 
 rise in vapoury form through the rarefied air in 
 the electrically charged centre of the whirling 
 current, sweeping on like the rushing water-spouts 
 which strike such terror into the hearts of the 
 mariner. A dipt and sallow light gleams from the 
 lowering sky over the dreary plain. The horizon 
 suddenly contracts, and the heart of the traveller 
 sinks with dismay as the wide steppe seems to 
 close upon him on all sides. The hot and dusty 
 earth forms a cloudy veil which shrouds the 
 heavens from view, and increases the stifling op- 
 pression of the atmosphere." 
 
 It is believed by scientific men that these dust- 
 clouds of Central America are, in all probability, 
 closely connected with the phenomenon of sea-dust. 
 
 THE WONDERS OF THE MAGNET.— II. 
 
 In the early years of this century the study of 
 magnetism received a mighty impulse, from the 
 discovery of a Danish philosopher that the closest 
 possible connection existed between electricity and 
 magnetism. If a bar of soft iron be wrapped 
 round with an insulated copper wire — that is, a wire 
 covered with silk or cotton thread — and a current - 
 of electricity be sent along it, the electric fluid is 
 compelled to traverse the whole length of the wire, 
 for the thread prevents each coil from touching 
 its neighbour ; and as electricity of this species is 
 incapable of running along either cotton or silk, 
 and as incapable of leaping from one wire to the 
 other if there be the least space between thom, 
 the current is caused to circulate round the piece 
 of iron, and when this is the case, the iron be- 
 comes a strong magnet, and the moment the 
 current ceases to run, that moment the iron also 
 
 Fig. I. 
 
 ceases to be a niagnet. Fig. r is an electro-magnet of 
 the simplest form ; j « is the soft iron core, / and 
 71 are the ends of the insulated wire, which is wound 
 continuously on the iron bar. These cads W* 
 
32 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 attached to the first and last plate of a galvanic 
 battery, and the instant the current traverses the 
 wire, s n becomes a strong magnet. 
 
 The more coils of wire wrapped round the bar, 
 and the stronger the current, the stronger will be 
 the magnet, up to a certain limit. 
 
 Now there is another peculiarity about this mag- 
 net. If it were suspended so that it could move 
 freely, it would point north and south, precisely as 
 a compass-needle ; and, moreover, a very few ex- 
 periments will convince us that which end of the 
 bar shall be the north pole entirely depends upon 
 the direction in which the current goes round the 
 iron core. If you take out your watch, and suppose 
 that the pin upon which the hands are fixed is the 
 end of the iron core, then if the current be passing 
 round it in the direction in which the hands move 
 — that is, from left to right — that end of the core 
 will be the south pole. 
 
 This may not at first sight appear to be very 
 wonderful. But though the fact itself may not 
 excite any great wonder, yet at least it is a step 
 which will lead us to appreciate a truth which 
 cannot but fill us with astonishment. 
 
 Suppose, now, we extract the iron core from the 
 electro-magnet, leaving the coil of wire, and suppose 
 
 Fig, 2. 
 
 we suspend it as in this illustration (Fig. 2), so that 
 the coil is able to swing round with perfect ease. 
 
 Two little cups, a and b, are supported as you 
 see. The two ends of the wire coil are bent back, 
 and brought away at the centre of it ; they are 
 then carried up, and their extremities bent so as to 
 dip into the cups, \vhich are filled with mercury. 
 Each cup is connected with a wire, which is carried 
 down the upright frame, to a screw in the base of 
 the stand, where it meets the wire from the battery 
 carrying the current. A glance will show you that 
 by this contrivance the coil can have a current sent 
 through it, and yet be able to swing round precisely 
 as a suspended needle. Now let the current run, 
 
 and what is the result? The coil behaves in all 
 respects as if it were a magnet. A permanent 
 magnet will attract one end and repel the other, 
 and it will place itself north and south, just as a 
 compass-needle. 
 
 We need one other fact ere we can explain the 
 wonder of magnetism. 
 
 It is not a difficult thing to show that a wire 
 which is conducting a current of electricity will 
 attract another wire, which is also carrying a cur- 
 rent in the same direction, whilst it will repel it if 
 the current be going in the opposite direction. 
 Thus we may say generally that if two currents of 
 electricity are near each other, they will do all they 
 can to induce each other to go in the same direc- 
 tion. If the wires which carry the opposite cur- 
 rents be free to move as they wish, one of them will 
 turn completely round, so as to make the current 
 which runs along it go in the same direction as 
 that which traverses its neighbour. Here, then, is 
 the explanation of magnetism : round every particle 
 of iron runs an electric current. In a non-magne- 
 tised piece of iron these currents are in utter dis- 
 order, but the moment an electric current circulates 
 all round the bar, this great current induces the 
 myriads of tiny currents which are rushing round 
 the particles of the iron all to go in the same direc- 
 tion, and to look in the same way. 
 
 When this piece of iron is then brought near 
 another piece, it has the same effect upon all the 
 native currents in this second piece — they all 
 arrange themselves in the same direction. But 
 since currents which are travelling in the same 
 direction attract each other, so these pieces of iron, 
 compelled by the currents, are drawn together. 
 
 Now take a nail in your hand. It looks a dead, 
 lifeless thing ; but docs it not become a wonderful 
 thing when you know that it is quivering with 
 electric life .■* Millions of electric currents, in mo- 
 tion as swift as thought, are speeding round the 
 innumerable particles which compose the nail. 
 
 And herein w-e find a reason why compasses 
 point to the north. Round the earth, above us, 
 there in those quiet heavens, a current of electricity 
 is moving in the same direction as the sun ; or it 
 may be that our planet home is sailing in a sea of 
 electric fluid, and by her own motion produces the 
 current. Yet there is the current, and it influences 
 every current which surrounds a magnet-needle, 
 and induces it to place itself so that the minute 
 current which circulates round the needle may be 
 parallel to the mighty current which encircles the 
 earth, and hence is it that all compass-needles 
 point in the same direction. 
 
 Now the reader will be able to understand why 
 the great masses of that particular iron ore which 
 is capable of being magnetised become "lodestone." 
 The great current of the earth influences the mag- 
 netisable mass, and it becomes magnetised. 
 
GIANTS 
 
 33 
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL'S PORIER. 
 
 GIANTS. 
 
 One of the earliest giants of whom we have any 
 individual record is Og, the King of Bashan, so 
 familiar to us from the mention of him in the 
 Psalms; and he was, it seems, about nine feet high, 
 although some Eastern legends have made him 
 many miles in height. Ishbi-benob, Goliath, and 
 the children of Anak are also mentioned in Scrip- 
 ture as being of exceptional height ; Saul also must 
 have been an immensely tall man, as the reader will 
 find on referring to I. Sam. ix. 2; and even father 
 Adam himself is represented by Rabbinical writers 
 as of fabulous and extraordinary height. 
 
 In heathen mythology, too. we find in the tales 
 
 5 
 
 of the Titans and the Cyclops a strong belief in 
 giants. The Greeks, indeed, were very fond of 
 making out all their heroes to be tall men, and 
 Orestes was, on their authority, nearly twelve 
 feet in height. The Greeks and Romans held also 
 the belief, common to almost all nations, that they 
 were but pigmies to the gigantic races which had 
 preceded them ; and, indeed, if the human race 
 had gone on degenerating as much as they sup- 
 posed it to have done, we should by this time have 
 been a race of the merest dwarfs. 
 
 The earhest stories of giants in these islands tell 
 of the bones of very tall men being discovered in 
 various parts of the country, and of huge stone 
 erections supposed tp be the work of giants, as 
 
34 
 
 THE AVORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 ■well as of giants' caves. Some instances of such 
 things must be within the experience of every one. 
 But the stories of gigantic heroes must ahvays bj 
 received with caution, inasmuch as many ibssil 
 remains have turned out on investigation by scien- 
 tific men to be the bones of megatheria, and other 
 antediUivian monsters, and not of human beings 
 at all. 
 
 Gog and Magog, the renowned giants of the City 
 of London, are instances of that curious custom 
 of all nations, which almost invariably associated 
 giants with City pageants and with civic rule. We 
 may mention here, by the way, that the original 
 names of the two giants were Gogmagog and 
 Corinffius, the first of these names now being 
 divided and made to do duty for both figures. 
 In this country, as* well as on the Continent, it 
 was the custom to carry pasteboard giants in holi- 
 day processions, and gigantic figures are placed 
 in the halls of justice in many German towns, 
 symbolical of the power of the municipality. 
 
 Our modern nursery stories of giants, who are 
 very useful in legendary fiction, seem to have been 
 handed down to us from the very earliest ages. 
 Jack the Giant-killer comes to us from Scandi- 
 navia, as well as from Wales, and Jack and the 
 Bean-stalk is only a reproduction of one of the 
 beautiful myths of the weird mythology of the 
 Norland. All these giants in old stories seem 
 to have been made to s'ave for the weal of man- 
 kind in a good-natured way ; and they were also 
 represented as by no means impervious to softer 
 feelings, and very ready to fall in love. There is 
 a pathetic story of a Cornish giant who was in 
 love with St. Agnes, and who was ordered by 
 the cruel lady to fill a hole in the clifTs with his 
 body. This hole opened into the sea, and the 
 poor giant thus fell a victim to his unrequited at- 
 tachment. 
 
 No race of giants, in one sense of the word, how- 
 ever, can be proved to exist. We know that the 
 Egyptian mummies, in cases where the exact height 
 can be ascertained, are the remains of people no 
 taller than ourselves. The Patagonians are not so 
 tall as many travellers have asserted, their average 
 height, according to a recent and reliable authority, 
 being between six and seven feet. 
 
 We have spoken before of the mental charac- 
 teristics of giants, and it is curious to find them 
 very often deficient in courage. An amusing in- 
 stance of this occurred when an empress of Austria, 
 for the gratification of an odd fancy, had all the 
 giants and dwarfs in her empire assembled together. 
 It was at first thought that it would be necessary 
 to protect the dwarfs against the giants, but pre- 
 cisely the opposite course turned out to be required. 
 The dwarfs bullied and teased the giants to such 
 an extent that the big men had to be protected by 
 sentinels from their tiny persecutors. 
 
 Oliver Cromwell had a giant porter, whose sur- 
 name is not on record, but whose Christian name 
 was Daniel. This Daniel was a great student ; 
 he especially loved mystical works, and these are 
 supjosed to have sent him mad. He was many 
 yc.irs in Bedlam, and as there was no chance of a 
 cure for him, he was allowed to have his library 
 there. He had a Bible given him by Nell Gwynne. 
 Daniel used to preach, and, as has been reported, 
 with great zeal and fervour. Our illustration shows 
 him standing at the gate reading his Bible, un- 
 moved by the jeers of the mocking band of Cavaliers 
 in front of him. 
 
 A still more curious whim than that of the 
 Austrian empress, was the fancy of Frederick 
 William of Prussia to make what might fairly be 
 called a regiment of giants. None of the soldiers 
 in this corps of guards were less than seven feet 
 high, and a king of Poland, who was of a fair 
 height, could only reach the chin of one of them 
 with his outstretched arm. Cornelius Magrath 
 was a very famous Irish giant who flourished in 
 the middle of the last century, and concerning 
 whose origin there is a curious story told. He was 
 seven feet eight inches high, and it is said that 
 Bishop Berkeley had found him when an orphan 
 child, and brought him up on certain dietary prin- 
 ciples with a ^•iew of inducing an abnormal height. 
 It is probable, however, that the Bishop had only 
 benevolent intentions, and no idea of any artificial 
 production of a giant. 
 
 Another celebrated Irish giant was Charles 
 O'Brien, who measured eight feet four inches. 
 The way in which he advertised himself was very 
 amusing, heaping laudatory epithets upon himself 
 in a thoroughly Hibernian manner. O'Brien was 
 in great fear lest the surgeons of the period should 
 get hold of his body, and at his death he desired to 
 be thrown into the sea. The doctors, however, 
 were too wary for him, and it is said that William 
 Hunter, the anatomist, gave upwards of five 
 hundred pounds for his body— certainly an enormous 
 sum. O'Brien was also the assumed name of one 
 Patrick Cotter, another gigantic Irishman, who 
 used to light his pipe at the street-lamps in North- 
 ampton. 
 
 Big Sam was the sobriquet of a gigantic Scotch- 
 man who was porter to George IV., and used to 
 look over the gates of Carlton House; being, 
 according to some accounts, nearly eight feet high. 
 
 Of the giants who have appeared in our own 
 day, we must notice Joseph Brice, a Frenchman, 
 who was seven feet seven inches high, and after 
 exhibiting himself on his own account in 1863, was 
 brought out as " Anak," by Professor Anderson, a 
 few years afterwards. Chang Woo Gow, the 
 Chinese giant, appeared about the same time, and 
 at the age of nineteen was seven feet nine inches 
 in height. 
 
WONDERS OF THE OCEAN. 
 
 35 
 
 CURIOUS CUSTOMS. 
 
 BEATING THE BOUNDS. 
 
 The Christian custom of perambulating parishes 
 in Rogation Week appears to have been derived 
 from a still older pagan observanca " Before the 
 Reformation these parochial perambulations were 
 conducted with great ceremony," says " The Book 
 of Days." " The lord of the manor, with a large 
 banner, priests in surplices and with crosses, and 
 other persons with banners, hand-bells, and staves, 
 followed by most of the parishioners, walked in 
 procession round the parish, stopping at crosses, 
 forming crosses on the ground, ' saying or singing 
 gospels to the corn,' and allowing ' drinkings and 
 good cheer,' which was remarkable, as the Rogation 
 days were appointed fasts. From the different 
 practices observed on the occasion, the custom 
 received the various names of processioning, roga- 
 tio>i{iig, perambulating, and gauging the bounda- 
 ries; and the week in which it was observed was 
 called Rogation Week [from the Latin Rogarc, to 
 beseech] ; Cross Week, because crosses were borne in 
 the processions ; Grass Week, because the Rogation 
 days being fasts, vegetables formed the chief por- 
 tion of diet." 
 
 At the Reformation a homily was prepared Tor 
 the occasion, and the rector, vicar, or curate, and 
 the substantial men of the parish, were to walk 
 about the parishes, and on their return to the 
 church pray together. 
 
 Persons beating bounds were to be justiiied in 
 going over the old ground, utterly regardless of 
 the wishes of the owners of the property over which 
 they walked. If a canal were cut through the 
 boundary of a parish, some one must pass through 
 it ; or if a house had been built on the line, it 
 must be entered and walked through. A house in 
 Buckinghamshire still exists with an oven passing 
 over the boundary. A boy generally was placed 
 inside ; but on one occasion the oven was found 
 full of fagots — in fact, in a very advanced state for 
 the process of baking. Finally, after frightening 
 several boys by asking them to take up the usual 
 position, the officers made one of them scramble 
 over the top, and the boundary right was con- 
 sidered upheld. 
 
 At the beginning of this century, as the bounds 
 were being beaten in the parish of St. George's, 
 Hanover Square, a nobleman's carriage, empty, was 
 standing upon the boundary line. The principal 
 churchwarden ordered the coachman to move on a 
 little, but he persisted in his right to remain where 
 his master had ordered him. The churchwarden 
 (who was himself a nobleman) opened the carriage 
 door and coolly walked through, followed by the 
 whole procession, amongst which were not only 
 sweeps, scavengers, shoe-blacks, &c., but roughs of 
 the worst description. 
 
 Moniicrs of tlje <i)tm\\. 
 
 THE SARGASSO SEA. 
 
 There is a sea in the middle of the ocean! As- 
 tonishing as the statement sounds, it is literally 
 true. The limits of the sea are as well defined as 
 those of any other known collection of water ; its 
 characteristics are so special that no one can mis- 
 take them. 
 
 When Columbus, on his first voyage, had got 
 some distance to the westward of the Canary 
 Islands, he- was amafed one morning to find his 
 ships in an undulating meadow. As far as he 
 could see, the water was covered with a greenish- 
 yellow plant, which appropriated the surface of the 
 sea as thoroughly and effectually as water-lilies 
 cover a pond. The wind was light but steady ; there 
 were not any birds to indicate the proximity of land, 
 neither was there any apparent cause for such a 
 collection of weed. The sailors, already scared by 
 the persistence of the wind from one quarter — they 
 had got into the trade-winds — looked upon the weed 
 before them, behind them, and on either side of 
 them, as infallible proof of their imminent des- 
 truction. The Almighty, they said, was angry at 
 their impious attempts to pry into his secrets in 
 the west, and had given them over to the devil, 
 who was causing a wind to blow that would for 
 ever prevent their return to Spain, and now had 
 brought them into a snare such as sailors most 
 dread — shallows extending too far beyond the land 
 to allow of ships or men being saved. The com- 
 mander could not. explain the sight he saw, and 
 might have thought with his men that the weed 
 was the cast-off clothing of some dangerous rocks 
 which lay a short distance down, ready to tear and 
 rend them. The deep sea lead-line was hove, but 
 no bottom was found. The ships kept on their 
 westerly course, still sounding and still getting no 
 bottom, till, in a few days they drew clear of the 
 weed and came where the broad ocean was all 
 around them again, unencumbered by aught but 
 the ships of the explorers. 
 
 Ever since the day Columbus saw the weed, and 
 probably for thousands of years before he saw it, 
 the Sargasso Sea — such is the name of the weedy 
 sea — has existed. Its boundaries may be indicated 
 by tracing a triangle, of which the three corners 
 are represented by the Azores, the Canaries, and 
 Cape de Verde. Within those limits the sea is 
 still bottomless, and is clothed on its surface with 
 a garment of vegetable material, so thick as Xo 
 retard the progress of vessels sailing through it. 
 Steamers avoid it when they can do so, because 
 of the fouling of their screws and paddles by the 
 weed ; but sailing-vessels outward bound to the 
 West Indies, South America, the Cape, &c., must 
 needs pass through it. Sometimes a great storm, 
 proceeding from some point outside the charmed 
 
3« 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 triangle, causes its effects to be felt within the tri- 
 angle, and scatters the weed more or less out of 
 bounds. But usually there is a placid condition of 
 things in the Sargasso Sea : the wind is light, the 
 sky is clear, the water never rages, and, unless 
 such a storm as has been mentioned should dis- 
 turb the wonted calmness of the sea, the surface, 
 over several degrees of latitude and longitude, is 
 covered, as in the day when Columbus saw it, with 
 the weed Sargassum, which springs from an ap- 
 parently inexhaustible source. 
 
 CURIOUS RHYMES. 
 
 Rhymes auout the Cuckoo. — 
 In April 
 
 The cuckoo shows his bill : 
 In May 
 
 He is singing all day ; 
 In June 
 
 He changes his tune ; 
 In July 
 
 He prepares to fly ; 
 In August 
 Fly he must. 
 
 Curious Stanzas on Nail-Cutting. — 
 A man had better ne'er been born. 
 Than have his nails on a Sunday shorn. 
 Cut them on Monday, cut them for health ; 
 Cut them on Tuesday, cut them for wealth ; 
 Cut them on Wednesday, cut them for news ; 
 Cut them on Thursday for a pair of new shoes ; 
 Cut them on Friday, cut them for sorrow ; 
 Cut them on Saturday, see your sweetheart 
 morrow. 
 
 to- 
 
 A Curious Will.— The following last will and 
 testament was proved on the 5th of July, 1737 : — 
 This fifth day of May, 
 Being airy and gay. 
 To hip not inclined. 
 But of vigorous mind. 
 And my body in health, 
 I'll dispose of my wealth ; 
 And of all I'm to have 
 On this side of the grave 
 To some one or other, 
 I think to my brother. 
 But because I foresaw 
 That my brothers-in-law. 
 If I did not take care. 
 Would come in for a share, 
 Which I noways intended 
 Till their manners were mended — 
 And of that there's no sign — 
 I do therefore enjoin. 
 And strictly command. 
 As witness my hand, 
 
 That nought I have got 
 
 Be brought to hotch-pot ; 
 
 And I give and devise 
 
 Much as in me lies 
 
 To the son of my mother, 
 
 My own dear brother. 
 
 To have and to hold 
 
 All my silver and gold. 
 
 As the affectionate pledges 
 
 Of his brother, John Hedges. 
 
 WONDERFUL NATURAL PROVISION. 
 
 In the struggle for life which is going on per- 
 petually throughout the whole of the animal crea- 
 tion, it is interesting to observe the wonderful 
 provisions which Nature makes for the preserva- 
 tion of the weaker and more helpless animals. 
 In many cases the colour of the creature is adapted 
 in a wonderful way to its mode of living and place 
 of concealment, and contributes very materially 
 to its safety. We know how difficult it is to dis- 
 tinguish the grasshopper from the leaf or blade 
 where he is resting, till he betrays himself by 
 moving. The birds that sing in the hedge-rows 
 have feathers on their backs which harmonise w ith 
 the colour of the leaves about which they flit, while 
 the feathers on their breasts borrow the white hue 
 of the clouds above them. The partridge can 
 hardly be distinguished from the stubble where it 
 makes its nest, while in northern countries, the 
 winter dress of the hare and ptarmigan is white, 
 like the snow among which they are seen. The 
 same is the case with the inhabitants of the water. 
 The frogs which live in the pools and muddy 
 ditches are known to vary their colour according 
 to the nature of the sand or mud among which 
 they live. The tree-frog, on the other hand, is 
 green, and thus is with difficulty distinguished from 
 the trees to which it adheres. Fish, especially those 
 which inhabit fresh water, are so like in colour to 
 the weeds and stones among which they lie, that it 
 is often very difficult to detect their presence. 
 
 One of the most wonderful instances of nature's 
 care in providing for the protection of the more de- 
 fenceless creatures is found in the apparatus for 
 defence with which the cuttle-fish is furnished. 
 As soon as its quick eyes catch a glimpse of an 
 approaching enemy, knowing the impossibility of 
 saving itself by flight, it prepares at once to seek 
 safety in concealment. With this object, it sinks 
 downwards, and throws out from a vessel with 
 which it is provided a black stream of inky fluid. 
 This entirely surrounds and conceals it, and as it 
 takes a considerable time to disperse, the enemy 
 is generally baffled ; if, however, the cuttle-fish is 
 still in danger, it pours out another flood of ink, 
 and remains quiet until the peril is past. 
 
WONDERFUL WOMEN, 
 
 37 
 
 THE FEMALE PIRATES. (FROM AN OLD I'RINT.) 
 
 oitberful ^omeit. 
 
 THE FEMALE PIRATES. 
 
 The number of pirates who infested the Spanish 
 Main in the early part of last century was so 
 large that it can hardly appear wonderful that two 
 women should be found among them, of the same 
 lawless and daring character. Yet the story of the 
 two female pirates — Mary Read, and Anne Bonny, 
 is sufficiently remarkable to claim a place in our 
 pages, and especially as we are able to give por- 
 traits of them, copied from an engraving published 
 at the time they lived — viz., about one hundred and 
 fifty years ago. 
 
 Mary Read was born in England. Her mother, 
 who was married to a sailor, gave birth to a son 
 soon after her husband had departed on a voyage, 
 from which he never returned. When the child 
 was about a year old, his mother left her husband's 
 relations, and went to reside for a time with her 
 own friends. The boy soon afterwards died, but 
 his mother finding herself in need of assistance, 
 took a little girl, the heroine of our story, dressed 
 her up in boy's clothes, and passed her off on her 
 husband's mother as her son. The deception was 
 successful, and the widow was assisted with a weekly 
 allowance, to ensure the continuance of which it was 
 necessary that the girl, whose name was Mary, should 
 pass for a boy so long as the old woman lived. 
 
 Mary was thirteen years of age when the old 
 
 woman died, and being accustomed to her attire, 
 she was not disposed to change it for the apparel 
 proper to her sex. She first took a situation as 
 foot-boy to wait on a French lady, then entered 
 herself on board a man-of-war ; after quitting 
 which, she went to Flanders and carried arms in a 
 regiment of foot as a cadet. Failing to get a com- 
 mission, she changed to the cavalry, and displayed 
 such courage as to win the esteem of her officers. 
 Her promising career, however, was now cut short 
 by a circumstance which has often changed the 
 fate of men and kingdoms — she fell in love with her 
 comrade, and having made him acquainted with 
 the secret of her life, they pledged troth, and when 
 the campaign was over were publicly married. Her 
 husband, however, lived only a short time, and on 
 his death, finding herself penniless, she resolved to 
 resume her old manner of life ; so putting on man's 
 apparel, she went to Holland and joined a regi- 
 ment of foot. But she was impatient of promotion, 
 and finding herself one day near the coast, she 
 seized the opportunity of embarking in a ship bound 
 for the West Indies. It happened that this ship 
 was taken by English pirates, who kept Mary 
 amongst them, but soon afterwards took advantage 
 of a Royal proclamation to surrender themselves, 
 and live quietly ashore. This they did so long as 
 money was plentiful ; but after awhile, hearing that 
 Captain Woods Rogers, governor of the island of 
 Providence, was fitting out privateers to cruise 
 against the Spaniards, Mary, with several of her 
 
38 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 comrades, embarked for that island, resolved to 
 make a fortune one way or other. 
 
 We now come to the most extraordhiary part of 
 Mary's story. Some of the pri^'ateer crews, who 
 had been pardoned for piracy, rose against their 
 commanders almost as soon as they had sailed 
 from port, and took to their old trade. In this 
 number was Mary Read, though she afterwards 
 declared that she had always abhorred the life of a 
 pirate, and had resolved to quit it whenever the 
 opportunity should offer. If she really felt this 
 repugnance, it was not for want of courage, as no 
 man in the crew with which she sailed was c\'er 
 more ready to seize the boarding-pike, or undertake 
 any hazardous adventure. 
 
 Anne Bonny was born in the County Cork, where 
 her father was an attorney. He deserted his home, 
 and emigrated to Carolina, taking Anne with him. 
 Here she incurred his displeasure by marrying 
 against his will ; and being turned out of doors, 
 found her way to the island of Providence, where 
 she made the acquaintance of a pirate captain 
 named Rackam. On board his ship she fell in with 
 Mary Read, who soon found it necessary to reveal 
 to her the secret of her life. It was natural, after 
 this, that the two women should be often together, 
 and this intimacy excited the jealousy of Captain 
 Rackam, who was so violent that he would have 
 killed Mary if her secret had not been discovered 
 to him also. They then continued their cruise in 
 harmony, and captured a great number of ships 
 belonging to Jamaica, and other parts of the West 
 Indies, bound to and from England. 
 
 Between this period and the capture of the pirate 
 ship, an incident occurred which shows in a striking 
 manner the courage and devotion of which Mary 
 Read was capable. Among the captives taken by 
 the pirate captain was a gentleman of such attrac- 
 tive manners that Mary could not help falling in 
 love with him. It happened that he had a quarrel 
 with one of the crew, when the ship was lying at 
 anchor, and a time was appointed for the two 
 men to go ashore and fight it out. Mary would 
 not on any account have seen the man she loved 
 shrink from danger, yet she could hardly doubt 
 that his chance against her shipmate would be very 
 slight. She accordingly made an occasion for 
 quarrelling with the pirate, some two hours before 
 the time appointed for his duel, and fighting him 
 with sword and pistol, left him dead. 
 
 When the pirate ship was attacked by one of 
 His Majesty's ships, and came to close' quarters, 
 only one besides Mary Read and Anno Bonny 
 kept the deck. So gallant was Mary, that she called 
 down to Rackam and his crew, when they fled to the 
 hold, to come up and fight like men ; and finding no 
 response, she fired down amongst them, killing 
 one and wounding others. On being asked by one 
 of Rackam's prisoners what pleasure she could 
 
 have in being concerned in such enterprises, when 
 her life was continually in danger by fire or sword, 
 and not only so, but she must be sure of dying an 
 ignominious death if she should be taken alive, she 
 answered that as to hanging, she thought it no 
 great hardship ; for were it not for that, every 
 cowardly fellow would turn pirate, and so infest 
 the seas that men of courage must starve. Anne 
 Bonny also showed her courage to the last. The 
 pirate captain having been admitted to see her, by 
 special favour, on the day he was to be executed, she 
 told him contemptuously that "if he had fought like 
 a man he need not have been hanged like a dog." 
 About their ultimate fate there is great uncer- 
 tainty. They were both condemned to be hung, 
 but Mary Read died in prison, and Anne Bonn)-, 
 having been respited from time to time, also 
 escaped execution ; but what punishment she re- 
 ceived, and %\hat became of her afterwards, is not 
 on record. In taking leave of them, one can but 
 wonder and lament that qualities so admirable in 
 all, but more particularly in a woman, as courage 
 and endurance, should be capable of the perversion 
 which this story illustrates. 
 
 —   — 
 
 The Floating Island on Derwentwater. — 
 As a result of the long-continued and unprece- 
 dented drought in the lake district, that periodical 
 phenomenon, the floating island, has again made 
 its appearance on Derwentwater, in the neighbour- 
 hood of Lodore, its size being considerably larger 
 than usual. For a few inches in depth it is com- 
 posed of a clayey matter, apparently deposited by 
 the water in which the growing plants have fixed 
 their roots. The rest is a mass of decayed vege- 
 table matter, forming a stratum of loose peat-earth 
 about six feet in thickness, which rises from a 
 stratum of fine soft clay. A considerable quantity 
 of air is contained in the body of the island, and 
 may be discharged by probing the earth with a 
 pole. It is nearly half an acre in extent, and its 
 appearance is indicative of an extraordinarily hot 
 season. — From the " Times" July 2^/1, 1868. 
 
 A Green Rose.— A writer, " H. A. B.," in A'oiei 
 and Queries some years since, made the following 
 statement regarding a wonderful rose; — "When in 
 Baltimore, Maryland, y.S., in the year 1852, I saw 
 two or three young rose-trees, each bearing green 
 roses. This was in a nursery garden. I should 
 have procuied a plant had not the gardener (who 
 came from Scotland) assured mc he had seen the 
 same rose in the old country. As it is, I only 
 possess a dried specimen of one of the flowers ; it 
 is a moderate-sized root, with a faint smell." 
 
 At Kingston-on-Thames, soil brought up from a 
 depth of 360 feet, and then covered with a hand- 
 glass, exhibited speedy vegetation. 
 
WONDERFUL DOGS. 
 
 39 
 
 In the finest weather hardly a quarter of an hour 
 passes in an American forest, when, if one listens, 
 a tree is not heard to fall. — Head's " Forest Scenes 
 in North America." 
 
 Thistles in the Pampas are ten feet high, and 
 clover rises four or five feet. Marigolds and camo- 
 miles in North Africa grow to four or five feet ; 
 the rhododendron grows thirty feet in India. 
 
 WONDERFUL DOGS. 
 
 " Love me, love my dog," says the proverb ; and, 
 indeed, there is no animal which succeeds in win- 
 ning for himself the affection of man, and thus 
 earning, as it were, a sort of claim to his indiA'i- 
 duality, so completely as the dog does. We have 
 collected together here a few instances of that 
 wonderful sagacity which is their most especial 
 characteristic ; some of the stories are so remark- 
 able that we have been careful to give the sources 
 from which they are taken. 
 
 From Bell's Weekly Messenger of the 23rd of 
 October, 1803, we extract the following proof of 
 the sagacity of the bloodhound :— " The Thrapston 
 Association for the Prosecution of Felons in 
 Northamptonshire have provided and trained a 
 bloodhound for the detection of sheep-stealers. 
 To prove the utility of the hound, the 28th ult. 
 was appointed for the purpose of exercising it. 
 The person he was to hunt started at ten o'clock 
 in the forenoon, in the presence of a great concourse 
 of people, and at eleven the hound was let loose ; 
 when, after a chase of an hour and a half, notwith- 
 standing a very indifferent scent, the hound found 
 him secreted on a tree at the distance of fifteen 
 miles." 
 
 A curious story of a mastiff, the comical ending 
 of which reminds us very much of the boy in 
 Cowper's poem, is told in the London Magazine 
 for July, 1734: — "A bachelor, who lived alone in 
 a little house about two miles from a market town, 
 had trained up a mastiff to carry a basket to the 
 butcher's, and return with the meat he wrote for in 
 a piece of paper, which was placed in the basket. 
 The dog, in passing through the village, was often 
 attacked by the curs belonging to it. For a long 
 time he managed to elude his assailants, and car- 
 ried his meat triumphantly to his master. At 
 length, all the dogs in the neighbourhood com- 
 bined to plunder him, and on one luckless day 
 the whole posse fell upon him. He defended his 
 trust long and bravely, but finding at last that 
 he was powerless against so many, he gave over 
 fighting, and helped his assailants to demolish the 
 spoil. He 'shared in the plunder, but (doubtless) 
 pitied the man.' " 
 
 A Mr. Moore, of Windsor, wrote to some friends 
 in the north of England, to obtain a well-bred grey- 
 
 hound, to oblige one of the keepers of Windsor 
 Great Park, for the purpose of killing fawns in the 
 season. The application was successful, and the 
 greyhound was sent to London by wagon. It 
 arrived safely in Bishopsgate Street, and from thence 
 was conveyed to the Belle Sauvagc upon Ludgate 
 Hill, where it was delivered to the driver of a 
 Windsor caravan, and reached the place of destina- 
 tion in safety. The dog was kept in-doors for two 
 days, and paid every possible attention by the 
 family. At the end of that time it was left free, and 
 in less than forty-eight hours was nowhere to be 
 found. A few days after, Mr. Moore received a 
 letter with intelligence that the dog had reached the 
 place of its former residence, in Yorkshire, before 
 the return of the wagon by which he was originally 
 sent to London. 
 
 Dr. Anderson relates the following remarkable 
 instance of sagacity in a shepherd's dog. The 
 owner himself, he says, had been hanged for sheep- 
 stealing, and the following fact respecting the dog 
 came out and was authenticated by evidence upon 
 his trial. When the man meant to steal some sheep, 
 he did not do it himself, but detached the dog to 
 perform the business. With this end in view, under 
 pretence of looking at the sheep with intent to 
 purchase, he went through the flock with the dog at 
 his feet, to whom he secretly gave a signal so as to 
 let him know the individuals he wanted, to the 
 number of perhaps twenty out of some hundreds ; 
 he would then go away, and at the distance of 
 several miles send back the dog by himself, in the 
 night-time. The dog would single out the sheep 
 previously pointed out to him, and drive them home 
 before him to his master. 
 
 Our last extract is a remarkable instance of a 
 man's gratitude to his dog for faithful services. It 
 is from the will of Samuel Trevithuan, of the 
 parish of Padstow, in Cornwall, carpenter, dated 
 Nov. 26th, 1729. The will is now in the Registry 
 of the Consistorial Couit of the Bishop of 
 Exeter; — 
 
 " Item. — I do give unto my dear wife or my daugh- 
 ter, or to whose hands soever he may come, one shil- 
 ling and sixpence weekly, for the well-treating my 
 old dog, that has been my companion through thick 
 and thin almost these fifteen years. The first time 
 that ever he was observed to bark was when that 
 great eclipse was seen, April 22nd, 1715. I say, I 
 do give one shilling and sixpence a week, during 
 his life, for his well-meating, fire in the winter, and 
 fresh barley-straw now and then, to be put in his 
 old lodging, in the middle cage, in the old kitchen, 
 to be paid out of my chattel estate, and forty shil- 
 lings a year that I reserved to make me a freeman 
 of the county ; desiring and requiring all people 
 and persons whomsoever, not to hurt or kill him 
 that hath been so good a servant of a dog, for sense 
 and tractableness to admiration." 
 
40 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 YEAST, A PLANT. 
 
 It will surprise many persons to be told that yeast is 
 a plant. Without doubt, a very small number of 
 those who are constantly using it for purposes of 
 fermentation have ever looked at it in that light. 
 To the ordinary observer it is nothing more in 
 appearance than a thick creamy froth, which makes 
 the bread rise and the beer work ; but to the man 
 of science, examining it with the aid of a micro- 
 scope, it reveals itself as the simplest form of a large 
 and very interesting class of plants. The yeast- 
 plant is, in fact, a species of fungus. It is the 
 simplest form of those growths of which moulds 
 and mildews on the one hand, puff-balls, mush- 
 rooms, and truffles (these last being simply sub- 
 terranean puff-balls) on the other, are the more 
 
 suspected except by the botanist. Gardeners arc 
 aware that the productiveness of their mushroom - 
 beds is dependent on the healthy development of a 
 mass of " spawn," of which mushrooms are the 
 fruit ; but most persons are ignorant that the toad- 
 stools upon rotten wood are the mere indications ot 
 an invisible but widely-spreading spawn carrying 
 destruction in the form of dry-rot as it extends itself 
 among the fibres of the wood. Again, the appear- 
 ance of moulds or mildews upon preserved vegetable 
 substances or liquids is an indication that the mis- 
 chief is far advanced ; for these are but the fruits 
 of the fungus, which it only bears when arrived at 
 maturity. 
 
 It seems to be an established law of nature that 
 the weakest should go to the wall, and thus «e find 
 that mould always attacks plants of a weak and 
 
 Fig. 2. 
 
 Fig- 3-' 
 
 highly organised kinds. Yeast, and the vinegar 
 plant or " mother " as it is sometimes called, are 
 the forms in which it vegetates under various cir- 
 cumstances when well supplied with food. Mildew 
 is its fruit, formed on the surfaces exposed to the 
 air at certain periods, like the flowers and seeds of 
 the higher plants, to enable it to diffuse itself 
 throughout nature. The seeds, or spores as they are 
 called, from which all these plants are developed, 
 are so minute that they are constantly wafted about 
 by every current of air, and deposited in every spot 
 of earth where they can find a resting-place. 
 When once rooted their powers of growth are so 
 rapid, that acres of land have been known to be 
 covered over by them in a single night. Tliey are 
 extremely tenacious of life, and exhibit considerable 
 powers of resisting frost as well as extreme heat ; 
 the experiment having been tried of subjecting some 
 of them to the heat of boiling water without in 
 the least impairing their powers of germination. 
 
 It is frequently the case that these plants are 
 even \vell developed when their presence is hardly 
 
 unhealthy nature in preference to others, just as 
 animals in a sickly state are often attacked by 
 parasites, from which when in health they are free. 
 In the same way deep-coloured roses are more liable 
 to mildew than those of a more subdued tint ; the 
 colour in this case being a sign of constitutional 
 weakness, indicating as it does a want of power to 
 decompose carbonic acid, one of the most indis- 
 pensable of vital functions in the vegetable king- 
 dom. 
 
 The illustration gives an idea of the beautiful 
 appearance and diversity of form assumed by some 
 of the most minute kinds of fungus or mould found 
 growing on our common articles of food, or vege- 
 table substances in general, when viewed through a 
 microscope. Fig. i represents the mildew found 
 growing on the stem of a plant. Fig. 2 is the 
 mould found growing on cheese, bread, &c. Fig. 3 
 is the mould usually found on decaying vegetable 
 substances. This last is the fungus which produced 
 such wide-spread destruction among our potato 
 crops some few years ago. 
 
THE MAN WITH THE IRON MASK. 
 
 41 
 
 THE MAN WITH THE IRON MASK. 
 
 The man with the iron mask ! Yes, there was 
 such a man, who endured not for a month or so, 
 not for a few years only, but for forty-two years, 
 a close imprisonment, during the whole of which 
 time he wore, without once removing it, an iron 
 mask that effectu- 
 ally disguised his 
 identity. It was 
 never known who 
 he was, nor did 
 any grave suspi- 
 cion rest upon any 
 one as being the 
 man. Not the 
 slightest clue has 
 ever been obtained 
 as to the history 
 cf the mysterious 
 stranger. The 
 
 closest scrutiu) 
 has been baffled, 
 the most diligent 
 search foiled, in 
 the attempt to fa- 
 thom the most 
 singular historical 
 mystery that has 
 ever presented it- 
 self 
 
 Cardinal Maza- 
 rin, who had fol- 
 lowed out Riche- 
 lieu's policy, 
 though bydififerent 
 means, died in 
 1 65 1. Several 
 months after his 
 death there was 
 sent to the Isle 
 .SainteMarguerite, 
 in the Mediterra- 
 nean, off the coast 
 of Provence, an 
 unknown prisoner. 
 This prisoner was 
 
 young, in stature above the average height, and of 
 a handsome, noble figure. On the journey he wore 
 a mask of iron, the lower part of which was fur- 
 nished with steel springs that allowed of his eating 
 without ever taking off his mask. The orders to 
 his guard were to kill him if he made known who 
 he was. He remained at the island for twenty- 
 nine years, a close prisoner, and was then removed 
 secretly to the Bastilc in Paris. 
 
 Though secluded so carefully, and guarded so 
 specially, it was clear to all who came in contact 
 6 
 
 THE MAN WITH THE IRO.N MASK. 
 
 with him that he was a person of very great im- 
 portance. His rooms were handsomely furnished, 
 he was served with the greatest respect possible, 
 the governor of the castle himself waited upon him 
 at meals, and never sat down without permission 
 in his presence. His taste for elegant furnishings 
 to his table, for fine linen and lace, was gratified 
 to the utmost, and every facility was given him to 
 
 make his rigorous 
 confinement as 
 light as possible. 
 He amused him- 
 self frequently with 
 a guitar. To give 
 some idea of the 
 importance of the 
 prisoner, it may be 
 said that the Mar- 
 quis of Louvois, 
 Louis the Four- 
 teenth's prime mi- 
 nister, waited upon 
 him before his re- 
 moval from the 
 Isle Sainte Mar- 
 guerite, to the 
 Bastile, and at all 
 the interviews he 
 had withhim never 
 once sat down. 
 
 Shortly after he 
 was brought to the 
 isle he scratched 
 some words with 
 a knife on a silver 
 l)latc,andflungthe 
 plate out of his 
 prison window to 
 .a spot where he 
 saw a fisherman's 
 boat moored to 
 the bank near the 
 foot of his prison 
 tower. The fisher- 
 man took up the 
 plate and carried 
 it to the governor 
 of the castle. The 
 governor, greatly astonished and much concerned, 
 inquired if the man had read the writing, and 
 whether any one but himself had seen it. The 
 fisherman declared he could not read, and that no 
 one else had seen the pl.ate, which he had only just 
 found. It was not until the governor had satis- 
 fied himself beyond a doubt that these were facts, 
 that he let the man go, saying, as he released him, 
 " It is well for you that you do not know how to read." 
 A doctor who attended the man with the iron 
 mask during his incarceration in the Bastilc, said 
 
42 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 that though he had long waited upon him, he had 
 never seen his face, but his tongue and all the 
 rest of his body he had seen, and that he was 
 admirably formed. Never did this man complain 
 of his condition ; never did he let fall a word by 
 which it might be known who he was. 
 
 M. de Chamillart, Minister of State, was thelast 
 minister who possessed a knowledge of this mystery. 
 When he was dying, his son-in-law, the Marechal 
 de la Feuilladc, begged him on his knees to tell 
 him who " the Man " was. The dying minister re- 
 fused, saying it was a state secret, ^v•hich he had 
 sworn never to reveal. 
 
 In 1703 "the Man in the iron mask" died, having 
 spent forty -two years of his life in prison. He was 
 buried at night, still disguised in his mask, and 
 there was no one to say who or what he had been. 
 At the time of his first imprisonment there was 
 not missed from Europe any one of note, such 
 as " the Man " would seem to have been, nor has 
 any clue been found, either directly or indirectly, to 
 the history of this remarkable being. Suggestions 
 there have been in plenty, but all wide of the mark. 
 The secret of Mazarin's — if Mazarin's it was — has 
 hitherto been shrouded in an impenetrable veil, 
 which all the ingenuity of historians and bio- 
 graphers has been unable to lift. Who shall solve 
 the mystery? A century and a half have rolled 
 away since the great liberator. Death, freed the 
 captive from his prison, and no voice has been 
 found to declare either his name or his genera- 
 tion. Should time eventually reveal them, it must 
 still remain a wonder of the world that ever there 
 should have been a prisoner who was a party, as it 
 were, to his own captivity ; who never complained 
 of the treatment which he received at his gaoler's 
 hands ; never was known to murmur at his mys- 
 terious lot ; never, except in the case of the plate, 
 tried to reveal himself; never attempted to escape ; 
 was kind and gentle to all who approached him, 
 and whose imprisonment was yet so rigorous as not 
 only to seclude him wholly from the outer world, 
 but to require as one of the conditions of the 
 prisoner's existence, that he should live and die an 
 imknovvn man, hidden from the sight of his fellow- 
 creatures by the hideous device of an iron mask. 
 
 WONDERS OF DREAMLAND. 
 
 Many are the wonders of dreamland, of which we 
 can here only record a few remarkable examples. 
 In a large class of dreams it is certain that the 
 persons or things seen have been previously well 
 known to the dreamer, but, perhaps, not lately 
 thought of If, according to the philosophy gene- 
 rally received, such appearances are nothing but the 
 recollected images of the persons or objects seen, 
 they are still wonderful. A beloved and long-lost 
 
 friend suddenly appears in a dream, so like the 
 waking reality that it is impossible to distinguish 
 between the sensations caused by them respec- 
 ti\-el\-. This being so, wc may well speak of such 
 things as " wonders," be the explanation of them 
 what it may. 
 
 Abercrombie treats of dreams as hallucina- 
 tions, and in support of his opinion relates the 
 following : — " An eminent medical friend having 
 sat up late one evening, under considerable anxiety 
 about one of his children who was ill, fell asleep 
 in his chair, and had a frightful dream, in which 
 the prominent figure was an immense baboon. He 
 awoke with the fright, got up instantly, and walked 
 to a table which was in the middle of the room. 
 He was then quite awake, and quite conscious of 
 the articles around him ; but close by the wall, at 
 the end of the apartment, he distinctly saw the 
 baboon making the same grimaces which he had 
 seen in his dream. The spectre continued visible 
 for about half a minute." 
 
 If the dreamer, in this instance, had ever seen 
 a balaoon making similar grimaces, the spectre 
 would justly be called a recollected image ; but it 
 is still wonderful that such an image should sud- 
 denly start into existence, like the living thing 
 itself If he had never seen a baboon under similar 
 conditions, but only a picture of one, it is still more 
 wonderful that the picture, after having been for- 
 gotten perhaps for years, should in an instant 
 assume the form and substance of a living creature, 
 and in all respects act as if alive. Look at such 
 phenomena as we will, they are, to say the least, 
 marvellous. To assume that they can easily be 
 explained by the association of ideas, is only to 
 urge one mystery in explanation of another. 
 
 A second wonder of dreamland is that of the 
 transformation or substitution of one set of ideas 
 for another ; but in such a way, that the new images 
 are the actual product of the old. One night, for 
 example, the writer dreamed that he was walking 
 by the side of a river, and saw a fair young girl 
 taken out of the water and laid upon the bank. 
 She was dead, but her beautiful blue eyes were 
 wide open, and were fixed upon him, as he thought, 
 with a steadfast gaze. The intensity of the feeling . 
 thus excited caused him to wake, and after a few 
 moments' reflection, he was able to trace this dream 
 to its origin. Immediately before going to bed he 
 had heard the mouse-trap in the pantry shut down 
 with a click, and wishing to set it again, he had 
 drowned the mouse in a pail of water, and had 
 afterwards shaken it out of the trap. He re- 
 membered observing that the mouse's eyes were 
 open as it lay dead on the table, and that they 
 were blue. He then re-set the trap, and immediately 
 went to bed. The dreaming sense had transformed 
 the image of the mouse to that of a fair young girl ; 
 the pail of water had become a river, to harmonise 
 
WONDERFUL SHOWERS. 
 
 43 
 
 with the altered conditions of the httlc drama that 
 was to be played over again ; and two or three 
 strange characters were introduced, in the shape 
 of the persons who drew the girl out of the water. 
 So far the dream is accounted for ; but is it not 
 wonderful when viewed in this light ? It is as if 
 a poet with fine dramatic instincts had taken a 
 hint from the drowned mouse, and invested the 
 incident with the most touching human interest. 
 Such a transformation did not occur to the writer 
 while he was awake. Why, or rather, by what 
 law of intellectuality did it occur to him when 
 asleep? 
 
 The time occupied by a dream is another marvel 
 of dreamland. We read in " The Philosophy 
 of Mystery" that a gentleman dreamed he had 
 enlisted as a soldier, that he had joined his regi- 
 ment, that he had deserted, was apprehended, and 
 carried back to his regiment ; that he was tried by 
 court-martial, condemned to be shot, and was led 
 out for execution. At the moment of the comple- 
 tion of these ceremonies, the guns of the platoon 
 were fired, and at the report he awoke. It was clear 
 that a loud noise in the adjoining room had both 
 produced the dream and awakened the dreamer 
 almost at the same moment. 
 
 " There was another gentleman," says Mr. Dendy, 
 " who, for some time after sleeping in the damp, 
 suffered a sense of suffocation when slumbering 
 i-n a recumbent position ; and a dream would then 
 come over him as of a skeleton which grasped 
 him firmly by the throat. This dream became 
 at length so distressing, that sleep was to him 
 no blessing, but a state of torture ; and he had 
 a servant posted by his couch to awake him at 
 the very instant he fell asleep. One night, before 
 being awakened, the skeleton made his attack, 
 and a long and severe conflict ensued. When 
 fully awake, the dreamer remonstrated with the 
 watcher for having allowed him to remain so long 
 in his dream, and, to his astonishment, learned 
 that his dream had been mo)nciitaty. He was 
 roused at the instant he began to slumber." 
 
 A very remarkable instance of the kind is related 
 by the famous Count Lavalette. It occurred while 
 he was confined in a French prison. " One night, 
 while I was asleep," he says, "the clock of the 
 Palais do Justice struck twelve, and awoke me. 
 I heard the gate open to relieve the sentry, but I 
 fell asleep almost immediately. In this sleep I 
 dreamed that I was standing in the Rue St. 
 Honore, at the corner of the Rue de I'Echelle. A 
 melancholy darkness spread around me ; all was 
 still. Nevertheless, a low and uncertain sound 
 soon arose. All of a sudden I perceived at the 
 bottom of the street, and advancing towards me, a 
 troop of cavalry ; the men and horses, however, all 
 flayed. The men held torches in their hands, the 
 flames of which illumined faces without skin, and 
 
 with bloody streaks. Their hollow eyes rolled fear- 
 fully in their large sockets, their mouths opened from 
 ear to ear, and helmets of hanging flesh covered 
 their hideous heads. The horses dragged along 
 their own skins in the kennels, which overflowed 
 with blood on both sides. Pale and dishevelled 
 women appeared and disappeared alternately at the 
 windows in dismal silence ; low, inarticulate groans 
 filled the air, and I remained in the street alone, 
 petrified with horror, and deprived of strength suffi- 
 cient to seek my safety by flight. This horrible 
 troop continued passing in rapid gallop, and cast- 
 ing frightful looks on me. Their march, I thought, 
 continued /o>- five hours, and they were followed by 
 an immense number of artillery wagons, full of 
 bleeding corpses, whose limbs still quivered. A 
 disgusting smell of blood and bitumen almost 
 choked me. At length the iron gate of the prison 
 shutting with great force awoke me again. I made 
 my repeater strike. It was no more than mid- 
 night, so that the horrible phantasmagoria had 
 lasted no more than ten miniiics — that is to say, 
 the time necessary for relieving the sentry and 
 shutting the gate. The cold was severe, and the 
 watchword short. The next day the turnkey con- 
 firmed my calculations. I, nevertheless, do not 
 remember one single event in my life the duration 
 of which I have been able more exactly to cal- 
 culate than the time apparently occupied in the 
 dream." 
 
 These are only some of the wonders of dream- 
 land. There is so much to relate of a similar kind, 
 or more marvellous still, that we must return to the 
 subject at another opportunity. 
 
 Moniicrful Sljotocrs. 
 
 A Shower of Fishes.— In 1833, at Lake Gwy- 
 nant, in the county of Caernarvon, a woman was 
 engaged washing a pail at the edge of the lake, and 
 a number of children were with her. While she 
 was thus employed, at eight p.m., a shower of small 
 fishes fell partly into the lake, partly upon the land, 
 close to where the woman was. The fish resembled 
 herrings, but were much smaller. A heavy shower 
 of rain had preceded the descent of these fishes, 
 and the day following there was much rain and 
 thunder. — Caernarvon Herald, 1833. 
 
 A Shower OF Crabs. — Lord Eastnor, of Tytten- 
 hanger Park, Kent, writes, in August, 1836:— 
 " Soon after a most violent storm of rain and wind, 
 in the summer of 1829, three small crabs, weighing 
 from \\ to li oz., were found in the area of the 
 workhouse at Reigatc ; and a fourth was afterwards 
 found at a little distance, I think the following 
 morning. One of them appeared to be still living. 
 In the morning of the day prc\'ious to the storm 
 the area of the workhouse had been thoroughly 
 
44 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 Fin 
 
 -THE PLAIN OF LAUGAKVATN — GENEKAI. \ ILW 
 
 swept and cleaned ; consequently they must have 
 been scon had they been there then. They were 
 found by a boy, who told the governor that he had 
 found a comical sort of a frog." 
 
 Fall of Fishes. — Yesterday morning a great 
 number of small fish were found swimming in the 
 gutters in Jefferson Street. During the night 
 previous a heavy rain fell, and the fish of course 
 descended with the water. We saw a number of 
 them ; they were from two to three inches long, 
 and were mostly sun-perch. — Louisville Newspaper^ 
 Nov., 1835. 
 
 Shower of Young Herrings. — On the 9th 
 March, 1830, the inhabitants of the island of Isla, 
 Argyleshire, after a day of heavy rain, were sur- 
 prised to find numbers of small herrings strewed 
 over their fields, perfectly fresh, and some of them 
 exhibiting signs of life. Similar instances of 
 showers of small fish are well authenticated. — Note 
 by Yarrell in Re id's ^^ Law of Storms!' 
 
 Fall of Fish in Kent. — About Easter, in the 
 year i656, in a pasture-field in the parish of Stan- 
 «ted, which is a considerable distance from the sea 
 or any branch of it, and a place where there are no 
 fish-ponds, there were found fish in quantity about 
 a bushel, supposed to have been rained down from 
 a cloyd. there having been at that time a great 
 
 tempest of thunder, hail, wind, &c. These fish 
 were about the size of a man's little finger ; some 
 were small whitings, others like sprats, and some 
 rather like smelts. Several of these fish were 
 shown publicly at Maidstone and Dartford. — 
 Hasted' s ''History of Kent:' 
 
 GEYSERS. 
 
 The Geyser, or as we, using the kindred English 
 word, should say, " gusher," is a phenomenon 
 peculiar to the small island of Iceland — a strange, 
 wild plateau of land heaved up from the bottom of 
 the Atlantic, on the confines of the Arctic Ocean, as 
 if to show what Nature can do when she has a mind 
 to it, in the way of making extremes meet. Some 
 of its mountains are volcanic, pouring out their lava 
 flood into the valleys beneath ; others are crowned 
 with eternal snows and glittering with glaciers. 
 Cold streams ripple on among the scoria; beds on 
 the level lands, while not far away, boiling hot 
 springs, or geysers, bubble up from the sub-soil or 
 fling their spray to the clouds. 
 
 The most remarkable group of geysers is that on 
 the plain of Laugarvatn, represented in Fig. I, 
 Over an area of about a square half mile, on the slope 
 
GEYSERS. 
 
 45 
 
 
 
 Fig. 2. — THE I'LAIN OI.' LAUGAKVATN — THE GREAT GEYSER, 
 
 of a slight eminence rising from the valley of the 
 White River, arc scattered some scores of boiling 
 springs — the basins of two or three of them measur- 
 ing several yards across, while the majority range 
 from the size of a tea-cup to that of a good sized 
 cauldron — all of them bubbling and throwing off 
 steam, a few sending a column or jet of hot water 
 straight up into the air. Around the mouth of each 
 is a small rim or incrustation, formed of the sand, 
 which is thrown up by the water during its bub- 
 blings. Besides those constantly in the boiling 
 state are a few that are spent, and some that are 
 only in a state of eruption at intervals. The two 
 largest and most interesting of those that are con- 
 stantly in the boiling state are the Great Geyser, 
 or " gusher," and the Strokr, or " churn." 
 
 The Great Geyser (Fig. 2) lies on the summit of a 
 sandy rim, or mound, of its own formation, rising 
 about fifteen feet above the level of the plain. The 
 pool is circular, and measures something like twenty- 
 four feet across. Its depth ranges between four 
 and five feet, except in the centre, where a sort of 
 shaft, also circular and a little over two yards in 
 diameter, dips to a depth of eighty-three feet. It 
 is up this shaft that the boiling water rises con- 
 tinuously from the bowels of the earth. During 
 the greater part of the day the flow is very small, 
 
 and trickles in a tiny stream down into the plain, 
 through a channel which it has worn in the mound. 
 At intervals of five or six hours, the water boils 
 tumultuously, and sends up little jets a few feet 
 above the surface ; and once in the twenty-four 
 hours this boiling culminates in a grand eruption, 
 during which columns of water are repeatedly 
 flung to a height of seventy or eighty feet, and give 
 off a mass of steam, which obscures the country 
 for a mile round. The heat of the water at the 
 bottom of the shaft, just before one of these great 
 eruptions, has been found to be as much as 261° 
 Fahr., which is considerably over the boiling point. 
 At the side of the pool on the summit of the 
 mound, the temperature of the water is about 190° 
 Fahr. In the centre, it is much higher, ranging 
 from 220° to 230° Fahr. 
 
 The Strokr is a much smaller geyser, and does 
 not " play " unless forced to do so. It is an irregu- 
 lar-shaped hole some six or eight feet in diameter. 
 The depth of it is unknown, for its course is crooked 
 and cannot be measured. The boiling water lies 
 some twenty feet down, where it may be seen bub- 
 bling and throwing up steam all day long. At the 
 bottom of the pool is a narrower aperture ; and if 
 enough turf can be thrown in to stop it up, the 
 result is of a most magnificent description, First 
 
46 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 there is a great rumbling noise ; then an explosion 
 is heard below, followed by the flinging up of an 
 immense body of water, which rises to a height of 
 sixty feet, and breaks into showers of spray, \\hich 
 seem to fall from clouds of steam. 
 
 It is now the generally received opinion that 
 these eruptions are produced by the incredibly rapid 
 production of vapour in the bowels of the earth, 
 which takes place when the water from which it 
 is obtained has been boiled over and over again. 
 The manner in which it is supposed to operate 
 is shown in the small engraving given below. 
 The water, it will be seen, fills A, the cavernous 
 
 Fig- 3- 
 
 reservoir under ground, to a point higher than its 
 outlet, B; and when enough steam is generated to 
 fill the remaining space, the water is of course 
 forced out more rapidly. Periodically the steam 
 rises to its highest point, and then we have the mag- 
 nificent eruptions which, consisting both of steam 
 and water, may be supposed to clear out the cavern 
 down to the level of the outlet. The water, it is 
 thought, is heated by the same subterranean fires 
 which pour from Mount Hecla, which latter is 
 situated within a few miles of the Geyser group 
 of Laugai"vatn. 
 
 Monbwfitl Sacjacifg of ^nhnals. 
 
 War Horses. — When horses are hit in battle, 
 they stop, tremble in every nmscle, and groan 
 deeply, while their eyes show wild astonishment. 
 During the battle of Waterloo, some of the horses, 
 as they lay on the ground, having recovered 
 from the first agony of their wounds, fell to eating 
 the grass about them ; thus surrounding them- 
 selves with a circle of bare ground, the limited 
 extent of which showed their weakness. Others 
 of these interesting animals were observed quietly 
 grazing in the middle of the field, between the 
 two hostile lines, their riders having been shot off 
 their backs ; while the balls that flew over their 
 heads, and the tumult behind, and before, and 
 
 around them, caused no interruption to the usual 
 instincts of their nature. It was also observed that 
 when a charge of cavalry went past, near to any 
 of the stray horses already mentioned, they would 
 set off, form themselves in the rear "f their mounted 
 companions, and though without riders, gallop 
 strenuously along with the rest, not stopping or 
 flinching when the fatal shock with the enemy took 
 place. At the battle of the Kirk, in 1 745, Major iNIac- 
 donald, having unhorsed an English officer, took 
 possession of his horse, which was very beauyful, 
 and immediately mounted it. When the English 
 ca\-alry fled, the horse ran away with its captor, 
 notwithstanding all his efforts to restrain him ; nor 
 did it stop until it was at the head of the regiment, 
 of which, apparently, its master was the commander. 
 The melancholy and, at the same time, ludicrous 
 figure which Macdonald presented when he thus 
 saw himself the victim of his ambition to possess a 
 fine horse, which ultimately cost him his life upon 
 the scaffold, may be easily conceived. 
 
 An intelligent Dog.— Dr. Williams did show 
 me how a dog that he hath do kill all the cats 
 that come thither to kill his pigeons, and do after- 
 wards bury them ; and do it with so much care that 
 they shall be quite covered. That if the tip of the 
 tail hangs out, he will take up the cat again, and 
 dig the hole deeper, which is very strange ; and he 
 tells me that he do believe that he hath killed 
 above 100 cats. — Pepys, vol. i., p. 2ig. 
 
 Wonderful Cats. — It is on record that a shoe- 
 maker in Edinburgh chanced to leave the door of a 
 lark's cage open, of which the bird took advantage 
 to fly away. About an hour afterwards, a cat 
 belonging to the same person, made its appearance 
 with the lark in its mouth, which it held by the 
 wings over the back in such a manner that the bird 
 had not received the least injury. After dropping 
 the bird on the floor, the cat mewed, and looked up 
 to her master as if expecting his recognition of her 
 cleverness. The writer has himself observed many 
 instances of a remarkable instinct in cats, and at 
 the present time has one which every day knocks at 
 the door — sometimes modestly, sometimes with a 
 sharp double knock like a postman, occasionally 
 with a series of raps, pianissimo, like a lady or a 
 quiet single gentleman. The door is half glass, 
 and the knocker low. The cat was not taught, but 
 acquired the trick by his own observation. 
 
 LUMINOUS VEGETATION. 
 
 Mr. Gardner, in his "Travels in Brazil," relates 
 the following :~" One dark night, about the begin- 
 ning of December, while passing along the streets 
 of the Villa de Natividade, I observed some boys 
 amusing themselves with some luminous object, 
 which I at first supposed to be a kind of large 
 fire-fly ; but on making inquir)-, 1 found it to be a 
 
THE WONDER OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 47 
 
 beautiful phosphorescent fungus, and was told that i 
 it grew abundantly in the neighbourhood on the 
 decaying leaves of a dwarf palm. Next day I ob- 
 tained a great many specimens, and found them 
 to vary from one to two and a half inches across. 
 The whole plant gives out at night a bright phos- 
 phorescent light, of a pale greenish hue, similar to 
 that emitted by the larger fire-flies. From this cir- 
 cumstance, and from growing on a palm, it is called 
 by the inhabitants ' Flor do Coco.' The light 
 given out by a few of these fungi in a dark room 
 was sufficient to read by. I was not aware at the 
 time I discovered this fungus that any other species 
 of the same genus exhibited a similar pheno- 
 menon ; such, however, is the case ; and Mr. 
 Drummond, of Swan River Colony, in Australia, 
 has given an account of a very large phospho- 
 rescent species occasionally found there." This 
 property is also possessed by some of the mosses 
 in this country. In searching for ferns and other 
 botanical specimens, the writer has often found 
 moss shining with great brilliancy in the furthest 
 recesses of a dark cleft in a rock, though on being 
 brought out to the light, it did not present an 
 appearance in any way remarkable. 
 
 WONDERS OF SYMPATHY AND 
 ANTIPATHY. 
 It is well known that certain objects excite an 
 instant horror in the minds of persons to whom 
 they are antipathetic, and this in a manner quite 
 distinct from tlie affectation of fright. There are 
 silly girls who are ready to shriek at the sight of a 
 spider ; but though, in many cases, this maybe the 
 result of what is commonly called nervousness, and 
 in rare instances may be the sign of a real antipathy, 
 it is more often foolishness and nothing more. 
 Some remarl^able instances of real sympathy and 
 antipathy are, however, collected by Millingen in his 
 book on " Mind and Matter." Amatus Lusitanus 
 relates the case of a monk who fainted when he 
 beheld a rose, and never quitted his cell while this 
 flo\\>er was blooming. Orfila (a less questionable 
 authority) gives the account of the painter 
 Vincent, who was seized with violent vertigo and 
 swooned when there were roses in the room. 
 Volpi relates the history of an officer who was 
 thrown into convulsions and lost his senses, in con- 
 sequence of pinks being shut up with him in his 
 chamber. Zimmerman tells of a lady who could 
 not endure the feeling of silk and satin, and who 
 shuddered when touching the velvety skin of a 
 peach. Boyle records the case of a man who felt a 
 natural abhorrence of honey ; and that of a young 
 man who fainted when the servant swept his room. 
 Hippocrates mentions one Nicanor, who swooned 
 whenever he heard a flute. Boyle himself, in spite 
 of his philosophy, fell into a syncope when he heard 
 
 the splashing of water ; Scaliger turned pale at the 
 
 sight of watercresses ; Erasmus experienced febrile 
 symptoms when smelling fish ; the Duke d'Epcrnay 
 swooned on seeing a leveret, although a hare did 
 not produce the same effect ; Tycho-Brahe fainted 
 at the sight of a fox, Henry III. of France if he 
 saw a cat, and Marshal d'Albret if a pig faced 
 him. Every one in the least acquainted with his- 
 tory is aware that King James I. could not endure 
 a drawn sword ; and the writer often feels a cold 
 shudder thrill through him at tlie bare thought of a 
 knife. Effects of this kind are in the majority of 
 instances purely physical ; in some cases, however, 
 the imagination is first affected. 
 
 THE WONDER OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 I. — RECORDING SIGNALS. 
 
 Any ordinary mechanic is aware that when a 
 motive power is once obtained, it can be converted 
 by mechanism to almost any use required. In our 
 account of Electro Magnetism, it has been shown 
 in a very simple manner that the operator has at 
 his command a source of mechanical action, which 
 he can use at pleasure. We have seen that the 
 attractive power of the magnet being made to act 
 upon the " armature " or " keeper," produces a 
 simple up and down motion, which may be used in 
 the simplest manner to strike a bell, as already 
 shown, or to liberate the detents of a clock move- 
 ment, and set in motion various kinds of complicated 
 machinery. With this power at his command, it is 
 not difficult to conceive how an ingenious mechanic 
 may arrange for any kind of action in the machinery 
 that may be required to effect his object. For 
 example, A (Fig. l) is a magnet, b the armature or 
 keeper, working on a pivot c ; d, the extended arm of 
 the keeper, furnished with a point projecting against 
 the strip of paper ee. The current of electricity 
 having been turned on to the magnet A (Fig. i), 
 it attracts the keeper b, and its motion causes the 
 point at d to rise and make an indentation in the 
 
 paper e e, from which it is instantly drawn back by 
 the springyj in consequence of the electricity being 
 turned off, and the magnet ceasing to attract. If 
 the paper is made to pass over a drum set in 
 motion by the action of clockwork, and thus to 
 move in the direction indicated by the arrow, 
 while the point at d is rapidly strikirig against it, 
 we shall get a row of indentations. If contact be 
 made, three times, for example, in quick succession, 
 there will be three impressions close together, and 
 
48 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 a pause in working the current while the clockwork 
 continues in motion will be represented by a blank 
 on the paper. It may be agreed beforehand that 
 three dots thus impressed shall represent the letter 
 a, four b, and so on to the end of the alphabet. 
 
 Such a system, however, would entail an enor- 
 mous waste of time and power for want of a well con- 
 nected system of signs ; besides which the mechanism 
 is so rudely conceived as to be open to some 
 practical objections. People acquainted with the 
 delicacy of voltaic electricity itself, and with that 
 of the machinery used in telegraphy, will be 
 disposed to smile at this "rule of thumb" work, 
 and at the neglect of some important conditions 
 which it involves. Nevertheless, there is enough 
 here to illustrate the principle, and the reader who 
 has hitherto had no conception of the process will 
 see that the wonder of the telegraph is in some 
 measure revealing itself to him. 
 
 Instead of dots only, as supposed in the above 
 illustration. Professor Morse, an American, hit upon 
 the ingenious device of impressing dots and dashes 
 on the telegraph paper, and thus secured the desired 
 simplicity, speed, and certainty in the transmission 
 of messages. The explanation of this system of 
 telegraphy will bo easy to understand by reference 
 to the above figure. As the paper imroUs from the 
 drum, and the electro-magnet is put into rapid action, 
 we obtain a series of dots as already described ; but 
 it is obvious that if the lever be held down— in other 
 words, if the magnetic current be allowed to act — 
 while the paper unrolls over the point at d, an 
 impression of a dash will be made instead of a dot ; 
 and this dash will be long or short, in proportion to 
 the time the keeper is kept in contact with the 
 m.agnet. The action of the operator is precisely 
 like that of playing on a piano or an organ and 
 holding the note, only that in the case of electricity, 
 the action that takes place is not affected by the 
 distance of the operator from the place where his 
 music is heard — that is to say, where the instrument 
 delivers the message. He touches the key a thou- 
 sand miles away, and the electric current flashes 
 through the wire, the magnet attracts the keeper, 
 and the dot is made ; he holds the key down, and 
 the dot is converted into a dash. It is only neces- 
 sary to make the various combinations of dots and 
 dashes stand for letters, and the message can be 
 read almost as easily as if it were in the sender's 
 handwriting. For example : — 
 
 n if c d e / 
 
 
 With such a system of signs as this, the printing 
 of the message is of course abbreviated. If only 
 
 dots were used, for example, to telegraph " All well," 
 one dot being for a, five for e, twelve for each of the 
 four /'s, and twenty-three for w, there would be 
 seventy-seven indentations, and great care in 
 counting them would not prevent serious mistakes ; 
 whereas by the above system of dots and dashes 
 the message is briefly expressed thus : — 
 
 all '.veil 
 
 Here another wonder of the telegraph has to be men- 
 tioned. Some of our readers may have seen these 
 characters printed on telegraph ribbon apparently 
 with blue ink. This is effected by combining chemical 
 action with the marking apparatus, and is the inven- 
 tion, we believe, of Mr. liain, who saturates the slip 
 of paper in a solution of cyanide of potassium. The 
 
 ribbon so prepared (a a in the diagram. Fig. 2) is 
 passed over a brass drum B, upon which it is pressed 
 down by the iron point C C, when contact is made 
 by the sender of the message. Tlie electric current, 
 passing from the point C through the paper satu- 
 rated with cyanide of potassium, causes decomposi- 
 tion to take place, and thus a small quantity of 
 cyanide of potassium is found everywhere the point 
 touches the paper. This cyanide of potassium is, in 
 reality, Prussian blue, and thus it is the dots and 
 dashes t.tke that colour. The electric current passes 
 out of the machine by the spring d. 
 
 The above system of telegraphy, whether by 
 indentations impressed on the paper, or by colour- 
 ing matter, or however the code of signs may be 
 varied, is " Morse's system." Some years ago an 
 improvement was made by Mr. Bain, which con- 
 sisted in preparing the message by means of a 
 separate instrument, the action of which is purely 
 mechanical. The prepared message appears in the 
 form of apertures punched on a strip of paper, and 
 this strip of paper, being passed through a trans- 
 mitting machine, makes or breaks the voltaic circuit 
 by means of a delicate spring, which passes through 
 the holes, and touches the periphery of a metal 
 wheel. This invention has been further perfected 
 by Mr. Allan, whose arrangements for preparing 
 the message, including an important improvement 
 on Morse's code of signals, seems to approach as 
 near perfection as possible with our present know- 
 ledge. 
 
 Having endeavoured in this article to make the 
 unscientific reader acquainted, as far as possible, 
 with the recording system of telegraphy, we propose 
 in our next article to describe the needle instrument 
 invented by Messrs. Cooke and Wheatstone. 
 
WONDERS OF THE OCEAN. 
 
 49 
 
 MonUfrs of i^t <Bun\x. 
 
 —   — - 
 
 SEA-NETTLES. 
 
 1 N the neighbourhood of the Azores may be seen, 
 a httle to the southward of the group, one of the 
 most wonderfally beautiful sights the ocean has to 
 show. The water, especially in calm weather, is 
 literally crowded with creatures, small in size and 
 fantastic in shape, and painted in all the colours of 
 the rainbow. These are sea-nettles; hving organisms 
 
 lines of light purple, which pick out the form of 
 the creature as decorators mark the lines in archi- 
 tecture with threads of colour. A short stem, like 
 a handle to this incomparable umbrella, points 
 dowrkwards in the water, and from the lower end of 
 it hang long white threads, which wave about as it 
 in search of food. Then there are mushroom-shaped 
 things, about mushroom size, but marked on their 
 heads like strawberries. There are acorn-like 
 objects of all sizes and colours, and gelatinous 
 
 SEA-NETTLES. 
 
 of a low order, but marvellously ornate and beauti- 
 ful. Count them you cannot. Myriads upon myriads 
 throng the water, swimming layer upon layer, and, 
 according to their specific gravity, high or low in 
 their watery domain. Here is a dark brown patch 
 of jelly, some six inches in diameter, looking not 
 unlike the leather suckers with which boys play at 
 air-pump, only it is marked around its centre with 
 gorgeous coloured eyes, and has an elaborate fringe 
 of colour round its outer circumference. It throbs 
 along in the water, jostling a shoal of tiny, half-egg 
 shaped transparent things, with pink and blue lines 
 upon an azure ground, and having long threads or 
 feelers, which twist about continually, pendant from 
 the inner central spot. In solitary state goes a 
 half transparent bell, five inches in diameter, of a 
 very pale blue colour, stamped on its top surface 
 with a bright purple cross, between each arm of 
 which is a dark, purple-coloured mark, something 
 like a horse-shoe. Over the sides of the bell run, 
 fiom the ceiitr? tpwar(}s the circiwjfer?nce, delicate 
 
 discs, marked with coloured spots, and devoid of 
 hanging threads, which move along with a palpi- 
 tating motion, their cups being sometimes turned up 
 and sometimes down. Some are transparent jellies, 
 not so globular in form as the rest, having an opaque 
 white cross let in like a crest upon the top surface, 
 with a handsome black spot of exceeding brilliance 
 stamped on each of the four angles. The outer 
 edge of the circle has a yellow tinge, and from the 
 edge itself hang down innumerable threads of a 
 pink colour, which stream away in the water as the 
 creature is swept onwards. 
 
 It would be endless to describe all the classes of 
 this convoy, the members of which no man can 
 number. They seem to be an agglomeration of 
 nerves, for though they swim so near the surface, and 
 are apparently so thoroughly within reach, it will be 
 found the most difficult matter to haul them in with 
 a bucket. Perseverance, however, will be rewarded, 
 the shyness of the coy creatures will be overcome, 
 and then the pursuer of knowledge will find, if he 
 
 7 
 
50 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 puts his hand into the pail, why these delicate crea- 
 tures are called sea-nettles. From the threads of 
 which mention has been made, will be discharged 
 a nervous fluid, which imparts a stinging sensation 
 to the skin, and in some cases causes complete 
 numbness of the hand. Irritation, however, of the 
 creature's nerves by means of a piece of stick will 
 discharge all the fluid, and then they may be handled 
 with impunity, and their simple beauty may be 
 admired in peace. 
 
 These creatures are to be found all over the warm 
 regions of the ocean, especially within the tropics ; 
 but the place where they abound is at that spot 
 near the Azores where the Gulf Stream begins to 
 lose its force. There they are massed in vast multi- 
 tudes, because of the ever-decreasing temperature of 
 the warm water in which alone they can live ; and 
 their area is circumscribed by the unfriendly volumes 
 of cold water which shut them in on every side. 
 
 And the function of these creatures? — is to 
 supply food to the whale, whose small swallow, 
 for all that he is himself so large, cannot accommo- 
 date anything bigger or less pulpy and soft than 
 the beautiful, delicate bodies of the sea-nettles. 
 
 Monbtrful P^Mljanital C0iTtriijantcs. 
 
 An entry in Evelyn's diary of February 24th, 1655, 
 gives an account of a curious mechanical contri- 
 vance which the writer had lately seen. This 
 was a table-clock, whose balance was only a crys- 
 tal ball sliding on parallel irons, without being at 
 all fixed, but rolling from stage to stage till it was 
 thrown up to the utmost channel again, made with 
 an imperceptible declivity ; thus, by a continual 
 vicissitude of motion, entertaining the eye every half- 
 minute, and the next half giving progress to the 
 hand that showed the hour, and giving notice by 
 a small bell, so that in one hundred and twenty 
 half-minutes, or periods of the balls falling on the 
 spring, the clock part struck. The clock was richly 
 ornamented, and had been presented by a German 
 prince to King Charles I. 
 
 About twenty years ago, an Hungarian, M. 
 Kempelon, exhibited at the Egyptian Hall a speak- 
 ing machine which he had invented, and had ex- 
 pended the greater part of a long life in constructing. 
 Externally, it presented the effigy of a human face 
 and figure, while its internal anatomy consisted of 
 a reed or glottis, of air-chest with valves, bellows 
 for lungs, a mouth and jaws, and nostrils. It pro- 
 nounced most letters perfectly, but d, k, g, and i 
 imperfectly. The voice or tone was somewhat 
 harsh, but it uttered long words and sentences with 
 great facility, and they were perfectly intelligible. 
 The inventor, a venerable-looking man of over 
 eighty, produced the tones by operating on a key- 
 board like that of a pianoforte ; he had, unfor- 
 
 tunately, suffered much from rheumatic gout in the 
 joints of the hands, so that his manual power was 
 of the feeblest and most bunghng kind, but notwith- 
 standing, the effects he produced were most startling. 
 
 THE BLACK DEATH. 
 
 Wonderful in its origin, in its characteristics, in 
 its consequences, was the great pestilence known as 
 the Black Death, which swept half the people out of 
 England in 1348. For two years previously there 
 had been gradually spreading over the eastern parts 
 of Europe a virulent disease, imported from Asia, 
 which had made havoc of the people in some of the 
 finest portions of the world. 60 dreadful indeed 
 had been its ravages that, according to the most 
 respectable monkish writer of the time, many 
 Saracens, convinced that the pestilence was a sign 
 of God's wrath on account of their unbelief, became 
 Christians, till, finding the Christians to be likewise 
 afflicted, they returned to their old faith. A series 
 of earthquakes, which shook the whole of eastern 
 Europe, ushered in the year 1348 ; men's hearts 
 quailed for fear, and many were the steps taken — • 
 short of draining the towns and providing better 
 ventilation — with the view of propitiating the Divine 
 wrath. In vain. The plague which had scourged 
 Asia and the Greek empire crept slowly but surely 
 westward, seemingly uninfluenced by the coldness 
 of climate, or by the intervention of sea. Bocfiaccio 
 has written in the preface to his " Decameron " an 
 account of the plague as it operated in Florence, 
 which no one who has ever read it can forget. 
 Within a few months of its slaughter of the Floren- 
 tines, it had s\vept through Spain, France, and 
 Germany, and had crossed the Straits of Dover. 
 
 From June to December, 1348, there had fallen 
 in England an almost incessant downpour of rain ; 
 the ground was damp, and the streams became 
 polluted by the surface-drainage which was washed 
 like compost all over the country, in default of a 
 proper outlet into a proper receptacle. In August the 
 first cases were reported ; by November the capital 
 was reached, and from London the plague spread 
 all over the kingdom, and, says Stowe, " so wasted 
 and spoyled the people, that scarce the tenth person 
 of all sorts was left alive." This was not an exaggera- 
 tion of what happened in some places ; " there died 
 an innumerable sort, for no man but God only knew 
 how many." Between the 1st of Januaiy and ist 
 of July, 1349, there died in the city of Norwich 
 57,104 persons ; Yarmouth buried 7,052 in the year ; 
 and other towns in the eastern counties suffered 
 nearly as much. In the thirteen acres of Spittle Croft 
 (the site of the existing Charterhouse), which was 
 given by Sir Walter Manny for the burial of the dead 
 because the London churchyards were choke full, 
 were buried fifty thousand persons. The plague was 
 swift in execution ; those seized by it often dying 
 
WONDERFUL PRECOCITY OF MUSICIANS. 
 
 51 
 
 within six hours, and none lasting over three days. 
 The tics of nature seemed loosened ; parents for- 
 sook their children, the dead remained in many 
 instances without burial, and were allowed to 
 take their revenge on the living by adding fearfully 
 to the pestilential character of the atmosphere. 
 Cattle became infected with the disease, and their 
 bodies lay rotting in the fields untouched by the 
 birds of prey. How many of the people died it is 
 not possible to say with certainty ; but the most 
 reliable accounts state that, taking England all 
 through, half of the entire population died. The 
 eastern counties never recovered from the ravages 
 of the plague ; places which awhile had been the 
 scats of manufacture became obscure villages, and 
 to this day there may be seen in those counties, 
 places in which large churches that once were too 
 small for the congregation, have survived only to 
 attest what the villages they preside over once were. 
 
 Half the population ! The labours of agriculture 
 were neglected ; the courts of justice were not 
 opened ; Parliament was prorogued from time to 
 time ; the whole business of the country drifted for 
 very lack of hands to attend to it, and the curse of the 
 plague became so notorious that the Scots swore by 
 it, by the " foul deth of the English." For a time 
 Scotland escaped, and the Scots, taking advantage 
 of the weakened condition of their southern foe, 
 collected an army for the purpose of finishing what 
 the plague had spared to do. But into their camp 
 at Selkirk the "foul deth" came and slew five thou- 
 sand men, and put an end to the project of invasion. 
 
 All sorts of reasons were assigned for the visita- 
 tion. Some declared it was a sign of God's anger 
 at the extravagance and effeminacy of the men; 
 others that it was because of his wrath at the gay 
 costume of the women, who seemed to have arrayed 
 themselves more after the fashion adopted by some 
 women now-a-days, than after the fashion cither of 
 Solomon or the lily of the field. Some said one 
 thing and some another, but we do not hear of any 
 one hitting the real blot, and assigning the cause to 
 the anger of God against filthy streets, unwholesome 
 houses, undraincd towns, and utter want of ventila- 
 tion. The Black Death was a wonder in its effects 
 rather than in its causes, and was attended by the 
 supplementary wonder, that it went away without 
 a Great Fire, which, by burning down the plague- 
 cherishing towns, might have prevented, as it di I 
 later on in London, a recurrence of the visitatio;\ 
 At intervals afterwards, the plague returned, though 
 never again with such destructive power ; it came, 
 and went, and devoured its victims, till people found 
 out what it was that God was angry about. Then 
 it went away finally, leaving behind it a promise to 
 return— a promise which holds good at the present 
 hour — whenever men should so tempt their fate as 
 to provoke it by dirt and tho.sc other abominations 
 upon which it thrives. 
 
 ®l0nba"ful f modtiT of llusicians. 
 
 Mozart, like many other musicians, at a very 
 early age gave indications of extraordinary musical 
 genius. When he was only three years old he was 
 observed to take a wonderful interest in the lessons 
 on the harpsichord his sister was taking from iheir 
 father, and was soon able to play several airs, which 
 he learnt with great facility. When he was five years 
 old he had already composed some small pieces, 
 and at the age of six he wrote a concerto for the 
 harpsichord. In 1763, when he was seven years of 
 age, he appeared before the French court at Ver- 
 sailles, and in the same year he performed in Paris 
 at two public concerts. The Baron Grimm, the 
 well-known musical critic, speaks thus of his arrival 
 in Paris:— "A chapel -master from Salzburg, named 
 Mozart, has just arrived here with two charming 
 children. His daughter, who is eleven years old, 
 performs the most brilliant music on the harpsi- 
 chord with surprising precision. Her brother is so 
 wonderful a prodigy, that one can hardly believe 
 one's eyes and ears. Though his little hands can 
 hardly stretch a sixth on the key-board, he will 
 execute the most difficult passages with perfect 
 facility. But that is nothing. What is almost in- 
 credible is the way in which he extemporises by the 
 hour, abandoning hiinself to the inspiration of his 
 genius, while a crowd of most charming ideas seem 
 to succeed each other without anything like con- 
 fusion, and in the most perfect taste." In 1764 the 
 children were brought over to this country, and had 
 the honour of performing before the royal family. 
 During his visit, the young Mozart astonished the 
 musical world of London by the composition of six 
 sonatas, which he dedicated to the Queen. An 
 account of his wonderful performances was read 
 before the Royal Society, and was afterwards 
 printed in the sixtieth volume of the Pliilosophical 
 Transactions. 
 
 Charles Wesley, at the age of two years and 
 nine months, played a tune in correct time. Not 
 long after, he could play any tune by ear, and 
 supply an harmonious bass to it. When he was 
 asked to play to any of his parent's friends, he 
 would ask, " Is he a musicker ?" and if the answer 
 was Yes, he would immediately rush to the instru- 
 ment and play. 
 
 William Crotch, at a year and a half old, 
 would leave his food to listen to music. At two 
 years he would strike the two or three opening 
 notes of the tune he wished his father to play to 
 him. At two years and three months he could 
 play great part of " God save the King " with one 
 hand. In a day or two he mastered the whole of 
 it, and in a few months more he could play "Hope, 
 thou nurse of young desire," from " Love in a Vil- 
 lage." 
 
5? 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 MoniJirs of i^c %,ima»^\)tn, 
 
 THE MIRAGE— SPECTRE OF THE BROCKEN. 
 The beautiful, deceptive phenomenon known as the 
 mirage is of three distinct kinds. First, there is that 
 form of it where some distant object, below the line of 
 the horizon, and consequently out of the range of 
 vision, seems to be lifted up into mid-air, and to hang 
 suspended there — sometimes in its natural position, 
 sometimes upside down, and sometimes both ways 
 at once ; the image in this latter case being doubled, 
 like a ship and its reflection in the water. Secondly, 
 there is that form of it where some object high up 
 in the air, such as a cloud or a village on a hill, 
 seems to be brought down and to lie floating in a 
 vast lake stretching miles away at the spectator's 
 feet. Thirdly, there is that less frequent form of 
 it, where the setting sun appears to fling huge 
 shadows of terrestrial objects far out into space. 
 
 Of the first kind of inirage there are sorae very 
 striking instances on record. While sailing in the 
 Polar seas, in 1822, Captain Scoresby saw the 
 inverted image of a ship, apparently suspended in 
 the air, some miles distant. " It was," he writes, 
 "so well defined that I could distinguish by a tele- 
 scope every sail, the general rig of the ship, and 
 its particular character, insomuch that I pronounced 
 it to be my father's ship the Fame, which it after- 
 wards proved to be ; though on comparing notes 
 with my father when we met, I found that our rela- 
 tive position at the time gave our distance from one 
 another very nearly thirty miles, being about seven- 
 teen miles beyond the horizon, and some leagues 
 beyond the limit of direct vision." In May, 1854, 
 the captain of H.M.S. Archer, while cruising in the 
 Baltic, saw a similar mirage of tlie whole British 
 fleet, consisting of nineteen sail. Here, again, the 
 distance between the vessels was found to be full 
 thirty miles. In both these instances the objects 
 seen were inverted. On the 25th of June of this year, 
 at Hastings, a more striking example of mirage was 
 witnessed. The whole of the coast of France, from 
 Calais to Dieppe, though more than fifty miles 
 distant, and quite out of the range of ordinary 
 vision, seemed to be lifted up into mid-air, and 
 was seen there, not inverted, but in its natural 
 position, during the space of three hours, by 
 hundreds of persons assembled upon the beach. 
 The most remarkable instance of all, however, is 
 that recorded by Dr. Vince. From Ranlsgate, the 
 four turrets of Dover Castle may be seen on a 
 fine day over the top of an intervening hill. While 
 looking in this direction one evening. Dr. Vince 
 saw the whole castle, not lifted up in the air above 
 the hill on the other side, but to all appearances 
 brought over bodily on this side of it. " So strong 
 was the image," says Dr. Vince, " that I could not 
 see the hill through it." The double mirage is seen 
 oftenest on the shore of the Straits of Messina, 
 
 where the phenomenon is known as the Fata Mor- 
 gana. The images of men, horses, houses, and 
 ships are projected into the air feet to feet, or keel 
 to keel, as the case may be, until the atmosphere 
 looks like one huge lake, in which all these miscel- 
 laneous objects are seen floating about together. 
 
 The second kind of mirage— that, namely, in 
 which the object is brought down instead of being 
 elevated — is most frequently seen in the arid de- 
 serts of Lower Egypt, where it often proves cruelly 
 deceptive to the thirsty traveller. Dotted about 
 the waste are elevations, on which the natives 
 have built their villages, in order that they may 
 be safe from the flood during the periodical in- 
 undations of the Nile. In the heat of the day, 
 the mirage brings down an image of the sky upon 
 the level, some few miles in front of the caravan, 
 and produces the effect of a broad expanse of 
 water, in which each village, brought down also, 
 appears as an islet. Lured on by the refreshing 
 prospect, man and beast push hopefully forward, 
 often miles out of their track, to find the waters 
 and the islands constantly receding from their 
 view, until the evening comes, and they vanish 
 altogether. So complete is the delusion, that not 
 only experienced and scientific travellers, but even 
 the Arabs themselves, are often deceived by it. 
 
 The third kind of mirage is seen only from the 
 top of the Brocken, the highest summit of the Harz 
 Mountain range in Hungary. It is there known as 
 the Brockengespcnst, or " .Spectre of the Brocken ;" 
 and very spectre-like it looks in the red evening 
 sun. You no sooner step out upon the plateau on 
 the top of the hill, than jour shadow, grim and 
 gigantic, is apparently flung right out against the 
 eastern sky, where, with all visible space for a 
 play-ground, it flits swiftly from place to place, 
 following your every movement. The illustration 
 on the opposite page will enable our readers to 
 judge foi themselves of this weird-looking pheno- 
 menon better than any description in words. It is 
 only in the evening just before sunset that the 
 phenomenon is visible, so that the shadow is 
 doubly exaggerated, first by the distance and level 
 of the sun, and then by the distance of the surface 
 upon which it is projected. 
 
 Each of these different kinds of mirage has its 
 own separate cause, though they all depend for their 
 existence upon a special state of the atmosphere. 
 Before the phenomenon is possible the air must be 
 divided into strata of different degrees of density. 
 That done, the mirage follows, sometimes by re- 
 fraction, sometimes by reflection, sometimes by the 
 projection of shadows. Let us take the mirage by 
 refraction first. Place a shilling in an empty bowl, 
 and walk backwards until the coin, being hidden by 
 the rim of the vessel, is no longer visible to you. 
 Now, standing just where you arc, ask a friend to 
 fill the bowl with water, and as he does so the coin 
 
WONDERS OF THE ATMOSPHERE. 
 
 53 
 
 lilt bPECTRE OF THE BROCKEN. 
 
54 
 
 THE AVORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 will gradually come back within the range of vision, 
 and you will see it as plainly as ever. How is this? 
 You have not moved, and the coin has not been 
 ma^-'cd. No ; but the straight ray of light which, 
 passing from your eye to the basin, enabled you to 
 see the coin at first, has been bent in passing 
 through the water, and you are now able, as it were, 
 to see round a corner. This is precisely what takes 
 place in cases of mirage like that seen by Captain 
 Scoresby and by the people on the beach at 
 Hastings. The rays of light thrown back by the 
 ship in the one instance, and by the French coast 
 in the other, would, in ordinary states of the atmo- 
 sphere, have shot outward and upward high into the 
 air, and left the objects from which they were re- 
 flected totally invisible to persons at the distances 
 of thirty and fifty miles. But in both cases the 
 intervening air was ranged in strata of different 
 degrees of density ; and just as the ray from the 
 coin in the basin is bent by passing through the 
 water, so were the rays from the ship and the coast 
 bent in passing through a layer or layers of denser 
 atmosphere. 
 
 The kind of mirage which, like that seen by the 
 traveller in the desert, brings the object down 
 instead of elevating it, is accounted for differently. 
 In the former case we had refraction, here we 
 have reflection. The terrible heat of the sand 
 rarefies the air nearest it, and, contrary to what 
 is usual in nature, forces the denser atmosphere 
 into a stratum above it. The two strata meet 
 like two pieces- of glass, one laid on top of the 
 other, and where they join a surface is formed, 
 which, like a lake, reflects back all objects above 
 it. It is in this way that an image of the sky is 
 brought down to look like water in the desert, the 
 illusion being rendered the more perfect very often 
 by the ripples that run over the surface of air. 
 
 The explanation of the Spectre of the Brocken 
 is very simple. To the east of the Harz Mountains 
 there is always a very dense and hazy atmosphere, 
 so dense that it presents a surface capable of 
 receiving the impression of a shadow and of re- 
 taining it as a wall does. When, therefore, the sun 
 gets round to the west, the shadows of all objects 
 that are near enough to this surface arc projected 
 upon it. It is not the .fact that these shadows are 
 flung out, as they appear to be, upon what is called 
 the sky, they are all close at hand. And the 
 chances are that if it were possible to walk straight 
 out towards them from the top of the Brocken, 
 the spectator would very soon get behind them. 
 
 To produce the mirage in miniature, let the 
 reader take a red-hot poker and look along it 
 horizontally towards an object (say some letter of 
 the alphabet) stuck upon the wall a few feet away. 
 He will soon see the inverted image of the object 
 a few inches from the end of the poker, and a few 
 inches above it. 
 
 THE MAGICAL SQUARE. 
 A REMARKABLE curiosity in numbers is the magical 
 square. It consists of numbers so disposed in 
 parallel and equal lines, that the sum of each line, 
 taken any way of the square, amounts to the same. 
 To work this out, it is necessary, first, to form 
 
 A NATURAL SQUARE. 
 
 A G B 
 
 H 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 sl 
 
 6 1 
 
 7 
 
 8 
 
 9 
 
 lO I 
 
 II 
 
 12 
 
 13 
 
 14 
 
 15 ; 
 
 i6 1 
 
 '7 
 
 i8 
 
 19 
 
 20 
 
 "i 
 
 22 
 
 23 
 
 24 
 
 23 1 
 
 These numbers are to be transposed as follows to 
 form the 
 
 MAGICAL SQUARE. 
 
 11 
 4 
 
 lO 
 
 24 
 12 
 
 5 
 iS 
 
 7 
 25 
 
 I 
 
 20! 3| 
 8 ; 16 
 2. ] 9 
 
 14 22 
 
 23 
 
 6 
 
 19 
 
 .JUL 
 
 First, the rank E F in the natural square to the 
 diagonal A D in the magic square. Then the rank 
 G H to the diagonal B c. Then i to the space under 
 13, and 2 in continuance of the diagonal below to 
 the right. Some attention to the following diagram 
 will be necessary, to make the remainder of the 
 operation intelligible : — 
 
 : i ir 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 : '"' 
 
 12 
 
 
 8 
 
 iC 
 
 ; 
 
 \ 
 
 18 
 
 13 
 
 1 
 
 14 
 2 
 
 15 
 
 
 ;""l 
 
 • 
 
 ; 1=3 
 
 * ; : 
 
 • : : \ A \ a 
 : : : : : i 
 
 6 \   \ 
 
 i \ d \ 
 
 In continuance of the diagonal from i downwards, 
 3 falls out of the square into the right-hand corner 
 of a supposed square placed underneath, at a. For 
 this reason the 3 has been placed in the corre- 
 sponding corner of the magical square. In the 
 same continued line, 4 would fall into a second 
 supposed square, at i. It is put in the corres- 
 ponding part of the magical square. So, 5 would 
 fall in the supposed space c, and it occupies a 
 similar space in the magical square. But 6 falls in 
 
WONDERFUL LITERARY FORGERIES. 
 
 55 
 
 d, the corresponding space to which is occupied by 
 I ; we therefore begin a fresh diagonal, and place 
 it in the magical square beneath i8. The digit 7 is 
 now placed in a diagonal li-ne before 8, and after 8, 
 still proceeding diagonally, we place 9. This would 
 make 10 fall out of the square into a third sup- 
 posititious square, at e. It is therefore placed in the 
 corresponding part of the magic square. The 
 figures from 11 to 15 are already placed ; 16 would 
 fall in the first corner (marked x) of the second 
 supposed square ; but the corresponding corner of 
 the magic square is occupied by 1 1. We find the 
 place it must occupy, by supposing the diagonal 
 from 18 to be continued into a fourth supposititious 
 square at g; the next number, 17, then comes in 
 order before -1 8, and 19 follows in the same line; 
 20 falls out of the square at h, which marks its 
 position, and 21 would fall at i, but that part of the 
 magical square is occupied by 16 ; we begin the next 
 diagonal with it, and in the same line place 22. This 
 brings 23 to the corner of the third supposed square, 
 k, and 24 to /, near to which is the place of 25. 
 
 This being done, it will be found that the sum 
 of every row of figures in the magical square, taken 
 in a right line, makes 65. Any series of odd num- 
 bers in arithmetical progression may be worked in 
 the same way. 
 
 Monbtrfiil ^iftrariT Jforgmcs. 
 
 CHATTERTON. 
 Thomas Chatterton was born in November, 
 1752, the son of a verger and schoolmaster at St. 
 Mary Redcliffe, Bristol. At five years of age he 
 was sent to the district school, arid in a short 
 time was sent back to his mother as a " stupid 
 boy." His mother had great difficulty in getting 
 him to .read, but when he was six years and a half 
 old he was suddenly attracted by an illuminated 
 music-book which his father had, belonging to the 
 church. Over this treasure the lad pored, and soon 
 mastered its contents, as well as those of a lumber- 
 room in which several ancient books were kept. 
 He went again to the free school, and at eight 
 years of age was sent to Colston's charity school. 
 There he devoured books, became noticeable on 
 account of his studious habits, and for an intellec- 
 tual pride, which operated even at that early age to 
 prevent his competing with his fellows for the 
 school honours. He wrote satires upon the masters 
 and the boys, spent all his holidays (saints' days 
 were holidays then) and all his play-time in study- 
 ing old books, and in reading all the poems, espe- 
 cially quaint old poems, he could lay his hands 
 on. Stow, Camden, Fuller, Speed, Macpherson's 
 Ossian's Poems, and Mason's Poems, he read, and 
 his imagination was greatly impressed by the 
 " Castle of Otranto," pubhshed about this time. 
 When he was fifteen years old, he was taken 
 
 from school and articled to Mr. Lambert, an attor- 
 ney of Bristol. The office work had little attraction 
 for him, and he neglected it in favour of more con- 
 genial studies. During the three years he passed 
 at Lambert's, Chatterton contrived to find time not 
 only to study, but to write upon what he had studied ; 
 and many were the contributions he made at this 
 time to the London magazines as well as to the 
 Bristol newspapers. Antiquity threw its wondrous 
 charm over him, and made him a faithful votary at 
 her shrine ; he wrote upon the antique, and was led 
 in the fervour of his devotion to copy the antique. 
 He knew the old words which have passed by non- 
 use out of the language ; he knew the old modes of 
 expression ; and he could write the old character as 
 well or better than he could write the new. His 
 very breath seemed to be drawn from four centuries 
 back. Poverty, an intellectual desire to mock 
 ignorance, and a cynical contempt for the vanity of 
 the wise, tempted him to plan a gigantic literary 
 forgery, for the execution of which his studies 
 afforded him unusual facilities. When the new 
 bridge was opened at Bristol, in 1768, he wrote in 
 Felix Farley's Bristol Journal an account of the 
 opening of the old one, in which he described with 
 much circumstance and minuteness the ancient 
 ceremonial — monks passing over the bridge, chant- 
 ing hymns, the city authorities in grand array, and 
 the citizens of Bristol in civic procession. The 
 account, well written, and so full of archmological 
 interest, attracted much attention, and Chatterton, 
 on being questioned as to his authority for the 
 statements, said he had found the account in a 
 number of old manuscripts which his father had 
 given him, and which had been discovered in a 
 muniment chest in the church many years before. 
 He was visited by local historians and archajologists, 
 who received from him, as a special favour, por- 
 tions of the old manuscripts said to h.ive been found 
 in the muniment chest. Then he published a scries 
 of poems, written, as he alleged, by Rowley, a monk 
 of the fourteenth century ; poems which had re- 
 mained hidden in the church chest, but which were 
 full of beauty of thought and expression, though 
 worded in quaint old language. These excited 
 universal admiration. Chatterton sent copies of 
 some of them to Walpole, and asked his assistance. 
 Walpole says he knew them at once for forgeries ; 
 he gave no help, though he corresponded with the 
 poet, and made some inquiries about him through 
 friends in Bristol. The literary world was divided ; 
 some thinking the Rowley Poems, which were very 
 voluminous, genuine productions, others adopting 
 Walpole's belief that they were forgeries. They 
 were, in effect, forgeries, but of what kind, and by 
 whom ? Herein is the wonder. The poems were 
 written on parchments which seem.ed begrimed 
 with the dust of ages, and in ink t'nat looked as if 
 it were pale with watching through the many years 
 
THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 _56 
 
 that must have elapsed since it was first used. 
 There was nothing to show that the age-stained 
 complexion of the parchments had been obtained 
 by means of ochre and floor-dust rubbed indus- 
 triously into their surface, or that the ink with 
 which the writing had been done had been diluted 
 before use, or that the written sheet had been sul> 
 jected to further dulling causes that hid effectually 
 the modernness of its birth. The caligraphic cha- 
 racters of the fourteenth century, admirably imi- 
 tated, betrayed no secret. There was nothing in 
 the mechanical contrivance of the fraud by which 
 its true nature might be known. For the poems 
 themselves, they were the beautiful emanations of a 
 brain bountifully endowed with " the gift and the 
 faculty divine," but which was pleased for some 
 reason, it were hard to find what, to clothe its 
 thoughts in an ancient dress, and to give the 
 honour of the authorship to another. They were 
 poems that bore the stamp of genius on every line, 
 and that excited the just admiration of an age 
 remarkable for the fastidiousness of its taste. They 
 were written, not by a man trained in the " accom- 
 plishment of verse," educated in the mysteries of 
 antiquity, or fitted by long experience in literary 
 work ; but by a youth of seventeen and a half, a 
 charity school-boy, an attorney's apprentice, who 
 was indebted to himself for his education, and to 
 Nature for that genius which made him a wonder 
 of the world. His brain teemed with productions 
 in prose and verse on all sorts of subjects : history, 
 poetry, archaeology, mental philosophy, the drama, 
 essay writing — all these were within his range, and 
 he sent forth unceasingly supplies of literary matter, 
 which, alas ! were all he had to depend on for his 
 existence. 
 
 Baffkd in his attempts to get recognised by the 
 leaders of literature, injured by the recoil upon 
 himself of his deceit about Rowley's poems, hungry 
 for fame and not satisfied, hungry for bread, and 
 not satisfied in that particular either, too proud to 
 beg, too weak to fight on alone and unassisted, he 
 took poison and died in August, 1770, in the nine- 
 teenth year of his age. 
 
 Walpole, on being charged ^^•ith having been an 
 accessory to his death, by neglecting him, had the 
 heartlessness to write, " He had no more principles 
 than if he had been one of all our late administra- 
 tions. He was an instance that a complete genius 
 and a complete rogue can be formed before a man 
 is of age." Surely this language justifies the words 
 which Chatterton had used by anticipation of his 
 censor : — " Oh, ye who honour the name of Jiian, 
 rejoice that this Walpole is called a lord." 
 
 When too late, the world began to recognise the 
 extraordinary, though misapplied, talents of the 
 neglected boy-poet ; and the visitor to Bristol may 
 see in the churchyard of St. Mary Redcliffe a beau- 
 tiful monumental effigy of the " marvellous boy," 
 
 ®0niJ«rs jof llatural ^istorg. 
 
 —   — 
 
 Wonder of the Spider's Thread.— That any 
 creature could be found to fabricate a net, not less 
 ingenious than that of the fisherman, for the 
 capture of its prey ; that it should fix it in the 
 right place, and then patiently await the result, is a 
 proceeding so strange, that if we did not see it 
 done daily before our eyes by the common house- 
 spider and garden-spider, it would seem wonderful. 
 But how much is our wonder increased when we 
 think of the complex fabric of each single thread, 
 and then of the mathematical precision and rapidity 
 with which, in certain cases, the net itself is con- 
 structed ; and to add to all this, as an example of 
 the wonders which the most common things 
 exhibit when carefully examined, the net of the 
 garden-spider consists of two distinct kinds of silk. 
 The threads forming the concentric circles are com- 
 posed of a silk much more elastic than that of the 
 rays, and are studded over with minute globules of 
 a viscid gum, sufficiently adhesive to retain any 
 unwary fly which comes in contact with it. A net 
 of average dimensions is estimated by Mr. Black- 
 wall to contain 87,360 of these globules, and a large 
 net of fourteen or sixteen inches in diameter, 
 120,000 ; and yet such a net will be completed by 
 one species in about forty minutes, on an average, 
 if no interruption occurs ! — Introduction to Zoology.. 
 
 A FISH in Java, called the "jaculator," catches 
 flies and other insects by squirting from its mouth 
 some water, and seldom misses its aim at the dis- 
 tance of five or six feet, bringing down a fly with a 
 single drop. — Mitchell. 
 
 The elephant throws out sand from his trunk to 
 blind man and horse, and then rushes on them. 
 — Denham and Clapperton' s " Discoveries in 
 Africa!' 
 
 Wild ducks arc estimated to fly ninety miles an 
 hour ; swallows fly rather faster, and the swift flies 
 above two hundred miles in an hour. 
 
 Leuwenhoek. affirms that he saw hundreds of 
 animalculas in the space of a grain of sand, and ten 
 thousand organised beings. 
 
 A single female house-fly produces in one 
 season 20,080,320. — Haller. 
 
 One pair of pigs will increase in six years to 
 119,169, taking the increase at fourteen times per 
 annum. A pair of sheep in the same time would 
 be but sixty-four. — Allnut. 
 
 The Antipathy of Tlies to the Magnet. 
 — A person having an artificial magnet suspended ' 
 from the wall of his study, with a piece of iron ad- 
 hering to it, remarked for several years that the 
 flies in the room, though they frequently placed 
 themselves on other iron articles, never settled on 
 the artificial magnet, and even that if they ap- 
 proached it, they in a moment again removed from 
 it to sorne distance, — Voighfs Journal, 
 
WONDERFUL OPTICAL ILLUSION. 
 
 57 
 
 MoniJirfuI d^ptwal Illusion. 
 
 —   — - 
 
 THE HORIZONTORIUM. 
 
 Many of the parlour pastimes which delighted and 
 amused us oldsters when we were youngsters have 
 been superseded and forgotten, some deservedly so, 
 but others from their inge- 
 nuity deserve to be rescued 
 from the unmerited oblivion 
 into which they have fallen. 
 Among these was a curious 
 optical illusion called the 
 Horizontorium, and as the 
 effect is both pleasing and 
 astonishing, perhaps a short 
 description may not be con- 
 sidered out of place if in- 
 serted in these pages. 
 
 The original designs were 
 published at Liverpool some 
 forty years back, and con- 
 sisted of a castle or fort, with 
 turrets, palisadoes, a maga- 
 zine, and a sentry standing 
 outside of his box, also the 
 roof of a cottage on one 
 side. When viewed from 
 any other than the one point 
 of sight, it is difficult to 
 imagine what the design is 
 intended to represent, as 
 the walls of the castle ap- 
 pear to slope outwards, so 
 that they are nearly twice 
 as wide at the top as at the 
 base. The soldier and his 
 sentry-box have a most sin- 
 gular effect, the former ap- 
 pearing a very tall figure in 
 height, while his breadth 
 scarcely exceeds that of his 
 musket. 
 
 To produce a regular pic- 
 ture from this almost shape- 
 less assemblage, all that is 
 necessary is to view it from a certain point, with 
 one eye only, which is best done by the help of a 
 sight made of pasteboard or card, which accom- 
 panies the original. When viewed by these means, 
 it is impossible to describe the beautiful effect pro- 
 duced. It is not a picture, but a reality. The 
 castle walls and palisadoes resume their regular 
 proportions. The sentinel is reduced to proper 
 dimensions, and the effect of light and shade is 
 almost miraculous. The whole has the appearance, 
 not of a picture, but of an exact miniature model 
 of the things intended to be represented. The 
 illustration which accompanies this article will give 
 
 a fair idea of this curious illusion. In order to 
 realise all the effect, it is necessary to observe care- 
 fully the following directions : — A piece of paper, or, 
 what is still better, a slip of cardboard, must be cut 
 out of the exact size and shape of the figure a^b, c; 
 an aperture for the eye, about the size of a pea, a, 
 must be made precisely on the spot shown in the 
 sight-piece. The shaded 
 part of the sight-piece must 
 be folded back at a right 
 angle, so as to form a kind 
 of foot to stand upon. The 
 sight-piece must then be 
 placed perpendicularly, 
 exactly over the piece, d. 
 Then keeping the paperper- 
 fectly horizontal, and plac- 
 ing the eye close to the 
 aperture, a, there will be 
 seen a perfect representa- 
 tion of a tombstone sur- 
 rounded by railings. A 
 little experience will enable 
 one to see the image very 
 exactly; if not, the person 
 who makes the trial may 
 depend upon it that he has 
 not placed the sight-piece 
 correctly. 
 
 The light should fall on 
 the side of the figure oppo- 
 site the shadow. If the 
 representation of the figure 
 a, b, c, is found to interfere 
 with the picture, it may be 
 covered by a small piece 
 of white paper. .Special 
 care must be had that the 
 paper be perfectly smooth, 
 , as the slightest wrinkle will 
 
 distort the figure materially; 
 also remember to shut one 
 eye, and place the other as 
 close as possible to the 
 sight-hole. 
 
 It is possible to multiply 
 designs to any extent, as the principle upon 
 which the Horizontorium is constructed is very 
 simple. Any design may be made of any object, 
 if it be drawn in isometrical perspective— that is, 
 with the vanishing point below the plane of the 
 picture, which point becomes the station for the 
 sight piece. If the picture be carefully drawn, the 
 effect of reality will be as good as that given by the 
 stereoscope. All those who have any notion of 
 drawing, may, by the exercise of a little ingenuity, 
 and at the expense of a few hours' time, not only 
 give themselves employment during the winter 
 evenings, but also give pleasure to their friends. 
 
k8 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 Monbtrs of llj^ #«an. 
 
 A WONDERFUL SOUNDING. 
 " Thev who go down to the sea in ships" do indeed 
 " see the works of the Lord, and liis wonders in 
 the deep." Here is the story of a wonder not less 
 astounding than the wonder of the high mountain, 
 told by one of those who was engaged for many 
 years in a professional examination of the wonders 
 of the ocean, and whose daily business it was to 
 pry into the secrets of the great deep. 
 
 It had long been a question what was at the 
 bottom of the sea ; and though this question had 
 been answered more or less fully concerning re- 
 gions where the depth was not very profound, there 
 had always remained the puzzle of the so-called 
 "bottomless" seas — that is to say, of seas where 
 the volume of water was so out of proportion to 
 the measuring power of the surveyor that its di- 
 mensions could not be gauged. By the exertions 
 and skill of various marine surveyors, waters which 
 to the earlier navigators had been bottomless, were 
 fathomed, and specimens of the bottom obtained. 
 The Americans have done much in this direction, 
 and to them we are indebted, not only for a highly 
 ingenious sounding apparatus, but for some care- 
 fully conducted soundings obtained with it at a 
 distance of nearly four miles down in the bosom of 
 the Atlantic. The Americans, however, had given 
 up as useless any further attempts to sound at 
 greater depth ; they reported that in the deeps 
 deeper than the deepest there were physical and 
 mechanical difficulties which rendered true sounding 
 an impossibility — the ships drifted, the sounding- 
 line got out of the perpendicular, currents ran off 
 with the plummet, something or other came in the 
 way to prevent success. 
 
 It seemed desirable to Captain Denham(now Rear- 
 Admiral Sir Henry Denham), when in command of 
 H.M.S. Herald on surveying service, to ascertain for 
 . himself whether he could not find a bottom to the 
 bottomless sea. He received a supply of sounding- 
 line, fifteen thousand fathoms in length, which had 
 been made specially for sounding purposes, and 
 which was presented to him by the American Com- 
 modore M'lvor, who had himself been engaged in 
 trying experiments in the ocean. 
 
 Captain Denham elicited all the information the 
 American officer could give as to the sounding 
 process the latter had adopted. The Americans 
 had hove their lead from the ship. This Captain 
 Denham felt convinced was wrong ; he knew by 
 experience the difficulties there were in getting 
 proper results by this means, and resolved to profit 
 by his friend's discomfiture in conducting his own 
 experiments. 
 
 He chose a day when sea and air combined to 
 produce such a calm as is seldom seen in the midst 
 
 of the Atlantic, where he then was, half-way be- 
 tween Buenos Ayres and Tristan d'Acunha.' Two 
 boats were lowered, and in one of them the sound- 
 ing gear was placed. At a short distance from the 
 ship, so as to be out of the influence of her attrac- 
 tion, an ordinary deep-sea lead was cast from the 
 sounding boat, until the plummet having arrived at 
 the dead-water level, where the action of wind and 
 surface motion is not felt, brought the boat up, 
 holding her as though she were at anchor. The 
 crew were ordered to keep the blades of their oars 
 just moving, so as to keep the boat to her anchorage, 
 while a painter made fast to the boat ahead served 
 as an additional check. Upon a great reel, rigged 
 winch fashion in the bow of the sounding boat, was 
 the very deep sea lead line, one-tenth of an inch in 
 diameter, and weighing, when dry, one pound per 
 hundred fathoms. The plummet weighed nine 
 pounds, was eleven inches and a half long, and one- 
 seventh of an inch broad. 
 
 Everything being ready, the plummet was let go 
 at 8.30 a.m. The first hundred fathoms of line 
 cleared out in a minute and a half ; the second in 
 two minutes five seconds ; and the time for every 
 succeeding hundred fathoms increased gradually ; 
 so that, whereas the first thousand fathoms ran off 
 in twenty-seven minutes fifteen seconds, one hour 
 forty-nine minutes and fifteen seconds was the time 
 required to get out the seventh thousand. After 
 7,706 fathoms, or eight and three-quarters English 
 miles, had run off, bottom was reached, the opera- 
 tion having lasted nine hours twenty-five minutes. 
 " That bottom was reached there could not be any 
 doubt, the extreme stillness of the water enabling 
 the sounders to perceive the same indications of 
 touch as would have manifested themselves with 
 casts in much shallower water. Again and again 
 the line was tried, and stopped always at the same 
 mark ; several sets of hands tried the line, and each 
 verified the report of their predecessors. The beat 
 of the lead on the bottom was as distinctly felt as 
 if an electric shock had been passed through the 
 line." 
 
 MoitWfitl Humbers. 
 
 Certain wonderful properties of numbers are illus- 
 trated by what may be called tricks. For example, to 
 mak» any number divisible by 9, you have but to 
 place a certain number between two of the figures. 
 Thus, given the number 29 to be divided, the pro- 
 duct is 3 and 2 over; but place 7 between the 
 digits, and there is no remainder, for 
 
 279-^-9=31- 
 Again, let the number given be 64324, the product 
 divided by 9 will be 7 147 -|- 1 , but interpose 8 between 
 any two of the figures, and nothing will remain. The 
 curiosity of this lies in the fact that it is of no con- 
 
WONDERS OF MECHANICAL iNGEt^UITY. 
 
 59 
 
 sequence at what part of the dividend' the figure is 
 added. Thus :— 
 
 76036 
 
 9)6432^ 
 71476 
 
 9)64^324 
 72036 
 
 9) 643*24 
 7153S 
 
 9) '64324 
 96036 
 
 9) 64324' I 
 71472 I 
 
 Or, take a longer number for the dividend, say, 
 6038478643269846. This, we shall find, is not 
 divisible by g. But if 6 be added between any two 
 of the digits it will be found exactly divisible. 
 
 9) 6'o3847864326984 6 
 7337608738141094 
 
 We need not ring all the changes, but will try only 
 two more. 
 
 9)6038*478643269846 
 6709608738141094 
 
 9)6038478643*269846 
 67094297 151 41094 
 
 It is not always possible to explain the reason of 
 what happens in dealing with numbers, unless 
 appeal can be made to an amount of mathematical 
 knowledge which is not commonly possessed. As 
 a single step towards understanding the above 
 curious phenomenon, let us see what the result 
 would be of dividing the number we have already 
 taken, 64324, by 9, changing the order of the digits, 
 but adding nothing to them. 
 
 9)64324 I 9) 63424 I 9)63344 
 
 7147 + 1 I 7047 + 1 I 69274-1 
 
 9)44326 r 
 
 4925 + 1 I 
 
 9)34264 I 
 
 3807+1 I 
 
 So it appears that in whatever order we place the 
 digits, the remainder is i. For this reason we added 
 8 in the first example. If a number had been chosen, 
 which resulted in a remainder of 4 when divided by 
 9, the number to add would have been 5 ; because 
 5+4, like 8-|-i=g, and 9 is, of course, exactly divi- 
 sible by itself as a factor. The only other digit 
 that can be used in the same way is 3, because 
 3 >< 3=9- 
 
 9)43426 
 4823+1 
 
 9)46243 
 1 5138+ 1 
 
 91 46432 
 5159+1 
 
 9)23446 
 
 2605+1 
 
 WONDERFUL MECHANICAL 
 CONTRIVANCES. 
 ^I.\NY attempts have been made, from very early 
 times, to imitate the motions of animals by 
 mechanical contrivances, and some have been 
 remarkably successful. The story of ancient 
 writers, that Archytas of Tarentum, who lived B.C. 
 400, constructed a pigeon that could fly, but, when 
 once it alighted, could not resume its movement, 
 is open to doubt ; but we have better authenticated 
 narratives of equally wonderful inventions in a 
 later time, and in some cases their truth is abso- 
 lutely certain. It is said that a German artist 
 named John Miiller, sometimes called Regiomon- 
 tanus, constructed an artificial eagle, which, on 
 the entry of the Emperor Maximilian into Nurem- 
 berg, flew to meet him, and returning, alighted on 
 the gate of the city to await his approach. Miiller 
 
 is also said to have made an iron fly which flew 
 from his hand, and returned to it after performing 
 a considerable round. Some little doubt has been 
 cast upon the authenticity of Miiller's reputed 
 inventions, but the following are beyond dispute. 
 
 General De Gcnncs, who defended the French 
 colony of St. Christopher, in the West India 
 Islands, against the English in 1688, was remark- 
 able for his great mechanical skill. Among other 
 contrivances, he made a peacock that walked about 
 as if alive, picked up grains of corn, and not only 
 swallowed them, but digested them in its stomach. 
 
 Wonderful as this was, its ingenuity was outdone 
 by that of a duck made by a Frenchman named 
 Vaucanson, which was exhibited in Paris in 1738. 
 It was of the natural size, was clothed with feathers, 
 and all the bones of the living object were imitated 
 in their exact position by the mechanism of the 
 interior. When set in motion, it performed the 
 movements of a duck exactly. It moved its wings, 
 ate and drank in the manner of the original, and 
 all the usual processes of digestion were carried on 
 in the stomach, partly by means, it is presumed, of 
 a chemical solution. It also quacked like a duck, 
 and is said, in drinking, to have muddled the water 
 with its bill. 
 
 Beckmann, who travelled in Russia in 1764, 
 saw at the palace of Zausko-Selo, near St. Peters- 
 burg, a collection of automata which were reputed 
 to have been purchased from Vaucanson after he 
 had exhibited them through Europe ; and among 
 them was the duck above mentioned. It still ate, 
 drank, and moved, and as most of the feathers 
 which had covered the ribs were then lost, the 
 interior construction was exposed to view. The 
 observer relates that the motion was communicated 
 by means of a cylinder and fine chains, like the 
 mechanism of a watch, all proceeding through the 
 feet of the duck, which were of the usual size. 
 
 Vaucanson also constructed an automaton flute- 
 player, which played twelve tunes, the wind issuing 
 from its mouth in the ordinary way into a German 
 flute, and the holes being opened and shut with 
 its fingers. This also was among the relics of the 
 French artist which Professor Beckmann saw, but 
 it then emitted only a few faint tones. 
 
 Vaucanson's flute-player has since been imitated 
 with complete success. Some years ago we our- 
 selves saw, at an exhibition of curious mechanism 
 at the Adelaide Gallery in London, two automaton 
 flute-players, representing the figures of two ladies, 
 seated, and the size of life, which were playing 
 ducts in the manner of the living performer, and 
 producing considerable variety of tone from the 
 instruments. The notes, it is true, had a hollow 
 and dreary sound, and the figures were somewhat 
 ghastly ; but the mechanism had evidently been 
 constructed many years before, and was no doubt 
 very much out of order. 
 
6o 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 —   — 
 
 THE ELEPHANT. 
 
 The proboscis of the elephant is the most remark- 
 able feature in his formation, and is capable of being 
 put to a great variety of uses. Through it the 
 animal breathes, drinks, and smells. It is so pliant 
 that it can be made to move in any direction, and 
 so strong that it is impossible to take anything 
 away from its grasp. It is hollow from end to end, 
 and divided throughout with a partition. At the 
 very point of it, just above the nostrils, the skin is 
 extended into the shape of a finger about five inches 
 long. By means of this the animal is able to take 
 a pin from the ground, untie the knots of a rope, 
 and unlock a door. CElian relates even a more 
 wonderful use to which he saw it put. "I have 
 seen," he says, "an elephant writing Latin cha- 
 racters on a board in a very orderly manner, his 
 keeper only showing him the figure of each letter." 
 
 It is not long since the public were astonished 
 by the feats of Blondin on the high rope at the 
 Crystal Palace. But still more wonderful perform- 
 ances are on record. In the time of the Emperor 
 Galba, an elephant was made to walk backwards 
 and forwards on a rope, across the open space of 
 one of the great amphitheatres. The authorities 
 for this are quoted by Justus Lipsius in his '' Episto- 
 larum Sehdarum Censuria," published at Antwerp 
 in 1605. According to Leibnitz, in the year 1237, 
 at the wedding of Robert, brother to the king of 
 France, a horse was ridden upon a rope. 
 
 About the year 1767 a cutler at Sheffield, in 
 sawing through an elephant's tooth, met with a 
 resistance which he found very difficult to overcome. 
 On examination, he found it was an iron bullet, 
 which had lodged in the very body of the tooth 
 without any visible external mark of the place 
 where it had entered. In 1801, Mr. Combe des- 
 cribed to the Royal Society an elephant's tusk with 
 the iron head of a spear completely imbedded in it ; 
 he judgsd from the position in which it was found 
 that it had been driven right through the skull, at 
 a point close to the tusk. It then appeared to have 
 followed the natural direction of the cavity, and 
 thus pointed downwards to the apex of the tusk. 
 It is assorted by those who have experience in such 
 matters, that other foreign substances are frequently 
 found imbedded in the tusk of the elephant. 
 
 WONDERFUL HIGHWAYMEN. 
 
 Macaulav has given a very graphic description of 
 the mounted highwaymen that were wont to infest 
 the principal roads ; and other writers have dwelt 
 upon the deeds of these lawless freebooters, attach- 
 ing so great a romance to men whose audacity 
 and ferocity often brought them to the gallows, but 
 
 who occasionally displayed acts of good nature, 
 nobleness, and generosity. Claude Du Val, who was 
 French page to the first Duke of Richmond, has 
 been immortalised in the celebrated print, which 
 shows him in the act of dancing a coranto on the 
 heath with a lady of quality, he having suffered the 
 fair owner to ransom three hundred pounds by 
 giving him her hand in the measured step. Nor 
 was this system of polite plundering confined to 
 England, for it is recorded that in August, 1776, a 
 lady and her servant, when riding in the Phoenix 
 Park, Dublin, were stopped by a man on foot, 
 remarkably well dressed, in a suit of white and a 
 gold-laced hat. He demanded the lady's money, 
 which she gave him, amounting to twenty-six 
 guineas, when, having put the cash into one of his 
 pockets, he took from the other a small diamond 
 hoop ring, which he presented to the lady, desiring 
 her to wear it for the sake of one who, though a 
 robber, made it a point of honour to take no more 
 from a beautiful lady than he could make a return 
 for in value. He then politely bowed, and, vaulting 
 over the wall, disappeared. 
 
 It often happened that highwaymen paid the 
 penalty of their temerity, many having been shot 
 when attacking travellers. The story of a noble- 
 man saving his own life, and taking that of his 
 opponent by an adroit expedient, is well known. 
 " Your money or your life ! " said the hero of the 
 road, presenting a cocked pistol at the window 
 of a carriage on Hounslow Heath. " I would not 
 yield to one man," responded the occupant of the 
 vehicle, " but as there are two of you I must." The 
 robber, taken aback, looked round to see where 
 the second man was, and at that moment received 
 a bullet through the heart from his intended 
 victim. Upon another occasion, in 1775, the Nor- 
 wich stage was attacked on Epping Forest by 
 seven highwaymen, three of whom were shot dead 
 by the guard, but his ammunition failing, he was 
 i himself killed, and the coach was robbed by the 
 survivors. The chief magistrate of the City of 
 London and his suite seem upon a memorable 
 occasion to have thought that discretion was the 
 better part of valour, for in 1776 the Lord Mayor 
 was robbed near Turnham Green in his chaise-and- 
 four, in sight of all his retinue, by a single highway- 
 man, who swore that he would shoot the first man 
 that made resistance or offered violence. Occasion- 
 ally these maurauders took to the "silent highway" 
 as well as the road, for in June, 1771, three gentle- 
 men and two ladies returning from Vauxhall 
 Gardens by water, were boarded within two hundred 
 yards of Westminster Bridge by six men who had 
 their faces covered with black crape. These river 
 pirates demanded the money of the party under the 
 threat of throwing them overboard, and, after 
 robbing them of twenty guineas and two gold 
 watches, quietly rowed away up the river. 
 
WONDERS OF CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 6i 
 
 oniitxB oi Constracliun. 
 
 THE LEANING TOWER OF PISA. 
 
 Pisa is one of those old Italian towns which occu- 
 pied a prominent position, and played an important 
 part in mediaeval 
 history. It is 
 saidtohavebeen 
 founded about 
 600 years B.C., 
 and was a town 
 of the ancient 
 district of Etru- 
 ria. In recent 
 times it be- 
 longed to the 
 Grand Duchy of 
 Tuscany, now 
 incorporated in 
 the Kingdom of 
 Italy. 
 
 Pisa is chiefly 
 celebrated now 
 for its wonderful 
 Leaning Tower, 
 a representation 
 of which is given 
 in our illustra- 
 tion. This was 
 erected about the 
 year 11 50, by the 
 German archi- 
 tect Wilhelm of 
 Innsbruck. It 
 was designed as 
 a belfry for the 
 cathedral, and 
 stands in a 
 square close to 
 the building to 
 which it is at- 
 tached. We may 
 remark, in pass- 
 ing,thatthecrcc- 
 tion of belfries 
 apart from the 
 churches was 
 common in the 
 early days of 
 ecclesiastical ar- 
 chitecture ; and many instances of this peculiarity 
 are to be found in this country. 
 
 The leaning tower is built wholly of white marble, 
 and consists of eight circular stories, each orna- 
 mented with rows of columns, and gradually nar- 
 rowing in width from the base towards the top. 
 
 The summit is a flat roof, with an open gallery, 
 which commands a magnificent view. Its height 
 
 THE I.F.AMNG TOWER OF PISA. 
 
 is 188 feet, or about fourteen feet less than that of 
 the monument in London. 
 
 The tower leans so much from the perpendicular, 
 that a plummet dropped from the top falls at a 
 distance of about fifteen feet from the base. The 
 ordinary observer wonders that, with so great a 
 
 deviation, it does 
 not come to the 
 ground ; but it 
 stands ifi obedi- 
 ence to the law 
 of physics, by 
 which any body 
 of matter will 
 maintain that 
 position so long 
 as a perpendicu- 
 lar line drawn 
 from its centre 
 of gravity shall 
 ■fall within its 
 base. The "cen- 
 tre of gravity " 
 may be ex- 
 plained, to those 
 who are unac- 
 quainted with 
 scientific terms, 
 as the balancing 
 point, or point 
 at which the en- 
 tire weight of a 
 body will be 
 equally divided, 
 and exactly ba- 
 lanced on the 
 one side and on 
 the other. As 
 this point is 
 found in the 
 leaning tower to 
 fall within the 
 space covered 
 by its founda- 
 tions, there is 
 no reason why it 
 should not con- 
 tinue to stand, 
 as it has done, 
 for many centu- 
 ries to eome. 
 The appearance of the tower has led many to 
 suppose that the law above mentioned is actually 
 violated ; and, in fact, so nearly is the limit of com- 
 pliance with it approached, that scientific observers 
 have occasionally formed the same opinion by cal- 
 culation, and have been forced to the conclusion 
 that the building was held together only by the 
 great tenacity of the mortar : but the balance of 
 
62 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 authority, as well as of probability, is against this 
 conclusion. 
 
 As to the cause of the inclination of the tower, 
 opinions have also been divided. Some have attri- 
 buted it to a subsidence of the foundation, or a 
 movement of the adjacent earth. But others have 
 contended, with more show of reason in support of 
 their argument, that its leaning was the original 
 device and purpose of the architect, and that it was 
 therefore one of those triumphs of architectural 
 skill which in the middle ages would have been 
 cordially welcomed and appreciated. Captain Basil 
 Hall made a series of careful investigations on the 
 subject, and established, as he believed, to demon- 
 stration, that the tower was built as it now stands. 
 He found that the line of the tower, on the side 
 towards which it leans, has not the same curvature 
 as the line on the opposite side. If, he remarked, 
 the tower had been built upright, and then made to 
 incline over, the line of the wall on the side towards 
 which the inclination was given would be more or 
 less concave ; but he found the contrary to be the 
 fact, the line of the wall on the leaning side being 
 decidedly more convex than that on the opposite 
 side. Captain Hall had, therefore, no doubt what- 
 ever that the design of the architect was apparent 
 in evory successive layer of the stone. 
 
 These conclusions are partly supported by the 
 remarks of another scientific observer, to the effect 
 that the name of " the Leaning Tower " does not 
 convey a true notion of the form of the building. 
 It is, he remarks, in fact, a " twisted" tower, there 
 being an irregular curvature in the building. But 
 he conjectures that this " twist " was due to the 
 subsidence of the foundation during the erection, 
 and an attempt on the part of the architect to 
 " right " the building as the work proceeded. 
 
 We may add that from the leaning tower of Pisa 
 the great astronomer Galileo made, early in the 
 seventeenth century, a series of observations from 
 which he deduced the principles of the gravitation 
 of the earth. 
 
 AERIAL COMBATS. 
 
 In a pamphlet published, as the title-page runs, for 
 "■B. B., London, in 1622," we read that in the twelfth 
 year of the reign of Richard II. a battle was fought 
 between gnats at Shenc, now called Richmond : 
 their multitudes were so great, that the air was 
 darkened with them. It was computed that two- 
 thirds of them were killed, and the remaining third 
 suddenly vanished. 
 
 This account is inserted as preliminary to one 
 of an cngagemont between the starlings at Cork, 
 in Ireland, on the 12th of October, 1621 ; they 
 mustered four or five days previously, every day 
 increasing in number. .Some came from the east, 
 others from the west, and, as it were, encamped 
 
 themselves eastward and westward of the city. 
 During the time of their assembling, those who 
 came from the east sought their meat eastward, and 
 those from the west sought theirs westward ; no one 
 flying in the circuits of the other. 
 
 On Saturday, the 12th of October, they fought, 
 and on Sunday none were to be seen. Upon this 
 same Sunday a similar battle was seen between 
 Gravesend and Woolwich, and there was a raven 
 flying between the combatants. 
 
 On Monday, the 14th, they reappeared at Cork, 
 and fought with as much violence as before, the 
 dead and wounded falling on the houses, into the 
 streets, and in the river. Besides the starlings, 
 kites, ravens, and crows were found dead. 
 
 The work quoted is among the King's Pamphlets 
 in the British Museum. 
 
 ^lonbei'S of ^^arlilie Intixntiott. 
 
 THE MONCRIEFF BARBETTE. 
 
 Great attention has been paid during the present 
 century to inventions for warlike purposes, and the 
 art of war has reached such a formidable stnge of 
 development, that philanthropists have ventured to 
 hope the time must shortly come when war will 
 cease to ravage the earth. 
 
 Warlike inventions range themselves in t\\o 
 classes — the one for offensive, and the other for 
 defensive purposes. In the latter class ranks that 
 now known b)- the title placed at the head of- this 
 paper. We shall give a brief description of this 
 invention, sufficient to afford the reader some idea 
 of its general character. 
 
 Most of our readers have seen a fort, and have 
 observed that the cannon either look tlirotigh 
 openings made in the outer wall, or over the top 
 of the parapet. The first plan of fortification is 
 known as the embrasure, and the second as the 
 barbette system. The barbette is a terrace formed 
 inside the parnpet, and the cannon are mounted on 
 this terrace, at such an elevation that they may be 
 fired in any direction over the top of the wall. This 
 system gi\cs freedom of movement in working the 
 gun ; but the disadvantage attending it is that the 
 men who work it are necessarily greatly exposed to 
 the enemy's fire. To remedy this disadvantage to 
 some extent, the embrasure system was invented, 
 the gun and the artillerymen both being enclosed 
 and protected from fire, unless it should penetrate 
 the opening made in the wall. This opening is 
 usually shaped like a funnel, narrow at tlic outer 
 side through which the muzzle protrudes, and widen- 
 ing inside so that the direction of aim may be 
 altered by a movement of the body of the cannon. 
 
 But the embrasure system has its disad\antages 
 also. The openings in the wall weaken the wall 
 itself, and besides this, they present marks at which 
 the enemy can fire, so that shot or shell glancing 
 
WONDERS OF THE SNOW. 
 
 63 
 
 through may effect great destruction. The great 
 problem in artillery was, effectually to protect the 
 men and the cannon they were working, and at the 
 same time to preserve the power to use the guns 
 freely for defence. 
 
 This problem has now been solved by Captain 
 Moncrieff, an officer of the Edinburgh Militia 
 Artillery, after many years devoted to the study of 
 the subject. But its solution has depended on the 
 settling of another question of great difficulty, to 
 which we must next allude. 
 
 Every one knows that when a gun or pistol is 
 fired, there is a recoil of the weapon, more or less 
 severe in proportion to the charge of powder which 
 has been used. The force with which a heavy 
 cannon recoils is extremely great, and produces a 
 severe strain upon its carriage and the works sur- 
 rounding it. It is impossible to prevent this recoil, 
 but the question had suggested itself to many 
 minds whether this immense force could not in 
 some way be turned to account. One idea was 
 that it might be used to pull up another gun after 
 the first had been fired ; but the difficulties attend- 
 ing the working out of the suggestion were too 
 great, and nothing came of it. Captain Moncrieff 
 at length solved this question of utilising the recoil 
 force, and with it the problem to which we before 
 referred. His mode of doing so is as follows : — 
 
 The gun is placed in a circular pit, and the 
 muzzle, when elevated, is on a level with the top, 
 over which it can fire in any direction. It rests on 
 a small iron carriage, and this lies between two 
 rockers, the movement of which is dependent upon 
 the motion of the gun. The rockers or elevators, 
 as they are termed, are something like those of a 
 boy's rocking-horse, to which the whole apparatus 
 has been aptly compared. When the gun is fired, 
 the force of recoil is imparted to the rockers, and 
 the movement of these brings it down again to a 
 position in which it is held until it is reloaded, 
 both the gun and the men being meanwhile com- 
 pletely hidden from the enemy. Attached to the 
 rockers is a box containing heavy weights, the 
 raising of which checks the downward motion of 
 the gun ; and the depression of these weights, 
 when the gun is loaded and the catch released, 
 brings the cannon up again to the mouth of the 
 pit to fire. The weight of the elevating machine, 
 or rocking-chair, is about six tons. 
 
 The aim of the gun is directed by means of 
 mirrors placed in the pit, and in which the men in 
 charge can see all that is going on outside, while 
 they themselves remain unobserved. The only 
 danger they have to fear is that of shot or shell 
 dropping in upon them from above. But the 
 mouth of a sunken battery like the Moncrieff 
 barbette presents so small and undistinguishable 
 a mark, that this danger is in reality small, and it 
 is possible, moreover, to protect the pit by an iron 
 
 roof. The system is capable of application in a 
 variety of ways, and k is thought it may be applied 
 to ships as well as to land fortifications. 
 
 It will be seen from the foregoing account that 
 the idea of the principle, like that of many other 
 great inventions, is comparatively simple ; but it 
 has required long study to bring the details to 
 perfection, and some time may yet elapse before all 
 its capabilities are developed. 
 
 WONDERS OF THE SNOW. 
 
 The ancient historian Herodotus tells us, in his 
 gossiping way, that the Scythians reported of the 
 country lying beyond them, and farther to the north, 
 " that it could neither be passed, nor yet discerned 
 with the eye, on account of i\\Q feathers which were 
 continually falling. With these both the earth and 
 the air were so filled as effectually to obstruct the 
 view." He had himself sufficient acquaintance with 
 natural phenomena to conjecture that by " feathers " 
 the wild inhabitants of Scythia in reality meant 
 snow ; but it is more than probable that when the 
 uninformed denizens of warmer latitudes first gazed, 
 in their travels, on the spectacle of a snow-storm, 
 they verily believed, and reported in all honesty, 
 that feathers had been falling to the ground. The 
 nursery story of the " old woman picking her geese" 
 may thus have had its counterpart, in the infantile 
 ages of the Ijfe of the human race. 
 
 Snow is always a wonder to him who sees it for 
 the first time, and, familiar as it is to us, we occa- 
 sionally meet with people to whom it is utterly 
 strange. Youths born in India, for example, on 
 visiting England in winter, gaze upon a snow-fall 
 with astonishment and admiration. " I do so want 
 to see the snow coming down," observed such a 
 young friend of ours ; and he was not content until 
 a severe winter fully realised his wish. 
 
 But there are wonders in the snow, with which 
 many who look upon its coming as quite a matter 
 of course may be unacquainted. Such a wonder 
 is presented in the phenomena of crystallisa/ioit. 
 Snow is produced by the freezing of moist vapours 
 suspended in the atmosphere ; and in very low 
 temperatures the flakes or particles of snow are 
 found to assume the most elegant and regular forms. 
 These, from their perfect geometrical proportion, 
 are denominated crystals, that name being applied 
 to all particles of matter which take a definite geo- 
 metrical shape. Snow crystals are of infinite variety 
 and beauty. Captain (afterwards Doctor) Scoresby, 
 the Arctic traveller, who was the first to observe 
 them, gave ninety-six illustrations of their graceful 
 forms, in his description of the Arctic Regions, 
 published in 1820. From these we select a few, 
 which will afford an idea of the character of the 
 remainder. 
 
64 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 It was at first thought that only such extreme 
 cold as that of the Arctic regions could produce 
 this crystallisation. On investigation, however, it 
 was discovered that in our own severe winters the 
 
 figure is like a triangle with the points cut off ; and 
 now and then two small figures are connected to- 
 gether by a slender bar or link. These exceptional 
 figures, as well as others more commonly discovered, 
 
 ^ ^f ♦HU 
 
 
 // ^ 
 
 
 snow presents an equally wonderful appearance ; 
 and the eminent meteorologist. Dr. Glaisher, in 
 
 will be found represented in our smaller illustration. 
 As a rule, however, the hexagons consist of thin 
 
 1855, gave to the world a representation of 150 plates shaped like beautiful stars, and sometime? 
 figures from the snow, which had come within his ' surrounded by other stars of similar nature. The 
 own observation during tlie previous winter. These 1 great variety of these appearances is apparentl>- in- 
 
 wcre quite as beaulifu! and diversified in character 
 as those noticed by Dr. Scoresby in the Polar seas. 
 One striking feature in the snow crystals is this : 
 that though differing so widely in character, they 
 are all, or nearly all, hexagonal or six-sided in 
 shape. Occasionally three-sided figures are seen, 
 but these are very rare. Sometimes three of the 
 sides are shorter than the other three, so that the 
 
 exhaustible, for each investigation has resulted in 
 the discovery of forms previously unobserved, al- 
 though possessing the general characteristics to 
 which we have alluded. 
 ! The angle of sixty degrees is also found to pre- 
 ' vail in all the various ramifications of these stars 
 ' amid the snow, in conformity with the law by which 
 1 water always crystallises at this angle. 
 
EARTHQUAKES. 
 
 65 
 
 EARTHQUAKES. 
 
 An earthquake is the most terrible of all the won- 
 derful phenomena of nature ; there is nothing which 
 is so utterly appalling to the senses of those who 
 witness it. The buildings which man has erected 
 for his comfort and protection are crashing into 
 ruin over his head, the solid earth trembles beneath 
 his feet, or, yawning wide, threatens every moment 
 to swallow him up ; fire and water combine to add 
 their terrors to the scene, and yet he is afraid to 
 fly, for he feels that the very spot which he may 
 
 terrible effects, in the Indian Archipelago as far 
 north as Japan. In America those countries which 
 surround the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, 
 as well as those that he between the Andes and 
 the Pacific, including also the mountain region 
 itself, are the localities where earthquakes most 
 frequently occur. The countries of Peru and 
 Ecuador, the scene of the late terrible earthquake, 
 lie within these latter limits. 
 
 Earthquakes occur much more frequently than 
 most people suppose. Humboldt asserted it as his 
 belief that if it were possible to obtain daily infor- 
 
 VIEW IN LISBON AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE. FROM AN OLD PRINT. 
 
 choose as his vantage ground of safety, may chance 
 to be just exactly over the focus of the earthquake's 
 force. 
 
 It is not our intention here to discuss the various 
 theories which from time to time have been started 
 as to the origin of earthquakes. It is enough to 
 say that it is considered most probable that they 
 are the result of an imprisoned force, generated 
 by the extreme heat which is supposed to keep the 
 centre of our globe in a constant state of lique- 
 taction ; the same force that occasionally finds a 
 vent in volcanoes, which act, so to speak, as safety- 
 valves for its destructive powers. 
 
 Some countries are very much more liable to 
 shocks of earthquake than others. In the old 
 world those countries which lie round the Mediter- 
 ranean are most subject to these disasters ; and 
 they also occur frequently, and often with very 
 
 mation respecting the state of the whole surface of 
 the globe, we should probably convince ourselves 
 that this surface is nearly always shaken at some 
 point or other, though not, of course, always with 
 any great degree of violence. The shocks vary, 
 both in their intensity and in their mode of action. 
 Sometimes they are so slight as to be scarcely 
 perceptible, at other times they cause the most 
 wide -spread devastation. Again, they appear 
 sometimes as tremulous movements of the earth's 
 surface, which do but little material damage, and 
 commonly pass away in a moment, though 
 they have been known to continue for several 
 days together. At other times they are what 
 is called undulating, the surface of the ground 
 being alternately raised and depressed, not unlike 
 the effect produced on the sea by a moderate 
 breeze, More terrible in their nature are the 
 
56 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 upheaving earthquakes, which raise up and burst 
 open the solid crust of the earth. The cftects whiclr 
 an earthquake of this nature sometimes produces 
 are ahnost incredible. 
 
 But the most terrible of all, and happily those 
 which occur most seldom, are those which are 
 known as rotatory earthquakes. They are sup- 
 posed to be the combination of the upheaving 
 and undulating movements, and act upon the 
 surface of the earth much as violent cross-winds 
 do upon the sea. The results of these shocks are 
 sometimes most extraordinary. In the earth- 
 quake of Catania, in .Sicily (1818), several statues 
 were found to have been turned quite round. At 
 Concepcion, in Chili, in the year 1835, an 
 angular stone pinnacle was found to have been 
 turned half round, without being displaced from 
 its base. 
 
 In the great earthquake of Calabria, in the year 
 1783, some extraordinary changes of position were 
 effected. Houses were removed, and carried up 
 to places higher than those they had originally 
 occupied. In some places large pieces of ground 
 exchanged their respective situations, and for 
 several years after the earthquake, lawsuits used 
 to be brought in the courts of Naples, to decide 
 the claims to which this singular confusion had 
 given rise. 
 
 One of the most terrible earthquakes on record 
 is that which happened at Lisbon on the ist of 
 November, 1755. The morning was fine, and there 
 was no apparent indication of the coming destruc- 
 tion. About nine o'clock a low, subterraneous 
 rumbling was heard, which gradually increased, 
 and culminated, at last, in a violent shock of earth- 
 ciuake, which levelled to the ground many of the 
 principal buildings of the place. Three other 
 shocks followed in rapid succession, and continued 
 the work of destruction. Scarcely had the ill-fated 
 inhabitants begun to realise the enormity of the 
 disaster which had come upon them, when they 
 were surprised by another visitation, of a different 
 but not' less destructive character. The sea sud- 
 denly began to rush with great violence into the 
 Tagus, which rose at once as much as forty feet 
 above high water mark. The water swept over a 
 gireat part of the city, and many of the inhabitants 
 fled from its approach to take refuge on a strong 
 marble quay lately erected. They had collected 
 there to the number of 3,000, when the quay was 
 suddenly hurled bottom upwards, and every soul 
 on it perished. There was another shock in the 
 evening which split the walls of several houses ; but 
 when it passed away, the rents closed up again so 
 firmly that no trace of them could be seen. What 
 the earthquake and the flood had spared was con- 
 siuned by fire. The ist of November, being All 
 Saints' Day, was kept as a high festival, and all 
 the churches were brilliantly illuminated with 
 
 candles ; these falling, with the shock of the earth- 
 quake, against the timbers and curtains, set fire 
 to them, and as there were no means of checking 
 it, the conflagration rapidly spread. It is stated 
 that by the combined effects of these disasters, no 
 less than 60,000 persons perished. The destruc- 
 tive effects of the earthquake were felt, more or 
 less, throughout the whole of Portugal and a great 
 portion of Spain. 
 
 At Cadiz the inhabitants were terrified by seeing 
 the sea suddenly rise to the height of sixty feet 
 above its ordinary level. It came on like a gigantic 
 wall of water, advancing against the town, which it 
 inundated, causing great destruction and consider- 
 able loss of life. It then retreated far out to sea, 
 leaving a great part of the bay dry. This alternate 
 rising and subsidence of the waters was repeated 
 three or four times, each time abating something of 
 its violence, until the sea at length resumed its 
 usual level. 
 
 The earthquake which lately laid waste Iciuique 
 and the neighbouring places on the west coast of 
 South America, presented many features strikingly 
 similar to those of the Lisbon earthquake. There 
 was the same terrible overthrow, without any pre- 
 vious warning ; there was the same overvi'helming 
 rush of water from the sea. In the official report 
 forwarded to the Admiralty it is mentioned that, 
 " Immediately after the earthquake it was noticed 
 that the sea was unusually high ; suddenly it 
 receded with great rapidity, uncovering the bay at 
 a depth of four fathoms. \^'hiIe the sea was going 
 out, there was seen coming from the south-west, as 
 if to meet it, a great wave. It is described as a 
 dark blue mass of water, forty feet high, without 
 crest or foam, rolling steadily on at the rate of 
 about fourteen miles an hour. This, when it 
 reached the land, surged over the town and neigh- 
 bouring beach. The destruction was complete, 
 and as the sea went off to its original bounds, 
 everything in the lower part of the town was swept 
 away. 
 
 The earthquake of Caraccas, in Venezuela, oc- 
 curred on the 26th of March, 181 2. The shocks 
 continued at intervals, varying in intensity, till the 
 30th of April. In this earthquake 12,000 people 
 are said to have perished. The same town was 
 visited by another, almost as disastrous, in the year 
 1826. 
 
 Very violent earthquakes have been known on the 
 table-land of Quito. In one which happened there, 
 on the 4th of February, 1797, no less th.an 40,000 
 lives were lost. Not without reason did Humboldt 
 say that there is no force known to exist, not even 
 the murderous inventions of our own race con- 
 trived for each other's extirpation, by which, in 
 the short period of a few seconds or minutes, such 
 a number of persons can be killed, as by an earth- 
 quake. 
 
A WONDERFUL VOYAGE. 
 
 67 
 
 MouLiwful Siatistks. 
 
 Size of the Atlantic Waves. — From Dr. 
 Scorcsby's observations, made 1847-8, it appears 
 that in a very heavy gale, the waves arc from 24 
 to 36 feet high, or from 12 to 18 feet above and 
 below the mean level of the sea. During a raging 
 storm they have been 45 feet (22i feet above and 
 below). From crest to crest in a fresh sea, 100 to 
 1 50 feet ; a moderate gale, 300 feet ; a great storm, 
 600 feet, moving onward with a velocity exceeding 30 
 miles an hour. — Companion to B)-itis!i Almanac 
 for 1858, p. 28. 
 
 Charities of London. — The Registrar-General, 
 in his Summary for 1856, mentions a startling fact 
 • — that, in that year, one person in every five that 
 ' died closed his days under a roof provided by 
 public law or private charity. Total number of 
 those who died in 1856 in London, 56,786. Num- 
 ber of those who died in the same year in 116 
 public institutions — workhouses, hospitals, asylums, 
 prisons, &c.— 10,381. — See Registrar - General's 
 Returns, Annual Summary, 1856. 
 
 Books on Arithmetic. — Professor de Morgan 
 calculates that since the year 1500 there have been 
 published 3,000 works on arithmetic, in Latin, 
 French, German, Dutch, Italian, and English : an 
 average production of one a year to each of these 
 languages. — " The Decimal System," by Sir John 
 Bowring, p. 35. 
 
 A Pleas.\nt Climate. — The following is the 
 calendar of a Lapland or Siberian year: — June 23, 
 snow molts ; July I, snow gone ; July 9, fields quite 
 green ; July 17, plants at full growth ; July 25, 
 plants in full flower ; August 2, fruits ripe ; August 
 10, plants shed their seed; August 18, snow, con- 
 tinuing until June 23. 
 
 The human brain contains a considerable propor- 
 tion of phosphorus, varying from ^'^th to Joth of 
 the whole mass. If the average weight of the 
 English brain be taken at 471 oz., it will then 
 contain an amount of phosphorus amounting to 
 i-f'iE oz., or 2j oz. This phosphorus is found to 
 be almost entirely wanting in the brains of idiots. 
 The intellectual power of the human brain 
 depends to some extent upon the depth and 
 number of its convolutions. The lower we descend 
 in the scale of intelligence, the fewer and sliallowcr 
 do these convolutions become. While the brain of 
 the fox almost resemljles a miniature human brain 
 in its corrugated appearance, that of the pigeon is 
 almost smooth. 
 
 The voracity of the larvae of insects is so great, 
 that Linna;us has asserted that the progeny of three 
 female flesh flies (each gives birth to 20,000 young, 
 and a third generation is produced in a few days) 
 would eat the carcase of a horse with greater speed 
 than a lion. When first hatched, the larva of the 
 silkworm weighs xJijth of a grain ; previous to its as- 
 
 suming the pupa state it weighs ninety-five grains, 
 an increase of 9,500 times its original weight. The 
 full-grown caterpillar of the goat-moth weighs as 
 much as 72,000 fresh born ones. If this propor- 
 tion existed in the human race, and a fresh born 
 baby weighed 10 lb., its mother would weigh 160 
 tons, 3 cwt., 2 qr., 27 lb. 
 
 A WONDERFUL VOYAGE, 
 
 KICHARD DEVOE. 
 
 There is a good story told of an American, who was 
 rather given to drawing the long-bow, being paid 
 back in his own coin by a still sharper American. 
 The former was telling a wonderful story of how, on 
 one occasion, having crossed the Atlantic, and near- 
 ing England, the captain of the vessel saw some- 
 thing coming towards them, nearer and nearer. 
 There was much excitement on deck to know what 
 it might be. 
 
 " And what do you think it was ? " said the first 
 American. 
 
 " Can't say," replied the other. 
 " It was a man who had come all the way from 
 America on a hen-coop." 
 
 Says the other, " / luas that man!' 
 The story of Richard Devoe recalls the anecdote 
 above related, but it has the merit of being strictly 
 true. This young sailor lad was miraculously 
 preserved from the wreck of the schooner Mary, 
 on her passage from Curacoa to Greenock, in the 
 year 1806. 
 
 It appears that on. Saturday, 23rd August, 1806, 
 the Mary experienced a tremendous gale, which 
 continued all night. On Sunday it was calm for 
 about two hours, when they made more sail, but the 
 gale coming on they took in all but the foresail, 
 under which they lay to, until suddenly the 
 schooner upset. After remaining in the water 
 in this situation for about a quarter of an hour 
 they cut away the lanyards in hope that the 
 vessel would right ; but unfortunately she foun- 
 dered while the captain was at the helm, and every 
 soul but young Devoe and a man named William 
 perished. Just before the vessel went down Devoe 
 cut away the gripes of the long-boat, but in at- 
 tempting to get into her she capsised ; then, as a 
 last resort, he swam to the booby-hatch, which he 
 caught hold of. The sailor, William, got hold of the 
 hatch at the same time, but, the sea upsetting it, he 
 was obliged to let go his hold and was lost. Devoe 
 continued by the hatch all night, holding on by 
 the clamp when the fury of the gale abated. On 
 Monday it was calm, and by a great piece of good 
 fortune, a crab floated on to the hatch, which, from 
 extreme hunger, he ate alive. Fatigued, cold, and 
 almost exhausted, in this perilous situation he lay 
 down on the hatch and slept. Having awoke, and 
 feeling considerably refreshed, he saw two schooners 
 
68 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 at a short distance, making, as ho supposed, a S.E. 
 course. He waved his hat and handkerchief, but 
 there was no responsive sign. Early on Tuesday 
 morning he saw a ship close by him, which he 
 hailed, but those on board did not hear him, the 
 current sweeping him away. The wind, however, 
 suddenly turned and brought the ship so close 
 to him that he was observed. A boat was imme- 
 diately lowered, and Devoe was taken on board. 
 She proved to be the Rose Gardner of Phila- 
 delphia, bound for Cork, but bearing away to 
 New York in distress, where she arrived on 30th 
 August. 
 
 Whilst Devoe was on the hatch his situation was 
 rendered more terrible by observing the sharks 
 devour the bodies of his dead comrades. 
 
 FIRE-BALLS, 
 
 On the 7th of October in the year 1868, one 
 of the most remarkable fire-balls of which any 
 record exists, was seen from three points so far 
 distant from each other as Paris, Rouen, and 
 London. From ten to fifteen minutes before twelve, 
 the moon and the stars shining brightly, the 
 atmosphere being frosty and cloudless, and scarcely 
 a breath of air stirring, thousands of people be- 
 tween and around the points mentioned above, were 
 startled by a sudden blaze of light in the heavens. 
 The brightness resembled that of the magnesium 
 light, and not only did the moon and stars grow 
 dim in its lustre, but many of the eye-witnesses 
 were so dazzled by the glare, that they could not 
 observe the phenomenon with sufficient accuracy 
 to give any intelligible account of it. Others, with 
 more presence of mind, have recorded their 
 observations, and the result, from combining 
 the various particulars they have given, is as 
 follows. 
 
 A witness at Ramsgate relates that the meteor 
 seemed to dart suddenly from the highest point in 
 the heavens, and as it could not have been visible 
 from places so wide apart as Paris and London, 
 unless its elevation was very great, we may accept 
 this observation as absolutely correct. As it floated 
 slowly across the heavens (slowly when judged by 
 the eye) in a direction from north to south, or more 
 correctly, perhaps, from a point verging north- 
 west to south-east, its appearance changed from 
 that of an immense globe of white light to a 
 comet-like form, the tail having various colours, 
 changing from green through several shades of 
 red to blue or purple. It exploded with a sound 
 resembling two gunshots, audible at Paris and 
 Rouen, but not, so far as we can learn, in any 
 part of England. The probability is that it fell at 
 La Varenne, St. Hilaire, near the Vincennes rail- 
 way, and if so, it has been identified with a meteoric 
 
 stone found in the grounds of M. Launy, and 
 measuring about thirty-nine inches in length, by 
 seven or eight inches in thickness. 
 
 History abounds in similar records, but it has not 
 often been possible to combine the simultaneous 
 observations made in distant places ; and it may 
 be doubted if the elevation would always admit of 
 a fire-ball being observed at points so distant from 
 each other as in this instance. It 1768, a cloud 
 was seen to explode over the village of Luce on 
 the Maine, and the sound was heard ten miles 
 distant. In 1798, a large fire-ball was seen near 
 Benares, in India, and at several places, extending 
 to a distance of fifteen miles. In 1803 a fiery globe 
 of extraordinary brilliance was seen in full daylight 
 over the town of L'Aiglc, in Normandy, and at such 
 an elevation that the inhabitants of two hamlets, a 
 league distant from each other, saw it at the same 
 time. It burst in a shower of meteoric stones. 
 
 To come to recent times, a great fire-ball was 
 observed simultaneously on the 29th of April, 1865, 
 at Manchester and Weston-super-Mare. From the 
 careful observations made by Messrs. Baxcndalc 
 and Wood, Mr. Alexander Herschel was enabled 
 to compute that this meteor first appeared exactly 
 over the city of Lichfield, at a height of fifty-two 
 miles ; that it travelled at the rate of about twenty 
 miles per second, and disappeared when at a height 
 of thirty-seven miles, over the city of Oxford. Fire- 
 balls are most often seen a day or two before, or a 
 day or two after, the recognised dates of those won- 
 derful displays of asteroids which are now known 
 to be a regularly recurring phenomenon at two 
 periods of the year. The probability is that all 
 these appearances admit of one and the same ex- 
 planation, namely, that they are masses of matter 
 revolving round the sun, which come into contact 
 with the earth, and take fire on entering its atmo- 
 sphere. The smaller particles are consumed in 
 passing through the atmosphere, and fall to the 
 earth unperceivcd, as small dust ; while the larger 
 reach the ground in great masses, and often pene- 
 trate to a considerable depth. 
 
 The weight of some of these stones is well known. 
 One which fell at Ensisheim in Alsace, on the 7th 
 of November, 1492, weighed 260 lb., and sank 
 itself three feet deep in the earth. Gassendi 
 observed one fall on Mont Vasir, near Nice, on the 
 27th of November, 1627, which weighed 591b. In 
 1672 two stones fell near Verona in Italy, the one 
 weighing 300, the other 200 lb. Paul Lucas relates 
 that when he was at Larissa, a town of Greece, 
 near the Gulf of Salonica, a stone weighing 72 lb. 
 fell in the vicinity. A shower of meteoric stones 
 fell near Geneva in 1753, of which the largest 
 weighed 2olb. In 1795 a stone fell in Yorkshire, 
 within a few yards of one of the observers, and it 
 was found to weigh 561b. Sometimes a large 
 stone explodes into hundreds of small fragments, 
 
THE FROZEN SEA. 
 
 69 
 
 bCK.N'E O.N THE FROZEN SEA. 
 
 and falls in a shower. It is even recorded that a 
 fall of sand continued for fifteen hours over the 
 Atlantic on the 6th of April, 1719, but this we 
 should be inclined to attribute to the action of wind 
 bringing clouds of sand from some desert region of 
 the earth. Masses of iron and other materials, 
 much larger than any we have mentioned above, 
 are known to exist in places where their appearance 
 can only be accounted for on the supposition that 
 they are meteoric stones. One of these great 
 masses, estimated at 70 cubic feet in bulk, is 
 known to have fallen in America on the 5th of 
 April, 1800. 
 
 When touched immediately after their descent, 
 meteoric stones are invariably found to be hot. 
 Sometimes they approach to the spherical in form, 
 but are as often of irregular shape, as might be 
 expected when an explosion has preceded their fall. 
 They smell strongly of sulphur, and are generally 
 covered with a black crust. They are by no means 
 uncommon objects in collections of curiosities, 
 and probably most of our readers have frequently 
 examined them. A small one, about the size 
 of a walnut, which the writer once possessed was 
 spherical in shape, but with an irregular surface 
 like a little potato ; and it contained so much sul- 
 phur in combination with iron, that it gradually fell 
 to pieces, and could even be crumbled by the finger. 
 This gave an opportunity for observing that it was 
 beautifully radiated from the centre, as if composed 
 of myriads of fine fibres. 
 
 Manbtrs of iljc ©teitit. 
 
 THE FROZEN SEA. 
 
 Whatever opinions may be entertained as to the 
 existence of an open sea around the North Pole, 
 it is agreed on all hands that there is a Polar 
 Frozen Sea. In both the northern and southern 
 high latitudes it has been found that there is a 
 certain limit beyond which the progress of ships 
 is barred by an impenetrable fence of ice. What 
 is beyond it is more or less matter of speculation. 
 Concerning the Frozen Sea of the Arctic regions, 
 mucfi more is known than has been ascertained 
 about the Frozen Sea in the Antarctic circle; 
 many more expeditions have been sent out to 
 examine the nature of the sea around the North 
 Pole than have ventured to the South ; but it 
 would appear that the latter is, of the two, the 
 more impervious. Ocean surveyors, from the time 
 of Cook to the time of Ross and Penny, have 
 been unanimous in reporting that there is no indi- 
 cation of a break anywhere along the southern 
 barrier. Their ships sailed for many degrees along 
 the outer face of an icy wall, of which the first 
 shelf was as high as their mainyard. Above and 
 beyond that shelf, as far as the assisted sight could 
 reach, there was nothing but solid ice, save in 
 some few places, where what looked like land was 
 joined on to and backed the frozen fringe. Mile 
 after mile, day after day, the ships sailed on coastwise, 
 keeping a pretty straight line of latitude, watching 
 
7° 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 narrowly for an opening in the hard ice chff. Not 
 any opening presented itself, and the results of 
 discovery in the Antarctic regions have been to 
 show that land, probably in continental proportions, 
 does exist beyond the ice in some parts. 
 
 The frozen condition of the Arctic Ocean is a 
 fact within the experience of every whaler, though 
 the question of the extent to which the sea is frozen 
 remains unsettled. At a degree of latitude which 
 varies with the season of the year, the progress of 
 ships northward is barred by a barrier of frozen 
 water. During the summer months, when occa- 
 sionally the thermometer will register a heat equal 
 to the mean temperature of the tropics, and such 
 life as there is in the Arctic circle wakes up 
 and renews its lease, the zone of the north is 
 loosened, the outer edge of the belt cracks and 
 splits into vast mountains of ice which, becoming 
 detached, get -tmder way and start for the south. 
 From the end of May they are to be met with 
 in the North Atlantic, sailing majestically and dan- 
 gerously towards those warmer regions of which the 
 temperature is reduced and invigorated by their icy 
 presence. The question is whether there is any 
 general break up of the Frozen Sea, whether in the 
 more northerly parts the pack ice ever becomes loose 
 ice, and again whether, supposing it does not be- 
 come loose, the pack ice drifts bodily southward 
 as it has been suggested it docs. Ships that have 
 been nipped by the ice and have been surprised by 
 winter in the north, report that during their captivity 
 they have been carried many degrees to the south- 
 ward by the drift of the pack in which they were 
 enclosed. Lieutenant De Haven, of the American 
 navy, when in command of the United States ex- 
 pedition after Sir John Franklin, was frozen up for 
 nine months, at the beginning of which time he was 
 in mid-channel in Wellington Straits, and at -the 
 end he found himself i,ooo miles to the southward. 
 H.M.S. Resolute, which was abandoned by Captain 
 Kellet in the ice, remained in the cold embrace of 
 the ice nip for several years, but in the end was borne 
 south till the temperature burst her bonds and she 
 was recaptured and sent home unharmed. These 
 instances only prove that the particular portion of the 
 Frozen Sea in which the ships were bound became 
 loose, though there is good reason to think that the 
 entire belt of ice about the North Pole does in 
 ordinarily warm summers become detached, new ice 
 being formed on the extreme northerly limit of the 
 sea as soon as winter returns, in order to replace 
 what has been during the summer pushed away tp 
 the southward. 
 
 If we may credit the great amount of evidence 
 which has been adduced, we should adopt the 
 general behef of Arctic explorers, that beyond the 
 Frozen Sea there is a large open sea, free from ice, 
 which extends for several degrees all round the 
 Pole, Dr, Kane, in one of his search expeditions, 
 
 crossed a barrier of ice a hundred miles broad, of 
 which the northern boundary was reached in the 
 eighty-third degree of north latitude. There he 
 found an open sea extending in an unbroken sheet 
 of water as far as the eye could reach towards the 
 Pole, the waves broke upon the shore, and there was 
 a tidal variation in the height of the \vatcr, the 
 temperature of which was four degrees above 
 freezing. Whether this sea was only temporarily 
 free from ice or whether it is always open, is a 
 question yet to be solved. Explorers who have 
 penetrated far to the northward of Dr. Kane's posi- 
 tion have reported the whole place ice-bound, with 
 apparetitly an unmoving,- fast-anchored ice-pack 
 stretching away to the north. 
 
 Our illustration — taken from an original sketch 
 made on the spot — gives a remarkably \'ivid reprc- 
 
 PROOFS OF GUILT IN SUPERSTITIOUS 
 
 AGES. 
 The origin of the curious custom of making 
 persons suspected of murder touch the murdered 
 body for the discovery of their guilt or innocence 
 is interesting. This [method of finding out mur- 
 derers was practised in Dcn]nark by King Chris- 
 tian II. The story goes that it arose in the fol- 
 lowing way. Certain gentlemen being on an 
 evening together in a tavern, fell out among them- 
 selves, and from words grew to blows, insomuch 
 that one of them was stabbed with a poniard. Now 
 the murderer was unknown, by reason of the number, 
 although the person stabbed before death accused 
 a pursuivant who was one of the company. The 
 king, to find out the homicide, caused them all 
 to come together, and, standing round the dead 
 body, he commanded that they should, one after 
 another, lay their right hands on the dead man's 
 naked breast, swearing that they had not killed 
 him. The gentlemen did so, and no sign ap- 
 peared against them. The pursuivant alone ra- 
 mained, who, condemned before in his own con- 
 science, went first of all and kissed the dead man's 
 feet, but as soon as he laid his hand on his breast, 
 the blood, we arc told, gushed forth both out of 
 his wound and his nostrils, so that, urged by this 
 evident accusation, he confessed the murder, and 
 was, by the king's own sentence, immediately 
 beheaded. 
 
 The elder Disraeli, in his " Curiosities of Litera- 
 ture," gives several examples of these " ordeals," 
 as they were called, such as walking blindfold 
 amidst burning plough-shares ; passing through 
 fires ; holding in the hand a red-hot bar ; and 
 plunging the arm into boiling water. The popular 
 affirmation, " I will go through fire and water for 
 my friend," was, in all probability, derived from 
 this custom. 
 
THE WONDER OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 71 
 
 Disraeli says, " Those accused of robbery were 
 put to trial by a piece of barley bread on which 
 the mass had been said, which if they could not 
 swallow, they were declared guilty. This mode of 
 trial was improved by adding to the bread a slice 
 of cheese, and such was the credulity that they 
 were very particular in this holy bread and cheese, 
 called the corsncd. The bread was to be of un- 
 leavened barley, and the cheese made of ewes' 
 milk in the month of May." Du Cange observes 
 that the expression, "May this piece of bread choke 
 me," comes from this custom. 
 
 P^oitetariT MoiTbfrs. 
 
 Joint-Stock Mania. — In Swift's Memoirs, Sir 
 W. Scott states, that in 1720 most chimerical 
 schemes were circulated in abundance, introduc- 
 ing a breed of asses, sweeping the streets, and 
 maintaining foundlings ; and one projector ob- 
 tained subscriptions to a very large extent, and 
 some advance in ready money on each, for a 
 project, the object of which ho declined to explain, 
 further than by promising a return of the ad- 
 venturers of cent, per cent. Swift wrote several 
 papers abusing these projects. — Swift's Memoirs, 
 p. 251. 
 
 Mania for Speculation.— In 1720, the time 
 of the South Sea Bubble, amongst the many mad 
 schemes put forward, was one for " An undertaking 
 ■which shall in due time be revealed." Each sub- 
 scriber was to pay down two guineas, and there 
 were actually 1,000 of these subscriptions paid in 
 one morning, the promoter of the scheme decamp- 
 ing with the money the same afternoon. — Lord 
 Mahon's"- Hist. Eng-.," vol. ii., p. 12. 
 
 Monopolies in France, Seventeenth Cen- 
 tury. — To such an extent was this practice carried 
 that in 1677 the Duke of Bouillon, Grand Chamber- 
 lain of France, procured the privilege of selling a 
 poison for vermin. Bills notifying the privilege 
 were posted on the walls of Paris, and a copy is 
 given in Locke's Journal. — See " Life of Locke" by 
 Lord King, p. 86, Bohn, 1858. 
 
 THE WONDER OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 11. — the needle instrument. 
 
 We have described the recording instrument for 
 transmitting messages, invented by Professor Morse, 
 and improved successively by Mr. Bain and Mr. 
 Allan. There is, however, a tot.ally different method 
 of signalling by means of what is called the needle 
 instrument, invented by Messrs. Cooke and Wheat- 
 stone. This- instrument flashes the intelligence as 
 fast as it can be read off by the eye, following the 
 motion of the needle as it points to tl)c characters ; 
 
 but it makes no record of the messages. The clerk 
 writes it down letter by letter as it is signalled. 
 
 Every one is familiar with the appearance of the 
 dial of this apparatus, seen so frequently in private 
 offices and in railway stations. To explain the 
 action of the mechanism behind the dial we must 
 refer to a phenomenon in electricity which wc have 
 not hitherto mentioned. If a magnetic needle (as 
 used for the mariner's compass) be freely suspended 
 in a direction parallel to the wire through which an 
 electric current is directed, the needle will place 
 itself at right angles to the wire. The reader must 
 be contented with a bare statement of this fact : 
 it is sufficient to enable him to draw the inference 
 that just as an electric magnet can be made to 
 attract its keeper by means of a current of elec- 
 tricity, and thus set other parts of the apparatus 
 to which it belongs in motion, so a needle can be 
 made to move in certain directions at the pleasure 
 of the operator. This motion of the magnetic 
 needle (which is concealed in the box behind the 
 dial) is transferred mechanically to the needle on 
 the outside, the quick movements of which look 
 almost like intelligence. All the rest is only a 
 matter of arrangement and manipulation. If the 
 handle,/ (Fig. i), be moved to the right, the current 
 of electricity moves the needle to the right, once, 
 twice, or thrice as may be required to make the 
 signs corresponding to the letters of the alphabet, 
 and the same as regards the movement to the left. 
 
 To explain this, a little attention will be required to 
 the following diagram (Fig. 2, p. 72). 
 
 The reader must imagine himself to be standing 
 so as to face the back of the dial. The boss. A, 
 represents the end of the spindle worked by the 
 handle in front of the instrument. When at rest, 
 the position occupied by the rod, c b, is that of the 
 dotted lines, ^ /i, but the handle having been moved 
 to the right the cross piece at the end oic b touches 
 the spring ndald, while the other extremity touches 
 the spring E e ate. Now as the wires F/conncct 
 c 6 with the battery B, and as the wires I i arc 
 connected with the galvanometer,* c K (in which the 
 
 • A g.ilvanometer is an instrument composed of .1 magnetic needle 
 surrounded by a coil of wire, through which the electric curifent is 
 passed. The length of wire coiled up increases (within certain liraitsl 
 the sensitiveness of the needle. 
 
*/2 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 magnetic needle itself works), it is evident that by 
 moving c b into the position represented, the dis- 
 joined parts have been brought into contact, and 
 the electric circuit is completed.* The same result 
 would have taken place if the handle in front of the 
 instrument had been turned to the right, except that 
 the current would have been reversed. Its action 
 is as follows : — 
 
 The current of electricity derived from chemical 
 action in the battery passes into the wire F, and 
 thence to the distant station by way of w through the 
 
 earth, where it deflects the needle. From the distant 
 station it returns in the course marked by the arrow 
 and passes through the wire i into the galvanometer 
 coil c, and deflecting the needle, S N, returns to the 
 battery through the coil K and the %Yire I. All 
 this, though it takes long to describe, is effected 
 instantaneously. The direction of the current is 
 reversed according as contact is made at d or E, 
 and the motion of the needle of course responds 
 to it. For example, to telegraph the word CAN the 
 movements must be four to the left, two to the 
 left, and two to the right, as shown by the signs on 
 the dial. If the needle be moved thus in London, 
 and the other end of the conducting wire be in 
 Edinburgh or elsewhere, the needle at that end 
 also moves in the same way. 
 
 In estimating the velocity with which messages 
 can be delivered by any of the instruments we have 
 described, it must be remembered that there are 
 mechanical arrangements to be taken into account. 
 
 * Various other mechanical arrangements are in use, but the prin- 
 ciple is the -same in all, i 
 
 From observations made with the Atlantic cable, it 
 has been proved that the electric current travels at 
 the rate of 6,020 miles a second, and on land lines 
 it is known to be considerably greater, the average 
 of several experiments giving 16,000 miles per 
 second. So far, therefore, as the natural law is 
 concerned, " as quick as lightning" would express 
 no more than the truth ; but when mechanism has 
 to be moved, other laws come into operation which 
 seriously affect the result. In his evidence before 
 the select committee on the FJectric Telegraphs 
 Bill in the House of Commons, last year. Sir Charles 
 Whcatstonc affirmed that, ordinarily, from twenty 
 to twenty-five words a minute are sent ; he pro- 
 duced an instrument, however, which is capable of 
 sending from sixty to seventy words a minute, and 
 which he affirmed has worked at the rate of one 
 hundred and twenty. To send twenty-five words a 
 minute by the ordinary Morse apparatus is a feat 
 of dexterity, however, not practical work under ordi- 
 nary circumstances. An exceptionally intelligent 
 and skilful practitioner at each end of the wire must 
 be provided, and after all the message may be as 
 difficult to read by ordinary telegraph clerks, as bad 
 handwriting by ordinary readers of print. The in- 
 dentations are indistinct, or the dashes and dots 
 blurred together. About fifteen words a minute, we 
 believe, can be telegraphed with precision, and this 
 rate of speed is equivalent to a hundred lines cf our 
 own printed columns per hour. This view of the case 
 is supported by the following facts. On Saturday, 
 December 21, 1867, a message of forty-eight words 
 was sent from London to Washington in nine and a 
 half minutes, the time of transmission being divided 
 as follows : from London to Heart's Content, four 
 and a half minutes ; from Heart's Content to Plaister 
 Cove, one and a half minutes ; from Plaister Cove to 
 New York, one and a half minutes. A reply of sixty 
 words was returned in twenty minutes. On the 
 same evening a message of twenty-two words was 
 sent from London to Heart's Content, and in ten 
 minutes a reply of twenty-four words was delivered 
 in London. These being trials of skill, the best 
 hands were employed, and extra precautions taken 
 to ensure speed. 
 
 We may safely affirm that the telegraph is yet 
 only in its infancy. To say nothing here of Mr. 
 Allan's plan for a system that shall be as universal 
 as the penny post. Sir Charles Wheatstone has de- 
 signed what he calls a " Cryptograph," or mode of 
 secret telegraphy. This instrument is employed by 
 the police, and it was found particularly useful 
 during the Fenian excitement. Any person using 
 one of these instruments may employ his own 
 cipher ; and had it been used for military purposes 
 in America during the late war, the artful trick 
 of "tapping" the telegraph wires, and misdirecting 
 the troops of the enemy, or discovering their move- 
 ments, would have been impossible to execute. 
 
THE GREAT TUN OF HEIDELBERG. 
 
 73 
 
 THE GREAT TUN OF HEIDELBERO. (IKUM AN ol.li I'KINT.) 
 
 THE GREAT TUN OF HEIDELBERG. 
 
 Heidelberg was the capital of the Palatinate of 
 the Rhine, from 1362 to 17 19, when the Elector 
 removed his residence to Mannheim. The mag- j 
 nificent castle, which stands on a commanding 
 eminence, embosomed in dark woods, overlooking 
 the town, was the palace of the Electors Palatine, 
 and was celebrated during a part of this long 
 interval, for two curiosities : first, the five stone 
 pillars said to have been brought from Ravenna 
 by Charlemagne ; and secondly, the " Great Tun." 
 In the year 1608, the city was visited by one 
 Thomas Coryat ; and Tom, as the traveller loves 
 to call himself, being able to make use of the 
 name of his friend Sir Henry Wotton, at that 
 time ambassador at Venice, was admitted to some 
 familiarity with the people of Prince Frederick's 
 court, and so found his way into the wine-cellars 
 of the castle. There he beheld a " wondrous | 
 company " of great wine-barrels, the sight of 
 which, and something more, made him " spin," 
 and he was at last taken into a room which con- 
 tained a wonder not unworthy, in his estimation, 
 to be classed with the Colossus of Rhodes, the 
 hanging gardens of Semiramis, or the tomb of 
 Mausolus. These " decantated miracles," Tom 
 says, were no worthier of the immortality they 
 have won than this miraculous wine-barrel. 
 10 
 
 Recent accounts state that the great tun was 
 first constructed in 1343, when it was made to 
 contain twenty-one pipes of wine ; that it was suc- 
 ceeded by one made in 1664, which held 600 hogs- 
 heads ; and that this again having been destroyed 
 by the French in 1688, was succeeded by a third 
 which held 800 hogsheads, and is now mouldering 
 away, being no longer used. Tom Coryat says 
 the miraculous tun seen and depicted by him 
 was begim in 1589, and finished in 1591, seventeen 
 years before his visit : "one Michael Warner, of 
 the city of Landavia, being the principal maker 
 of the worke." It contained nearly 600 hogsheads 
 of Rhenish wine, valued at ^2,000. It must not 
 be supposed that the staves of this immense tun 
 were like those of common wine-barrels. They 
 were really great beams of wood, 27 feet long, and 
 1 1 2 in number. The diameter of the tun was from 
 16 to 18 feet, and the boards were hooped together 
 with 26 iron bands, weighing 11,000 pounds. 
 The supports of this huge mass were " marvellous 
 great pillars made of timber, and beautified about 
 the ends and the top with the images of lions," which 
 are the arms of the Electors Palatine : Three lions 
 were at each end, "' a fair scutcheon being affixed 
 to each image." It is this tun that our illustration 
 represents. According to Murray's Handbook, the 
 existing tun was made in 1751, and it has not been 
 used since 1769. It is capable of containing 800 
 hogsheads, or 283,200 bottles. No wonder it is 
 
74 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 disused, for its predecessor, the tun of 600 hogs- 
 heads, was once emptied in eight days by the 
 Elector's gallant visitors. 
 
 Heidelberg Castle, bearing on its shattered walls 
 the marks of the devastating fury of the sa\agc 
 Louvois, is at the present day one of the most 
 picturesque ruins in the world. In one of the cellars 
 may still be seen the great tun, more marvellous in 
 point of size than that which Coryat saw ; but 
 the traveller has no longer any need of honest 
 Tom's caution, not to bo over-persuaded by the 
 social Germans — at least, while he stands on the 
 top of tlie barrel — to take too much of the good 
 Rhenish which it contains no longer. 
 
 SIR EDWARD MORGAN, THE 
 JAMAICA BUCCANEER. 
 It is not at" all wonderful that there should be 
 pirates by profession ; but it does seem wonderful 
 that there should have been professional pirates 
 ■who not only justified their acts to themselves, but' 
 found quiet, steady-going folk to sympathise with 
 them, and even to help them in their enterprises. Yet 
 so it was. In the Elizabethan days, when the Spanish 
 power was dominant and domineering, when might 
 was right, and men went upon the good old rule —   
 
 "The simple plan 
 That they may get who had the power, 
 And they may keep who can,'* 
 
 there was a perpetual succession of men who risked 
 their lives, their property, and their honour in ad- 
 venturous voyages which had for their object the 
 enriching of the voyagers at the expense of the 
 regular commerce of the dominant Spanish power. 
 It did not suit the public convenience of most of the 
 European states to be at open issue with the greatest 
 power of the Continent, with which, however, there 
 could never be any abiding peace ; so private wars, 
 undertaken at private cost and private risk, in- 
 volving the country in no responsibility, nor in 
 any difficulty in case of the voyagers being captured, 
 were winked at, if not directly countenanced ; and 
 if the bold adventurers could get rich in the war, 
 so much the better for them. Of this class of 
 adventurers were Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Richard 
 Grenville, Martin Frobisher, Hawkins, Drake, and 
 many more whose names are foremost in the roll of 
 glory which belongs to Elizabeth's reign. But there 
 was a class of persons who quickly followed the evil 
 part of the example of those who did evil that good 
 might come — men whose sole delight was in doing 
 mischief that they might suck no small advantage out 
 of the confusion their own wickedness had caused. 
 
 Among these buccaneers, as they were called, were 
 men whose wonderful success has almost raised 
 them to the rank of heroes. " No one doubts the 
 nobility of conquerors," and conquerors some of 
 ^ese undoubtedly were. With their hand against 
 
 every man and every man's hand against them, it 
 is marvellous that any of them should have sur- 
 vived more than a few years of their wild hfe, 
 exposed as they were, not only to the vengeance 
 of man, but to the manifold perils of a sickly 
 climate, and the dangers of a notoriously stormy 
 region.. Many sea-robbers went down into Hades, 
 sent thither by the sword of successful resistance, 
 or strangled by the rope of justice's executioner; 
 but some of them survived all the horrors of 
 their life, and became decent members of society. 
 Edward Morgan was one of these. He was of 
 the family of the Morgans of Tredegar, and, being 
 obliged to leave home, went to Jamaica, the head- 
 quarters of the buccaneers, and qfifered his ser- 
 vices. Soon he rose to command a ship, and the 
 other pirates, finding him so able a man, preferred 
 to be of his company rather than of any other. He 
 was brave, skilful, and energetic, fertile in stratagem, 
 and with a presence that inspired respect in those 
 who placed themselves under his command. He 
 had, moreover, that cold, hard nature, which did 
 not shrink from deeds of horror, which was dead to 
 all considerations of pity, and which was eminently 
 suited to the leader of a band of robbers. 
 
 Morgan was in the habit of organising regular 
 warlike expeditions, of which the fitting out and the 
 dispatch were openly announced at Jamaica, and 
 winked at by the governor, probably " for a con- 
 sideration." In conjunction with Manf'eldt, the 
 prince of pirates, he stormed and plundered Pro- 
 vidence Island, thirty-five leagues from Chagres 
 River ; and in 1668 went in chief command, with 
 nine ships and some five hundred men, against the 
 Spanish settlement of Porto Bello. This place he 
 approached by night, surprised the sentries, and 
 carried the castle ; and, shutting up all his pri- 
 soners in a dungeon, fired the magazine, giving as 
 his reason for this horrible cruelty that he could not 
 spare enough men to guard the captives. The 
 commandant of the town retired into the remaining 
 fort, and kept up an incessant cannonade upon the 
 pirates, who, however, made only the more haste to 
 kill, burn, and destroy. They forced the people of 
 the place to help them to rear their scaling ladders 
 against the fort, and when they got possession they 
 slew the garrison partly by way of revenge, partly 
 as a terror to others. For fifteen days they 
 remained at Porto Bello, indulging in the utmost 
 licence and brutality. They then sailed away with 
 250,000 pieces of eight (a piece of eight was worth 
 about five shillings) and an enormous amount of 
 plunder — a quantity so vast that on the sea-shore 
 at Jamaica the plate, jewels, and merchandise which 
 had been stolen from churches, colleges, and houses 
 at Porto Bello were literally piled up under the 
 eaves of the houses for want of warehouse room. 
 This great prize was soon spent in debauchery and 
 riotous living, and in a few weeks Morgan put to 
 
THE MINER'S CORPSE. 
 
 75 
 
 sea again at the head of a thousand desperadoes. 
 Maracaibo and several other places on the Spanish 
 main were visited with all the horrors of a bucca- 
 neer attack ; and Panama, a strongly fortified place, 
 and the depot for much of the wealth of the Spanish 
 West Indies, was captured after a fight in which 
 quarter seemed to be excluded from the conditions. 
 Somehow or other, a fire broke out, which could not 
 be extinguished, and kept on burning for several 
 days. Molten gold and silver w-as found encrusted 
 on the pavements of the streets, and into the cellars 
 and wells of the city many millions' worth of valu- 
 ables were thrown in hope of hiding them from the 
 greedy captors. Notwithstanding the loss of large 
 quantities of plundei-, Morgan arrived at Chagres 
 with 175 mules laden with gold and jewels. At 
 Chagres he divided the spoil, but his men accused 
 him of cheating, and nfutinicd, driving him off with 
 two or three ships and 400,000 pieces of eight to 
 Jamaica. 
 
 On returning from this voyage, Morgan deter- 
 mined, like Falstaff, "to live cleanly, as a gentleman 
 should." He bought an estate, turned planter, and 
 so conducted himself in Jamaica, that Charles II. 
 conferred on him the honour of knighthood, and 
 made him governor of the island. The accounts 
 v^ry as to his end ; some say he lived to a 
 good age, and died respected and beloved in his 
 adopted country ; others, that he was ordered to 
 England to take his trial for some piratical acts 
 he had committed after he was made governor, 
 and that he died in disgrace and in comparative 
 poverty. 
 
 Morgan, or rather Sir Edward Morgan, was a 
 fair specimen of the better sort of buccaneer. Of 
 the scoundrels who did worse, it were long to write, 
 and the account would read like a passage out of 
 the annals of hell. It required many years, and the 
 exercise of an immense amount of force, to clear 
 the West Indian seas of these dreadful scourges ; 
 and the execution of the last of the buccaneers is an 
 event of quite modern times. In Morgan's time 
 the Government winked at what was done. Wit- 
 ness a letter from Lord Arlington, Secretary of 
 State in 1665, to Sir Thomas Modyford, governor 
 of Jamaica, directing him that " privateers be 
 handled quietly for the future, and be reclaimed by 
 degrees;" and in 1664 it was officially stated that 
 the calling in of the privateers was " a remote and 
 hazardous experiment." 
 
 CURIOUS ORIGIN OF THE NUMERALS 
 
 V, X, C, L, M, D. 
 The writer of this is not aware whether Pasquier's 
 ingenious mode of accounting for the origin of the 
 above numerals has ever been superseded by a more 
 plausible theory. If not, the suggestion is at least 
 interesting. 
 
 The earliest method of reckoning is universally 
 believed to have been with the fingers. Each 
 finger would stand for one, and would be represent- 
 able by an upright stroke, so that the number four 
 was originally IIII. To continue the account, the 
 number five was considered to be formed by the 
 first finger and thumb when displayed, which it will 
 be seen has something of a V-like figure. The 
 representation of five being thus fixed on, that of 
 ten would be determined by uniting two fives — that 
 is, two V's by their apices. 
 
 The letter C — anciently ' written E, being the 
 initial of the Latin word centum, a hundred — was a 
 very obvious abbreviation of that number, and being 
 divided in two, horizontally, each half was a kind of 
 L ; that letter, therefore, was adopted to signify 
 fifty. The letter M was the initial of iiiUle, a 
 thousand, and being anciently written thus, CD 1 the 
 half of it bore a near enough resemblance to a D, 
 to suggest the adoption of that letter for 500. 
 
 Instead of the four strokes, we now use IV. for 
 four, signifying five less one ; six is VI., signifying 
 five plus one ; seven and eight follow the same rule ; 
 nine is IX., signifying ten less one ; eleven is XL, 
 or ten plus one. The rest are obvious. 
 
 THE MINER'S CORPSE AT FAHLUN. 
 
 I'')-oiH Schiibert^s ^' Nlghi-side q/ Nalural Science," 1818, 
 
 In the Swedish mines of Fahlun, while making 
 a cross excavation between the shafts, some work- 
 men discovered a coi"pse, so saturated with the 
 vitriol, which is found in iron-mines, as to become, 
 when brought into the air, as hard as stone, though 
 perfectly soft when first touched. For fifty years 
 had the body lain three hundred feet below the 
 surface of the ground in a pool of vitriol ; and no 
 one would have recognised the unaltered features 
 of the unfortunate young man, no one would have 
 remembered the circumstance of his having been 
 lost (traditions of the neighbourhood becoming con- 
 fused, ou-ing to the melancholy frequency of such 
 accidents), had not the heart of a faithful woman 
 identified the once beloved face. For when the 
 inhabitants of the neighbourhood, full of eager 
 curiosity, were pressing round to gaze on the re- 
 covered corpse, an aged grey-haired female, lean- 
 ing on crutches, came up, weeping, to the body, 
 affirming it to be that of her betrothed husband, 
 and blessing God for the day on which the gates 
 of the grave had opened, to enable her to look on 
 him once more. The bystanders beheld with 
 astonishment the re-union of this singular pair, 
 of whom one had retained his youthful appearance 
 in death and in the bowels of the earth, while in 
 the other the warm love of youth had remained 
 true and unaltered, amidst the decay of her beauty 
 and the inroads of old age upon her wasted exterior. 
 
16 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 CORAL ANIMALS. • 
 
 Wonderful in themselves, wonderful in their 
 operations, are those multitudinous, minute con- 
 tractors, who undertake the business of building up 
 " continents to be," and causing the dry land to 
 appear in the midst of the world's oceans. They 
 may be seen by those who seek them, in the waters 
 
 having its own characteristic style of architecture, 
 and being celebrated for some special kind of 
 building. The work of some is rough and massive, 
 that of others polished and elegant ; all their works 
 j are beautiful, and they are accomplished with an 
 industry that is untiring, and a devotion which is 
 even unto death. 
 
 Coral animals are polyps, having an intestinal 
 
 Fig. I. — PORITES AND CORAL. 
 
 of warm climates, incessantly at work a few fathoms, I 
 it may be a few feet, below the surface, waving 
 about like an under-water fringe that borders the 
 garment of some great rock. In the clear blue 
 water of the tropics their operations may be watched 
 and their habits studied, with a facility altogether 
 exceptional. Notwithstanding, it was for many 
 years questioned whether they belonged to the vege- 
 table or animal kingdom, and it was not till the 
 middle of the last century that their true nature was 
 ascertained. They are animals having a low form 
 of Hfe, and dwell in houses of their own building ; 
 they are divided into many families, each family j 
 
 cavity, with distinct mouth surrounded by radiating 
 lobes. They secrete salts which are over and above 
 the wants of the sea in which they live, and with 
 these salts, prepared by them in some \vt)nderful 
 way, they construct those blocks of solid masonry 
 which are known as coral reefs, coral barriers and 
 fringes, and coral islands. These reefs are indeed 
 but a collection of corals' houses, so many coralline 
 cities. The coral animals, being gregarious, live and 
 work together, joining house to house, and street to 
 street, till the aggregate comes to be an important 
 geographical item. When dead, they leave their 
 bodies in the house where they lived, and that be- 
 
CORAL ANIMALS. 
 
 77 
 
 coming filled up, forms a strong stony foundation, 
 on which a new generation can build a fresh super- 
 structure. The corals' village, or polypary, as it is 
 called, seems itself to be endowed with vitality, and 
 to be so intimately connected with the being of the 
 polyps who dwell in it, that it is questionable if 
 they could exist apart from it. Upon the polypary, 
 wherein already several genera- 
 tions lie buried, there is seen a ^ » 
 swelling, the top of which in 
 course of time cracks across, 
 and thereout comes the new 
 corallium. It is in this way 
 that the creatures are per- [=: 
 petuated. The new corallium 
 inhabits the cell from which he 
 was born, and having done his 
 work, makes his grave there, 
 as his forefathers did before 
 him. 
 
 It has been ascertained that 
 the coral animals cannot live 
 at a greater depth than thirty 
 fathoms below the surface. 
 From that depth they will build 
 gradually up till they come in 
 contact with the atmospheric air, ^ . 
 
 or until their path is crossed by 
 some fresh- water affluent. In either of these events 
 they die, leaving their work to be continued in a 
 lateral direction by their surviving kinsmen, and to 
 be upheaved into space in the shape of a reef or 
 an island ; or to be broken off by the sea waves, 
 which pile it up in boulders. The number of coral 
 animals required to make a given piece of work 
 varies greatly according to the family of the crea- 
 tures, and the class of work to be 
 done. In a piece of Astraa pol)- 
 pary, twelve feet in diameter, it has 
 been reckoned that there are 100,000 
 coral animals, and that in a polypary 
 of the. Poriit's family (Fig. I.), of the 
 same diameter, there are five millions 
 andahalf Theprogressof the builders 
 is slow, a few inches only of masonry 
 being added in the year ; but then 
 what masonry it is, how superbly 
 strong and how firmly bound to- fIj 
 
 gether ! It is all piece-work — none 
 of it is scamped ; the lord of creation may examine 
 it never so closely, he must ever admit that it is 
 very good. 
 
 The madrepore family undertake the largest ocean 
 works ; their polypary is the well-known tree coral, 
 which, branching out in all directions, the little 
 camellia-like blossoms on its branches, looks like 
 some beautiful, white sea plant in the garden of 
 Neptune. Sometimes the madrepores build fans, 
 sometimes vast, shapeless masses of work ; their 
 
 style includes several forms of architecture, and 
 they are, super-eminently, the great general con- 
 tractors among the travailletirs de la iner. 
 
 Fig. 3 is an illustration of the work of a musical 
 coral family, which works in long tubes. The draw- 
 ing shows the polypary of the Tubipora miisica, or 
 organ coral, so called from the tubes of which the 
 polypary is composed being 
 .ffV, '* ranged side by side like the 
 
 ^^ tubes in the organ. This is not 
 a common coral, though it may 
 be found in most tropical 
 waters, generally in a more 
 sheltered position than the ma- 
 drepores choose for their opera- 
 tions. Then there is the well- 
 known blood coral, of which we 
 give an illustration in Fig. 2, 
 which grows only in the Medi- 
 terranean, and especially about 
 the island of Sicily, and is 
 the work of the family Corti- 
 cata, or barked corals. These 
 creatures have a stony axis, 
 covered with a soft fleshy bark, 
 in which are embedded little 
 spicules of limestone, and 
 polyp cells dotted all over it. 
 This polj'pary is fixed on to some hard substance 
 on which it slowly grows. Its form and colour 
 are well known, for it is from this coral that brace- 
 lets, necklaces, and other coral ornaments are 
 made. The polypary, as imported, has grooves on 
 its surface running fore and aft, these having formed 
 channels of communication for the polyps during 
 their residence. This coral is of slow growth, and 
 never attains to any size, a speci- 
 men a foot in length being con- 
 sidered good. It is found at a depth 
 below the surface, in retired places, 
 and the seeking of it affords employ- 
 ment to many hundreds of people. 
 
 A very simple mode of obtaining 
 it is adopted off the coast of Sicily : 
 a large cross of wood heavily weighted 
 is let down into the sea, with a net 
 at each end, this apparatus being 
 3. dragged over the coral beds, breaks 
 
 off large pieces of coral, which get 
 entangled in the nets, and are thus secured. 
 
 There are many other families of coral animals, 
 but their history would be long to tell. The wonder 
 attaching to one attaches to all, and it is rather 
 with that than with the natural history of the crea- 
 tures that we have now to do. All alike bear 
 witness to the wisdom of Him who created them, 
 and who in their case, as in the case of babes 
 and sucklings, has ordained strength out of weak- 
 ness. They with all His works praise Him. 
 
78 
 
 THE WORLD OF -WONDERS. 
 
 — -♦ — - 
 
 Recent Microscopic Results.— By a micro- 
 scopic examination of the retina and optic nerve 
 of the brain, M. Bauer has found them to con- 
 sist of globules of ^iaggth to 2^3013'^ of '^f '"^h 
 diameter, united by a transparent fluid. The 
 achromatic microscope shows the hair to be in- 
 dented with teeth resembling those of a coarse 
 round rasp, but extremely irregular and rugged. 
 And these incline all in one direction, from the 
 origin of the hair towards its extremity ; so that 
 if a hair be drawn between the finger and thumb 
 from the end to the root, it will be distinctly felt to 
 give a greater resistance and a different sensation 
 to that which is experienced when drawn the oppo- 
 site way. By the aid of the microscope, shells can 
 be measured to the thousandth part of an inch. 
 Crystals can be obtained from an imponderable 
 quantity of a substance, and those so characteristic 
 that poisons can be thus detected when the substance 
 for examination is too small to be submitted to tests. 
 Sir David Brewster has detected, with a microscope, 
 a fine down of quartz the filaments of which could 
 not exceed the one-third of a viillionth part of an 
 inch. Professor Kelland has shown in Paris, on a 
 spot no larger than the head of a small pin, by 
 means of powerful microscopes, a specimen of 
 distinct and beautiful writing, containing the whole 
 of the Lord's Prayer written within this minute 
 compass. The microscope detects the invisible 
 ingredients which adulterate our food, our drink, 
 and our medicines. It tells the murderer that the 
 blood which stains him is that of his brother, and 
 not of the other life which he pretends to have 
 taken ; and, as a witness against the criminal, it, 
 on one occasion, appealed to the very sand on 
 which he trod at midnight. Hundreds of adulte- 
 rations have been discovered, the detection of 
 which was beyond the power of chemistry. Three 
 distinguished chemists arc known to have asserted 
 it was impossiljlc to detect the presence of chicory 
 in coffee ; whereas, by the use of the microscope, 
 the differences of structure in the two substances 
 can be promptly discerned, no matter to what 
 extent they may bo pulverised, mixed, or even 
 roasted. Professor Sorby's microscope detects the 
 most minute stains ; even of the millionth part of 
 a grain we can have the most perfect view. And 
 by the microscope it has been found that in certain 
 Bohemian schists there are fifty-one millions of 
 animalcules to the cubic inch, each skeleton 
 weighing no more than the two hundred millionth 
 part of a grain. 
 
 The Most Perfect Microscope.— In 1864, 
 an eminent microscopist expressed his conviction 
 that in the production of object-glasses with one- 
 twenty-fifth of an inch focus, the microscope, had 
 
 reached its utmost attainable limit of perfection. 
 He added that "it appears impossible to separate 
 or define lines more numerous than 90,000 in an 
 inch, on account either of the (.lecomposition of light, 
 or some other cause. It, therefore, seems beyond 
 our power ever to discover more of the ultimate 
 composition of bodies by means of the microscope." 
 Yet, an object-glass, with a one-fiftieth of an inch 
 focus, has since been made by Powell and Lea- 
 land. This object-glass possesses double the 
 power of the above, and defines with wonderful 
 distinctness particles which the latter cannot render 
 visible at all. It magnifies 3,000 diameters with the 
 low eye-piece ; or with a No. 5 eye-piece, 15,000 
 diameters — that is to say, in popular parlance, 
 1,575,000,000 of times. It must immensely in- 
 crease our knowledge of the lower organisms, and 
 may even aid our researches into the ultimate 
 constitution of matter. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE. 
 
 In the opinion of the alchemists, or those who prac- 
 tised the pretended art of making gold and silver, 
 all the metals are compound, the bases of them con- 
 taining the same constituents of gold, but mixed with 
 various impurities, which, being removed, the com- 
 mon metals were thought to assume the properties 
 of gold. The change was said to be effected by 
 what was called the " Philosopher's Stone," which 
 is described as a red powder, with a peculiar 
 smell. It was prepared by adding to the mercury 
 of the adepts, philosophical gold, which, being left 
 in a brooding furnace, becomes a black substance, 
 then a white body, and being long and more fiercely 
 heated, becomes yellow, and, finally, bright red. 
 Now, the .Stone so prepared could hardly have been 
 anything but an amalgam of gold, which, if pro- 
 jected into melted lead or tin, and then cupcllated 
 (purified), would leave all the gold that existed 
 previously in the amalgam. It might, therefore, 
 have been employed by impostors to persuade the 
 ignorant that it was merely the Philosopher's Stone ; 
 but the alchemists who prepared the amalgam 
 could not be ignorant that it contained gold. Yet, 
 although the existence of the Stone was regarded 
 for centuries as a fact, no one pretended to pos- 
 sess it ; each adept only maintaining that it was 
 in the possession of another. Roger Bacon, the 
 " Friar Bacon " of the story books, believed in 
 the production of the Philosopher's Stone ; and 
 Arnold de Villcneuve professed that he could 
 increase the Stone at pleasure. In 1455, Henry VI. 
 granted patents and commissions to find out the 
 Philosopher's Stone, " to enable the king to pay all 
 the debts of the crown in re.il gold and silver." 
 No gold, of course, was ever made, but the king 
 had a forge or smithy built for practice in Pall 
 
WONDERS OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
 
 79 
 
 Mall, on the site of the first Carlton House. Ripley, 
 the alchemist, wrote on " the twelve gates " leading 
 to the discovery of the Stone in 1470, but he re- 
 pented his wasted life, and begged all men would 
 burn his books, which were "false and vain." 
 Basil Valentine, the German monk, was of opinion 
 that the metals were compounds of salt, sulphur, 
 and mercury, and that the Philosopher's Stone was 
 composed of the same ingredients. Cornelius 
 Agrippa joined the French alchemists in searching 
 for the Stone, as did Paracelsus in his youth, but 
 he died in poverty when young. Dee and Kelly 
 sought for the stones. Boyle and Sir Isaac Newton 
 joined in a process for " multiplying gold," for which 
 a company was established in London. Leibnitz 
 joined a society of Rosicrucians in Nuremburg, in 
 the pursuit of the Philosopher's Stone. Bergmann, 
 the chemist, relates a number of cases in which 
 gold was supposed to be formed by the use of the 
 Philosopher's Stone ; though they were the result 
 of fraud by secretly introducing into the crucible 
 gold, pretended to have been obtained by trans- 
 mutation. Sometimes crucibles were made with 
 a false bottom, gold or silver being concealed at 
 the real bottom ; when, heat being applied, the 
 false bottom disappeared and the gold or silver 
 was found at the bottom of the crucible. Some- 
 times gold or silver were introduced in charcoal — 
 the hole stopped with wax — or in the hollow rods 
 with which the crucible was stirred, the end being 
 closed with wax. A common exhibition was to dip 
 nails into a liquid, and take them out half converted 
 into gold. These nails were one-half gold and one- 
 half iron, the gold being covered with something 
 to conceal its colour, which the liquid removed. 
 Roger Bacon believed the Stone sufficed to trans- 
 mute a million parts — according to Raymond Lulle, 
 a thousand billions of parts— of a base metal into 
 gold. Basil Valentine states its power at only 
 seventy parts ; and Dr. Price, the last alchemist, 
 only thirty to sixty parts of the base metal into gold. 
 There lived at Wilton, in Aubrey's time, "a great 
 chemist," who had spent his fortune in long search 
 for the Stone : — " After his death," says Aubrey, 
 " they found in his laboratory there two or three 
 baskets of egg-shells, which, I remember, Geber 
 saith is a principal ingredient of that Stone." 
 Ashmole, the antiquary, tells us that, in 1653, 
 " Father Backhouse '' told him in syllables the 
 true matter of the Philosopher's Stone, which he 
 bequeathed to him. 
 
 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in a letter dated 
 January, 1717, records that " at Vienna there was 
 a prodigious number of alchemists. The Philo- 
 sopher's Stone is the great object of zeal and science ; 
 and those who have more reading and capacity than 
 the vulgar, have transported their superstition (shall 
 I call it .') or fanaticism from religion to chemistry. 
 This pestilential passion has already ruined several 
 
 great houses. There is scarcely a man of opulence 
 or fashion that has not an alchemist in his service ; 
 and even the emperor is supposed to be no enemy 
 to this folly in secret, though he has pretended 
 to discourage it in public." Nevertheless, some 
 benefits have accrued to mankind from the ancient 
 practice of an art which is now considered a low 
 delusion and imposture. The books of the alche- 
 mists show the effects of experiments ; and though 
 they were guided by false views, they made most 
 useful researches, and thus laid the foundation of 
 experimental science and modern chemistry. Two 
 centuries ago, Sir Thomas Browne regarded alche- 
 mical studies as the cradle of chemistry. 
 
 — « — 
 
 The Dodo. — The drfdo is one of the curiosities 
 of natural historj', on account of the entire extinc- 
 tion of the bird, and the paucity of its remains. Till 
 a short time ago, nothing but a few fragments of its 
 'bones, and those scattered through several museums, 
 were known to exist. In November, 1866, however, 
 a collection of bones, discovered in the island of 
 Mauritius, was received by Professor Owen. These 
 comprised no fewer than a hundred bones and 
 fragments, which had apparently belonged to four 
 or five dodoes, somewhat differing from each other 
 in size. The dodo was undoubtedly a pigeon, but 
 it was flightless, and its structure was modified in 
 conformity with this circumstance. It was some- 
 what larger than a turkey-cock, and the above 
 discoveries completely authenticates the well-known 
 portrait of the dodo, which hangs in the British 
 Museum. It was addicted, in some measure, to 
 animal food, and it was doubtless this fact that 
 made its flesh less palatable to the Dutch settlers' 
 of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, than 
 they found that of the pigeon. Sir Thomas Browne 
 speaks of a specimen of the dodo exhibited in a 
 show ; he adds, that its keeper used to point out 
 a heap of pebbles, some of which were as large as 
 nutmegs, and which, he said, the creature ate. 
 
 Fecundity of Life in the Sea. — Schleiden, 
 in speaking of the prodigious fecundity of aquarian 
 life, says : " We marvel at the hen, which will lay 
 200 eggs in the year, but the eggs of a fish must be 
 counted by hundreds of thousands. In every 
 mouthful, the whale swallows thousands of the 
 tiny mollusc, Clio borealis, which forms its chief 
 nourishment. Frequently on the coast of Green- 
 land, the sea is coloured for ten or fifteen miles in 
 breadth, and 1 50 to 200 miles in length, with tiny 
 Medusce. A single cubic foot contains 110,592 of 
 these animals, and such a streak of colour must 
 contain at least 1,600,000,000,000 of them !" Among 
 specimens of the animal and vegetable life at the 
 
So 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, in soundings along 
 the telegraph plateau, were found Forayninifera — 
 beings which secrete many chambered shells, each 
 the habitation of a group of individuals so minute 
 as to require the highest powers of the microscope 
 to perceive them. 
 
 (Sffetts rrf J'rost. 
 
 When water solidifies, or freezes, it expands, and 
 for this reason water-jugs and bottles, as well as 
 the leaden supply-pipes, are often broken in severe 
 weather by the formation of ice within them. The 
 explanation of this is as follows. The water in the 
 vessel freezes at the top, a b. No injury is done 
 because there is nothing to hinder the expansion 
 upwards. But if it freezes again to the depth o{ c 
 
 or d, until the ice becomes so thick that it is more 
 capable of resisting the expansive force than the 
 glass or earthenware of which the vessel is com- 
 posed, the latter will break. As an illustration of 
 the greatness of this expansive force, we borrow 
 the following facts from Cazin's " Treatise on 
 Heat," recently translated from the French b)' 
 E. Rich. , 
 
 An artillery officer at Quebec made an experi- 
 ment during a hard winter, by filling a bomb-shell, 
 about fourteen inches in diameter, with water, and 
 then closing the opening with an iron peg, which 
 was driven firmly in. This being exposed to the 
 severe frost, the stopper was driven out to a 
 distance of more than loo yards, and a cylinder 
 of ice, eight or nine inches long, came out of the 
 opening. In a second experiment of the same ; 
 kind, the stopper resisted the expansive force ; but 
 the shell itself was rent, and a ring of ice was : 
 forced through the crack all round the shell. 
 
 In the same manner houses have been overthrown 
 by the expansive force of frost in the earth causing 
 the ground to swell up. Stones will break in con- 
 sequence of the water they contain freezing, and 
 trees have split up with an explosive sound on 
 occasions of sudden cold occurring when their 
 vessels have been full of sap. 
 
 An interesting experiment on the expansion of 
 
 ice, was made by the Rev. Frederick Gardiner, 
 and communicated to the American Journal of 
 Science, vol. xl., 1865. The Kennebec River, 
 near the town of Gardiner, is about 700 feet wide ; 
 the water is very fresh for many miles below, 
 and the average ebb and flow of the tide is five 
 feet ; the depth of the water varies, according ta 
 the locality and state of the tide, from seventeen 
 to twenty-five feet. In the course of the winter, 
 the ice is always observed to crowd ashore, crump- 
 ling up in ridges on the flats, and near the edge 
 of the channel. This process was well advanced 
 when Mr. Gardiner commenced his experiment 
 on the 6th of February. A row of stakes was 
 planted in the ice, by boring holes through to the 
 water, at distances of about 100 feet apart, avoid- 
 ing a very near approach to the shore. The distance 
 between the eastern and western stakes was 500 
 feet. On March the i8th, it was found that the 
 easternmost stake had advanced 12 j inches, and 
 the westernmost stake I2i feet, making a total 
 expansion of the ice between a distance of 509 
 feet, not less than 13 feet 2% inches in forty days. 
 
 Leeches in Ice.— The. common leech is said to 
 be capable of resisting the effects of a low tempera- 
 ture to a wonderful degree. It is said that once a 
 group of these animals left accidentally in a closet 
 without a fire, during the severe frost of the year 
 i8i5, not only survived, but seemed to have expe- 
 rienced no injury, although they had been embedded 
 in a solid mass of ice for many days. — Howard oji 
 Climate. 
 
 Preservative Properties of Frost. — Dr. 
 Scoresby, the celebrated Arctic traveller, states that 
 all animal substances, fish excepted, may be pre- 
 served in Greenland for any length of time without 
 being smoked, dried, or salted. Beef, mutton, pork, 
 and fowls, the latter neither plucked nor drawn, 
 are constantly taken out from the northern islands 
 of Scotland, and preserved in this way. When 
 used, the beef is divided by a saw ; it is then thawed 
 in cold water, and, if cooked when it is three, four, 
 or five months old, will frequently appear as profuse 
 of gravy as if it had been recently killed. A further 
 antiscptical effect is produced by the cold on animal 
 and vegetable substances, so as to preserve them, 
 if they remain in the same climate, unchanged for 
 many years. Wood has been met with in Spitz- 
 bergen which has resisted all injury from the 
 weather during the lapse of a century. A French 
 writer quoted by Dr. Scoresby relates, also, that 
 the bodies of seven Dutch seamen, who perished in 
 Spitzbergen in 1635, were found twenty years after- 
 wards by some sailors who happened to land about 
 the place where they were interred, in a perfect 
 state, not having suffered the smallest degree of 
 putrefaction. 
 
WONDERFUL RELICS. 
 
 8l 
 
 THE OLDEST HUMAN RELIC IN THE WORLD. 
 
 Manbn-ful %dus. 
 
 THE OLDEST HUMAN RELIC IX THE WORLD. 
 
 In the Etruscan Vase Room at the British Museum 
 is to be seen the skeleton of one Pharaoh Mykc- 
 rinus, decently encased in its original burial-clothes, 
 and surrounded by fragments of the coffin, where- 
 on the name of its occupant can be easily read by 
 Egyptologists, affording conclusive evidence that 
 it once contained the mummy of a king wlio was 
 reigning in Egypt more than a century before the 
 time of Abraham. The proof is thus explained 
 in the Gentleman's Magazine, April, 1866. About 
 two years ago, Herr Diimichen, a German explorer 
 of the monuments of Egypt, following up the in- 
 dications pointed out by M. Mariette, a distin- 
 guished archaeologist, discovered on the buried 
 walls of the temple of Osiris, Abydos, a large 
 tablet containing the names of the ancient Pharaohs 
 from the time of Mizraim — the grandson of Noah, 
 and founder of the Egyptian monarchy — to 
 that of Pharaoh Seti I., the father of the well- 
 known Rameses the Great, including thereby the 
 chronology of nine centuries — viz., from B.C. 2300 
 to B.C. 1400. This tablet, by far the most im- 
 portant yet discovered, has been compared to the 
 sculptured figures of the kings of England, at the 
 Crystal Palace, from William the Conqueror to 
 Her Majesty Queen Victoria. Astronomical evi- 
 1 1 
 
 I dence, moreover, enables us to determine the tima 
 \ of two important epochs in the history of Egypt, 
 I one of which is connected with our present subject. 
 -Sir John Herschcl has fixed the age of the Great 
 Pyramid of Ghizch to the middle of the twenty- 
 second century B.C. The tablet of Abydos shows 
 that the Pharaoh whose bones we now possess 
 succeeded the builder of the Great Pyramid with 
 only two intervening kings. We are, therefore, war- 
 ranted in assuming that the remains of Pharaoh 
 M\kerinus belong to the age to which we have 
 assigned them. 
 
 Egyptian Bricks.— The bricks of Egypt are 
 among the most interesting relics of antiqi;ity, 
 preserved, as it seems, in an imperishable form. 
 j Professor Unger has examined a brick from the 
 I pyramid of Dashour, which dates from between 
 3400 and 3300 B.C., and has found embedded among 
 the Nile mud or slime, chopped straw, and sand of 
 which it is composed, remains of animal and 
 vegetable forms, and of the manufacturing arts, 
 entirely unchanged. So perfectly, indeed, have 
 they been preserved in the compact substance of 
 the brick, that little or no difficulty is experienced 
 in identifying them. By this discovery we are 
 made acquainted with wild and cultivated plants, 
 which were growing in the pyramid-building days ; 
 with fresh water shells, fishes, remains of insects, 
 and so forth ; and a swarm of organic bodies, which, 
 for the most part, are represented without alterar 
 
82 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 tion, in Egypt at the present time. Besides two 
 sorts of grain — wheat and barley — were found 
 the field pea and the common flax, the latter 
 having, in all probability, been cultivated as an 
 article of food, as well as for spinning. The relics 
 of manufacture consist of fragments of burnt tiles, 
 of pottery, and a small piece of twine, spun of flax 
 and sheep's-wool, significant of the advance which 
 civilisation had made more than 5,000 years ago. 
 The presence of the chopped straw confirms the 
 account of brickmaking as given in Kxodus and 
 by Herodotus. 
 
 Montin-s of Pumaniti). 
 
 J0.SEPH Clark., THE Extraordinary Posture- 
 Maker. — Joseph Clark, of Pall Mall, was undoubt- 
 edly the most extraordinary posture-maker that ever 
 existed. Though a well-made man, and rather 
 gross than thin, w^e learn from Caulfield's " Memoirs" 
 that ho exhibited in a most natural manner almost 
 every species of deformity and dislocation. He 
 frequently made himself merry with the tailors, 
 often sending for one of them to take his measure, 
 but so contriving as to have an immoderate rising 
 on one of his shoulders. When his clothes were 
 brought home and tried upon him, t'ao deformity 
 was removed to the other shoulder ; upon which 
 the tailor begged pardon for the mistake, and 
 mended it as fast as he could. But upon a third 
 trial he was found with perfectly straight shoulders 
 and a hump on his back. He dislocated the ver- 
 tebras of his back and other parts of his body in 
 such a manner that Molins, the famous surgeon, 
 before whom he appeared as a patient, was shocked 
 at the sight, and would not attempt a cure. He 
 often passed for a cripple with persons with whom 
 he had been in company but a few minutes before. 
 Upon these occasions he would not only change 
 the position of his limbs, but entirely alter his 
 countenance. His facial powers were more extra- 
 ordinary than his flexible body. He would assume 
 all the uncouth faces he saw at a meeting or place 
 of amusement. 
 
 A Man who Lived Twenty Days on Water. 
 — About the year 1724, one John Ferguison, of 
 Kilmelfoord, in Argyleshire, having over-heated 
 himself on the mountains in pursuit of cattle, in that 
 condition drank to excess of cold water from a 
 rivulet, and then fell asleep on the bank. He awoke 
 in about twenty-four hours in a high fever, and from 
 that time could retain no kind of aliment, except 
 water, and clarified whey, though he had the latter 
 but seldom. Archibald Campbell of Ineverliver, to 
 whom this man's father was tenant, carried him 
 to his own house, locked him up in a chamber for 
 twenty days, and supplied him himself with fresh 
 water, to no greater quantity a day than an ordinary 
 
 man might use for common drink ; and at the 
 same time took particular care that it should not 
 be possible for his guest to supply himself with any 
 other kind of food without his knowledge ; yet, 
 after that time he found no alteration in his vigour 
 or visage. — PJiilosopliical Transactions, 1742. 
 
 Restoration of Animal Life. — Dr. Pecklin 
 relates, in the Philosophical Transactions, 1676, 
 an extraordinary instance of a Swedisli gardener 
 who, some years previously, endea\-ouring to help 
 another who had fallen into the water under the 
 ice, fell into it himself, into the depth of eighteen 
 Swedish ells. Here, afterwards, he was found 
 upright, with his feet on the ground, and was 
 drawn up after he had remained there for the 
 space of sixteen hours. He was wrapped closely 
 in linen and woollen clothes, to keep the air from 
 suddenly rushing upon him ; he was then lain in a 
 warm place, rubbed and rolled, and then given 
 some spirits to drink. By this means he was at 
 length restored to life, and shown to the queen- 
 mother of -Sweden, who gave him a >carly pension, 
 and showed him as a prodigy to divers persons of 
 quality. This narrative was confirmed by the 
 famous Dr. Langelot, who himself received the par- 
 ticulars in Sweden so well attested, " that nothing," 
 says Dr. Pecklin, " can be required more to prove 
 a historical truth." 
 
 WONDERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY. 
 
 The photographic art has been brought so com- 
 pletely within reach of the public, that any one who 
 can spare sixpence may possess a specimen of it. 
 This familiarity with its wonderful results, however, 
 co-exists with much ignorance of its methods, and 
 of what may be called its more curious or recondite 
 capabilities. 
 
 As an illustration of the popular ignorance about 
 photography, take an instance recorded three or 
 four years ago. A thief went ostensibly to have 
 his photograph taken, but really to see what he 
 could steal. He seized his opportunity when the 
 photographer had retired to de\elop the plate, and 
 made off with a valuable lens, quite unconscious 
 of the fact that the few seconds he had sat facing the 
 camera had placed his jmrtrait in the hands of the 
 operator. Of course, the means of identifying him 
 speedily found its way into the hands of the police. 
 
 An ignorant mis:onception of exactly the op- 
 posite character was displayed a few years ago 
 in a then popular drama. The culprit is detected 
 in consequence of his having accidentally committed 
 his crime in front of a camera and lens, which a 
 photographer had by chance left in the place. The 
 author evidently entertained the strange notion 
 that in all places and under all circumstances, a 
 camera and lens would take a picture of what 
 
WONDERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY. 
 
 83 
 
 passed before them without the intervention of any 
 sort of human agency.* The reader may regard 
 this as a marvel of popular ignorance, just as worthy 
 in its way of being recorded as are the marvels of 
 human ingenuity. 
 
 In a similar way, the photographic art has 
 sometimes been credited with what it is altogether 
 beyond its power to accomplish. At various inter- 
 \als during the last seven years, there have been 
 extraordinary tales afloat of photographs taken 
 from the eyes of the dead, which revealed the last 
 scene impressed upon the retina. It was believed 
 by many that an infallible means of detecting 
 crime would thus be furnished, and that the mur- 
 derer would leave behind him an exact photographic 
 representation of himself and his evil deed in the 
 eye of his victim. It is hardly necessary to say 
 that this hope has been disappointed, and that 
 press writers have for some time ceased to repro- 
 duce the wonderful tale. 
 
 The expectation of seeing objects depicted in 
 their natural colours by photography has acted 
 lihe fascination on many minds, and it would seem 
 that the case is not altogether hopeless, though many 
 practical men doubt if the hope will ever be realised. 
 M. Claudet records that Becquerel and Sir John Her- 
 schel have both succeeded in impressing the image 
 of the solar spectrum, and even of coloured maps, 
 upon a silver plate prepared with chlorine. The 
 image, however, was not permanent. M. Niepce 
 de St. Victor went a step further. Taking for his 
 model a large doll, dressed up in the most brilliant 
 colours, he was able to repeat and vary his experi- 
 ments without the least fear of tiring out his sitter. 
 The result was, after surmounting many difficulties, 
 that he obtained a photographic picture of his 
 model, showing all the colours distinctly, but yet, 
 as ifsee)i through glass of a pale rose colour. To 
 look at the photograph was like looking at the doll 
 itself through such a medium. Still, the colours 
 are only a slight degree more permanent than those 
 of the spectra depicted by Becquerel and Sir John 
 Herschel. The picture has to be kept in the dark, 
 and only looked at now and then in the full light 
 of da)-. 
 
 In making the above experiments, M. Niepce 
 produced black and white in his pictures, which he 
 regards as a curious and interesting fact, since it 
 proves that black is not entirely the absence of 
 light, but is a colour of itself, producing its own 
 effects, as other colours do, by chemical action. It 
 is thought by some that this discovery is more 
 extraordinary than would be the production of all 
 the recognised colours in a photographic picture. 
 Dr. Calvert's Canton lectures may be referred to for 
 other experiments made with a view to the produc- 
 tion of photographs in natural colours. In a word, 
 
 • The Photogmfhic Jmminl, vol. !x., p. 13S. 
 
 the great point yet to be attained is to fix the 
 tints. 
 
 Another wonder of photography is the success 
 that has been achieved in taking photographs of 
 objects in motion. For example, a shot or a shell 
 has been depicted at the instant of its leaving the 
 cannon's mouth. By an ingenious mechanical 
 contrivance, the rate at which the shot travels can 
 be ascertained at the same time. 
 
 A paper was read by M. Claudet at the meeting 
 of the British Association in 1865, on "moving 
 photographic figures," and these have since been 
 popularised by the production of a toy called the 
 " Wheel of Life." The idea is, in fact, an old one. 
 The writer remembers a similar optical toy having 
 been in existence in his boyhood, but the superiority 
 of the movements of the little figures when produced 
 stereoscopically cannot be doubted. Nevertheless, 
 the idea of producing an appearance of motion 
 by the recurrence of certain images on the retina 
 is the same. The principle is simply this : — the 
 retma retains for a short time any impression made 
 upon it ; if, therefore, a second impression can be 
 produced before the first has died out, the two 
 combine to form an uninterrupted sense of vision. 
 Familiar instances of this law will occur to every 
 one. The appearance presented by the spokes of a 
 wheel in rapid motion ; the circle of fire produced 
 by a spark at the end of a stick, when the stick is 
 whirled round, are cases in point. It is only fair 
 to state that we are indebted to the ingenuity of an 
 American for the enjoyable manner in which the 
 Wheel of Life is now presented to the public. One 
 marvel, however, suggests another, and there is 
 reason to believe that our winter evenings will soon 
 be enli\'ened by another adaptation of the same 
 idea. A clever designer has prepared diagrams 
 which represent persons in the act of swimming 
 and skating, a cat springing upon a rat at the 
 moment of its disappearance down a hole, a ball 
 leaving a cannon's mouth, and fish swimming in a 
 stream. The most curious of these is the appear- 
 ance of men swimming. They are all alike seen 
 horizontally, the diagram being placed at the bottom 
 of the Wheel of Life as in a tray. 
 
 Mr. Alfred A. Pollock, in a communication to the 
 Photographic Journal a few months ago (No. 188, 
 p. 160), suggests a process by which a person in 
 motion could be photographed, and afterwards seen 
 in motion. His plan is a very simple adaptation of 
 the idea worked out in the Wheel of Life. Instead 
 of the usual negative, a number of plates, say fifty, 
 would be prepared on a disc, and the person whose 
 portrait is to be taken, having been focusscd as 
 usual, would be made to walk up and down between 
 certain threads properly fixed for his guidance. 
 The mechanical arrangement would be such as 
 to distribute the two steps of the subject over the 
 whole of the prepared plates at the same instant. 
 
§4 
 
 l^HE WORLD OF WOMDERS. 
 
 From the negatives so obtained, prints would be 
 taken in the usual way and mounted upon a re- 
 volving disc. Looked at through the slit in the same 
 manner as the figures of the toy described above, 
 the person photographed would be seen walking, 
 and the rate at which the disc revolved would regu- 
 late the speed of his walk. By this or even by a 
 simpler practical method, there can be no doubt 
 the public will soon be photographed in motion. 
 Already the London Stereoscopic Company have 
 succeeded in producing a marvellous little toy 
 called the Kinescope. This ingenious toy in out- 
 ward appearance resembles a lock, and it can be 
 worn suspended from the watch-chain like a charm. 
 You look through a small hole, and sec one or 
 
 OUR ANCESTORS' CANNON. 
 
 Well may we wonder when we see the marvellous 
 contrivances which our ancestors were pleased to 
 call their cannon ; still more may we wonder when 
 we read the accounts of what was done with them. 
 Here is a description of what must have been truly 
 wonderful pieces of artillery, used by Philip Van 
 Artevelde at the siege of Oudenarde in 1382. " They 
 with much labour placed on the hill of Oudenarde 
 a prodigiously great engine, twenty feet wide and 
 forty long, which they called a mutton, to cast 
 heavy stones and beams of timber into the town, 
 and crush everything they should fall on. They 
 had also, the more to alarm the garrison, fired a 
 
 ANCIE.Vr IIAND-CUNS. 
 
 more figures, which are set in motion by pressing 
 a pin. 
 
 The Magic Photograph recently brought out in 
 Paris and London, is contained in two envelopes. 
 White albumeniscd papers arc enclosed in one, and 
 in the other slips of blotting-paper of a correspond- 
 ing size. One of each of the pieces of paper having 
 been moistened with water, and the one laid upon 
 the other, a beautiful photograph is brought to 
 view on the albumenised surface. In fact, the 
 photograph has been printed in the usual way, and 
 then decolourised by a chemical agent, while the 
 blotting-paper has been prepared with another 
 agent, which only requires the addition of moisture 
 to enable it to restore the photographic image to 
 view. Professor Roscoe illustrated this subject at 
 the Royal Institution in March, 1868, when he 
 developed a latent image on the screen of a magic 
 lantern, so that the whole audience could see it. 
 
 bombard of a very great size, which was fifty feet in 
 length, and shot stones of an immense size. When 
 they fired off this bombard it might be heard five 
 leagues off in the daytime, and ten at night. The 
 report of it was so loud that it seemed as if all the 
 devils in hell had broken loose ! The Ghent men 
 made likewise another engine which they pointed 
 against the town to cast large bars of hot copper. 
 With such machines as cannons, bombards, sows, 
 and muttons, did the Ghent army labour to annoy 
 the garrison of Oudenarde." In 1383, when the 
 warlike Bishop of Norwich was laying siege to 
 Ypres, he made " a certain subtle bridge " with ^ 
 which to approach the walls, but the besieged, says 
 Walsingham, " threw from a certain gun (de quadam 
 gunna), a great stone which struck the bridge and 
 broke it, and killed some of its occupants." The 
 bishop had to raise the siege, and among his 
 belongings which could not be burned nor broken, 
 
OUk ANCESTORS' CANNON. 
 
 SS 
 
 and had to be left behind, were some "great guns 
 of immense price and value." 
 
 In another place we read of an earth cannon ; 
 which must have been more formidable to its 
 owners than to the epemy. Earth was scooped 
 out bore-wise to a certain distance in the ground 
 which was fortified by clay, heavy boulders and 
 other pieces of resistance, the earth barrel was 
 strengthened by rods or sheets of metal, and then 
 the charge was introduced, being fired by means of 
 priming which communicated with the lower end 
 of the cannon through a very long touch-hole. As 
 may easily be imagined such a weapon speedily 
 went into disuse. 
 
 The cannon used at Oudenarde and Ypres, and, 
 as some writers say, by the Englislx for the first 
 
 were used, and when they did hit anything it was 
 " a very palpable hit," for they weighed a hundred 
 and fifty and two hundred pounds, and being thrown 
 rather deliberately by the charge, lumped down 
 whole, without scattering. It was by a lucky cast 
 from one of the bombards above mentioned that the 
 Venetians toppled over a wall behind which Peter 
 Doria, the Genoese admiral was sheltered ; the wall 
 fell, killing the admiral with some twenty more, and 
 helped materially to end the state of siege. 
 
 Men were slow to improve their cannon, for the 
 gentlemen of the army looked upon them as base 
 weapons, unworthy the attention of knighthood, 
 and did not, therefore, study the science of artillcrv. 
 When engineers, whether knights or otherwise, did 
 give their attention to gunnery— and the French 
 
 time at the battle of Crecy, were made of metal, 
 iron or brass, hammered ; sometimes of iron and 
 copper plates with lead run between them. They 
 were not portable in the sense of being mounted on 
 carriages, but were literally planted in the ground, 
 which had to bear the blow of the recoil and must 
 often have been torn up by it. By the same token 
 they could not be pointed exxcpt in the direction 
 first given to them, so that if they were operating 
 against men or horses and these changed their 
 position, the cannon were placed hors de combat. 
 They could not have been of very material assistance 
 to the army using them, for the cannoniers of the 
 period were afraid to charge them when heated, and 
 they required moreover a long time to clean out and 
 reload. The Venetians in the war of Chioggia with 
 the Genoese in 1378, had two bombards which 
 they loaded over-night, and fired in the morning, 
 considering, though greatly pressed by the Genoese, 
 that they could not fairly call upon the bombards to 
 throw more than one shot per diem. -Stone shot 
 
 began to do so before any other people — they 
 learned to cast them, instead of welding them to- 
 gether in bars hooped round with strong encircling 
 bands ; they reduced the size of them, and they 
 fitted them upon carriages which made them at 
 once movable, and allowed of their being pointed 
 in any direction the gunner in charge might wish. 
 They substituted iron balls and bolts for stone shot, 
 and made both cannon Aid missile more handy 
 instruments than they had been. The large figure 
 in our drawing shows the form and make of a 
 bombard about the era of improvement. This 
 particular bombard was formerly at Bodiham 
 Castle, and is now among the collection of ancient 
 artillery at Woolwich Arsenal. From the muzzle 
 to the touch-hole it measures twenty-two inches, its 
 total length being forty-four inches ; the diameter 
 is fifteen inches and a quarter, and the weight six 
 i hundredweight. As will be seen, the ancient 
 1 bombard corresponded somewhat to the mortars of 
 ; modern warfare, and some of them were constructed 
 
86 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 on the principle of firing three or even nine shots at 
 once ; but the practice of shell firing does not seem 
 to have been known. 
 
 Wonderful as it may seem to us who pride our- 
 selves on our breech-loading and revolving fire-arms, 
 it is nevertheless true that many of the ancient 
 cannon and hand guns were breech-loaders, and 
 there arc specimens of muskets in the Tower at 
 the present moment, supposed to be of the time of 
 Henry VII., which are constructed on the principle 
 of a revolving chamber to a single barrel. 
 
 Our ancestors were \-ery slow to extend th-e 
 principle of fire-arms to manual weapons. The 
 English, who are said to have been the first to use 
 ordnance, did not have hand-cannons, culverins, or 
 hand-guns, as they were called, till a hundred and 
 thirty years after the battle of Crccy, and it was not 
 till Elizabeth's reign that the musket was substituted 
 for the bow and crossbow as the arm of the English 
 infantry. On page 84 is a drawing showing what the 
 hand-gun was like. Improvements were made in it 
 from, time to time, but for a long while the mus- 
 quetoon or other piece fired on a rest, and by means 
 of a blown match instead of flint or a percussion 
 lock, was the regular arm until after the time when 
 hacqucbuts, harquebuses, petronels, firelocks, ethoc 
 genus oinne, had become the arms of precision. 
 
 In noticing our ancestors' cannon we ought not 
 to omit mention of the petard, a favourite implement 
 of mediaeval warfare. The petard was a French 
 invention, first used in 1579, and was intended to 
 blow in the gates of towns which refused to admit 
 besiegers. It was a portable iron mortar, only 
 instead of being round it was flattened as to its 
 sides, being a sort of biffin amongst cannon. There 
 were small trunnions upon it with which to secure 
 it to walls or gates, and the ordinary size of the 
 petard was such that two men might carry it. 
 It was loaded with coarse powder well rammed 
 down, and there was a touch-hole with a long fuse 
 attached, i n the centre of the breech. This instrument 
 ■was carried by the enemy to the gate or wall which 
 barred progress, and there was fastened by means 
 of the trunnions, the fuse was then lighted, and when 
 it had burnt down the petard exploded, generally 
 blowing in the gate to which it was secured. Fancy 
 two men going quietly up to a town defended by 
 say two Snider rifles, for the purpose of hoisting the 
 gates thereof with a petard. Ahus avons change 
 tout ccla. 
 
 THE LOSS OF THE BIRKENHE.A.D. 
 
 Of all the wonderful instances of human courage 
 on record, there is none more striking than that 
 which is contained in the sad history of the loss of 
 the Birkenhead troop-ship. The Birkenhead was 
 an iron paddle-wheel steamer, one of the finest of 
 her class. She sailed from Queenstown, Ireland, 
 
 on the 7th of January, 1852, for the Cape of Good 
 Hope, and took out a detachment of the 12th 
 Lancers, and detachments of nine regiments of 
 the line. She made a fair and prosperous voyage, 
 sighted the Cape, and as she ran down the coast 
 her passengers looked forward to a speedy release 
 from the pleasant confinement of her decks. It was 
 a fine afternoon, the 25th of February — 
 
 *' The air was calm, and on the level brine 
 Sleek Panope witll all her sisters play*d . " 
 
 the Birkenhead was steaming at full speed towards 
 her goal, not dreaming of harm, and unconscious of 
 the proximity of danger. There were six hundred and 
 thirty-eight persons on board, including the ship's 
 company, and the wives and children of the soldiers. 
 
 Suddenly there was a blow that shook every one 
 of the ship's timbers, the Birkenhead \.xc\xOc>yQA. from 
 stem to stern, stopped, and began to sink. A rock, 
 unknown to navigators had found her out ; and, 
 having pierced her side, thrust up its pointed head 
 into the engine-room. There was alarm, but no 
 confusion. Instantly, as though they had been 
 waiting for the accident instead of waiting to go 
 ashore, the ship's officers and the officers of the 
 troops issued their necessary orders. The women 
 and children were taken on the upper deck, and 
 the soldiers were mustered there, while the sailors, 
 in obedience to the captain's commands, lowered 
 the ship's boats and made ready to go. 
 
 The boats being manned alongside, the women 
 and children were handed into them, with such of 
 the crew as were necessary to take them to the 
 shore. Few if any of the soldiers who saw their 
 beloved ones departing, were able to go in the boats, 
 for it was found that the utmost the boats could ac- 
 commodate without endangering the safety of their 
 occupants, was but 184 out of the total number of 
 638 on board. The land was near, only a few miles 
 distant; Simon's Bay, to which port ihc Birkenhead 
 was bound, was close at hand ; there was a chance 
 that the boats might return before the final catas- 
 trophe came, or help might come at any moment 
 from the port of destination. Some there might 
 have been who indulged in this hope, and who were 
 sustained by it till it was rudely dashed to pieces ; 
 but the majority of the men knew that escape was 
 all but impossible ; that before the boats could 
 return from their first trip, to say nothing of a 
 second, all would certainly be over. The force with 
 which the ship struck had been so great as to drive 
 the rock bodily into her; she was being pressed 
 down by the weight of the water that had rushed in, 
 and was showing signs of giving way amidships. 
 
 Not a murmur was heard from the soldiers as 
 they stood at their death parade, no hint was 
 there of unruliness, of selfishness, or complaint. 
 Witll death staring them in the face, the men felt 
 comfort in knowing that the women and children 
 
THE ALHAMBRA. 
 
 »7 
 
 were beyond the reach of harm. Some few solemn 
 words of consolation, but none of earthly hope, 
 were spoken by the colonel in command of the 
 troops, and the brave captain of the Birkenhead 
 was not slow to second him in bidding the men 
 resign themselves to their inevitable fate. .Soon the 
 fatal moment came. The good ship which lay so 
 badly wounded on the sharp spear that had pierced 
 her, could last no longer, she gave a few convulsi\e 
 throbs, there was a cracking and a rending, and 
 the Birkenhead parted in the middle, sinking in 
 two pieces on either side of the rock. Long ere the 
 boats could get back to her from the shore ; long 
 before the news of her disaster could be told at 
 Simon's Bay, the 454 bra\c men who had been un- 
 avoidably left in her had given up the ghost, had been 
 drowned in the sea or been devoured by the sharks. 
 
 — • — 
 
 Red .Snow. — This is a phenomenon which is 
 frequently observed in the Polar regions, and has 
 occasionally been met with in the Alps and in Scot- 
 land. Captain Ross discovered, on the shore of 
 Baffin's Bay, a range of cliffs extending for eight 
 miles, which were covered with red snow of a brilliant 
 hue, and sometimes as much as twelve feet in depth. 
 The cause of the appearance was a puzzle to men 
 of science as well as to the observers, until careful 
 examination with the microscope revealed that it 
 was due to the presence among the snow of a very 
 minute plant, which has been called by Sir William 
 Hooker Palniella nivalis. 
 
 Black Rain. — There are on record several in- 
 contestable instances of black rain having fallen, 
 among which the following may be mentioned : — 
 Professor Barker, in April, 1849, l^'d before the 
 Royal Dublin Society some observations on a 
 shower of black rain which had fallen around 
 Carlow and Kilkenny, and extended over an area 
 of more than 400 square miles. He presented to 
 the society a specimen which had been forwarded 
 to him, the person who had collected it mentioning 
 that at the time that it fell it was uniformly black, 
 and resembled ordinary writing ink. Dr. Barker 
 found, however, that after allowing it to stand for 
 a short period, the black colouring matter separated 
 from the water with which it had been mixed, ren- 
 dering the colour of the rain much lighter than at 
 first. This shower was preceded by such darkness 
 that it was impossible to read except by candle-light. 
 After this darkness had continued for some time, 
 a hail-storm occurred, attended with vivid light- 
 ning, but without thunder, and when this subsided 
 the black rain fell. On examinj.tion of the rain 
 just after it had fallen, it was found to have an 
 extremely fostid smell, and a very disagreeable 
 taste ; it left a stain upon some clothes on which 
 
 it had fallen, and cattle refused to drink it. A 
 similar shower occurred near Northampton in 
 July of the following year, and was thus described 
 by the Rev. J. T. Tryon, of Bulwick Rectory. It 
 fell about three or four o'clock in the afternoon, 
 rendering quite black the people's clothes on the 
 hedges, and those spread on the grass to dry ; also 
 giving to the water caught in tubs and vessels 
 from slated and tiled houses, almost the colour of 
 ink. Some rain which had fallen in the morning 
 had been perfectly clear, and the black rain appeared 
 to fall from one particular cloud. " It caused," 
 said Mr. Tryon, '• a black-lead froth at the top of 
 my tub, so that I myself collected three or four 
 bowls of such froth therefrom. Three da,\-s after, 
 two boys loading my wagons with clover were 
 rendered as black as chimney sweepers from the 
 black sediment the rain had left thereon. .M\' 
 shepherd's inexpressibles, up to the knees, were 
 rendered of the like colour after shepherding his 
 sheep, so that it appears the shower was not con- 
 fined to this parish." 
 
 Snow in the Ball-room.— The following 
 anecdote is told by Professor Dove, of Berlin, in 
 illustration of the production of snow by change of 
 temperature. On an extremely cold but starlight 
 night, a large company had assembled in a ball- 
 room in Sweden, which in the course of the evening 
 became so warm that some of the ladies fainted. 
 An officer tried to open a window, but found it was 
 frozen to the sill. He then broke a pane of glass, 
 and the rush of cold air from without produced a 
 fall of snow in the room. Its atmosphere was charged 
 with vapour, which, becoming suddenly condensed 
 and frozen, fell in the form of snow upon the astonished 
 dancers. 
 
 THE ALHAMBRA. 
 
 On a hill in the city of Granada, a principal town 
 in the Spanish province of Andalusia, stands an 
 extensive fortress known as the Alhambra, or " the 
 red castle." It is the old citadel of the town, 
 and was built by the Moors when they were the 
 masters of Spain. Designed for warlike and 
 defensive purposes only, it has no pretension to 
 architectural grandeur or effect. Its walls, which 
 average thirty feet in height and six feet in thick- 
 ness, are irregular in form, and composed chiefly of 
 loose stones cemented together, and faced with a 
 plaster coat. The area enclosed by this fortress is 
 very extensive. It is like a town in itself, having 
 its streets, its church, and convent ; and is said in 
 its palmy days to have afforded accommodation to 
 a garrison of 40,000 men. 
 
 Plain and rugged as is this structure in external 
 appearance, it is the casket which holds one of the 
 richest gems of the architecture of any age or 
 time. Within its walls are enclosed the remains of 
 
88 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 tha Moorish palace to which the name of " the 
 Alhambra " is generally applied, although it be- 
 longs properly to the fortress itself. This palace 
 was built in the thirteenth and fourteenth cen- 
 turies, and all the beauty and ingenuity of Arabic 
 art were lavished upon its construction. Upon 
 the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, it oc- 
 casionally became the residence of the Christian 
 sovereigns, and Charles V. designed to place 
 by its side another 
 palace, which should 
 eclipse the glories 
 of the art of the 
 infidel Moor. But this 
 building, although 
 it was commenced, 
 and some very fine 
 portions of it are 
 still in existence, was 
 never completed. Its 
 fragments were suf- 
 fered to decay when 
 Granada grew in dis- 
 favour as a residence 
 with the Spanish 
 monarchs, and, when 
 compared with the re- 
 mains of the Moorish 
 palace, they now 
 show to great dis- 
 advantage ; the con- 
 trast between the two 
 styles of art and tiie 
 nature of the work- 
 manship in each is 
 greatlyin favourof the 
 Moors. " The walls 
 of the Christian edi- 
 fice," says one writer, 
 "are defaced, the 
 paintings faded, the 
 woodwork is decayed, 
 and festoons of cob- 
 webs are seen hang- 
 ing from the ceiling. 
 Ill the works of the 
 
 Arabs, on the contrary, the walls remain unaltered,- 
 except by the injuries inflicted by the hand of man. 
 The colour of the paintings, in which there is no 
 mixture of oil, on removing the particles of dust, 
 appear to have preserved their brightness. The 
 beams and wood-work of the ceilings present no 
 signs of decay ; no spiders, flies, or other insects 
 are to be seen there. The art of rendering timber 
 and paints durable, and of making porcelain 
 mosaics, arabesques, and other ornaments, began 
 and ended in Western Europe with the Moorish 
 conquerors oi Spam. 
 
 The remains of the palace of the Aljic^mbra con- 
 
 TIIi: HAI.I. (jF the AliKNCKRRACF.S. 
 
 sist of entrance-arches, corridors, and courts, con- 
 structed chiefly of marble, and richly adorned with 
 arabesques. The Arabs were forbidden by their 
 religion to use the representation of living figures 
 or animals in their ornamental devices, which there- 
 fore took the shape of flowers and geometrical forms, 
 sometimes very fanciful in their natm^e. The term 
 arabesque was applied to this class of ornament, 
 after the race by which it was chiefly used. These 
 
 arabesque ornaments 
 were cast in moulds, 
 and joined with such 
 extreme nicety that 
 frequently no trace 
 of the point of junc- 
 tion can be detected. 
 They were coloured 
 in blue, red, and 
 gold, and the general 
 effect in such edifices 
 as the Alha'mbra 
 is so gorgeous that it 
 cannot be realised by 
 description. An excel- 
 lent idea of it, how- 
 ever, was given by the 
 Alhambra Court in 
 the Crystal Palace at 
 Sydenham, which was 
 a most artistic imi- 
 tation of the original, 
 botli in style and 
 material, although 
 on a smaller scale. 
 It is much to be re- 
 gretted that this beau- 
 tiful and costly repro- 
 duction of Moorish 
 art was defaced by 
 the fire which recently 
 occurred, and which 
 threatened its total 
 destruction ; but we 
 hope to see it restored 
 in its full beauty at 
 no distant day. 
 The style of the courts, &c., of the Alhambra, as 
 well as their elaborate decoration, are shown in our 
 engraving, which represents the saloon known as 
 the Hall of the Abencerrages, with its beautiful 
 stalactite roof, composed of 5,000 separate pieces, 
 fitting into each other with the greatest exactitude. 
 The hall takes its name from a Moorish family, the 
 last members of which were treacherously murdered 
 in this chamber. A mark, said to have been left 
 by their blood, is pointed out upon the marble 
 floor ; but sceptical people in later times have 
 declared that it is nothing but the deposit of water 
 impregnated with iron, 
 
WONDERFUL BELLS. 
 
 R9 
 
 WONDERFUL BELLS. 
 
 The history of bells is one of the most interesting 
 in the record of inventions. They were not always 
 made in the shape or of the material with which 
 
 we are most fami- 
 
 liar ; but of these 
 early forms we 
 have nothing to 
 sayjustat present. 
 Our business is 
 with bells in their 
 present shape, 
 and with them 
 only so far as they 
 are calculated to 
 excite our wonder 
 by their size or 
 tunefulness. 
 
 The earlier,; 
 church Ijells are 
 said to have 
 been used at 
 Nola in Campa- 
 nia, and it is to 
 this fact that the 
 Latin name for 
 a bell, campaiii'. 
 and our own am: 
 ■panilt', owe their 
 origin. They are 
 first heard of 
 about the year 
 400, before whicli 
 date rattles were 
 used. In the year 
 610 we hear of 
 bells in the city of 
 Sens ; the arin\ 
 of Clothaire. 
 king of France, 
 having been 
 frightened away 
 by the ringing 
 of them. In 960 
 the first peal of 
 bells was hung 
 in England, at 
 Croyland Abbey, 
 in Lincolnshire. 
 
 They were six in number. In those early times, 
 it was the custom to bless the church bells 
 by a sort of baptism ; after which it was be- 
 lieved they had power to dri\e away evil 
 spirits, avert tempests, and extinguish fire ; and 
 on many bells inscriptions are found, generally 
 in old Latin rhymes, which accord with this 
 belief. The great bell of Ghent, which played so 
 prominent a part in \\\f^ civil struggles in the I 
 
 THE CKEAT liELL AT MOSCOW. 
 
 Netherlands, and which bore the name of Roland, 
 was famous for an inscription of this nature. 
 
 Many years ago, it was estimated that there were 
 at least 2,262 peals of bells, great and small, in 
 England, viz : — 12 peals of 12 bells ; 50 of 10 ; 380 
 
 of 8 ; 600 of 6 ; 
 500 of 5 ; 720 of 
 4, 3, and 2. The 
 number now 
 must be very 
 much greater. 
 The single bells 
 that have become 
 celebrated on 
 .account of their 
 great size are 
 the following : — 
 -Moscow, the 
 largest bell in 
 the world, 432,000 
 lb. ; Moscow, 
 another, 288,000 
 lb. ; Moscow, a 
 thud, 127,836 lb.; 
 Big Ben, West- 
 minster, 56,000 
 lb. ; Rouen, the 
 George d'Am- 
 boise, 36,000 lb. ; 
 Oxford, Mighty 
 Tom, 17,360 lb. ; 
 Florence, Palaz- 
 zio Veccio, 17,000 
 lb.; Exeter, Great 
 Tom, 13,440 lb. ; 
 London, Saint 
 Paul's, Tojn 
 Growler, 11,230 
 lb. ; Lincoln, 
 GrcatTom, 10,528 
 lb. ; Canterbury, 
 clock bell, 7,840 
 lb. ; Gloucester, 
 clock bell, 7,280 
 lb. ; Beverley 
 Minster, clock 
 bell, 5,600 lb. 
 The bell at Flo- 
 rence, notwith- 
 standing its great 
 weight, is elevated 275 feet from the ground. Big Ben, 
 at Westminster, is raised to the height of nearly 200 
 feet. The enormous bell at Moscow, of which we 
 give an engraving, was presented to the cathedral 
 by the Empress Anne. In 1731, the beam to which 
 it was fastened was burnt, and this marvellous bell 
 falling, a fragment was broken out of it, leaving an 
 opening large enough to admit two persons abreast 
 without stooping. Its tone, however, was not affected. 
 
00 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 It has been thought that the custom of ringing 
 tunes upon bells was peculiar to England ; but, in 
 fact, the Cathedral of Antwerp, celebrated fbr its 
 magnificent spire, has a peal of ninety-nine bells, 
 on which the most elaborate music is played every 
 half-hour. 
 
 It is an interesting fact that ilio peal of bells in 
 the clock-tower of the old Royal Exchange was 
 chiming " There is nae luck aboot the house," when 
 the building was on fire, and fragments of the tune 
 were heard ^s one by one the bells fell from their 
 places into the ruins. 
 
 The following table shows the number of changes 
 that can be rung. Thus : — 
 
 ON A PRAL 
 
 OF 
 
 CHANGES, 
 
 ON 
 
 A PEAL OF 
 
 CHANGES. 
 
 2 bells 
 
 
 . . 2 
 
 
 8 bells . . 
 
 40,820 
 
 3 >. 
 
 
 . . 6 
 
 
 9 .. 
 
 362,880 
 
 4 ,» 
 
 
 . . 24 
 
 
 ID ,, . . 
 
 3,628,800 
 
 5 » 
 
 
 . . I02 
 
 
 II ,, . . 
 
 39,916,800 
 
 „ 
 
 
 . . 720 
 
 
 12 ,, . . 
 
 479,001,600 
 
 y >. 
 
 
 . . 5,040 
 
 
 
 
 The number of changes that can be rung on the 
 wonderful chime of ninety-nine bells at Antwerp we 
 forbear to estimate, as the breadth of our page would 
 far from suffice for the row of figures we should have 
 to set down. On these bells overtures are played 
 thyongli, and choice parts from operas, and, in a 
 word, the most elaborate of compositions. But 
 further, to convey an idea of the astonishing num- 
 bers we have here to contemplate, it would require 
 ninety-one years to ring through all the changes 
 on a peal of twelve bells, supposing ten changes, 
 that is, 120 sounds, to be struck every minute. 
 For the changes of fourteen bells, 16,575 years 
 would be required, and for twenty-four bells, be- 
 yond which number we refrain from proceeding, 
 117,000,000,000,000,000 years. 
 
 THE LAKE OF CIRKNITZ. 
 
 In Krain, among the Julian Alps, lies the celebrated 
 Lake of Cirknitz, the wonder and enigma of the 
 whole district. On the east of Adelsberg, where 
 the mysteries of the lower world lie concealed in 
 a hundred caverns among the chalk hills, may be 
 seen, like a mirror three square miles in extent, 
 the marvellously beautiful Lake of Cirknitz. Five 
 islands stud its surface, and on one of them stands 
 the village of Ottok. Several streams fall into it. 
 It is very rich in fish and water-fowl, and the whole 
 district in which it lies is romantically beautiful. 
 North of it tower the Slivinitza Mountains, to 
 its south and west the great Javornik. Its cir- 
 cumference augments when there has been much 
 rain, but after a drought its waters disappear into 
 the lower world, taking with them the fish and 
 the water-fowl. When this wonderful phenomenon 
 approaches, the inhabitants of the villages round 
 assemble in order to procure as much fish as pos- 
 sible while there is time. From hour to hour the 
 
 lake sinks lower, until a number of holes at the 
 bottom of the lake swallows up its waters. Sub- 
 terraneous openings of immeasurable extent, never 
 beheld by human eye, at length receive them, and 
 then they entirely disappear, and the bottom of the 
 lake looks up to the bright sky. It becomes dr)-, 
 and busy man mows grass where at other seasons 
 he has fished. He even sows crops, knowing well 
 that he will be able to grow buck-wheat and millet 
 there ; nay, he takes the gun instead of the fish- 
 ing-net, and obtains game. So that it is justly said 
 of this wonderful lake, that one can fish, hunt, and 
 reap on it. But the weather changes again, and 
 violent rains and tempests return. Then again 
 the waters rush up from their subterranean caverns. 
 The lower world throws up waves, fish, and water- 
 fowl, so that, in four-and-twcnty hours the lake is, 
 as it were, created anew. This singular phenomenon 
 is accounted for by the connection of the lake with 
 subterraneous openings, some on a higher, others 
 on a lower level than itself 
 
 HARTLEY'S COOLNESS AT GIBRALTAR. 
 
 Summer time in sunny Spain, and the great Rock 
 of Gibraltar reflecting the ardent ra)-s ; everything 
 barren, arid, scorched, and the heat insufferable, 
 in spite of the gentle breezes now and then wafted 
 from the blue Mediterranean — wafts of air in- 
 valuable, since they bore away the dense clouds of 
 smoke that hung about the face of the rock, filling 
 the casemates, and blinding the gunners with their 
 sulphurous fumes. For one of tlie great sieges to 
 which this fortress has been subjected was at its 
 height, and the jealous Spaniard eagerly watched 
 for an opportunity of dislodging the gallant islanders 
 who held that portion of his soil. The business of 
 the siege progressed. The rock by the batteries 
 sent forth its splinters to deal destruction around 
 at every impact of the Spanish shot ; but the return 
 fire was of the most telling description, and most 
 steadily kept up, our men feeling proud of the 
 opportunities given for silencing the guns of the 
 Don. 
 
 But removed from the smoke and din, in the 
 laboratory of the garrison, surrounded by the 
 chemistry of war, sat one man, a humble private 
 of artillery. His it was, while his comrades worked 
 the guns in the suffocating casemates of the covered 
 batteries, to prepare the shells for the use of the 
 mortars. A dangerous task ; so dangerous, in fact, 
 that even the examination of the deadly missiles is 
 considered sufficiently perilous on board ship to 
 warrant a stage being slung over the side, to be 
 occupied by only one or two men, the others being 
 kept at a distance. But familiarity with peril 
 robs men of their fear, and Hartley sat busily 
 making ready shell after shell, filling them with the 
 explosive composition, and afterwards fitting in the 
 
THE STEAM-HAMMER A\D THE AIR-ttAMMER, 
 
 01 
 
 fuses, driving them home, and ranging the pre- 
 pared shells in cases till they should be fetched, to 
 be sent in fiery arcs to deal death and destruction 
 amongst the enemy. 
 
 The laboratory was at that time full of explosive 
 material, every grain of which was of inestimable 
 value to the beleaguered garrison ; and it had 
 been accordingly placed in a position which ren- 
 dered it impossible for the shot or shell of the 
 enemy to reach it. But now the danger guarded 
 against from without threatened, if possible, more 
 terribly from within — threatened to destroy at one 
 blow the whole of the explosive compounds stored 
 for defence, and this at a time when such a loss 
 would have been irreparable. Shell after shell 
 had been filled, the grim black spheres, as they 
 lay ready, giving but small signs of their deadly 
 power — the force that should rend them into in- 
 numerable shards of cast-iron, each to maim or slay. 
 Suddenly, while calmly proceeding with his work, 
 and driving a fuse into a fresh-filled shell, the fuse 
 took fire, hissing loudly as it discharged its rain of 
 sparks, and burning rapidly away. There seemed 
 hardly time for thought, much less for action, and the 
 first feelings of Hartley were those of blank dismay. 
 He had seen the discharge and flight of shells 
 so often, that he knew he could only reckon upon 
 its burning for seconds ; and then would come the 
 dire explosion that should act upon the part of 
 the fortress where he was like an earthquake — the 
 bursting of the shell being, as it were, but the flash 
 in the pan that should prelude the blowing up of 
 the laboratory. But with the calmness of a man 
 whose trade was one which brought him daily face 
 to face with death. Hartley seized the shell in 
 both hands, hurried out into the open air, and 
 then with a tremendous effort hurled the deadly 
 globe far into space, where, a couple of seconds 
 after, it harmlessly burst. It was not until some 
 time had elapsed, that the performer of this 
 daring act could thoroughly realise the great 
 danger that had threatened him with destruction ; 
 and though the peril was now past, it was some time 
 after, and then only with unstrung nerves, that he 
 returned to his perilous task, probably never for a 
 moment thinking, in his humility, that his had 
 been an act which history would hand down to 
 posterity. 
 
 Taming a Spider.— The Abbe d'Olivct, author 
 of the Life of Pelisson, inserted in the History of 
 the French Academy, relates the following anec- 
 dote : — " Confined at the time in a solitary place, 
 where the light of the day penetrated only through 
 a small slit, having no other servant or companion 
 than a stupid and dull clown, a Basque, who was 
 
 continually playing the bagpipes, Pelisson studied 
 to secure himself against an enemy which a good 
 conscience alone cannot always repel — I mean the 
 attacks of unemployed imagination, which, when 
 it once exceeds proper limits, becomes the most 
 cruel torture of a recluse individual. He adopted 
 the following stratagem : — Perceiving a spide" spin- 
 ning her web at the aperture before-mentioned, he 
 undertook to tame her, and to effect this he placed 
 some flies on the edge of the opening, while the 
 Basque kept playing on his favourite bagpipe. 
 The spider by degrees accustomed herself to 
 distinguish the sound of that instrument, and to 
 run from her hole and seize her prey ; thus, by 
 always calling her out with the same tune, and 
 placing the fliss nearer and nearer his own seat, 
 after several months' exercise he succeeded in 
 taining the creature so well that she would start 
 at the first signal to seize a fly at the farthest end 
 of the room, and even on the knees of the prisoner." 
 Maternal Instinct.— Early in August, 1868, a 
 fire occurred in Red Lodge Nursery, a mile and a 
 half from Southampton, and burnt about ten rods of 
 furze. There was no wind at the time. When the 
 fire was extinguished, some labouring men noticed 
 that a little plot of heath in the centre of where 
 the fire had been was not burnt, and that the 
 fire had burnt everything round the heath, and 
 had approached close to it. In looking about, 
 the men discovered a pheasant's nest contain- 
 ing six eggs among the heath. A few hours 
 afterwards the pheasant was seen sitting on the 
 eggs. Some time after, the nest was visited, and 
 the parent bird was absent, but the eggs were nearly 
 hatched. When the nest was again visited, the 
 pheasant had hatched the eggs, and carried off the 
 young birds. It is remarkable that the heath was 
 not burnt, as it was perfectly dr)-, and it is belie^-ed 
 that the pheasant had, by flapping her wings, kept 
 the fire off. — Times, Aug. 6, 1868. 
 
 THE STEAM-HAMMER AND THE 
 
 AIR-HAMMER. 
 
 The Steam-hammer has now become indis- 
 pensable in every engineering workshop, and its 
 introduction marks a new period in the history 
 of mechanical progress. It was invented by 
 James Watt and Deverell, and patented nearly 
 half a century ago ; next, Mr. Nasmyth designed 
 and applied at Patricroft Works the self-acting 
 motion, so as to complete the steam-hammer in its 
 present compact and manageable form ; and the 
 circumstances of the invention and improvement 
 are proved by the testimony of Mr. Gaskell and 
 D. W. Fairbairn, as stated in the Mining Journal. 
 In this extraordinary implement or tool, a heavy 
 block of cast iron, sometimes five tons in weight, 
 and attached to the lower end of a piston-rod 
 
92 
 
 THE WORLD OF WOxNDERS. 
 
 working in an inverted cylinder, is lifted by admit- 
 ting the steam beneath the piston, and then allowed 
 to fall upon the work by its own weight ; by a little 
 management it may also be made to slide up and 
 down without striking at all. The hca\iest work is 
 forged under the blow of this ponderous hammer, 
 which acts with an energy that the strength of iron 
 cannot withstand ; yet it is kept in such control 
 that a nut-shell may be cracked, or an egg-shell 
 chipped, as easily as iron beams are welded or 
 shaped. By means of this machine a pile can be 
 driven into the ground in four minutes that pre- 
 viously required for the operation twelve hours. 
 The saving of time thus effected is as one to 
 r,8oo ; and it is impossible to express more strik- 
 ingly the power of this wonderful tool. Several 
 steam-hammers of from four to ten hundredweight 
 are now working at .Sheffield, with which 500 or 
 600 blows per minute can be struck if required. 
 Mr. Nasmyth has also produced a steam-engine, 
 somewhat pyramidal in form, which is greatly 
 used in steam-ships ; he has invented a planing 
 machine, known as "Nasmyth's steam-arm ;" he 
 has made a circular cutter for toothed wheels ; 
 and with a fine telescope of his own making, 
 he has made out that the bright surface of the 
 sun consists of separate insulated individual 
 objects or things, all nearly of one definite size, 
 and in shape something like a willow-leaf. Sit 
 John Herschel describes this as a most wonderful 
 discovery. 
 
 In the Air-hammer, compressed air is employed 
 as the moving power in the place of steam, in Mr. 
 Nasmyth's implement. The machine consists of a 
 force-pump, supplying compressed air to a reservoir, 
 and a working cylinder and piston similar to those 
 of a steam-hammer, having mechanism for varying 
 the action of the liammer as required, and increas- 
 ing the rapidity of the blows, ^^•hich may attain a 
 maximum of 800 strokes per minute. One of the 
 largest air-hammers \et put to work has a cylinder 
 eight and a half inches in diameter, with a stroke of 
 twenty-eight inches ; and the pressure may be 
 adjusted to any amount, from five pounds to 
 forty pounds per square inch. Grimshaw's high- 
 speed compressed air-hammer is now employed in 
 Birmingham for various stamping and_ forging 
 purposes ; at Glasgow for coppersmiths' work, and 
 at Sheffield for steelwork. 
 
 TROPICAL VEGETATION. 
 
 It is hardly possible for one who has not visited 
 the tropics to imagine the wonders of tropical vege- 
 tation. The most faithful picture, the most finished 
 photograph, give but an idea of what it really is ; 
 and the ablest description is but a word-paint- 
 ing in which the \ariety of hues, the graduated 
 
 shades of colour, the immensity of size, and the 
 grandeur of the reality are more or less wanting. 
 There is not anything in this country with which 
 to compare the richness of the tropical growth ; 
 .md lovely as are the tints in a wide-spread Englisli 
 landscape, they arc as nothing in point of splendour 
 to those of the tropical scene. Accessories of sun, 
 sky, and temperature, which there serve to bring 
 the principal into greater prominence, are repre- 
 sented here only in an inferior degree. 
 
 Particular reasons, connected with a great rain- 
 fall and with the size and number of the rivers, 
 render the South American continent luxuriant 
 above most other places in the quantity and rich- 
 ness of its vegetation. From the shore of the Gulf 
 of .Mexico to the frontier of Chili, there is a wanton- 
 ness of growth which is truly wonderful. Had not 
 man carved out a place for himself, the huge forests 
 which now cover league after league of ground 
 would have stretched down to the water's edge, 
 and filled the whole land with their branches. As 
 it is, they oppose a resistance to man's advance, 
 surmountable only by the most untiring energy ; 
 and wherexer they have an opportunity, they begin 
 afresh in any spot which is temporarily left uncul- 
 tivated. 
 
 What a scene is presented to one who would 
 penetrate the borders of a forest whereon the hand 
 of man has not been laid ! Such forests might be 
 found in the Old World, but it is in the New that 
 they are found in the greatest perfection. The fore- 
 ground is taken up by vast families of many kinds 
 of shrubs, which the influence of the climate tends 
 to make gigantic ; the cactus and prickly pear 
 unite with the merciless " Spanish needle " to form 
 a hedge through which no tiger could force his 
 way : ferns higher than a man's head join with the 
 many kinds of grasses to produce an impracticable 
 footway, in which lurk the cobra and the rattle- 
 snake, ferocious centipedes, the whole family of 
 scorpions, and the rest of the creatures which ware 
 doomed to wound man's heel. Lilje watch-towers 
 in the sea of vegetation, the wild plantain and 
 banana, the castor-oil plant, the India-rubber tree, 
 the wild grape, and the cotton shrub, stand out 
 above the level at which the jungle growth stops 
 short ; and creeping up aroimd them, the sweet 
 potato and the cassava intertwine their creepers. 
 A clump of mangrove bushes marks the spot where 
 water cannot soak through the saturated ground, 
 and the maize standing stiff in terra firma beyond, 
 shows the partial character of the swamj). The 
 lesser palms, the trumpet tree, the roseau cane, the 
 standard tig, and the cocoa shrub, are represented 
 at intervals here and there. 
 
 A path, cut out as through stonework in this 
 densest of thickets, leads to the border of the forest 
 itself, where the strong glare of the noonday sun 
 cannot enter, save in a suL.lucd form through 
 
TROPICAL VEGETATION. 
 
 93 
 
 SCENE IN A SOUTH AMERICAN FOREST. 
 
94 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 openings made by the fall of some forest giant, or 
 through the apertures occasioned by the freaks of 
 nature in the disposition of the trees. The same 
 shrubs, and grasses, and ferns, and creepers which 
 cover-cd the foreground and made it all but im- 
 passable, are here to be seen occupying the fruitful 
 ground, so tliat all spaces between the trees are 
 closely filled up, while in and out among their stems 
 climbers of enormous strength bind them together 
 and to the trees, covered with parasitic climbers. 
 Among the trees of the forest are almost all the 
 trees that grow, save those peculiar to the tem- 
 perate zone. The ironwood, the cedar, the locust 
 tree, the mastic, the satinwood, mahogany, bully 
 tree, and rosewood, with the various kinds of gum 
 tree and logwood, form the staple of the commu- 
 nity. The great chinchona tree, from the bark of 
 which quinine is drawn, heads a division of no 
 mean strength, while every variety of palm and 
 cocoa-nut rear their graceful and gigantic stems in 
 every spot where they can find an opening. So 
 thickly are these trees planted, so innumerable are 
 their allies, so closely are the interlacing branches 
 bound together, that the sky is visible in only a few 
 places. The full-page illustration which accom- 
 panies this article will convey to the reader as good 
 an idea as it is possible for a picture to give of the 
 gorgeous and luxuriant growth of these tropical 
 forests, with the trees covered with the richest blos- 
 soms, and interlaced with festoons of creepers and 
 parasitic plants. Among the gorgeous blossoms of 
 the hundreds of wild flowers th.-it embrace the trees, 
 liaply a scarlet snake or a whip snake may be seen 
 hanging from some branch, deceiving the traveller 
 by its blossom or tendril-like appearance, ready to 
 do him to death in the event of his coming within 
 reach. Animal life swarms in these forests with 
 amazing abundance. " Parrots of various species 
 and brilliant plumage ; birds innumerable, from 
 the scarlet flamingo to the tiny humming-bird, 
 nestle in every branch ; while the thickets swarm 
 with wild animals in such prodigious numbers, that 
 it appears hardly conceivable how they can all find 
 subsistence. Tigers, jaguars, tapirs, monkeys, wild 
 boars, deer, besides smaller quadrupeds, abound in 
 every direction ; and by a peculiarity very remark- 
 able, and unknown elsewhere, they all begin at the 
 same hour of the night to raise their respective 
 cries, and fill the forest with a chorus so loud and 
 dissonant that sleep is for hours impossible to the 
 wearied traveller. So imiversal and well known is 
 this custom, that the monks, in their journeys on 
 the shores of the Orinoco, before lying down, 
 pray ' for a quiet night and rest as other 
 mortals.' " 
 
 No words can convey any idea either of the 
 height or girth of the great trees. Twelve, eigh- 
 teen, twenty, and five-and-twenty feet, do some of 
 Jhe monsters measure round the waist, while for 
 
 height they may be compared to those hills where- 
 of Othello said that their "heads touch heaven." 
 Seventy, and even a hundred feet of clear stem, 
 without a branch — such is the measure of many of 
 them ; while it would be almost impossible to calcu- 
 late the quantity of wood contained in one great 
 tree and its branches. This is the aspect of 
 forests covering the ground for many hundreds 
 of consecutive miles, in parts of South America. 
 
 LAKE DWELLINGS. 
 
 Among the most interesting discoveries of recent 
 times are those relating to the subject of " pre- 
 historic man " — that is, to man as he lived in various 
 countries before our existing historical records were 
 compiled. Many remarkable facts in this direction 
 have been ascertained, although this branch of re- 
 search is as yet quite in its infancy. The " lake 
 dwellings" of ancient times form a prominent fea- 
 ture in these inquiries, and we shall briefly relate 
 the principal discoveries concerning them. 
 
 Strictly speaking, these lake dwellings are not 
 " pre-historic." The "father of history," Hero- 
 dotus, writing of the invasion of Thrace by Darius, 
 the Persian king, mentions an unsuccessful attempt 
 of one of his commanders to subdue the in- 
 habitants of Lake Prasias, which is found in the 
 present day in the Turkish province of Roumelia. 
 He says of the Prasians, " They inhabit dwellings 
 of the following construction : in the lake, strong 
 piles are driven into the ground, over which planks 
 are thrown, connected by a narrow bridge with the 
 shore. These erections were in former times made 
 at the public expense ; but a law afterwards passed, 
 obliging a man for every wife whom he should 
 marry (and they allow a plurality) to drive three 
 of these piles into the ground, taken from a moun- 
 tain called Orbelus. On these planks each man 
 has his hut, from every one of which a trap-door 
 opens to the water. To prevent their infants from 
 falling into the lake they fasten a string to their 
 legs. Their horses and cattle are fed principally 
 on fish, of which there is such abundance, that if 
 any one lets down a basket into the water, and steps 
 aside, he may presently after draw it up full of 
 fish.''* 
 
 This description by Herodotus, of a state of 
 things existing about 500 years B.C., had been re- 
 ceived, like many other of his narrations, with 
 incredulity, until recent investigation brought to 
 light the fact that precisely similar colonies had 
 existed abundantly in Europe before our history 
 commences. The manner in which the discovery 
 was first made is remarkable. 
 
 The winter of 1853-54 was an unusually dry 
 season, and the waters of the Swiss lakes wore in 
 
 * Herodtnis, Book V., Bcloe's translation. 
 
WONDERS OF MEMORY. 
 
 93 
 
 consequence very low. The residents on the Lake 
 of /Zurich thought they would seize the opportunity 
 to reclaim a portion of the land left dry by the sink- 
 ing of the waters ; and while the works necessary 
 for this object were in progress, a great quantity of 
 piles were discovered embedded in the lake. To- 
 gather with these piles were found portions of the 
 framework of wooden buildings, with a quantity 
 of rude implements, and the remains of food which 
 the inhabitants had consumed, such as bones, the 
 seeds of fruit, nut-shells, &c. Being deeply sunk in 
 the soft mud, these vegetable relics were in suf- 
 ficient preservation to be easily identified. 
 
 This discovery led to the careful examination of 
 the shores of other lakes in Switzerland, and it was 
 found that the evidences of these lake colonies 
 were so abundant as to lead to the conclusion that 
 they had formed the customary habitations of the 
 ancient Swiss tribes. The reason for their selecting 
 such a mode of life, it has been conjectured, was to 
 guard against the predatory attacks of enemies, as 
 the narrow strip of causeway leading from the 
 dwellings to the shore was capable of easy defence, 
 and may have been provided with something in the 
 nature of the drawbridges attached to the castles 
 and moats of the middle ages. 
 
 Very similar structures were used for defensive 
 purposes in Ireland and Scotland in recent times ; 
 and the remains of these " crannoges," as they are 
 called in the Celtic tongue, are common in the 
 lakes of both countries. It does not appear, how- 
 ever, that lake dwellings were grouped together 
 there, as in Switzerland, in such numbers as to 
 accommodate a population of some hundreds, but 
 rather that they were used merely as strongholds to 
 which the native chiefs could occasionally retreat 
 in time of war. 
 
 In some parts of Germany remains similar to 
 those of the Swiss lakes have been found, and it 
 is believed traces of such dwellings have been ob- 
 served in England ; but at present the inquiry is 
 not sufficiently advanced for anything definite to 
 be known on the subject. 
 
 At the present day, habitations in some respects 
 similar to the ancient lake dwellings are found in 
 South America, and the islands of Borneo and New 
 Guinea. The natives in these places occasionally 
 erect their huts on piles driven in shallow streams or 
 marshy places, as a protection against inundations. 
 It may be worth the while of archaeologists to con- 
 sider how far the same reason alone may sometimes 
 have operated to cause the erection of the lake 
 colonies in Switzerland — a country which was pos- 
 sibly far more subject to sudden inundations in 
 ancient than in modern times. 
 
 The very rude implements discovered in the 
 remains of the lake dwellings show that their in- 
 habitants were comparatively ignorant of the arts 
 of civilised life. In the earliest of these remains, 
 
 the hatchets and knives which are found in abun- 
 dance consist merely of flint stones chipped to the 
 shape required ; and the bottoms of the piles fre- 
 quently show that they were pointed and fashioned by 
 these rude means alone. The use ofsuch weapons has 
 given rise to the term " the Stone Age," relating to 
 one of the pre-historic periods. This was succeeded 
 by " the Bronze Age," when people had learned to 
 substitute such savage implements by a mixture of 
 copper and tin ; and of this material some relics 
 are found in the later deposits in the lakes. After- 
 wards came the "Age of Iron," when the lake 
 dwellings a^d their inhabitants appear to have been 
 swept away. The charred state of the wood found 
 on the sites of these dwellings shows that their 
 destruction was usually effected by fire — -the readiest 
 means by which a more " civilised " race could 
 effect the subjugation of these primitive tribes in 
 their chosen retreats. 
 
 WONDERS OF MEMORY. 
 
 The uniformity of Nature's laws among the lower 
 animals forms a strong contrast to the various 
 tones and speeches by which human thought makes 
 itself known, and which gi\e best exercise and 
 scope to the faculty of memory, especially the 
 memory of sounds and words. Morton, an Eng- 
 lishman, could repeat from memory a discourse 
 delivered in his presence. Claudius Mcnetrier 
 could repeat three hundred arbitrarily connected 
 words, which had been once uttered in his pre- 
 sence, in the same order in which he had heard 
 them ; while a pupil of Schenkel (inventor of one of 
 the arts of memory), could repeat an equal number 
 of words, and as many as two hundred and forty 
 sentences, also in the same order in which they 
 had been heard. The celebrated Picodella Miran- 
 dola retained as many as two thousand names 
 from a lecture to which he had listened but once ; 
 and the power of memory by which, according to 
 Seneca, Cineas, the ambassador of Pyrrhus (and 
 another whom he mentions, who could repeat 
 verbatim a foreign poem which he had heard 
 once), became the marvel of that age, seems to 
 have been a similar faculty to fhat which made 
 the Florentine Magliabecchi the wonder of his 
 contemporaries. The latter could not only retain 
 the whole contents of a book once read, but he 
 could recollect the number of a page in which 
 such and such a passage occurred, and possessed 
 also a wonderful memory for places, instantly re- 
 calling every detail of a locahty which he had 
 seen only once, and that many years before. 
 Joseph Scaliger learned by heart all the songs of 
 Homer in one-and-twenty days, and the works 
 of all the Greek poets in four months ; and many 
 
96 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 others, enjoying an equal reputation for retentive 
 and faithful memory, might be enumerated — as 
 Themistocles among the ancients, and Pascal, 
 Leibnitz, and Locke among the moderns. Sur- 
 prising, indeed, as are these instances of accuracy 
 in remembering words, they are surpassed by 
 instances on record of memories which could 
 retain a prodigious stock of numbers and figures, 
 which occasionally border on the incredible. 
 As, lor example, when we hear of the man 
 who could not only remember the names of 
 all the soldiers in a battalion after hearing 
 them once, but thirty geometrical figures, in 
 which he had all the geometrical operations as 
 clearly before him as if they were placed on 
 a table beneath his eyes. In this \va\- John 
 Wallis excracted the 
 square root from two 
 hundred and eighty 
 figures, which had 
 been given him in 
 the dark. 
 
 S2lonteful|isks. 
 
 Double Cat- 
 fish. — FrofessorSil- 
 liman's namejs well 
 known in Europe as 
 that of an American 
 savant who delights 
 in making the public 
 acquainted with the 
 novelties that come 
 under his observa- 
 
 tion,and with the dis- double cat-fish 
 
 coveries of science. 
 
 The above engraving represents a double cat-fish 
 that was presented to the professor about thirty-five 
 years ago. It was taken alive in a shrimp-net at the 
 mouth of Cape Fear River, near Fort Johnson, 
 North Carolina. The two fishes were joined much 
 in the same manner as the Siamese Twins, by a 
 piece of skin on the breast, the point of union being 
 marked by a dark streak, otherwise the appearance 
 of the skin was not found to differ from that of the 
 fish's belly. There was no connection between 
 the viscera of the fishes, but the integument was 
 hollow or double, so that, when an incision was 
 made in one of the fishes and the entrails taken out, 
 a flexible probe could be passed through into the 
 body of the other. The integument was thin and 
 very flexible, so that the two fishes could almost swim 
 together in the natural position at the same time. 
 The difference in the size of the two fishes is worth 
 remarking. It is quite evident that the larger one 
 must have got the start of the other in the race of 
 life, and that it had continued to appropriate the 
 
 lion's share of the good things which fell to tJieir 
 joint lot. The little fish, indeed, must have shown 
 some dexterity to live at all, and surely deserved 
 infinite credit as a "snapper up of unconsidered 
 trifles." 
 
 Power oe the Whale.— If the whale knew 
 his own power, he would easily dcs'.roy all the 
 machinery which the art of man could devise for 
 catching him ; it would be only necessary for him 
 to swim on the surface in a straight line, in order 
 to break the thickest rope, but instead, on being 
 struck by the harpoon, he obeys a natural in- 
 stinct, which, in this instance, betrays him to his 
 death. Sir Humphry Davy, in his " Salmonia," 
 observes that the whale, not having an air- 
 bladder, can sink to thj lowest depths of the 
 
 ocean, and mistaking 
 the harpoon for the 
 teeth of a sword-fish 
 or a shark, he in- 
 stantly descends, this 
 being his manner of 
 freeing himself from 
 these enemies, who 
 cannot bear the pres- 
 sure of a deep ocean; 
 and from ascending 
 and descending in 
 small space, he thus 
 puts himself in the 
 power of the whaler. 
 If we include the 
 pressure of the at- 
 mosphere, a body at 
 the depth of loo feet 
 would sustain that of 
 si.xty pounds on the 
 square inch ; while 
 one at 4,000 feet, a depth by no means consider- 
 able, would be exposed to a pressure of 1,830 
 pounds. We need not, therefore, feel surprised 
 that on the foundering of a ship at sea, though 
 its timbers part, not a spar floats to the surface ; 
 for if the hull has sunk to a great depth, all that 
 is porous is penetrated with water, or is greatly 
 compressed. Scoresby states that when by en- 
 tangling the line of the harpoon, a boat was carried 
 down with the whale, it required after it was re- 
 covered, two boats to keep it at the surface. As 
 soon as the whale dives after having been wounded, 
 it draws out the line or cord of the harpoon, which 
 is coiled up in the boat, with very considerable 
 velocity. In order, therefore, to prevent any ac- 
 cident from the violence of this motion, which 
 might set the side of the boat on fire, one man is 
 stationed with an axe to cut the rope asunder if it 
 should become entangled, while another furnished 
 with a mop, is constantly cooling with water the 
 channel through which it passes. 
 
WINKELRIED. 
 
 97 
 
 THE HATTI.E OF SEMPACII, 
 
 WINKELRIED. 
 
 Bravery is a quality with two aspects. There is 
 a bravery which springs from a natural inability to 
 entertain fear, and a bravery which is the result of 
 deliberate acceptance of the post of danger. There 
 is also a pseudo-bravery, which springs from igno- 
 rance both of the extent and proximity of danger — 
 a bravery which is often seen in the hunting-field, 
 in the foot-ball match, in the amateur Alp climber, 
 in many a field where danger is the excitement and 
 the attraction, and where those who join in the sport 
 are unable to measure the height of the excitement 
 which is their lure. The highest fonn of bravery is 
 undoubtedly that in which the danger being known, 
 he who is exposed to the danger deliberately and of 
 free choice undertakes a post where he will infallibly 
 come in for some of that danger's influence. Men 
 
 13 
 
 with a nervous temperament who do this are 
 eminently brave, seeing that they have to overcome 
 a natural repugnance to overstep the bounds of 
 caution, as well as to decide for other reasons upon 
 taking the perilous path. There are not wanting 
 many examples of all the kinds of bravery. It is 
 proposed now to give an example of one of the most 
 consummate acts of bravery, involving utter self- 
 devotion, which it has been the duty of historians 
 to record. 
 
 For many years after the Counts of Hapsburg, 
 who were Swiss citizens, had been raised to the 
 imperial throne of Germany, they strove by all the 
 means in their power to bring the Swiss under 
 German dominion. They affected sovereign rights 
 over a large portion of the cantons, and did their 
 utmost to enforce their claim. Such pretensions 
 met with the most strenuous resistance, notwith- 
 
98 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 standing the great disparity in the opposed forces. 
 The Swiss were actuated by all the motives that 
 can stir a freedom-loving, free-born people, when 
 the question of their independence is vexed by a 
 powerful enemy able and anxious to do them harm ; 
 and the Germans were actuated by the lust of 
 power, and by that hatred which all enslaved peoples 
 have for those who are not as themselves. On 
 many a hard-fought field had the question been 
 raised to the music of clanging blows on helmet and 
 cuirass, and to the dirge of many a stalwart warrior. 
 On almost every occasion the cause of freedom 
 had triumphed, and the chivalry of Austria had 
 gone down before the terrific ardour of the Swiss 
 peasants ; but perseverance was beginning to tell 
 upon the Swiss strength ; for every man they lost, 
 the Germans could bring ten fresh men, while the 
 gaps in the Swiss ranks were far from easily filled 
 up. The spirits of the patriots were beginning to 
 be depressed by the continuousness of the war, and 
 when they were called to arms in the summer of 
 1385, as they had been called for many seasons 
 before, they answered quickly, but with feelings 
 which were closely akin to despair. The imperial 
 army was powerful, contained some of the flower of 
 German knighthood, and was led by a general who 
 was famed throughout Europe for his skill. Already 
 it had penetrated far into Swiss territory, the weak 
 of heart had given way before it, and there was 
 imminent danger of an advance into the heart of 
 the home of freedom. From village and hamlet, 
 from town and suburb, the Swiss warriors came 
 with something of the sense of a forlorn hope 
 mingled with the valour of desperation in their 
 breasts. They could die, and they would die, in 
 defence of their country, but they were oppressed 
 \\ith the belief that even this sacrifice would be 
 unavailing to save their children from the disgrace 
 of foreign dominion. 
 
 At Scmpach the armies met, and the Swiss, 
 according to their custom, attempted by a furious 
 onset to take their enemy's position by storm. To 
 resist them, the iron-clad soldiers of Austria and 
 15ohemia dismounted, and placing their spears in 
 position, waited in dense form the attack of the 
 Swiss. The impetuous valour of the mountaineers 
 was thrown away upon such a defence. They came 
 on, swinging their two-handed five-fect-long swords, 
 striving to find a weak place wherein they might 
 thrust the thin end of their military wedge ; but 
 they were rolled back again, unable to break the 
 serried mass of steel. It was a critical moment ; 
 if the Swiss could not succeed in sustaining their 
 atJtack, they must be subjected in their dispirited 
 condition to an attack themselves ; defeat would be 
 disaster ; even a retreat would lay the country open, 
 and necessitate the withdrawal of the patriots to 
 their hills. If the German phalanx could only be 
 broken the least bit ; if room were made in it for 
 
 but one Switzer to get his sword in, then the issue 
 of the fight might safely be left to the strong arms 
 and deep-biting swords of the patriots. But the 
 opening must be made at once ; the strength of the 
 assailants becoming exhausted, their spirits must be 
 raised forthwith if anything is to be done. 
 
 At this juncture it occurred to the mind of one of 
 the Switzers how an opening might be made in the 
 German ranks. If a number of the lance-points 
 which presented themselves so forbiddingly could 
 be entangled, the assailants might strike in and 
 strike down the lance-holders ere they could recover 
 from their confusion. What better, what surer way 
 of entangling them than by burying them in a human 
 body '? Such was the thought of Winkelricd, a 
 gentleman of Untcrwald. He was a husband and a 
 fathci", but above that he was a Swiss. Switzerland 
 was his country, all her sons were his brethren ; he 
 might safely, therefore, leave the charge of his dear 
 ones to those who were so closely related to him. 
 Certain death was the inevitable result of what he 
 proposed to do ; but what he proposed to do was 
 necessary ; let the result then look after itself. 
 Commending his wife and children to his country- 
 men's care, Winkelricd rushed forward alone 
 towards the row of steel points. He came up to the 
 sharp outer edge, and gathering up as many lancc- 
 heads as he could in both his arms, suffered him- 
 self to be pierced through and through. He attained 
 his object, and his dead body won the victory. 
 Before the astonished Germans could pluck their 
 lances out, the infuriated countrymen of the fallen 
 had passed over his corpse, and were among them 
 with the terrible two-handed swords. The fury of 
 the attack overbore all the valour of the Austrians ; 
 they fought well, and many died bravely, but they 
 could not prevail ; and in an hour after Winkelricd 
 had breathed his last, such of the Germans as sur- 
 vived were flying from that bloody field of Sempach, 
 with experiences which did not allow them ever 
 again to attempt the conquest of Winkelried's 
 countrymen. 
 
 Moit'bws of p;c£^HiiicwI (BfngcmiUir. 
 
 Thin Sheets of Iron. — Many years ago, thcr; 
 was sent to England from Pittsburgh, in the United 
 States, a letter written on a sheet made from iron, 
 1,000 sheets of which laid upon each other would 
 only make one inch in thickness ; the dimensions 
 being 8 in. by 5J in., or a surface of 44 inches, and 
 weighing 69 grains. Since then, Wales has surpassed 
 America, Staffordshire has surpassed Wales, and 
 Wales again surpassed Staffordshire, till at length 
 Swansea succeeded in making a sheet of the finest 
 appearance, and thinnest that has ever yet been seen 
 by mortal eyes, 10 in. by S^in., or 55 inch surface, 
 and weighing but 20 grains, and being, indeed, a 
 
THE REM. QUEEN OF TliE GIPSIES. 
 
 99 
 
 sort of iron " gossamer." This being brought to 
 the standard of 8 in. by 5 Jin., or 44 surface inches, 
 is but 16 grains, or 30 per cent, less than any pre- 
 vious effort, and requiring at least 4,800 sheets to 
 make one inch in thickness. By way of compari- 
 son we may add that one grain of gold may be ex- 
 tended over 56 square inches of surface, and gold 
 leaf is only about jocauij of an inch in thickness ; 
 some authors say 2 BjAiao o^ "^^ inch. A single 
 grain may be drawn out into 500 feet of wire. Tin 
 is expanded by rolling or hammering, or by a com- 
 bination of the two operations, into leaves or sheets 
 barely one-thousandth part of an inch in thickness, 
 under the name of tin-foil. 
 
 A Fairy Coach.— The following description of 
 a coach made by Camus, a French mechanician, 
 for the amusement of Louis XIV., when a child, 
 reminds one of the wonderful equipages occasionally 
 mentioned in fairy tales. It is given by Sir David 
 Brewster in his " Letters on Natural Magic." The 
 coach was a small one, drawn by two horses, and 
 contained the figure of a lady within, with a foot- 
 man and page behind. When this machine was 
 placed at the extremity of a table of the proper sizej 
 the coachman smacked his whip, and the horses 
 instantly set off, moving their legs in a natural 
 manner, and drawing the coach after them. When 
 the coach reached the opposite edge of the table, 
 it turned sharply at a right angle, and proceeded 
 along the adjacent edge. As soon as it arrived 
 opposite the place where the king sat, it stopped ; 
 the page descended and opened the coach door ; 
 the lady alighted, and with a curtsey presented a 
 petition, which she held in her hand, to the king. 
 After waiting some time, she again curtseyed, and 
 re-entered the carriage. The page closed the door, 
 and, having resumed his place behind, the coach- 
 man whipped his horses and drove on. The foot- 
 man, who had previously alighted, ran after the 
 carriage, and jumped up behind into his former 
 place. 
 
 Whitworth's Measuring Machines.— Mr. 
 Whitworth, the eminent engineer, whose specialty 
 is the perfection of accurate proportions, has built 
 up steel guns in which the breech is screwed in, 
 being formed of one, two, or three concentric 
 cylinders, so exquisitely perfect in manufacture that 
 every thread of them fits into its appointed groove 
 with the nicest accuracy, never failing to run 
 smoothly with the other. Such nicety has only 
 been rendered possible since Mr. Whitworth in- 
 vented an apparatus for measuring to the tnillionth 
 of an inch, and produced absolutely two planes 
 which may float on each other, separated by a 
 thin film of air ; or if this film be pushed aside 
 by sliding the top plate forward, instead of placing 
 it at once face to face with the lower one, the 
 two will adhere together as if made of one piece. 
 Mr. Whitworth has deposited in the South Ken- 
 
 sington Museum, to be there perpetually preserved, 
 three original true planes and a measuring machine^ 
 an instrument demonstrating the millionth part 
 of an inch ; and has provided, by endowment, for 
 the delivery of lectures to explain such instru- 
 ments. Their importance will be manifest when 
 it is considered that the value of every machine, 
 when made of the best materials, depends on the 
 truth of its surface and the accurate measurement 
 of its parts. Mr. Whitworth has shown that the 
 fineness of measurement obtained by his machine 
 is sufficient to detect the expansion in length of an 
 inch bar caused by a momentary touch of the 
 finger. In his larger machine for measuring the 
 standard yard, with a bar 36 inches long, the same 
 amount of expansion is shown by the momentary 
 contact of the finger-nail. The finest measurement 
 requires the precautions of freedom from dust and 
 moisture in the atmosphere, and from any current 
 of air interfering with uniformity of temperature ; 
 the machine is therefore kept in its glass case 
 during the time of use, with an opening only suffi- 
 cient for moving the micrometer-wheel and lifting 
 the gravity-piece. By sufificient care in these 
 respects, the measure of a space corresponding to 
 half a division on the wheel, or the ^sciooo of an 
 inch, has been rendered distinctly perceptible. 
 
 THE REAL QUEEN OF THE GIPSIES. 
 
 We have all heard of Margaret Finch, the Queen 
 of the Gipsies. This extraordinary woman was 
 born at Sutton, in Kent, and lived to the great age 
 of 108 years. After travelling all over England 
 for many years as queen of the gipsy tribe, she 
 fixed her place of residence at Norwood, about 
 eleven years before her decease. By her constant 
 custom of sitting upon the ground with her chin 
 resting on her knees, generally, by-the-byc, with a 
 pipe in her mouth, attended invariably by a faithful 
 dog, her sinews became so contracted that towards 
 the close of her life she could not extend herself 
 or change her position, so that when she died her 
 corpse was forced to be crammed into a box con- 
 formable to her usual posture. It was conveyed 
 in a hearse followed by two mourning coaches to 
 Bcckenham churchyard, where she was buried, 
 and a special funeral sermon preached on the 
 occasion. This was in the year 1740. The expense 
 of the funeral was defrayed by the neighbouring 
 publicans, to whom she had been of great service, 
 not from what she drank herself, but from the 
 quantity of people she attracted to the spot by 
 her dexterity in fortune-telling and her wonderful 
 appearance. She was at this time an object of 
 notoriety all over England. 
 An old inn, called the " Gipsy House," had for q 
 
100 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 sign, until the last few years, a portrait of Margaret 
 Finch. 
 
 WONDERS IN NATURAL HISTORY. 
 
 Recognition of Voice between the Ewe 
 AND THE Lamb. — James Hogg, "the Ettrick 
 Shepherd," observes, " The acuteness of the sheep's 
 ear surpasses all things in nature that I know of. A 
 ewe will distinguish her own lamb's bleat among a 
 thousand all braying at the same time. Besides, 
 the distinguishing of voice is perfectly reciprocal 
 between the ewe and the lamb, who, amid the 
 deafening sound, run to meet one another. There 
 are few things that have ever amused me more 
 than sheep-shearing ; and then the sport continues 
 the whole day. We put the flock into a fold, 
 and set out the ewes to them as they are shorn. 
 The moment that a lamb hears its dam's voice it 
 rushes from the crowd to meet her, but instead of 
 finding the rough, well-clad, comfortable mamma, 
 which it left an hour or a few hours ago, it meets a 
 poor naked starveling — a most deplorable looking 
 creature. It wheels about, and, uttering a loud 
 tremulous bleat of perfect despair, flies from the 
 vision. The mother's voice arrests its flight — it 
 returns, flies, and returns again, generally for ten or 
 a dozen times before the reconcilement is fairly 
 made up." 
 
 Musical Mice. — In Brown's " Anecdotes of 
 Quadrupeds " we find the following, given on the 
 authority of Dr. Archer, of Norfolk, in the United 
 States: — "On a rainy evening in 1817 (says the 
 doctor), as I was alone in my chamber, I took up a 
 flute and commenced playing. In a few minutes 
 my attention was directed to a mouse that I saw 
 creeping from a hole, and advancing to thq chair in 
 which 1 was sitting. I ceased playing, and it ran 
 precipitately back to its hole. I began again shortly 
 afterwards, and was much surprised to see it reappear, 
 and take its old position. The appearance of the 
 little animal was truly delightful ; it couched itself 
 on the floor, shut its eyes, and appeared in ecstasy. 
 I ceased playing, and it instantly disappeared again. 
 This experiment I repeated frequently with the 
 same success, observing that it was always differently 
 affected, as the music varied from the slow and 
 plaintive to the brisk and lively. It finally went off, 
 and all my art could not entice it to return." A 
 similar and even more remarkable circumstance 
 was communicated to the " Philadelphia Medical 
 and Physical Journal," by Dr. Cramer, of Jefferson 
 County, on the authority of a gentleman of un- 
 doubted veracity. He stated that " one evening, as 
 a few officers on board a British man-of-war, in the 
 harbour of Portsmouth, were seated round the 
 fire, one of them began a plaintive air on the violin. 
 He had not performed many minutes when a mouse 
 made its appearance in the centre of the floor. The 
 
 I strange gestures of the little animal strongly 
 ' excited the attention of the officers, who, with one 
 consent, resolved to suffer it to continue its singular 
 action unmolested. Its exertions appeared to be 
 greater every moment ; it shook its head, leaped 
 about, and exhibited signs of the greatest delight. 
 After performing actions which an animal so dimi- 
 nutive would, at first sight, seem incapable of, the 
 little creature, to the astonishment of the spectators, 
 suddenly ceased to move, fell down, and expired 
 without evincing any symptoms of pain." Although 
 these cases are exceptionally striking, the suscep- 
 tibility of mice to the influence of musical sounds 
 is a well-known fact, and many " performing mice " 
 have been exhibited in public. 
 
 REMARKABLE INSCRIPTION. 
 
 The following singular inscription is to be seen 
 carved on a tomb situated at the entrance of the 
 church of San Salvador, in the city of Oviedo. 
 The explanation is that the tomb was erected by a 
 king named Silo, and the inscription is so written 
 that it can be read 270 ways by beginning with the 
 large S in the centre. The words are Latin, 
 " Silo princeps fecit." 
 
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 Besides this singular inscription, the letters H. S. 
 E. S. S. T. T. L. are also carved on the tomb, but 
 of these no explanation is given. Silo, Prince of 
 Oviedo, or King of the Asturias, succeeded Aurelius 
 in 774, and died in 785. He was, therefore, a con- 
 temporary of Charlemagne. No doubt the above 
 inscription was the composition of some ingenious 
 and learned Spanish monk. 
 
 Monbtrful llelks. 
 
 —   — 
 
 ROMAN CITY IN SHROPSHIRE. 
 
 Within the last ten years there have been explored 
 the ruins of the ancient Uriconium, at Wroxeter, 
 a little more than five miles from Shrewsbury ; 
 this being the first instance in England of pene- 
 trating into a city of more than fourteen centuries 
 ago on so large a scale, and with such extensive 
 remains of its former condition, where the visitor 
 may w^lk over the floors which had been trodden 
 
WONDERFUL RELICS. 
 
 lOI 
 
 last, before they were thus uncovered, by the 
 Roman inhabitants of this island. The city was 
 standing here as early as the beginning of the 
 second century, when it was called Viroconium, 
 a name which appears to have been changed in the 
 later Romano-British period to Uriconium. The 
 line of the ancient town-wall forms an irregular 
 oval more than three miles in circumference, on 
 Watling Street Road, which occupies the line of 
 one of the principal streets of the old city. The 
 only portion of the buildings above ground is 
 a solid mass, upwards of twenty feet high, of 
 Roman large flat red bricks, in long string-courses. 
 
 and from the end wall of this hypocaust we learn 
 that the Roman houses were plastered and painted 
 externally as well as internally ; the exterior wall 
 was painted red, with stripes of yellow. A sort of 
 dust-bin was found filled with coins, hair-pins, 
 fibute (brooches), broken pottery and glass, with 
 bones of birds and animals which had been eaten. 
 In another hypocaust were found human remains of 
 three persons who had crept in there for conceal- 
 ment ; near one lay a httle heap of 132 Roman 
 coins. This, Mr. Thomas Wright, the archaeologist, 
 believes, " is the first instance which has occurred in 
 this country in which we have had the opportunity of 
 
 VIEW OF EXCAVATIONS I.S URICONIUM. 
 
 The other remains of the Roman city had long 
 been buried beneath the soil when, in 1859, their 
 excavation was commenced. In one of the plun- 
 dering invasions of the Picts and Scots, Uriconium 
 is thought to have perished, towards the middle of 
 the fifth century, by fire, when such of the inhabi- 
 tants as were not massacred were dragged away 
 into captivity. 
 
 The old wall already mentioned must have been 
 a portion of a public building ; portions of capitals, 
 bases, and shafts of columns were found scattered 
 about ; and among other objects were found frag- 
 ments of a strong iron chain, the head of an axe, 
 and pavements of fine mosaic. This building is 
 thought to have formed the corner of two principal 
 streets of the Roman city. A hypocaust of great 
 size was found, with a quantity of unburnt coal : 
 
 ascertaining what particular coins, as being then in 
 daily circulation, an inhabitant of a Roman town in 
 Britain, at the moment of the Roman dominion in 
 Britain, carried about with him." The majority of 
 these coins point to the very latest period previous 
 to the establishment of the Anglo-Saxons as the 
 date at which Uriconium must have been de- 
 stroyed. 
 
 Three fine wide streets, the roadway paved with 
 small round stones, were found in Uriconium. The 
 Roman houses in Britain had no upper storeys, all 
 the rooms being on the ground-floor ; no traces of 
 a staircase have ever been found. The roofing in 
 Uriconium was of slate or flags. Window-glass was 
 found one-eighth of an inch thick, though until 
 recently it was thought that the Romans, especially 
 in this distant province, did not use window-glass. 
 
102 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 Among the domestic articles, two classes of 
 Roman pottciy, both evidently made in Shropshire, 
 were found — one white ware, and the other Salo- 
 pian pottery, among which we find the colander. 
 JNIost curious is a medicine stamp f£)r salves or 
 Washes for the eyes, inscribed with, probably, the 
 name of a physician resident in Uriconium. 
 
 The general result of these discoveries is that 
 they show the manner in which this country was 
 inhabited and governed during nearly four cen- 
 turies ; and we learn from the condition of the ruins 
 of Uriconium, and especially from the remains 
 of human beings which arc found Scattered over 
 its long-deserted floors, the sad fate under which it 
 finally sunk into ruins ; and thus v.-e are made 
 vividly acquainted with the character and events of 
 a period of history, which has hitherto been but 
 dimly seen through vague tradition. 
 
 A few stones, with Roman inscriptions, chiefly of a 
 sepulchral charactei", ha\'e been dug up at Wroxcter, 
 in the course of accidental excavations. Three of 
 these were found in 1752. One has an inscription 
 intimating that it marked the grave of a soldier of 
 the twentieth legion, which was stationed at Chester, 
 the Roman Deva. Another commemorated a soldier 
 of the fourteenth legion, and is supposed to have 
 belonged to a very early period, as that legion was 
 withdrawn from Britain before a.d. 68. It was the 
 legion which suffered so much in the war against 
 Boadicea, and this soldier may, perhaps, have been 
 engaged in that war, although his having died in 
 Britain docs not necessarily imply that the legion 
 to which he had belonged \vas there at the time, or 
 indeed that it had ever been there, unless we had 
 some other reason for supposing it. The other of 
 these inscribed monuments was divided into three 
 columns, or tables, in memory of three members of 
 the family of a citizen of Uriconium. Another 
 sepulchral stone bears an inscription commemo- 
 rative of Tiberius Claudius Terentius, a soldier of 
 the cohort of Thracian cavalry. Lastly, is a monu- 
 ment of stone which, during the Middle Ages, had 
 been formed into a holy water stoup, and bears 
 characters which formed part of a Roman inscrip- 
 tion to one of the Emperors. 
 
 TENACITY OF VEGETABLE LIFE. 
 
 The duration and tenacity of vegetable life, as seen 
 in the length of time during which the seeds of cer- 
 tain plants will retain their vitality, are truly won- 
 derful. We may cite the following as examples. 
 
 Lord Lindsay states that in the course of his 
 wanderings amid the pyramids of Egypt he stum- 
 bled on a mummy, proved by its hieroglyphics to 
 be at least 2,000 years old. In examining the 
 mummy after it was unwrapped, he found in one of 
 its closed hands a tuberous or bulbous root. He 
 was interested in the question how long vegetable 
 
 life could last, and he therefore took that tuberous 
 root from the mummy's hand, planted it in a sunny 
 soil, allowed the rains and dews of heaven to descend 
 upon it, and in the course of a few weeks, to his 
 astonishment and joy, the root burst forth and 
 bloomed into a beauteous dahlia. 
 
 The roots of many plants retain their vitality 
 under intense temperatures. Those of the vitex 
 agiius castrus will not be affected though immersed 
 in boiling water, and boiling water may be applied 
 to many others without their sustaining injury. 
 Certain plants, also, may by their roots absorb 
 some poisons which would be destructive to others. 
 
 The seeds on which birds have fed will retain 
 their powers of germination during a long period. 
 Birds that feed on the seed of the castor oil plant 
 have been known to bear them in their bodies from 
 one country to another, where they have grown and 
 multiplied. 
 
 THE "GREAT EASTERN" STEAMSHIP. 
 
 The vastness of our sea-going steamships cul- 
 minates in the Leviathan (now the Great Eastern), 
 constructed on the wave principle, and lines of 
 Mr. Scott Russell, at Millwall, in 1857, with these 
 dimensions : Length, 680 feet ; breadth, 83 feet ; 
 depth, 58 feet ; tonnage, 23,000 tons ; carries of 
 coal and cargo 18,000 tons ; nominal horse-power of 
 paddlewheel-engines, 1,000 ; nominal horse-power 
 of screw-engines, 1,600; draught of water (light), 
 18 feet ; ditto (loaded), 28 feet. The four cylinders 
 of the engines are, probably, the largest steam- 
 cylinders ever made for marine service, at least in 
 England. They are 74 inches in diameter, and have 
 a stroke of 14 feet. Each cylinder is a casting in one 
 piece, weighing 28 tons. The condenser is a casting 
 in one piece, of 36 tons. The upper frames are four 
 castings of 13 tons each, .all cast in the works at 
 Millwall without a flaw. The paddle-wheel shafts 
 have Mr. Scott Russell's self-acting gearing, by 
 which engines engage or disengage themselves 
 from either paddle-wheel. Each paddle-wheel is 
 58 feet in diameter, and in turning one round will 
 advance 60 yards. Two revolutions of the wheel 
 per minute would cover 600 yards per minute, or 
 36,000 yards per hour, which is a speed of 20 miles 
 an hour for the circumference of the wheel. 
 
 The story of the Great Eastern is a sad one. 
 This vast ship originally belonged to the Eastern 
 Steam Navigation Company, which had for its 
 chairman the late Mr. Henry Thomas Hope, a 
 member of the wealthy family of that name. 
 The company was established to carry the India 
 and China Mails by the long sea route ; but in 
 this they were over-matched by the Peninsular and 
 Oriental Company. In 1854 the ship was com- 
 menced by Mr. I. K. Brunei, and nearly a million of 
 money was expended before she was tried. Pccu- 
 
AGED AND CURIOUS TREES. 
 
 103 
 
 niary difficulties ensued, and in 1858 a new 
 company was formed, with ^330,000 capital. In 
 the autumn of 1859 she went to sea ; when off 
 Hastings, a destructive accident occurred, and 
 thence followed a scries of casualties, but without 
 material injury to her hull or machinery. , She 
 rode out a gale in Holyrood Harbour ; encountered 
 a hurricane in the Atlantic, which disabled her rud- 
 der and damaged her paddles, and left her for three 
 or four days rolling about in the trough of a heavy 
 sea. She ran upon a rock at New York, and broke 
 her bottom-plates for a length of 80 feet, which 
 were repaired while afloat, and without going into 
 dock ; she then came home safely. More costly 
 repairs increased her financial difficulties, and 
 eventually the ship was sold for ^25,000, scarcely 
 one-third of its value as old materials. The unex- 
 pected death of Captain Harrison, the first com- 
 mander of the Great Eastern, should be recorded 
 among the calamities which have befallen this 
 ill-fated vessel. 
 
 Slstronomtcal Monbcrs. 
 
 Passage OF the Earth through the Tail 
 OF a Comet. — In June, i86r, M. Liais, the 
 celebrated astronomer at Rio Janeiro, from observa- 
 tions which he had made of the great comet of that 
 year, which had not as yet become visible in 
 Europe, became convinced there was a great 
 likelihood that the earth would come in contact with 
 one of the tails of the comet ; and M. Liais proved 
 beyond question, that on the 19th of June, 1861, the 
 earth really did pass through one of the comet's 
 tails, the moment of contact being 12 minutes 
 past 6 a.m. ; and the earth must have been wholly 
 immersed in the tail for about four hours. Yet 
 it had no perceptible influence upon the weather — 
 a very remarkable fact, adding reason to suppose 
 that comctary matter is some millions of times 
 rarer than our atmosphere. This phenomenon had 
 never before occurred, according to the dictum 
 of Arago the astronomer. Lord Wrotteslcy, in 
 i860, remarked that when the comet of Enckc 
 returned, its motion was continually accelerated, and 
 it was consequently drawn nearer to the sun. " The 
 final result," says Lord Wrotteslcy, " will be, that 
 after the lapse of ages, this comet will fall into the 
 sun ; this body, a mere hazy cloud, continually 
 flickering, as it were, like a celestial moth round 
 the great luminary, is at some distant period 
 destined to be mercilessly consumed. Professor 
 William Thomson suggests that the heat and light of 
 the sun may be from time to time replenished by 
 the falling in and absorption of countless meteors, 
 which circulate round him ; and here we have a cause 
 which may accelerate or produce such an event. 
 
 Curious Calculation.— The curious in calcu- 
 lations, and readers who have a higher aim, will be 
 
 interested in the following passage from a paper on 
 " The Physical Constitution of the Sun," by Mr. 
 Braylcy. A railway train at the average speed of 
 thirty miles an hour, continuously maintained, would 
 arrive at the moon in eleven months, but would not 
 reach the sun in less than 352 years ; so that, if such 
 a train had been started in the year 15 12, the third 
 year of the reign of King Henry VIII., it would reach 
 the sun in 1864. When arrived, it would be rather 
 more than a year and a half in reaching the sun's 
 centre ; three years and a quarter in passing through 
 the sun, supposing it was tunneled through, and ten ' 
 years and one-eighth in going round it. How great 
 these dimensions are, may be conceived from the 
 statement, that the same train would attain the 
 centre of the earth in five days and a half, pass 
 through it in eleven days, and go round it in thirty- 
 seven days. 
 
 AGED AND CURIOUS TREES. 
 
 The age of trees has ever been a subject of interest- 
 ing inquiry among naturalists and the lovers of 
 historic illustration. The rings in the trunk, being 
 annually deposited, form a natural chronicle of time, 
 by which the ago of a tree is determined with as 
 much precision as the lapse of human events is 
 determined by the contemporaneous registration of 
 annalists. Milton speaks of " monumental oak." 
 
 Trees which are known to be of great antiquity 
 sometimes give rise to fabulous legends, destitute of 
 any foundation in fact. Such, for example, was 
 the Plane tree near Caphyae, in Arcadia, seen by 
 Pausanias in the second century after Christ ; which 
 was reported by the inhabitants to have been 
 planted by Menelaus, when he was collecting the 
 army for the expedition against Troy. Such, too, 
 doubtless, was the oak of Mamre, where the angels 
 are said to have appeared to Abraham. A Rose-tree 
 growing in the crypt of the cathedral of Hildesheim 
 is referred, by a church legend, to a date anterior to 
 1081, which would imply an age of more than 800 
 years, but the identity is doubtful. Setting aside 
 such doubts, the annals of particular trees arc very 
 numerous ; and from the best authenticated in- 
 stances and sources are the following : — 
 
 The Ash at Carnock, in Stirlingshire, supposed to 
 be the largest in Scotland, and still a luxuriant tree, 
 was planted about the year 1596, by Sir Thomas 
 Nicholson, of Carnock, Lord Advocate of Scotland 
 in the reign of James VI. 
 
 ■fhe Baobab tree is the most wonderful vegetable 
 product of South Africa. Dr. Livingstone describes 
 it as " a great baby-looking bulb," which reaches an 
 enormous size and an astonishing age. It appears, 
 indeed, as if nothing would kill it. The natives 
 make a strong cord from the fibres contained in the 
 pounded bark. The whole of the trunk as far as 
 they can reach- is, consequently, barked, which, with 
 
104 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 any other tree, would cause its death, but which has 
 no other effect on the Baobab but to make it throw 
 out a new bark. No external injury, not even fire, 
 can destroy this tree from without ; and if an axe be 
 driven in with a hard blow, it can with difficulty be 
 extracted from the soft, spongy wood which closes 
 on it. Nor can any injury be done from within, as 
 it is quite common to find the tree hollow ; and Dr. 
 Livingstone himself spent a night in one, which was 
 big enough to hold twenty men. Even cutting 
 down docs not exterminate it, and it continues to 
 grow in length after it is lying on the ground. 
 
 The Camphor tree of Sorrogi, in Japan, is hollow, 
 and will hold fifteen persons. It is superstitiously 
 related that it grew from the staff of the philosopher 
 Kobadarsi ; and Siebold thinks the tree may have 
 existed since the time of that sage, at the close of 
 the eighth century. 
 
 Cypress-trees, on the continent of America, grow 
 to immense ages. In counting the concentric rings 
 in sawing a trunk across, it appears that i,6oo years 
 is a common age. There is a gigantic trunk in the 
 province of Oxaca, in Mexico, whose circumference 
 at the base is 200 feet ; of this, taking i '6 line as 
 the average growth of a year, the age would be 3,5 12 
 years (Lyell's "United States " and Prescott's "Peru "). 
 The cypress of Soma, in Lombardy, is reputed to 
 be the oldest tree of which there is any record in 
 the world. It is generally supposed to have been 
 planted in the year of the birth of Christ ; but 
 the Abbe Belize says there is extant at Milan a 
 chronicle which proves that it was a tree in the 
 time of Julius Casar, B.C. 42. It is 121 feet high. 
 Evelyn, in his " Sylva," mentions a gigantic cypress 
 in Persia, but his calculation of its age at 2,500 
 years is considered of no value. The cypress of 
 Hafiz, near Shiraz, is said to have been planted by 
 the poet himself. 
 
 The Dragon, tree, of Orotava, in the island of 
 Teneriffe, was considered by Humboldt to be 
 1,000 years old. It is stated to have been as large 
 and as hollow in 1402 as it was found by Humboldt 
 in the last century. In 1819 a storm deprived 
 this tree of part of its crown, and it was entirely 
 destroyed in the autumn of 1867 by a gale of 
 wind. 
 
 A great Elm, growing at Chipstead Place, in 
 Kent, in appearance bears out the tradition annexed 
 to it, that in the time of Henry V. a fair was held 
 annually under its branches — the high road from 
 Rye, in Sussex, to London then passing close by it. 
 If this tradition be authentic, the elm in question 
 must have been a large and well-spreading tree 
 in the years 1413 — 22. An elm at Chequers, in 
 Buckinghamshire, is reported, by a tradition handed 
 down in the families of the successive owners, to 
 have been planted in the reign of King Stephen. 
 
 The Eucalyptus or Gum-tree, near the foot of 
 Mount Wellington, in Tasmania, is stated to be 
 
 250 feet high ; its diameter is fully thirty feet. 
 This is reputed to be the largest, if not the oldest, 
 tree in the world. 
 
 A Fir tree, near Mont Blanc, has been ascertained 
 by M. Bertholct to be more than 1,200 years old ; 
 and near it, in the Forest of Ferre, is a tree called 
 the Meleye, whose age cannot be less than 800 
 years. A silver fir grew near Barr ; a section of 
 its trunk is preserved in the Museum at Strasburg.* 
 Its diameter was eight feet close to the ground, 
 and the number of rings is said to amount to 
 several hundreds. 
 
 The Hethel Thorn was said by the first Sir Thomas 
 Beevor to be mentioned in a deed of 1200 and odd 
 as a boundary, under the appellation of " the Old 
 Thorn. ' It is stated also to be mentioned in some 
 chronicle as the thorn round which a meeting of 
 insurgent peasantry was held during the reign of 
 King John. The involution of its branches, which 
 are all hollow tubes, as heavy as iron, is most 
 curious. 
 
 A Lime tree at Neustadt, in Wirtemberg, is said 
 to be 1,000 years old. A German writer states it 
 to have required the support of sixty pillars in the 
 year 1392, and attained its present size in 1541 ; it 
 now rests on 100 props, and a market can be held 
 under its shade. There is another colossal lime in 
 the churchyard of the village of Cadiz, near Dres- 
 den. The trunk is forty feet in circumference, and 
 is completely hollow. There is also at Freyburg, 
 in Switzerland, a lime tree which was planted in 
 remembrance of the battle of Morat, fought June 
 27th, 1476. 
 
 The Olive tree at Pessio, the most ancient in 
 Italy, is stated by Masechettini to be 700 years 
 old ; but in the environs of Nice is an olive tree 
 of much greater age. 
 
 Orange trees.— \n the orangery at Versailles is a 
 tree raised from seed sown in 1421. There is 
 another in the yard of the convent of St. Sabina, at 
 Rome, said to have been planted by St. Dominic, in 
 1200. In the neighbourhood of Finale is an orange 
 tree which bears nearly 8,000 oranges in a single 
 year. There are in Holland many orange trees 
 which have been in the same family 200 and 300 
 years ; one at Versailles has the inscription, " Seme 
 en 1 42 1." 
 
 The Tree of the Thousand Images, seen by 
 Father Hue in his journey to Thibet, has its leaves 
 and bark covered with well-defined characters of 
 the Thibetian alphabet. It appeared to MM. Hue 
 and Gabet to be of great age, and is said by the 
 inhabitants of the country to be the only one of its 
 kind known there. According to the account given 
 by these travellers, the letters would appear to be 
 formed of the veins of the leaves. The resemblance 
 to Thibetian characters induced them to suspect 
 fraud ; but, after repeated observations, they came 
 to the conclusion that no fraud existed. 
 
THE RISING OF THE NILE. 
 
 105 
 
 THE RISING OF THE NILE. 
 
 To the annual phenomenon of the rising of the 
 Nile, Egypt is entirely indebted for its fertility, and 
 even for its existence as an inhabited and populous 
 country. Without it the land would always have 
 been a desert, incapable of affording the means of 
 subsistence to man. E.xcept occasionally near the 
 shores of the Mediterranean, no rain falls through- 
 out the land, and therefore its parched and sandy 
 soil would be entirely unfruitful, were it not that 
 regularly, at a certain season of the year, the river 
 overflows the whole adjacent country. 
 
 Why it should do so 
 was a mystery in ancient 
 times, and many absurd 
 theories and conjec- 
 tures were raised to 
 account for it. The 
 Egyptians themselves 
 believed the river was 
 a god, who in his bene- 
 ficence spread himself 
 annually over the land, 
 to supply the wants of 
 his people. If the rising 
 did not begin to make 
 its appearance at the 
 expected time — and it 
 has hardly varied a 
 single day throughout 
 the course of ages —   
 they hastily prepared 
 a sacrifice to this deity, 
 usually a beautiful girl, 
 who was richly adorned, 
 and then thrown into 
 the stream. 
 
 Some of the ancient 
 philosophers lighted on 
 the true reason of the 
 rising of the waters, 
 when they imagined it 
 to be due to heavy rains faUing in the interior 
 of Africa, and swelling the sources of the river. 
 What those sources were, it had baffled the 
 investigation of thousands of years to ascertain, 
 until recently our travellers, Speke, Grant, and 
 Baker, discovered them in immense lakes situated 
 near the equator, more than 3,000 miles, as the 
 stream winds, from the mouth of the Nile on the 
 Mediterranean coast. To these lakes the names 
 of the Victoria Nyanza and the Albert Nyanza 
 have been given by the successful explorers. 
 
 In the regions adjacent to these lakes, rain falls 
 throughout the greater part of the year, and most 
 heavily in March, at the time of the spring equinox. 
 The lakes form huge reservoirs for the water which 
 descends from the elevations known as the Moun- 
 
 14 
 
 tains of the Moon ; and as they become swollen, 
 the size of the streams which emerge from them is 
 proportionately increased. Several of these streams 
 uniting in their course form the Upper or White 
 Nile, and this river, flowing gradually on until it 
 meets the Blue or Lower Nile, bears irrigation to 
 the thirsty lands below. Not only this, but as 
 these rivers come down they bring with them a 
 quantity of alluvial soil of the richest kind ; and 
 when the Nile at last spreads itself over the flat 
 and sandy plains of Egypt, it enriches them year 
 by year with this muddy but fertile deposit. The 
 consequence is a gradual rising of the land, to the 
 extent, it is calculated, 
 of from five to six inches 
 in a century. Owing 
 to this fact, many of the 
 remains of the proudest 
 cities of ancient Egypt 
 are now half buried in 
 the soil. 
 
 Although in these 
 daj-s we know more 
 about natural pheno- 
 mena than the philoso- 
 phers of old, and can 
 satisfactorily explain the 
 reason of the rising of 
 the waters, there re- 
 mains one wonder con- 
 nected with it which is 
 as great to us as to 
 them, and that is its 
 uniformity. As we have 
 said, throughout the 
 course of ages its com- 
 mencement has scarcely 
 varied by one day, and 
 its extent is also com- 
 prised, as a rule, with- 
 in a narrow limit. So 
 equal, in the main, 
 must be the quantity of 
 water which falls annually at the equator, and so 
 regular the commencement and decline of the 
 rainy season. 
 
 The rising commences in Lower Egypt about the 
 25th of June, and steadily increases during the 
 three months following. In this time the valley of 
 the Nile becomes covered by its waters, and its 
 villages stand out from them like little islands, as 
 for the time they are. When the water has attained 
 its maximum height, it remains stationary for about 
 ten days, and then declines as steadily as it arose. 
 On its subsiding, the land has been thoroughly fer- 
 tilised, and vegetation becomes luxuriant. 
 
 The height to which the river rises is a matter of 
 vital importance. A few feet more or less make 
 the difference between starvation and abundance. 
 
 THE NILOMETER. 
 
THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 The average height varies according to the distance 
 traversed by the river, from about forty feet where 
 it enters Egypt, to four feet only near the Mediter- 
 ranean. Taking as an intermediate height that 
 observed at Cairo, if tlie rise is less than twenty 
 feet, there is scarcity, or even famine ; if it is 
 three or four feet more, the crops will be short ; 
 three or four feet more again, and they will be 
 abundant ; but if the water goes still higher, it 
 becomes an unhealthy flood. 
 
 Contrivances for measuring the exact rise of the 
 Nile were in use in ancient times, and in two in- 
 stances the remains of these "Kilometers" still 
 exist. One, and the most ancient, supposed to 
 have been erected in the time of the Roman domi- 
 nion, is found in the island of Elephantine, in 
 Upper Egypt ; and on the walls of the building in 
 which it is contained are inscriptions recording the 
 heights of the inundation in various years. The 
 other (represented in our engraving) is situated in 
 the island of Rhoda, near Cairo, and is believed to 
 have been built in the time of the Arabian caliphs. 
 It consists of a square well, into which the water is 
 admitted as it rises, while in the centre is a column 
 of marble marked at frequent intervals with the 
 distance from the lowest level. The Nilometcrs 
 are supposed to have been of chief utility in adjusting 
 the taxation of the country, as they would give 
 indications as to whether the season would be plen- 
 tiful or otherwise. 
 
 WONDERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY. 
 
 Akin to the "Magic Photographs" mentioned in a 
 previous number, are Dr. Taylor's Dioramic Photo- 
 graphs, first exhibited about seven years ago, and 
 described in a Glasgow newspaper. For example, 
 we are looking through the glass at an Indian river 
 scene. The glow of a tropical sun is gleaming in 
 the sky and in the waters, but as we look the scene 
 changes. The clouds which had previously seemed 
 to hang in the tropical sky, appear to move and to 
 assume a dusky hue, the waters look sombre, the 
 landscape begins to wear a deeper green, gradually 
 the light dies away, and there remains the cool and 
 fjuiet of an evening on the banks of the Ganges or 
 the Hooghly. This, again, like the invisible photo- 
 graph, is but the application, with the additional 
 artistic effects afforded by photography, and other 
 improved means, of an old principle. The apparatus 
 employed is a revolving cylinder, the edge or rim 
 of which is strongly coloured with the required 
 hues, which arc reflected upon the photographic 
 plates according to the effect required. 
 
 Next to the above in curious interest, is what 
 may be called Microscopic Photography, or the 
 reduction of large objects into such small dimen- 
 sions that the picture is invisible to the naked eye. 
 
 Mr, Shadbolt, in 1854, was the first who executed 
 these small photographs by making an achromatic 
 object-glass i or ij in. focus the lens of a camera, 
 and using a peculiar kind of collodion. His portraits 
 varied from J^th to -^^jth of an inch in diameter, 
 and would bear to be magnified a hundred times. 
 Mr. Dancer, of Manchester, produced a family 
 group of seven full-length photographs in a spot the 
 size of a pin's head ; and he states that it is only a 
 question of trouble to include 10,000 portraits in a 
 square inch. Ten years ago it was suggested that 
 a diplomatic despatch might be conveyed in a 
 spot no bigger than a full stop. Since that time 
 the idea has been worked out in a variety of ways, 
 a full page of the Times newspaper or an extensive 
 landscape, having been photographed in so small a 
 space. 
 
 The enlargement of photographs, though less 
 wonderful to the common apprehension than their 
 reduction to the infinitely small, is, practically, not 
 less interesting and curious. These enlarged pictures 
 were first exhibited by M. Claudet at the soiree of 
 the British Association in 1862. By means of the 
 solar camera, photographic cartes were magnified 
 to the size of life. The effect, when first seen, 
 was pronounced very striking and beautiful. M. 
 Claudet, at the same time, also exhibited some 
 photographs taken by the Count de Montizon of 
 all the most curious animals of the Zoological 
 Gardens, and instantaneous views of Paris by 
 Fcrrier, showing the boulevards full of carriages 
 and people, as they are in the middle of the 
 day. 
 
 But the most striking photographs of this topo- 
 graphical character are those which have been 
 taken in balloons floating some 4,000 feet above the 
 earth. The, first experiments of this kind were 
 made by Mr. Negrctti in CoxwcU's " Mammoth " 
 balloon in the summer of 1863. They were regarded 
 with much interest at the time, as several problems 
 were involved in success or failure — such, for ex- 
 ample, as the difficulty of operating at all in a 
 moving tent, and the question whether the actinic 
 power of the solar rays would be as effective up 
 aloft as on the surface of the earth. It was not 
 only the onward motion of the balloon that created 
 a difficulty, but its rotating motion, to obviate 
 which a good deal of ingenuity in constructing and 
 working the apparatus was needful. 
 
 One more of the surprising effects of photography 
 remains to be mentioned here — viz., its application 
 to illustrate geometrical figures and problems.* 
 This followed rapidly upon the discovery of the 
 principle of the stereoscope. Every one who has 
 gone through the eleventh book of Euclid is aware of 
 the great difficulty which is superadded to that of 
 the problem itself by the number of lines crossing 
 each other on a flat surface. By producing these 
 lines on stereoscopic slides, they arc made to appea.' 
 
WONDERFUL RELICS. 
 
 107 
 
 as if the figure was made of wires stretching from 
 point to point in space. Planes are seen to inter- 
 sect each other with as much distinctness as if they 
 were sheets of cardboard incHned at various angles ; 
 and solid angles and pyramids have their edges and 
 angular points in such tangible relief that a model 
 could not afford a better illustration of the text. 
 The letters, too, arc so contrived as to appear to 
 belong to the points to which they refer, and to 
 stand out at the proper distances from the spectator. 
 Before concluding this article we may also notice 
 some remarkable instances of grotesque or carica- 
 ture photography. When the lamented Abraham 
 Lincoln was president of the United States, his 
 photographic portrait was exhibited, and to the 
 naked eye appeared as if pitted with the small-pox. 
 On examining the dots with a microscope, they were 
 found to consist of portraits of generals, politicians, 
 divines, poets, actresses, and other well-known 
 characters suitably placed. Jeff. Davis would be 
 found in the president's eye ; McClellan on the 
 tip of his nose ; Miss Cushman, or some other 
 sweet thing, on his lips, and so on. All these like- 
 nesses were said to be very striking, and the whole 
 caricature was regarded as a felicitous performance. 
 Something of the same comic character was done 
 in Rome, when well-known figures, suggestive of a 
 satirical application, were published with the heads 
 of public characters. Thus the face of Antonclli 
 appeared on the shoulders of Fra Diavolo ; and the 
 queen of Naples was made to figure as Moll Flagon. 
 Even the Pope himself was not spared. The speedy 
 result, however, was a Papal edict against the 
 enormity, by which the photographic artists were 
 subjected to the loss of their places and instruments, 
 a fine of one hundred dollars, and a year in the 
 galleys ! The models who dared to sit for such 
 figures were denounced in the same penalties. 
 
 — — 
 
 Prices Realised ey Relics. — The passion for 
 the possession of remarkable relics has led to extra- 
 ordinary prices being sometimes given for things of 
 little value in themselves, or sometimes perfectly 
 worthless. The following instances of extravagant 
 sums paid for objects more or less curious have 
 been recorded: — A tooth of Sir Isaac Newton's was 
 sold in 1 816 for the sumof ;^730. It was purchased 
 by a nobleman, who had it set in a ring which he 
 wore constantly on his finger. 
 
 The prayer-book used by King Charles I. when 
 on the scaffold was sold in London in 1825 for 100 
 guineas. 
 
 The hat worn by Napoleon Bonaparte, at the 
 battle of Eylau, was sold in Paris, in 1835, for 1,920 
 francs (about ^80). It was put up for sale at 500 
 francs, and there were thirty-two bidders. 
 
 The ivory arm-chair presented to Gustavus Vasa 
 by the city of Lubeck was sold, in 1825, to the 
 Swedish chamberlain, M. Schmekel, for 58,000 
 florins. 
 
 The coat worn by Charles XII. at the battle 
 of Pultawa, and preserved by one of his officers 
 and attendants, was sold in 1825 for 561,000 
 francs. 
 
 The two pens employed in signing the treaty of 
 Amiens were sold in 1825 for ^500. 
 
 The pens used in Paris for signing the treaty of 
 peace, concluded after the Russian war, were pre- 
 sented to the Empress Eugenie, by whom they 
 have no doubt been carefully preserved. 
 
 A wig that had belonged to Sterne was sold at a 
 public auction in London for 200 guineas. 
 
 An old wig which had belonged to the German 
 philosopher, Kant, was sold after his death for 200 
 francs. 
 
 Voltaire's cane realised 500 francs at a sale in 
 Paris. 
 
 A waistcoat belonging to J. J. Rousseau was 
 sold for 950 francs, and his metal watch for 500 
 francs. 
 
 At the French village of Pezenas some years ago 
 there was an old arm-chair, which was said to have 
 been frequently used by Moliere. When he was 
 living in this village he was accustomed every 
 Saturday afternoon to go to a barber's shop, in a 
 corner of which this chair was keptc The shop 
 was the resort of all the idlers and gossips of the 
 town, and there politics were discussed, and all the 
 news of the day repeated. The chair in the corner 
 formed a kind of observatory for the dramatist, who 
 was in the habit of attentively watching all that 
 was going on around him. The old chair was 
 brought to Paris to be sold, and realised a con- 
 siderable sum. 
 
 The Harp of Brian Boru.— The great Irish 
 monarch, Brian Boroihme, or Boru, was killed at 
 the battle of Clontarf, A.D. 1014. He left his son, 
 Donagh, his harp, but Donagh having murdered 
 his brother and been deposed by his nephew, re- 
 tired to Rome, and carried with him the crown, 
 harp, and regalia of his father. These regalia 
 were kept in the Vatican till Pope Clement sent 
 the harp to Henry VIII., but kept the crown, which 
 was of massive gold. Henry gave the harp to the 
 first Earl of Clanricarde, in whose family it re- 
 mained until the beginning of the eighteenth 
 century, when it passed by marriage into other 
 hands. It was deposited in 1782 in the Museum 
 of Trinity College, Dublin, where it now is. The 
 harp is thirty-two inches high, and of good work- 
 manship, the sounding-board is of oak, and the 
 extremity of the uppermost arm is capped in part 
 with silver, well wrought and chiselled. It contains 
 a large crystal set in silver, and under it was another 
 stone, now lost. 
 
io8 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 GLACIERS. 
 
 Glaciers are masses of ice which descend into 
 the valleys from the higher regions of snow-moun- 
 tains. Above a certain line, called the snow-line, 
 varying in height according to the situation of the 
 country — in the Alps it is on an average at 7,200 
 feet above the sea level — the sun is not sufficiently 
 powerful to melt the snow that falls in large quan- 
 tities during the winter months. In the recesses and 
 higher valleys of the mountains this snow accumu- 
 lates, one layer being formed upon another, till the 
 
 M. Agassiz was the first to ascertain by exact 
 I measurements the rate of progress of a glacier. 
 I By boring holes in the ice, and fixing in them piles 
 of wood in the same straight line across the glacier, 
 and opposite to certain marked objects on the sides 
 of the mountain, he was enabled, by returning to the 
 same spot the next year, to determine how far 
 downwards the piles had moved. 
 
 Glaciers abound in all the great mountain chains, 
 
 and play an important part in physical geography, 
 
 being the sources of some of the largest rivers in 
 
 I Europe and Asia. The Rhine, the Po, the Rhone, 
 
 •THE RHONE GLACIER. 
 
 lower strata, by the increasing weight above, be- 
 come pressed and consolidated together till they 
 form ice ; and the whole mass is then forced down 
 the valley till it reaches and extends beyond the 
 snow-line. If the reservoir above is small, the 
 portion that arrives beyond the snow-line melts, 
 the supply equalling the demand and no more. But 
 in large mountainous districts, where the accumu- 
 lations are on a vaster scale, the supply exceeds 
 the demand, and the ice is gradually pressed down 
 into the lower valleys, and often into the plains. 
 
 " The glacier's cold and restless mass 
 Moves onward day by day ; 
 
 but its rate of progress varies very much, being 
 naturally quicker in summer and slower in the winter. 
 The progress of the Mer de Glace has been as 
 much as thirty inches a day in summer, and sixteen 
 jrjches in winter. 
 
 the Garonne, the Ganges, and the Indus, all take 
 their rise from glacier streams. Some glaciers 
 cover an enormous area ; that of Baltoro, in the 
 Himalayas, is as much as thirty-six miles long, and 
 between two and three miles wide ; that of Biafo is 
 sixty-four miles long. The glaciers of the Alps are 
 better known, and though small when compared 
 to those just quoted, are yet of considerable extent 
 and importance. There are as many as sixty in 
 the whole Alpine range, which extends from Mont 
 Pelvoux, in Dauphine, to the Grosser Glockner, in 
 Carinthia. The glacier of Aletsch, the largest in 
 Switzerland, is sixteen miles long and one and a 
 quarter miles broad, and descends from 12,000 to 
 4,000 feet above the sea. The Mer de Glace, which 
 descends into the valley of Chamouni, one of the 
 best known of all glaciers, is seven and a half miles 
 long. 
 
GLACIERS. 
 
 109 
 
 The glacier of the Rhone, shown in the illustra- 
 tion, gives a very good specimen of the general 
 features of a glacier, and more especially of what is 
 called the fan-shaped glacier. It takes its rise on 
 the west side of the Galenstock — the mountain on 
 the right of the picture — and after issuing through 
 a somewhat narrow portal, extends itself, compara- 
 tively unconfined, over the slope of the mountain. 
 It expands in a nearly circular shape ; and the 
 deep fissures or crevasses, as they are called, 
 formed by the onward motion of the ice, appear, 
 like the sticks of a fan, to radiate from the centre. 
 From the valley, the upper part of the glacier or 
 neve is seen piled up in a confused mass, broken and 
 cracked by the action of the weather, and assuming 
 strange fantastic shapes. 
 These blocks are known 
 by the name of serass. 
 The lower part, as may be 
 seen, is comparatively 
 flat, and may be traversed 
 easily, though the cre- 
 vasses are rather wide. 
 These crevasses are gene- 
 rally filled with water, 
 of a dark blue colour, 
 within a few feet of the 
 surface, and are often of 
 great extent, and form 
 the real dangers of moun- 
 tain travelling. A cre- 
 vasse on the Mer de 
 Glace was estimated at 
 2,000 feet in length. It 
 is in this part of the 
 glacier that are found 
 the internal cascades or 
 moitliiis, as they are 
 called. They arise from 
 the superficial waterocca- 
 sioned by rains, and the 
 melting of the snow on the surface. The several 
 small rivulets formed from these causes unite in 
 one considerable stream, which flows on till it 
 comes at last to a crevasse, down which it descends 
 in great force, keeping open and widening the 
 channel, which presents at length an open shaft 
 sometimes of immense depth. There is a moulin 
 on the Mer de Glace more than 350 feet deep. On 
 the right bank of the Rhone glacier, where the 
 glacier meets the rock, is a very fine specimen of 
 this ice waterfall. Sometimes, when the bed of a 
 glacier is high, and breaks off abruptly, the ice is 
 forced over the precipice thus formed in huge I 
 blocks, and constitutes an ice-fall ; one of the most ' 
 singular phenomena of the mountains. There is 
 a very fine ice-fall in the lower glacier at Grindel- 
 wald, and one in the Mer de Glace. 
 
 The lower end of a glacier is usually steep. 
 
 Sometimes its outline rises unbroken, but more fre- 
 quently it is split up, by intersecting cracks, into 
 masses, which the continued action of the sun and 
 air sharpen into pyramids and grotesque shapes. 
 The stream formed by the waste and melting of 
 the ice, and fed by the jnon/ins, issues at the foot 
 of the glacier, sometimes by a small opening, but 
 generally from a cave, as in Fig. 2. In the summer- 
 time, after heavy rains, the snow and ice at these 
 apertures are loosened, and fall in large quantities, 
 widening the entrances of these outlets. The effect 
 on these ice-caves, when the sun is shining, is sin- 
 gularly beautiful, the dirty masses of the outer crust 
 contrasting with the pure white of the inner layers, 
 and the glitter of the blue and green ice. 
 
 The heaps of debris de- 
 picted in the foreground of 
 Fig. I are called moraines. 
 They consist of rock 
 and pieces of stone and 
 earth brought away by the 
 glacier in the course of its 
 journey down the moun- 
 tain. All along the sides 
 of a glacier these heaps 
 may be seen, and wher- 
 ever they are found it is a 
 sure signthat a glacier has 
 been there some time or 
 other. For a glacier re- 
 cedes as well as advances, 
 and its path, like that of 
 a retreating army, may be 
 traced by the ravages it 
 has committed and the 
 ruins it leaves behind. 
 There is little doubt that 
 the glacier of the Rhone 
 once extended to the 
 Lake of Geneva. Another 
 sure sign of the track of 
 a glacier is its action on the bed of rock on which it 
 is formed. Stones and pieces of rock find their 
 way through the crevasses to the bed of the glacier 
 ■stream. These, by the immense weight above, are 
 ground into a species of powerful emery powder, 
 and wear away the surface of the hardest rock, 
 rounding off huge blocks as smooth as a slab of 
 marble. The stones and rocks in their turn are 
 ground into powder, and a glacier stream can 
 always be recognised by its white milky colour, 
 caused by these ground atoms. The peculiarities 
 of form produced by this grinding action of the ice 
 are to be traced in most of the Alpine valleys. In 
 the Grimsel and Hash valleys, on the slopes of the 
 Jura and the Italian sides of the Alps, evidences of 
 extinct glaciers are to be found in every direction, 
 and they are not confined to high mountainous 
 districts only, but are to be seen in the hills of 
 
 GLACIER C.\VKKi\. 
 
no 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 Cumberland, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Round 
 Snowdon especially, the rocks are furrowed and 
 scratched by glacier action ; and there is reliable 
 evidence that the ground now occupied by the Lake 
 of Killarney, was once a glacier bed. 
 
 WONDERFUL DEXTERITY OF A GOAT. 
 
 Dr. Cl.\rke relates that when he was travelling 
 from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, his party fell in with 
 an Arab who had a goat, which he led about the 
 country for exhibition. He had taught this animal, 
 while he accompanied its movements with a song, to 
 mount upon little cylindrical blocks of wood, placed 
 successively one above the other, and in shape re- 
 sembling the dice-boxes of a backgammon table. 
 In this manner the goat stood first upon the top of 
 one cylinder, then upon the top of two, and after- 
 wards of three, four, five, and six, until it remained 
 balanced upon the top of them all, elevated several 
 feet from the ground, and with its four feet collected 
 on a single point, without throwing down the dis- 
 jointed fabric upon which it stood. Dr. Clarke adds, 
 that this feat is very ancient. It is also noticed 
 by Sandys. Nothing can show more strikingly the 
 tenacious footing possessed by this quadruped 
 upon the jutting points and crags of rocks ; and the 
 circumstance of its ability to remain thus poised 
 may render this exhibition less surprising. It is 
 seen frequently in mountainous countries, standing 
 securely, though with hardly any place for its feet, 
 upon the sides and by the brink of the most tre- 
 mendous precipices. The diameter of the upper 
 cylinder upon which its feet ultimately remained until 
 the Arab had ended his ditty was only two inches, 
 and the length of each cylinder was six inches. 
 The most curious part of the performance occurred 
 afterwards ; for the Arab, to convince Dr. Clarke's 
 party of the goat's attention to his tune, interrupted 
 the da capo. As often as he did this the goat 
 tottered, appeared uneasy, and upon his master 
 becoming suddenly silent in the middle of the 
 song, fell to the ground. 
 
 THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES. 
 
 In the days of its prosperity, the capital of the 
 island of Rhodes—" the City of the Sun," as it 
 was poetically called— is said to have been adorned 
 with 3,000 statues and upwards of 100 colossal 
 figures ; of the latter, one was distinguished as 
 " the Colossus of Rhodes," which was one of the 
 Seven Wonders of the World. It was erected with 
 the spoil which Demetrius left behind him when he 
 raised the siege which he had so long carried on 
 against the city, and the statue was consecrated 
 to the Sun, the tutelar deity of Rhodes. It was, 
 according to Pliny, the work of Chares of Lindus, 
 
 a pupil of Lysippus. Its height was twenty cubits 
 (about 105 feet), the cost of its erection amounted to 
 300 talents (about £70,006), and the time consumed 
 in its construction was twelve years. Fifty-six 
 years after its completion (224 B.C.), this stupen- 
 dous statue was thrown down by an earthquake; 
 and in Pliny's time, it was still lying on the ground, 
 a wonder to behold. Few persons, he says, could 
 embrace the thumbs, and the fingers were longer 
 than the bodies of most statues ; through the frac- 
 tures were seen huge cavities, into which immense 
 stones had been placed to balance it while standing. 
 It is asserted to have spanned the entrance to the 
 harbour of the island, and to have admitted the 
 passage of vessels in full sail between its wide- 
 stretched legs ; and, although no old representation 
 of the statue exists, the historian RoUin, several 
 French dictionaries, and even encyclopedists have 
 adopted the above description of the wonder. 
 Vignere is supposed to have been the first who 
 ventured to make an imaginary drawing of the 
 Colossus. Chevreau added a lamp to the right 
 hand of the statue. Du Choul further adorned 
 the Colossus by giving him a sword and lance, and 
 by hanging a mirror round his neck, " in which," 
 it is added, " ships might be discovered as far off as 
 the coast of Egypt." 
 
 The Count Gouffier, about the year 17S0, how- 
 ever, declared the Colossus with the outstretched 
 legs to be fabulous, as did the Belgian Colonel 
 Rottiers, and our geologist HamiUon ; but they 
 placed the statue at the entrance to one of the 
 smaller harbours of Rhodes scarcely forty feet wide. 
 " Rottiers," says Dclepierre, in his " Historical Diffi- 
 culties," published in 1868, "goes even further, and 
 gives a superb engraving of the Colossus, under the 
 form of an Apollo, the bow and quiver upon his 
 shoulders, his forehead encircled by rays of light, 
 and a beacon-flame above his head." The statue, 
 according to Dclepierre, was erected on an open 
 space of ground near the great harbour, and close 
 to the spot where the pacha's seraglio now stands. 
 This explanation is still further supported by the 
 fact, that a chapel built on the ground, in the time 
 of the Templars, is named Fanitm Saudi Joannis 
 Colossensis. 
 
 Strabo, who wrote and travelled during the 
 reigns of the first two Roman emperors, is, after 
 Polybius, the earliest author who mentions the fall 
 of the Colossus. Pliny enters into fuller details. 
 Towards the end of the second century after Christ, 
 some writers speak of a colossal statue at Rhodes 
 as still existing, and Dclepierre thinks it possible 
 that "one was again constructed, but of smaller 
 dimensions. Indeed, Les AUazzi tells us that the 
 Colossus of Rhodes was reconstructed under the 
 Emperor Vespasian." And, a long time after the 
 fall of the Roman empire, the island of Rhodes 
 was conquered by the general-in-chief of the Caliph 
 
THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY. 
 
 Othman, in the seventh century of the Christian era, 
 when, we arc told in Byzantine history, that "the 
 general took down the Colossus which stood erect 
 on the island, transported the metal into Syria, 
 and sold it to a Jew, who loaded 980 camels with 
 the materials of his purchase," which statement 
 disposes of the story, that after the overthrow of the 
 Colossus, Greece and Egypt offered to contribute 
 large sums to restore the figure ; but the Rhodians 
 declined, alleging that they were forbidden by an 
 oracle to do so. We perceive that Delcpierre is in- 
 clined to attribute the exaggerated stories of the 
 Colossus to the time of the Crusades, when the 
 inhabitants of Rhodes made this boast to the new 
 comers of their past grandeurs. 
 
 Moiiirerful Statistics. 
 
 — * — - 
 
 Oriental Wealth : Tippoo Sultan.— In 
 1786, after Tippoo had concluded an expensive war 
 with the English, his treasures were thus estimated : 
 — 80,000,000 sterling (jewels and treasures) ; 700 
 elephants; 6,000 camels; 11,000 horses; 400,000 
 bullocks and cows ; 100,000 buffaloes ; 600,000 
 sheep ; besides immense quantities of military 
 stores and arms. — Afeinoirs and Correspondence 0/ 
 Marquis Wellesley, vol. i., p. 195. 
 
 The Railway Mania in 1845.— In 1845, there 
 were before the public projects for railways, 620 in 
 number, requiring a capital of ^563,203,000. Parlia- 
 ment granted powers to make 2,883 miles of railway, 
 at a cost of 44 millions. In 1846 applications were 
 made to Parliament for powers to raise 389 mil- 
 lions sterling for new lines ; and powers were 
 granted for forming 4,790 miles (including 60 miles 
 of tunnel), at a cost of 120 millions sterling. — • 
 Smiles' "Life of George Stephenson," p. 419. 
 
 Curiosities of Picture Dealing.— The 
 Orleans Gallery of the Italian and French 
 schools, containing 295 pictures, was sold by its 
 owner, Philip Egalitd, in 1792, to Mr. Walkners, a 
 banker at Brussels, for 750,000 francs. He in turn 
 sold them to M. Laborde de Mereville, for 900,000 
 francs (^'36,000). The next owner was Mr. Jeremiah 
 Harmann, of London, who gave ^40,000 for them. 
 In 1798, the Duke of Bridgevvater, Earl of Gower, 
 and Earl of Carlisle bought them for ^41,000, 
 selected for themselves pictures of the estimated 
 value of .£39,000, and then realised by a private 
 sale of others, 31,000 guineas, and by auction of 
 the remainder, ^10,000 ; thus obtaining for no- 
 thing pictures valued at ^39,000. — Waagen's " Ari 
 Treasures in England," vol. i., p. 21. Waagen 
 aflso mentions (ibid., vol. i., p. 408) a picture by 
 Cuyp, in Sir Robert Peel's collection, on panel 
 (i foot by I foot 8 inches) a landscape, originally 
 purchased at Hoorn, in Holland, for about one 
 shilling English. Sir Robert Peel pTiid 350 guineas 
 for it. 
 
 WONDERFUL EFFECT OF 
 IMAGINATION. 
 
 During the siege of Breda, in the Netherlands, in 
 1625, the garrison was dreadfully afflicted with the 
 scurvy. So useless was the medical aid afforded to 
 the soldiers, and so desperate were they in con- 
 sequence, that they resolved to give up the city to 
 the enemy. This resolution came to the ears of 
 the Prince of Orange ; he immediately wrote 
 addresses to the men, assuring them that he pos- 
 sessed remedies that were unknown to physicians, 
 and that he would undertake their cure, provided 
 they continued in the discharge of their duty. 
 Together with these addresses he sent to the 
 physicians small vials of coloured water, which the 
 patients were assured were of immense price, and 
 of unspeakable virtue. Many, who declared that 
 all former remedies had only made them worse, 
 now recovered in a few days. A long and interest- 
 ing account of the wonderful working of this purely 
 imaginary antidote was drawn up by M. Van der 
 Mye, one of the physicians in the garrison, whose 
 office was thus successfully usurped by the Prince 
 of Orange. A corroborative proof of the well- 
 known power of the imagination in affecting-disease 
 is afforded in the following Arabian fable : — One 
 day a traveller met the Plague going into Cairo, 
 and accosted it thus : " For what purpose are you 
 entering Cairo ?" " To kill 3,000 people," rejoined 
 the Plague. Some time after, the same traveller 
 met the Plague on his return, and said, " But you 
 killed 30,000!" "Nay," replied the Plague, "I 
 killed but 3,000 ; the rest died of fright." 
 
 THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY. 
 
 This celebrated collection of books was founded 
 by the first Ptolemy, king of Egypt, and was main- 
 tained by him and his successors ; its foundation 
 dates between 285 and 283 B.C., and it was sug- 
 gested by Demetrius Phalareus, who had seen and 
 profited by public libraries at Athens. Demetrius 
 was appointed superintendent of the new library, 
 and collected for it the literature of all nations, 
 Jewish, Chaldee, Persian, Ethiopian, Egyptian, 
 &c., as well as Greek and Latin. This was, prob- 
 ably, the largest collection of books which was 
 ever brought together before the invention of 
 printing, and from this circumstance thus early the 
 city of Alexandria derived the title of " Mother of 
 Books." 
 
 The number of books in the library has been 
 variously stated. -Some authors assert that Deme- 
 trius had brought together 200,000 volumes ; but 
 Eusebius says, with more probability, that at the 
 death of Ptolemy Philadelphus, which occurred 
 later, there were but 100,000 volumes in the library. 
 Philadelphus purchased the library of Aristotle. 
 
112 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 His successor, Ptolemy Euergetes, greatly increased 
 the library. In the reign of Ptolemy Epiphanes, 
 Eumenes, king of Pergamos, established a rival 
 library. The Egyptian monarch, in a fit of jealousy, 
 forbade the exportation of paper {papyrus) from 
 his domains ; and the invention of parchment, or, 
 perhaps, the improvement of this material, was the 
 consequence. Ptolemy (Euergetes II.) was also a 
 great book collector, and is said to have commenced 
 a second library, probably that which was placed 
 in the Serapeion, or temple of Serapis, in a different 
 quarter of the city. It is said that during his reign 
 all books brought into Egypt were seized and sent 
 to the museum, as it was called, where they were 
 transcribed, and the copies delivered to the owners, 
 while the originals were detained in the library — a 
 royal road to the formation of a valuable collection. 
 Almost all the Ptolemies were patrons of learning ; 
 and at last the Alexandrian Library is said to have 
 amounted to 700,000 volumes. It is to be recol- 
 lected that the rolls (volninina) spoken of contained 
 far less than a printed volume, as, for instance, the 
 " Metamorphoses" of Ovid, in fifteen books, would 
 make fifteen volumes ; and one Didymus is said 
 by Athenaeus to have written 3,500 volumes. This 
 consideration will bring the number assigned at 
 least within the bounds of crcdibihty. 
 
 The library building was eastward of the sea-port 
 of Alexandria, and in its siege by Julius Cassar, 
 when he set fire to the fleet, the flames were carried 
 by the wind to the neighbouring houses, and thence 
 to the library ; and the conflagration is thus vividly 
 described in Rowc's translation of the " Pharsalia " 
 of Lucan ; — 
 
 " On one proud side the lofty fabric stood, 
 Projected bold into the adjoining flood ; 
 There, fill'd with arniL-d bands, their barks drew near, 
 But find the same defending Cicsar there ; 
 To every part the ready warrior flies. 
 And with new rage the fainting fight supplies ; 
 Headlong he drives them with his deadly blade. 
 Nor seems to be invaded, but to invade. 
 Against the ships Phalaric darts he aims, 
 Each dart with pitch and livid sulphur flames. 
 The spreading fire o'erruns their unctuous sides. 
 And nimbly moiuiting, on the topmast rides. 
 Planks, yards, and cordage feed the dreadful blaze ; 
 The drowning vessel hisses in the seas; 
 While floating arms and nren promiscuous strew'd, 
 Hide the whole surface of the azure flood. 
 Nor dwells destruction on their fleet alone. 
 But, driven by winds, inv.ades the neighbouring town ; 
 On rapid wings the sheety flamei they bear. 
 In wavy lengths, along the reddening air ! 
 Not much unlike the shooting meteors fly 
 ^ In gleaming trails athwart the midnight sky. 
 
 Soon as the crowd behold their city burn. 
 Thither, all headlong, from the siege they turn ; 
 But Caesar, prone to vigilance and haste, 
 To snatch the just occasion ere it pass'd, 
 Hid in the friendly night's involving shade, 
 A safe retreat to Pharos timely made." 
 
 The library of the Serapeion is said also to have 
 been burnt in this siege, but this has been disputed. 
 If burnt, it was, at least, very soon re-established ; 
 
 and there is reason to presume that the diligence 
 of the learned men who frequented and were 
 attached to these establishments, would preserve 
 some part of their contents, to aid in forming the 
 new library, to which Marc Antony presented, 
 through Cleopatra, the whole collection of Eumenes, 
 king of Pergamos, amounting to 200,000 volumes. 
 Gibbon asserts that the whole library was totally 
 consumed, and that this gift was the foundation of 
 the new one, which continued to increase in size 
 and reputation for four centuries, until, at the des- 
 truction of the Serapeion by Theophilus, Patriarch 
 of Alexandria, it was dispersed, a.d. 390. Orosius, 
 who visited the place twenty years afterwards, saw 
 the empty book-cases. Still the library was re- 
 established ; and Alexandria continued to flourish 
 as one of the chief seats of literature until it was 
 conquered by the Arabs, A.D. 640. The library 
 was then burnt, according to the story generally 
 believed, in consequence of the fanatic decision of ' 
 the Caliph Omar, "If these writings of the Greeks 
 agree with the Book of God (the Koran), they 
 are useless, and need not be preserved ; if they 
 disagree, they are pernicious, and ought to be 
 destroyed." Accordingly, it is said, the books were 
 distributed to the various baths in Alexandria, to 
 be burnt in the stoves ; and such was the number, 
 that six months were barely sufficient for the 
 consumption of the precious fuel. Gibbon, and 
 other writers, reject this notion. Delepicrre objects 
 that John of Alexandria, who figures in the story, 
 was dead before the city was taken in 640. Then 
 there were 4,000 baths in Alexandria to be heated. 
 Greek authors, who were so incensed against the 
 Saracens, omit to speak of this conflagration 
 authorised by Omar ; and " the caliphs had for- 
 bidden, under severe penalties, the destruction of 
 all Jewish and Christian volumes ; and we nowhere 
 hear of any such work of destruction during the 
 first conquests of the Mohammedans," although 
 two Orientalists, Langley and Do Sacy, maintain 
 that the Mohammedans did demolish libraries and 
 destroy books, in spite of the law against any such 
 destruction. 
 
 Gibbon thus pathetically describes the empty 
 library at Alexandria : " It was pillaged or des- 
 troyed ; and near twenty years afterwards the 
 appearance of the empty sh&lves excited the regret 
 and indignation of every spectator whose mind was 
 not totally darkened by religious prejudice. The 
 compositions of ancient genius, so many of which 
 have irrevocably perished, might surely have been 
 excepted from the wreck of idolatry, for the amuse- 
 ment and instruction of succeeding ages ; and   
 either the zeal or the avarice of the archbishop 
 might have been satiated with the richest spoils 
 which were the rewards of his victory." The library 
 was, at all events, dispersed, if not destroyed : it 
 ceased to exist as a public institution. 
 
THE PITCH LAKE OF TRINIDAD. 
 
 "3 
 
 THE rlTCII I.AKK i)F IRlMbAli. 
 
 THE PITCH LAKE OF TRINIDAD. 
 
 The Pitch Lake of Trinidad is one of those extra- 
 ordinary natural wonders of which much has been 
 reported on hearsay, but little from personal obser- 
 vation. Writers have been content to borrow 
 from former accounts, when describing the place, 
 so that errors have been perpetuated which ought 
 to have been corrected. The island of Trinidad, in 
 which the Pitch Lake is situated, lies out of the 
 ordinary routes of travellers, and the lake is not 
 accessible without the expenditure of some trouble, 
 even after the traveller has been landed at Port of 
 Spain. These reasons will account for a good deal 
 of the obscurity with which the accounts of this 
 singular phenomenon are surrounded. 
 
 A morning's sail down the south-western coast 
 of the island will bring the traveller from Port of 
 Spain to Cape La Brea, in the neighbourhood of 
 Naparima. For several miles before reaching the 
 cape there will be perceived a strong pitchy smell, 
 
 IS 
 
 and it will be found on landing that the beach and 
 shore are perfectly black, being either composed of, 
 or overlaid with, the pitch which has at some time 
 or other found its way down from the lake. There 
 is abundant vegetation springing up in dark earth 
 more or less impregnated with pitch, and the bright 
 fresh green of the shrubs and trees serves the better 
 to set off the vulcan-like colour of the ground. A 
 walk inland for a mile over a black road on which 
 the finely-divided particles of pitch form a choking 
 and a blinding dust which flies with every puff of 
 wind hither and thither, brings the traveller to the 
 lake. The road has been ascending from the 
 shore, and the lake is at a level of eighty feet above 
 the level of the sea. At the lake, " as on either 
 side of the road for the whole way, the number and 
 luxuriant growth of the trees are very remarkable. 
 Nearly all the tropical plants are represented, and, 
 as if not to allow the animal kingdom to be unfavour- 
 ably contrasted with the vegetable, numbers of the 
 most beautiful butterflies it is possible to see, and 
 of the most gorgeously-dressed humming-birds, 
 
114 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 flutter and flit about in the sunlight, or fly in and 
 
 out among the branches of the trees." 
 , The lake itself is contained in a basin about a 
 mile and a half in circumference. In the months 
 of July, August, and September the contents are in 
 a simmering condition ; fountains of pitch, boiling 
 water, and argillaceous matter are thrown up here 
 and there to a height of thirty feet, and objects, 
 however light, allowed to fall into the lake, sink 
 down and arc irrecoverably lost. During the rest 
 of the year, however, the pitch at the borders, and 
 for a considerable extent away from them, is com- 
 paratively hard ; soft and dangerous parts are 
 indicated by the bubbling asphalte and by the 
 increasing insecurity of the footing. Even at times 
 when it is practicable to walk on the lake, it is not 
 .safe to stand still; the footsteps leave their imprint 
 on the soft substance of the surface, and it is neces- 
 sary to keep "moving on" in order to avoid sinking 
 as into a quick-sand. At these times the pitch lies 
 in large hummocks, between which run small rivulets 
 of fresh water, clear as crystal, and with a sulphureo- 
 pitchy taste, which act as a system of veins and 
 .arteries to the Tartarean lake. Small islets, covered 
 with the greenest shrubs and plants, are dotted 
 about the surface of the lake, which engulfs them 
 immediately tiic liquefying season comes, but re- 
 produces them on the arrival of the next cool 
 season. It is supposed that the lake has subterra- 
 nean communication with the sea, poles marked 
 with special characters having been found on the 
 coast, which had erewhilc been thrust into the 
 asphalte of the lake. That a communication does 
 exist is more than likely ; for at some distance from 
 Cape La Brca there are submarine pitch volcanoes 
 which throw up quantities of pitch and Pitch Lake 
 products into the sea ; and it is at all events reason- 
 able to suppose that these and the lake are connected. 
 Humboldt, Do Verteuil, and other authorities affirm 
 that there is a correspondence between all of these 
 and similar phenomena on the South American 
 continent, with which the island of Trinidad was 
 unquestionably once joined. 
 
 TRANSFUSION OF THE BLOOD. 
 
 A.MONG the wonders of surgery, nothing is more 
 remarkable than the operation of transfusion, which 
 has occasionally been performed with success in 
 Very cxtfcmc cases. It consists of conveying a por- 
 tion of the blood from the veins of a healthy and 
 vigorous person into those of one sinking, and ap- 
 parently at the point of death. A case of this kind 
 has lately occurred in the Hospital dclla Concezione 
 at Palermo. A youth of seventeen, named Giuseppe 
 Ginazzo, was received into that establishment in 
 September, 1868, with a bad humour in his leg, 
 which eventually rendered amputation necessary. 
 
 The patient was very much emaciated, and labour- 
 ing under fever, and after the operation he became 
 more reduced than ever, the pulse being imper- 
 ceptible, the eyes dull, the body cold, and it was 
 clearly apparent that he was sinking fast. In this 
 emergency, his attendant, Dr. Enrico Albanese, 
 had recourse to transfusion of the blood as the only 
 remedy that had not yet been tried. Two assistants 
 of the hospital offered to have their veins opened 
 for the purpose, and thus a quantity of blood on 
 two different occasions was introduced into the 
 patient's system. He began at once to revive, and 
 after the first operation he recovered the faculty of 
 speech, stating that before he could neither see nor 
 hear, but felt as if he were flying in the air. 
 
 A similar, and even more interesting case, occurred 
 a few years back in Staffordshire, the operation 
 then being performed on a lady residing in Can- 
 nock. The patient seemed to be expiring from loss 
 of blood, when her husband, at the suggestion of the 
 surgeon, Mr. J. Wheatcroft, consented to the ex- 
 periment of transfusion, and two pounds of blood 
 were conveyed from his veins into those of his wife. 
 In a few minutes after the operation was performed 
 the current of blood began to flow, the " ebbing of 
 life " was checked, and the circulation being re- 
 established, deliverance from death, which had 
 seemed so near, was secured. 
 
 The suggestion has been thrown out that, in 
 the last stage of low typhus, and the collapse 
 attendant on Asiatic cholera, the same remedy 
 might possibly prove of service. But we have not 
 yet heard of the experiment being tried in such a 
 case. 
 
 ELIZABETH CANNING. 
 The Daily Advertiser of the 6th of January, 1753, 
 contained the following advertisement of a remark- 
 able disappearance, the subject of which afterwards 
 gave rise to a singular trial, which divided opinion 
 in England, and was debated with all the excite- 
 ment of a great political question : — 
 
 ■\y57HEREAS, Elizubetli Canning went from her friends betwecTi 
 Houndsditch and Bishopsgate, on Monday last, the ist instant, 
 between 9 and 10 o'clock : whoever can give any account where slie 
 is, shall have two guineas reward, to be Jjaid by Mrs. Canning, a 
 Hawycr, in Aldernianbury Postern i which w ill be a great satisfaction 
 to her mother. 
 
 A description of her appearance and dress is added, 
 and the following note is appended : — 
 
 !t is supposed she was forcibly taken away by some evil-disposed 
 person, as she w.as heard to shriek out in a hackney coach, in Bishops- 
 gate Street. If the coachman remembers anything of the affair, by 
 giving an account as above, he shall be handsomely rewarded for 
 his trouble. 
 
 Nothing was heard of Elizabeth Canning for 
 more than three weeks. At last, on the 29th, she 
 returned to her mother's house, in an exhausted 
 
ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 "5 
 
 and miserable condition. She related that two 
 men had seized her near Bethlehem Gate, in 
 Moorfields, and when she resisted their attempts 
 to drag her along, had tied her hands behind 
 her, and with the greatest brutality compelled her 
 to accompany them, dragging her through the 
 mire, and otherwise ill-treating her. They reached 
 a lonely house by the roadside, about three hours 
 before daylight, when she was handed' over to an 
 old woman, who forced her up an old flight of 
 stairs into a back room, like a hayloft. Here 
 she was kept a close prisoner, and fed on bread 
 and water only, until the afternoon of the day 
 on which she returned home. .She then escaped 
 by breaking through the window of the room and 
 jumping into a narrow lane, from whence she gained 
 the main road to London, and, without having 
 stopped anywhere on the way, reached her home 
 in six hours. 
 
 Other statements made by Elizabeth Canning 
 led to the suspicion that the house in which she 
 had been detained was a place known as " Mother 
 Wells's," at Enfield Wash. The girl was taken to 
 make a deposition before the sitting alderman, and 
 eventually a number of persons were arrested — viz., 
 Mother Wells, the owner of the house ; an old gipsy 
 woman named Mary Squire; ; tliis old woman's son 
 and daughter, and another wandering gipsy named 
 Judith Natus. Elizabeth Canning swore to Mary 
 Squires as being the woman who had received her 
 into custody at the house and cut off her stays. 
 As the investigation went on, however, the most 
 extraordinary discrepancies were discovered in her 
 story ; among the rest, her description of the room 
 was not in agreement with the ascertained facts. 
 Nevertheless, both Mary Squires and Wells were 
 found guilty of the alleged felony, and, according to 
 the law of those times, the poor old gipsy was 
 sentenced to death. 
 
 It would be hard to describe the excitement which 
 arose out of this case, unless we filled several columns 
 with details of the conflicting evidence and of the 
 reasons which induced certain public characters to 
 espouse the different sides of the question. The 
 notorious " Orator " Henley declaimed to excited 
 crowds in favour of Elizabeth Canning ; and Justice 
 Fielding pronounced on the same side with the 
 deliberation which suited better to his dignity. On 
 the other side was a popular writer. Dr. John Hill, 
 who reasoned with much acumen in favour of the 
 condemned gipsy ; and with him was the equally 
 acute Lord Mayor of London, Sir Crispe Gascoyne. 
 These uniting their efforts, the sentence against 
 Mary Sauires was suspended, and in the April 
 sessions of 175;! Elizabeth Canning was put on her 
 trial at the Old Bailey for perjury. During the eight 
 days that this trial lasted, the public were kept in 
 a state of intense excitement. At last an extra- 
 ordinary verdict was returned — " Guilty of perjury. 
 
 but not wilful or corrupt." Such a verdict could 
 not, of course, be received by the court ; and at 
 last it took the form of " Guilty, with a recommen- 
 dation to mercy." Canning was then sentenced to 
 seven years' transportation. 
 
 The cause or motive of this girl's disappearance 
 has never been explained ; but it is not imreason- 
 able to surmise that she had some good reason to 
 secrete herself for awhile, and that she was led on, 
 step by step, to invent the story which excited so 
 much attention. 
 
 — • — 
 
 Value of Manuscripts in Ancient Times.— 
 Before the invention of printing, literature onl\- 
 existed in the form of manuscripts, which were 
 exceedingly rare and costly. "There have been 
 ages," says the elder Disraeli, " when, for the pos- 
 session of a manuscript, some would transfer an 
 estate, or leave in pawn for its loan hundreds of 
 golden crowns, and when even the sale or loan of 
 a manuscript was considered of such importance 
 as to have been solemnly registered by public acts. 
 Absolute as was Louis XI. he could not borrow 
 the MS. of Rasis, an Arabian writer, from the 
 library of the Faculty of Paris, for copying, without 
 pledging a hundred golden crowns; and the president 
 of his treasury, charged with this commission, sold 
 part of his plate to make the deposit. For the loan 
 of a volume of Avicenna a baron offered a pledge 
 of ten marks of silver, which was refused, because 
 it was not considered equal to the risk incurred of 
 losing the volume. These events occurred in 1471. 
 One cannot but smile at an anterior period, when 
 a Countess of Anjou bought a favoiirite book of 
 Homilies for 200 sheep, some skins of martens, and 
 bushels of wheat and rye. In these times manu- 
 scripts were important articles of commerce. They 
 were excessively scarce, and preserved with the 
 utmost care. Usurers themselves considered them 
 as precious objects for pawn. A student of Pavia, 
 who was reduced by his debaucheries, raised a new 
 fortune by leaving in pawn a manuscript of a body 
 of law ; and a grammarian, who was ruined by a 
 fire, rebuilt his house with two small volumes of 
 Cicero." What a contrast do such facts as these 
 present to the general diffusion of the most precious 
 treasures of learning by the art of printing, as 
 developed in recent times ! 
 
 An Early Manuscript of the Bible. — The 
 Duke of Sussex, uncle of Her present Majesty, pos- 
 sessed a very fine manuscript of the thirteenth cen- 
 tury, uDon vellum, in two volumes, entitled, " Biblia 
 Sacra Hebraica." At the end of the second volume 
 was the following curious inscription in Hebrew : — 
 " I, Meyer, the son of Rabbi Jacob the .Scribe, 
 have finished this book for Rabbi Abraham, the 
 year 5052 (a.D. 1292), and he has bequeathed it to 
 
ii6 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 his children, and his children's children, for ever. 
 Amen, Amen, Amen. Be strong and strengthened. 
 May the book not be damaged neither this day nor 
 for ever, until the ass ascends the ladder." After 
 this was drawn the figure of an ass ascending a 
 ladder. — - 
 
 WONDERS OF ENGINEERING. 
 
 THE MONT CENIS TUNNEL. 
 
 Of all the projects with which engineers of the 
 present day surprise us, the most wonderful as yet 
 actually in process of execution is undoubtedly 
 the tunnel through the heart of Mont Ccnis, the 
 Alpine barrier between France and Italy. Every- 
 one knows the story of the passage of the Alps by 
 Hannibal in the old Roman times, and again by 
 Napoleon in our own, both which events are re- 
 garded as marvels ^f daring and persistent en- 
 durance. In more recent times the passage over 
 Mont Cenis has become the regular highway from 
 France into Italy whenever, from the state of the 
 weather, it was practicable. But the travelling was 
 often interrupted by snow, and at most periods of 
 the year was full of discomfort, if not of danger. 
 Modern engineering proposed to put an end to all 
 this, by going through the mountain instead of 
 over it. To pierce through the very heart of Mont 
 Cenis, a distance of more than seven and a half 
 English miles, under circumstances which might 
 well have been supposed to present insuperable 
 engineering difficulties, is an achievement before 
 which those of Hannibal and Napoleon sink into 
 insignificance. 
 
 First, the perforating machinery had to be in- 
 vented, and it was required to be powerful enough 
 to make its way through rocks harder to work than 
 even granite. The mountain mass consists, for 
 the most part, of what geologists call a " crystal- 
 lised calcareous schist," interrupted occasionally by 
 large masses of pure quartz. A thousand years 
 might have been spent in vain attempts to bore 
 and blast this rock with the ordinary means. But 
 the difficulty of the work only seemed to stimulate 
 the ingenuity of the engineers, who vied with each 
 other in producing the most elaborate machines for 
 this purpose. Of these several were tried and put 
 into actual use. The cut on the opposite page gives 
 a representation of one of the most remarkable of 
 them. It is the invention of a French engineer, M. 
 Leschot. The remarkable feature about it con- 
 sists in substituting for the ordinary iron bars, used 
 to bore hard rocks, rotatory tools acting like an 
 angular conical head, in which the steel teeth are 
 replaced by diamonds. 
 
 The apparatus consists principally of an iron 
 tube, at the extremity of which is a steel ring, in 
 which black diamonds are set, projecting from 
 the surface, some within, some without, and others 
 a little in advance of the front edge. A rotary 
 
 motion is given to this tube, with a greater or lesser 
 pressure against the rock, which is broken up and 
 bored wherever the diamonds touch it ; the motive 
 power employed is water, which has been found 
 more convenient for the working of this machine 
 than steam or compressed air. To further facilitate 
 the working of the machine a stream of water is 
 introduced either by means of an india-rubber pipe 
 or even the iron tube containing the perforator, 
 which washes away the fragments of rock which 
 would otherwise soon choke the machine and stop 
 its working. With this apparatus a hole of 2-loths 
 of an inch in diameter, and nearly 3J inches in 
 depth can be made in a hard rock in the space of 
 an hour. 
 
 But of course this, though wonderful enough in 
 itself, only implied a very slow rate of progress. 
 In any case, it was certain that many years would 
 be occupied in boring a tunnel through the Alps, 
 and the lapse of time would alone have made the 
 work impracticable, since few people would be so 
 mad as to supply large sums of money for a pro- 
 ject which they might never see realised. It was 
 resolved, therefore, to commence the tunnel from 
 both sides of the Alps at once, and this rendered 
 it necessary to contrive means for laying out the 
 line accurately, so that the two bores might meet. 
 Plans and levels to determine the sections, and to 
 fix the axis of the tunnel from various points on the 
 mountain, had to be taken under enormous diffi- 
 culties of all kinds. At length this too was done so 
 satisfactorily that, on making a final summary of the 
 results, the deviation was found to be less than a 
 foot for the whole distance. 
 
 We say nothing here of the extraordinary labour 
 and various strange contrivances involved in the 
 preparatory works, and how the difficulty of sup- 
 plying air to the workmen was overcome ; these 
 are points which will be easily imagined by the 
 reader. The work of tunnelling was not actually 
 commenced till November, i860, three years aftei" 
 the project had been sanctioned by the Sardinian 
 government. The time allowed for the completion 
 of the tunnel was twenty-five years, but such pro- 
 gress has been made, that it is reported it will 
 be ready for traffic within three or four years 
 from the present time. Out of a total length of 
 12,220 metres, equal to yj miles, the latest report 
 shows that 8,958 metres, or about two-thirds of the 
 distance, have been completed, leaving but 3,261 
 metres, say two miles in round numbers, to be 
 accomplished. The rate of progress from either 
 end is about two metres a day. The tunnel will 
 be lined in its entire length with stone, which is 
 quarried in the immediate vicinity of the two 
 entrances, and the placing of which is continued 
 by the masons a few hundred yards in the rer.r of 
 the men engaged in perforating the rock. The 
 tunnel is not driven at one iiniform level. The 
 
WONDERS OF ENGINEERING. 
 
 117 
 
 DIAMOND DRILLING MACHINE USED IN BORING MONT CENIS. 
 
 entrance on the French side, near the village of 
 Fourneau, is 3,946 feet above the sea ; on the 
 Italian side, at Bardonoche, it is 4,380 feet above 
 the sea-line. This difference of level, 434 feet, 
 causes a gradient, or gradual ascent from the 
 French side, for a distance of four miles, with an 
 average gradient of i in 45J : the Italian gradient 
 is I in 2,000. Trains passing from France to 
 Italy will take from thirty-eight to forty minute? 
 
 running through, while those from Italy into France 
 will accomplish the distance in about thirty minutes. 
 It is confidently expected that the difference in level 
 of the two ends of the line will accomplish, by 
 natural means, the perfect ventilation of the tunnel, 
 which otherwise would have been a work of per- 
 petual expense, if not of considerable engineering 
 difficulty. The expense of the tunnel is to be 
 borne in equal proportions by Italy and France, 
 
iiS 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 A WONDERFUL DELUSION. 
 
 Every lunatic asylum in the kingdom contains 
 several patients suffering from religious mania, and 
 there arc, alas ! numbers unconfined who are 
 labouring under similar delusions ; but this latter 
 class is, happily, not so numerous as it was in 
 former days. Old newspapers, pamphlets, and 
 magazines contain copious accounts of various 
 religious pretenders, and the life of each one affords 
 matter of interest enough to warrant the telling; 
 but it is proposed to speak of only one in this 
 present article, more especially as it is certain that 
 there are yet to be found people who believe in the 
 Divine encouragement of her life and mission. 
 Joanna Southcott was born in Devonshire about 
 the year 1750, of very humble parentage. .She was 
 for many years a domestic servant in, Exeter, and 
 when she was between thirty and forty years of age, 
 she joined the Methodists in that place, then pre- 
 sided over by a man called Sanderson, who pre- 
 tended to the gift of prophecy. Joanna seems to 
 have caught the infection, and started prophetess 
 on her own account, expressing her foreknowledge 
 either in a loose, doggrel, .Seven Dials sort of 
 rhyme, or, when she wrote in prose, she copied the 
 manner, without the mind, of Holy Scripture. 
 
 She declared that she was the woman spoken of 
 in the Revelation, in the ist and following verses of 
 the 1 2th chapter. 
 
 In consequence of this avowal she had numerous 
 followers, to whom she sold seals, said to secure 
 the salvation of the purchasers. Her followers 
 included rich and poor, learned and ignorant, re-. 
 fined and rough folk of both sexes, one of whom, 
 perhaps the most notable, was William Sharp the 
 engraver. He had beenthc victim of many impos- 
 tors, and was cured at last of his passion for religious 
 pretenders by Joanna, who swindled him out of his 
 hard-gained money under the pretence of purchasing 
 for him an estate in the New Jerusalem. But the' 
 most glaring deception connected with this poor 
 demented housemaid was, that she declared that 
 upon the 19th of October in the year 1814, and at 
 twelve at noon precisely, the Prince of Peace, the 
 Shiloh, would be born of her. She had at that 
 time nearly 100,000 followers, who spent much 
 money in preparing a suitable outfit in clothes and 
 furniture worthy of him who was expected. The 
 cradle, which was made by a London upholsterer, 
 and cost 100 guineas, is, with a silver ladle also pre- 
 pared for the occasion, preserved in the museum at 
 Peel Park, Salford, Manchester. 
 
 At the appointed time, the street in which she 
 lived was crowded with anxious spectators, who 
 dispersed when it was given out that the blessed 
 Joanna had fallen into a trance. 
 
 On the 27th of December in the same year she 
 ceased to exist, the immediate causjs of death being 
 
 dropsy. On her death-bed, Joanna said, "Ul have 
 been misled, it has been by some spirit, good or 
 evil." At least, it was fortunate for her that she 
 lived in the days of comparative medical ignorance, 
 and when many like her were permitted to go at 
 large. During the course of her life she had given 
 to the world several volumes of so-called prophecies, 
 one of them called "The Book of Wonders," which 
 were religiously preserved after her death by her 
 followers, who still continued to believe implicitly 
 in her mission. 
 
 According to the census of 1851, there were four 
 congregations in various parts of the kingdom, pro- 
 fessing to wait for the reappearance of Joanna with 
 the promised Shiloh, they believing that she was 
 carried to heaven in that trance in which she 
 actually died. These people call themselves 
 Christian Israelites, the waiters for the Shiloh. 
 They affect a singularity in dress, wearing a 
 modification of the Quaker garb. AH these people 
 still lay claim to the gift of prophecy, and they 
 have from time to time pretended to have been 
 endowed with miraculous powers ; but in every 
 case in which these powers have been called forth, 
 have they failed most completely. 
 
 In Ashton-undcr-Lyne, where there is one branch 
 of this remarkable sect still existing, one of these 
 people obtained so much influence over the mind of 
 a weak but wealthy inhabitant of that place, as to 
 make him believe that he had power to walk upon 
 the water of the canal, which was close upon his 
 house. In the presence of a great crowd he stepped 
 out from his house upon the water, and — went to 
 the bottom. It is, perhaps, only superfluous to say 
 that the " Prophets " attributed his failure to want 
 of faith. 
 
 A few years back, one of these congregations 
 assembled in Walworth, in the southern part' of 
 London ; they met in a cooper's shed, under the 
 shadow of St. Peter's Church. 
 
 On a desk were laid copies of some pamphlets 
 written by Joanna, and after a little time the 
 Shilohitcs — as they called themselves — made their 
 appearance in front of the curtain, headed by a 
 wild-looking woman, with her hair streaming, and 
 a fillet of tinsel round her forehead. The men who 
 accompanied her wore long beards and white 
 vestments, crossed by bells with texts of Scripture 
 inscribed thereon. 
 
 In the days when this took place, the beard 
 movement had not begun, so that their appearance 
 would have been venerable, for they were mostly' 
 old men, had it not been for a certain wild, rest- 
 less expression common to all. The proceedings 
 commenced by the recitation and singing of some 
 doggrel verses, beginning " See the conquering 
 Shiloh comes," a parody of that well-known 
 chorus in Handel's Judas Maccabeus, accompanied 
 by a large drum— hitherto kept concealed— and 
 
THE NAUtlLUS AND PORTUGUESE MAN-OF-WAR. 
 
 "9 
 
 an accordion. Some extracts were then read from 
 the " Book of Wonders," written by Joanna, by 
 the wild-looking woman before mentioned, oc- 
 casionally interrupted with remarks by the boys 
 •forming the congregation, by whose riotous pro- 
 ceedings the service was brought to a premature 
 conclusion, and the Ijuilding was closed. 
 
 THE GOLDEN HOUSE OF NERO. 
 
 On that part of the ruins of Imperial Rome lying 
 between the Palatine and the Esquiline Hills — a 
 space which was more than a mile in breadth — Nero 
 erected his celebrated " Golden House," as he called 
 the new palace in which he fixed his abode. The 
 vastness of extent and the varied magnificence of 
 this imperial residence and its ornamental grounds, 
 almost surpass belief ; and if the details that have 
 come down to us respecting it were not too well 
 authenticated to admit of doubt, they might be 
 regarded as falbulous. Within its enclosure were 
 comprised spacious fields, groves, orchards, and 
 vineyards ; artificial lakes, hills, and dense woods 
 aftsr the manner of a solitude or wilderness. The 
 palace itself consisted of magnificent buildings 
 raised on the shores of the lake. The various 
 wings were united by galleries each a mile in length. 
 The House or immediate dwelling of the emperor 
 was decorated in a, style of excessive gorgeousness. 
 It was roofed entirely with golden tiles, and with 
 the same precious metal also the marble sheath- 
 ing of the walls was profusely decked, being at the 
 same time embellished with ornaments of mother- 
 of-pearl — in those times valued even more highly 
 than gold — and with a profusion of precious 
 stones. The ceilings and woodwork were inlaid with 
 ivory and gold, and the roof of the grand banquet- 
 ing-hall was constructed to resemble the firma- 
 ment. It was contrived to have a rotatory motion, 
 so as to imitate the motion of the heavenly bodies. 
 The vaulted ceilings of ivory opened and let fall 
 on the guests a profusion of flowers, and golden 
 pipes sprayed over them the most delicate per- 
 fumes. 
 
 The vastness of the plan prevented the Golden 
 House of Nero being finished during his lifetime. 
 Vespasian drained the principal lake of this fairy 
 region, on which he built the Colosseum, and pulled 
 down all that Nero had erected beyond the Pala- 
 tine, reducing the Imperial palace to the hill that 
 once contained Rome. Domitian built up what 
 his predecessor had pulled down, and added to 
 the palace the Adones, or halls and gardens of 
 Adonis, the splendid wonder of that age of mag- 
 nificence. Septimius Sevcrus made several addi- 
 tions to the south of the Palatine, especially the 
 Septizoniuni, the site of which has been much dis- 
 puted ; while in later days Pope Sixtus V. carried 
 
 off to St. Peter'sthe three orders of columns of which 
 it was composed. Among the modern discoveries of 
 the palace, were a room full of Roman coins, and a 
 hall hung with cloth of gold, and on another part 
 of the Palatine a spacious hall covered with paint- 
 ings. The fall of the palace of the Caesars was a 
 true picture of plunder. In the fifth century the 
 Goths pillaged it of all its gold, silver, ivory, &c. ; 
 its bronze fell to Genseric, and the Vandal is sup- 
 posed to have freighted a ship with statues from 
 the Imperial palace. In the long feudal wars of 
 the Roman nobles, it was attacked and fortified, 
 taken and retaken ; but the Farnese popes and 
 princes gave the finishing stroke to its desolation, 
 to enable them to erect their palaces and villas 
 with its materials. 
 
 THE NAUTILUS AND PORTUGUESE 
 
 MAN-OF-WAR. 
 There are two wonders of the deep which are 
 often confounded with each other, the nautilus and 
 the little creature which is known to sailors as the 
 Portuguese man-of-war. Both are sea-farers, but 
 the n.autilus is to its rival as the most fanciful, 
 delicate yacht is to the water-bruising frigate. The 
 nautilus is a fair-weather sailor, while the other, 
 though unable to face storms, is yet a hardy, open- 
 sea navigator, spreading its canvas when winds 
 are fresh, and anxious to make a good offing 
 when the nautilus is only too solicitous to fore- 
 gather, even with a lee shore, so it may be unex- 
 posed " while the stormy winds do blow." 
 
 Judged according to their respective ranks in the 
 scale bf animal life, the nautilus is of far greater 
 consequence than the Physalia Atlantica, for such 
 is the scientific name for the Portuguese man-of- 
 war. The nautilus is a member of a rather highly 
 organised family, while the physalia is only one of 
 " the upper ten thousand " in a community where 
 the vital system is so simple and rudimentary, as 
 to be hardly admitted into tlie animal kingdom. 
 Both are wonderful in construction and habit. Let 
 us see what Xho. physalia is like. Floating on the 
 surface Jof the water is an elegant quadrant of 
 membrane distended like a sail, and almost trans- 
 parent. It is generally of a whitish-blue colour, 
 fringed at the edges with a beautiful pink or purple. 
 The membrane which has the appearance of a 
 shell, and is commonly taken for one, is flattened at 
 the sides, which at the level of the water arc usually 
 from two to four inches apart. The sail thus 
 made is used by the little creature as his only 
 means of progression, and in the sides of the 
 cavernous sail are ribs or wrinkles, which suggest 
 an idea that the proprietor has the power of reef- 
 ing his canvas at will, by a sort of self-reefing 
 apparatus put in action from the deck, and pre- 
 venting the necessity for " hands aloft," or for 
 
r^o 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 driving under bare poles. As quaint Richard 
 Ligon, writing in 1673, says of him, he " can when 
 he pleases enjoy himself with his neighbour fishes 
 under water, and 
 when he puts on a 
 resolution to try his 
 fortune in another 
 element, then he 
 riseth to the top of 
 the sea, let the 
 billows go never so 
 high, and then with- 
 out the help of a 
 sailor raises up his 
 mainmast, spreads 
 his sails which he 
 makes of his own 
 sinews, fits his rud- 
 der and ballast, 
 and begins his 
 voyage ; but to 
 what coast he is 
 bound or what 
 traffic he intends, 
 himself and He 
 that made him only 
 
 can tell." The creature will out-sail any ship, and 
 as the author just quoted says, " can go nearer the 
 wind by a point than the most yarc friggot that 
 ever was built." It is not accord- 
 ing to the present writer's ex- 
 perience, however, to confirm the 
 statement that the physalia can 
 continue his voyage, " let the 
 billows go never so high." On 
 the contrary, though in stiff 
 breezes and with a roughish sea 
 the little creature may be seen 
 hundreds of miles from any land, 
 speeding swiftly along, up one 
 wave and down another, in really 
 foul weather — or rather on the 
 approach of it — he strikes sail, 
 folds himself within himself, and 
 subsides into the bosom of the 
 ocean till the surface be once 
 more calm, and the wind tyranny 
 be overpast. 
 
 The nautilus is a mariner of 
 quite another stamp, with a pedi- 
 gree far nobler in point of anti- 
 quity than the other, for its form 
 and substance are enshrined in 
 many of the fossil strata of the 
 earth ; and in its family history 
 it has, as the Basque peasant 
 retorted to the boastful Montmorency, left off 
 dating. It is one of twenty-two recognised 
 families, whereof some have their habitation in 
 
 SHELL OF THE PEARLY NAUTILUS. 
 
 PORTUGUESE MAN-OF-WAR. 
 
 fresh water and others in salt, and this nautilus 
 in particular is called Nautilus umbilicatus, 
 because of the ligature which connects the different 
 
 portions of its body 
 when exposed over 
 the sides of its 
 shell, as its manner 
 is when bound sea- 
 ward. It has a 
 imi-valve shell of a 
 highly-organised 
 description. Each 
 shell is divided by 
 partitions into a 
 number of cham- 
 bers which gra- 
 dually increase in 
 size towards the 
 mouth of the shell 
 where the nautilus 
 animal actually 
 lives. As the 
 animal grows it in- 
 creases the size of 
 its shell by addi- 
 tions at the mouth, 
 and at the same time cuts off a chamber in the 
 interior of the shell. These chambers are so many 
 air compartments which the nautilus can fill or 
 empty at will, and by means of 
 which he can adapt himself to 
 the specific gravity of the medium 
 in which he happens to find him- 
 self Those who have most 
 closely watched his habits, assert 
 that he is naturally disinclined 
 to surface-navigation, that he 
 only takes to it when absolutely 
 compelled by disturbing causes 
 underneath, and that his favourite 
 occupation consists in creeping 
 along the bottom of the sea with 
 the mouth of his shell down- 
 wards, and in that position fish- 
 ing for such food as may come 
 to him. When at the surface, he 
 is seen to float with his shell the 
 reverse way, and with his body 
 hanging over the edges, but se- 
 cured by the ligature from which 
 he derives his class name. 
 
 The nautilus is rarely seen out 
 of the Indian seas ; but the Por- 
 tuguese man-of-war is to b3 
 noticed over a wide range of the 
 Atlantic — in the northern hemi- 
 sphere from the Azores to the equator. Our illus- 
 trations will give the reader an idea of the appear* 
 ance of these two wonderful navigators. 
 
A WONDERFUL WEED. 
 
 121 
 
 ANACIIARIS ALSINASTRUM. 
 
 A WONDERFUL WEED. 
 
 Ill weeds proverbially grow apace, and perhaps 
 nothing affords a more striking illustration of this 
 familiar saying than the water-weed known as 
 the Anacharis alsinastrum, called also by some 
 botanists the Elodea Canadensis, and known more 
 commonly as the American water-weed, or " water 
 thyme." It is found in ponds, rivers, or canals, and 
 when once it makes its appearance it spreads in 
 such an extraordinary manner as in a short time to 
 entirely destroy the beauty of ornamental water, 
 and even to obstruct the navigation in canals and 
 streams. It floats wholly under water, but at the time 
 of flowering makes its appearance on the surface, its 
 roots being widely spread in the mud at the bottom. 
 It has the peculiar faculty of being capable of 
 propagation from the smallest fragment of its stalk, 
 and hence it is a matter of great difficulty to get 
 rid of it. Another peculiarity of the weed is that it 
 sometimes suddenly springs up in places where it 
 had never been observed before, but this is doubt- 
 less owing to some small portion having been 
 brought to such localities by the wind, or occa- 
 sionally, it may be, even in the bodies of water-fowl. 
 At the present time it is growing to a serious 
 extent in some of our principal rivers, such as the 
 Trent and the Shannon. In these it impedes navi- 
 
 16 
 
 gation materially, and fishermen complain, also, that 
 it kills or drives the fish from the water. 
 
 The anacliaris (from ana, without, and charts, 
 beauty,) is believed to be a native of America, 
 where it is certainly found in great abundance, but 
 nothing is positively known as to the time and 
 manner of its introduction into these islands, beyond 
 that it has only been observed in recent years. 
 One story is that a portion of the weed was brought 
 to England from America with a number of other 
 botanical specimens, and that a gentleman who 
 was taking these specimens with him in a cab 
 recognised it, and, instead of keeping it for effectual 
 destruction, thoughtlessly threw it out of the window, 
 whence it fell on to a spot suitable to its growth. 
 There is not, however, sufficient evidence to esta- 
 blish the truth of this anecdote, and its probability 
 is contradicted by the accounts given of the weed 
 by some of our eminent botanists, who assert that 
 it made its appearance in several remote parts of 
 Britain simultaneously, and that its existence was 
 observed farther back than is generally supposed. 
 Among those who have written on the subject, are 
 the authors of " Contributions towards a Cybele 
 Hibernica," in which work the plant is thus 
 described : — 
 
 " A native of America recently introduced, but 
 now not unfrequent in canals, streams, and ponds 
 
THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 in many parts of Ireland. Abundant in the canals 
 near Dublin and Belfast, whence it has extended to 
 Lough Neagh and the River Shannon, and is still 
 spreading, having become in some places a very 
 troublesome weed. Professor Murphy describes it 
 as being now a great nuisance in the River Lee, 
 below Cork, having been introduced in 1851. i\Ir. 
 Carroll has seen it growing plentifully in the river 
 at Carlow. Dr. Dickie has recorded its having 
 been observed in a pond at Waringstown, Down, 
 about the year 1836 ; and in his ' Flora of Ulster' 
 it is stated to have been known near Lisburn for 
 more than twenty years previous to 1 864." 
 
 The very measures taken to check the growth of 
 the anacharis often favour its propagation, small 
 pieces of the plant becoming dispersed, and taking 
 root immediately for themselves, owing to the 
 vitality before mentioned. In streams of any size 
 it is scarcely possible to deal with the weed effec- 
 tually, and every year its spread is accelerated by 
 portions being brought down by the currents. In 
 ponds, however, and small ornamental water, it has 
 fortunately been found that it may be kept entirely 
 imder by the introduction of swans or Canadian 
 geese, which devour it eagerly. 
 
 THE ORRERY. 
 
 It was believed by Desaguliers that George Graham, 
 about the year 1700, first invented a movement for 
 exhibiting the motion of the earth about the sun, at 
 the same time that the moon revolved round the 
 earth. This machine being in the hands of the 
 instrument-maker, to be sent with some other in- 
 struments to Prince Eugene, he copied it, and 
 made the first for the Earl of Orrery, and then 
 several others with additions of his own. Sir 
 Richard Steele — who knew nothing of Graham's 
 machine — in one of his lucubrations, thinking to do 
 justice to the first encourager, as well as to the first 
 inventor of such a curious instrument, called it after 
 the earl, an Orrciy, and gave Mr. J. Rowley the 
 praise due to Mr. Graham. We find, however, 
 earlier mention of an orrery than the above, in the 
 journal of the Dean of Ross, under date 1689. 
 
 "December 14. — In the evening Mr. Milburn 
 came and sat with me, and showed me an account 
 of an automaton projected and made by Mr. 
 Watson of Coventry, whereby all the stars' motions, 
 and planets, were exactly represented in clockwork, 
 and all the problems and observations in astronomy 
 thereby fully answered." 
 
 Orreries have been constructed by several inge- 
 nious persons. Mr. John Fulton, a native of Fen- 
 wick, was a self-taught artist, and constructed a 
 beautiful orrery ; hence the maker was called " Ful- 
 ton of the Orrery." He was a working shoemaker 
 in his native village, of scanty means and education, 
 
 yet, by dint of application during his leisure hours, 
 he executed the above instrument with the greatest 
 care and finish. He was afterwards employed by 
 Mr. Bate, the well-known mathematical instrument 
 maker in the Poultry, where he made theodolites 
 for the Pasha of Egypt, and balances for the Royal 
 Mint. Fulton also applied himself to the study of 
 languages, but his health failed him through exces. 
 sive application, and he died at a comparatively 
 early age. 
 
 AN EXTRAORDINARY SLEEPER. 
 
 The following account of a labouring man, named 
 Samuel Clinton, of Timbury, near Bath, is taken, so 
 far as the substantial facts are concerned, from the 
 Philosophical Transactions. On the 13th of May, 
 1694, Clinton, who was then twenty-five years of 
 age, fell into a profound sleep, in which he continued 
 for a month. Every effort was made to rouse him, 
 but in vain. At the end of that time he awoke of 
 himself, and went about his business as usual. 
 Nothing more extraordinary occurred until the 9th 
 of April, 1696, when ho again fell into a profound 
 sleep. Mr. Gibbs, an apothecary of Bath, was sent 
 for after a fev/ days, and bled, blistered, cupped, and 
 scarified the young man, all to no purpose. Victuals 
 were kept before him, of which he occasionally ate 
 without waking. Sometimes the act of eating was 
 not fully accomplished, and he would be found with 
 his mouth full of meat. In this manner he con- 
 tinued for seventeen weeks, till the 7th of August. 
 He then awoke naturally, put on his clothes, and 
 went into the fields to his work. He was surprised to 
 find it was harvest time, the period that had elapsed 
 since he was at work sowing oats and barley having 
 been a blank. From this time, again, he remained 
 well until the 17th of August, 1697, when he com- 
 plained of a shivering and a coldness in his back, 
 vomited once or twice, and once more fell asleep. 
 Dr. Oliver, whose account of the matter appeared 
 in the Philosophical Transactions, then went to 
 see him, and found his pulse regular, and his body 
 agreeably warm. He tested the sleeper in the 
 most severe manner, and tried by every artifice he 
 could devise to surprise him into wakefulness, and 
 was at last compelled to admit that the sleep was 
 real. About ten days after, an apothecary (Mr. 
 Gibbs, wc presume) took fourteen ounces of blood 
 from his arm, tied it up again, and left him as he 
 found him, without the least movement having been 
 made by the sleeper. About the end of September, 
 Dr. Oliver saw him again, and a gentleman ran a 
 large pin into his arm to the very bone, but Clinton 
 gave no sign of being sensible of what was done to 
 him. Once, on the 19th of November, he woke up 
 and spoke to his mother, but almost instantly went 
 to sleep again, and continued so till the end of 
 January or beginning of February. He then awoke 
 
WONDERS OF HUMAN FOLLY. 
 
 123 
 
 perfectly well, and, as on former occasions, had no 
 recollection of anything that had occurred. He 
 resumed his business, and nothing more is on re- 
 cord concerning him. 
 
 LAND AND MOUNTAIN SLIPS. 
 
 On the morning of the 2nd of September, 1806, 
 the inhabitants of the village of Goldau, situated at 
 the foot of the mountain known as the Rossberg, 
 in Switzerland, were surprised to see large fissures 
 appearing here and there in the sides and at the 
 base of the mountain, and to hear low, hollow 
 S3unds occasionally emitted from its depths. Un- 
 acquainted with natural phenomena, and ignorant 
 of the meaning of these strange portents, they do 
 not seem to have concerned themselves much about 
 them, but pursued their ordinary avocations as if 
 nothing had happened. So things went on through- 
 out the day, the sounds still continuing at intervals, 
 and the fissures becoming wider, but yet not so 
 much so as to create uneasiness or alarm. Night- 
 fall came on, and most of the people had retired to 
 tlieir homes, when the hour of the threatened 
 visitation arrived. In a few minutes, and without 
 further warning, the upper portion of the vast 
 mountain shook, gave way, and descended upon 
 the doomed village of Goldau, with three others 
 that lay scattered around its base, burying them 
 and all that they contained. More than 450 people 
 were killed, with the herds of cattle which it was 
 their chief business to tend ; but, strange to say, a 
 few persons were extricated some days afterwards 
 while still alive. 
 
 This sad calamity would, if scientific men had 
 been upon the spot, have been perfectly foreseen 
 from the morning's indications. " Land-slips," as 
 they are called, or mountain slips, are sufficiently 
 familiar to all who are versed in physical science, 
 and they have played an important part in the 
 formation of the present surface of all countries 
 of the earth. Our own land presents abundant 
 examples. Not to multiply instances, we may 
 mention that of the celebrated Undercliff, the 
 most beautiful part of the Isle of Wight, which 
 was formed by an immense slip of the land from 
 the high cliffs above, the lower strata on which they 
 rest having been undermined by the action of the sea. 
 
 In the case of Goldau and its unfortunate neigh- 
 bours, the same agency — water — had operated in 
 another but equally well-understood manner. To 
 explain it we must refer to one of the most interest- 
 ing branches of geological inquiry. 
 
 The action of the weather is continually pro- 
 ducing a change on the surface of our globe. This 
 change, as a rule, progresses slowly, although its 
 results in the course of years are very clearly seen. 
 Even hard granite rocks become completely pul- 
 
 verised in time by the influence of rain and wind, 
 their surfaces being reduced to powder to the depth 
 of many feet, and thus hollows are eventually 
 scooped out as completely as by the blasting 
 operations of the engineer. But the rain also 
 operates in a manner other than this, which is 
 known as " disintegration." It produces wonders 
 by what is known as the " percolation of the soil." 
 Here we have the explanation of the calamitous 
 phenomenon of the Rossberg. The season of 1806 
 having been very rainy, great quantities of water 
 had penetrated through the sides and at the foot 
 of the mountain, and lodged in the softer strata 
 at its base. The upper portion of the Rossberg is 
 formed of a conglomerate of flint and rock, com- 
 monly known as pudding-stone, which rests upon a 
 foundation of sandy soil. By the influence of the 
 heavy rains, the sandy foundation of the mountain 
 became completely saturated with water, and at last 
 it was so far undermined that there was no longer 
 the necessary support for its great weight, and the 
 upper portion toppled over upon the plains beneath. 
 It is not often that geological changes of this 
 kind occur on so large a scale, or are so terrible in 
 their results, but to a less extent they are among 
 the most frequent of natural phenomena. Any 
 well-informed traveller who observes the features of 
 a country through which he passes may notice that 
 in innumerable instances the superficial formation 
 is due to a slip of earth from hill or mountain, and 
 we occasionally hear that in our own islands some 
 striking instance has taken place. The outline of 
 our sea-coast is always in process of change, from 
 the combined action of the weather and the sea. 
 One of the largest of our land-slips in recent times 
 occurred in Dorsetshire about thirty years a^o, 
 when a mass of chalk about three-quarters of a 
 mile long slipped from its bed of clay towards the 
 
 WONDERS OF HUMAN FOLLY. 
 
 THE TULIP MANIA. 
 
 We often hear of " fancy prices " being given for 
 articles of rarity, such as new varieties of plants, or 
 birds just introduced from foreign parts. Twenty 
 guineas for a flower, and one hundred for a fowl, 
 may seem wildly extravagant sums, but such have 
 been occasionally paid by wealthy people deter- 
 mined to possess any novelty, whatever may be 
 the cost. This rage for rarity attained extra- 
 ordinary proportions in the "Tulip Mania," as it is 
 commonly called, of the seventeenth century, when 
 the desire for the possession of tulip bulbs — then 
 but recently introduced into Europe — gave rise to a 
 trade which ended in a vast and ruinous speculation. 
 Tulips appear to have been unknown in Western 
 Europe until the middle of the sixteenth century, 
 when their culture was introduced from the Levant. 
 
124 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 They were grown at first only in the gardens of a 
 few natiiniHsts, but, becoming more widely known, 
 they found their way to Holland. Here, the cha- 
 racter of the soil and climate being highly favour- 
 able, their cultivation was attended to with great 
 care, and the plants became more and more in 
 request as they increased in variety and beauty. 
 Dutch merchants made their purchase and sale a 
 part of their regular trade, and supplied other 
 nations of Europe with their importations. 
 
 Any tulip of a new and rare kind was sure to 
 obtain purchasers at a considerable advance on 
 the ordinary value ; for among tulip-growers the 
 strongest rivalry existed as to who should have the 
 choicest selection. This rivalry formed the basis 
 of the tulip mania, for people began to buy up bulbs 
 of the rarer kinds, in order that tulip-fanciers might 
 be forced to come to them and purchase them at a 
 greatly enhanced price. Several individuals making 
 a large profit in this way, others entered the field to 
 join in the speculation. Thus the demand increased, 
 and the price went higher and higher ; the tulips 
 being bought, not for their own intrinsic beauty, 
 but with regard to what it was thought they might 
 eventually bring in the market. The preposterous 
 height to which this folly attained will best be 
 understood by the following facts, which are given 
 by Beckmann in his " History of Inventions :" —   
 
 " The trade was not carried on throughout all 
 Europe, but in some of the chief cities of the Nether- 
 lands, and rose to the greatest height in the years 
 1634-37. Hunting has given, from some of the 
 books kept during that trade, a few of the prices 
 then paid, of which I shall present the reader with 
 the following. For a root of that species called the 
 Viceroy, the after-mentioned articles were agreed 
 to be delivered : — 2 lasts of wheat, 4 of rye, 4 fat 
 oxen, 3 fat swine, 12 fat sheep, 2 hogsheads of 
 wine, 4 tuns of beer, 2 tuns of butter, 1,000 lb. of 
 cheese, a complete bed, a suit of clothes, and a 
 silver beaker ; making a total value of 2,500 florins 
 (about ^250). The tulips were afterwards sold 
 according to the weight of the roots. Four hundred 
 perits (a small weight of less than a grain) of 
 Admiral Leifken cost 4,400 florins ; 446 ditto of 
 Admiral Von der Eyk, 1,620 florins ; 200 ditto 
 Semper Augustus, 5,500 florins, &c. A root of the 
 species Semper Augustus has been often sold for 
 2,000 florins ; and it once happened that there were 
 only two roots of it to be had, the one at Amsterdam 
 and the other at Haarlem. For a root of this species 
 one agreed to give 4,600 florins, together with a 
 new carriage, two grey horses, and a complete set 
 of harness. Another agreed to give for a root 
 twelve acres of land. Those who had not ready 
 money, promised their movable and immovable 
 goods, houses and lands, cattle and clothes. One 
 man was said to have gained by this trade more 
 than 60,000 florins in the course of four months. 
 
 It was followed not only by mercantile people, but 
 also by the first noblemen, and by citizens of every 
 possible station. 
 
 " At first every one won and no one lost. Some 
 of the poorest people gained in a few months houses, 
 coaches, and horses, and figured away among the 
 wealthiest in the land. In every town some tavern 
 was selected, which served as a 'change, where high 
 and low traded in flowers, and confirmed their 
 bargains with the most sumptuous entertainments. 
 They formed laws for themselves, and had their 
 notaries and clerks. A speculator often offered and 
 paid large sums for a root which he never received 
 and never wished to receive. Another sold roots 
 which he never possessed or delivered. Oft did a 
 nobleman purchase of a chimney-sweep tulips to 
 the amount of 2,000 florins, and sell them at the 
 same time to a farmer ; and neither the nobleman, 
 chimney-sweep, nor farmer had roots in his posses- 
 sion, nor wished to possess them. Before the 
 tulip season was over, more roots were sold and 
 purchased, bespoke and promised to be delivered, 
 than in all probability were to be found in the 
 gardens of Holland ; and when Semper Augustus 
 was not to be had, which happened twice, no 
 species, perhaps, was oftener purchased and sold. 
 
 " To understand this gambling traffic (continues 
 Beckmann), it may be necessary to make the follow- 
 ing supposition. A nobleman bespoke of a mer- 
 chant a tulip-root, to be delivered in six months at 
 the price of 1,000 florins. During these six months 
 the price of that species of tulip must have risen or 
 fallen, or remained where it was. We shall suppose 
 that at the expiration of that time the price was 
 1,500 florins ; in that case the nobleman did not 
 wish to have the tulip ; and the merchant paid him 
 500 florins, which the latter lost and the former 
 won. If the price was fallen when the six months 
 were expired, so that a root could be purchased for 
 800 florins, the nobleman then paid to the merchant 
 200 florins, which he received as so much gain ; 
 but if the price continued the same, neither party 
 gained or lost. In all these circumstances, however, 
 no one ever thought of delivering the roots or of 
 receiving them. . . . The whole of this trade 
 was a game at hazard, as the Mississippi trade was 
 afterwards, and as stock-jobbing is at present." 
 
 At length the trade, like many similar specula- 
 tions, collapsed. Many persons who had suffered 
 ruinous losses broke their contracts ; faith in the 
 ultimate realisation of the money which the tulips 
 were supposed to represent then fell suddenly to 
 the ground, and ruin was spread far and wide. The 
 holders of roots, for which they had paid immense 
 sums, found no one to take them off their hands, 
 and discovered then that they had parted with 
 money and lands for a thing which was of abso- 
 lutely no value beyond the fictitious price which 
 had been set upon it 
 
THE FISHING-FROG. 
 
 I2S 
 
 THE FISHING-FROG. 
 
 THE FISHING-FROG. 
 
 Amongst the spiny-finned fishes, the two most 
 remarkable are the sea-wolf and the Lophms pisca- 
 torius, or fishing-fi-og. The former, which is known 
 in British seas, attains a length of six or seven feet, 
 and in colder latitudes is even larger. It lives on 
 crustaceans and molluscs, which it crushes with its 
 formidable teeth and jaws— instruments of which it 
 avails itself freely upon any attempt at capture. 
 Fishermen, knowing its peculiarities, knock it on 
 the head before it has a chance of doing mischief ; 
 and in Iceland the people eat its flesh, which is 
 said to be excellent. The skin is used for making 
 pouches and wallets, and the liver is used as a 
 substitute for soap. 
 The fishing-frog, of which a, drawing is annexed. 
 
 is a very remarkable creature. It is known as the 
 wide-gab, the angler, and the sea-devil (not to be 
 confounded with the devil-fish), and is one of the 
 ugliest of fishes. The head is very large, depressed, 
 and rotundate, forming in many instances quite 
 half the body. Its ample mouth is armed with 
 numerous pointed teeth of a truly formidable cha- 
 racter, which are the terror of all smaller fry. On 
 the head are three movable filaments, of which 
 the first one is forked, and has a silvery lustre. 
 This is the creature's fishing-rod. He moves the 
 flag-like top to and fro in the water, and the sheen 
 of it attracts small fishes. The angler himself, 
 being of a sluggish nature, lies close at the bottom 
 of the water, where he disturbs the mud so as 
 to hide his ugly presence ; but as soon as an 
 unfortunate fish is within reach, he rouses himself 
 
126 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 from his lair, devours his prey, and resumes his 
 fishing. Besides procuring food in this way — at 
 one time it was said he used no other way — he 
 hunts by netting, and for this purpose he uses the 
 sac which is formed behind the gill-cover by the 
 elongation of the gill membrane. At the fore part 
 of the head, on each side of the first ray, lies tlic 
 olfactory apparatus, in the form of a small, stalked 
 cup. It is pretty certain that at times when food is 
 scarce, and the fishing-frog is hungry — an almost 
 perpetual condition of his — the lophiits will abandon 
 liis sly mode of angling, and go off on an aggres- 
 sive prowl, seeking what he may devour. He 
 has been pulled up to the surface in company 
 with a cod, from whose toothsome flesh he was 
 only compelled to let go by means of a stout blow 
 delivered on his head by the fisherman. Mr. 
 Yarrell states that on one occasion a fishing-frog 
 seized a conger eel that had just been hooked, when 
 the eel wriggled through the narrow bran^-hial aper- 
 ture of his second enemy, and in this manner the 
 two were hauled up together. 
 
 Sometimes the lophius attains a length of five 
 feet, but the specimens taken on the British coasts 
 rarely exceed three. It is of no value in itself, but 
 is sometimes exhibited at sea-side places as a 
 natural curiosity. 
 
 Monbjjrs of Coitstnidiotr. 
 
 EHRENBREITSTEIN. 
 
 Ehrenbreitstein is a small town situated on the 
 right bank of the Rhine, opposite Coblentz, of no 
 particular interest beyond its proximity to the 
 Prussian fortress of Ehrenbreitstein (broad sto.ne 
 of honour), which stands above it, ana is one of 
 the strongest fortified places in Europe. Its origin 
 still remains unknown, but we hear of its having 
 been inhabited many centuries ago by the Romans, 
 and of their watch-tower, called Ciesar's Tower, 
 which was subsequently demolished by the French, 
 who besieged the fortress in 1688, under Marshal 
 Boufflers, without success, although the famous 
 Vauban directed the works against it, and 
 Louis XIV. went thither himself to witness its 
 surrender. It was attacked again in 1798, when 
 the French took it after a fourteen months' siege, 
 and on their evacuation of it at the peace of 
 Luneville, in 1801, they blew up its defences. Up 
 to the early part of the thirteenth century, it served 
 as a stronghold of the Electors of Treves, who in 
 former times had a palace at the foot of the rock, 
 which is now used as a flour-store. The fortress 
 was entirely reconstructed in 181 5, by some Prus- 
 sian officers of the engineers, and the French gave 
 fifteen millions of francs towards it, as they had 
 agreed to do at the second peace of Paris, for 
 having destroyed it ; but more than four times that 
 firaount has been expended on its restoration by 
 
 the Prussian government. In 1484, a well nearly 400 
 feet deep, and communicating with the Rhine, was 
 built by Prince John of Baden. The platform on 
 the top of the rock serves as a parade-ground, and 
 covers vast cisterns capable of containing a supply 
 of water for the garrison for three years, while the 
 magazines are said to be extensive enough to hold 
 provisions for 8,000 men for ten years. The 
 escarped rocks and steep steps on three sides of 
 the fortress are defended by many-mouthed bat- 
 teries, numbering a total of 400 guns. The north- 
 west portion of the fortification is its weakest point, 
 and is protected by three lines of defences, con- 
 structed one within another, which must be taken 
 in succession by the enemy before an entrance in 
 this direction can be effected. The road up to the 
 fortress from the town of Ehrenbreitstein, is about 
 twelve hundred paces long ; it is also fortified, and 
 rests almost entirely upon arches built over the 
 chasms in the rock of which the height consists. 
 The fortress is capable of holding a garrison of 
 14,000 men, but in time of peace the number 
 quartered there seldom exceeds 500. 
 
 The famous large cannon, which was made in 
 1528, was over 17 feet in length, and shot a ball of 
 160 pounds weight. 
 
 The view from the summit of Ehrenbreitstein is 
 extensive and beautiful. For many years strangers 
 were not admitted within the fortress without a 
 special order from the government, but the Prus- 
 sians are now less strict about these observances. 
 
 CURIOUS TREES. 
 
 Eve's Apple-trees. — The botanical curiosities 
 of the island of Ceylon are replete with varied 
 interest. The Rt. Hon. Sir Alexander Johnston, 
 while inquiring into the history of the country, 
 had drawings made of a great many of the trees, 
 plants, and other vegetable productions, to which 
 any religious, political, or moral interest was 
 attached by the native Hindoos, Buddhists, 
 Mohammedans, or early Christians. One of these 
 is " the forbidden fruit, or Eve's apple-tree," the 
 Tabermemontana dichotoma of the " Hortus Kew- 
 ensis." Its native name is Diivi Kaditrii, Kaduru 
 signifying " forbidden," and Diwi " tigers." The 
 flower of this extraordinary production is said to 
 emit a fine scent. The colour of the fruit, which 
 hangs from the branches in a Afcry peculiar and 
 striking manner, is very beautiful, being orange 
 on the outside, and a deep crimson within ; the 
 fruit itself presenting the appearance of having 
 had a piece bitten out of it. This circumstance, 
 together with the fact of its being a deadly poison, 
 led the Mohammedans on their first discovery 
 of Ceylon — which they assigned as the site of 
 Paradise — to represent it as the forbidden fruit 
 
THE WONDERFUL POWER OF RESISTING FIRE. 
 
 12*^ 
 
 of the Garden of Eden ; for although the finest 
 and most tempting in appearance of any, it had 
 been impressed, such was their idea, with the mark 
 of Eve's having bitten it, to warn men from med- 
 dling with a substance possessing such noxious- 
 properties. Its effects are so poisonous, that two 
 European soldiers, shortly after the capture of 
 Colombo, in 1795, being unaware of the nature of 
 the fruit, were tempted by its appearance to taste 
 it, and very soon sickened and died. 
 
 The Oldest Rose Tree in the World.— 
 Humboldt in his " Aspects of Nature," relates that 
 in the crypt of the cathedral of Hildcsheim, grows 
 a wild rose tree, said to be one thousand years 
 old ; whereas it is the root only, not the stem, which 
 is eight centuries old, according to accurate infor- 
 mation derived by Humboldt from ancient and 
 trustworthy original documents. A legend connects 
 this rose tree with a vow made by the founder of the 
 cathedral, Ludwig the Pious ; and a document of 
 the eleventh century states that when Bishop Hezilo 
 rebuilt the cathedral, which had been burnt down, 
 he enclosed the roots of the rose tree within a 
 vault which still exists, raised upon this vault the 
 crypt, which was reconstructed in 1061, and spread 
 out the branches of the rose tree upon the walls. 
 The stem was, in 1849, 26i feet high, and the 
 branches covered about 32 feet of the external 
 crypt wall. This is considered to be the oldest 
 rose tree in the world. 
 
 THE WONDERFUL POWER OF 
 
 RESISTING FIRE. 
 Everybody has heard of the wonderful power 
 which some persons have possessed, or pretended 
 to possess, of resisting the action of fire. The truth 
 is, that it is now quite possible to account in a 
 rational manner for genuine cases of this kind. 
 Other performances, apparently still more wonder- 
 ful, are the results of trickery, and as a juggling 
 trick loses all its interest when once the truth is 
 told concerning it, we will explain one of these 
 marvels, and then pass on to those much greater 
 marvels of the same kind which admit of a scien- 
 tific elucidation. 
 
 The performer shows his audience an iron spoon, 
 empty, and immediately dipping it into a vessel full 
 of what appears to be melted lead, shows it again 
 filled with the molten metal. He then puts the 
 spoon into his mouth, and on withdrawing it from 
 between his lips shows the spectators that it is 
 empty. In a few moments — during which time 
 his lips are compressed as if he were painfully 
 holding the metal between his teeth till it cooled — 
 he takes from his mouth a solid piece of lead with 
 the marks of his teeth moulded in it. To all ap- 
 pearance the juggler has taken into his mouth a 
 spoonful of racked lead, and licld it between his 
 
 teeth till it became solid. In reality his spoon 
 has a hollow handle containing quicksilver, which 
 he allows to run out into the bowl, when he pre- 
 tends to dip. it into the lead, and which runs into 
 the handle again, and leaves the bowl of the spoon 
 empty, when he pretends to put it into his mouth. 
 The piece of solid lead which the performer ex- 
 hibits has, of course, been prepared beforehand, 
 and kept ready in his mouth. 
 
 The explanation of this apparent wonder must 
 suffice as an example of many similar explanations, 
 applicable to juggling tricks with fire. The facts 
 we are about to mention are of quite a different 
 character. 
 
 Readers of history are well acquainted with the 
 general nature of the Ordeal by Fire, a form of 
 appeal to Divine judgment in the Middle Ages. 
 Either red-hot ploughshares were prepared, on 
 which the accused was doomed to walk, or he had 
 to carry a piece of red-hot iron in his hand a 
 certain distance. All persons except the priest 
 and the accused were prohibited from entering 
 the church after the fire, in which the iron was 
 to be heated, had been kindled ; and when the 
 iron was red-hot, it had to be taken in the hand 
 and carried over a space nine times the length 
 of the accused's foot. If boiling water was chosen 
 by preference, the hand had to be plunged in it 
 to the depth of the wrist, in the simpler cases, and 
 in the severer trials, to the depth of the elbow. 
 After either ordeal, the hand was bound up and 
 sealed by the priest, and not inspected till the 
 end of three days. It is obvious that these regula- 
 tions admitted of fraud, but it will be shown be- 
 fore we conclude, that it was by no means physically 
 impossible for the accused to escape unhurt, even 
 when the experiment was fairly tried. 
 
 It would fill many pages were we to record all 
 the instances in which fire has been handled with 
 impunity. Amongst others there is the story of the 
 Augustinian father and the Jesuit. 
 
 After a contest of words, in which the latter was 
 worsted, he offered to settle the matter by giving 
 miraculous proof of the greater sanctity of his 
 order. Then turning to one of the monks, he said, 
 " My hands are cold, Brother Mark, fetch me some 
 fire from the kitchen to warm them ; and do not 
 stay to put the burning coals in a chafing-dish, 
 but just bring them, brother, in your hands." 
 Mark left the room cheerfully, and presently came 
 back with his hands full of burning coals, which he 
 held without any signs of pain, until his superior 
 had warmed himself, and then quietly carried 
 them back. In comparatively recent times the 
 same daring has been exhibited by performers. 1 a 
 the year 1680, an Englishman named Richardson 
 went the round of Europe in the character of a 
 fire-king. He chewed and swallowed burning 
 coals, ate molten glass, drank a flaming composi- 
 
128 
 
 THE WOkLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 tion ol pitch and sulphur, and held the red-hot 
 heater of a box-iron in his mouth. In the early 
 part of the present century a woman performed 
 similar feats in the metropolis : it is stated that she 
 stood with her naked feet on a plate of red-hot 
 iron and washed her hands in boiling oil. 
 
 In some of these cases the power of resisting 
 fire was obtained by 
 hardening the skin with 
 certain chemical prepa- 
 rations. The scientific 
 explanation of others 
 was discovered by M. 
 Boutigny, who made a 
 special study of what he 
 called the spheroidal 
 state of bodies, and 
 proved experimentally, 
 in his own person, that 
 it is possible to plunge 
 the hand into molten 
 lead and yet sustain no 
 injury. The first edition 
 of M. Boutigny's work 
 was published in 1842, 
 and in it he demon- 
 strated the remarkable 
 fact, that there is no 
 actual contact between 
 
 I'll- r. 
 
 bodies in the spheroidal 
 state and the surfaces on which they appear to rest. 
 To make this statement intelligible, let a, Fig. i, be 
 a lump of silver or platinum, egg-shaped, and weigh- 
 ing about half a pound or less. Having been made 
 as hot as possible, it is suspended in water by 
 means of the hooked rods, b c. What we afifirm is, 
 that the metal, a, will not bo in actual contact with 
 the water, but that the 
 water will recede from 
 it as represented in the 
 engraving. Or, again, 
 let a b, Fig. 2, be a well- 
 polished capsule of iron 
 kept at a red heat by 
 the lamp beneath it. 
 Let fall into this cap- 
 sule or tray a few drops Fig. 2. 
 of cold water, and they 
 
 will immediately collect together in the form of a 
 spheroid, c, which has the appearance of trembling. 
 This tremulous motion is caused by the vapour 
 which escapes from the bubble, and which is inter- 
 posed between it and the red-hot plate, like a spring- 
 cushion, though invisible. That there is no con- 
 tact can be proved by blackening the water before 
 it is dropped : the light of a candle can then be 
 distinctly seen through the thin stratum of vapour, 
 as represented in the engraving, though of course, 
 the distance between the spheroid of water and the 
 capsule is exaggerated. 
 
 The theory for our purpose is this : the hand of 
 the operator, having been very carefully moistened 
 with a very volatile liquid, such as alcohol or ether 
 is to be plunged rapidly, and with a certain kind 
 of adroitness, into the molten metal. In some cases 
 the natural humidity of the skin, especially when 
 the operator is influenced by some terrible appre- 
 hension, may do as well. 
 The moisture, however 
 produced, is thrown by 
 its sudden contact with 
 the heated metal into 
 the spheroidal state, and 
 as a necessary conse- 
 quence there is no actual 
 contact of the hand with 
 the metal, but a thin 
 layer of vapour is inter- 
 posed between them. 
 In order for the sphe- 
 roidal state to be as- 
 sumed, a certain limit 
 of temperature must be 
 exceeded, which differs 
 for different bodies : 
 that of water must be 
 below the boiling point. 
 If, after having obtained 
 the vessel or capsule be 
 
 the spheroidal globule, 
 
 allowed to cool, the hquid immediately touches it and 
 boils. Occasionally explosions take place in steam- 
 boilers, which can only be accounted for on the pre- 
 sumption that the water had assumed the spheroidal 
 state, and that the heating of the boiler had then 
 ceased, and an amount of steam been generated 
 which the boiler was not strong enough to resist. 
 
 The theoretical ex- 
 planation here given 
 has been experimen- 
 tally verified by Bou- 
 tigny, who plunged his 
 own hand into molten 
 metal ; and other 
 savans have done the 
 same thing to prove 
 their confidence in the 
 scientific principle, 
 themselves of the same law 
 
 Glass-blowers avail 
 
 when they fashion a mass of incandescent glass 
 in water by turning it rapidly round, and blowing 
 through the rod from which it is suspended. A 
 bubble is thus formed in the midst of the pasty 
 mass, and a little water being introduced into it, 
 and the opening closed, the vapour of the water 
 expands the bubble because it cannot escape, nor 
 even enlarge itself otherwise. If the water were 
 not in the spheroidal state when this is done, 
 and were really in contact with the glass, an 
 explosion would take place. 
 
THE WHITE ANT FAMILY; 
 
 )2C) 
 
 WHITE ANTS AND THEIR DWELLINGS. 
 
 THE WHITE ANT FAMILY. 
 
 The Termites, or white ants, as they arc often called, 
 though they have little affinity with the true ants, 
 are chiefly confined to the tropics ; some few species, 
 however, extend into the temperate regions. Like 
 the bees, wasps, and ants, which live in society, the 
 termites are composed of three kinds of individuals — 
 males, females, and what are termed neuters or 
 workers. The larvae nearly resemble the perfect 
 insect, excepting that they possess no wings. The 
 pupae have rudimentary wings. The neuters differ 
 from the males and females in possessing no wings, 
 in having the body stouter, the head much longer 
 
 17 
 
 and provided with long jaws crossing at the ex- 
 tremity ; they are said to defend their nests, and 
 station themselves near the outer s<irfacc ; they 
 are the first to make their appearance when their 
 habitation is disturbed ; they will attack their 
 assailants, and bite with considerable strength. 
 The negroes and Hottentots consider these insects 
 a great delicacy. They are destroyed with quick- 
 lime, or more readily with arsenic, which is thrown 
 into their habitations. 
 
 The fullest account we have of these remarkable 
 
 creatures is that related by Smeathman in the 
 
 Philosopliical Transactions, 1781. They destroy 
 
 ' all timber in buildings, all furniture, and nothing 
 
IJO 
 
 THE WORLD OK WOiNDERS. 
 
 escapes them but metal or stone. They construct 
 their nests with covered galleries, and far surpass 
 our European ants, bees, wasps, or beavers, in 
 the art of building, and in sagacity and govern- 
 ment. 
 
 There are se\'eral species, and some build on llic 
 j;round, others on the branches of trees, often at 
 great heights. The largest species ( Tcr/nes bellicosits) 
 is best known on the coast of Africa. It erects 
 immense buildings of well-attempered clay. In 
 .Senegal they resemble the villages of the natives, 
 being ten or twelve feet above the level of the 
 ground, and like very large haycocks. Comparing 
 the size of the animal with that of man, these 
 buildings are to the ants what four or five limes the 
 height of the Monument would be to us. 
 
 Every building consists of two parts, an exterior 
 dome and an interior, divided into an amazing 
 number of apartments. The exterior is a protection 
 from the weather, and in the interior reside the king 
 and (jueen, and the whole community, with maga- 
 zines stored with provisions and conveniences. 
 They raise these immense structures in separate 
 turrets, of the shape and size of sugar-loaves, and 
 then till it between till the dome is completed by 
 joining the tops of the lofty turrets which they raise 
 in the centre. They then take away the bases of 
 the central turrets, and apply the clay to the con- 
 struction of the interior. 
 
 The royal chamber is in the centre, iir the shape 
 of a large oven. The entrances are so small, that 
 the king and queen can never leave it. Around it 
 are apartments for soldiers and attendants, and 
 magazines filled witli gums and hardened juices of 
 plants. Among these are the nurseries for the 
 eggs and young. lieneath are sewers to carry off 
 \\ater, descending to the gra\x"l ; here subterraneous 
 passages are carried horizontally to vast distances, 
 like passages from old castles, from which they 
 emerge on any building or merchandise they intend 
 to attack. As they cannot carry up perpendiculars, 
 all the ascents and descents are made by spiral 
 roads. For a communication inside they construct 
 elliptical bridges. 
 
 Their destructiveness is very methodical. They 
 destroy all the softer substances first, and arc 
 particularly fond of pine boards, eating away the 
 entire inside, and le.'iving the surface as thin as 
 paper. A stake in a hedge is their sure prey, of 
 which they leave only the bark, and if the bark 
 fall off the outside of a beam, they cover it 
 with their mortar, so that no one suspects the attack 
 till the articles are handled or a support gives 
 way. Fallen trees they perforate in like manner ; 
 and what appears to be a sound piece of timber, 
 often proves but a shell which may be crushed by 
 the fingers. They seem aware that if their work 
 were seen from without, they should be disturbed, 
 so that the mischief is never suspected till it is per- 
 
 petrated. Of deserted houses or villages they leave 
 not a vestige in a few weeks. 
 
 The ravages of white ants continue to be a-, 
 destructive as when Smeathman described them. 
 In the island of St. Helena, the white ants were, it 
 is supposed, accidentally introduced from the coast 
 of Guinea, about twenty years since. Jamesto^ n 
 was devastated, the cathedral and the books of 
 the public library were destroyed. Everything in 
 the town made of wood was more or less injured, 
 imperilling the lives of large numbers of the 4,000 
 inhabitants. In the government stores it was found 
 that the moist traces of the insect on the outside 
 of the tin cases caused very speedy corrosion ot 
 the metal, and enabled the insects to make their way 
 in and devour the contents, doing many thousand 
 pounds' damage. The governor of .St. Helena 
 applied to the Lords of the Admiralty for the best 
 mode of finding the ants' nests, and effectually 
 destroying them ; and also as to the description of 
 timber which has proved to be the least susceptible 
 of injury from the insects ; these inquiries having 
 been referred to General Hearsey and the Ento- 
 mological Society, it has been decided that the 
 nests must be sought in the plains ; that if the anl-> 
 once effected a lodgment in the walls of a house, 
 the walls themselves must be taken down before 
 the insects could be got rid of Steeping tiiriber in 
 a solution of quick-lime, will prevent the attacks 
 of the insects, and impregnating the timber with 
 creosote has been found a preservative. lit Western 
 Australia, where white ants abound and destroy all 
 buildings and furniture to a great extent, the wood 
 of the mahogany tree has been found proof against 
 the ants' attacks ; while in the Amazon country, 
 where the house walls consist of posts with crossed 
 laths filled up with mud, and covered with lime and 
 cemsnt, the houses, if washed over with a solution 
 of arsenicated soap, will be preserved from the 
 insects' attacks. 
 
 Monbers of EUdjaitrciil Ingtiunlir. 
 
 —   — - 
 
 ICXl'ANDING MODEL OF A MAX. 
 In the Great lixhibition in Hyde Park, in the yeai 
 185 1, was shown a mechanical curiosity— an expand- 
 ing model of a man — the construction of which has 
 a romantic interest. It was the invention of the 
 Polish Count Dunin, who, in early life, became 
 involved in the insurrection of his countrymen, and 
 was banished. In his' dreary exile he betook him- 
 self to mechanical pursuits, that he might expiate 
 his ofifence, real or imaginary, against the emperor 
 of Russia, by showing that he could be useful if he 
 were restored to his country. 
 
 The model represents a man five feet high, in 
 the proportions of the Apollo Belviderc. From that 
 height and size it can be proportionally increased to 
 
EDUCATED FLEAS. 
 
 131 
 
 eight feet eight inclies ; and as its use is to measure 
 the clothing of an army, it is capable of expansion 
 and contraction in all its parts. The internal 
 mechanism is completely concealed, tlie figure 
 externally being composed of thin slips of steel and 
 copper, by the overlapping of which, expansion or 
 contraction is exercised, the motion being com- 
 municated by thin metal slides within the figure, 
 these slides having pins worked in curved grooves 
 in circular steel plates, which arc put in revolution 
 by a train of wheels or screws. A winding key, 
 turned right or left, effects the expansion or con- 
 traction noiselessly, and in the direction of the 
 fibres of the muscles of the living subject. The 
 mechanical combinations are composed of 857 
 framing pieces, 48 grooved steel plates, 163 wheels, 
 203 slides, 476 metal washers, 488 spiral springs, 
 704 sliding plates, 497 nuts, 3,500 fixing and ad- 
 justing screws, with numerous steadying pins ; 
 so that the number of pieces is upwards of 7,000. 
 For this beautiful piece of mechanism a Great 
 Exhibition Council Medal was awarded to the 
 inventor. Count Dunin. 
 
 Wonderful Jewellery.' — A Parisian jeweller 
 makes brooches and other ornaments in which 
 mechanical movements are introduced and set in 
 action by very small galvanic batteries, which are 
 concealed in some part of the wearer's dress. The 
 moving object may be a rabbit, which is made to 
 strike a bell with drumsticks ; the head of a skele- 
 ton with rolling eyes, and a mouth that opens and 
 shuts ; a grenadier beating a drum ; a monkey 
 playing the fiddle ; or a bird moving its wings as 
 if in the act of flying. The batteries are con- 
 structed of minute slips of zinc and platinum, or 
 zinc and carbon, which act in the same manner as 
 llie larger arrangements of the same kind used for 
 ordinary purposes. 
 
 Mcmirirfttl Helixs. 
 
 THE EARLIEST KNOWN FO-SSIL. 
 
 TllF, oldest type of organic life yet known to the 
 geologist is the Eozoon, lately discovered in Canada, 
 and brought to England by Sir William Logan. It 
 is more perfect than any previously found, but 
 would have been taken for a coral had it not been 
 for the evidence of its microscopic structure. It is 
 termed a rhizflpod (from two Greek words, root and 
 foot), a name proposed by Mr. Dujardin for a new 
 class of animals of a lower degree than the radiata, 
 possessing the power of locomotion by means of 
 minute tentacular filaments. The skeletons of this 
 rhizopod seem to have greatly extended themselves 
 over the surface of all submarine rocks, their base 
 frequently reaching a diameter of twelve inches, 
 and their thickness being usually from four to six 
 inches. These masses, occurring in homogeneous 
 
 limestone, exhibit, more or less, regular alternation 
 of calcareous or siliceous layers. Dr. Carpenter has 
 determined by the microscope the minute structure 
 of this organism, which, he says, in its living state 
 might be likened to an extensive range of buildings, 
 made up of successive tiers of chambers, those 
 of each tier generally comin'jnicating very freely 
 with each other. The walls of these chambers are 
 everywhere fonned of a vitreous, pellucid, shelly 
 substance, minutely perforated with little parallel 
 tubes, which are so penetrated by siliceous infiltra- 
 tion, that when the calcareous shell has been re- 
 moved by acid, the natural cast of their cavities 
 remains in the form of very delicate needles, 
 parallel to each other, on the solid mould of the 
 cavity of the chamber, over which they form a very 
 delicate layer. 
 
 This discovery of the Eozoon is of the highest 
 importance, occurring, as it does, in strata that were 
 formed at a period inconceivably antecedent to the 
 pre-supposcd introduction of life upon the globe, 
 and displacing the argument derived from the 
 supposition that at the dawn of life a multitude of 
 beings of high organisation were simultaneously 
 developed in the Cambrian and Silurian strata. 
 
 EDUCATED FLEAS. 
 
 SO-ME years ago a strange little man, with a quaint- 
 looking box, used to take his stand in various parts 
 of London as soon as it was dusk, during the winter 
 months, and silently invite the passing crowd to 
 stay and take a peep into this quaint-looking box, 
 which was lighted by a candle placed inside of it, 
 the light of which shone through various coloured 
 papers, and exhibited a transparent description of 
 the object for which he hoped to gather halfpence — 
 "A flea chained up by the neck, alive." The fee 
 for viewing the flea undergoing this strange im- 
 prisonment was "one halfpenny," and a convenient 
 magnifying-glass was let into the side of the quaint 
 box, in order that the object exhibited might be the 
 better viewed. The writer of the present article has 
 paid more than once to see this unusual sight, until 
 he catne to be regarded by the proprietor of the 
 imprisoned pulex as a regular customer, and was 
 treated to a sight of "sucking'' fleas undergoing 
 the process of training. Some were very quick, 
 according to his account, and "others he could 
 make nothing of." The chains, cars, and locks 
 which these little beasties drew were of silver, and, 
 as the strange little man said, all constructed by 
 himself. He had one flea who had been with him 
 twenty-six months, and declared that he knew of 
 still older ones, and he was accustomed to feed his 
 fleas, twice a day, by allowing them to suck from 
 the back of his hand. He declared that he was 
 the last man who possessed the secret of educating 
 these lively insects. 
 
132 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 In 1829, on the ruins of the houses taken 
 down to make the new approaches to London 
 Bridge, on the Southwark side, another man 
 exhibited by candle-light two fleas, one drawing a 
 kind of car and the other a lock and chain. 
 This they appeared to manage with the greatest 
 ease. 
 
 In Nottingham also, in the same year, there were 
 two fleas shown, who had gold chains about their 
 necks. One of them drew a carved cherry-stone, 
 and the other a silver cannon. There was also an 
 exhibition in London about the year 1845, of some 
 " industrious fleas." One flea had a chain made of 
 nearly 700 links, the whole of which was little more 
 than a span long, but it was sufficient to restrain 
 the flea's furious leaps he made in trying to escape. 
 This chain also had a padlock and key curiously 
 wrouglit, the whole of which only weighed a grain. 
 
 In the same exhibition were two other fleas drawing THE COLISEUM, 
 
 a chariot, three were dragging an omnibus, and two | Among the many stupendous architectural works 
 military fleas were fastened to a brass cannon of 
 
 The cause of this phenomenon, which is called 
 the Mascaret, is as follows :— The tide flows from 
 the estuary, known as the Gironde, towards the two 
 rivers Dordogne and Caronne. The former is 
 right in the direction of its straight course, while 
 the latter is angular and divergent ; and hence the 
 Dordogne receives a disproportionate quantity and 
 impulse of the water. The impediments which the 
 Mascaret meets as it ascends the Dordogne, from 
 sand-banks, &c., and the rapidity of the opposin"- 
 current, all tend to increase its force and fur)-, 
 and its velocity at last becomes so great, that 
 not a moment must be lost by him who would 
 observe it. 
 
 Monbfrs of CflivshuctioiT. 
 
 proportionate size. 
 
 The street exhibitor, the strange little man with 
 the quaint-looking box, was in the habit of visiting 
 public-houses with a view to increase his income, 
 but one night, yielding to strong temptation and 
 strong liquor at the same time, his quaint box got 
 broken, his fleas escaped and fled on their own 
 account, to " seek fresh fields and pastures new," 
 and so the educated fleas were lost to the world, 
 and it has never since been our good fortune to 
 light upon a similar exhibition, and perhaps they 
 are persuading their brethren in a wild state 
 that chains about the neck are the ornaments 
 and clothing proper to all civilised and educated 
 fleas. 
 
 THE MASCARET. 
 
 At the mouth of the River Dordogne, in France, 
 there is occasionally observed a natural pheno- 
 menon which is witnessed on no other river in 
 Europe. When the waters of the Dordogne are 
 low, and especially in summer, a hillock of water, 
 about the height of an ordinary house, suddenly 
 rises at the confluence of the river with the Garonne. 
 It spreads and rolls along the bank, ascending the 
 sinuous windings of the river with extraordinary 
 rapidity and fearful noise. All that comes in its 
 way on the bank on which it moves yields to its 
 fury. Trees are torn up, barges sunk, and stones 
 are often driven to the distance of fifty paces ; all 
 fly from it with consternation, and cattle, even, 
 with what seems a sudden instinct. It sometimes 
 takes the centre of the river, and changes its shape. 
 The watermen are usually able, by observation, 
 to discover its approach, and thus escape certain 
 destruction. 
 
 . of antiquity which surprise us by their extent, their 
 beauty, and the wonderful difficuhy of their con- 
 struction, the Roman Coliseum stands out pre- 
 eminent. Its ruins refuse to perish, and there they 
 stand in colossal majesty, the astonishment of all 
 beholders. As will be seen by the annexed draw- 
 ing, the Coliseum was an amphitheatre, of which 
 the external walls consisted of four tiers of arcades, 
 adorned with columns of the Doric, Ionian, Corin- 
 thian, and Composite orders. The internal circum- 
 ference was i,5oo feet, and the accommodation pro- 
 vided seats for over 80,000 people. On fair authority 
 it is stated that the Emperor Vespasian caused this 
 theatre to be built, occupying 30,000 captive Jews 
 in the erection of it. It does not seem, however, 
 to have been completed in Vespasian's reign. Titus, 
 the destroyer of Jerusalem, was he who had the 
 gratification of opening it for Roman sports ; and 
 it is said that on the opening day he caused over 
 5,000 wild beasts to be introduced into the arena, 
 and compelled captive Christians to fight with 
 them. Vast cells, or rather ranges of cells, were 
 constructed under the spectators' galleries, for the 
 reception of the wild beasts, panthers, leopards, 
 pards, and lions, which were the combatants in these 
 cruel pastimes. There were also gigantic reservoirs 
 of watercontainingsuchsupplies,that when occasion 
 required, the floor of the Coliseum could be flooded 
 from them to the depth of several feet ; and on the 
 opening day, after the Christians and the beasts 
 had afforded pleasure to Rome, the entire floor was 
 covered with a sheet of water upon which two 
 mimic squadrons performed their evolutions, and 
 went through the performance of a sham naval 
 engagement. 
 
 For many years the Coliseum was the one great 
 public recreation-place in Rome. Successive em- 
 perors exerted themselves to maintain it in all its 
 original splendour, and enormous were the sums of 
 
THE COLISEUM. 
 
 T33 
 
 KCINS oi' Tin; C(ji,i,si:i;.M. 
 
 money annually expended upon repairs, and in 
 keeping up the performances. When the Goths 
 sacked Rome they spared the amphitheatre, and 
 until the removal of the seat of imperial govern- 
 ment to Constantinople, the Coliseum was pre- 
 served in all its integrity. After that event the 
 purposes for which the Coliseum was built were no 
 longer desirable — Christian bishops ruled where 
 pagan emperors had dictated, and the ecclesiastical 
 government was averse to all plays, games, and 
 spectacles — except where it chose specially to have 
 them. The Coliseum's occupation was gone, and 
 its great bulk, and the great store of stone con- 
 tained in it, proved obnoxious to the desires of 
 certain dignitaries, who, being without palaces, 
 tliought the Coliseum might worthily be utilised in 
 furnishing the materials for building them. .So 
 the Coliseum served in lieu of a quarry. Paul II. 
 built St. Mark's Palace, Paul III. the Farnese 
 Palace, out of materials from the great theatre, and 
 other prelates and church princes followed the bad 
 example, till something like half of the Coliseum 
 was swept away, what remained being spared not 
 so much on aesthetic grounds as 'because of the 
 hugeness of the blocks, which resisted all the 
 efforts of the indolent Italians to move them. On 
 the floor where Corcyrian and Corinthian fleets 
 had manceuvrcd, great (quantities of debris were 
 
 piled up, so that in course of years the interior 
 was choked with rubbish above the lower galle- 
 ries on which enthusiastic spectators h.ad sat and 
 applauded. 
 
 When Pope Pius VII. was dethroned and taken 
 prisoner by Napoleon I., the Coliseum, in common 
 with many other Roman buildings, was cleaned 
 and cleared. The channels which conducted the 
 water for the aquatic exhibitions, the iron gates 
 which were opened to admit the wild beasts to the 
 arena, and the bronze rings to which the Christian 
 martyrs were chained, were brought to light. It is 
 not possible to say how far the French emperor 
 would have gone on the road of restoration had he 
 continued to direct the fortunes of Italy. He dug 
 out old Rome during the short time his engineers 
 were in the city, and disclosed in all their beauty 
 and reality some of the most splendid monuments 
 of the past. But as soon as the churchmen got 
 back, they undid no small portion of the great 
 emperor's work, actually refilling a large part of the 
 interior of the Coliseum in order to render certain 
 chapels in and about it more accessible. 
 
 The splendid ruins themselves remain as Napo- 
 leon left them ; and it is possible they may outlive 
 the ecclesiastical dominion which has despoiled 
 them, as they have outlived the imperial dominion 
 which caused their origin. 
 
'34 
 
 THK WORLD OI' WONDERS. 
 
 THE LADY OF THE HAYSTACK. 
 
 In the year 1776 a young woman suddenly made 
 her appearance at the village of Bourton, near 
 ISristol, and attracted universal attention by the 
 strangeness of her life. Young and beautiful in 
 person, and graceful in her manners, she neverthe- 
 less lived a desolate life for four years, without 
 knowing the comfort of a bed, or the protection of 
 a roof. Her place of refuge was a haystack, to 
 which she fled with a kind of wild rapture when 
 remonstrated witli, or when any attempt «-as made 
 to restrain her actions. The ladies of the neigh- 
 bourhood supplied her with the necessaries of life, 
 but she would neither wear, nor, indeed, accept of 
 any finery or ornaments. When such things were 
 forced upon her, she hung them on the bushes, as 
 being unworthy of her attention. 
 
 Her exposed manner of life had gradually under- 
 mined her health and impaired her beauty, before, 
 after repeated trials, she was prevailed upon to 
 remain under the care of Mr. Henderson, the 
 keeper of a private asylum, where she was sup- 
 ported by the benevolent Mrs. Hannah More and 
 her sisters. As her health improved, it became 
 more and more e\-ident that her intellect was 
 impaired. .Slie spoke English \\'ith a German 
 accent, but every attempt to inquire into her 
 history was baffled cither by her reticence or her 
 increasing idiocy. A gentleman spoke to her in 
 Crcrman, when her emotion was so great that she 
 turned from him and burst into te.ars. 
 
 The circumstances under which she had been 
 found, and every slight suggestion that could be 
 gathered from repeated conversations with her, 
 were published in German and French throughout 
 the Continent, but led to no result till the year 1785, 
 when a pamphlet appeared in the French language, 
 without either name or place which might serve as 
 a clue to its authorship, under the title of " The 
 Stranger: a true History." From this pamphlet 
 the following particulars of a strange story are 
 derived, and when we have recited them, the reader 
 must judge for himself whether the Lady of the 
 Haystack and the young lady described in the 
 pamphlet were one and the same person. 
 
 In the year 1768 (the French pamphlet relates) 
 a letter was received from a lady at Bordeaux 
 by Count Cobenzel, the Austrian minister at 
 Brussels, entreating for the writer his advice and 
 assistance, and signed, in very indifferent French, 
 (.Mademoiselle) La Friilen. Not long afterwards 
 the count also received a letter from Prague, signed 
 Count J. Weissendorf, in which he was entreated 
 to comply with Mademoiselle's request, and even to 
 advance her money. The letter concluded thus : — 
 " When you shall know, sir, who this stranger is, 
 you will be delighted to think you have served lier, 
 
 and grateful to those who have gi\cn >ou an oppor- 
 tunity of doing so.-' 
 
 A third letter came to the minister's hand from 
 Count Dictrichstein, of A'icnna, urging the same 
 request, but at the same time desiring him to advise 
 Mademoiselle to be frugal in her expenditure. The 
 count replied to the last two letters, but got no 
 rejoinder, and in the meantime he continued the 
 correspondence with Mademoiselle La Friilen al 
 Bordeaux, who finally stated that she could noi 
 entrust her secret to writing, but that she intended 
 to visit the Austrian Netherlands, and would see 
 him personally. She meantime sent him her por- 
 trait, in which the count saw nothing more than 
 the features of a lovely woman, while Prince Charles 
 of Lorraine declared that it bore a strong rcsera- ' 
 blance to the late emperor, his brother. 
 
 The pamphleteer continues the account of the 
 circumstances which followed, with much detail. 
 Despatches from Vienna led to Mademoiselle's 
 arrest. It appears that while Joseph II. was on 
 his travels in Italy, the king of Spain had received 
 a letter, purporting to be written by the emperor, 
 and informing him in confidence that his father 
 had left a natural daughter, whose history was 
 known only to his sister, the Archduchess Marianne, 
 himself, and a few intimate friends. The king of 
 .Spain thought this letter so extraordinary that he 
 sent it to the emperor. Its authorship was denied, 
 and, as a consequence. Mademoiselle La Friilen 
 was arrested and conveyed to Brussels. 
 
 It is as strange as the other particulars of this 
 strange story, that just before she quitted the French 
 dominions, a person unknown, in the habit of a 
 courier, put a note into her hand at the coach- 
 window, and then retired with the utmost precipi- 
 tation. The officer by whom she was accompanied 
 read the note, which contained only these words : 
 " My dear girl, everything has been done to sa\ e 
 you ; keep up your spirits, and do not despair." 
 She afterwards declared that she neither knew the 
 courier nor the handwriting. 
 
 At Brussels, notwithstanding her winning ap- 
 pearance and engaging manners, she was subjected 
 to the severest tests. She spoke French with a 
 German accent. Details of her early history were 
 extracted from her, which are all related in the 
 -pamphlet. She had understood that Bohemia 
 was the name of the country in which she had been 
 brought up, in tlie care of two ladies, one of -whom 
 she had been accustomed to call "mamma," theother 
 Catharine ; she had also received instruction from 
 an ecclesiastic who frequently visited the house. .Slie 
 described certain visits made at distant intervals 
 by a handsome gentleman in a hunting suit, be- 
 neath whose riding coat she once noticed some- 
 thing red. At one time this visitor was expected, 
 but did not come ; and he afterwards accounted for 
 his absence by explaining that he had been ill ill 
 
MEDICAL WONDERS. 
 
 t^S 
 
 consequence of overheating himself in the chase. 
 Prince Charles recollected that at the time corres- 
 ponding to this statement the emperor was actually 
 taken ill on his return from hunting. 
 
 Tlien came the time when she heard of the strange 
 gentleman's death, which corresponded ^^■ith that 
 of the emperors ; and La Friilen related a long 
 story about her rcmo\al from Bohemia, and from 
 the companionship of the two ladies, by the eccle- 
 siastic. In some particulars of this part of her 
 story she was convicted of pre\'arication ; but then, 
 again, confirming circumstances occurred. Unex- 
 pectedly seeing a portrait of the late emperor, she 
 was so affected by it that a long and serious illness 
 ensued. The result of her alleged removal from 
 Bohemia was her settlement at Bordeaux, where 
 she lived luxuriously ; and there she most certainly 
 forged letters as a means of recommending herself 
 to the Duke de Richelieu. These acts she did not 
 conceal from her examiners, but declared, with all 
 the appearance of simplicity and frankness, that 
 forsaken as she was, and certain as she felt of her 
 parentage, she did what she had a right to do for her 
 own protection. Before any conclusion was come 
 to concerning her, Count Cobenzel died, and from 
 what he told a friend, there is reason to believe he 
 •was more than half satisfied of the substantial truth 
 of her representations. Mademoiselle was then 
 liberated from prison, fifty louis d'ors were placed 
 in her hands, and she was turned adrift in the 
 "wide, wide world."' This was in 1769, and if she 
 was the same person afterwards disco\ered at 
 Bristol, and known as the " Lady of the Haystack," 
 there is an interval of seven years which it is but 
 little likely will ever be accounted for in her sad 
 history. Considering the condition in which she 
 was found, the story would probabi)- be one of 
 hopeless wandering from place to place until her 
 reason was impaired. 
 
 The Lady of the Haystack had been named 
 Louisa by her benefactors, but there are so many 
 coincidences in what little she related, and in her 
 manners, with the story of La Friilen, that it is 
 almost impossible to resist the conclusion that we 
 arc reading the history of the same person. Two 
 scars which marked her person corresponded with 
 the description gi\'en of the stranger by the pam- 
 phleteer, and her beautiful features, with a touch 
 of " the Austrian lip," further established her iden- 
 tity. When sudden remarks were purposely made, 
 there were proofs given in her manner that she had 
 been accustomed to luxurious living, and to riding 
 in a carriage. Besides this but little remains to 
 relate of her. After remaining for a considerable 
 time under the care of Mr. Henderson, Louisa was 
 removed, as incurable, to Cluy's Hospital. As 
 years passed on, the contraction of her limbs, from 
 exposure to cold in the fields and from her sub- 
 sequent inactivity, rendered her an object of the 
 
 strongest compassion. She died rather suddenl)-, 
 after a long illness, on the i8th of December, iSoi, 
 and on the 23rd her remains were interred in the 
 hospital grounds, at the expense of Mrs. More. 
 
 Htfiiical Moui)£i'S. 
 
 Re.markable Recovery ok Lost Voice.— 
 In the beginning of December, 1801, Elizabeth 
 Sellers, a scholar in the Girls' Charity School at 
 .Sheffield, aged thirteen years, lost her \-oice, inso- 
 much that she was unable to express herself other- 
 wise than by a whisper. She, however, enjoyed 
 very good health, and performed several employ- 
 ments in the school, such as knitting, sewing, and 
 spinning. She was unable to read audibly, and 
 her infirmity resisted all attempts at cure. One 
 evening, hearing several of her schoolfellows singing 
 a hymn, and being desirous to join them in their 
 devotion, she whispered to one of her companions, 
 requesting her to shout violently down her throat, 
 which being complied with, she immediately re- 
 covered her voice to its fullest pitch. By her 
 account, the sensation was like that of having a 
 lump in her throat, which, as she rightly conceived, 
 might be broken by the shout. 
 
 An equally remarkable story is told by Charles 
 Dickens in his Life of Grimaldi of a sailor who had 
 lost the power of speech from some illness, sud- 
 denly reco\ering it in the theatre from the excite- 
 ment and intense amusement he experienced from 
 witnessing the drolleries of the celebrated clown. 
 Whether this account is true we cannot undertake 
 to say, but it is related by Mr. Dickens as an un- 
 doubted fact, aljout which there seemed no question 
 at the time of its occurrence. 
 
 ll)10(.:V PRODUCED BY STRONG MENTAL E.\IO- 
 'I'lON. — Dr. Abercrombie, in his celebrated i\ork on 
 ■'The Intellectual Powers," gives some very striking 
 exajnples of this kind. He remarks that idiocy "is 
 a simple torpor of the faculties, in the higher 
 degrees amounting to total insensibility to every 
 impression ; and some remarkable facts are con- 
 nected with the manner in which it arises without 
 bodily disease. A man mentioned by Dr. Pinel was 
 so violently affected by some losses in trade, that 
 he was deprived almost instantly of all his mental 
 faculties. He did not take notice of anything, 
 not even expressing a desire for food, but merely 
 taking it when it was put into his mouth. A servant 
 dressed him in the morning, and conducted him to 
 a seat in his parlour, where he remained the whole 
 day with his body bent forward and his eyes fixed 
 on the floor. In this state he continued nearly five 
 years, and then recovered completely and rather 
 suddenly. The account which he afterwards ga\-e 
 of his condition during this period was, that his 
 mind was entirely lost, and that it was only about 
 two months before his final recovery that he began 
 
136 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 to have sensations and thoughts of any kind. These 
 at first served only to convey fears and apprehen- 
 sions, especially in the night-time. Of mental 
 derangement produced in the same way by a moral 
 cause, an affecting example is also given by Pinel. 
 Two young men, brothers, were carried off by the 
 conscription ; and, in the first action in which they 
 were engaged, one of them was shot dead by the 
 side of the other. The survivor was instantly stru ck 
 with perfect idiocy. He was taken home to his 
 father's house, where another brother was so 
 affected by the sight of him that he was seized 
 at once in the same manner, and, in this melan- 
 choly state, they were both received into the 
 liicctre (a French hospital for lunatics, &c.). For 
 the production of such an extraordinary result, it is 
 not necessary that the mental impression should be 
 of a painful description. Pinel mentions an engi- 
 neer who, on receiving a flattering letter from 
 Robespierre respecting an improvement he had 
 proposed in the construction of cannon, was struck 
 motionless on the spot, and soon after conveyed to 
 the Bicetre in a state of complete idiocy." 
 
 MOUNTAIN RAILWAYS. 
 
 Many ingenious devices have been employed 
 for the purpose of carrying railway traffic over 
 the face of mountains, where it has not been 
 thought necessary or practicable to tunnel them. 
 While the great railway through IMont Ccnis was 
 in progress, one of these contrivances, known as 
 Fell's Climbing Rail, was adopted to traverse the 
 mountain, and by its means the Alpine pass from 
 St. Michel to Susa, a distance of forty-nine miles, 
 was accomplished in about five hours. The line was 
 used both for passenger and for goods traffic. The 
 principle on which it was constructed was the 
 adoption of a centre rail between the two ordinary 
 rails, and a means of making the locomotive grasp 
 this rail, and cling closely to it while still pursuing its 
 upward path. For this purpose two horizontal 
 wheels were adjusted to the locomotive, and these 
 fitting into two grooves, one on each side of the 
 centre rail, were pressed against this rail by power- 
 ful springs, which bound the engine and its car- 
 riages closely to the line, while the outer rails 
 were traversed by wheels working in the ordinary 
 fashion. 
 
 The ascent of the mountain by this railway began 
 at an elevation of about 2,500 feet above the sea 
 level, and rose to a height of nearly 7,000 feet, by 
 a succession of curves and zigzags, resembling a 
 winding staircase. During the first twenty-four 
 miles of the line the mean gradient or incline was 
 I in 60, and the maximum i in 12 ; while in the 
 second half of the line the mean gradient was as 
 high as I in 17, the maximum being the same. 
 The sight of an engine, with a trainful of passen- 
 
 gers, climbing up a steep ascent of this description 
 was a most remarkable one. On the line itself, to 
 look down from the train when near the summit 
 was something like looking from a balloon. Four 
 zigzags were visible at the same instant to a depth 
 of 2,000 feet. Add to the sublimity of this the 
 features of the surrounding scenery, the snow-clad 
 peaks and glaciers rising to an elevation of from 
 10,000 to 13,000 feet, and some idea maybe formed 
 of the sentiment which the passage of Mont Cenis 
 by the Fell Railway was likely to inspire — a senti- 
 ment widely different to that which now strikes the 
 traveller as he is carried by the new line through 
 the heart of the mountain. 
 
 The Fell Railway was opened in June, 1867, and 
 it ceased working when the tunnel route was com- 
 pleted, the permanent way used for it being then 
 taken up. Within the last two or three years, 
 however, a similar line has been in operation for 
 the ascent of the Righi — a well-known mountain 
 range in .Switzerland, upon the Lake of Lucerne. 
 Here, again, the principle of the centre rail is 
 adopted, but this rail is constructed with small 
 hollows at equal distances along its surface, into 
 which hollows cog-wheels are made to work as 
 the locomotive ascends, and thus the tendency 
 to recede is prevented. The summit of the 
 Righi is 6,000 feet above the sea, and the total 
 distance traversed by the railway in its zigzag path 
 up the mountain is about five miles. Travellers 
 ascend the Righi for the purpose of enjoying the 
 magnificent view it affords of Alpine scenery. The 
 Righi range stands alone among the mountains, and 
 from its position has been compared to a natural 
 observatory, from whence on all sides the most 
 beautiful views of Switzerland and the Alps may be 
 obtained. The lower and middle portions of the 
 range are clad with forests, and the upper parts 
 consist chiefly of excellent pasture-ground, where 
 about 2,000 head of cattle usually graze in summer. 
 The highest point is called the Culm, and is a large 
 space of ground covered with turf, on part of which 
 an inn has been erected for the accommodation of 
 travellers, some of whom ascend the mountain 
 towards evening, and stay a night at the hotel, foi 
 the purpose of obtaining a view of the glorious 
 prospect which the break of day here reveals. The 
 horizon is said to extend to a circumference of 300 
 miles, including the range of mountains of the 
 Black Forest in Germany, and that of the Jura 
 from Geneva to Basle. 
 
 The ascent was formerly accomplished on foot 
 or by means of mules, several good paths being 
 available for the purpose ; but few persons now 
 prefer either of these tardy and toilsome methods 
 to the ready access to the summit which the railway 
 affords. The locomotive on the Righi Railway 
 takes up one carriage only, accommodating about 
 twenty-four persons. 
 
SOUNDING STONES AND SPEAKING HEADS. 
 
 137 
 
 SOUNDING STONES AND SPEAKING 
 
 HEADS. 
 
 The ancient magicians appear to have been very 
 successful in turning to their purposes the properties 
 of sound. In the labyrinth of Egypt, which con- 
 tained twelve palaces and 1,500 subterranean 
 apartments, the gods were made to speak in a 
 voice of thunder ; and Pliny, who lived at this time, 
 informs us that some of the palaces were so con- 
 structed that their doors could not be opened with- 1 
 out the peals of thunder being heard in the interior. ' 
 Uarius Hystaspes used to impress the divinity of 
 his character upon his subjects by the bursts of \ 
 thunder and flashes of lightning wliich accompanied : 
 
 The ancients turned to account the acoustic pro- 
 perties of certain kinds of stones in a remark- 
 able way. Pausanias tells of a marvellous stone 
 that was placed as a sentinel at the entrance of a 
 treasury, and that robbers were scared away by 
 the trumpet tones which it sent forth. Several 
 stones have this property of resonance, and it is 
 probable that a stone of this description was so 
 suspended as to be struck by a projecting piece of 
 metal when the external door of the treasury was 
 opened. Strong boxes or safes have been known 
 to emit sounds to alarm their owners when broken 
 into surreptitiously. M. Salverte relates that Louis 
 XV. possessed one of these, and that Napoleon I. 
 v/as offered one at Vienna in 1809 ; and there ha\e 
 
 VILW UF 1111; SIATUES OF MEMNON. 
 
 their devotions ; a id it is thought that in the sub- 
 terraneous and -.iulted apartments of the Egyptian 
 labyrinth, the reverberated sounds arising from the 
 mere opening and shutting of the doors themselves 
 afforded a sufficient imitation of ordinary thunder 
 to impose upon the credulous worshippers. Sir 
 Uavid Brewster conjectures that the method used 
 in our modern theatres was known to the ancients. 
 This is to shake a piece of sheet iron horizontally, 
 so as to agitate the corner in a direction at right 
 angles to the surface of the sheet, by which the 
 deep growl of distant thunder, as well as the loud 
 and explosive bursts which rattle over our heads, may 
 be produced. The same effect may be produced 
 by sheets of tin-plate and thin plates of mica, but 
 the sound is shorter and more acute. Imitative 
 lightning is produced by throwing powered rosin, 
 or the seeds of lycopodium, through a flame ; and 
 rattling rain is imitated by a shower of peas in a 
 sort of drum. 
 
 18 
 
 been made similar boxes which, when opened by a 
 false key, throw out a battery of cannon and shoot 
 the invader. 
 
 The clink-stone indicates by its very name its 
 sonorous qualities. The red granite of the Thebaid, 
 in Egypt, possesses similar properties ; and so 
 musical are the granite rocks on the banks of the 
 Orinoco, that their sounds are ascribed to witch- 
 craft by the natives. In Brazil, travellers have 
 seen large blocks of basalt which emitted very 
 clear sounds when struck ; and the Chinese em- 
 ploy this stone in the fabrication of musical instru- 
 ments. Several years since, an artisan of Keswick 
 exhibited a " Rock Harmonicon," composed of 
 slabs of stone placed at certain distances apart, 
 and upon which, when struck, were performed 
 different pieces of music. 
 
 But the most celebrated of these acoustic wonders 
 is the " Jabel Nakous," or " Mountain of the Bell," 
 a low sandy Ivll in the peninsula of Mount Sinai, 
 
138 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 in Arabia Petrsea, which gives out sounds varying 
 in power from that of a humming-top to thunder, 
 while the sand, either from natural or artificial 
 causes, descends its sloping flanks. 
 
 The late Hugh Miller, the geologist, observed 
 an analogous phenomenon in our own country. 
 When in the island of Eigg, in the Hebrides, he 
 observed that a musical sound was produced when 
 he walked over the white, dry sand of the beach. 
 At each step the sand was driven from his foot- 
 prints, and the noise was simultaneous with the 
 scattering of the sand ; the cause being either the 
 accumulated vibrations of the air when struck 
 by the driven sand, or the accumulated sounds 
 occasioned by the mutual impact of the particles of 
 the sand against each other. If a musket-ball 
 passing through the air emits a whistling note, 
 each individual particle of sand must do the same, 
 however faint be the note which it yields ; and the 
 accumulation of these infinitesimal vibrations must 
 constitute an audible sound, varying with the 
 number and velocity of the moving particles. In 
 like manner, if two plates of silex or quartz, which 
 are but crystals of sand, give out a musical sound 
 when mutually struck, the impact or collision of two 
 minute crystals or particles of sand does the same, 
 in however inferior a degree ; and the union of all 
 these sounds, though singly imperceptible, may 
 constitute the musical note of "the Mountain of 
 the Bell " in Arabia Petra;a, or the lesser sounds of 
 the trodden sea-beach of Eigg. 
 
 Sir A. Smith distinctly heard sounds issuing 
 from the celebrated granite statue of Memnon, in 
 the morning, which sounds are ascribed by others 
 to the same cause as the sound in granite rocks. 
 M. Salverte regards them as wholly artificial, and 
 the work of Egyptian priestcraft ; and he contrived 
 a complicated apparatus of lenses, levers, and 
 hammers, by which he supposed that the rays of 
 the sun, as the prime mover, produced the mar- 
 vellous sounds. 
 
 The cut on the preceding page shows the colossal 
 statues of Memnon in the plain on the west bank of 
 the Nile, to the northernmost of which this property 
 has been attributed. 
 
 The speaking heads of the ancients were con- 
 structed for the purpose of representing the gods, or 
 of uttering oracular responses. The speaking head 
 of Orpheus, at Lesbos, is one of the most famous, 
 and had the credit of predicting, in the equivocal 
 language of the heathen oracles, the bloody death 
 which terminated the expedition of Cyrus the Great 
 into Scythia. Odin, who imported into Scandinavia 
 the magical arts of the East, possessed a speaking 
 head, said to be that of the sage Minos, which 
 uttered responses. The celebrated mechanic, Gcr- 
 bert, who filled the papal chair as Sylvester II. 
 (a.D. iooo) constructed a speaking head of brass. 
 Albertus Magnus is said to have executed a head 
 
 in the thirteenth century, which not only moved, 
 but spoke. It was made of earthenware ; and 
 Thomas Aquinas is said to have been so terrified 
 when he saw it, that he broke it in pieces, upon 
 which the mechanist exclaimed, " There goes the 
 labour of thirty years ! " In these cases it is 
 probable that the sound was conveyed by pipes fronr 
 a person in another apartment to the mouth of the 
 figure. Lucian, indeed, expressly informs us that 
 the impostor Alexander made his statue of Escu- 
 lapius speak by the transmission of a voice from 
 behind, through the gullet of a crane, to the mouth 
 of the figure ; and this method was probably general, 
 for we read that in the twelfth century, when 
 Bishop Theophilus broke to pieces the statues at 
 Alexandria, he found some which were hollow, and 
 which were so placed against a wall that the priest 
 could conceal himself behind them, and address 
 the ignorant spectators through their mouths. 
 
 Even in modern times speaking machines have 
 been constructed upon this principle, it being a 
 mere head placed upon a hollow pedestal, which, 
 in order to promote the deception, contained a pair 
 of bellows, a sounding board, a cylinder, and pipes, 
 supposed to represent the organs of speech. In 
 other cases these are dispensed with, and a simple 
 wooden head utters its sounds through a speaking 
 trumpet. At the court of Charles II., the deception 
 was so effectively practised by an Englishman, 
 until a popish priest was discovered by one of the 
 pages in an adjoining apartment. The question 
 had been proposed to the wooden figure by whis- 
 pering into its ear, and the answers were correctly 
 given by speaking through a pipe in the same 
 language in which the questions were proposed. 
 Professor Beckmann was allowed, on the promise 
 of secrecy, to witness the process of deception. 
 He saw the assistant in another room, standing 
 before the pipe with a card in his hand, upon 
 which the signs agreed upon had been marked ; and 
 he had been introduced so privately into the house, 
 that even the landlady was ignorant of his being 
 there. 
 
 To this class of wonders belongs the famous 
 " Ear of Dionysius," which has often been un- 
 masked by travellers ; but Mr. Edward Postle- 
 thwaite, in his " Letters from Greece," has added 
 some curious details. He describes the "ear" as 
 a large black opening in a rock, in the form of the 
 ear of an ass, and fifty feet in height. It led into a 
 cavern sixty or seventy yards long, by five or six wide, 
 cut by pure chiselling in the solid rock, the sides 
 slanting towards each other as they rose, till at the 
 top they terminated in a mere rib or riband, which 
 indicated the winding of the den. This was in 
 imitation of the meatus auditorius of a donkc)-, 
 as the entrance of the ear itself was formed to 
 catch sound and carry it to the brain. The cavern 
 was, in short, in close proximity to the palace of 
 
CURIOUS PLANTS. 
 
 t39 
 
 the tyrant Dionysius, of Syracuse, and from his 
 palace was a passage to the top of the cavern. 
 In this he shut up his suspected or disaffected 
 subjects, and when it pleased his fancy he repaired 
 through the passage to that part of the cavern, it 
 is presumed, where the donkey's brain would be ; 
 and there, with his ear to the f round, he listened 
 to the conversations, or soliloquies, or ejaculations, 
 or even sighs, of his ill-fated prisoners. But how 
 could he hear the latter at sixty or eighty feet oft"? 
 The donkey will tell you as soon as asked. Mr. 
 Postlethwaite's guide went to a certain part of the 
 cave, and in a low, civil tone addressed some words 
 of reproach to the eavesdropping tyrant overhead ; 
 and Mr. Postlethwaite was astonished at hearing 
 his speech strike against the roof almost like a ball 
 from a racket, louder, indeed, it seemed than when 
 it passed his lips. 
 
 Captain Smythe, in his memoir descriptive of 
 Sicily, gives this more scientific explanation : " It 
 is in the shape of a parabolic curve ending in an 
 elliptical arch, with sides parallel to its axis, per- 
 fectly smooth and covered with a slight stalactitic 
 incrustation, that renders its repercussion exceed- 
 ingly sonorous." Although a considerable portion 
 of it has been fdled up, which Captain Smythe 
 ascertained by excavation, it is still 64 feet high, 
 from 17 to 35 in breadth, and 187 deep, and it has 
 an awful and gloomy appearance. 
 
 Dionysius could not, however, have listened with 
 satisfaction or advantage, for if two or more persons 
 are speaking together, it occasions only a contimied 
 clamour. 
 
 SOMxNAMBULISM. 
 
 The following, which was quoted some years back 
 in Blackwood's Magazine as " the most interesting 
 case of somnambulism on record," is given under the 
 head of '• somnambulism " in the French " Encyclo- 
 paidia," and appears there as a narrative communi- 
 cated immediately by an archbishop of Bordeaux. 
 
 At the same seminary with the archbishop was a 
 young ecclesiastic, who used to rise every night in 
 his sleep, and write out either sermons or pieces of 
 music. In order to study his condition, the arch- 
 bishop betook himself several nights to the chamber 
 of the young man, where he made the following 
 observations : — He used to rise, to take paper, and 
 to write. Before he wrote music, he would take a 
 stick, and rule the lines with it. He wrote the notes, 
 together with the words corresponding to them, with 
 perfect correctness, or, when he had written the 
 words too wide, he altered them. The notes that 
 were to be black he filled in after he had completed 
 the whole. After finishing a sermon, he read it 
 aloud from beginning to end. If any passage 
 displeased him, he erased it, and wrote the amended 
 passage correctly over the other. On one occasion 
 
 he had to substitute the word adorable into divin, 
 but he did not omit to alter the preceding ce into 
 cet by adding the letter t with e.xact precision to the 
 word first written. To ascertain whether he used 
 his eyes, the archbishop interposed a sheet of paste- 
 board between the writing and his face. He took 
 not the least notice, but went on writing as before. 
 The limitation of his perceptions to what he was 
 thinking about was very curious. A bit of aniseed 
 cake that he had sought for he ate approvingly ; 
 but when, on another occasion, a piece of the same 
 cake was put into his mouth, he spat it out without 
 observation. The following instance of the depen- 
 dence of his perceptions upon, or rather their 
 subordination to, his preconceived ideas, is truly 
 wonderfid. It is observed that he always knew 
 when his pen had ink in it. Likewise, if they 
 adroitly changed his papers when he was writing, 
 he knew if the sheet substituted was of different 
 size from the former, and in that case he appeared 
 embarrassed ; but if the fresh sheet of paper which 
 was substituted for that written on was exactly of 
 the same size with the former, he appeared not to 
 be aware of the change. And he could continue 
 to read off his composition from the blank sheet of 
 paper as fluently as when the manuscript itself lay 
 before him — nay, more, he would continue his 
 corrections, and introduce the amended passages, 
 writing upon exactly the place on the blank sheet 
 which would have been occupied in the written 
 page. 
 
 Curious iplants. 
 
 A Deadly Plant. — A few years ago there was, 
 in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, a speci- 
 men of probably the most poisonous plant ever 
 introduced into England. It was the jatropha 
 icrens, the properties of which are so noxious that 
 its possession is positively dangerous. Mr. Smith, 
 the curator of the gardens, was one day reaching 
 over it, when its fine bristly stings touched his 
 wrist. The first sensation was a numbness and 
 swelling of the lips ; the action of the poison was 
 on the heart, circulation was stopped, and Mr. 
 Smith soon fell unconscious, the last thing he re- 
 membered being cries of " Run for the doctor ! " 
 Either the doctor was skilful, or the dose of poison 
 injected not quite, though nearly, enough ; but 
 afterwards the man in whose house the plant was 
 placed, got it thrust into a corner, and would not 
 come within arm's length of it ; he watered the 
 diabolical plant with a pot having an extremely long 
 spout. In a short time, however, the plant dis- 
 appeared altogether, and another specimen of the 
 genus jatroplia, which was afterwards introduced, 
 vanished in the like mysterious manner. It was 
 presumed that the attendants were secretly deter- 
 mined that such plants should not be retained 
 
140 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 in the houses, to cause the possibility of an accident 
 sucli as that whicli had happened to the curator. 
 
 The Hunger-plant. — In Peru a plant named 
 the Erythoxyolon Coca has been found to possess 
 the remarkable property of quelling the sensations 
 of hunger and thirst for several days. M. de Rossi 
 reports the fact from experiments on himself. 
 A decoction of one hundred grains of the plant 
 produced the effect for forty-eight hours, the 
 muscular power being preserved. The plant 
 appears to narcotise the nerves of the stomach, 
 and suspend the digestive functions, without afford- 
 ing any nutriment. 
 
 THE FIRST MARINE CHRONOMETER. 
 
 To ascertain longitudeby means of the watch, a navi- 
 gator must have a chronometer showing him the 
 exact time at Greenwich ; the instant that the sun 
 comes to the meridian it is twelve o'clock, and the 
 difference between this time and the hour marked 
 by the chronometer gives him his longitude. Or, 
 when the time is known at which any particular 
 star passes the meridian at Greenwich, if the navi- 
 gator marks the instant at which the star comes to 
 tlie meridian, the difference between this time and 
 the time it would appear at Greenwich is the dif- 
 ference in longitude. 
 
 This problem had been for a long time but inaccu- 
 rately solved for w:ant of good watches. Maritime 
 nations had promised rewards to any one who should 
 make the discovery. In 1598, Philip III. of .Spain 
 offered a prize of 1,000 crowns ; the Dutch followed 
 this example ; the Duke of Orleans, Regent of 
 France, offered inthe name of the king 100,000 livres ; 
 and the French Academy awarded annually a prize 
 to those who made the more useful discoveries con- 
 nected with the subject. In 17 14, Parliament 
 appointed a committee to consider the cjuestion, 
 foremost of whom was Sir Isaac Newton, who at 
 once suggested the discovery of the longitude by 
 the dial of an accurate time-keeper ; and upon their 
 recommendation the legislature of Queen Anne 
 passed an Act granting _^io,ooo if the method 
 found discovered the longitude to a degree, or sixty 
 geographical miles, ^15,000 if to forty miles, and 
 ;^2o,ooo if to thirty miles ; to be determined by a 
 voyage from a port in Great Britain to any port 
 in America. For nearly a century and a half 
 philosophers alike failed, when the great dis- 
 covery was made by a self-taught genius, who was 
 bred a village carpenter : this was John Harrison, 
 born at Faulby, near Pontefract, in 1693. He 
 early manifested a taste for mathematical science 
 and mechanical pursuits ; and he had before made 
 two wooden clocks, without having received any 
 instruction in the art. He lived in view of the 
 sea, and this led him to attempt to make a marine 
 timepiece, and in 1736 he completed the first 
 
 chronometer used at sea, which neither varied from 
 change of temperature or the motion of the vessel ; 
 and this being placed on board a ship of war going 
 to Lisbon, the captain attested that Harrison had 
 corrected an error of about a degree and a half upon 
 their return to the English Channel. Harrison now 
 received from Parliament ^^500, to enable him to 
 proceed with his experiments. In 1739 he pro- 
 duced a smaller chronometer, which promised the 
 longitude with even greater accuracy. In 1741 
 he finished another, smaller than either, and 
 the society's gold medal was awarded him. Of 
 the third chronometer Harrison claimed a trial, 
 and in 1761 his son William was sent cut in a 
 king's ship to Jamaica. After eighteen days' navi- 
 gation the vessel was supposed to be 13° 50' west 
 of Portsmouth, while the watch, marking 15" 19', 
 was condemned as useless. Harrison, however, 
 maintained that if Portland Island were correctly 
 marked on the chart, it would be seen on the follow- 
 ing day ; and the captain continuing in the same 
 course, the island was discovered next day. In like 
 manner, Harrison was enabled by his watch to 
 announce all the islands in the order in which they 
 would fall in with them. On his arrival at Port 
 Royal, after 81 days' voyage, the chronometer was 
 about five seconds slow, and on his return to Ports- 
 mouth after a voyage of five months, it had kept 
 time within about one minute five seconds, which 
 gives an error of about eighteen miles. This was 
 much within the thirty miles prescribed by the Act 
 of 17 14, and Harrison claimed the reward. Objection 
 was, however, taken to the proof, and Harrison 
 made a second voyage, when his chronometer 
 determined the position of Barbadoes within tlic 
 limit of the Act ; ^20,000 was then awarded to him, 
 ^10,000 immediately on his explaining the principle 
 of construction, and the other half on its being 
 ascertained that the chronometer could be made 
 by others. The most important of Harrison's im- 
 provements are the gridiron pendulum, and the 
 expansion balance-wheel, the one serving to equalise 
 the movements of a clock, and the other those of a 
 watch, under all changes of temperature, and both 
 depending on the unequal stretching under change 
 of temperature of two different metals, which are 
 so employed to form the rod of the pendulum and 
 the circumference of the wheel, that the contraction 
 of the one exactly counterbalances the expansion 
 of the other. The complexity of Harrison's time- 
 keeper, and its high price, ^400, left to be invented 
 for practical purposes an instrument of greater sim- 
 plicity in the time-keeper of John Arnold, for which 
 he and his son received the Government reward 
 of Z3iO0O- In this machine each part performs 
 unchecked the office assigned to it ; and its extreme 
 variation in twelve months has been 57 hundredths 
 only. Yet, the advance in making chronometers 
 since Harrison's time has been very great, 
 
FINGAL'S CAVE. 
 
 iinc;als cave. 
 
 FINGAL'S CAVE. 
 
 About eight miles distant from the western coast 
 of Mull, and belonging to the Hebrides group, is 
 the small and uninhabited island of Slaffa. That it 
 owes its existence to volcanic agency is evident_from 
 its composition, which is almost entirely lava and 
 basalt, the columns of the latter substance being 
 the principal formation of the island, and from 
 which indeed it derives its name, Staffa being 
 the Norse term for staves or columns. Numerous 
 caverns are to be found in it, but the most celebrated 
 of all, and to which the island owes its fame, is 
 Fingal's Cave, or as it is sometimes called in j 
 Gaelic, Uamh an Binn — the Cave of Music, from a 
 supposed hole in the rock, through which the water | 
 flows in and out with an harmonious sound. It lies 
 on the southern side of the island, and it extends \ 
 inwards in a N.N.E. direction for about 230 feet. 
 Just before the entrance, on the right or eastern side 1 
 especially, the columns are broken and irregular, I 
 as if the waves had worn away their shafts and left j 
 the bases only ; but the entrance itself is through 
 an archway fifty feet wide, and about seventy feet ! 
 high, surmounted by an architrave of another thirty 
 feet, and which is supported on each side for the 
 whole length of the cave by basaltic pillars of a 
 greenish-black hue, wonderfully jointed, and of great 
 symmetry and regularity. The pillars vary very 
 muchin the number of their sides, though the greater 
 part of them have five or six. The roof is almost 
 
 unbroken in its surface, and is composed here and 
 there of smooth rock, and of the cornices, as it were, 
 of columns broken away — sometimes singly, some- 
 times in clusters or bunches, from which hang 
 stalactites, white, crimson, and yellow. A yellowish- 
 white substance resembling lime has gradually 
 oozed out of the joints of the pillars, filling up the 
 spaces between] and defining sharply their angles, 
 the whole forming a species of mosaic work. The 
 pillars on the west side are about thirty-six feet 
 high, rising up straight from the water — while 
 those of the east are, by the raising of their bases 
 eighteen feet, reduced to half the height, the eleva- 
 tion of the roof being the same on both sides. 
 On the eastern side is a ledge— it can hardly be 
 called a gallery — by means of which it is possible to 
 reach the extremity of the cave, which is there 
 twenty feet wide. Though the floor is the sea, and 
 the depth of water at the mouth is eighteen feet, 
 and at the other end nine feet, it is seldom prudent 
 and often impossible for boats to enter. The en- 
 trance being so wide, the tide makes its way in in an 
 almost unbroken swell. Standing, however, on the 
 ledge of rock already mentioned, it is a sight ex- 
 quisitely beautiful to watch when the sun is shining, 
 the light green waves rolling in with a loud boom, 
 made louder by the echoes, scattering the spray to 
 the roof, and washing the half-broken pillars on 
 both sides, when they reach the wall of rock that 
 bars their further progress, and contrasting their 
 colour with the dark red or violet rocks that forn* 
 
142 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 their bed, and the black cohimns of the walls 
 varied here and there by the stains of lichens into 
 bright green and red, orange, and yellow. 
 
 ^unositics of Stciim |Jaluci-. 
 
 THE STEAM-ENGINE AND THE HUMAN BODY 
 CO.MPARED. 
 
 We find in Dr. Arnott's practical " Treatise on 
 Warmth and Ventilation," the following ingenious 
 comparison : — 
 
 James Watt, when devising his first engine, knew 
 well that the rapid combination of the oxygen of 
 atmospheric air with the combustible fuel in the 
 furnace produced the heat and the force of the 
 engine ; but he did not know that in the living 
 body there is going on, only more slowly, a similar 
 combination of the oxygen of the air with the like 
 combustible matter in the food, as this circulates 
 after digestion in the form of blood through the 
 lungs, which combination produces the warmth and 
 force of the living animal. The chief resemblances 
 of the two objects are exhibited strikingly in the 
 following table of comparison, where in two adjoin- 
 ing columns are set forth nearly the same things 
 and actions, with difference in the names : — 
 
 TAliLE OF COMPARISON. 
 
 Tlie SUam-en^ine in acthn The Anitital Body in Life 
 
 takes : takes : 
 
 1. Fuel— viz., coal and wood, i. Food — viz., recent or fresh 
 both being old or dry vege- vegetable matter and llesli, both 
 table matter, and both com- being of kindred composition 
 bustible. and both combustible. 
 
 2. Water. 2. Drink (essentially waterj. 
 
 3. Air. 3. Breath (conunon air). 
 
 A nd produces : A nd produces : 
 
 4. Steady boiling heat of 212 4. Steady animal heat of 9S de- 
 degrees by quick combustion. grees by slow combustion. 
 
 5. Smoke from the chimney, or 5. Foul breath from the wind- 
 air loaded with carbonic acid pipe, or air loaded with car- 
 and vapour. bonic acid and vapour 
 
 6. Ashes, part of the fuel which G. Animal refuse, part of the 
 does not burn. food which does not burn. 
 
 7. Motive force, of simple alter- 7. Motive force, of simple alter- 
 nate push and pull in the piston, nate contraction and relaxation 
 which, acting through levers, in the muscles, which, acting 
 joints, bands, &c., does work through tlie levers, joints, 
 of endless variety, tendons, S:c. , of the limbs, 
 
 does work of endless variety. 
 
 8. A deficiency of fuel, water, or 8. A deficiency of food, drink, 
 air first disturbs and then stops or breath first disturbs and 
 the motion. then stops the motion and the 
 
 life. 
 
 9. Local damage from violence in 9. Local hurt or disease in a 
 a machine is repaired by the living body is repaired or cured 
 maker. by the action of internal vital 
 
 powers. 
 
 Such are the surprising resemblances between an 
 inanimate machine, the device of human ingenuity 
 executed by human hands, and the living body 
 itself — yea, the bodies of the men whose minds 
 contrive and whose fingers make such machines. 
 A prodigious difference, however, between the two 
 js pointed out by the expression t'/Az/ powers, con- 
 
 tained in the last line of the preceding table. That 
 difference, described in a few words, is, that while 
 the machine has to be originally constructed, and 
 afterwards worked and repaired and supplied with 
 every necessary by intelligence and forces alto- 
 gether external to it, the animal body performs all 
 the offices mentioned, and others yet more sur- 
 prising, for itself, by virtue of forces or powers 
 originally placed within it by the divine Author of 
 Nature. 
 
 Glass-blowing Extraordinary.— The fol- 
 lowing curious anecdote is related by the German 
 traveller Kohl, in his work on " Russia." The 
 Emperor Nicholas wished to illuminate the Alex- 
 ander column in a grand style. The size of the 
 round lamps to be used for the purpose was indi- 
 cated, and the glasses bespoken at the manufactory, 
 where the workmen exerted themselves in vain, 
 and almost blew the wind out of their bodies in 
 the endeavour to obtain the desired magnitude. 
 The commission must be executed — that was self- 
 evident ; but how ? A great premium was offered 
 to whoever should solve this problem. Again the 
 human bellows toiled and puffed. Their object 
 seemed unattainable ; when at last a long-bearded 
 Russian stepped forward, and declared that he 
 could do it — he had strong and sound lungs, he 
 would only rinse his mouth first with a little water 
 to refresh them. He applied his mouth to the 
 pipe, and puffed to such purpose that the vitreous 
 ball swelled and puffed nearly to the required 
 dimensions, up to them, beyond them. " Hold ! 
 hold!" cried the lookers-on, "you are doing too 
 much ; and how did you do it at all ?" " The matter 
 is simple enough," answered the long beard ; " but, 
 first, where is my premium ?" And when he had 
 clutched the promised bounty, he explained. He 
 had retained some of the water in his mouth, which 
 had passed thence into the glowing ball, and there 
 becoming steam had rendered him this good 
 service. 
 
 MoiTiJti's of ^luntal 
 
 m- 
 
 a lake of alligators. 
 About eight miles from Kurrachee, in Scinde 
 (says the author of " Dry Leaves from Young 
 Egypt "), is a place well worth inspecting to .all who 
 are fond of the monstrous and grotesque. A mo- 
 derate ride through a sandy and sterile tract, varied 
 with a few patches of jungle, brings one to a grove 
 of tamarind trees, hid in the bosom of which lie the 
 grisly brood of monsters. Little would one ignorant 
 of the locale suspect that under that green wood, 
 in that tiny pool, which an active leaper could half 
 spring across, such hideous denizens are concealed. 
 " Here is the pool," I said to my guide rather con- 
 temptuously, "but where .are the aUigators ?" At 
 the s.ame time I was stalking on very boldly, with 
 
ANTIQUITY OF NURSERY RHYMES. 
 
 143 
 
 head erect, and rather inclined to flout the whole 
 affair. A sudden hoarse roar or bark, however, 
 under my very feet, made me execute a pirouette in 
 the air with extraordinary adroitness. I had almost 
 stepped on a young crocodilian imp, about three 
 feet long, whose bite, small as he was, would have 
 been the reverse of pleasant. Presently the genius 
 of the place made his appearance in the shape of a 
 wizard-looking old Fakir, who, on my presenting 
 him with a couple of rupees, produced his wand— 
 in other words, a long pole — and then proceeded to 
 "call up his spirits." On his shouting " Ao ! ao !" 
 (come, come) two or three times, the water suddenly 
 became alive with monsters. At least threescore 
 huge alligators, some of fifteen feet in length, made 
 their appearance, and came thronging to the shore. 
 The whole scene reminded me of fairy tales. The 
 solitary wood ; the pool with its strange inmates ; 
 the Fakir's lonely hut on the hill side ; the Fakir 
 himself, tall, swart, and gaunt ; the robber-looking 
 Beloochee by my side, made up a fantastic picture. 
 Strange, too, the control our showman displayed 
 over his "lions." On his motioning with the pole they 
 stopped, and, on his calling out " Baitho " (sit 
 down), they lay flat on their stomachs, grinning 
 horrible obedience with their open and expectant 
 jaws. Some large pieces of flesh were thrown to 
 them, toget which they struggled, writhed, and fought, 
 and tore the flesh into shreds. I was amused with 
 the respect the smaller ones showed to their over- 
 grown seniors. One fellow, about ten feet long, was 
 walking up to the feeding ground from the water 
 when he caught a glimpse of another much larger 
 just behind him. It was odd to see the frightened 
 look with which he sidled out of the way, evidently 
 expecting to lose half a yard of his tail before he 
 could effect his retreat. At a short distance, per- 
 haps half a mile, from the first pool, I was shown 
 another, in which the water was as warm as one 
 could bear it for complete immersion, yet even here 
 I saw some small alligators. The Fakir told me 
 these brutes were very numerous in the river about 
 fifteen or twenty miles to the west. The monarch 
 of the place, an enormous alligator, to which the 
 Fakir had given the name of " Mor Sahib " ("My 
 Lord Mor "), never obeyed the call to come out. 
 As I walked round the pool I was shown where he 
 lay, with his head above water, immovable as a 
 log, for which I should have mistaken him but for 
 his small savage eyes, which glittered so that they 
 seemed to emit sparks. The Fakir said he was 
 very fierce and dangerous, and at least twenty feet 
 in length; 
 
 FECUNDITY OF RAEEITS. 
 The people of Australia are becoming greatly 
 embarrassed and distressed by the rapid increase 
 in the number of the rabbits, which were in the 
 first instance introduced from England. Our 
 readers arc no doubt aware that many attempts 
 
 have been made in that colony, as well as in New 
 Zealand and Tasmania, to acclimatise some of the 
 most useful and pleasing of the fishes, birds, and 
 quadrupeds of Europe, and these attempts ha\e 
 frequently been attended with great success. But 
 the introduction of rabbits, which were among the 
 number, has, it appears, been a great deal tov 
 successful. The fecundity of these animals is well 
 known, and is a source of great annoyance and loss 
 to the farmers in our own landj whose crops they 
 ravage immensely. It is found in some places 
 quite impossible to keep them sufficiently down, 
 whether by shooting, by trapping, by smoking them 
 out of their holes, or by the use of ferrets. 
 
 In spite of all measures taken against them, they 
 increase and multiply fast. At the age of a few 
 months they begin to breed, and one female will 
 produce several litters in a single year, each litter 
 containing from three to a dozen young ones. The 
 colonists are beginning now to find out that, 
 although rabbits arc very good in pies and stews, 
 and although it is also a very amusing sport to shoot 
 them, they had, perhaps, much better have been 
 without them altogether. We find one paper (the 
 Melbourne Argus) lamenting that "it is beginning 
 to be feared the colony has lost more than it has 
 gained by their introduction. Complaints against 
 their depredations are heard from all quarters. In 
 the country to the west of Geelong, in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Colac, and in the Western District, the 
 engrossing topic of conversation is the best means 
 for their extermination. Their numbers are so 
 great, and to such an extent are they eating down 
 the grass, that one large proprietor has entered 
 upon a war of extermination, and has employed 
 eighty-five men to starve them out by stopping up 
 all the rabbit-holes and outlets. It is calculated 
 that the cost of this one raid will be at least ^3,000 
 or ;£4,ooo. In some places dogs, traps, snares, 
 guns, and smothering, have all been tried, and 
 many hundreds of thousands destroyed ; notwith- 
 standing which, the rabbits apparently hold their 
 own ; and it is estimated that this work of extermina- 
 tion will take years to accomplish." 
 
 ANTIQUITY OF NURSERY RHYMES. 
 
 Many of these productions have a very curious 
 history, if it could only be traced. Some of them 
 probably owe their origin to names distinguished 
 in our literature ; as Oliver Goldsmith, for instance, 
 is believed in his earlier days to have written such 
 compositions. Dr. E. F. Rimbault gives us the 
 following particulars as to some well-known favou- 
 rites : — "Sing a Song of Sixpence" is as old 
 as the sixteenth century. "Three Blind Mice" 
 is found in a music-book dated 1609. "The Frog 
 and the Mouse" was licensed in 1580. "Three 
 
t44 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 Children Sliding on the Ice " dates from 1633. 
 " London Bridge is Broken Down " is of un- 
 fathonied antiquity. " Girls and Boys come out 
 to Play" is certainly as old as the reign of 
 Charles II.; as is also "Lucy Locket lost her 
 Pocket," to the tune of which the American song 
 of "Yankee Doodle" was written. "Pussy Cat, 
 Pussy Cat, where have you been ?" is of the age of 
 Queen Bess. " Little Jack Horner " is older than 
 the seventeenth century. " The Old Woman 
 Tossed in a Blanket" is of the reign of James II., 
 to which monarch it is supposed to allude. 
 
 THE SWORD-FISH. 
 The sword-fish, of which an engraving is annexed, 
 is of the large family of the mackerel, and, like the 
 rest of his tribe, is extremely greedy and pugnacious. 
 'for fighting he is equipped by nature with a re- 
 
 A few years since. Her Majesty's ship Faiuii, being 
 worn out, was in the ship-breaker's hands, and it 
 was found, on coming to her lower timbers, that a 
 s\v"ord-fish had pierced them to a depth of eighteen 
 inches. The sword, having snapped off, was left in 
 the ship's side. Nothing was known of the wound 
 by those who had sailed in the Fawn. The timber, 
 with the sword in it, is preserved in the museum of 
 the College of Surgeons, whence it was recently 
 taken to be exhibited in court upon the trial of an 
 action on a policy of marine insurance, in which 
 the plaintiff showed that certain damage done to 
 his ship, insured by the defendants, had been the 
 work of a sword-fish's beak. It appeared at the 
 trial that between four and five o'clock on the after- 
 noon of the 13th of March, 1S64, the barque Dread- 
 nought being on her way from Colombo to England, 
 a sword-fish was hooked but got away, carrying 
 with it a shark-hook and tackle. Soon afterwards 
 the barque began to leak. She returned to Co- 
 lombo, and went thence, still leaking, to Cochin. 
 There she was hove down and examined, and after 
 
 THE SWOKD-Fiair, 
 
 iharkable prolongation of the upper jaw into a long 
 sword-like weapon, from which he derives his title. 
 The sword is rapier-shaped, and consists of a sub- 
 stance as dense as any known bone, covered with a 
 substance still harder, like the enamel of a tooth. 
 Armed with this formidable weapon, the sword-fish 
 will attack other fishes for the sake of their bodies, 
 which he eats with great greediness. He will 
 sometimes run full tilt at a ship —whether under the 
 idea that it is an edible friend, or whether, as 
 Cuvier seems to think, out of irritation caused by 
 a parasitic crustacean which buries itself in its flesh 
 and causes great torment, it were difficult to say. 
 Certain it is that, under the influence of the parasite, 
 the sword-fish, maddened by pain, will run itself 
 aground, apparently in hope of getting rid of its 
 foe. The fish is a large one, attaining a length of 
 fifteen, and even twenty feet. It is found in the 
 Mediterranean, and in tropical seas ; small spe- 
 cimens are also occasionally taken in Britisli 
 waters. 
 
 Wonderful stories have been related of its as- 
 saults on ships at sea. Some of them are no doubt 
 exaggerated, some may be even apocryphal ; but, 
 allowing for these, there is abundant testimony to 
 prove the wonderful character of this warrior fish. 
 
 ■much time had been spent in searching, a hole was 
 discovered, about an inch in diameter, through the 
 garboard streak on the port side. The hole was 
 quite large enough to account for the leakage which 
 had taken place, and the shipowner and the crew 
 of the Dreadnought believed that it had been made 
 by the sword-fish hooked, but not captured, on the 
 13th of March. 
 ' Professor Owen and Mr. Buckland were examined 
 with a view to eliciting their opinion whether a 
 sword-fish was capable of inflicting the damage 
 deposed to. Much curious evidence was given by 
 them as to the great power and strength of the fish ; 
 and though they said that it was not imusual for 
 sword-fishes to attack vessels and to bury their 
 blades in the timbers, it was not within scientific 
 experience that the blades had ever been withdrawn. 
 They had been snapped off, as in the case of the 
 Fawn, but had not been recovered by the fish. Still, 
 considering that the hole made in the Dreadnought's 
 side was only three inches deep, the witnesses 
 would not say the assailant might not have tugged 
 his sword away, and so caused the leak. The jury 
 thought he had, and the under-writers, against whom 
 a verdict was given, were left to seek their own 
 remedy against the perpetrator of the damage. 
 
CORAL FORMATIONS. 
 
 145 
 
 CORAL FORMATIONS. 
 
 The coral animals, wonderful in themselves, are 
 still more wonderful in their works. Out of the 
 mouths of babes and sucklings praise is perfected, j 
 and the Almighty Creator of the universe has 
 chosen the small creatures of his world to discharge 
 some of the most wonderful offices in it. To the 
 coral animals has been committed the execution of 
 building works, far exceeding in magnitude any- 
 thing that man can boast, and there is evidence 
 that since the world began, or at all events since 
 a very early period of its history, these tiny things, 
 low down in the scale of life, have been the archi- 
 tects and builders of no small portion of the dry 
 
 being so small as scarcely to be noticed but for 
 the surf which breaks and roars upon their rough 
 outer walls, others having dimensions as great as 
 eighty-eight miles by twenty miles, the dimensions 
 of the largest known lagoon in the Maldive Archi- 
 pelago. Let the sea be never so rough outside the 
 lagoon, inside the water is calm and placid, so that 
 where an entrance is practicable, as in almost all the 
 larger atolls, these lagoons afford a covert from the 
 wind and a hiding-place from the tempest to ships 
 in distress. It is uncommon not to find easy and 
 safe anchorage inside a lagoon ; though the water 
 outside of it be bottomless to the sounding line, 
 very often there is bottom on the inside at twenty 
 fathoms. On the outer side of the embracing wall 
 
 A LAGOON ISLAND IN THE PACIFIC. 
 
 land which appears. Geology marks them for her 
 own, and reveals among her treasures enormous 
 masses of the fabric these things made before man 
 had any being. Their historical work is done, 
 however, and it is by their operations in the living 
 present that we are now to judge of the importance 
 of their position in the economy of nature. 
 
 Coral-work is of four kinds, which are known as 
 atolls or lagoon islands, encircling reefs, barrier 
 reefs, and coral fringes. Atolls are rings of coral en- 
 closing a portion of the sea, but having generally on 
 the leeward side an opening by which communica- 
 tion is kept up with the open water. They are not 
 always round, some of them being of most irregular 
 shape externally, but they are all so many en- 
 closures presenting a barrier to the sea, which is 
 allowed to come as far as to their sides and no 
 farther. These sides are commonly raised from 
 three to twelve feet above the water, and have a 
 breadth of from a few yards to half a mile. The size 
 of the islands varies very much, some of them 
 
 of the harbour of refuge, the coral shelves down 
 gradually to say twenty-five fathoms, a depth which 
 may be obtained at a distance of two hundred 
 yards from the island, but beyond this sounding 
 the plummet will go into fathomless depths. At 
 only one hundred yards away soundings have been 
 taken to a depth of a mile and a half, and no bot- 
 tom found ; while inside the lagoon there has been 
 bottom at twenty fathoms. To these islands come 
 the waifs and strays of wind and sea, drift, weeds, 
 plants, and seeds. These last, which are borne 
 from very considerable distances by winds and 
 currents, take root and bring forth fruit after their 
 kind ; wandering birds come, and their refuse and 
 the dead leaves of plants form the beginning of a 
 soil which is continually being formed by the attri- 
 tion of water on the coral, causing a disintegration 
 of the sun-dried mass. Thus in a marvellously 
 short space of time is the birth of the ocean clothed 
 and ornamented with the luxuriant vegetation of 
 the tropics. It is a remarkable fact that the atoll- 
 
146 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 wall is strongest on the side most exposed to the 
 weather. The coral animals flourish best on the least 
 sheltered side. There they get fresher and larger 
 supplies of material, and rough usage seems only 
 to act as a tonic, and to spur them on to greater 
 exertion. Inside the lagoon they languish, do not 
 work so hard, and become delicate as compared 
 with their brethren who love to battle with the 
 waves, and who draw fresh life out of the means 
 of apparent destruction. Atolls are not found in 
 the West Indian seas, where other formations of 
 coral are abundant ; but they are in countless 
 numbers in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, where 
 they form a principal difficulty of navigation. 
 Their proximity is as often apprehended by the 
 sense of sound as of sight, for the roar of the surf 
 beating upon their sides may be heard for many 
 miles, and will warn the sailor of his danger long 
 before the eye can discern it. At one time it was 
 said that these circular reefs marked the outline of 
 a submarine crater ; but this supposition is com- 
 bated not only by the great extent of the diameters 
 of the atolls, but also by their shallowness. There 
 are few of them, as we have seen, which may not be 
 sounded inside, and some of them have even been 
 known to get filled up. According to Mr. Darwin, 
 the following is the process of formation : — " An 
 island mountain, closely encircled by a coral reef, 
 subsides, while the fringing reef that had sunk with 
 it is constantly recovering its level, owing to the 
 tendency of the coral animals to regain the surface 
 by renewed perpendicular structures. These con- 
 stitute first a reef, encircling the island at a distance, 
 and subsequently, when the enclosed island has 
 wholly subsided, an atoll." It is now thought that 
 atolls mark the configuration of the land as it is 
 under water, and that they choose the loftiest heads 
 of submarine ranges as those most worthy of being 
 ornamented with their beautiful crown. 
 
 Barrier reefs are the work of coral animals which 
 begin their operations upon the slope of some 
 shelving coast, and build up gradually till they 
 reach the surface of the water. At the surface the 
 animals die, killed by contact with the air and 
 sun. Between the reef and the mainland fresh- 
 water streams empty themselves into the sea, 
 bringing with them a quantity of land-mud, which 
 is fatal — so is fresh water — to the existence of the 
 corallium. The consequence is, that the watery 
 gulf between the reef and the main never gets built 
 upon by the coral contractors, who extend their 
 operations, if at all, seawards, adding continually 
 to the strength of their work, and increasing its 
 area. Should the causes which retard these 
 creatures' operations be removed, as by the dry- 
 ing up of some noxious river, or its diversion from 
 its course, the busy travailleurs de la mer will 
 forthwith begin to build between the land and 
 their works. Some barrier reefs are of enormous 
 
 extent. There is one on the north-east coast of 
 Australia which is a thousand miles long, and is 
 continuous for three hundred and fifty miles with- 
 out a break or opening. It runs parallel to the 
 land, which is, in consequence, most difficult of 
 access. 
 
 Encircling reefs are similar in character to lagoon 
 islands, but instead of being independent, as lagoons 
 are, they attach themselves to some subsiding 
 island or continent, round which they throw their 
 arms. They will, unless means be taken to keep 
 the navigation open, gradually cut off the object 
 they embrace from all communication with the 
 sea. 
 
 Fringing reefs are strips or bands of coral bound 
 round the shore of some steep island. Where the 
 sides of the island slope abruptly, the reefs are only 
 a few yards wide ; where they slope more gently 
 the reefs will stretch' farther — indeed, until the water 
 deepens to about thirty fathoms, the greatest depth 
 at which coral animals can live, and move, and 
 have any being. ^_^ . 
 
 THE GARDEN SPIDER. 
 
 The writer has often tested the intelligence and 
 perseverance of the geometrical spider by the 
 following, it must be admitted, aggravating experi- 
 ment. Taking a piece of paper and rolling it 
 between his fingers, he has thrown it into the web, 
 taking care that it is not heavier than the weight of 
 a fly. The spider runs along with alacrity towards 
 his supposed prey, and soon discovering its un- 
 palatable nature, carefully disentangles it, and drops 
 it clear of the web to the ground by stretching out 
 his first pair of legs, just as a human being might 
 reach out his arm. He then returns to his place in 
 the centre, and in a moment or so a piece of paper 
 is thrown into another part of the web. The spider 
 acts as before, and will do so, without much vari- 
 ation, a few times. The fifth or sixth time he 
 rushes at the paper with an appearance of anger, 
 or runs an inch or two along the strands as if 
 enraged, and then back again ; pauses a moment 
 or so, as if to recover his equanimity, and then goes 
 briskly to his disappointment, and again carefully 
 disentangles the paper. All these movements, from 
 the evident feeling and intelligence shown, are full 
 of interest to the observer of nature, and they are 
 sufficiently varied in individuals to make the experi- 
 ment worth trying any number of times. Occa- 
 sionally, for example, the spider, after he has been 
 deceived a few times, will stretch out all his feet 
 upon the strands, without moving from his place, 
 and shake his web angrily ; or he will jerk the 
 paper out much as one might' fillip it away from 
 between the finger and thumb, with a decisive sharp- 
 ness, very significant of passion. After awhile the 
 spider will give up attacking his supposed prey. 
 
BURKE AND WILLS. 
 
 M? 
 
 Throw in a dozen, twenty, thirty bits of paper, and 
 he will remain passive ; but give up your sport and 
 retire for five or ten minutes, and you will again 
 find him busily at work, going from piece to piece 
 until the entire web is set free. 
 
 BURKE AND WILLS, THE AUSTRALIAN 
 
 EXPLORERS. 
 A BRIGHT day in Melbourne. August nearly at an 
 end, and the first warm breeze of the season telling 
 that the sprrng-time of the antipodes was at hand. 
 An excited crowd pressing in one direction, to arrive 
 at last in the Royal Park, where a busy scene was 
 presented, as of some oriental caravan about to 
 start. Horses, drays, pack-saddles, tents, goods 
 such as might be suited for a long desert journey, 
 and above all, standing swinging their long necks, 
 kneeling in process of loading, or already burdened, 
 were no less than twenty-seven camels. For this 
 was the day of starting of the exploring expedi- 
 tion, whose duty was to pierce the thick veil that 
 then covered the centre of the great continent of 
 Australia, and to try and establish communication 
 between Melbourne in the far south, and the land 
 directly north upon the shores of the great Gulf of 
 Carpentaria. 
 
 The preparations were at length made, the last 
 farewell and " God speed you " uttered, and then 
 the train started in quiet regular order along the 
 beaten tracks, past station after station, where the 
 desert had been brightened by the home of the 
 settler, and dotted by his flocks and herds. At the 
 close of each day a halt was made, and then at early 
 dawn on again, till the enclosed districts were left 
 behind ; and, with the vast pathless wild before 
 them, the magnitude of the undertaking first burst 
 in all its reality upon the travellers. Mr. Burke 
 was the captain of the expedition, Mr. Landells his 
 second in command, and Mr. W. J. Wills, a pro- 
 mising young man of twenty-seven, the third ; 
 the party being composed of fifteen more, all told, 
 well and liberally supplied by the Government 
 of Victoria with provisions and instruments for 
 observation. 
 
 So far, all had gone on in the most promising 
 way, and by easy stages the expedition had ad- 
 vanced ever due north, encountering no further 
 obstacles than the want of water, or a too great 
 abundance in some creek or river, which rendered 
 fording necessary. But now the foreman of the 
 party, evidently alarmed, made objections, and 
 behaved in a way which rendered his discharge 
 imperative ; while before much more ground had 
 been covered there was again dissension in the 
 camp, ending in the resignation of the second in 
 command and the doctor. 
 
 This last was, however, evidently a gain, and, 
 appointing Mr. Wills now his lieutenant, Mr. Burke 
 
 pushed on to Cooper's Creek, a watering-place about 
 halfway between Melbourne and the head of the 
 gulf Here they waited for some considerable time 
 for the coming up of fresh stores of provisions, but 
 at length, growing impatient at the loss of valuable 
 time, Burke determined to push on, and after mak- 
 ing arrangements for the establishment of a depot 
 of provisions, whereupon he could fall back, the 
 leader left the bulk of his party with instructions 
 to stay at the creek until his return, and then, ia 
 company with Wills and two men, taking with 
 them six camels, a horse, and a supply of pro- 
 visions, started forward to pursue the expedition, 
 opening up a route to the gulf, and, in spite of some 
 difficulties, achieving the first part of their task, 
 having from starting made about one hundred 
 and twenty halts at various camps on a journey 
 which lasted till February of the following year, 
 1861. 
 
 On the 13th of February, having accomplished 
 their design, Burke and Wills began the retura 
 route, rejoining their two men whom they had left 
 with the camels at camp 1 19. And now began the 
 serious part of the journey. Frequent thunder- 
 storms and heavy rain made the ground boggy, 
 distressing their horse and camels ; the food ran 
 short, and birds were unaccountably wild and hard 
 to approach. The one horse they had soon became 
 so toilworn that he was shot, and they were glad to 
 eat his flesh. Soon after one and then another 
 camel shared the horse's fate, the flesh being 
 jerked for future consumption. The long, toilsome 
 journey was telling fast upon the travellers, bad 
 supply of food and constant exposure adding their 
 part to make the once buoyant, gallant men weak 
 and low-spirited. But there was now the recollec- 
 tion that could they reach the depot at Cooper's 
 Creek there would be rest, fresh horses and camels, 
 and abundant store of provisions. 
 
 And now came a great trouble upon them — the 
 little party of four was reduced to three by the 
 death of Gray, one of the men, at a time when, after 
 watching his last struggles, the survivors were so 
 weak that they could hardly dig a shallow grave in 
 which to cover the poor fellow's remains. 
 
 With death staring them in the face, they once 
 more pressed on, suffering from hunger and thirst 
 by day, and from the piercing cold by night ; hardly 
 able to keep together, and with their six camels 
 now reduced to two ; here through long flats of 
 kangaroo grass, reaching to their shoulders, or rich 
 spear grass, making their way more toilsome as 
 they waded through it knee-deep ; over creek and 
 billibang ; across vast sandy plains ; by gum tree 
 and salt bush ; ever on and on for the haven of 
 rest that it seemed they would never reach — de- 
 spairing sometimes, hoping at others, till on Sunday, 
 April 2 1 St, the little wayworn party reached the 
 creek, to stand lost, stunned, stupefied with amaze- 
 
t48 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 ment and the great despair that filled their souls, 
 as, after their long and frightful journey— pioneers 
 of civilisation that they were — after some 1,500 
 toilsome miles of desert, they found themselves 
 starving, weak, despairing, and with their clothes 
 frilling from them in tatters, alone in the great 
 wilderness. 
 
 Utterly prostrated, Burke threw himself upon the 
 ground to bury his face in his hands, while, with 
 blank despair depicted in their countenances, his 
 companions stood amidst the awful stillness to try 
 and not believe that the trouble could be true. But 
 the great blank truth was before them, and, once 
 more collecting the energy that had led him across 
 the pathless waste from shore to shore of the vast 
 continent, Burke arose, and after a little examina- 
 tion of the place, they found that at the foot of a 
 tree a tolerably abundant store of provision had 
 been left ; but the pleasure was damped by the 
 discovery of a letter, telling them that those left in 
 charge of the depot had departed with plenty of 
 provisions, six camels, and twelve horses, all in 
 good condition, that very day — but a few hours 
 before the arrival of the hapless wanderers. 
 
 "Can you make an effort to overtake them?" 
 was the leader's query to his followers ; and the 
 answer was in each case, " No." " I thought it my 
 duty to ask you," he says, " but for my part I could 
 not have stirred." 
 
 Nor was it likely that the three fearfully weakened 
 men could have gone many miles in pursuit of 
 those who, they were given to suppose, were fresh 
 and well-mounted. The attempt seemed hopeless 
 and absurd. Here, then, they determined to rest 
 and recruit for awhile, trusting that the change of 
 diet they could now enjoy would restore their 
 strength, and enable them by a different route to 
 reach some of the most advanced settlements of 
 South Australia by way of Mount Hopeless. 
 
 Hopeless it proved ; for after many weary attempts, 
 checked ever by the want of water, they were glad 
 to return once more to the depot camp, hopeful 
 that a party might be sent up to their rescue ; but it 
 came not. And now appeared new actors upon 
 the scene in the shape of a tribe of natives, who, 
 during their stay in the neighbourhood, not merely 
 supplied them with fish, but with a bread composed 
 of the seed known amongst them as " nardoo " — a 
 seed obtained from a plant growing after the fashion 
 of the clover of our fields. 
 
 The days passed on, with the hopeless travellers 
 .daily growing weaker ; the last fragments of camel 
 eaten, and an occasional crow forming their suste- 
 nance ; for the natives were gone, and the stores left 
 exhausted. After a search. King found out where 
 the nardoo grew; but now a fresh disaster befel 
 them — the gunyah or hut was burned, and with it 
 clothes, coverings, and guns and instruments des- 
 troyed. But, in spite of all, Mr. Wills kept on 
 
 writing his journal from day to day, in a cheerful 
 spirit that breathes of resignation, and hardly 
 reveals the weakness of the sufferers, till we read 
 that from getting too feeble to go and gather the 
 nardoo, first one and then the other grew too 
 weak even to pound it into flour ; and after having 
 had his journal buried in the depot cach6, Mr. 
 Wills, as a last resource, begged of his two com- 
 panions to leave him, helpless and alone in the 
 wilderness, while they went to try and bring some 
 of the natives to his aid. 
 
 A pitiful scene ! the dying man giving his wallet 
 and a letter to his companion in the long journey, 
 and urgi ng him to go, until, slowly and unwillingly, 
 with hanging head and faltering steps, Burke left 
 him, followed by King. One day they travelled on 
 slowly, Mr. Burke complaining of weakness. On 
 the second day, at the end of two miles, he de- 
 clared he could go no farther, and, after struggling 
 on a little distance, he lay down calmly and re- 
 signedly, his great task done, to seek for rest. No 
 great horror and dread of death upon him, no wild 
 struggle of the strong against the appalling shade ; 
 but the weary wanderer putting his little affairs in 
 order, calmly giving a few directions to his follower, 
 ending by asking him to stay with him till he was 
 quite dead, and then hopefully and gently sinking 
 without a struggle into his last long sleep. 
 
 King, his humble companion, stayed by him, and 
 in his simple homely words — words expressive of 
 volumes when taken in connection with his position, 
 hundreds of miles from civilised man, says, " I felt 
 very lonely." 
 
 Almost ready to lie down by his chief. King 
 struggled on a little farther, to find a native hut 
 with food therein ; and after a rest, the poor fellow 
 toiled back to the gunyah where he had left 
 Mr. Wills, to find that he had joined his brave- 
 hearted leader, for Wills too was at rest. King says 
 but little of his own feelings in his simple narrative, 
 but even the savages who clustered round the 
 bough hut, where now a few branches and some 
 sand covered the brave young man's remains — 
 even they could add their little to the covering of 
 the cold clay, and weep bitterly at his fate. 
 
 Dead both, when, but for cold neglect and care- 
 lessness, the gallant fellows — men whose names 
 will ever shine in history — might have been saved, 
 for " they perished with help so nigh and yet so 
 far from them." Their part of the task was nobly 
 done, but those who should have been ready to 
 receive them on their return cruelly abandoned 
 them to their fate. 
 
 Too late were the failings of the expedition dis- 
 covered — its badly chosen officers, and arrange- 
 ments too cumbersome for such a duty ; and too 
 late was the arrival of those sent to discover the 
 gallant men who had won a way through the path- 
 less land. 
 
The palace of the escurial. 
 
 149 
 
 VIEW OF THE ESCURIAL. 
 
 THE palace of THE ESCURL\L. 
 
 The famous palace and monastery of the Escurial 
 stands in the kingdom of Toledo, seven leagues 
 from Madrid. The term Escurial, or Escorial, 
 is considered by some to be Arabic, meaning a 
 place full of rocks ; but by others is derived from 
 scoria fcrri, iron dross, from there having been 
 anciently great iron works near this place. The 
 Spaniards call it la octava maravilla, " the eighth 
 wonder," and eccentricity of plan and vast extent 
 entitle it to this distinction. It owes its existence 
 to the bigotry of Philip II., who, in his fight with 
 the French at St. Quintin, vowed that if he were 
 successful he would build the most magnificent 
 convent in the world, in honour of the saint whose 
 name should be found that day upon the calendar. 
 The battle being won, it was found that San 
 Lorenzo, or St. Lawrence, was the lucky patron ; 
 and measures were forthwith taken for the fulfil- 
 ment of the vow. According to the legend, this 
 saint suffered death by being broiled on a gridiron ; 
 and the architect, Juan Baptista de Toledo, at once 
 took it into his head to build the convent on that 
 
 singular plan. " With this view," says the author 
 of " A Year in Spain," " he represented the several 
 bars by files of building, the handle by a portion 
 of the church, and even the feet by four insignifi- 
 cant towers which rise at the corners. Indeed, the 
 only poetic licence he was guilty of, was in sup- 
 posing his gridiron to be turned upside down." 
 This is confessedly the most wonderful edifice in 
 Europe, whether in dimensions or riches. It has 
 i,85o rooms, 6,200 windows and doors, 80 stair- 
 cases, 73 fountains, 48 wine-cellars, 8 organs, and 
 51 bells. It contains, also, 1,560 oil-paintings ; 
 and the frescoes, if all brought together, would form 
 a square of 1,100 feet. Its circumference is 4,800 
 feet, nearly a mile. 
 
 The plan is divided so as to form a convent with 
 cloisters ; two colleges ; the royal palace ; three 
 chapter-houses ; three libraries, with about 30,000 
 volumes and some valuable MSS. ; five great halls; 
 six dormitories, thirty other halls, nine refectories, 
 and five infirmaries, with apartments for artisans 
 and mechanics. 
 
 The church is a wonderful structure. "The 
 riches of Spain and her ancient colonies," says 
 
*So 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 Inglis, "are exhausted in the materials — marbles, 
 porphyries, jaspers of infinite variety, and of the 
 most extraordinary beauty, gold, silver, and pre- 
 cious stones ; and the splendid effect of the whole 
 is not lessened by a nearer inspection : there is no 
 deception, no false glitter ; all is real. The whole 
 of the altar-piece in the Capella Mayor, upwards of 
 ninety feet high and fifty broad, is one mass of 
 jasper, porphyry, and marble. The church has 
 forty chapels, each with its altar ; and it is crowned 
 with a dome 330 feet high from the ground. There 
 is a mausoleum, encrusted with marbles ; the design 
 is in imitation of the Pantheon at Rome. The 
 cost of the Escurial was six millions of piastres. A 
 description of the edifice was translated into Eng- 
 lish by a servant of the Earl of Sandwich, in his 
 embassy to Spain in 1671, from which it appears 
 that the Escurial was reported to have been des- 
 troyed by fire in that year. There was a similar 
 report about sixty-five years ago. 
 
 i-gctr nnis Citrious ^xm. 
 
 — • — 
 
 YEWS AND OAKS. 
 
 Yew trees, of all European trees, are considered 
 by De Candolle to attain the greatest age ; and he 
 assigns an antiquity of thirty centuries to the Taxiis 
 baccata of Braburn, in Kent ; from twenty-five to 
 thirty centuries to the Scotch yew of Fortingal ; and 
 fourteen and a half and twelve centuries respectively 
 to the yews of Crowhurst, in Surrey, and Ripon 
 (Fountains Abbey), in Yorkshire, but these ages are 
 conjectural on the size. Beneath the three yews at 
 Ripon, the founders of Fountains Abbey are stated 
 to have held their rural council in a.d. 1132 ; they 
 are yet standing, and Norman churches in England 
 are found with yews beside them older than the 
 church. A yew-tree at Aukerwyke House, near 
 Staines, is supposed to be of great antiquity : there 
 is a tradition that Henry VIII. occasionally met 
 Anne Boleyn under its branches. This yew is 
 stated to have been a vigorous tree on the bank 
 of the Thames, opposite Runnymede, when Magna 
 Charta was signed there in 1215 ; and it still bears 
 its green leaf after 650 winters. The yew trees 
 at Kingley Bottom, near Chichester, in Sussex, 
 date as far back as the landing of the Sea Kings 
 on the coast of Sussex. On one of the South Down 
 hills, immediately above the yew tree valley, and 
 called Bow Hill, are some tumuli, which are always 
 called by the natives the graves of the Sea Kings, 
 who, with their followers, are supposed to have 
 fallen in a battle fought under these very yew trees. 
 The celebrated yew in Harlington churchyard, Mid- 
 dlesex, was formerly clipped into fantastic shapes, 
 but since 1790 has grown in its natural form ; in 
 1823 its age was stated at 800 years ; height of 
 Stem, 44 feet 6 inches ; circumference of trunk, 14 
 
 feet I inch ; spread of branches, 1 50 feet. Mr. 
 Bowman, F.L.S., as the result of his observations 
 upon the growth of several yew trees, concludes 
 that their diameter increases during the first 120 
 years at the rate of one-sixth of an inch per 
 annum. In Gresford churchyard, near Wrexham, 
 North Wales, eighteen yew trees, recorded to 
 have been planted in 1726, averaged twenty inches 
 in diameter in 1836. Another yew tree in the 
 same churchyard had a trunk twenty-two feet in 
 circumference at the base, and twenty-nine feet 
 below the first branches. From three sections 
 of this tree, Mr. Bowman found the average of 
 rings deposited for one inch in depth of its latest 
 growth to be thirty-four and two-thirds, comparing 
 which with the data of eighteen young trees, the 
 probable age of this tree was 1,419 years. Another 
 yew tree in Darley churchyard, Derbyshire, is cal- 
 culated to be 2,006 years old. Norbury Park, in 
 Surrey, has a " Druids' grove " of yews, of girth 
 but seldom equalled ; one is upwards of twenty- 
 two feet in circumference. 
 
 Owen Glendower's Oak, at Shelton, near Shrews- 
 bur)', is named from that chieftain, who from its 
 branches is said to have witnessed the great 
 battle between Henry IV. and Henry Percy, July 
 20th, 1403. It is so hollow on the inside that 
 six or eight persons may stand within it. Its 
 extreme girth is 40 feet 3 inches, and it is 
 healthy and flourishing. Cowthorpe Oak, near 
 Wetherby, in Yorkshire, is stated by Professor 
 Burnet to be 1,600 years old, and so large is its 
 hollow as to have contained within it seventy 
 persons at one time. The famous Fairlop Oak, in 
 Hainault Forest, was 36 feet in circumference 
 about a yard from the ground, and its shade over- 
 spread an area of 300 feet in circuit ; it was blown 
 down in 1820. The Oak of the Partisans, in the 
 forest of Parey, Saint Ouen, in the department 
 of the Vosges, extends its branches over 100 feet, 
 and its height is 107 feet ; it has lived 650 years, 
 and was known at the time when the Cothereaux, the 
 Carriers, and Routiers devastated France, in the days 
 of Philip Augustus. The Dull Oak, Wcdgenock 
 Park, and the Plcstor Oak, Colborne, are believed 
 to be as old as the time of disparking lands, after 
 the Norman Conquest ; but the VViiifartliing Oak, 
 and the Bcntley Oak, are believed to have been 700 
 years old at the time of the Conquest. William the 
 Conqueror's Oak, in Windsor Great Park, measures 
 at four feet from the ground, 38 feet in girth, 
 and is probably from 1,000 to 1,200 years old. The 
 great Oak ofSaintcs, in the department of Charente 
 Inferieure, measures 23 feet in diameter five feet 
 from the ground, and is large enough to contain a 
 small chamber ; its antiquity is conjectured at 
 1,800 or 2,000 years. Dr. Goddard remarks : — 
 " It is commonly and very probably asserted that a 
 tree gains a new ring every year." In the body of 
 
THE WONDERS OF LIGHT. 
 
 151 
 
 a great oak in the New Forest, three and four 
 hundred rings have been distinguished. The 
 Queen's Oak at Huntingfield, in Suffolk, was 
 situated in a'*Vark belonging to Lord Hunsdon, 
 where he entertained Queen Elizabeth, who is 
 reported to have shot a buck with her own hand 
 from this oak. Sir Philip Sidneys Oak, near 
 Penshurst, is said to have been planted at his 
 birth in 1554. It has been celebrated by Ben 
 Jonson and Waller. This oak is above 22 feet 
 in girth ; it is hollow and stag-headed. The El- 
 lerslie Oak, near Paisley, is reported to have 
 sheltered among its branches Sir William Wal- 
 lace and 300 of his men. If this legend were 
 true, it would imply that the tree was in its full 
 vigour at the end of the thirteenth century. The 
 Swilcar Oak, in Needwood Forest, Staffordshire, is 
 stated by Strutt "to be known by historical docu- 
 ments to have been, in 1822, 600 years old." This 
 noble tree stands on a beautiful lawn surrounded 
 with* extensive woods. It measures 13 yards round 
 at its base. The Abbot's Oak, near Woburn Abbey, 
 is stated to derive its name from the fact that the 
 abbot of the monastery was, by order of Henry 
 VIII., hung from its branches in 1537. Marshall 
 says :— "If we consider the quick growth of the 
 chestnut, compared with that of the oak, and at 
 the same time the inferior bulk of the Tortworth 
 chestnut to the Cowthorpe, the Bentley, and the 
 Boddington oaks, may we not venture to infer 
 that the existence of these truly venerable trees 
 commenced some centuries prior to the era of 
 Christianity ?" 
 
 A WONDERFUL TIDE. 
 
 In the collection of tracts forming a portion of the 
 library of King George III., in the British Museum, 
 is one of four leaves, which contains the following 
 account of an extraordinary phenomenon observed 
 at London Bridge in the middle of the seventeenth 
 century : — 
 
 " Friday, February 4th, 1641, it was high water 
 at one of the clock at noon — a time, by reason so 
 accommodated for all employments of water or 
 land, very fit to afford witness of a strange and 
 notorious accident. After it was full high water, 
 and that it flowed its full time, as all almanacks set 
 down, watermen, the unquestionable prognosti- 
 cators in that affair, with confidence maintain it 
 stood a quiet, still, dead water a full hour and a 
 half, without moving or returning in any way never 
 so little ; yea, the watermen flung in sticks to the 
 stream as near as they could guess, which lay in 
 the water as upon the earth, without moving this 
 way or that. Dishes, likewise, and wooden buckets, 
 they set a-swimming ; but it proved a stifling, for 
 move they would not any way, by force of stream 
 or water, so that it seemed the water was indeed 
 
 asleep or dead, or had changed or borrowed the 
 
 stability of the earth. 
 
 " The watermen, not content with this evidence, 
 would needs make the utmost of the trial, that 
 they might report with the more boldness the truth 
 of the matter ; and with more credible confidence 
 they took their boats, and launched into the stream 
 or very channel ; but the boats that lay hauled up 
 on the shore moved as much, except when they 
 moved their oars ; nay — a thing worthy the admira- 
 tion of all men — they rowed under the very arches, 
 took up their oars, and slept there, or, at least, lay 
 still an hour very near ; their boats not so much as 
 moved through any way, either upward or downward, 
 the water seeming as plain, quiet, even, and stable 
 as a pavement under the arch, where, if anywhere 
 in the Thames, there must be moving, by reason of 
 the narrowness of the place. 
 
 "In this posture stood the water a whole hour 
 and a half, or rather above, by the testimony of 
 above 500 watermen on either side of the Thames, 
 whom not to believe in this case were stupidity, not 
 discretion. At last, when all men expected its ebb, 
 being filled with amazement that it stood so long 
 as hath been delivered, behold a greater wonder — a 
 new tide comes in ! A new tide with a witness. 
 You might easily take notice of him ; so loud he 
 roared that the noise was guessed to be about 
 Greenwich, when it was heard so, not only clearly 
 but fearfully to the bridge ; and up he comes, 
 tumbling, roaring, and foaming in that furious 
 manner that it was horror unto all that beheld it. 
 And as it gave sufficient notice to the ear of its 
 coming, so it left sufficient satisfaction to the eye 
 that it was now come, having raised the water four 
 foot higher than the first tide had done — four foot 
 by rule, as by evident measure did appear, and 
 presently ebbed in as hasty, confused, unaccustomed 
 manner. See here, reader ! a wonder that, all 
 things considered, the oldest man never saw or 
 heard of the like." 
 
 THE WONDERS OF LIGHT. 
 
 What is light ? The answer is wonderful enough. 
 Light is motion — the motion or vibration of an 
 imponderable, invisible, all-present something, 
 which, for the want of a better word, philosophers 
 call ether. This ether permeates all space, and 
 is capable of receiving various kinds of motion. 
 Sir Isaac Newton, the most profound of natural 
 philosophers, left at the end of his great work, the 
 " Principia," three assertions — assertions which all 
 but deserve the name of prophecies, for he seems 
 to have had little reason for making them beyond 
 his marvellous sagacity. Two of these have 
 already been found true, and the third seems 
 daily approaching demonstration. It is, that light, 
 heat, magnetism, electricity, and animal life are 
 
IS2 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 all the offspring of one great source ; or, in other 
 words, that these wonderful powers are all allied to 
 each other, and arc probably only the same thing 
 in different states of motion. Every year science 
 discovers some new connecting link. We know 
 that electricity can produce light, heat, and mag- 
 netism, and that a dead body can be made to 
 exhibit the muscular functions of life under its in- 
 fluence ; and that the reverse of all this is true, that 
 electricity in its turn can be produced by heat or 
 magnetism, or animal life. So that the day may 
 yet come when we shall be able to show that these 
 powers are only different states of this very ether 
 whose motion produces light ! 
 
 The eye is such a delicate organ, that we have a 
 better means of investigating the properties of light 
 than those of any of the kindred powers. And 
 truly are the results of this investigation wonderful ! 
 That motion of this ether which is light, is termed 
 " wave motion." If a stone be thrown into water, 
 rings of waves begin to circle from the place where 
 the water was disturbed, widening further and 
 further. If there should be a piece of straw or any 
 light body floating on the water, the wave does not 
 carry this with it, but it merely 
 rises and falls as the wave _a a 
 
 passes beneath it ; teaching ( 
 us that the water does not '•>._ 
 move in the direction of the «^ i i' b 
 wave, but each particle of fluid 
 
 rises and falls again into the exact place from which 
 it was disturbed. This is wave motion, and is the 
 manner in which all disturbances are propagated 
 in different media. For example : sound is pro- 
 duced by similar waves in the air. The air is not 
 put into motion in such a manner as to produce 
 wind — we do not feel a breeze, when listening to an 
 organ, issuing from the instrument — and yet we 
 know that sound is produced by waves of air, as 
 we shall presently show. In an earthquake this 
 same kind of motion is produced, and as the 
 waves ripple the surface of the land, they upset 
 buildings, &c. ; but the earth is not cast up in waves 
 and ridges, like huge furrows of a ploughed field, 
 thrown in confusion over each other. A wave, in 
 scientific language, is, therefore, understood to be 
 an undulatory movement which passes through 
 the medium without permanently disturbing it. 
 
 We may give some idea of the manner of this 
 vibration which takes place in a pencil of light, by 
 fastening a long cord to a distant point, holding 
 the other end in the hand. When the hand is 
 shaken, a wave runs along the string ; if the hand 
 be turned round as it is shaken, a series of waves 
 in different positions would pass along the cord. 
 If we imagine this cord to be ether, and, instead of 
 one hand, many were at the same time causing the 
 oscillations in different positions, we should have a 
 pencil of light, 
 
 The size and rapidity of these waves can be mea- 
 sured. If the curved line in the figure represent a 
 wave of ether, the colour of the liglit will depend 
 on the length of the wave — that is, upon the dis- 
 tance from a to a. This is longest in red light, 
 being ^-jig^th of an inch ; if the light be violet, the 
 length is seventh of an inch. 
 
 The brightness or intensity of the light will 
 depend on the depth of the wave, or the distance 
 from a to b. The colour is also influenced by the 
 rapidity of vibration — that is, the number of times 
 the point a will descend to a, and back again in a 
 second. It is truly a triumph of science to have 
 measured this time of oscillation. For red light it 
 is 482,000,000,000,000 in a second, while for violet 
 light it is no less than 707,000,000,000,000 a second ! 
 What greater wonder can be expressed than to say 
 that during every second the eye is looking at a 
 violet flower or a mauve ribbon, the delicate retina 
 is receiving and recognising 707 million millions of 
 impulses ! 
 
 Conceive the number ! Suppose that there were 
 
 3,000,000 people in London capable of counting 
 
 100 every minute, that this vast multitude counted 
 
 on twelve hours every day ; 
 
 it would take their united 
 
 effort to count for nearly ten 
 
 years before they told the 
 
 number of the vibrations 
 
 which 
 
 violet colour for oni; second. 
 
 Yellow is caused by a number of oscillations 
 midway between these extremes. How little do 
 we know how wonderfully we are made ! We do 
 not say that the retina of the eye, which is the net- 
 work of the optic nerve spread out to catch the 
 light which enters through the pupil, absolutely 
 vibrates this enormous number of times itself, but 
 it is so delicately constructed that it can be affected 
 by these vibrations ; and the nerve receives them, 
 and transmits them faithfully to the brain. Many 
 persons are colour-blind. That is on account or 
 some defect either in the construction of the retina, 
 or in the means of transmitting its impressions to 
 the brain ; the proper number of oscillations is not 
 registered, and therefore the right colour is not 
 perceived. Just so with the ear. If the tympanum, 
 or the fine membrane which is stretched across the 
 tube which has its opening in the ear, be thick, it 
 is not capable of feeling very rapid vibrations of the 
 air, which beat against it; and as the higher the 
 note the greater are the number of vibrations — for 
 example, the highest note in a piano causes about 
 three thousand vibrations in a second ! Many 
 people cannot hear so high a note, because their 
 tympanum has become thick; and many more 
 cannot hear the chirp of a cricket, for the same 
 reason. The delicate construction of the eye and 
 the car [it truly wonderful. 
 
 cause us to perceive 
 
GRACE DARLING. 
 
 GRACE DARLING SETTING OUT 
 
 RESCUE THE CREW OF THE " EORFARSHIRE. 
 
 ^ratog of eHomaiT. 
 
 GRACE DARLING. 
 
 The story of Grace Darling's rescue of the survi- 
 vors of the Forfarshire steamer is wonderful, not 
 only on account of the difficulties of the rescue 
 itself, but more particularly on account of the 
 unhardy nature of her who was solely instrumental 
 in effecting it. Grace Darhng was no " strong 
 daughter of the plough," or of the oar, to whom it 
 would not be so difficult a matter to pull a boat 
 through a raging surf. On the contrary, she was of 
 delicate constitution, and died young. The following 
 is the story of the wonderful rescue she effected : — 
 On the evening of the 5th of September, 1838, 
 the steamer Forfarshire, of 300 tons burden, left 
 Hull for Dundee, with sixty-three persons on 
 board, including passengers and crew. There had 
 been something wrong with her boilers before she 
 left port, and this injury had been so ill remedied 
 , that when off Flamborough Head tlae boilers were 
 
 30 
 
 found to leak worse than ever. The Forfarshire's 
 progress was retarded, so that what with stopping 
 to repair the boilers, and what with the diminished 
 action of the engines, it was evening on the 6th of 
 September before the " Fairway," or passage be- 
 tween the Fame Islands and the mainland, was 
 made. The steamer got through the passage into 
 Berwick Bay, when the wind began to blow ex- 
 ceedingly hard from the northward, and the sea to 
 get up. As the night came on the weather became 
 rougher, and at ten o'clock there was a whole gale 
 of wind. The engineers reported that the leak in 
 the boilers had put out the fires, and that the 
 engines were unmanageable. The master of the 
 Forfarshire, John Humble, put sail on the ship 
 and got her round, with the intention of getting 
 her before the wind and running out to sea. He 
 did not probably think himself so close to dangerous 
 rocks as to justify, or rather to necessitate, letting go 
 his anchors. The Forfarshire would not answer 
 her helm; she fell off, carried away some of her 
 gear, and becoming unmanageable, began to drift. 
 
154 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 The current was setting to the southward, in the 
 direction of the Fairway, the dangerous channel 
 through which the steamer had so lately passed. 
 The shipmen were ignorant of their position until 
 suddenly the Fame Islands light flashed upon them, 
 and they saw close under their lee the broken water 
 which marked the spot where outlying rocks lurked 
 in ambush for them. 
 
 Captain Humble did his utmost to run his ship 
 into the channel, through which he hoped he might 
 get into clear water beyond ; but she was not under 
 command, and between three and four o'clock on 
 the morning of the 7th September, she struck 
 heavily forward upon a sharp rock of one of the 
 Fame Islands. Nine of the crew lowered a boat 
 and so saved themselves, being picked up next 
 day by a passing ship ; but no attempt was made 
 to save any more lives. Soon after the first shock 
 had taken place, the waves struck the steamer 
 some heavy blows on her quarter, and then, uniting 
 their strength, lifted her, to fling her down again on 
 the edge of the rock. Immediately she broke her 
 back, and the after part, containing the captain, his 
 wife, and many ef the passengers, was swept away 
 and destroyed with its living freight. The fore 
 part fell forward on the rock. Upon it, and in the 
 make-shift shelter furnished by its wreckage, were 
 clustered nine persons, five of the crew and four 
 passengers, including a poor woman whose two 
 children died in her arms during the night. When 
 morning broke the look-out at the lighthouse on the 
 Longstone, one of the Fame group, descried the 
 position of the sufferers, and saw also the apparent 
 impossibility of assisting them. The wind had 
 abated a little, but the sea was still tremendously 
 high, and around the rocky Fames was surging and 
 seething like the water in a mill dam. In the 
 Longstone lighthouse were three persons, William 
 Darling, his wife, and their daughter Grace, who 
 was twenty-three years of age. What assistance 
 could they render ? William Darling thought 
 none, and, knowing the great danger of the naviga- 
 tion at all times, but especially in stormy weather 
 — knowing also that unusual strength would be 
 necessary to pull a boat through such a sea as was 
 running— determined to leave the shipwrecked folk 
 to their fate. Men on the mainland refused that 
 day to put off, though for substantial reward. 
 
 Grace Darling knew less, perhaps, than her 
 father about the perils of a rescue, but she could 
 not bear the idea of no attempt being made to save 
 those who could be seen by the aid of a glass 
 clinging to the wreck on the sea-washed rock about 
 a mile away. She begged that the lighthouse boat 
 might be launched, and declared her own readiness 
 and ability to take an oar. Doubtingly and with 
 misgiving, William Darling yielded to his daughter's 
 solicitations, and, with the help of wife and 
 maiden, got the boat into the water. Then came 
 
 the difficulty, then there was the danger. Bravely, 
 manfully, perseveringly the two rowers toiled at 
 their work, now raised high on the crest of one 
 wave, now buried in the lap of another, now using 
 all their skill and co-operation to keep the boat's 
 head to the breakers, now giving way with earnest 
 will to pull the boat through them. On they went 
 spurred to exertion not only by the enthusiasm of 
 humanity, but by prudential motives, for they knew 
 that unless they could get back from the goal they 
 aimed at with the flow of the tide, they would have 
 to be prisoners with the shipwrecked till the tide 
 served again. After a severe labour which well- 
 nigh exhausted the crew, the lighthouse boat was 
 brought alongside the rock on which the miserable 
 people were. Well might they wonder at the sight 
 the boat presented ; welljmight they wonder to see 
 in one of their rescuers a fair maiden, young and 
 feminine in her looks, who yet seemed able to 
 manage her oar with all the skill, strength, and 
 dexterity of the most practised boatman. 
 
 All the survivors were taken off, and brought 
 back to the Longstone, where they were duly cared 
 for and entertained until, the boisterous weather 
 having subsided, they could be fetched by succours 
 from the mainland. Four years afterwards Grace 
 Darling, whose wonderful courage and hardihood 
 were thus the means of saving nine lives, fell a 
 victim to consumption ; but her name, still lives, 
 and must endure until the day when the world 
 shall cease to admire and love tlrose who are 
 capable of the most exalted and wonderful heroism. 
 
 A NATURAL ^OLIAN LYRE. 
 
 Near Freyberg, in the Grand Duchy of Baden, 
 there is a chasm in a mountain, remarkable not 
 only for the romantic nature of the scene, but for 
 the extraordinary sounds which occasionally issue 
 from it. This latter peculiarity was first observed 
 at the end of the seventeenth century by some 
 soldiers stationed on the adjoining heights, who 
 heard melodious tones resounding from the tops of 
 some fir-trees which grew beside a waterfall in a 
 neighbouring wood. The current of air ascending 
 and descending through the chasm, receives a 
 counter impulse from an abrupt angle of rock, and 
 acting on the tops of the trees and shrubs, forms a 
 natural ^Eolian harp, the tones of which are accom- 
 panied by the gurgling of the waterfall. The 
 religious spirit, which was the prevailing charac- 
 teristic of the age, led the soldiers to regard this 
 phenomenon as the result of supernatural agency. 
 On approaching the spot whence the music issued, 
 they found affixed to the tallest of the group of fir- 
 trees a wooden image of the Virgin holding the 
 infant Jesus in her arms. This image was erected, 
 in 1680, by Frederick Schwab, a citizen of Freyberg, 
 
THE EARTH-EATERS. 
 
 155 
 
 as a memorial of his having been cured of leprosy 
 by the water of the mountain spring. The soldiers, 
 however, conjectured that the aerial music which 
 had attracted them to the spot was the singing of 
 the celestial choir. Near the image was placed a 
 box for the reception of offerings, which soon 
 became sufficiently numerous to defray the expense 
 of erecting a chapel on the spot. 
 
 THE EARTH-EATERS. 
 
 To " eat dirt " is naturally, as well as metaphorically, 
 a most disagreeable and unwholesome undertak- 
 ing ; but to eat dirt in the literal sense, and not 
 only to enjoy it, but to thrive on it, is so contrary 
 to our ordinary ideas as to seem absolutely im- 
 possible. Nevertheless, it is perfectly true that 
 earth-eaters are to be found among the tribes of 
 the human race ; and we will give our readers an 
 account of these people and their usages, on the 
 authority of the famous scientific traveller. Baron 
 von Humboldt. 
 
 In his " Aspects of Nature," it is related that in 
 descending the Orinoco — a river which runs through 
 Venezuela, in South America — he passed a day 
 with the earth-eating tribe of Indians called the 
 Otomacs. The Baron thus describes the peculiar 
 diet and habits of this people : —   
 
 " The earth which the Otomacs eat is a soft 
 unctuous clay, a true potter's clay, of a yellowish-grey 
 colour, due to a little oxide of iron. They seek for it 
 in particular spots on the banks of the Orinoco and 
 the Meta, and select it with care. They distinguish 
 the taste of one kind of earth from that of another, 
 and do not consider all clays as equally agreeable to 
 eat. They knead the earth into balls of about five 
 or six inches diameter, which they burn or roast by a 
 weak fire, until the outside assumes a reddish tint. 
 The balls are remoistened when about to be eaten. 
 It is a proverb among the most distant of the 
 nations living on the Orinoco, when speaking of 
 anything very unclean, to say that it is ' so dirty 
 that the Otomacs eat it.' As long as the waters of 
 the Orinoco and the Meta are low, these Indians 
 live on fish and river tortoises. During the periodical 
 s-tvelling of the rivers the taking of fish ceases, for 
 it is as difficult to fish in deep river water as in the 
 deep sea. It is in this interval, which is of two or 
 three months' duration, that the Otomacs swallow 
 great quantities of earth. We have found con- 
 siderable stores of it in their huts, the clay-balls 
 being piled together in pyramidal heaps. A very 
 intelligent monk, who lived twelve years among 
 these Indians, assured us that one of them would 
 eat from three-quarters of a pound to a poimd and 
 a quarter in a day. 
 
 " According to the accounts which the Otomacs 
 themselves give, this earth forms their principal 
 subsistence during the rainy season, though they eat 
 
 at the same time occasionally, when they can obtain 
 it, a lizard, a small fish, or a fern root. They have 
 such a predilection for the clay that even in the 
 dry season, when they can obtain plenty of fish, 
 they eat a little earth after their meals every day 
 as a kind of dainty. The Franciscan monk who 
 lived among them as a missionary, assured us that 
 he perceived no alteration in their health during 
 the earth-eating season. 
 
 " The simple facts are therefore as follows : — The 
 Indians eat large quantities of earth without injury 
 to their health ; and they themselves regard the 
 earth so eaten as an alimentary substance, i.e., 
 they feel themselves satisfied by eating it, and that 
 for a considerable time ; and they attribute this to 
 the earth or clay, and not to the other scanty 
 articles of subsistence which they now and then 
 obtain in addition. If you inquire from an Otomac 
 about his winter provision, he points to the heap of 
 clay balls stored in his hut." 
 
 Humboldt combats the idea that this clay had 
 anything such as maize, meal, and crocodile-fat 
 mixed with it, as some writers had asserted ; and 
 he then goes on to say ; " In all tropical countries, 
 human beings show an almost irresistible desire 
 to swallow earth ; and not alkaline earths, which 
 they might be supposed to crave in order to 
 neutralise acid, but unctuous and strong-smelling 
 clays. It is often necessary to confine children to 
 prevent them from running out to eat earth imme- 
 diately after a fall of rain. I have observed with 
 astonishment the Indian women in the village of 
 Banco, on the Magdalena river, while engaged in 
 shaping earthen vessels on the potter's wheel, put 
 great lumps of clay into their mouths. With the 
 exception of the Otomacs, individuals of all other 
 races who indulge for any length of time the strange 
 desire of earth-eating have their health injured 
 by it. At the mission of San Borja we saw the 
 child of an Indian woman, who, his mother said, 
 would hardly eat anything but earth. He was, 
 however, wasted nearly to a skeleton. 
 
 " In the Island of Java, Labillardi^re saw small 
 square reddish-coloured cakes exposed for sale in 
 the villages. On examination and inquiry, he 
 found that the cakes consisted of reddish clay, 
 and that they were eaten. The edible clay of 
 Samarang was sent to Berlin in the year 1847, 
 in the shape of rolled tubes like cinnamon, and 
 was found to be a fresh-water formation deposited 
 on limestone, and consisting of microscopic Poly- 
 gastrica, &c." 
 
 Other instances are mentioned, and the Baron 
 concludes by saying : " Thus we find the practice of 
 eating earth diffused throughout the torrid zone, 
 among indolent races inhabiting the finest and 
 most fertile parts of the globe. But accounts have 
 also come from the North, according to which 
 hundreds of cartkiads of earth containing Infusoria 
 
IS6 
 
 THE. WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 are said to be annually consumed by the country 
 people, in the most remote parts of Sweden, as 
 bread - meal, and even more from fancy than 
 necessity ! In Finland this kind of earth is oc- 
 casionally mixed with bread. It consists of 
 empty shells of animalculae, so small and soft that 
 they do not crunch perceptibly between the teeth. 
 It fills the stomach, but gives no real nourishment. 
 In periods of war, as, for example, during the Thirty 
 Years' War in Pomerania, in the Lausitz, and in the 
 territory of Dessau, and subsequently in 17 19 and 
 1733 at the fortress of Wittenberg, chronicles and 
 documents preserved in archives often give inti- 
 mation of earths containing Infusoria having been 
 eaten, speaking of them under the vague and 
 general name of ' mountain meal.' " 
 
 MUSICAL FISH, OR MOLLUSCA. 
 
 When Sir Emerson Tennant visited Batticaloa, in 
 the northern forests of Ceylon, about twenty years 
 ago, he made inquiries relative to a story which 
 had reached him of musical sounds said to be 
 heard issuing from the bottom of a lake, at several 
 places, both above and below the ferry opposite the 
 old Dutch fort. The sounds were said to be heard 
 at night, and most distinctly when the moon was at 
 the full. They were described to him as resembling 
 the faint sweet notes of an ^olian harp. On con- 
 versing with the fishermen of the lake, they con- 
 firmed these statements, and expressed their belief 
 that they proceeded from a shell known by the 
 Tamil name of oorie coolooroo cradoo, or the 
 " Crying shell." The specimens shown to him 
 were identified as those of the Cerithium palustre 
 and Littoriiia la;vis. 
 
 One moonlight evening, when not a breath of air 
 was stirring, and not a ripple was to be seen on the 
 water except that caused by the dip of their oars. 
 Sir Emerson Tennant accompanied the fishermen 
 to the spot. On arriving at the point mentioned, 
 he avers that he distinctly heard the sounds rising 
 up from the lake, like the gentle thrills of a musical 
 chord, or the faint vibrations of a wine-glass when 
 its rim is rubbed by a wet finger. He says: "It 
 was not one sustained note, but a multitude of tiny 
 sounds, each clear and distinct in itself ; the 
 sweetest treble mingling with the lowest bass. On 
 applying the ear to the woodwork of the boat, the 
 vibration was greatly increased in volume by con- 
 duction. The sounds varied considerably at dif- 
 ferent points as we moved across the lake, as if the 
 number of the animals from which they proceeded 
 was greatest in particular spots ; and occasionally 
 we rowed out of hearing of them altogether, until, 
 on returning to the original locality, the sounds 
 were at once renewed." 
 
 Sir Emerson Tennant was induced to conclude 
 
 from all the facts, that the sounds were really pro- 
 duced by shell-fish. "They came evidently and 
 sensibly from the depth of the lake, and there was 
 nothing in the surrounding circumstances to support 
 a conjecture that they could be the reverberation of 
 noises made by insects on the shore, conveyed 
 along the surface of the water, for they were 
 loudest and most distinct at those points where the 
 nature of the land, and the intervention of the fort 
 and its buildings, forbade the possibility of this 
 kind of conduction." In fact, similar sounds have 
 been heard issuing from the sea in the harbour of 
 Bombay, and near the landing-place at Caldera in 
 Chili. In the last-mentioned locahty they rise and 
 fall as much as four notes. We may add the well- 
 known fact that some fishes grunt when disturbed, 
 and even oysters have an acoustic apparatus, 
 though it does not rise to the dignity of an ear. 
 
 When Sir Emerson Tennant first communicated 
 his observations at Batticaloa to the Edinburgh 
 Philosophical Society, Dr. Grant experimented with 
 some specimens of a mollusc ( Trito>iid) by placing 
 them in a glass vessel filled with sea-water. This 
 vessel was placed on the central table of the Wer- 
 nerian Natural History Society of Edinburgh, 
 around which many members were sitting. During 
 the whole time of the meeting, a "clink," as of a 
 steel wire struck on the side of the jar, was heard 
 at intervals, and so distinctly that it extended to 
 the distance of twelve feet. 
 
 MonbMuI Eelics. 
 
 STONEHENGE. 
 
 STONEHENGE,onc of the most remarkable of ancient 
 monuments in these islands, and destined to puzzle, 
 as to its origin and use, geologists and antiquaries 
 alike, is situated on Salisbury Plain, about seven 
 miles north of Salisbury, and three miles west of 
 Amesbury. It lies nearly at the apex of a triangle 
 formed by the junction of two roads, one leading 
 north to Heytesbury and Warminster, the other south 
 toStecple Langford and Wily. On the former road, 
 at about 100 yards from the junction, is the Avenue, 
 marked on each side by a bank and ditch, and ex- 
 tending on the right across the turnpike-road for a 
 distance of 594 yards ; and on the left past a large 
 stone sixteen feet high, standing by itself by the 
 wayside, called the Friar's Heel, in a direct north-east 
 direction to the entrance of the temple. That this 
 was the only entrance, is rendered probable from the 
 fact that round the whole of the work is a ditch 
 crowned in the inner circle by a small ridge of earth 
 or valltmt, measuring 369 yards in circumference. 
 
 The accompanying cut shows Stonehenge as it 
 is supposed to have appeared when perfect. At 
 present there are but very few of the uprights left 
 standing, and the stones arc scattered about the 
 
STONEHENGE. 
 
 157 
 
 STONEHENGE RESTORED.' 
 
 ground without much appearance of order. Still, 
 it is not difficult for the traveller to imagine what 
 its original shape was. 
 
 As is seen by the cut, the temple itself consisted 
 of two circles and two ovals. At a distance of loo 
 feet from the ditch, and measuring 300 feet in cir- 
 cumference, is the outer circle. This consisted of 
 thirty huge upright stones, varying in size and form ; 
 those of the entrance being thirteen feet high, while 
 the average height of all of them was sixteen feet, 
 the width six and seven feet, and the circumference 
 eighteen feet. Above these were placed horizon- 
 tally, as a lintel to a doorpost, oval-shaped blocks 
 about twelve feet long and two feet eight inches 
 deep. The upright stones taper a little towards 
 the top, and show, from the slight grooves made to 
 receive the imposts, that the mortices, as they are 
 callfid in masonic language, have been scooped out 
 by tools. The imposts or tenons were placed touching 
 each other, so as to form a complete circle. There 
 are now but seventeen of the uprights remaining, 
 and but six of the lintels. The space between 
 each upright varies somewhat, but averages 
 about three and a half feet. That of the entrance 
 is wider, being five feet. At exactly eight feet 
 three inches from the outer is the inner circle, 
 composed of smaller but even ruder stones, origi- 
 nally forty in number, but of which only twenty 
 remain. On the assumption that the building was 
 a temple, it has been conjectured that these stones ^ 
 
 were votive offerings, made after the temple was 
 finished. The next enclosure was in the shape of 
 a horse-shoe, and was formed of ten upright stones 
 placed in pairs at regular intervals, each pair having 
 a third stone placed over them as in the outer 
 circle, but not, as in the outer circle, touching each 
 other. These gigantic trilithons, or combination of 
 three stones, are the chief characteristics of the 
 place, and when it has been found by measurement 
 that one of those now standing cannot weigh less than 
 seventy tons, the impost alone weighing eleven tons, 
 it is not surprising that the old tradition should 
 have been that they were brought there and placed 
 in their positions by the supernatural agency of 
 Merlin. They were not all of a uniform height, but 
 rose gradually from east to west. The two pairs 
 nearest the spectator, opposite to each other at a dis- 
 tance of about forty feet, are about sixteen feet three 
 inches high ; the next pair is seventeen feet two 
 inches ; while one of the uprights of the great central 
 pair facing the entrance measures twenty-six feet 
 six inches. There is only one of the uprights of 
 this central trilithon now standing, and that is nine 
 inches out of the perpendicular, and is apparently 
 supported by one of the smaller stones of the inner 
 oval. The fallen impost is fifteen feet six inches 
 long. Of the five trilithons, but two are now entire, 
 though it might have been thought that, " by their 
 own weight made steadfast and immovable," no- 
 thing less than the shock of an earthquake could 
 
158 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 have overturaed them. That next to the great cen- 
 tral stone fell on the 3rd January, 1797, backwards, 
 the impost in its fall striking a stone of the outer 
 circle. One upright of the next pair still remains ; 
 the other and the impost have fallen forwards, 
 each of them lying broken into three pieces. The 
 inner oval is supposed to have consisted of nineteen 
 stones, though traces but of eleven can now be 
 found. They are about seven and a half feet high, 
 and measure twenty-three inches round at the base, 
 and twelve inches at the top. These two ovals 
 formed the sanctum or cell, and the altar-stone 
 stood in the inner enclosure, in front of the great 
 trilithon, which has nearly covered it in its fall. It 
 measures fifteen feet in length. 
 
 Such is this wonderful monument of the pre- 
 historic age, including in the area contained within 
 the ditch one acre and a quarter of ground. 
 
 By what means the stones were brought there is 
 still a matter of doubt. The greater part of the 
 stones themselves, those of the outer circle and the 
 large trilithons, are all rough stones, taken from 
 the quarry in their rude state, and are a species of 
 siliceous or flinty sandstone. Numbers of these are 
 to be 'found in Wiltshire, and are known by the name 
 of Grey Wethers. Those of the inner circle and 
 smaller oval are of a different species, and their 
 presence is not so easily accounted for. For 
 what purpose the building was erected has been a 
 matter of great speculation among antiquaries. It 
 has been supposed to have been a monument 
 erected to the memory of the dead buried in the 
 numerous barrows adjoining it, or that it was an 
 astronomical observatory, but it is now generally 
 admitted to have been a Druidical temple. What- 
 ever it may have been, it is, and as long as it 
 remains it always will be, one of th* most interest- 
 ing relics of bygone ages. 
 
 Monir^rs xrf %um^\ fife. 
 
 * — 
 
 Muscular Power in Beetles.— Mr. Gosse 
 relates the following anecdote of a three-horned 
 beetle, the oryctes maimon, which is not larger than 
 the ordinary English stag-beetle : — " This insect 
 has just astonished me by a proof of its vast 
 strength of body. When it was first brought to 
 me, having no box immediately at hand, I was at 
 a loss where to put it until I could kill it ; but a 
 quart bottle full of milk being on the table, I clapped 
 the beetle for the present under that, the hollow at 
 the bottom allowing him room to stand upright. 
 Presently, to my surprise, the bottle began to move 
 slowly, and glide along the smooth table, propelled 
 by the muscular power of the imprisoned insect, 
 and continued for some time to perambulate 
 the surface, to the astonishment of all who wit- 
 nessed it. The weight of the bottle and its con- 
 
 tents could not have been less than three pounds 
 and a half, while that of the beetle was about half 
 an ounce ; so that it readily moved a weight 112 
 times exceeding its own. A better notion than 
 figures can convey will be obtained of this feat by 
 supposing a lad of fifteen to be imprisoned under 
 the great bell of St. Paul's, which weighs 12,000 
 pounds, and to move it to and fro upon a smooth 
 pavement by pushing within." 
 
 Sagacity of the Raven. — Mr. R. Ball com- 
 municated the following anecdote of this species to 
 the author of " Thomson's Irish Birds." When he 
 was a boy at school, a tame raven was very atten- 
 tive in watching their cribs or bird-traps, and when 
 a bird was taken, the raven endeavoured to catch 
 it by turning up the crib ; but in so doing the bird 
 always escaped, as the raven could not let go the 
 crib in time to seize it. After several vain attempts 
 of this kind, the raven, seeing another bird caught, 
 instead of going at once to the crib, went to another 
 tame raven, and induced it to accompany him ; 
 when the one lifted up the crib, and the other bore 
 the poor captive off in triumph. 
 
 THE PALACE OF WATERS, CON- 
 STANTINOPLE. 
 Among the wonders of the world, a hall or palace 
 of imposing grandeur, the roof of which is sup- 
 ported on massive pillars standing in a vast expanse 
 of water, and formed of ponderous stone arches, 
 the very extent of which is unknown and its origin 
 enveloped in mystery, but which was nevertheless 
 suddenly discovered by an accident to underlie the 
 foundations of the capital city of a great nation, 
 may surely claim no insignificant place. Such is 
 Yere-Batan Serai, which not more than forty years 
 ago was discovered, by the falling in of some of 
 its arches, to exist beneath Constantinople. The 
 approach to it is through a house, after enter- 
 ing which the visitor passes through the entrance- 
 hall into a courtyard, and descends a steep slope 
 of slippery earth, when he finds himself at the 
 opening of the dim and mysterious Palace of 
 Waters. 
 
 The roof of this enormous cistern, which is formed 
 of massive circular arches, is supported by magnifi- 
 cent marble columns about ten feet apart. Their 
 capitals are of the Corinthian order, and are in 
 many instances elaborately carved, one near the 
 entrance being covered with exquisitely sculptured 
 ornaments, and each pillar being formed of a single 
 block. 
 
 At the time of the visit of the writer to whom we 
 are chiefly indebted for information on this subject, 
 Constantinople had long been suffering fromdrought, 
 so that the stateliness of the effect was augmented 
 by the lowness of the water, which gave greater 
 height to the stupendous subterranean abode. A 
 
WONDERS OF VEGETATION. 
 
 ISO 
 
 boat used once to be moored on the water, but the 
 Effendi who owned the house through which the 
 palace is approached had had it destroyed, to pre- 
 vent loss of life in attempts to explore the extent of 
 the vast hall. Two Englishmen had previously 
 made the attempt, but in both cases without success, 
 and in one with a fatal result. The first of these 
 travellers, about 1830, not satisfied with gazing on 
 the wonders of the palace from its opening, sprang 
 into the boat, and with the waterman who used 
 frequently to row the family of the owner of the 
 dwelling-house above mentioned near the entrance, 
 pushed off. Those on the shore earnestly begged 
 him to return, and warned him at least not to lose 
 sight of the light, but to no purpose. Producing a 
 lamp with which^he had provided himself, he rowed 
 on regardless of the shouts of his friends, having, as 
 is supposed, induced the boatman by the promise 
 of a heavy reward to comply with his wish. The 
 flame of his lamp appeared fainter and fainter, and 
 was finally altogether lost to the sight of those who 
 had seen him depart, and who now anxiously awaited 
 his return. But they lingered in vain, and had looked 
 their last on the unfortunate men who had so rashly 
 risked their lives in an adventure which, if success- 
 ful, could not have been worth a risk so fearful. It 
 can only be presumed either that they perished 
 in a current of foul air, or that, bewildered among 
 the columns in their attempt to return, they died 
 miserably of hunger. 
 
 The other attempt to explore the extent of this 
 marvellous hall took place but a few months before 
 the visit of the narrator, and was attended with so 
 much of success as to show that its extent is but 
 inadequately described as vast, while, happily, it 
 was followed by no fatal result. Another English- 
 man requested permission to use the boat which 
 had replaced the one so unhappily lost, for an ex- 
 ploring expedition. Objections were raised in vain ; 
 the adventurer was bold and persevering, and at 
 length, on his repeated promises of caution, the 
 Effendi gave his reluctant permission. No one 
 ventured to accompany the explorer on " the ter- 
 rible track," and he accordingly set out alone, 
 having first fixed two lighted torches to the stern of 
 his boat, and tied one end of a quantity of strong 
 twine to one of the pillars near the entrance, leaving 
 it to unravel itself from a reel as he went along. 
 The flame of his torch gradually faded from view, and 
 thefourth hour from his departure had nearly expired 
 when a faint gleam of hght once more appeared in 
 the distant darkness, to the inexpressible relief of 
 those who were anxiously watching for his return. 
 In but a little time afterwards the wanderer sprang 
 from the boat chilled and exhausted, and in answer to 
 the inqu^|es of his friends, said that he had gone on 
 for two hours in a straight line, but had seen nothing 
 more than they themselves could see— the vaulted 
 Toof overhead, the water beneath him, and long 
 
 avenues of columns stretching around him in all 
 directions, and losing themselves in the darkness. 
 
 This second adventure so alarmed the worthy old 
 Osmanli to whom the boat belonged that he at once 
 had it destroyed, and visitors have since been com- 
 pelled to content themselves with such a view of 
 Yere-Batan Serai and its marvels as can be com- 
 manded from the brink of its unexplored, and, as, it 
 hence appears, inexplorable lake. 
 
 The spot which afforded the view fi-om whicli 
 this description was written does not appear to be 
 the legitimate entrance, but was nevertheless the 
 locality in which the first lapse of a portion of the 
 fabric gave evidence of its existence, and no en- 
 trance is known but such as have been discovered 
 in a similar manner. Another such failure in a 
 yard near the Sublime Porte revealed its extent in 
 that direction ; a third also occurred at another 
 time near the mosque of St. Sophia ; and a fourth 
 within the walls of the Record office ; which facts, 
 joined to the negative discovery of the second and 
 more fortunate of the two above-mentioned English 
 travellers, prove that it extends over a space of 
 many square miles beneath the city. Beyond what 
 has been thus stated, the authorities of Constanti- 
 nople can throw no light either upon its extent or 
 its history. But as the narrator truly says, the very 
 mystery which surrounds Yere-Batan Serai serves 
 but to add to its interest. 
 
 ontiirs of Bt^dntian, 
 
 THE RAFFLESIA. 
 
 " Come with me, sir ; come ! A flower, very large, 
 beautiful, wonderful ! " exclaimed a Malay, who 
 drew the attention of Dr. Arnold to a flower re- 
 markable alike for its enormous size and its ano- 
 malous structure and habit. And the surprise of 
 the Malay was nothing compared with that of Dr. 
 Arnold and his companions. Sir Stamford and Lady 
 Raffles, when, following their native attendant, they 
 saw among the bushes of a jungle a flower appa- 
 rently springing out of the ground, without stem or 
 leaf, and measuring at least a yard in diameter. 
 The first news of this remarkable discovery created 
 a great amount of curiosity in Europe, and no 
 papers ever read at the Linnasan Society can be 
 compared, for the interest they excited, with those 
 in which the illustrious Robert Brown described 
 this wonder of the vegetable world. 
 
 Sir Stamford Raffles having been appointed 
 governor of a settlement in Sumatra, and impelled 
 by his great love for Nature, resolved to explore 
 that little-known island. On his first journey, in 
 1 81 8, he took with him Dr. Arnold, an ardent and 
 promising naturalist, who died as a new world was 
 opening before him. He, however, discovered this 
 gigantic flower ; his drawings and descriptions 
 were left unfinished, but his patron carefully pre- 
 
l6o 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 NATIVE FOKl'.S 
 
 IWER. AND lUIJ. 
 
 served and perfected them, and Robert Brown per- 
 petuated the memory of both in connection with 
 the plant, by naming it Rajflesia Anioldi, 
 
 The most striking feature in the Rafflesia is its 
 enormous size ; indeed, it is the largest and most 
 magnificent flower in the world. It is composed of 
 five roundish leaves or petals, each a foot across, of 
 a brick red colour, but covered with numerous irre- 
 gular yellowish white swellings. The petals sur- 
 round a large cup nearly a foot wide, the margin of 
 which bears the stamens ; and this cup is filled with 
 a fleshy disc, the upper surface of which is every- 
 where covered with curved projections, like miniature 
 cows' horns. The cup, when freed from its con- 
 tents, would hold about twelve pints of water. The 
 flower weighs fifteen pounds. It is very thick; the 
 petals being from one to three-quarters of an inch 
 in thickness. 
 
 A flower of such dimensions and weight might be 
 expected to be a treasure to the perfumer ; but, 
 alas, its odour is exactly that of tainted beef! Dr. 
 Arnold supposed that even the flics which swarmed 
 over the flower when he discovered it were deceived 
 by its smell, and were depositing their eggs in the 
 thick disc, taking it for a piece of carrion ! 
 
 Another cause of wonder to the little b^.nd of 
 explorers who discovered it, was that they could 
 find no leaves connected with it. It sprang from a 
 small, leafless creeping stem, about as thick as two 
 fingers. Now, a plant without leaves is like an 
 animal without a stomach ; for the leaves are to 
 the plant what the stomach is to the animal : they 
 
 separate from the air the food needed for the growth 
 of the plant. Without them there could be no 
 wood, no flowers, no fruit, no seed. Plants, there- 
 fore, have leaves — some consist of only a leafy ex- 
 pansion, and even the single cell of minute and 
 microscopical plants are really leaves reduced to 
 their simplest structure. There are, however, 
 strange plants which are actually leafless, making 
 up for this want by using the leaves of others. 
 Such plants are called parasites, because they feed 
 on the nutritive juices of others. Thrusting their 
 roots into the living tissues of other plants instead 
 of into the earth, they appropriate the prepared 
 food of these plants, and at once apply it to their 
 own purposes for the production of stem, or flower, 
 or fruit. The most familiar example of such a 
 parasite is, perhaps, the Dodder, one kind of which 
 infests cultivated flax, while others are found on 
 clover, heath, and whin. The gigantic Rafflesia 
 belongs to this class. Without a vestige of foUage,' 
 it rises at once from the long slender stems of one 
 of the wild vines of Sumatra — immense climbers, 
 which are attached like cables to the largest trees 
 in the forest. 
 
 The buds push through the bark like little 
 buttons, continuing to grow until they have the 
 aspect of large closed cabbages, and in about three 
 months after their first appearance, the flower 
 expands. It remains but a short time in perfec- 
 tion, soon beginning to rot, leaving only the central 
 disc, which becomes a large, rough fruit, filled with 
 multitudes of small, simple seeds. 
 
THE INDIAN FAKIRS. 
 
 i6i 
 
 THE INDIAN FAKIRS. 
 
 Perhaps the most wonderful of all instances of 
 religious fanaticism is that presented by the Fakirs 
 of India and other countries of the East. In all 
 ages and countries, men have been known to inflict 
 upon themselves bodily suffering from mistaken re- 
 ligious zeal. The 
 natural religious 
 instinct univer- 
 sally found in 
 man leads him 
 frequently to in- 
 flict upon him- 
 self grievous pe- 
 nalties for sins 
 cither real or 
 imaginary ; and 
 wherever Chris- 
 tianity does not 
 exert its be- 
 nign influence, 
 we find this ten- 
 dency occasion- 
 ally e-xcrcised in 
 ways repulsive 
 and abhorrent to 
 the general feel- 
 ings of huma- 
 nity. EvenChris- 
 tianity itself, in 
 someofthe forms 
 by which men 
 have debased it, 
 has not been free 
 from fanaticism 
 of the same de- 
 scription, many 
 of the profess- 
 edly religious or- 
 ders having,even 
 down to the pre- 
 sent time, sys- 
 tematically prac- 
 tised self - pun- 
 .ishmcnt in one 
 shapeoranother. 
 On this portion 
 
 of the subject it is not our province to enlarge. We 
 purpose to deal now with religious fanaticism simply 
 as exhibited by the Fakirs. 
 
 The Fakirs of the East Indies are a very large 
 class, numbering, it is believed, more than three 
 millions of people, of whom about three-fifths are 
 adherents of the Hindoo, and the remainder of the 
 Mohammedan religion. The word fakir is of 
 Arabic origin, signifying poor or beggarly, and is 
 applied to all those enthusiasts who separate theni- 
 
 AN INDIAN FAKIR. 
 
 selves from the ordinary pursuits of the life around 
 them, to give their whole time to religious obser- 
 vances, and the practice of self-mortification. The 
 Fakirs are of different grades, some bearing a 
 respectable character for learning and piety, ac- 
 cording to their religion, whether Hindoo or 
 Mohammedan ; while others, forming the mass of 
 the order, are signalised only by their wretched 
 
 condition, and 
 the disgusting 
 character of the 
 inflictions which 
 they impose up- 
 on themselves. 
 There are among 
 them also, it must 
 be remarked, a 
 large number of 
 impostors, who 
 make a trade of 
 their spurious 
 form of self-de- 
 nial, and adopt 
 it merely as a 
 cloak for all 
 kinds of crimes. 
 The Fakirs 
 generally go en- 
 tirely naked, and 
 live in caves and 
 holes, whence 
 they occasion- 
 ally start out to 
 supplicate the 
 passer-by for 
 charity, some- 
 times for them- 
 selves, but more 
 frequently as an 
 offering towards 
 the building of 
 a temple, or in 
 honour of a god. 
 Many of them 
 present deplor- 
 able spectacles, 
 with the body 
 unclothed and 
 filthy, and the 
 hair and nails allowed to grow to a frightful length. 
 Some bend the body into a painful and unnatural 
 position, from which at last they have no power to 
 raise it ; others tic round them heavy weights and 
 chains, which gall and eat into the flesh ; many 
 crawl about continually on their hands and knees, 
 or roll over the ground from place to place for hun- 
 dreds of miles without attempting to regain the 
 erect posture. One writer says, " I have seen a 
 man who had made a vow to hold up his arms in r- 
 
x6a 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 perpendicular manner above his head and never 
 to suspend them, until he totally lost the power of 
 moving them. He seemed more like a wild beast 
 than a man ; his arms, from having been so long 
 in one posture, were become withered and dried 
 up, while his outstretched fingers, with long nails 
 of twenty years' growth, had the appearance of 
 extraordinary horns ; his hair, full of dust and never 
 combed, hung over him in a savage manner ; and 
 except in his erect position, there appeared nothing 
 human about him. This man was travelling 
 throughout Hindustan, and being unable to help 
 himself with food, women of distinction among the 
 Hindoos contended for the honour of feeding this 
 holy person wherever he appeared. I saw another 
 of the devotees who had made a vow to fi.x every 
 year a large iron ring into his body, and thereto 
 to suspend a heavy chain, many yards long, to 
 drag on the ground. I saw this extraordinary 
 saint in the seventh year of his penance, when he 
 had'just put in the seventh ring, and the wound 
 was then so tender and painful, that he was obliged 
 to carry the chain upon his shoulder until the 
 orifice became more c.illous." Another example of 
 self-imposed torture and bodily contortion is depicted 
 in our illustration. 
 
 The Fakirs sometimes submit to tortures of 
 another description, such as roasting before a slow- 
 fire, or hanging suspended by hooks thrust through 
 their flesh. An American missionary thus describes 
 a spectacle of this kind which he had witnessed : — 
 " I was residing upon the sea-shore near the spot 
 where the cruel festivity was to occur. At mid-day 
 the multitude began to assemble, and before five 
 o'clock the crowd could not have been less than 
 five thousand persons. A beam about forty feet in 
 height had been erected, across the top of which 
 was placed a transverse pole of smaller siz'e, to each 
 end of which was tied a rope ; the end of one I'ope 
 trailed upon the ground, while to the shorter one 
 were attached two iron hooks, strong, rounded, 
 smooth, and sharp-pointed. The devotees were 
 retained in an adjoining temple until the fitting 
 hour arrived. One of them was then led out, pre- 
 ceded by Brahmins, and musicians, and friends. 
 He approached the upright polcj lay upon his face 
 while the hooks were thrust under the flesh on 
 either side of the vertebrae, just below the shoulder- 
 blade, and then, the other ropes being well manned, 
 he was hoisted up in mid-air, and swung round 
 and round to the number of ten to thirty times, 
 according as strength allowed, or the vow made 
 necessary. Twenty or more went through this 
 ceremony that afternoon, many of whom, by way 
 of manifesting their indifference to pain, scattered 
 flowers and fruit, beat a tomtom, or smoked a 
 cigar. Being sceptical as to the statement that the 
 hook went into the flesh, and was supported by it 
 alone, unaided by any exterior bandage, I went 
 
 near enough to convince myself that such was the 
 fact, and that no deception was practised. The 
 muscles are strong, and accidents from falling 
 seldom occur." 
 
 The origin of Fakirism is lost in antiquity. There 
 is a tradition to the effect that the first Fakir was 
 an Indian prince, who made a vow to lead a life of 
 penury and self-mortification, and to found an 
 order of his countrymen who should habitually 
 practise the same mode of life ; but history does 
 not tell us of any such person. The early Fakirs 
 were known to the Greek and Roman world as 
 gymnosophists (from the woxA. gymnos, naked), and 
 Alexander the Great, when pursuing his conquests 
 in Asia, about 320 B.C., was astonished to meet 
 men who lived habitually in bodily pain, and volun- 
 tarily submitted themselves to cruel tortures. 
 
 Monbcr.g of ^fgdation, 
 
 THE MOUNTAIN CABBAGE TREE. 
 
 This magnificent palm is described by Pinckard, 
 in his " Notes in the West Indies," as unquestionably 
 the finest tree that is known. This traveller saw it 
 growing in a wood at Barbadoes — of a peculiar 
 kind, and different from all others in the island. 
 From words or drawings, only an imperfect idea 
 of it can be collected ; and, to comprehend its fine 
 symmetry, its grandeur, and majestic loftiness, it 
 must be seen. Its trunk is very smooth, and 
 almost regularly cylindrical, rising into a superb 
 and stately pillar, resembling a well-hewn column 
 of stone. At the base, its circumference is some- 
 what greater than at any other part, yet lessening 
 so gradually upwards, as to preserve the most just 
 and accurate proportions. Not a single branch, 
 not even the slightest twig, interrupts the general 
 harmony of the trunk, which often rises in a correct 
 perpendicular, to the height of from sixty to one 
 hundred feet, and then spreads its palmated foliage 
 into a wide and beautifully radiated circle. Branches 
 it has none, but the fine expansive leaves shooting 
 immediately from the summit of the trunk, extend 
 around it, crowning, and, as it were, protecting 
 the massy column, in the form of a well-spread 
 umbrella. 
 
 " It may perhaps, be thought that our noble Eng- 
 Iis*h oak, with all its rude and crooked limbs, must 
 be a more picturesque object. So it is, and so is also 
 the wide branching silk-cotton ; but the loftiness, the 
 stately grandeur the exact proportion, and the deep 
 shading foliage of the mountain cabbage are un- 
 equalled, and in their happy combination crown 
 this tree the king of the forest, the most exalted of 
 the vegetable world. 
 
 " When planted in avenues, it forms a grand and 
 imposing approach to a dwelling, conveying an air 
 of grea-tness to the mansion which it adorns. It 
 
TRADE WIND^. 
 
 163 
 
 grows free from decay to a very old age, but cannot 
 be converted to the useful purposes of timber. It 
 is a tree of state, calculated to enrich and augment 
 the magnificence of a palace : nor let it detract 
 from its majestic qualities, to know that after all it 
 is but a cabbage tree ! Its loftiest summit is a 
 spiral succulent shoot, the sides ofwhich, by gradually 
 and successively unfolding, form the fine wide- 
 spreading foliage. Before this opens to expand 
 itself around, it is a congeries of young and tender 
 leaves, in which state it is often boiled and brought 
 to table as a cabbage, of which it is the very best 
 kind. It is also used without boiling, by way of 
 salad, and is then eaten with oil and vinegar ; and 
 so highly is it esteemed for these culinary purposes, 
 that too often a very fine tree has been devoted to 
 the axe, merely because no other means could be 
 found of obtaining from its towering summit this 
 most excellent cabbage." 
 
 The Snake Nut. — This is one of the most 
 remarkable productions of the vegetable kingdom. 
 It is found in British Guiana, and specimens are 
 occasionally brought down to the coast for sale as 
 curiosities to the passengers by West India 
 steamers, but it has so rarely been brought to this 
 country that it is comparatively unknown. When 
 a few specimens were first brought over by a gentle- 
 man from Demerara, about ten or twelve years 
 ago, one was forwarded to and courteously accepted 
 by Her Majesty. The nuts vary in size from about 
 a small walnut to that of an ordinary egg, and the 
 kernel closely resembles a small boa constrictor, 
 coiled up as if asleep. While the nut is unripe, the 
 kernel can be uncoiled, and its resemblance to the 
 body, fang, and tail of a reptile is most extraordinary. 
 
 WONDERS OF MINUTE WORKMAN- 
 SHIP. 
 In the twentieth year of Queen Elizabeth a black- 
 smith named Mark Scaliot made a lock consisting 
 of eleven pieces of iron, steel, and brass, all which, 
 together with a key to it, weighed but one grain of 
 gold. He also made a chain of gold, consisting of 
 forty-three links, and, having fastened this to the 
 before-mentioned lock and key, he put the chain 
 about the neck of a flea, which drew them all with 
 ease. All these together, lock and key, chain and 
 flea, weighed only one grain and a half. 
 
 Oswaldus Norhingerus, who was more famous 
 even than Scaliot for his minute contrivances, is 
 said to have made 1,600 dishes of turned ivory, all 
 perfect and complete in every part, yet so small, 
 thin, and slender, that all of them were included at 
 once in a cup turned out of a pepper-corn of the 
 common size. Johannes Shad, of Mitelbrach, carried 
 this wonderful work with him to Rome, and showed 
 it to Pope Paul V., who saw and counted them 
 aH by the help of a pair of spectacles. They were 
 so little as to be almost invisible to the eye. 
 
 Johannes Ferrarius, a Jesuit, had in his posses- 
 sion cannons of wood, with their carriages, wheels, 
 and all other military furniture, all of which were 
 also contained in a peppercorn of the ordinary size. 
 
 An artist, named Claudius Gallus, made for 
 Hippolytus d'Este, Cardinal of Ferrara, represen- 
 tations of sundry birds sitting on the tops of trees, 
 which, by hydraulic art and secret conveyance of 
 water through the trunks and branches of the trees, 
 were made to sing and clap their wings ; but, at the 
 sudden appearance of an owl out of a bush of the 
 same artifice, they immediately became all mute and 
 silent. 
 
 TRADE WINDS. 
 
 That there should be a wind ever constant from 
 the same quarter all the year round, is, apart 
 from the causes of it, a wonderful fact. Of almost 
 every wind that blows except the trade wind, it 
 might be said literally, " The wind bloweth wh'ere 
 it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but 
 canst not tell whence it cometh, nor whither it 
 goeth." Of the Trade Winds, however, it may be 
 said that in the northern hemisphere they blow 
 regularly from N.E. by N. to N.E. by E., and in 
 the southern hemisphere from S.E. by S. to S.E. 
 by E. They can be surely counted on as infallible 
 incidents in a voyage. 
 
 Columbus first discovered the full extent of the 
 N.E. trade winds, when he made his first voyage to 
 America. Previously he had observed in the 
 neighbourhood of the Canaries the frequency of the 
 winds from the same quarter, but it was not till he 
 set out on his first American voyage that he ascer- 
 tained the extent over which they regularly prevail. 
 The story is well known about the anxiety of 
 Columbus's crew, how they noticed, when well to 
 the westward of Grand Canary, the perpetual breeze 
 from north-east ; how they expressed their fears 
 about getting back to Europe, declaring that God 
 was angry with them for presuming to pry into his 
 secrets in the West, and had given them over to 
 the power of the devil, who caused a wind to blow 
 which should ever prevent their return to Spain. 
 Columbus, while he succeeded in overcoming the 
 fears of his sailors, and taught his successors how 
 to sail round the wind which he could not sail ' 
 against, never seems to have understood the 
 cause of the phenomenon. 
 
 So far as the name is concerned, it may be pretty 
 safely concluded that it was given because the wind 
 was the sure promoter of commerce, a wind upon 
 which the merchant might certainly count to carry 
 his ships over a known distance of the voyage. As 
 regards the direction from which it blows, when the 
 sun is south of the equator the wind has a little 
 more north in it, and is variable between N.E. and 
 N.N.E. When the sun is north of the line the 
 
i64 
 
 TH]:: WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 wind is more easterly, blowing sometimes from 
 E.N.E. 
 
 The extent of the trade wind region depends 
 entirely upon the sun. When the sun has a 
 southern declination the trade wind is often not 
 found till the twenty-seventh degree of north lati- 
 tude; but with a northern declination of the sun 
 the wind gets as far north as thirty-two degrees. 
 Its influence is perceived at from two to seven 
 degrees north of the equator, so that the district 
 over which the wind blows may be estimated at 
 about twenty-two degrees of latitude. The force 
 of the wind is sufficient to propel a ship regularly 
 at the rate of seven to eight miles an hour. 
 
 The causes of these winds were suggested by 
 many speculators upon science, even in the olden 
 time ; but modern science, which is able to declare 
 absolutely things once thought to be beyond man's 
 ken — to fix the distances between planet and planet, 
 to predict with certainty future scientific events, to 
 foreknow the tides, and to describe the journeys 
 yet to be performed of whole armies of stars — is, 
 among other things, able to speak with assurance 
 even about the winds in their circuits. Times 
 have changed since the Inquisition made Galileo 
 discredit the witness of his senses; since Columbus 
 was threatened with violence for persisting in his 
 voyage of discovery ; and — last, not least — since 
 Charles II. posed the Royal Society with his well- 
 known question about the difference in weight 
 between a salmon alive and the same salmon 
 dead. The times have changed, and we with them. 
 Opportunities for scientific investigation arc not 
 only ten thousand times more abundant, but the 
 people as a whole are more ready, thanks to the 
 general spread of knowledge, carefully to use the 
 means they have. 
 
 The trade wind theory now accepted may be 
 thus explained : — At either pole is a region of calms, 
 estimated at from one to one and a half degrees in 
 extent. Outside this is a district extending for 
 many degrees, over which prevail winds running 
 from all directions towards the pole. Beyond 
 this are the calms of Cancer and Capricorn, in the 
 northern and southern hemispheres respectively ; 
 then the north-east and south-east trade winds, and 
 between them the belt of equatorial calms and 
 rains. Such are the facts. Now the rotatory motion 
 of the earth from west to east being kept in mind, 
 it will be readily understood that a current of air 
 coming from the north pole, where the earth's 
 motion is scarcely felt, towards the equator, would, 
 the further it travelled south, find itself more and 
 more affected by the rotatory motion. The earth 
 would be, as it were, slipping from under it, going 
 from west to east, so that the current which was 
 flying south would find that it did not go in a 
 straight line, but would "get sent away westward, 
 and would blow, therefore, from the north-east ; in 
 
 the same way, the south wind coming north would 
 be converted into a south-east wind. 
 
 Now the prevailing v/inds between the polar 
 calms and the calms of Cancer are winds which 
 blow towards the pole, so that the current of air 
 which blows towards the equator must overrun 
 them — as, in fact, it does till it reaches the thirtieth 
 parallel of north latitude. There it meets with a 
 counter-current of equal strength, and the two 
 irresistible bodies meeting, cause a pressure or 
 stagnation in the air at the point of contact, the 
 stagnation produced being the calms of Cancer, 
 which stretch over five or six degrees of latitiKle. 
 Either opponent being unable to conqiter, both 
 descend — the north wind to j^rsue its southerly 
 course to the equator, the south wind to fly onwards 
 to the north pole. The wind which the northern 
 giant met at parallel thirty was a south-west wind, 
 which had Ijlown above and across the extent tra- 
 versed by the north-cast trade. Its history does 
 not differ materially from that of its rival, except 
 that at parallel thirty it has nearly done its travels, 
 whereas the north wind is only just beginning. 
 One wind has made the circuit of the globe, as the 
 wind it meets will have to make the circuit. It 
 has started from the south pole along the upper road 
 {mutatis mutandis, the phenomena of the southern 
 hemisphere are like those of the northern), has en- 
 countered the strong north-east wind which overlies 
 and overblows the south-east trades, has pushed 
 against it so hard as to repeat at Capricorn what 
 was done at Cancer, and has swept rcsistlcssly over 
 thirty degrees of latitude as the south-east trade 
 wind. At so near the equator it has been met by the 
 north-east trade wind. The two winds have been 
 hurled at one another with a momentum acquired 
 in a run over thirty degrees of latitude apiece, and 
 have been forced to scale the heavens in order 
 to avoid each other. Away they rush northward 
 and southward respectively. 
 
 The conflict which takes place between the winds 
 at the equator, if not more fierce than that which 
 occurs at Cancer and Capricorn, has more visible 
 effects. To it must be attributed those strange 
 convulsions which often make the equatorial region 
 anything but a calm one: those fierce deluges of rain 
 which sweep down from the clouds in sheets, that 
 lightning and that thunder, which are the con- 
 comitants of the mighty battle that is being per- 
 petually fought for the supremacy of north and south. 
 The trade winds are perceived within the same 
 parallels all round the world, the only difference 
 observ.ible being in those parts where local winds, 
 land breezes, and monsoons affect them, and turn 
 them out of their course. 
 
 " The wind goeth towards the south and turncth 
 about unto the north ; it whirleth about continually, 
 and the wind returneth again according to his 
 circuits." 
 
UMBRELLA STONES. 
 
 THE EARTH PILLARS OF BOTZEN, 
 
 UMBRELLA STONES. 
 
 There is something wonderful in the constant rush 
 of muddy water out of rivers into seas and oceans, 
 for every drop of it contains a small portion of 
 solid matter which was once part of the dry ground. 
 The rivers devour, as it were, the crumbling soil of 
 the hills adjacent to them, and transmit it to the 
 sea. Rivers arise from streams and torrents, and 
 these are produced by the rain, the persevering 
 destroyer and carrier of the surface of the earth. 
 Ever since rain and dry land existed, the wear 
 and tear has gone on, and the sea has received the 
 sediment. Mountains have been worn down, hills 
 have disappeared, valleys have been excavated, and 
 plains have been lowered, and all by the action of 
 rain and rivers. 
 
 But there are some remarkable instances where 
 the effects of rain, without rivers, in eating away 
 hundreds of feet of hard soil, can be very readily 
 studied. In the Tyrol, near Botzen, hundreds of 
 tall columns of hard mud, varying from 20 to 100 
 feet in height, and usually capped by a large stone, 
 have been separated from the ridges of the valleys ' 
 of which they once formed a part. The columns J 
 occur on the sides and at the bottom of the valleys, j 
 and they are very elegant in shape. The lower 
 parts of the columns are usually flat on the sides, 
 so that they are tall pyramids, and not simple 
 cones. The mud out of which they were formed 
 once filled the valkys, and was produced by the 
 
 grinding down of the adjacent hills by an old 
 glacier as well as by the effects of rain. The stones 
 strewed over the mud were brought down by the 
 glacier, and were scratched and poushed by the ice 
 as by a tool. The mud, although intensely hard 
 from age, began to be worn here and there by rain, 
 but not beneath the capping-stones ; and these 
 natural umbrellas effectually kept off the drizzle of 
 centuries and its results. Year after year the soil 
 uncovered by the stones was washed away, and, of 
 course, as it diminished, the columns stood up 
 more and more. During the lapse of ages, the 
 mud of the system of valleys was worn away, 
 leaving the gigantic stone-capped columns as proofs 
 of its former depth. Rain has cleared out of the 
 valleys a dense mud as deep as the highest column, 
 and there could have been no river action, for it 
 would have washed the slender columns away. 
 When one of the columns loses its stone, it be- 
 comes sharp arnl spire-shaped, and the whole 
 diminishes in height and size. 
 
 Curiously enough, there are some large stones in 
 the mud of the columns, and when some of these 
 are diminishing in height from the loss of their 
 umbrella stone, one of the included stones acts as 
 a second cover, and preserves a small relic of the 
 former structure. Sir Charles Lyell measured one 
 of these umbrella stones, and found it to be ten 
 feet across, and the pillar of densely hard mud it 
 capped was sixty feet high. If the drainage of the 
 valley should remain as it is, and no earthquake 
 
i66 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 should occur, there is no reason why the columns 
 should not remain as they are, and enjoy their pro- 
 tection from the rain for centuries. 
 
 There were once some fine mud columns, with 
 mnbrella stones upon them, in the valley of the 
 Visp, near Zermatt, in Switzerland ; but an earth- 
 quake threw down _many of the stones, and even 
 some of the columns. One column, which was 
 thus destroyed in 1855, had a height of fifty feet, 
 and its umbrella stone was fifteen feet in diameter. 
 The earthquake, moreover, altered the drainage 
 of the valley, and a stream began to destroy the 
 lower parts of the columns by its rushing force. 
 
 In order to produce a column of fifty or sixty 
 feet, capped by a gigantic stone, it is evident that a 
 corresponding wearing away of surrounding soil 
 must take place. This wearing away is the result 
 of the slow action of rain, and thus the height of 
 the stone-capped column is a test of the wear and 
 tear by rain which occurred after the original valley 
 had been filled with mud. Similar stone-capped 
 columns occur, but of a very different material, 
 amongst the glaciers of the Alps. The glaciers are 
 great seas of ice which fill up the gorges and 
 valleys of the highest Alps, and which in a slow 
 downward movement wear away the rocks which 
 bound them. Great blocks of stone fall on to the 
 glaciers, and now and then, when the wasting of 
 the ice in its downward movement is very rapid, 
 these blocks act as preservers to the ice imme- 
 diately beneath. Stone-capped columns of ice 
 are thus formed, and the umbrella stone acts also 
 as a sun-shade. There is an interesting connec- 
 tion between the Tyrolese mud-columns and the 
 Alpine icy columns, for the former are remnants of 
 a mud which was deposited from an old glacier 
 in the Botzen valley, and it is, therefore, quite 
 possible that some of the umbrella stones capping 
 the mud columns may have been sun-shades to 
 the ice columns of the ancient mud-depositing 
 glacier. 
 
 POWER OF BEARING EXTREME HEAT. 
 
 The writer remembers a terrible story published 
 many years ago, of a fire at a brewery. The nar- 
 rator, trying to escape, had no alternative but to 
 jump into a copper vat, at the bottom of which was 
 a little heap of brick and mortar rubbish, on which 
 he stood. The vat became red-hot around him, 
 and yet he was rescued without having sustained 
 any material injury beyond the fright. Many facts 
 similar to this are recorded by Sir David Brewster 
 in his " Letters on Natural Magic." The best 
 known of these incidents are the experiments made 
 by M. Tillet, in France, and by Dr. Fordyce and 
 Sir Charles Blagden in England. These gentle- 
 men went into a room, the heat of which exceeded 
 260", and though Sir Charles Blagden's pulse rose 
 
 to 144 beats, or double its ordinary quickness, no 
 harm ensued. In order to prove that there was no 
 mistake as to the degree of heat endured, several 
 steaks were cooked and eggs roasted in the same 
 place. Messrs. Duhamel and Tiller testify by 
 their own experience that at Rochefoucault, in 
 France, the girls who were accustomed to attend 
 to the ovens of a bakehouse were capable of en- 
 during for ten minutes a temperature of 270'. It 
 will, of course, be remembered by our readers that 
 water boils at 212°. 
 
 Sir F. Chantrey, the celebrated sculptor, proved 
 in his own person that the human body is capable 
 of bearing very much higher temperatures than 
 any we have mentioned. The furnace in which 
 he dried his moulds was about 14 feet long, 12 feet 
 high, and 12 feet broad. When raised to its 
 highest temperature, with the door closed, the 
 thermometer marked 350" of heat, and the iron 
 floor became red-hot. Nevertheless, Chantrey's 
 workmen often entered it at a temperature of 
 340°, walking over the red-hot iron floor with 
 wooden clogs, which became charred on the sur- 
 face. On one occasion, as Sir David Brewster 
 relates, Chantrey himself, accompanied by five 
 or six of his friends, entered the furnace, and after 
 remaining two minutes, they brought out a thermo- 
 meter which marked 320°. Some of the party ex- 
 perienced sharp pains on the tips of their ears, and 
 in the septum of the nose, while others felt a pain 
 in their eyes. 
 
 Monbtrs of Constructbit. 
 
 THE EDDYSTONE LIGHTHOUSE. 
 
 " Nothing but wood could possibly stand on the 
 Eddystone," said the Brethren of the Trinity House, 
 when it was proposed to rebuild with stone the 
 wooden lighthouse which in December, 1755, was 
 destroyed by fire. This was not the opinion 
 of John Smeaton, the engineer who was entrusted 
 by the concessionary of the Eddystone to repair the 
 damage ; and he had abundant reason to warrant 
 his belief. There had been already two lighthouses 
 of wood upon the rock. The first, commenced in 
 1696, by Henry Winstanley, was three years in 
 building, and, judged by the event and by the light 
 of subsequent experience, was defective both in 
 principle and construction. In November, 1703, 
 Winstanley, who was very proud of his work, and 
 very confident of its durability, was lodging at his 
 lighthouse, and expressed a wish that the fiercest 
 storm that ever blew might come on while he was 
 there. The fiercest storm that had raged within 
 then living memory did come on the night of 
 November the 26th ; and when, on the morning of 
 the 27th, men looked for the Ijghthouse not a vestige 
 of it was visible. With the builder and his work- 
 men it had been swept away. 
 
THE EDDYSTONE LIGHTHOUSE. 
 
 167 
 
 The necessity for placing a beacon upon so 
 dangerous a set of reefs as the Eddystone rocks was 
 thrust forcibly upon the public attention by a number 
 of disastrous wrecks that followed the destruction of 
 Winstanley's lighthouse ; and the Parliament of the 
 day authorised a tax of one penny a ton upon all 
 vessels outward and inward, for the benefit of the 
 man who should again mark the reef with a light. 
 John Rudyerd was the engineer employed by the 
 purchaser of the right to build, and he, with extra- 
 ordinary ingenuity, with wonderful patience, and 
 with great skill, succeeded in once more planting a 
 lighthouse on the dreadful spot. Though he 
 avoided the glaring defects of his predecessor's con- 
 trivance — defects, indeed, which made it wonderful 
 that the structure should have outlived four winters' 
 storms — he adhered to the notion that the house 
 must be of wood, and his lighthouse therefore was 
 of that material. In 1706, John Rudyerd's work 
 was finished, and for forty-nine years it braved 
 triumphantly the attacks of wind and sea. There 
 is not any reason for supposing that it might not 
 have continued much longer — until its timbers 
 should have rotted, in fact — but it had in its very 
 nature the principle of destruction. On the night 
 of the 2nd of December, 1755, but under what cir- 
 cumstances it is not exactly known, the dried and 
 sooty rafters of the lantern were found to be on fire, 
 and the inmates of the lighthouse could not subdue 
 the flames. Driven from floor to floor as the fire 
 worked downwards, the men were at last obliged to 
 seek shelter under a ledge of the Eddystone rock 
 itself, and in this dreadful position, fourteen miles 
 from land, to await the succour which came off from 
 the shore when the catastrophe of the lighthouse 
 was apprehended. The lighthouse was totally 
 destroyed, and when, a year afterwards, John 
 Smeaton surveyed the site, he had difficulty in 
 recognising where the old structure had stood. 
 
 In spite of the opinion strongly entertained at 
 the Trinity House, Smeaton, who was entrusted 
 with the work of rebuilding the beacon, decided 
 upon using stone and not wood. One wooden build- 
 ing had been washed away, and another had been 
 burned, and he was resolved that if he could help 
 it the thing which had been should not be the thing 
 that might be in the matter of the Eddystone 
 Lighthouse. With infinite care, with untiring 
 industry, with an incessant personal applica- 
 tion that savoured of devotion, Smeaton set to 
 work. In the face of difficulties from foul weather 
 — and these were often of a character wholly to 
 prevent work for days together — in the face of 
 engineering and mechanical difficulties, for which 
 the science of the day had not any remedy, and 
 which had to be overcome by the suggestions of 
 his own genius, Smeaton persevered — often dis- 
 couraged but never cast down ; never advancing 
 a Step without first being thoroughly persuaded it 
 
 was a wise one, never having cause to regret a 
 single step he had taken. 
 
 The work was indeed wonderful, both in design 
 and execution. The idea of building a house, not 
 merely on a rock, but into a rock, so that it should 
 be identified undistinguishably with it, was in 
 itself a lofty one, such as no engineer had yet 
 conceived. The necessity, perhaps, had not arisen 
 with the same force as in the case of the Eddystone, 
 but there the necessity was overwhelming. The 
 Eddystone rocks are a set of reefs fourteen miles 
 from Plymouth, right in the fairway of ships bound 
 up or down Channel, and washed, not only by the 
 great Atlantic wave, but torn also by the ground 
 sea, and subjected to all the violence of the tide. 
 Rearing their heads in the path of so many mighty 
 forces, they have to endure all their rage in suc- 
 cession, and to receive the -blows which they deal 
 in the very height of their anger. " Even in sum- 
 mer," wrote Winstanley, the builder of the first 
 lighthouse, "the weather would at times prove so 
 bad that for ten or fourteen days together the sea 
 would be so raging about these rocks, caused by 
 outwinds and the running of the ground seas coming 
 from the main ocean, that although the weather 
 should seern and be most calm in other places, yet 
 here it would mount and fly more than 200 feet." 
 In rough wintry weather the waves rear against and 
 strike the stony edifice with a force that makes it 
 tremble, and they roar at their own discomfiture. 
 Wonderful was the undertaking to attempt work on 
 such a place. Wonderful also was the work. 
 Carefully, thoroughly, wisely, did Smeaton consider 
 every principle that could possibly help him, and 
 his own hands commenced the execution of every 
 detail, his own eye superintended the entire work. 
 By a wonderful adaptation of the principle of dove- 
 tailing, he knitted every stone to every other stone, 
 and wove the whole foundation into the fabric of 
 the rock. To large central stones the whole of 
 the outer stones were bound, and so the courses, 
 joined as well as cemented together, were piled one 
 upon the other till the whole became a mass of 
 solid masonry, tied in unbreakable union to each 
 other and the rock. Upon such a foundation the 
 upper part of the lighthouse was built, and was 
 finished on the 9th of October, 1759. Since that time 
 till the present, Smeaton's work has stood unmoved 
 and immovable, save by a power which should 
 rend and tear the Eddystone itself The storms of 
 a century have burst upon it, the most terrific 
 waves, the most dreadful winds have beaten upon 
 it, but it has not fallen. It was founded on a rock. 
 
 As if to justify Sincarton's objection to wood as 
 the material of the fabric, a portion of his work 
 which was left unfinished and was of wood, caught 
 fire in 1770, and was burned. It was replaced with 
 stone, of which, when finally finished, the lighthouse 
 was wholly built. 
 
i68 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 FLYING FISH. 
 
 Flying Fish, or " sea-swallows," as they are also 
 called, because of their resemblance to swallows in 
 flight, are truly wonderful inhabitants of the deep. 
 On first seeing them one might reasonably suppose 
 them to be birds. There are three or four branches 
 of the family, the more gaily decked being found 
 only in the Mediterranean and Red Seas, while the 
 common flying fish is met with all over the ocean 
 within the tropics. Seldom or never docs the little 
 creature venture outside the warm water of the 
 tropical seas, his delicate organisation rendering 
 him unfit to brave the cold temperature either of 
 north or south. In size the fish is about equal with 
 the herrin"-. It is of a bluish brown colour at the 
 
 be so sometimes, but it is accidental ; the fish fiy 
 just where they imagine they may get out of the 
 way of bonitas, albacores, and dorados, their sworn 
 foes, who seem to spend their whole time in hunting 
 these unfortunate little creatures. Often it happens 
 that, in their anxiety to get away from submarine 
 enemies, they fall into destruction in the air ; for 
 soa-birds on the prowl know that the flying fish 
 must come out, and wait for them accordingly, with 
 all the patience of deer-stalkers. 
 
 The flying fish itself has not any teeth ; its food, 
 when time is allowed it to snatch a meal, consists 
 of shrimps, infusoria, and the smaller kind of 
 medusa. But at best it must eat in haste, for the 
 number of its destroyers is only equalled by their 
 voracity. Sometimes in their fright they will come 
 
 KI.YINt; HSII. 
 
 top of the b.ack, white on the belly, and yellowish 
 red on the tip of the tail and of the fins. Its large 
 pectoral fin stretches the length of its body, and is 
 of a deep blue colour. The tail is forked, the lower 
 bend being longer than the upper. The head is 
 scaly, and the whole body is squarish shaped. 
 Some of the fish have four wings, others only two. 
 The fish clears the water by the aid of its tail, 
 keeping its wings close till free of the brine ; it 
 then flies with a rapid motion till the wings become 
 dry, which generally happens in the course of si.\ty 
 yards. A touch of the water enables it to fly on 
 about twenty yards further, and then the fish returns 
 to the sea, exhausted. It does not rise more than 
 six feet above the water, and seldom flies for more 
 than a htmdred yards. 
 
 As regards the line of flight, some people profess 
 to say that the fish fly against the wind. This may 
 
 on board ship, flapping down on the deck exhausted, 
 and unable to rise again. Tlicy have even been 
 known to break the glass of the binnacle light, so 
 great is the force with which they impel themselves. 
 Light seems to form a great attraction for them, 
 and they will fly at night in crowds in the direction 
 of a glare. Advantage is taken of this known fact 
 by the fishermen, who go out at night with nets 
 rigged on poles sticking out all round the sides of 
 the boat. When the fishing-ground has been 
 reached, a fire is made in a brazier that is reared in 
 the middle of the boat. Soon the moths of the sea 
 are drawn to their destruction. They come, see, 
 and are conquered, falling down helplessly entangled 
 in the meshes of the net. The supply of them, espe- 
 cially in the Caribbean Sea, and around theWcst I ndia 
 islands, seems to be inexhaustible, and the demand 
 for their bodies is commensurate with the supply. 
 
THE PETER BOTTE MOUNTAIN. 
 
 169 
 
 THE PETER BOTTE MOUNTAIN. 
 
 The Island of Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean, 
 possesses a chain of mountains of volcanic origin, 
 some of which are singularly striking and rugged in 
 appearance. The most celebrated of these, and 
 one that, from 
 its peculiar for- 
 mation, is one 
 of the most won- 
 derful mountains 
 of the world, 
 is known as the 
 Pieter or Peter 
 Bottc, after the 
 name of an 
 adventurous 
 Dutchman who, 
 tradition asserts, 
 once scaled its 
 summit, but lost 
 his life incoming 
 down. In form 
 it is a rugged 
 cone, which runs 
 up sharply from 
 its base to the 
 height of more 
 than 2,800 feet ; 
 and at the sum- 
 mit of this cone 
 is a huge mass 
 of rock, which 
 appears to be 
 poised with th' 
 greatest nicct' , 
 so that a chanj 
 in its directic '1 
 of a few feet c 1 
 eithersidewouM 
 bring it to the 
 earth. 
 
 The example 
 of the unfortu- 
 nate Dutchman 
 was not suffi- 
 cient to deter 
 other daring spi- 
 rits from making the same attempt, and several times 
 in recent years the mountain has been ascended in 
 safety. The first instance occurred in 1832, when 
 a party of Englishmen accomplished what was then 
 deemed a most daring and hazardous task. This 
 party consisted of some officers of the Royal Navy 
 and engineers, named Captain Lloyd, and Lieu- 
 tenants Keppel, Philpotts, and Taylor. By the last 
 named the narrative of their adventure was com- 
 municated to Sir John Barrow, and by him forwarded 
 
 THE TETER liOTTE MOUNTAIN". 
 
 to the Royal Geographical Society. An idea of the 
 difficulty of the undertaking, as well as the general 
 character of the mountain, will be gained by the 
 following extracts from Lieutenant Taylor's letter:— 
 " On rising to the shoulder of the mountain, a 
 view burst upon us which quite defies my descrip- 
 tive powers. We stood on a narrow ledge or neck 
 
 __ ^ ^ of land about 
 
 twenty yards in 
 length. 
 
 "On the side 
 which wemount- 
 ed, we looked 
 back into the 
 deep wooded 
 gorge we had 
 passed up; while 
 on the opposite 
 side of the neck, 
 which was be- 
 tween six and 
 seven feet broad, 
 the precipice 
 went sheer down 
 1,500 feet to the 
 plain. One ex- 
 tremity of the 
 neck was equally 
 precipitous, and 
 the other was 
 bounded by what 
 to me was the 
 most magnifi- 
 cent sight I ever 
 saw. A narrow 
 knife-like edge 
 of rock, broken 
 here and there 
 by precipitous 
 faces, ran up in 
 a conical form to 
 about 300 or 
 350 feet above 
 us ; and on the 
 very pinnacle 
 old"PcterBotte" 
 frowned in all 
 his glory. 
 
 "After a short 
 rest we proceeded to work. A ladder had been left by 
 Lloyd and Dawkins last year. [This was in a 
 former and unsuccessful attempt by some of the 
 same party.] It was about twelve feet high, and 
 reached about halfway up a face of perpendicular 
 rock. The foot, which was spiked, rested on a 
 ledge, with barely three inches on each side. A 
 negro of Lloyd's clambered from the top of the 
 ladder, by the cleft in the face of the rock ; he 
 carried a small cord round his middle. A single 
 
170 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 loose stone or false hold must have sent him 
 down into the abyss ; however, he fearlessly scram- 
 bled away, till at length we heard him halloo from 
 under the neck, 'AH right !' The line carried up he 
 made fast above, and up it we all four ' shinned ' 
 in succession. It was, joking apart, awful work. 
 In several places the ridge ran to an edge not a foot 
 broad ; and I could, as I held on half sitting, half 
 kneeling across the ridge, have kicked my right 
 shoe down to the plain on one side, and my left 
 into the bottom of the ravine on the other. I held 
 on uncommonly hard, and felt very well satisfied 
 when I was safe under the neck. 
 
 "A communication being established with the 
 shoulder by a double line of ropes, we proceeded to 
 get up the necessary material — Lloyd's portable 
 ladder, additional coils of rope, crowbars, &c. But 
 now the question was how to get the ladder up 
 against the rock. Lloyd made a line fast round his 
 body, to which we all held on, and going to the 
 edge of the precipice on the opposite side, he flung 
 a large stone with a lead-line over the least pro- 
 jecting part, and it was eagerly seized on the oppo- 
 site side. Three lengths of the ladder were put 
 together on the ledge ; a large hne was attached to 
 the one which was over the head, and carefully 
 drawn up ; and, finally, a two-inch rope, to the 
 extremity of which we lashed the top of our ladder, 
 then lowered it gently over the precipice till it hung 
 perpendicularly, and was steadied by two negroes 
 on the ridge below. ' All right, now hoist away ! ' 
 And up went the ladder till the foot came to the 
 edge of our ledge, where it was lashed in firmly to 
 the neck. We then hauled away on the. guy to 
 steady it, and made it fast ; a line was passed over 
 by the lead-line to hold on, and up went Lloyd, 
 screeching and hallooing, and we all three scram- 
 bled after him. The Union Jack and a boat-hook 
 were passed up, and Old England's flag waved 
 freely and gallantly on the redoubted Peter 
 Botte." 
 
 The successful adventurers stayed all night on 
 the summit of the mountain, and all descended 
 safely in the morning. 
 
 The mountain was again ascended in 1848, in 
 1858, and lastly, so far as we are aware, in 1864, 
 each time by a party of Englishmen. The details 
 of the last ascent very much resembled those of 
 the first, the same apparatus of ladders and ropes 
 being employed to assist the adventurers. The 
 traces of former ascents were discovered at the 
 top, among them a piece of lead on which were 
 inscribed the names of the mountaineers of 1848. 
 A day or two after, the same party ascended the 
 mountain again, and this time Mr. Greene, an 
 amateur photographer, took several photographic 
 views of the mountain, one of which has afforded 
 the subject for our illustration. Before finally 
 turning their backs upon Peter Botte they left their 
 
 names in a " visitors' book," which was enclosed 
 in a tin box and left on the top of the mountain, 
 as a register for future adventurers. 
 
 ST. VITUS'S DANCE. 
 
 This peculiar disorder, now but rarely met with, 
 was once widely prevalent in Germany and the 
 Low Countries, where its diffusion appears to have 
 been greatly encouraged by the fondness of the 
 people for hysterical and superstitious excitement. 
 The " dancing mania," as it has been called, was 
 practised until a kind of general frenzy seemed to 
 have seized the people, many of whom entirely lost 
 control over their own motions. Jan, of Kdnigs- 
 haven, an old German chronicler, thus describes 
 the epidemic as it appeared at Strasburg— 
 
 ** At Strasburg hundreds of folk began 
 To dance and leap, both maid and man 
 In open market, lane, or street. 
 They skipp'd along, nor cared to eat. 
 Until their plague had ceased to fright us— " 
 'Twas call'd the dance of Holy Vitus." 
 
 The name appears to have been derived from the 
 supposed power of St. Vitus over nervous and hys- 
 teric affections. 
 
 The pranks indulged in by persons afflicted with 
 this mania were for some time ascribed to demonia- 
 cal possession. Even the great Paracelsus, who 
 effected many cures by medicinal remedies, in which 
 cold water was a prominent agent, for a time en- 
 couraged the popular belief, no doubt wishing in 
 some cases to operate on his patients through the 
 imagination. He therefore prescribed in these special 
 instances that "the patient was to make an image of 
 himself in wax or resin, and by an effort of thought 
 to concentrate all his blasphemies and sins in it, with- 
 out the intervention of any other person ; to set his 
 whole mind and thoughts concerning these oaths 
 in the image ; and when he had succeeded in this, 
 he was to burn the image, so that not a particle of 
 it should remain." 
 
 St. Vitus's dance, which raged in the countries 
 we have mentioned from the fourteenth to the six- 
 teenth century, began to decline as the progress of 
 enlightenment calmed the minds of men, and freed 
 them from their delusions. It is now only known 
 as a form of disease which occurs chiefly among 
 children, but is generally capable of successful treat- 
 ment under proper conditions, while in many cases 
 it is outgrown as the child advances in age. 
 
 DESTRUCTIVE POWERS OF WORMS. 
 
 In less than a year after a large jetty built at Val- 
 paraiso was finished, those piles which were not 
 defended by copper were completely reduced to a 
 honeycomb state by a curious little animal called 
 the auger-worm ( Teredo navalis), from the resem- 
 
THE STORY OF THE PORTLAND VASE. 
 
 171 
 
 blance its head bears to a common auger. It is 
 small, white, and almost gelatinous, with the excep- 
 tion of the head, which is armed with two movable 
 plates of shell, by which it is presumed the animal 
 perforates the wood. As it advances in the work 
 of destruction it lengthens and increases in size by 
 natural growth, constantly enlarging the cell in pro- 
 portion to the demand for accommodation. The 
 cell is lined with a calcareous coating (the secretion 
 of the animal), similar to the shells of the molluscous 
 tribes. The worm sometimes attains several feet 
 in length, and an inch in diameter. From the 
 havoc made on the jetty, it may be easily inferred 
 what would be the fate of a vessel undefended by 
 copper were she to remain long in this port. — 
 Three Years in the Pacific. 
 
 THE STORY OF THE PORTLAND VASE. 
 
 " Bid mortality rejoice or mourn. 
 O'er the fine form of Portland's mystic urn." — Darwin, 
 
 For the space of five-and-thirty years there was 
 deposited in the British Museum the most ancient 
 glass vase in existence, an object of rare art, which 
 for more than two centuries was the principal trea- 
 sure of the Barberini Palace at Rome, and was sub- 
 sequently known as " the Portland Vase." We 
 remember this gem of art for many years in the 
 old Museum. It was placed in the centre of the 
 ante-room at the head of the stairs leading from 
 the Gallery of Antiquities, upon an octagonal table 
 beneath glass. The room was imperfectly lighted, 
 and the vase was comparatively but little heeded 
 by visitors to the Museum, but it has altogether a 
 curious history. It was found about the middle of 
 the sixteenth century enclosed in a marble sar- 
 cophagus, within a sepulchral chamber under the 
 Monte del Grano, two miles and a half from Rome, 
 on the road to Frascati. It was deposited in the 
 palace of the Barberini family until 1770, when it 
 was purchased by Byres, the antiquary, and sold 
 by him to Sir William Hamilton, of whom it was 
 bought for 1,800 guineas by the Duchess of Port- 
 land, who placed it in her museum at Priory Gar- 
 dens, Whitehall ; and on the dispersion of this 
 museum by auction in 1786, this vase was bought 
 in by the Portland family for £i,02g. It is gf 
 inches in height, 7J inches diameter, and has two 
 handles. It was subsequently deposited in the 
 British Museum by the Duke of Portland in 1810. 
 
 On the vase being offered for sale by Sir William 
 Hamilton, Wedgwood, " the father of the Potteries," 
 considering that many persons, by whom the origi- 
 nal was unattainable, might be willing to pay a 
 handsome price for a good imitation of it, en- 
 deavoured to purchase the vase, and for some time 
 continued to advance upon each bidding of the 
 Duchess of Portland, until, at length, his motive 
 being ascertained, he was offered the loan of the 
 
 vase on condition of withdrawing his opposition. 
 Consequently, the Duchess became the purchaser 
 at the price of 1,800 guineas. It is stated that a 
 limited number of copies were sold at 50 guineas 
 each, and that the model cost 500 guineas ; pro- 
 bably our greatest English sculptor, Flaxman, was 
 the artist who was so liberally rewarded. Si*" 
 Joseph Banks and Sir Joshua Reynolds bore testi- 
 mohy to the excellent execution of these copies ; 
 they were chased by a steel tool, after the bas- 
 relief had been wholly or partially fired. The vase 
 was engra\ed by Cipriani and Bartolozzi in 1786. 
 There is a copy of it in the British and Mediaeval 
 room, in the British Museum, and a mould of it 
 was made by Pechler, the gem engraver, while it 
 was in the possession of the Barberini family, aiid 
 from this mould a number of casts were taken by 
 Tassie, who afterwards destroyed the mould. 
 
 The vase is ornamented with white opaque 
 figures in bas-relief upon a dark blue semi-trans- 
 parent ground. The design, and more especially 
 the execution, are truly admirable. The whole of 
 the blue ground — or at least the part below the 
 upper welding of the handle — was originally covered 
 with white enamel, out of which the figures have 
 been sculptured in the style of a cameo, witji 
 astonishing skill and labour. Although there 
 cannot exist any doubt as to the materials of which 
 this vase is composed, it is extraordinary that, not- 
 withstanding four authors have agreed in considering 
 it to be stone, all differ- as to the kind of stone. 
 Breval regarded it as chalcedony; Count Fetzi, 
 amethyst ; Bartoli, sardonyx ; and De la Chausse, 
 agate. " That travellers or authors," says Mr. 
 Pellatt, " should have been so ignorant as to suppose 
 that a natural production could have been hollowed 
 out of the size of the Portland Vase, seems sur- 
 passing strange ; nor does it appear less perplexing 
 that each account should differ in the colour and 
 description of stone." 
 
 There are three scenes on the vase ; one on 
 either side, and the other at the bottom. The first 
 represents three exquisite figures seated under a 
 tree near a ruined column. The centre figure, a 
 female, is apparently greatly exhausted or dying ; 
 in her left hand she holds an inverted torch, while 
 her right hand is thrown over her drooping head. 
 On her right hand is the figure of a man, and on 
 her left that of a woman, both seated, and looking 
 towards the reclining figure. The other scene 
 represents a male figure passing through a portal 
 with great timidity, and descending into a darker 
 region, where a beautiful female is waiting with 
 outstretched hand to receive him. She is seated 
 with her feet towards an aged male person, who is 
 resting his chin on his hand, and has one foot raised 
 on a column, and the other apparently sunk into 
 the earth. Between the knees of the female is a 
 large and playful serpent, and above is a Cupid, 
 
1^2 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 who beckons the male figure to advance ; and he 
 is striving to take with him a cloak or garment, 
 ■^hich adheres to the side of the portal. In this 
 scene are two trees, shading the female and the 
 aged male. On the bottom of the vase is repre- 
 sented another figure, pointing a finger to its mouth, 
 and on its head is a Phrygian cap, and a broad- 
 leavcd tree above. Aged heads, satyr-like, arc at 
 the base of the handles. 
 
 The piece of bas-relief engraved glass forming 
 the foot of the vase is distinct, and cemented to 
 the bottom of the vessel ; it appears to be of later 
 date than the body of the vase, and by a different 
 artist. It has likewise been conjectured that, the 
 neck of the vase being small, the large opening at 
 the bottom gave more room for putting in ashes or 
 bones, prior to the foot being finally cemented on. 
 At all events, this beautiful work of ancient art 
 proves that the manufacture of glass was carried to 
 a state of high perfection in early times. 
 
 On February the 7th, 1845, the vase was 
 wantonly dashed to pieces with a stone by one 
 William Lloyd, a visitor to the Museum. He was 
 secured and taken before a police magistrate, 
 who fined him ^3 for destroying the glass shade, 
 which belonged to the trustees of the Museum : the 
 fine was paid by some anonymous person. The 
 broken pieces of the vase were gathered up, and 
 it has been restored by Mr. Doubleday so beautifully 
 that a blemish can scarcely be detected. A drawing 
 of the fractured pieces is' preserved. The vase is 
 now kept in the model-room at the Museum. 
 
 oitirjrfirl Jfisljes. 
 
 GRATITUDE IN A PIKE. 
 When the late Dr. Warwick resided at Durham, 
 the seat of the Earl of Stamford and Warrington, 
 he was walking one evening in the park, and came 
 to a pond where fish intended for the table were 
 temporarily kept. He took particular notice of a 
 fine pike, of about six pounds weight, which, when 
 it observed him, darted hastily away. In so doing 
 it struck its head against a tenter-hook in a post 
 (of which there were several in the pond, placed 
 to prevent poaching), and as it afterwards appeared, 
 fractured its skull and turned the optic nerve on 
 one side. The anguish evinced by the animal 
 appeared most horrible. It rushed to the bottom, 
 and boring its head into the mud, whirled itself 
 round with such velocity, that it was almost lost 
 to sight for a short interval. It then plunged about 
 the pond, and at length threw itself completely out 
 of the water on to the bank. The doctor went and 
 examined it, and found that a very small portion of 
 the brain was protruding from the fracture in the 
 skull. He carefully replaced this, and with a small 
 silver toothpick, raised the indented portion of the 
 
 skull. The fish remained still for a short time, and 
 he then put it again into the pond. It appeared at 
 first a good deal relieved, but in a few minutes it 
 again darted and plunged about until it threw itself 
 out of the water a second time. A second time Dr. 
 Warwick did what he could to relieve it, and again 
 put it into the water. It continued for several times 
 to throw itself out of the pond, and with the assis- 
 tance of the keeper, the doctor at length made a 
 kind of pillow for the fish, which was then left in 
 the pond to its fate. Upon making his appearance 
 at the pond on the following morning, the pike came 
 towards him to the edge of the water and actually 
 laid its head upon his foot. The doctor thought 
 this most extraordinary ; but he examined the fish's 
 skull and found it going on all right. He then 
 walked backwards and forwards along the edge of 
 the pond for some time, and the fish continued to 
 swim up and down, turning whenever he tm-ned ; 
 but being blind on the wounded side of its skull, 
 it always appeared agitated when it had that side 
 towards the bank, as it could not then see its bene- 
 factor. On the next day he took some young 
 friends down to see the fish, which came to him 
 as before, and at length he actually taught the pike 
 to come to him at his whistle and feed out of his 
 hands. With other persons it continued as shy as 
 fish usually are. Dr. Warwick thought this a most 
 remarkable instance of gratitude in a fish for a 
 benefit received ; and as it always came to his 
 whistle, it also proved what he had previously dis- 
 believed, that fishes are sensible to sound. 
 
 Voice of the Tench. — Dr. Shirley Palmer re- 
 lates the following singular fact : — " In the spring of 
 1823 I received from a friend a brace of tench just 
 taken from the water. They were deposited in a 
 dish and placed upon a high shelf in the larder, 
 situated between the dining parlour and cooking 
 kitchen. The following midnight, whilst writing in 
 the dining-room, my attention was excited by a deep, 
 hollow, protracted groan. It was twice or thrice 
 repeated, and all my efforts to discover the source 
 of the sound were ineffectual. At length my ear 
 was startled by a loud splash, succeeded by a groan 
 more deep and long-continued than those which I 
 had previously heard, and evidently proceeding 
 from the larder. Inspection of that room explained 
 the mystery. One of the fishes had sprung down 
 from the shelf on the stone floor, and there la)-, with 
 mouth open, and pectoral and ventral fins exten- 
 ded, uttering the sounds by which my midnight 
 labours had been interrupted. Next day both 
   fishes were cooked for dinner ; and such is the 
 j tenacity of life in the tench, that although thirty 
 hours had then elapsed since their removal from 
 , their native element, both fishes, after having 
 I undergone the process of scaling and evisceration, 
 ' sprang vigorously from the pot of hot water when 
 consigned to it by the cook." 
 
THE WELWITSCHIA. 
 
 il3 
 
 LANDSCAPE IN TROPICAL AFRICA, WITH SPECIMENS OF WELWITSCHIA MIRABILIS. 
 
 Monb^rs of ^t^diximx, 
 
 THE WELWITSCHIA, THE WONDERFUL TABLE- 
 TREE OF WESTERN AFRICA. 
 
 About iooo miles north from the Cape of Good 
 Hope, on the western side of Africa, there is an 
 extensive district of sterile country extending north- 
 wards to the Portuguese settlement of Benguela. 
 This region is almost, if not altogether, rainless. 
 Heavy dews fall at night, and supply the little 
 moisture required by the scanty vegetation, which 
 consists of a few plants, specially fitted by their 
 organisation to endure the continuous rays of a 
 tropical sun poured down from a cloudless sky. 
 The exposure of one of our English plants to such 
 a sun for even a few minutes would evaporate every 
 particle of moisture it contained, and wither it up 
 into a dead, dry, friable skeleton. But these strange 
 plants, from the great thickness of the skin which 
 covers their leaves, and the structure of the 
 stomates, are able to resist the action of the most 
 powerful rays of the sun, and to retain the little 
 moisture they require for the necessities of their 
 life. 
 
 Among the few plants scattered o\'er these arid 
 sandy plains is one which its dcscriber has properly 
 called mirabilis, as it is one of the most wonder- 
 ful plants anywhere to be found on the surface of 
 the earth. It was discovered in the year i860 
 by the eminent scientific traveller, Dr. Welwitsch, 
 
 whose name has been associated with it by Dr. 
 Hooker in commemoration of his successful bo- 
 tanical explorations in Central Africa. 
 
 The Welwitschia is a tree which lives for many 
 years, some specimens being estimated by their 
 discoverer as at least a hundred years old, and 
 which every year of its life increases in size, yet 
 never grows higher. Rising just above the ground, 
 this strange plant, looking like a rough roundish 
 table, regularly enlarges by adding concentric layers 
 to its circumference. The flat upper surface of the 
 trunk is very hard and dark, resembling in colour 
 and texture the crust of an over-baked loaf In 
 shape it is a somewhat compressed disc, with a 
 more or less deep groove running through the centre 
 of its longest diameter, and dividing it into two 
 lobes. It is marked with a number of concentric 
 ridges studded with circular pits which have been 
 produced by the fallen fruit-stalks. Each new 
 ridge or concentric layer supports a large number 
 of fruits, in the form of beautifully regular and bright 
 scarlet cones, somewhat resembling the fruits of 
 the fir-trees of our forests, to which trees the Wel- 
 witschia, though so different in aspect, has a very 
 close affinity. Sometimes, in old plants, the mar- 
 gins of the lobes are very much split. The trunk 
 attains a size of from fourteen to eighteen feet in 
 circumference, but is never more than a few inches 
 above the ground. It gradually tapers downwards, 
 forming a large tap-root, which penetrates several 
 feet into the ground. 
 
n4 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 When the young plant springs from the seed it 
 sends up two small green leaves corresponding to 
 the first seed-leaves of the oak or beech. But in 
 our trees, and in all other plants, these first leaves, 
 having performed their part in the growth of the 
 plant, decay and disappear, and are succeeded by 
 numerous others of shapes peculiar to the different 
 plants to which they belong. The Welwitschia is a 
 singular and remarkable exception to this otherwise 
 universal rule. It never loses its two first leaves, 
 and it never gets any more. Imagine a frog always 
 remaining in its tadpole state, with external gills, a 
 long swimming tail, and no legs, yet growing to 
 the size of a large frog. Such a creature would be 
 in the animal kingdom as great an anomaly as the 
 Welwitschia is in the vegetable kingdom. The 
 plant is really an infant tree, attaining the age of a 
 hundred years, yet never getting rid of its early im- 
 perfect condition. The leaves rise from two deep 
 grooves in the outer margin of the trunk, one spring- 
 ing from each lobe. They increase in size year after 
 year with the growth of the plant until, in the larger 
 specimens, they attain a length of six feet or even 
 more. They are quite flat, long, very leathery, and 
 frequently split into numerous straps, that lie curl- 
 ing upon the surface of the barren soil. 
 
 A less inviting landscape can scarcely be imagined 
 than the sandy desert sparsely covered with short 
 dry grass and scattered specimens of this extraor- 
 dinary plant, looking more like the remains of some 
 ancient forest which had been cleared by the axe 
 of the settler, than a collection of complete and 
 living plants. For a time, when they are in perfec- 
 tion, the short branches of bright scarlet cones 
 which cover the crown of the stem relieve the 
 dismal monotony. With all its strange peculiari- 
 ties — and, indeed, chiefly because of them — the 
 Welwitschia is singularly adapted to the physical 
 conditions under which it lives. 
 
 INVENTION OF THE ARCH. 
 
 The invention of the true arch, after much contro- 
 versy, has been satisfactorily traced to the early 
 Egyptians. Mr. Fcrgusson, in his valuable " Hand- 
 book of Architecture," observes : " It is generally 
 supposed that the early Egyptians were ignorant of 
 the true principles of the arch, and only employed 
 two stones, meeting one another at a certain angle 
 in the centre, when they wished to cover a larger 
 space than could conveniently be done by a single 
 block. This, however, seems to be a mistake, as 
 many of the tombs and chambers around the Pyra- 
 mids are roofed by stone arches of a semicircular 
 form, and perfect in every respect as far as the 
 principles of the arch are concerned." 
 
 Several of these semicircular arches have been 
 drawn by Lepsius, but as their date cannot be 
 
 ascertained, Mr. Fergusson considers that the 
 curved form of the roofs of the third Pyramid would 
 alone be sufficient to render it more than pro- 
 bable that during the period of the fourth dynasty 
 the Egyptians were familiar with this expedient. 
 " At Beni Hassan, during the time of the twelfth 
 dynasty, curvilinear forms appear in the roofs, used 
 in such a manner as to render it almost certain that 
 they are copies from roofs of construction. Behind 
 the Rhamassion, at Thobes. there is a series of 
 'arches in brick which seem undoubtedly to belong 
 to the same age as the building itself ; and Sir 
 Gardner Wilkinson mentions a tomb at Thebes 
 the roof of which is vaulted with bricks, and still 
 bears the name of Amenoph I., of the eighteenth 
 dynasty, or 1500 years B.C. 
 
 " In Ethiopia, Mr. Hoskins found stone arches 
 vaulting the roofs of the porches of the Pyramids, 
 perfect in construction, and — what is still more 
 singular — showing both circular and pointed forms. 
 These are not earlier than the age of Solomon, nor 
 later than that of Cambyses." 
 
 In the age of Psammeticus, about 600 B.C., we 
 have several stone arches in the neighbojirhood of 
 the Pyramids. One, in a tomb at Sacca, has fre- 
 quently been drawn ; but Captain Campbell dis- 
 covered an arch of a more primitive form, composed 
 of three stones only, and above that another arch 
 of regular construction of four courses. Layard 
 discovered at Nimroud, vaulted drains and cham- 
 bers, circular and pointed, below the north-west 
 and south-east edifices, and consequently as old as 
 the eighth or ninth century before our era. 
 
 The great discovery of this class, however, is that 
 of the city gates at Khursabad, which were spanned 
 by arches of semicircular form, so perfect as to 
 prove that in the time of Sargon the arch was a 
 usual and well-understood building expedient. 
 
 Mr. Fergusson also infers, from discoveries made, 
 that the Assyrians used the pointed arch for tunnels, 
 aqueducts, and generally for underground work 
 where the pressure was great, and the round arch 
 above ground. 
 
 In Europe, the oldest work is probably that of 
 the Cloaca Maxima, at Rome, constructed under 
 the early kings. It is of stone, in three rims, and 
 shows as perfect a knowledge of the principle as 
 any subsequent example. 
 
 From all this, says Mr. Fergusson, it becomes 
 certain that the arch was used as early as the times 
 of the Pyramid builders of the fourth dynasty, and 
 was copied in the tombs of Beni Hassan, of the 
 twelfth ; and although the earliest existing example 
 cannot be dated further back than the first kings of 
 the eighteenth dynasty fromjthat time, that the 
 arch was currently used, not only in Egypt, but also 
 in Ethiopia and Assyria. 
 
 The old notion that the pointed arch originated 
 in the intersection of two round Norman arches, or 
 
THE WONDERS OF LIGHT. 
 
 I7S 
 
 in groined vaults, can no longer be held, as both 
 were unknown till long after the pointed arch had 
 been common in the East. " A whole mosque," 
 says Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson, " still remains 
 at Cairo, built A.D. 879 ; the Cufic inscriptions 
 at the Nilometer of Roda, opposite Old Cairo, 
 show from their style that its pointed arches are of 
 a similarly remote period ; and there is reason to 
 believe that this kind of arch was used by the 
 Arabs long before. It is also found covering one of 
 the chambers before an Ethiopian pyramid at Gebel 
 Bferkel, built while the Romans were in Egypt. 
 There is one with a keystone over a passage at 
 Tusculum, at least as old as the days of the Latin 
 Confederation ; another at Pompeii, at Zindem, and 
 at Ephesus ; and future discoveries will doubtless 
 prove that it was employed in the East before its 
 adoption by the Saracens." 
 
 " If not its inventors," continues the same au- 
 thority, " the Saracens were the first to make known 
 the pointed archio the architects of Europe ; and 
 the builders of the thirteenth and fourteenth cen- 
 turies benefited, like their predecessors, by the hints 
 derived from those of other people, which were 
 adopted and made their own, without derogating 
 from the excellence of the new style, and without 
 their builders thinking themselves degraded by 
 adopting what was beautiful and suited to their 
 wants. This was adaptation, not mere imitation." 
 
 THE BUTTER BIRD. 
 
 Humboldt, in his " Travels in South America," 
 records a visit to Caripe, where is the cavern of the 
 Guacharo bird ; and our knowledge of this wonder 
 is derived from his most interesting narrative. 
 Among the natives in the country around, this 
 cavern is celebrated for its great size, for the 
 mysterious birds which haunt its inmost recesses, 
 for the river which flows from it, and for the super- 
 stitious belief that in its gloomy depths is the abode 
 of the spirits of their departed ancestors. The 
 name which it bears signifies " the mine of fat," 
 because from the young of the birds which inhabit 
 it an immense quantity of fat is annually obtained. 
 These birds are about the size of our common 
 fowl, with wings which expand to three feet and a 
 half. All day long they dwell in the cavern, and, 
 like our owls, only come forth at night. They sub- 
 sist entirely on fruits, and have very powerful beaks, 
 which are necessary to crack the tough nuts and 
 reeds which form part of their food. 
 
 The approach to the cavern where they are 
 found is along the bed of a river, in a valley cele- 
 brated for its beauty and the salubrity of its climate. 
 The immediate entrance is surrounded by the most 
 gorgeous tropical vegetation. The hill, into the 
 depths of which it penetrates for upwards of half a 
 
 mile, is clothed with trees of immense height. The 
 mouth is a splendid arch upwards of seventy feet 
 high ; the river which flows from it has a fringe 
 of vegetation along its banks, which gradually 
 diminishes as the gloom increases. 
 
 The cave is so straight that the traveller can 
 enter for some distance without being obliged to 
 light his torch. As he proceeds over the some- 
 what rough ground which forms the bed of the. 
 river, he begins to hear from afar the hoarse cries 
 of the Guacharo birds ; and when he has arrived 
 at the dark parts of the cavern the noise is perfectly 
 terrific ; thousands of the birds uttering their pierc- 
 ing cries simultaneously. These screams re-echo 
 from the surrounding walls, and when it is remem- 
 bered that they take place in pitchy darkness, it 
 will be easy to understand the superstitious terrors 
 which the Indians associate with the spot. At half 
 a mile from the entrance the river forms a cascade, 
 and beyond this the cavern slightly changes in direc- 
 tion. Nothing will persuade the Indians to advance 
 further than this spot. 
 
 Midsummer is the harvest time for the fat. The 
 Indians enter the cave armed with long poles. The 
 nests are attached to holes in the roof about sixty 
 feet above their heads. They break these with the 
 poles, and the young birds fall down and are 
 instantly killed. Underneath their bodies is a 
 layer of fat, which is cut off, and is the object sought. 
 At the mouth of the cavern huts are erected with 
 palm-leaves, and there, in pots of clay, the natives 
 melt the fat which has been collected. 
 
 This is known as the butter of the Guacharo ; it is 
 so pure that it may be kept for upwards of a year 
 without becoming rancid. At the convent of Caripe 
 no other oil is ever used in the kitchen of the monks. 
 
 THE WONDERS OF LIGHT, 
 
 The mere fact that light is the motion of an ethereal 
 fluid is astonishing, but the way in which the theory 
 is supported by observation is even still more 
 remarkable. 
 
 Let us take an example from what is called 
 " Interference." If the reader will throw two stones 
 into a pond, and carefully observe the circles of 
 waves as they mingle with each other, it will be 
 found that when the crest of one wave happens to 
 be in the trough of the one coming to meet it, there 
 will at that place be a level. 
 
 This will at once be evident by a glance at the 
 diagram with which we illustrated our late notice of 
 this subject. Remembering how minute these bends 
 are — 5o,oooof them only making one inch in length — 
 it will be very evident that to all intents and purposes 
 the waves will be obliterated. But if, as we have 
 asserted, light is nothing but the impulse of these 
 waves, surely, if we annihilate the waves, we destroy 
 the light. Can this be done ? A moment's thought 
 
176 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 will at once convince us that if we had two waves 
 of light, and were able to allow one to have the 
 start of the other by just half the length of a wave, 
 we should then place these waves in the very posi- 
 tion required, and be able to demonstrate the rather 
 startling wonder that two waves of light, under 
 these circumstances, produce, not more light, but 
 absolutely darkness ! Any of our readers can 
 perform the experiment, 
 and thus be assured of one 
 of the most beautiful con- 
 firmations of this most won- 
 derful theory. It is only 
 requisite to be provided with 
 two pieces of glass, one of 
 which must be curved — a 
 magnifying glass, or spec- 
 tacle glass, or even a tum- 
 bler will suffice. The curved 
 
 surface is placed on the flat piece of glass, and whilst 
 in this position they are so held as to permit light 
 from the window or any other source to be reflected 
 into the eye from the point at which they touch ; 
 and at that point will be found a spot of darkness — 
 where there is no light — and on carefully observing, 
 this centre spot will be surrounded by dark rings. 
 This is explained by referring to Fig. i. The ray 
 of light, S B, penetrates the curved glass, arriving 
 at its under surface at A; some of it is reflected 
 upwards in the di- 
 rection A E, some 
 of it passes on, and 
 arrives at the sur- 
 face of the second 
 pieceof glass. Here 
 it behaves precisely 
 in the same way as 
 at A ; some passes 
 on through the 
 glass, the rest is 
 thrown upwards or 
 reflected in the di- 
 rection B F. Now, 
 it is very evident 
 that the two rays of 
 
 light, when they enter the eye at E F, have not 
 travelled an equal distance ; for the light which 
 journeyed along the path s B F, had further to go 
 than the other, and if it so happened that this 
 distance was greater by the length of half a wave — 
 that is, if the one path were ^ <, u\,^^th of an inch longer 
 than the other — then the two waves would interfere, 
 and destroy each other. This phenomenon would 
 take place, of course, if the one path were longer 
 than the other by any quantity which contained 
 half a wave length, li, or 2*, or 3 J, &c., and at these 
 distances the rings appear. This phenomenon has 
 also an illustration in the case of sound. As we 
 said before, the sensation of sound is produced by 
 
 waves of air beating upon a very fine membrane or 
 skin, which is stretched across the tube which has 
 its opening in the orifice of the ear. Different 
 sounds are caused, just as colour in light, by the 
 rapidity of the vibration of these waves. For 
 instance, whenever the note middle C is struck, it 
 causes the tympanum, or the fine membrane in the 
 car, to be struck 256 times in a second ; if an 
 octave higher, double this 
 number, or 512 vibrations 
 are produced. This is easily 
 proved by causing a cog- 
 wheel (Fig. 2) to turn ra- 
 pidly, holding a card. A, 
 against the teeth ; when 
 256 teeth of the wheel hit 
 against the card in a second, 
 I. the note C is produced. 
 
 A tuning-fork causes the 
 air to vibrate, and if it be held a little from the ear, 
 and gradually turned round, the. strength of the 
 note will vary greatly : now it is scarcely audible, 
 now it is loud ; the reason being that as the fork is 
 turned, the waves from each prong are brought 
 exactly into the same position as those of light in 
 the instance cited — they interfere, producing silence. 
 This accounts for the beats — the pulses in a sound 
 — which are very marked when two adjacent bass 
 notes of a harmonium are held down together. 
 
 Returning to light 
 for a moment, this 
 explained wonder 
 gives us the reason 
 why a mother-of- 
 pearl shell should 
 show a play of co- 
 lours. 
 
 The waves of co- 
 loured light are not 
 of the same length ; 
 the wave of red light 
 is sicsoth of an 
 inch, whilst that of 
 violet is ooiijoth. 
 Now, it is very 
 evident that sometimes it may so happen that the 
 red rays of two pencils of light may extinguish each 
 other ; and if you take away red out of white light, 
 you leave the yellow and blue, which make green. 
 So the blue might be taken out, and the light would 
 then be orange. A mother-of-pearl shell is made of 
 very fine layers ; and the light from the edges of 
 these layers is reflected. The rays interfering with 
 each other annihilate some colours, making the 
 white light coloured. If a piece of white wax be 
 pressed upon such a shell, the wax takes the impress 
 of the layers, and exhibits this wonderful phenome- 
 non. The colours of a soap-bubble, and all such 
 thin films, are due to this wonder of interference. 
 
THE DINOTHERIUM. 
 
 177 
 
 THE DINOTHERIUM. 
 
 Some years ago a huge head was dug up by some 
 workmen at Epplesheim, in Germany. The bones 
 were all that was left, but their wonderful size 
 attracted attention at once. As the digging pro- 
 ceeded, two immense tusks were found to be 
 attached to the lower jaw-bone, close to the chin ; 
 they did not simply project like the tusks of an 
 elephant, but were curved under the jaw. Their 
 position was so peculiar, that it left the notion on 
 the mind that if the animal ever opened its mouth 
 very wide, or fell on the top of its head, the points 
 of the tusks would pierce 
 either its neck or chest. 
 Some scientific men cleaned 
 this great skull and placed 
 it in the museum of Darm- 
 stadt. Drawings and mo- 
 dels were made of it, and for 
 many years it was the won- 
 der of the place. It became 
 an object of great interest to 
 all the anatomists of the day, 
 who differed greatly in their 
 opinions concerning the ha- 
 bits of the animal to which it 
 once belonged. A model of 
 the skull was once in the Bri- 
 tish Museum, but now the 
 real head has been purchased 
 for several hundred pounds, 
 and it may be recognised at 
 once by the curiously-curved 
 tusks of the lower jaw. When 
 this skull is compared with 
 
 those of some of the elephants, it will be found very 
 much larger than any of them ; and on looking at 
 the front, some resemblance will be noticed between 
 the faces of the two animals. Like the elephant, the 
 former possessor of the great skull had a flexible 
 nose in the form of a trunk. The openings for the 
 eyes arc large, and for the cars also, and the teeth 
 still remaining in the jaws are enormous and very 
 heavy, and arc ridged so as to form two gable- 
 looking tops to their chewing surface. The head 
 resembles that of an elephant without tusks, and 
 also that of an animal which lives in America 
 called the tapir. The tapir is in appearance some- 
 thing between a pony and a pig with a very long 
 snout ; but it has not the great curved tusks which 
 are placed in the lower jaw of this wonderful skull. 
 There could be no doubt that the animal whose skull 
 was thus attracting so much attention was a quadru- 
 ped ; but at first its huge bulk was thought to be too 
 great for that of a land animal ; for, from its head 
 being so large, it was supposed to have a corres- 
 pondingly large body. Consequently it was placed 
 
 23 
 
 SKULL OF lllli UlNOTHERIliM, 
 
 amongst the whale kind. After the lapse of a few 
 years, some pieces of the head-bones and limb- 
 bones of the animal were found in the south of 
 France, and also on an island in the Arabian Sea. 
 These bones were like those of enormous elephants, 
 and the idea of the creature being a whale was 
 abandoned. It was called Deinotherium, or Dino- 
 therium, which means in Greek awful beast : awful 
 from its size only, for its teeth were so made that 
 they could not tear flesh, and the great tusks were 
 so curved that they could ne\'er hurt any other 
 animal than that which possessed them. Probably 
 the Dinotherium stood as high as the tallest elephant. 
 It had rather a long neck ; its forehead and face did 
 not look to the front like 
 those of an elephant, but up- 
 wards, like those of the hip- 
 popotamus. The trunk, pro- 
 bably, was not long, and the 
 lower lips were very large. 
 
 This wonderful beast was 
 a feeder upon vegetables and 
 not upon animals ; its curved 
 tusks enabled it to dig up 
 roots, and its trunk plucked 
 rushes, large grasses, and 
 twigs, all of which the huge 
 grinders could pound into a 
 pulp, to be swallowed easily 
 enough. Some anatomists 
 think that the Dinotherium 
 was a river beast, and that it 
 lived in streams and lakes, 
 fixing itself to the banks by 
 means of its tusks when it 
 wished to cease floating about, 
 just as the great walrus an- 
 chors itself on the ice. Others consider that it lived 
 very much like the elephants do now ; but most 
 probably it was a slow-moving creature, with a 
 prodigious appetite for sweet canes, soft young twigs 
 of growing trees, and wild roots. 
 
 As the bones of the Dinotherium were found in 
 the west of Europe and in Asia, it must have lived 
 over a great extent of country. The tusks in the 
 lower jaw had to be moved up and down with the 
 jaw every time the mouth was opened and shut, 
 and therefore their great weight must have been 
 wearisome to the animal unless the muscles which 
 governed this motion were very large and strong. 
 That they were so, the space in which they worked 
 in the skull proves : there was a muscle on each 
 side as thick as the body of a man ! It is wonder- 
 ful that this great beast should no longer exist, and 
 that there is no animal with tusks like it. The 
 Dinotherium died off from the face of the earth 
 before man was created, and it is the most wonder- 
 ful of the many beasts that inhabited the world 
 which was gradually being prepared for us. 
 
178 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 Moitiiers xjf BtQthiwx. 
 
 The Lemon Grass of Ceylon.— One of the 
 most remarkable productions of Ceylon, which is 
 beheved to be peculiar to that island, is the lemon 
 grass, known to botanists as Andropogon scJtcenan- 
 thus. This curious herb is celebrated not only 
 for its distinguishing properties, but for the con- 
 flagrations of which it is frequently the subject. 
 It may be seen covering almost all the Kandian 
 hills, and while it is young is the best possible 
 pasture for cattle. It grows to the height of seven 
 feet or more, is very hard to the touch, and has a 
 strong but very pleasant acid taste. It derives its 
 name from having, when crushed, an odour like 
 that of a lemon, so strong that after a time it be- 
 comes quite heavy and sickening, although grate- 
 ful and refreshing at first. It covers the hills in 
 patches wherever they are not overgrown with 
 jungle, and is to be found nowhere but in the Kan- 
 dian district. It frequently ignites spontaneously, 
 and the appearance of the burning grass is de- 
 scribed as most magnificent. On the slopes of the 
 mountain of Ambulawe, in the wet season, the 
 grand spectacle of the conflagration is frequently 
 to be seen. Flames burst from spot to spot till 
 they unite and become one lurid mass, which con- 
 tinues burning rapidly against the wind, the long 
 grass being bent by the breeze towards the flames. 
 When the conflagration is at its height it throws a 
 fierce glare all around, and the growling hollow 
 sound made by the roar of the flames is heard at 
 a very great distance. When it has by degrees 
 subsided, volumes of dense smoke roll upwards, 
 sending forth millions of sparks, which, falling on 
 whatever grass may be remaining, frequently cause 
 a second conflagration to arise. A few days after, 
 from the midst of this parched, and blackened, and 
 apparently dead ground, lovely young green shoots 
 begin to arise^for the roots of the grass have not 
 been injured, far less destroyed by the fire— and in 
 a very short time the whole brow of the mountain 
 is again overspread with tufts of beautiful waving 
 green. 
 
 The Castle Trees of South Africa.— About 
 the latitude 23 deg. S., the traveller will first meet 
 with the gigantic and castle-like Uwana, which is 
 decidedly the most striking and wonderful tree 
 among the thousands which adorn the South 
 African forests. It is chiefly remarkable on ac- 
 count of its extraordinary size, actually resembling 
 a castle or tower more than a forest-tree. Through- 
 out the country of Bamangwato the average circum- 
 ference of these trees was from 30 to 40 feet ; but 
 on continuing my researches in a north-easterly 
 direction throughout the more fertile forests, which 
 clothe the boundless tracts through which the fair 
 Limpopo winds, I daily met with specimens of this 
 extraordinary tree averaging from 60 to 100 feet 
 
 in circumference, and maintaining this thickness 
 to a height of from twenty to thirty feet, when they 
 diverge into numerous goodly branches, whose 
 general character is abrupt and horizontal, and 
 which seem to terminate with a peculiar sudden- 
 ness. The wood of this tree is soft and utterly 
 unserviceable. The shape of the leaf is similar to 
 that of the sycamore tree, but its texture partakes 
 more of the fig-leaf ; its fruit is a nut, which in size 
 and shape resembles the egg of the swan. A re- 
 markable fact in connection with these trees is the 
 manner in which they are disposed throughout the 
 forest. They are found standing singly, or in rows, 
 invariably at considerable distances from one 
 another, as if planted by the hand of man, and 
 from their wondrous size and unusual height (for 
 they always tower high above their surrounding 
 compeers), they convey the idea of being strangers 
 or interlopers on the ground they occupy. — Cuvt- 
 min£s " Five Years in the Interior of South 
 Africa^ 
 
 LEECHES ATTACKING TRAVELLERS. 
 
 Of all the plagues detested by travellers, the land 
 leeches of Ceylon are the worst. They exist in 
 thousands, and though not visible when the weather 
 is hot and dry, a smart shower brings them out of 
 their lurking-places, and they lie in wait for the 
 first passer-by with all the cunning of brigands. 
 Sir Emerson Tennant describes them as being 
 about an inch in length, and as fine as a common 
 knitting-needle ; yet they are capable of distension 
 till they equal a quill in thickness, and attain a 
 length of nearly two inches. They have the power of 
 planting one extremity on the earth, as if it were 
 held down by a sucker, while the head is raised to 
 watch for their victims. On descrying their prey, 
 they advance by semicircular strides. Fixing their 
 mouths on the ground, they move forward their 
 tails, and so proceed mouth and tail alternately 
 with the greatest rapidity until they lay hold of the 
 traveller's foot, and ascend his dress in search of 
 an aperture by which to enter. They are so flexible 
 that they can insinuate themselves through the 
 meshes of the finest stocking, and when they once 
 reach the skin they ascend even to the back and 
 throat, and fasten on the tenderest parts of the 
 body. In these encounters the individuals in the 
 rear of a party of travellers are sure to fare worst, 
 as the leeches, once warned of their victims' ap- 
 proach, congreg.ate with wonderful celerity. Their 
 size is so insignificant, and the wound they make so 
 skilfully punctured, that both arc generally im- 
 perceptible ; and the first intimation of their on- 
 slaught is the trickling of the blood, or the chill 
 feeling caused by the leech when it begins to hang 
 heavily on the skin from being distended by its repast. 
 Horses are driven wild by them, and stamp the 
 
THE DISINTERRED POMPEIANS. 
 
 179 
 
 ground with fury to shake them from their fetlocks, 
 to which they hang in bloody tassels. Sir Emerson 
 declares that he has also seen them hang like 
 bunches of grapes round the ankles of palanquin 
 bearers and coolies, who, however, sutler no other 
 inconvenience than the annoyance caused by the 
 inflammation and itching of the wounds. The 
 best cure is to rub the part with lemon-juice. These 
 creatures are not confined to Ceylon, but are known 
 also in the lower ranges of the Himalayas, and in 
 Batavia, Sumatra, Japan, and Chili. The Ceylon 
 species have five pairs of eyes, and their bodies 
 are formed of one hundred rings. Their teeth are 
 very beautiful, and amount to seventy or eighty in 
 each set. 
 
 A GRAIN OF SAND. 
 
 I>f Connemara, in the west of Ireland, there is a 
 large bank of sand, bordering a small bay known 
 by the name of Dog's Bay. By naturalists all over 
 the kingdom specimens of this sand are eagerly 
 sought. In appearance it does not differ much 
 from ordinary sand, but when examined under 
 the microscope a most wonderful and beautiful 
 appearance is presented. Amid the grains of 
 sand which accompany them, there are count- 
 less thousands of most exquisitely beautiful shells. 
 These shells are about the size of the head of the 
 smallest pin made, and they are not equalled in 
 beauty by any of the well-known sea-shells. The 
 variety of their forms, and the incredibly great 
 number of each kind, at once attract our attention. 
 Here we see one shaped like a minute oil-flask, the 
 substance of which it is made being of a pearly 
 whiteness, and so thin as to be almost transparent. 
 Along the outside of the little flask from the mouth 
 to the bottom run delicate ribs, and the whole 
 surface is dotted over with innumerable small holes. 
 Another very common kind resembles a number of 
 beads, gradually increasing in size, strung together, 
 the outside of these beads having the usual delicate 
 ribs and the almost invariable minute holes. 
 Another form, perhaps the most common of all, 
 closely resembles the nautilus in miniature ; these 
 are only samples taken from hundreds of others 
 equally beautiful and interesting. What do we 
 know about the creatures which tenanted these frail 
 habitations ? These shells are all empty, but in 
 the sea they live and move. Naturalists have 
 collected and examined them, and they find within 
 each tiny shell a small bit of jelly. There is no 
 distinction between head and heart, between mouth 
 and stomach. The animal is simply a bit of jelly 
 fitted into a beautiful shell. But how does he live ? 
 From the small holes which perforate his house long 
 arms of jelly come out. Swaying about in the sea 
 they touch some smaller animal — some tiny ani- 
 malcula — or they enwrap some minute floating 
 
 plant, and draw it into their substance, and thus 
 derive their sustenance. These shells always grow 
 in the; sea ; those found on the beach when alive 
 have been just thrown up from the sea. At depths 
 where no other animal could possibly exist, there 
 these little creatures live and flourish. 
 
 Sounding-lines sent down two' or three miles to 
 the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, having a little 
 grease attached to the weight, bring us samples of 
 that which lies there, and among these samples 
 there are to be found myriads of the little shells. 
 It has been mentioned that the outside of the shell 
 is marked with holes ; this the name of the animal 
 signifies — Foraininifera. They are called Fora- 
 minifera, or bearers oi holes, from the Latin words, 
 foramen, a hole, &nd/ero, I carry. 
 
 THE DISINTERRED POMPEIANS. 
 
 For the tourist it is no long and arduous journey 
 before he can stand in reality amid the courts of 
 Pompeii ; while in imagination he can recall the 
 dread scene when, amid the darkness of that awful 
 time, the snowy ashes began to fall, mingled with 
 masses of pumice-stone of a size sufficient to crush 
 through roofs, or, striking together in the air, to 
 break in showers of fire, deahng destruction to 
 those within their reach. Suffocating heat, deadly 
 sulphurous fumes, falling fiery fragments, the rush 
 of molten lava, the rumbling of the earthquake, 
 and the hideous roar of the mountain in its fearful 
 throes, all were there ; and in their mortal dread, 
 shrieking with fear, the inhabitants tried to escape 
 with their treasures, but if not to fall suffocated 
 and beaten down in the streets, to retreat to their 
 houses, seeking even in the cellars for safety. 
 
 No legend, this ; for in laying open once more 
 to the day the city of Pompeii, the last acts of 
 many of its inhabitants were discovered, the liquid 
 mud having taken casts of the bodies — casts that 
 have hardened, and remain to show us the form, 
 features, even the dress, of those people of the 
 past. Here, a skeleton is found embedded in the 
 ashes of a lower room, with arms raised to defend 
 the head from the floor of the chamber above, 
 crushed down by the weight of the accumulating 
 ashes ; there, forms of men, women, children, 
 even infants, have been disinterred, and by the 
 light thus afforded the history of their fate and 
 struggles can be read. At one villa the spade 
 laid bare the skeleton of a man with a key close 
 to a gate, and by him a treasure in money that 
 he was evidently bearing away; while stretched 
 beside him lay another figure, with a number of 
 silver vases : possibly the master and slave seeking 
 safety, when beaten down or suffocated by the 
 fiery fumes. But, as the strong sought safety in 
 flight, the weak trusted to the walls for protection, 
 
i8o 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 and then fled to the vaults beneath the house ; for 
 here, after being buried seventeen ages, were dis- 
 covered twenty figures — eighteen of them being 
 those of full-grown persons — buried in wonderfully 
 fine ashes, that had gradually forced their way 
 in through chink and cranny, and afterwards to 
 form round them, taking the casts of the bodies 
 with a wondrous fidelity, and hardening into a 
 firm mass before the dead gradually decayed or 
 dried up into a frame-work of calcined bones. 
 
 In endless cases the last .acts seem to have been 
 to try and save treasure, for by skeletons in- 
 numerable were found collected together in room 
 or vault, or thrown down in despair on pavements, 
 or in street, documents and precious stones, en- 
 graved gems, rich vases, bracelets of gold, of great 
 Aveight and marvellously beautiful manufacture. 
 
 Room after room — atrium, triclinium, &c. — are 
 pointed out where skeletons were discovered ; 
 while in one part five were found together in an 
 upright position, as if suffocated or buried sub- 
 sequently when searching for the hidden treasures 
 of the city. But it was not till quite lately that 
 an idea occurred to an Italian gentleman, while 
 superintending the excavations, of getting a more 
 perfect record of the history of the dead citizens. 
 He had seen the shovel of the labourer sink into 
 some cavity in the consolidated ashes, to find that 
 in many cases here had been the body of some 
 unfortunate gradually desiccated, but leaving its 
 sliape in the surrounding earth. Upon the next 
 discovery of such a cavity, he had it carefully 
 filled with hquid plaster, left it to solidify, and 
 then the hardened ashes were broken away, with 
 the result that he had hoped for ; since here, in 
 the attitude taken at that awful time, was the cast- 
 ing of the dead Pompeian, with feature, form, 
 everything exact : in one case, evidently an elderly 
 woman who had lain down quietly to die ; in 
 another, a fair young girl convulsed with horror, 
 her limbs contorted, and her dress or veil held 
 round her head to keep out the suffocating ashes — 
 rings, ornaments, all plainly to be seen ; and _even 
 the embroidered sandals upon the feet of one 
 figure, whose coarsely-textured dress and many 
 rents seem to indicate that she belonged to the 
 poorer classes. The folds of her head-dress can 
 be seen sweeping down upon her shoulders, to 
 join the gracefully hanging robe ; but her ap- 
 pearance is distressing in the extreme. Evidently 
 fleeing for her life with what few treasures she 
 could collect — ^jewels, silver coins, silver cups, and 
 the key that probably had been used to secure 
 others — she had fallen at last, overcome by the 
 suffocating heat and deadly gases floating around. 
 But the next figure displays the peaceful sleep of the 
 strong — a tall, stout man this, lying upon his back 
 with calmly extended limbs, one who was probably 
 overcome at once by the stifling fumes. In this 
 
 case the clothing of a man of his station is plainly 
 to be made out, and he was evidently of the humbler 
 classes, as shown by his iron ring and heavy, nail- 
 studded sandals lightly laced to his ankles. His 
 dress was a short tunic, and here it seems that 
 the heat of the falling ashes was not so intense, 
 for a portion of the man's moustache is to be seen 
 upon the casting, while some of the teeth are yet 
 entire. 
 
 Many of the bodies seem to have been buried, 
 not by the falling ashes, which were so heated as 
 in most cases to directly calcine wood, but by the 
 finer soft dust, that gradually worked its way 
 through to where they had crouched for protection — 
 a fact which accounts for the delicacy of the moulds 
 formed by time. At the present time the number of 
 skeletons discovered is about seven hundred. The 
 first disinterment was made in 1748, but of late years 
 the excavations have been carried on more exten- 
 sively ; and fresh wonders of the by-gone civilisation, 
 as well as new horrors of the awful catastrophe, are 
 daily brought to light, when the imagination easily 
 supplies the little wanting tp complete the scenes of 
 this awful drama, giving life to the castings, cloth- 
 ing the carbonised skeletons with flesh, and seeing 
 again their dread fight for life against falling 
 cinders, blinding ashes, and deadly fumes. 
 
 A city of wonders ! but admiration for the beauties 
 displayed in the various mansions and public 
 buildings soon gives place to a feeling of dread, 
 almost of awe, as the visitor gazes upon the remains 
 of those disinterred from their ashy bed. 
 
 THE COLUMN OF TRAJAN. 
 
 The column of Trajan, erected by that emperor as 
 a decoration to his great Forum, is the finest in the 
 world, and is one of the most perfect works of 
 ancient art that time has spared, it being, with few 
 exceptions, in a high state of preservation. The 
 spot which it occupies was originally cut out of a 
 spur or offshoot of the Ouirinal Hill, down to the 
 level of the rest of the Forum, and the height of the 
 column is exactly the same as that portion of the 
 hill which was removed, as stated in the Latin 
 inscription on the pedestal. IFrom this inscription 
 we learn that the monument was erected by the 
 Senate and people of Rome, not only to commemo- 
 rate the victories of Trajan over the Dacians, but 
 also as a memorial of the height of the hill which it 
 was necessary to cut away in order to make room 
 for the noble structures which adorned the Forum. 
 This height is 128 modern feet, exclusive of the 
 bronze statue of St. Peter, eleven or twelve feet 
 high, on its summit, which was placed there by 
 Pope Sixtus v., in the latter part of the sixteenth 
 century, instead of the statue of bronze gik which 
 had. formerly occupied the top, but which had long 
 
THE COLUMN OF TRAJAN. 
 
 i8i 
 
 previously disappeared. The entire shaft of the 
 column is composed of twenty-three blocks of 
 Grecian marble, so curiously cemented as to seem 
 but one. The base and the pedestal have nine 
 blocks, the capital one, and the basement of the 
 statue one, — mak- 
 ing thirty-four 
 blocks of marble 
 in all. The ascent 
 is by a winding 
 staircase of 185 
 solid steps of Pa 
 rian marble, light- 
 ed by loopholes. 
 
 The column is 
 admirable both for 
 itsproportions and 
 for the design and 
 execution of the 
 bas-reliefs and or- 
 naments, which 
 completely cover 
 it. The bas-reliefs 
 ascend in a spiral 
 band, so as not to 
 destroy the line of 
 the shaft by their 
 projection, as in 
 the column of 
 Marcus Aurclius, 
 called the Anto- 
 nine Column. The 
 whole pillar is en- 
 cased with sculp- 
 tures, represent- 
 ing the exploits of 
 Trajan and his 
 army, particularly 
 his triumph over 
 Dacia after fifteen 
 years' war. These 
 sculptures repre- 
 sent pictorially the 
 progress of Tra- 
 jan's campaign, 
 and are full of de- 
 tails connected 
 
 THE LOWER TIERS OF TRAJAN'S PILLAR. 
 
 in which the Romans appear to have built their 
 stone camps, and the care with which they con- 
 structed roads to assist their warlike operations, are 
 strikingly shown. The number of human figures, 
 exclusive of other objects, such as horses, arms, 
 
 chariots, &c., re- 
 presented on the 
 shaft, is said to be 
 nearly 3,000 ; the 
 number 2,500 has, 
 .at all events, been 
 ascertained by ac- 
 tual enumeration. 
 ICacli of the figures 
 is on an average 
 two feet high. The 
 pedestal is deco- 
 rated with crowns 
 of victory, gar- 
 lands, and other 
 insignia of tri- 
 umph. 
 
 "Onthis pillar," 
 says Gibbon, " the 
 veteran soldier 
 contemplated the 
 story of his own 
 campaigns, and, 
 by an easy illu- 
 sion of national 
 vanity, the peace- 
 ful citizen asso- 
 ciated himself to 
 the honours of the 
 triumph." 
 
 The column 
 was made by the 
 Emperor Hadrian 
 a place of sepul- 
 ture for the ashes 
 of Trajan, which, 
 according to a 
 tradition immor- 
 talised by Byron, 
 were supposed to 
 have been con- 
 tained in the head 
 
 with the mode in which the Romans were wont to [ of a spear, or, according to another version, in a 
 
 carry on war; while the representations of the armour 
 and habits of the Romans in the field of battle are 
 most valuable to the classical student. The cam- 
 paign is depicted from its very opening. The first 
 view, at the bottom of the column, shows the 
 Roman soldiers shipping their stores; others exhibit 
 the army in the work of building camps ; the em- 
 peror sacrificing for the favour of Jupiter, and ex- 
 horting his cohorts ; the Roman soldiers in conflict 
 with the Dacians, with the various means then fol- 
 lowed of defence and attack. The thorough maimer 
 
 globe which the statue of Trajan, placed on the 
 summit of the column, bore in its hand. The 
 general effect of the column, as it stood originally 
 in the centre of Trajan's Forum, surrounded by 
 colonnades, must have been equally grand and 
 picturesque. It was completed A.D. 114, six years 
 after its commencement. A very good idea of 
 the elaborate ornamentation of this column may 
 be obtained from the cast in the South Kensington 
 Museum of its four lower tiers. It is from this 
 cast that our illustration is taken. 
 
l82 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 jagacit^r of §,annab. 
 
 Instinctive Counterfeiting of Death by 
 Insects. — This is a common device among spiders, 
 moths, and various species of beetles, and varies in 
 character according to the habits of the species. 
 Many of the moths, when they think themselves in 
 danger, draw their antenna as well as their wings 
 close to their body, and in this state they may be 
 tossed about without manifesting the smallest sign 
 of life or motion, as many of our readers may have 
 observed on catching them. The common " miller 
 moth," known to most school-boys, is a remarkable 
 adept in this art. The small grey beetle, which 
 makes pin-holes in old furniture (called scientifically 
 Aiiobiiim pertinax), is another common example of 
 this instinct. This little beetle has received from 
 naturalists the title of pertinax from its pertinacity 
 in counterfeiting death. A celebrated Swedish 
 entomologist, De Geer, says that he has found it to 
 equal, if not exceed, the heroic firmness of the 
 American Indians in bearing torture. You may 
 maim them, he asserts, pull them limb from limb, 
 and even roast them over a slow fire, without 
 making them move a joint, or exhibit the slightest 
 symptom of suffering pain. Spiders, also, may be 
 similarly tortured and maimed when they counter- 
 feit the attitude of death. It is very common, also, 
 with the little beetles called byrrhi to draw in their 
 feet and antennas so as to give themselves the 
 appearance of a pill, from which they take their 
 name of pill-beetles. The common wood-louse is 
 also well known to roll itself up in a ball when 
 apprehensive of danger, so that only the plates 
 which form the covering of the back are visible. 
 No doubt these plates, insignificant as they may 
 seem, are an effectual protection to the insect 
 against the attacks of some of its enemies. It is 
 remarked in Kirby and Spence's " Introduction 
 to Entomology" that the common dung-chafer 
 (Scarabcms stercorariiis) — the black, purplish, shin- 
 ing beetle which is found on almost every road in 
 England — deceives its enemies, the rooks, by set- 
 ting its legs as stiffly as if they were made of iron 
 wire, and remaining perfectly motionless ; and, as 
 the rooks will only eat them when alive, this strata- 
 gem is an effectual protectiori. That this simula- 
 tion of death is not the consequence of strong con- 
 vulsion caused by fear, is proved by the fact that 
 the insect makes off with all speed the instant the 
 object of alarm is removed ; whereas, if it were a 
 convulsive attitude, it could not resume its move- 
 ments at pleasure. 
 
 The Cunning of a Fox.— The proverbial 
 cunning of a fox is well illustrated in the follow- 
 ing anecdote from St. John's " Sutherlandshire : "— 
 " I have been assured by a person not given 
 at all to exaggerate, nor easily deceived, that he 
 
 once witnessed the following trick. Very early 
 one morning he saw a fox eyeing most wistfully 
 a number of wild ducks feeding in the rushy end 
 of a highland lake. After due consideration, the 
 fox, going to windward of the ducks, put afloat 
 in the locli se\eral bunches of dead rushes or 
 grass, which floated down amongst the ducks with- 
 out causing the least alarm. After watching the 
 effects of his preliminary fleet for a short time, the 
 fox, taking a good-sized mouthful of grass in his 
 jaws, launched himself into the water as quietly as 
 possible, having nothing but the tips of his ears 
 and nose above water. In this way he drifted 
 down among the ducks, and made booty of a fine 
 mallard. Though this story seems extraordinary, 
 it must be remembered that the fox manages to 
 capture wild ducks, wood-pigeons, hares, and 
 numberless other animals, sufficient to keep him- 
 self and family ; and it is self-evident that in doing 
 so he must practise many a trick and manoeuvre 
 that would seem most improbable if related, and 
 quite beyond the instinct of animals." Another 
 anecdote, quite as striking as an illustration of the 
 fox's wonderful sagacity, appeared, a few years 
 back, in a Preston paper. A farmer of that neigh- 
 bourhood had discovered that a fox came along a 
 beam in tlie night to seize his poultry. He accord- 
 ingly sawed the end of the beam nearly through, 
 and in the night the fox fell into a place whence he 
 could not escape. On going to him in the morning, 
 the farmer found him stiff, and, as he thought, 
 lifeless. Taking him out of the building, he threw 
 him on the dung-hill, but in a short time Reynard 
 opened his eyes, and, seeing that all was safe and 
 clear, galloped away to the mountains, show- 
 ing more cunning than the man who ensnared 
 him. 
 
 A Sagacious Newfoundland Dog.— At cer- 
 tain seasons of the year the streams in some 
 parts of North America, not far from the coast, 
 are filled with fish to a surprising extent. A 
 real Newfoundland (which, by-the-bye, is much 
 slighter in make than we in England generally 
 conceive), belonging to a farmer who lived near 
 one of those streams, used to keep the house 
 well supplied with fish. He thus managed it : 
 — He was perfectly black, with the exception of 
 a white fore-foot, and for hours together he would 
 stand almost immovable on a small rock which 
 projected into the stream, keeping his white foot 
 hanging over the ledge as a lure to the fish. 
 He remained so stationary that it acted as a 
 very attractive lure ; and whenever curiosity or 
 hunger tempted any unwary fish to approach too 
 close, the dog plunged in, seized his victim, and 
 carried him off to the foot of a neighbouring tree ; 
 and on a successful day he would catch a great 
 number. — Lieut -Col. Hutchinson's '■'■Dog-break' 
 
WATER UNDER PRESSURE AS A MOTIVE POWER. 
 
 183 
 
 DISCOVERY OF IDENTITY FROM THE 
 
 FLASH OF GUNPOWDER. 
 Among the singular questions which have been 
 started in Medical Jurisprudence — says Dr. 
 Taylor, in his work on that subject—the follow- 
 ing is not the least perplexing : —Whether a per- 
 son who fires a gun or pistol at another, during 
 a dark night, can be identified by means of the 
 light produced in the discharge? This question 
 was first referred to the Class of Physical Sciences 
 in France in 1809, and they answered it in the 
 negative. A case tending to show that their deci- 
 sion was erroneous was subsequently reported. A 
 woman positively swore that she saw the face of 
 a person, who fired at another during the night, 
 surrounded by a kind of glory, and that she was 
 thereby enabled to identify the prisoner. This 
 statement was confirmed by the deposition of the 
 wounded party. Desgranges, of Lyons, performed 
 many experiments on this subject, and he concluded 
 that on a dark night, and away from every source 
 of light, the person who had fired the gun might 
 be identified within a moderate distance. If the 
 flash was very strong, the smoke very dense, and 
 the distance great, the person firing the piece could 
 not be identified. 
 
 The question was raised in this country in the 
 case of the " Queen v. White," at the Croydon 
 Autumn Assizes, 1839. A gentleman was shot at 
 while driving home in his gig during a dark night ; 
 he was wounded in the elbow. When he observed 
 the flash of the gun he saw that the piece was 
 levelled towards him, and the light of the flash 
 enabled him to recognise at once the features of 
 the accused. In cross-examination he said he 
 was quite sure he could see the prisoner, and that 
 he was not mistaken as to his identity. The 
 accused was skilfully defended, and he was ac- 
 quitted. Evidence of this kind has, however, been 
 received in an English court of law. A similar 
 case was tried at the Lewes Lent Assizes, 1862, 
 " Reg. v. Stapley." The prisoner shot at the pro- 
 secutor, a game-keeper, on a dark evening in 
 December, and the latter swore that he distinctly 
 saw the prisoner by the flash of the gun, and could 
 identify him by the light on his features. This 
 evidence was corroborated by three witnesses who 
 saw him not far from the spot, and by one who saw 
 him in the act of running away, and the prisoner 
 was convicted. 
 
 WATER UNDER PRESSURE AS A 
 MOTIVE POWER. 
 All liquids possess the double property of being 
 incompressible and of exerting a pressure in every 
 direction against the sides of a containing vessel. 
 The result of these two properties combined is that 
 If a vessel be entirely filled with water and com- 
 pletely closed, any outside pressure exerted against 
 
 the vessel sufficient to force inwards any portion 
 of its side, must force outwards some other portion, 
 the amount of water displaced being exactly equal 
 in both operations. Imagine, now, two tubes (a 
 and a'. Fig. i), closed at the bottom, one of twelve 
 inches diameter inside, and one of one inch, each 
 having a soHd plug or "ram," b and li', fitting 
 water-tight into them. Let them be connected by 
 a tube, T, and the whole filled with water. If now 
 the ram u' be pressed down, the water in a' will 
 be forced through the tube, T, into the larger cylin- 
 der, and will push up the ram B. Now as the 
 diameter of u is twelve times greater than that of 
 b', the area of its base will be 144 times as great as 
 the area of b', and the consequence is that what- 
 e\-er force is applied to b' to press it down, that 
 force is multiplied 144 times in its effect upon b. 
 This method of gaining power through the medium 
 of water is called the hydraulic press. There is no 
 simpler method of obtaining an equal force, and it 
 
 - u 
 
 Fig. 1. 
 
 is easy to understand that scarcely any limit exists 
 to the power obtainable by this means. 
 
 By means of this press, cotton is compressed so 
 tightly that bands of iron are necessary to bind it 
 up to prevent it expanding afterwards ; and thus 
 very much more cotton can be packed in a ship's 
 hold than could otherwise be done. By this 
 press the largest ships arc not only (as was the 
 case with the Great Eastern) pushed from the 
 cradles upon which they were built into the water, 
 but actually lifted bodily out of the water, with their 
 masts and stores on board, to have their bottoms 
 examined and repaired. 
 
 But the most beautiful application of hydraulic 
 pressure, not only in the work done by it, but in 
 the method of obtaining and utilising the pressure, 
 is that invented by .Sir W. Armstrong. 
 
 In nearly all the large docks in the kingdom, and 
 in many large warehouses, are to be seen cranes 
 worked entirely by water pressure. The whole 
 mechanism of them is remarkably ingenious. 
 
 We will first explain the method of obtaining and 
 keeping up the required pressure. In a separate 
 building is a double-cylinder steam-engine, which 
 IS wholly employed in pumping water. Upon 
 its shaft is a large fly-wheel, imended to impart 
 steadiness of motion to the whole : but notwith- 
 
164 
 
 tMe world of wonders. 
 
 standing this, the speed is observed to be constantly 
 varying, and frequently the engine stops altogether 
 for a short period. The cause of this unevenness 
 of motion we shall presently see. In a tall, tower- 
 shaped building adjoining the engine-house is an 
 exceedingly strong, upright iron cylinder, about 
 sixteen feet high and five feet in diameter, into 
 which the water pumped by the engine is forced. 
 In this great cylinder is fitted, water-tight, a great j 
 plunger or ram, and across the top of it is fixed a | 
 strong piece of iron like the top 
 of the letter T, the ends of 
 which enter grooves or guides 
 of iron fixed to upright timber 
 supports, and upon this cross- E 
 piece of iron rests an immense 
 weight of many tons. When 
 the water is forced into the great cylinder it pushes 
 up the ram with the weight upon its top. As 
 soon as the ram has been pushed up nearly to 
 the top of the guides, a simple, self-acting ar- 
 rangement begins to shut off the steam from the 
 boiler, thus reducing the speed of the engine, and 
 when the ram has risen up to its full height the 
 same arrangement quite shuts off the steam and 
 stops the engine. Directly any water is allowed to 
 escape from the cylinder, the descent of the ram 
 re-admits the steam, and the engine again begins 
 pumping. Hence the reason of the constant varia- 
 tion in the speed of the engine. 
 
 The great cy- 
 lindcrand its ap- 
 purtenances is 
 called an "accu- 
 mulator," be- 
 cause within it 
 is stored up or 
 accumulated the 
 compressed wa- 
 ter, bythe agency 
 of which the 
 
 cranes arc worked, the pressure being the result of 
 the weight resting upon it. From this accumulator 
 is led a pipe or scries of pipes placed underground, 
 which conveys the compressed water to the cranes, 
 whither we will follow it, and observe the ma- 
 chinery upon which it acts. 
 
 Each crane requires an independent but similar 
 machine which is placed underground, and it is 
 so much like a double pulley in principle, only 
 applied in reversed order, that it will be necessary 
 to explain the one in order to comprehend the 
 other. 
 
 A double pulley consists of two single pulleys 
 acting together as in Fig. 2. A rope or chain is 
 passed backwards and forwards over the several 
 wheels, one end being fastened to one of the blocks, 
 and the other available for being pulled. 
 
 If the end which is held in the hand be drawn, 
 
 the two pulleys will be brought together with great 
 force, although the speed with which they approach 
 will be small in comparison with that with which 
 the rope is drawn. 
 
 Now, suppose that instead of pulling the rope, we 
 push asunder the pulleys, it is evident that although 
 we should lose power, we should gain speed in the 
 rope — that is, the rope will be drawn back much 
 faster than the pulleys move. This, then, is the 
 action of the hydraulic crane. Between the two 
 pulleys is placed an hydraulic 
 ram, to the bottom end of the 
 cylinder of which is fixed the 
 frame of one pulley, and to the 
 end of the ram the frame of the 
 2. other pulley. Fig. 3 shows the 
 
 arrangement, a is the cylin- 
 der laid horizontally underground, and B the 
 ram. To the two cross-heads, E and e', are fixed 
 the pulley-frames ; the ropes or chains, after 
 passing backwards and forwards over the wheels, 
 being led up through the ground and united 
 into one, in which state they pass over the crane. 
 A branch pipe, r, connected with that communicat- 
 ing with the accumulator, is fixed into the cylinder, 
 and a valve in this branch pipe, worked by a lever 
 brought above ground, admits or shuts off the com- 
 pressed water at pleasure ; whilst another lever 
 opens or closes a cock attached to the cylinder, to 
 allow the enclosed water to escape, when the ram 
 
 has to be pushed 
 back. 
 
 Here, then, is 
 the whole secret 
 of the hydraulic 
 crane. When wa- 
 ter is admitted 
 to the cylinder, 
 the ram is forced 
 out, thus sepa- 
 rating thcblocks, 
 and drawing back the chain, raising the weight 
 attached to its extremity. When the compressed 
 water is shut off, the chain remains stationary, to 
 allow the crane to be swung round ; and when 
 the water inside the cylinder is allowed to escape, 
 the weight at the end of the chain draws the two 
 pulleys together, and pushes back the ram. A 
 heavy ball of iron is permanently attached to near 
 the end of the chain, to perform this latter office, 
 when no other weight depends from it. 
 
 The same principle which we have described as 
 applied to the cranes, is applied also to opening 
 and closing the dock gates. In this case the chain 
 is led away to the gate to which it is fastened, 
 which, being forcibly pulled Ijy the pushing out of 
 the ram, draws the gate open. Another chain upon 
 the other side of the gate, by a similar arrangement, 
 closes it when required. 
 
THE AURORA BOREALIS. 
 
 i8s 
 
 THE AURORA BOREALIS. 
 
 Monbjrs of i^t %ima^\ttxt. 
 
 THE AURORA BOREALIS. 
 
 The long nights of the northern regions have their 
 darkness reheved by the appearance of the wonder- 
 ful Aurora Borealis, or northern lights. Before the 
 display of these natural fireworks commences, the 
 sky seems to prepare itself. Its hues deepen, until 
 a well-defined segment of dark sky is marked off, 
 its base resting on the northern horizon ; along the 
 line of its arc, and as if from behind the dark seg- 
 ment, a flashing luminous light begins to play, so 
 that soon the whole curve is one line of light. This 
 light seems like a continuous phosphorescent cloud ; 
 it is never still, but rises, and falls, and breaks — 
 now in one place, now in another — continually 
 sending out tongues of flame, which shoot up to 
 the zenith. When these luminous palpitating rays 
 reach their greatest extent the sight is truly 
 wonderful. 
 The Aurora dees not rilways assume the shape 
 24 
 
 here described. Our illustration shows a magnifi- 
 cent display which was seen at Bossekop in 1838. 
 It appeared like a beautiful fringed curtain hanging 
 in graceful folds from, the arch of the firmament. 
 The prevailing colour was red, though it changed 
 its hues rapidly. 
 
 These Auroras are by no means local appear- 
 ances. In 1796 one was witnessed simultaneously 
 in France and Pennsylvania, and, of course, in all 
 the intermediate countries. The best observations, 
 which, however, are not absolutely certain, find these 
 streams of light to be about 100 miles high ; we 
 may judge, therefore, over what a wide expanse 
 they are visible, when we remember that often they 
 occupy the whole horizon. Although they are seen 
 more in winter than summer, it is only because the 
 nights of winter are longer, and, therefore, there is 
 more opportunity for observation. If there be any 
 variation in the frequency of their appearance 
 throughout the year, they seem to be more numerous 
 about the tim<! of the equinoxes. 
 
 The cause of this wonderful phenomenon is not 
 
-i86 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 known. There can, however, be no doubt that if 
 it be not due to electricity itself, it is closely allied 
 to it. When the Aurora is being displayed, the 
 magnetic needles are agitated, and currents of 
 electricity stream along the telegraph lines, causing 
 the needles to deflect ; the most remarkable fact 
 being that the influence which the Aurora has on 
 telegraph lines is totally different to that exercised 
 by a thunder-cloud. In 1859, at the end of August, 
 the Aurora monopolised for hours and worked on 
 its own account several of the lines in the United 
 States, chiefly those which had a direction from 
 north to south. The European telegraphs were 
 similarly affected by the same Aurora. 
 
 Every philosopher knows that electricity plays a 
 very prominent part in the affairs of our earth ; 
 but as yet we are all but ignorant of its exact 
 effects. Yet it would seem that the Aurora indi- 
 cates the path of vast currents of electric fluid 
 which circulate through and about our world. 
 The streams always appear to leave one pole for 
 the other. The phenomenon at the southern pole 
 is termed the Aurora Austral is. 
 
 DIAMOND-WASHING IN BRAZH.. 
 
 Captain Burton, in his recently published work 
 on " The Islands of the Brazil," gives the following 
 account of the diamond-washing in the mines of 
 that country : — " As the Brazil borrowed her gold 
 mining through Portugal from the Romans, so she 
 lias taken her system of diamond-washing from 
 Ilindostan. The washing here begins with the 
 rains about November. The upper parts of the 
 troughs are charged with cascalbs (diamond earth), 
 and a man, standing before the open end or at the 
 side, dashes water upon the contents ; he then stirs 
 with the fingers the mass, to relieve it of the worthless 
 earth, dust, and clay, till the water runs clear, and 
 this washing may be repeated. Thus a pocket 
 of diamonds is sometimes, but very rarely, hit 
 upon. The fortunate slave no longer claps his 
 hands in the old style of signal. He may receive 
 his freedom after finding a stone weighing more 
 than an oitava and a half ; not by law, however, 
 but in order to encourage the other labourers. The 
 gravel may be treated a dozen times or more, and 
 precious stones, of course very diminutive, will still 
 be found in it. A good washer takes from half to 
 three quarters of an hour in order to exhaust a 
 single pan-full. 
 
 '' Magnify ing-glasscs are not yet in use, yet they 
 would save much trouble and prevent loss. The 
 present rude system is very severe upon the sight, 
 which soon fails. Past twenty-five few eyes can be 
 trusted, and children are always the best w-asliers. 
 It is during this treatment that robberies are mostly 
 effected. Few swallow the diamond, not because it 
 is considered poisonous, as by the Hindoo, but on 
 
 account of the difficulty of doing so unobserved. In 
 India the miner jerked the stone into his mouth, or 
 stuck it in the corner of his eye ; twelve to fifteen 
 overseers were required per gang of fifty light- 
 fingered men. The civilised thief pretends to be 
 short-sighted, and picks up the plunder with his 
 tongue-tip. A favourite way is to start as if 
 frightened by a snake, and thus to distract the 
 attention of the superintendent, who, if clever, is 
 wide awake to the trick. Most of the stones 
 disappear by being tilted or thrown over the lip of 
 the pan during the washing, and are picked up at 
 leisure." , 
 
 WONDERFUL SPIDER'S WEB. 
 
 Across the "sunny paths" of Ceylon, where the 
 forest meets the open country, and which con- 
 stitute the bridle-roads of the island, an enormous 
 spider stretches its web at the height of from 
 four to eight feet from the ground. The cordage 
 of these webs is fastened on either side to pro- 
 jecting shoots of trees or shrubs, and is so 
 strong as to hurt the traveller's face, and even 
 lift off" his hat, if he is so unlucky as not to see 
 the line. The nest in the centre is sometimes as 
 large as a man's head, and is continually growing 
 larger, as it is formed of succcssi\c layers of the 
 old webs rolled o\er each other, sheet after sheet, 
 into a ball. These successive envelopes contain 
 the limbs and wings of insects of all descriptions, 
 which have been the prey of the spider and liis 
 family, who occupy the den formed in their midst. 
 There seems to be no doubt that the spider casts 
 the web loose and rolls it round the nucleus in the 
 centre when it becomes overcharged with carcases, 
 and then proceeds to construct a fresh one, which 
 in its turn is destined to be folded up with the rest. 
 
 NAPOLEON AT MOSCOW. 
 
 Five hundred thousand men, drilled and disci- 
 plined into as fine an arm)- as ever were under the 
 command of general — veterans who had proved 
 their prowess on many a hard-fought field, and 
 followed Napoleon's eagles to victory. A gallant 
 army, rich in all the pomp of war — cavalry, infantr)-, 
 and artillery, with a mighty baggage train ; for the 
 Russ was now to be humbled, his capital seized, a 
 new treaty entered into, and Poland the oppressed 
 to be torn off once more and elevated into n 
 kingdom. 
 
 The French crossed the Nienien on the 24th of 
 June, 1812, when Wilna and Witepsk soon fell ; 
 and then, as army after army tried to oppose his 
 way. Napoleon routed the Russ till the enemy 
 melted away before him, and the conqueror made 
 a grand entry into Moscow, where, under the 
 impression that the Emperor Alexander would 
 
NAPOLEON AT MOSCOW. 
 
 187 
 
 send an embassy soliciting peace, the victor stayed 
 impatiently for six weeks. But not in ease and 
 comfort, for the French had hardly occupied the 
 city before there was an alarm of fire ; and again, 
 in different parts of the city, the fires took the 
 form of a fearful conflagration; for, lest the French 
 should make Moscow their winter quarters, the 
 Russians had fired their city. The Russian policy 
 was now evident : to call in the aid of famine 
 and their inclement winter to fight against the 
 foe. And then, finding at last that, so far from 
 his victorious march achieving any definite object, 
 there was nothing left for him but to retreat, 
 Napoleon gave the word, and his vast army was 
 once more in motion. 
 
 The return was commenced towards the end of 
 October, and almost as soon as the army was 
 well in motion down came the snow. Napoleon's 
 soldiers, indomitable before men, seemed to wither 
 and fade before the keen blast of the early winter 
 that had now set in. There was no taking advan- 
 tage of this town or that village for shelter, for 
 everywhere the Russians prepared fire and ruin for 
 the retreating troops ; and while men, numbed with 
 cold, were falling out from their ranks in the French 
 army, the well-clad, fur-caped warriors of Kutusoff 
 could harass the rear, and cut up the stragglers 
 with impunity. 
 
 But there was discipline ever, and the French 
 showed a bold front, for their great idol was with 
 them, and Murat, Ney, and Davoust were in com- 
 mand of divisions. Onward ever, but through 
 weather hourly growing more fearful. The roads 
 trampled by the feet of marching thousands soon 
 became ploughed by the wheels of gun and tumbril, 
 and horses would toil on till they fell and lay 
 struggling, adding to the confusion by striking 
 their fellows from their feet, till they lay in a tangle 
 of muddy and snowy harness, which the numbed 
 fingers of the soldiery coald not disentangle. 
 
 Soon the snow deepened, and the frost came, 
 turning it into a fine dust that, sweeping before the 
 fierce gale, seemed to pierce them to the bone. 
 Then a few intervals of thawing, when the trampled 
 route would soon grow into a miry slough. From 
 all being regularity and discipline,_the rear of the 
 grand army now began to grow into a wild crowd of 
 tired and strugghng men, using their last efforts to 
 keep up with the forced march, and only saved from 
 being cut to pieces by the efforts of the rear guard. 
 And at night men liuddled together gazing blankly 
 at each other, and not daring to tell of the despair 
 in their hearts. 
 
 Harassing attacks, and men cut off from the 
 main bodies. Pursuit was never dreamed of, 
 the sole object of the French generals being to 
 make good their retreat. Men struggling through 
 the snow, collecting it at times to try and quench 
 the famine thirst, but only to make it more keen. 
 
 Food frightfully scarce — foraging vain — and a 
 terrible selfishness now animating men's hearts ; 
 but forward still, to the same weary death march of 
 thair own tramp — a dread funeral march ; for the 
 army was melting away with a rapidity incon- 
 ceivable, and men began to look with longing eyes 
 now at the soft white inviting couch on either side. 
 They were wearied and despairing, and must rest. To 
 the last the commands of their officers were obeyed ; 
 but there was a point when, with freezing feet, they 
 could do no more ; it was either to fall in the ranks 
 and be trampled by the coming thousands behind, 
 or to drop out to accept the sleep that nature offered. 
 
 Night again: the troops, still in a state of dis- 
 cipline, halting and going through their few poor ar- 
 rangements in a strange mechanical manner, while 
 the ever-increasing mob of the disorganised in the 
 rear huddled together wherever a fire could be made. 
 
 Smolensk was reached at last, and here supplies 
 were expected; but no — from mismanagement there 
 was nothing for the wretched army but despair, and 
 to press on again in the disastrous retreat. Their 
 numbed and frozen hands could retain their weapons 
 no longer, as, with ice clinging to their beards, they 
 still struggled on, band after band of coming fugi- 
 tives, the crowd of a disorganised army, and then 
 the rear guard ever battling in their defence. The 
 road strewn with accoutrements, bodies of men, 
 bodies of horses, guns, wagons, tumbrils, the dis- 
 jecta membra of the great army ; then the falling 
 snow, and a few hours after the winding-sheet of 
 nature covering all. 
 
 Frozen marshes, vast pine-forests, howling winds, 
 endless plains, a journey apparently without a ter- 
 mination. The regiments that had kept orderly 
 now growing confused ; commissariat arrangements, 
 in spite of the efforts of the officers, at an end ; and 
 to the most hopeful it became evident that saime 
 qui peut must soon be the order of the day. 
 
 And now came the crowning horroK ; for the 
 River Berezina was reached, and with the river 
 in their front, the Russian army in their rear, the - 
 French came to a halt — the mighty army of half 
 a million men reduced to fourteen thousand still in 
 a state of discipline, and a vast, uncounted, dis- 
 organised crowd of followers. Two frail bridges 
 were constructed, and the wreck of the army 
 pressed on to cross ; their foe, at the same time, 
 vigorously attacking the rear guard. 
 
 The bridges sway and creak, but men press on, 
 for there is the sharp fusillade of musketry behind, 
 and an occasional Russian round shot ploughs its 
 way through the crowd. All these thousands to 
 cross, when there comes a sickening crash : one 
 bridge had given way, and a vast crowd of human 
 beings was straggling in the ice-laden waters. And 
 all this with a dreadful slaughter in progress, the 
 Russians charging on, driving the fugitives before 
 them, playing upon them from their guns, an4 
 
i88 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 ending the order that had so far existed, by turning 
 the retreat into one vast rout. 
 
 History is silent as to the numbers slain, drowned, 
 trampled to death in the passage of the Berezina ; 
 but she makes humanity shudder with the account 
 of the bodies in the river frozen into one dense 
 mass. And all these horrors succeeded by the 
 stern silence of winter— the falling snow hurriedly 
 hiding all, covering the heaps of slain, giving to the 
 wounded struggling in agony a calm lulling sleep, 
 against which struggling was vain ; for in the 
 midst of a frost-locked and devastated country help 
 was not. 
 
 The stern winter hid for months the horrors, but 
 as spring once more visited the earth, and its snowy 
 garment slowly dissolved away in the swollen 
 rivers, the sun began to shine upon the relics of the 
 war. Arms, accoutrements, the tawdry trappings of 
 the privates and the rich uniforms of the officers, all 
 were there ; but, in all the fearful stiffness of death, 
 to a man almost either young or in the prime of 
 life, there were 300,000 corpses of their enemies for 
 the Russians to bury ; and in vast funeral pyres, 
 as of sacrifices to the blood-stained god of French 
 glory, 160,000 dead horses to burn. 
 
 volatile oil, and states that " if a candle be brought 
 near it, this plant is enveloped by a transient flame 
 without sustaining any injury from the experiment." 
 Baron Hugel was told that the Auk river, in Cash- 
 mere, when swollen with rain, brings down from 
 Thibet pieces of timber which shine in the dark as 
 long as they continue moist. The rootstock of a 
 plant from the Ooraghum jungles, supposed to be 
 an Orchid or Marica, was exhibited at a meeting 
 of the Royal Agricultural Society, and " possessed 
 the peculiar property of regaining its phosphores- 
 cent appearance when a dried fragment was sub- 
 jected to moisture, gleaming in the dark with all 
 the vividness of the glow-worm, after having been 
 moistened with a wet cloth applied to its surface 
 for an hour or two. It does not seem to lose the 
 property by use, becoming lustreless when dry, and 
 lighting up again whenever moistened." Dr. 
 Lindley states that " a small slice of the dried root 
 being wrapped in a wet cloth, and allowed to re- 
 main about an hour, shines in the dark like a piece 
 of phosphorus, or perhaps somewhat paler, more 
 like dead fish or rotten wood." 
 
 LUMINOUS PLANTS. 
 
 In a contribution to the "Journal of the Agricul- 
 tural and Horticultural Society of India," Major 
 Madden gives an account of some luminous plants 
 of that country, which in the dark emit a phos- 
 phorescent light, while even portions of the root 
 possess the same property. He states that one 
 of these was discovered by a native, who was com- 
 pelled by rain to take shelter at night under a mass 
 of rock, where he was astonished to see a blaze of 
 phosphoric light over .all the grass in the vicinity. 
 Plants of this kind had long been known to the 
 Brahmins under the name of Jyotismati. On 
 inquiry at Almorah the major found that there was 
 a luminous plant well known there by that name, 
 and another implying the possession of light or 
 fire. It turned out to be Anthistiria anathera, of 
 which perhaps one root in a hundred is luminous 
 by night during the rainy season. Other grasses 
 are reported to possess the same property, and in 
 1845 the people of Simlah were open-mouthed 
 with a rumour that the mountains near Syree 
 were nightly illuminated in this manner. A plant 
 known in Europe as Dictamnus fraxitella has the 
 same quality, and as this abounds in some parts 
 of the Himalayas, the fame, says the major, of 
 a bush burning but not consumed, would be spread 
 afar by the pilgrims, among a people ever ready to 
 deify any peculiar manifestation of fire. 
 
 Professor Henslow explains the inflammable atmo- 
 sphere generated on a calm, still evening about 
 Dictamnus fraxitella, by the evaporation of 5 
 
 WONDERFUL VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS. 
 
 No one who has ever seen a volcano or burning 
 mountain casting forth steam, huge red-hot stones, 
 smoke, cinders, and lava, can possibly forget the 
 grandeur of the spectacle. At night it is doubly 
 terrible, when the darkness shows the red-hot lava 
 rolling down the hill-side. Sometimes the mountain 
 is quiet, and only a little smoke curls from its 
 top, and even this may cease, and the once burning 
 summit may be covered over with trees and grass, 
 like any other hill. But deep down in the earth 
 the gases and pent-up steam arc ever preparing to 
 rush up through the mountain, and to carry with 
 them dissolved rocks, slag, and the stones which 
 block up their passage. Sometimes, whilst all is 
 calm and beautiful on the mountains, suddenly deep- 
 sounding noises are heard, the ground shakes, and 
 a vast torrent tears its way through the bowels of 
 the volcano, and is flung hundreds of feet high in 
 the air, and falling again to the earth, destroys 
 every living thing for miles around. Such a scene 
 occurred forty-seven years ago in the Island of Java. 
 Java is a mountainous island — one of the East 
 Indies. It has a splendid climate, and its fertility 
 is very great. A large native population and 
 many European settlers are employed in cultivating 
 spices, coffee, and woods. The island is rather 
 more than 600 miles long, and it is not 150 miles 
 broad in any part ; and this narrow shape is pro- 
 duced by a chain of volcanoes which runs along 
 it. Some of the volcanoes are constantly in erup- 
 tion, whilst others are inactive. One of their 
 number, Galung Gung, forty-seven years ago, was 
 covered from top to bottom with a dense forest j 
 
WONDERFUL VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS. 
 
 189 
 
 around it were populous villages. The mountain 
 was higli ; there was a slight hollow on its top — a 
 basin-lilce valley, carpeted with the softest sward ; 
 brooks rippled down the hill-side through the 
 forests, and, joining their silvery streams, flowed 
 on through beautiful valleys into the distant sea. 
 In the month of July, 1822, there were signs of an 
 approaching disturbance ; this tranquil peacefulness 
 was at an end ; one of these rivers became muddy, 
 and its waters heated. In October, without any 
 warning, a most terrific eruption occurred. Suddenly 
 a loud explosion was heard ; the earth shook, and 
 immense columns of hot water, boiling mud mixed 
 
 violence from the crater, that while many distant 
 villages were utterly destroyed and buried, others 
 much nearer the volcano were scarcely injured ; 
 and all this was done in five short hours ! 
 
 Four days afterwards a second eruption occurred 
 more violent than the first, and hot water and mud 
 were cast forth with masses of slag like the rock 
 called basalt, some of which fell seven miles off. 
 A violent earthquake shook the whole district, and 
 the top of the mountain fell in, and so did one of 
 its sides, leaving a gaping chasm. Hills appeared 
 where there had been level land before, and the 
 rivers changed their courses, drowning in one night 
 
 VOLCANO IN JAVA. 
 
 with burning brimstone, ashes, and stones, were 
 hurled upwards from the mountain lop like a water- 
 spout, and with such wonderful force that large 
 quantities fell at a distance of forty miles. Every | 
 valley near the mountain became filled with burn- ' 
 ing torrents, and the rivers, swollen with hot water | 
 and mud, overflowed their banks, and swept away 
 the escaping villagers ; and the bodies of cattle, 
 wild beasts, and birds were carried down the flooded | 
 streams. [ 
 
 A space of twtnty-four miles between the moun- j 
 tain and a river forty miles distant was covered | 
 to such a depth with blue mud, that people were 
 buried in their houses, and not a trace of the 
 numerous villages and plantations was visible. The 
 l)oiling mud and cinders were cast forth with such 
 
 2,000 people. At some distance from the mountain 
 a river runs through a large town, and the first 
 intimation the inhabitants had of all this horrible 
 destruction was the news that the bodies of men 
 and the carcases of stags, rhinoceroses, tigers, and 
 other animals, were rushing along to the sea. No 
 less than 114 villages were destroyed, and above 
 4,000 persons were killed by this terrible catas- 
 trophe. 
 
 Many years before this eruption, one of the 
 highest burning mountains of Java was constantly 
 throwing out steam and smoke, but as no harm 
 was done, the natives continued to live on its sides 
 amongst the dense forests. Suddenly this enormous 
 mountain fell in, and left a gap fifteen miles long and 
 six broad. Forty villages were destroyesl, some being 
 
190 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 carried down and others overwhelmed by mud and 
 burning lava. No less than 2,957 people perished, 
 with vast numbers of cattle ; moreover, most of the 
 coffee plantations in the neighbouring districts were 
 destroyed. 
 
 Even more terrible was the eruption of Mount 
 Salek, another of the volcanoes of Java. The burn- 
 ing of the mourvtain was seen 100 miles away, 
 •while the thunders of its convulsions and the 
 tremblings of the earth reached the same distance. 
 Seven hills, at whoso base ran a river — crowded 
 with dead buffaloes, deer, apes, tigers, and croco- 
 diles — slipped down and became a level plain. 
 River-courses were changed, forests burnt up, and 
 the whole face of the country completely altered. 
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE CLIMATE ON 
 COLOURS. 
 There is a remarkable correspondence between 
 the geographical position of a region, and the colours 
 of its plants and animals. Within the tropics, where 
 " the sun shines for ever unchangeably bright," the 
 darkest green prevails over the leaves of plants, the 
 flowers and fruits are tinctured with colours of the 
 deepest dye, whilst the plumage of the birds is of the 
 most variegated description and of the richest hues. 
 In the people also of these climes there is manifested 
 a desire for the most striking colours, and their 
 dresses have all a distinguishing character, not of 
 shape merely, but of chromatic arrangement. In 
 the temperate climates everything is of more subdued 
 variety ; the flowers are less bright of hue ; the 
 prevailing tint- of the winged tribes is a russet- 
 brown ; and the dresses of the inhabitants of these 
 regions are of a sombre character. In the colder 
 portions of the earth there is but little colour ; 
 the flowers are generally white or yellow, and 
 the animals exhibit no other contrast than that 
 which white and black afford. A scale of colour 
 might be formed, its maximum point being at the 
 equator and its minimum at the poles. The in- 
 fluence of light on the colours of organised crea- 
 tion is well shown in the sea. Near the shores 
 we find seaweeds of the most beautiful tinctures, 
 particularly on the rocks which are left dry by the 
 tides ; and the rich hues of the actiniae, which 
 inhabit shallow water, must have been often observed. 
 The fishes which swim near the surface arc also 
 distinguished by the variety of their colours, whereas 
 those which live at greater depths are grey, brown, 
 or black. It has been found that after a certain 
 depth, where the quantity of light is so reduced that 
 a mere twilight prevails, the inhabitants of the 
 ocean become nearly colourless. That the sun's 
 rays alone give to plants the property of reflecting 
 colour, is proved by the process of blanching, or 
 the state produced by artificially excluding them 
 from li^hi.—I/uni's "Poeity of Science" 
 
 CURIOSITIES OF GLASS-MAKING. 
 
 Of the manufacture of glass it has been said that, 
 "although perfectly transparent itself, not one of 
 the materials of which it is made partakes of that 
 quahty." Its origin is uncertain. Josephus claims 
 the discovery for the Israelites ; Pliny assigns it to 
 the Phoenicians, and states that the first glass- 
 houses were erected in Tyre, where the only staple 
 of the manufacture existed for many ages. Hero- 
 dotus and Theophrastus likewise confirm the fact 
 of the use of glass having been known in the earliest 
 periods of civilisation, and of the establishment 
 of glass-works in Egypt and Phoenicia, and even 
 in India, where rock crj'stal was emplo)-ed in its 
 composition. 
 
 The art of making glass is reputed to have been 
 discovered by accident. Pliny states, some Phoeni- 
 cian mariners who had a cargo of nitrinn (salt, 
 or, as some have supposed, soda) on board, hav- 
 ing landed on the banks of the Belus, in Pales- 
 tine, and finding no stones to rest their pots on, 
 placed under them some masses of nitnim, which, 
 being fused by the heat with the sand of the shore, 
 produced a liquid and transparent stream. Now 
 the sand which lay about half a mile round the 
 river was peculiarly well adapted for the making 
 of glass. The Sidonians, in whose country the 
 discovery was made, took it up, and in process of 
 time carried the art to such perfection that they are 
 even said to have invented glass mirrors. Yet the 
 manufacture of glass was, a few years since, un- 
 known at Sidon, where it is reputed to have been 
 first invented. The above account by Pliny is, in 
 substance, corroborated by Strabo and by Josephus ; 
 yet it was long asserted that thG ancients were 
 unacquainted with glass, properly so called. Nor 
 did the denial entirely disappear even when Pompeii 
 presented evidence of the skill of the ancients in 
 glass-making. 
 
 The process of manufacture detailed by Pliny 
 appears to have been very much the same as that 
 practised at the present time. And Sir Gardner 
 Wilkinson gives the representation of two glass- 
 blowers inflating a piece of molten metal, by means 
 of hollow tubes, taken from a painting of Beni 
 Hassan, executed during the reign of that monarch, 
 who lived about 3,500 years ago; and adds that 
 glass vases, if we may trust to the Thcban paint- 
 ings, are frequently shown to be used for holding 
 wine as early as the Exodus, about 1400 years 
 before the Christian era. Such was the skill of 
 the Egyptians in glass-making, that they suc- 
 cessfully counterfeited the amethyst and other 
 precious stones worn as ornaments for the person. 
 Winckelmann, a high authority, is of opinion that 
 glass was employed more frequently in ancient 
 than in modern times ; it was used by the Egyptians 
 not only for drinking vessels, but for mosaic worl?, 
 
THE WONDERS OF LIGHT. 
 
 191 
 
 the figures of deities and sacred emblems, in which 
 they attained excellent workmanship and surprising 
 brilliancy of colour. The remains of Alexander the 
 Great are said by Suetonius and Strabo to have been 
 delivered to Augustus, when he was in Egypt, in a 
 glass-case in which Seleucus had deposited them after 
 removing them from a golden urn. Glass was used 
 by the Egyptians for coffins, and in 1 84.7 a process 
 was patented in England for making coffins of 
 glass. It would be reasonable to suppose that the 
 Hebrews brought glass, and a knowledge of its 
 manufacture, out of Egypt, were not the evidence 
 of history so explicit that it was actually discovered 
 and wrought at their own doors. 
 
 Archimedes is stated to have constructed an orb 
 of glass for scientific purposes ; and optical glass 
 has been found at Nineveh, in a microscope glass. 
 There is also, in the British Museum, a perfect 
 and beautiful goblet, excavated by Layard from 
 among the ruins of Nineveh. It has a name — pro- 
 bably that of the contemporary sovereign, or of the 
 maker — engraved upon it; and from the characters 
 employed, and the locality in which it was found, 
 it is believed to be of date seven centuries before 
 the Christian era, and probably the most ancient 
 piece of mantif act iired glass in existence. 
 
 In the reign of Tiberius, glass-works were first 
 established near Rome, and various sums were paid 
 for vases or goblets. Glass was not only an article 
 of luxury or ornament in the palaces, but employed 
 to decorate altars and the tombs of the dead. Many 
 fragments have been found in the catacombs, show- 
 ing it to have been used likewise by the early 
 Christians in their places of worship. In the above 
 reign a Roman artist had, according to Pliny, his 
 house demolished (according to others, he was 
 beheaded) for making glass malleable. The Pom- 
 peian and Roman architects are known to have 
 used glass in their mosaic decorations ; of these, 
 remains have been found among the ruins of the 
 villa of the Emperor Tiberius, in the island of 
 Capri. Several specimens are also yet to be seen 
 in Westminster Abbey, cemented into the sides of 
 the tomb of Edward the Confessor in flat pieces, 
 the under layer reddish and opaque, and the upper 
 white and transparent, gold leaf between, and the 
 whole fixed into one substance. 
 
 The clear glass resembling crystal was so costly, 
 that Nero gave for two cups of no extraordinary 
 size, with two handles, 6,000 sestertia, or nearly 
 ^50,000. Glass vessels are made to imitate pre- 
 cious stones, cut by the lathe in the style of cameos 
 in relief, by Roman artists. In the British Museum 
 are preserved many fragments of vases of white 
 opaque enamel glass upon blue and amethyst 
 grounds. White crystal glass without lead, cut to 
 imitate rock crystal, was then known ; and a few 
 pieces of this cut glass, considered Roman, have 
 been found in the City of London. 
 
 THE BEGGARS' SQUARE AT CANTON. 
 
 The cruelty of the Chinese to the sick and 
 infirm is strikingly illustrated in the following ex- 
 tract from Smith's "Cities of China:"— "I walked 
 with two friends about a mile and a half in a 
 north-easterly direction from the factories into a 
 part of the suburbs called the Beggars' Square. 
 It consists of an open space of about a hundred 
 yards on each side, and has a continued range 
 of temples on one side extending into the adjacent 
 streets. We proceeded into the centre of the 
 square, where numbers of idle \agabonds were 
 pursuing their various methods of amusement or of 
 vice. A number of emaciated pale forms were also 
 to be seen, partly covered with mats. Some were 
 gasping for breath and were scarcely able to move, 
 others were motionless and seemed destitute of life. 
 Numbers of poor mendicants, on the approach of 
 sickness, arc brought hither by their relatives and 
 left to perish, in neglected and unpitied destitution. 
 One poor youth, with a look that pierced my inmost 
 soul, had just sufficient strength to stretch his 
 hand for temporary relief, which was, alas ! now 
 unavailing. I counted four or five close by to all 
 appearance dead. Desirous of assuring myself of 
 the fact, I stooped, and, rcmo\ ing the scanty mat- 
 ting which partly obscured their pallid features, 
 gazed on the ghastly spectacle of death. Within 
 three or four yards of the corpses a company of 
 noisy gamblers were boisterously pursuing their 
 nefarious vocations." 
 
 THE WONDERS OF LIGHT. 
 
 Beams of light shoot through the fields of space 
 witli the prodigious velocity of 196,000 miles a 
 second ; so that a wave of light issuing from 
 the fires of the sun speeds on its journey for 
 eight minutes before it reaches our world. If in 
 the days of great Queen Bess that same engineering 
 enterprise which floated the Spanish Armada had 
 been able to span the 93,000,000 of miles which 
 separate us from the regal centre of our system 
 with a railway viaduct ; if a trip to the sun had 
 been advertised by the " runners " of the day, and 
 a train equipped for the journey — supposing it 
 never stopped at any of the planetary stations, but 
 rushed on forty miles every hour — it would just 
 now be entering the terminus of the Sun; and yet 
 this space, which one of our express trains could 
 only travel in 270 years, is passed through by 
 a beam of light in eight minutes! How can such 
 rapid motion be measured? The fir>i»g of the 
 velocity of light is no less wonderful than the 
 vslocity itself. 
 
 In the year 1676 the Danish astronomer, Olaus 
 Roemer, observed certain eclipses of the moons of 
 
192 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 Jupiter. Now we know all about the four moons 
 which circle round the bright and lovely planet 
 which so often is a conspicuous object in our 
 heavens, and therefore we know when they pass 
 behind the planet and so become eclipsed. The 
 exact time of these eclipses is calculated, and is one 
 means by which sailors can find out where they are 
 on the ocean— that is, how far east or west they are 
 from Greenwich. It is necessary to do this that they 
 should have " Greenwich time," but the very best 
 chronometers vary, and therefore tables are pub- 
 lished, in which the times of the eclipses of the 
 moons of Jupiter are given. Suppose that to-night 
 one of the moons passes behind the planet at ten 
 o'clock precisely, the captain of a vessel is not sure 
 that his chronometer is right, so to him Jupiter and 
 his moons become a watch ; he turns his telescope 
 upwards, observes the instant the little bright spot 
 is lost behind the disc of the planet, and then he 
 knows it is just ten o'clock by Greenwich time. 
 This was the very thing 
 Olaus Roemer was 
 about, but he could not 
 understand how it was 
 that when he made his 
 observations when Jupi- 
 ter was nearest the 
 earth the eclipse always 
 happened too soon, and 
 if the planet happened 
 to be on the other side 
 of the sun — the furthest 
 possible distance from 
 
 the earth — it took place nearly sixteen minutes too 
 late. The explanation of the astronomer's difficulty 
 will be readily comprehended from the diagram. 
 
 When the observation was made when the earth 
 was at E, Roemer found the eclipse took place 
 sixteen minutes sooner than it would have appeared 
 to do had the earth been at F, the opposite side of 
 her orbit. 
 
 There was only one way of accounting for this — 
 namely, that the light took sixteen minutes in 
 travelling from e to F, a distance of 186,000,000 
 miles, to accomplish which its velocity must be 
 192,500 miles a second. But still more wonderful 
 is it that this prodigious swiftness can be measured 
 with the greatest accuracy by actual experiment ; 
 the ingenuity of Fizeau invented the plan by 
 which if can be done. He arranged two telescopes 
 at a distance of 9,440 yards, looking at each other. 
 In the further end of the distant telescope was a 
 looking-glass, and a cog-wheel was so arranged 
 before the near telescope, that if you looked through 
 it you saw the further telescope through the space 
 between two of the teeth of the wheel. If the wheel 
 was moved round a very little, one of the teeth 
 would come before the end of the telescope and shut 
 out the view of the distant object. 
 
 When all this was thus adjusted a lamp was 
 placed on the same side of the toothed wheel as 
 the telescope, and a ray of light caused to pass 
 through one of the spaces ; of course this light shot 
 away to the other telescope, and was reflected back 
 from the looking-glass in it to the first telescope, 
 passing through the space between the teeth, and so 
 through the instrument to the eye. But suppose 
 that, while the light from the lamp was on its way, 
 before it could touch the reflector more than five 
 miles off, and come back again to the place whence 
 it started, and enter the telescope, as we have 
 said, the wheel had moved, and, when the beam 
 returned to the end of the telescope, instead of 
 finding an opening, it was obstructed by a tooth, 
 and prevented from entering, so that the person 
 looking through the telescope would not see the 
 light. Then to measure the velocity all that is 
 necessary is to look at the reflection of the light in 
 the distant mirror, then set the wheel in motion, 
 being careful to know 
 how many turns it makes 
 in asccond, and increase 
 the motion until the 
 light can be no longer 
 seen. Fizeau found that 
 when his wheel, which 
 had 720 teeth, revolved 
 at the rate of a httle 
 more than twelve re- 
 volutions in a second, 
 the light was eclipsed ; 
 from this it was very 
 easy to calculate what time the light spent in passing 
 through nearly eleven miles— to the further telescope 
 and back — and so we learn the fact that light travels 
 at the rate of 196,000 miles a second ; and yet some 
 of those stars which glimmer in the firmament above 
 us are so far away that hundreds of years ago they 
 may have been blown into a thousand fragments, 
 and the light of the explosion has not reached us 
 yet, to tell of the star's destruction. 
 
 Sound travels much slower than light. It passes 
 through the air at the rate of 1,130 feet a second. 
 This is the reason why we always see the flash of a 
 gun before we hear the report, and in a thunder- 
 storm, if we count the seconds which elapse between 
 the glare of the lightning and the first roll of the 
 thunder, we know that for every five seconds we 
 count the scene of the electric discharge is a mile 
 distant. The waves of sound do not maintain the 
 same velocity in all media ; in water they travel 
 at the rate of 4,900 feet a second. This fact was 
 proved at the lake of Geneva, by striking a bell 
 under water at a given signal, and a distant listener, 
 by means of an ear-trumpet, whose mouth was 
 beneath the surface of the water, registered the 
 moment the sound reached him. In some media 
 the velocity is much greater. 
 
pEAkL FISHJERIES. 
 
 193 
 
 PEARL FISHERIES. 
 
 The value of pearls has been in all ages of the 
 world commensurate with their beauty. In the East 
 especially they have been greatly admired, and 
 enormous sums of money have been paid for them. 
 It is said that 
 Julius Cassar 
 gave a pearl to 
 the mother of 
 Marcus Brutus 
 that was valued 
 at;{;48,4i7 I OS. 
 of our present 
 money ; and 
 Philip the Se- 
 cond of Spain 
 had a pearl 
 from the West 
 India fishery 
 which was said 
 to be worth 
 ^30,000. From 
 time immemo- 
 rial there have 
 been fisheries of 
 pearl in the Per- 
 sian Gulf and 
 Red Sea, and 
 in the bays of 
 Ceylon ; and 
 when Colum- 
 bus arrived in 
 the Gulf of 
 Paria, on his 
 first voyage to 
 America, he 
 was delighted 
 to find that 
 there too pearls 
 abounded. His 
 men landed, 
 "and saw the 
 Indian women 
 adorned with 
 splendid pearls, 
 as well round 
 their necks as 
 
 round their arms ; yet they were not prized by their 
 possessors, who regarded them only as slight femi- 
 nine ornaments, so that merely for an earthenware 
 plate — a broken one — that a sailor gave to an 
 Indian woman, she gave him four rows of her 
 pearls." The Spanish king forbade any one to go 
 within fifty leagues of the place where such riches 
 were found without the royal permission, and took 
 possession of the fisheries for himself ; but so c-uelly 
 did the Spaniards behave to the natives, mn.king 
 
 25 
 
 DIVING FOR PEARLS. 
 
 them perforce dive for them, and brutally ill-treating 
 them when they were unsuccessful in pearl finding, 
 that, " one morning at dawn the Indians assailed the 
 Spaniards, made a sanguinary slaughter of them, and 
 with dancing and leaping ate them, both monks and 
 laymen." The islamds of Cubagua and Margarita 
 were the principal seats of the pearl fishery, which 
 
 was also carried 
 on in the Gulf 
 of Paria itself, 
 on the coast of 
 CumanJi. 
 
 The pearl is 
 nothing more 
 than a pellet, 
 varying in size, 
 composed of 
 the same shin- 
 ing, hard, cal- 
 careous matter, 
 called nacre 
 or mother-of- 
 pearl, which 
 lines the shells 
 of many mol- 
 luscs,e3pecially 
 those of the 
 oyster andmus- 
 sel tribes. They 
 are found stick- 
 ing fast to the 
 lining whence 
 they spring, or 
 distinct in the 
 bodies of the 
 animals which 
 produce them, 
 lying loose in 
 the substance 
 of the animal 
 itself, com- 
 monly in its 
 thickest and 
 most fleshy 
 part. The cause 
 of the produc- 
 tion of the pearl 
 is in either case 
 some irritating 
 influence acting upon the oyster itself. A graiii of 
 sand has insinuated itself between the soft mantle 
 of the oyster and the shell, and to get rid of the 
 annoyance the animal throws over it some of the 
 calcareous secretion which it has power to exude, 
 adding thereto in proportion to the amount of incon- 
 venience it continues to feci. The pearls found in 
 the body of the oyster or mussel are supposed to be 
 abortive eggs which the creature has tried to throw 
 out, but which, remaining, have bgen coated with 
 
194 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 additional nacre in order to render them less un- 
 comfortable. The Chinese have several ingenious 
 methods for making the pearl yielders produce 
 artificial pearls. They introduce into the shell of 
 the creature small irritating objects — beads, nuclei of 
 mother-of-pearl,metal knobs, any small thing, indeed, 
 which the oyster cannot by any means get rid of, 
 but finding it there proceeds to coat over with pearl. 
 In the course of a year the secretion has been so 
 considerable as to sufficiently remunerate those 
 whose labour has been expended upon it. 
 
 There are many kinds of shells, not only bivalves, 
 but spiral shells also, in which pearls occur; indeed, 
 it would seem that all polished nacreous shells are 
 capable of producing them, though the oyster family 
 excels in the art. The size of the pearl varies ac- 
 cording to the time it has been in process of manu- 
 facture, and according to the extent of its irritating 
 cause. Climate, alsp, has no doubt something to do 
 with it, as the largest and finest pearls are from 
 warm water districts, while the mussels and oysters 
 of colder waters, like those of Great Britain, do not 
 seem to be capable of yielding very large, though 
 they afford many small pearls. The pearl fishery 
 of Scotland, where the people seek the pearl animals 
 in the slime of rivers at low water, affords employ- 
 ment to many hundreds of persons, and yields a 
 profit of several thousands a year. 
 
 The deep water fishery — that is to say, the fishery 
 in about twelve fathoms — is conducted now pretty 
 much as it was conducted in Columbus' time. I\Ien 
 accustomed from their infancy to an amphibious 
 sort of life, and trained to be expert divers, are 
 engaged at the work, and go down naked into the 
 sea in order to pick up the marvellous pearl-breeders 
 which lie at the bottom. They may bring up a 
 prize or a blank, but down they go time after time, 
 spending their lives in the occupation, and finding a 
 reward either in wages or in a co-partnership in tlie 
 lottery upon which they are engaged. In Ceylon, 
 the pearl fishers go out in company in their boats. 
 Each boat carries twenty men, of whom ten arc 
 rowers and ten divers. The divers take turn and 
 turn about at plunging, and remain under water for 
 a minute and a half to two minutes. Some of them 
 are said to be able to stay down as long as five 
 minutes, but this power is exceptional, and only to 
 be acquired by long practice. Trained to the work 
 from childhood, tlic divers go down, with the greatest 
 intrepidity, to a depth of from four to ten fathoms. 
 To assist them in their descent, they use a large 
 stone of red granite, having the smaller end bored 
 so as to admit a rope, which is rove through it. 
 When about to dive, the diver seizes this rope with 
 the toes of his right foot, and with the left foot 
 secures a network bag for his oysters. He then 
 takes hold of another rope with his hands and is let 
 down from the boat to his diving-ground, the stone 
 helping to sink him. When at the bottom, he casts 
 
 himself loose from the stone, picks up his oysters, and 
 when ready to return, jerks the rope by which he 
 was let down, and he is then hauled up, leaving the 
 stone to be recovered by its own rope. The chief 
 danger the divers have to encounter, after the pre- 
 liminary physical difficulties attendant upon diving 
 and working at so great a depth have been got over, 
 is from ground-sharks. The divers in the Persian 
 Gulf are wont to resort to magic and to religious 
 enchantments in the hope of guarding against these 
 horrible creatures ; but as an additional and more 
 effectual precaution, they are armed with a short 
 stick, pointed at either end, which they thrust into 
 the shark's mouth, they themselves getting away 
 while the monster is engaged in fretting over his 
 uncomfortable, indigestible meal. A story is related 
 of one diver who, having explored a rock on which 
 he expected to find oysters, was about to return 
 "where he could see the st.ars again," when, casting 
 his eye upward, he saw a huge ground-shark lying 
 in wait for him, and cutting off his retreat. Terri- 
 fied at the sight, and unable to get out of range, he 
 was beginning to give himself up for lost, when a 
 happy thought occurred to him. He took his 
 sharpened stake, which was too small to stop the 
 jaws of the shark, and going to a sandy nook of the 
 rock began to stir up the mud, and to make such 
 " a dust in the water " as to obscure the enemy's 
 vision. Having done this till he was forced to quit 
 for lack of breath, he swam off hastily in another 
 direction, and arrived at the surface exhausted but 
 in safety. At the top he was rescued by the boat 
 in attendance, and the shark, befooled at the 
 bottom of the water, was left to gnash his teeth 
 in vain. 
 
 Some of the divers are armed with a long knife, 
 which they use not only as a defence against marine 
 assailants, but for the purpose of detaching tenacious 
 oysters, many of which, especially they of the strong 
 byssHS or moorings, adhere to the rock with a grip 
 requiring great strength to overcome it. The diver 
 having been pulled into the boat with his net full of 
 oysters and mussels, the booty is taken on shore, 
 and " as soon as the oysters are taken out of the 
 boats, they are carried (in Ceylon) by the different 
 people to whom they belong, and placed in holes 
 dug in the ground to the depth of about two feet, or 
 in small, square, hollow places cleared and fenced 
 round for the purpose, each person having his own 
 separate division. ... As soon as they have 
 passed through a state of putrefaction and have 
 become dry, they are easily opened, without any 
 danger of injuring the pearls, which might be the 
 case if they were opened fresh, as at that time to do 
 so requires great force. On the shell being opened 
 the oyster is minutely examined for ' the pearls ; it 
 is usual even to boil the oyster itself, as the pearl 
 is not unfrequently found actually embedded in the 
 body of the fish." 
 
THE SiNfAKE-CHARAIEllS OF 1NDL\. 
 
 195 
 
 WONDERFUL APPLICATION OF HEAT. 
 
 Experiment (remarks Baron Liebig) has shown 
 that a quantity of heat, sufficient to raise a pound 
 of water one degree of temperature, will, when 
 communicated to a bar of iron, enable it to elevate 
 a weight of 1,350 lbs. to the height of one foot. An 
 interesting application of this fact was long ago 
 made in the Conservq.toire des Arts et Metiers, in 
 Paris. In this building, which was formerly a 
 convent, the nave of the church was converted into 
 a museum for industrial products, machines, and 
 implements. In its arch, traversing its length, 
 appeared a crack, which gradually increased to the 
 width of several inches, and permitted the passage 
 of rain or snow. The opening could easily have 
 been closed by stone and lime, but the yielding of 
 the side walls would not have been prevented by 
 these means. The whole building was on the point 
 of being pulled down, when a natural philosopher 
 proposed the following plan, by which the object 
 was accomplished :— A number of strong iron rods 
 were firmly fixed at one end to a side wall of the 
 nave, and after passing through the opposite wall, 
 were provided on the outside with large nuts, which 
 were screwed up tightly to the wall. By applying 
 burning straw to the rods they expanded in length. 
 The nuts by this extension being now removed 
 several inches from the wall, were again screwed 
 tight to it. The rods on cooling contracted with 
 enormous force, and made the side walls approach 
 each other. By repeating the operation the crack 
 entirely disappeared. This building, with its re- 
 taining rods, is still in existence. 
 
 THE SNAKE-CHARMERS OF INDIA. 
 
 Snake-charming is a very ancient art, having 
 been practised in many Eastern countries from a 
 remote antiquity. We find occasional allusions to 
 it in the Old Testament, as well as in classic 
 writers. But it is in India that the art of snake- 
 charming has attained the highest degree of 
 success, its secrets being so well handed down that 
 it is commonly practised by the Hindoos at the 
 present day. 
 
 The Indian snake-charmers wander from village 
 to village, and from town to town, with their snakes 
 carried in baskets. They exhibit their skill chiefly 
 for the amusement of the people, but often turn it 
 to useful account in luring dangerous serpents 
 from their lurking-places in houses, banks, or 
 old walls. The chief agency in the charm is music, 
 and this of the most indifferent kind, consisting of 
 dismal tunes slowly played on a pipe something 
 like a flageolet. The Hindoo conjurer affects also 
 to exercise a spell on the reptiles by means of the 
 voice alone, but this is believed to have no founda- 
 tion in fact. 
 
 The mode of exhibition by the snake-charmer 
 is usually the following : — Setting down his basket 
 of snakes, which has been covered with cotton 
 wool, he produces his pipe, and performs upon it 
 a few droning notes. The snakes come out from 
 the basket upon the ground, and as the juggler 
 continues playing, seem much delighted, erect- 
 ing themselves about half their length from the 
 ground, and keeping time by graceful undulatory 
 motions of the head and neck. At times twenty of 
 the serpents may be seen thus dancing together, 
 with hundreds of natives looking on. After the 
 dancing has continued some time, the juggler, 
 seizing one or more of the snakes, will coil them 
 round his head and neck, playing with them fear- 
 lessly, and apparently having them under his entire 
 control. 
 
 The snakes which generally form the subject of 
 exhibition, are the kind most dreaded of all — the 
 cobra di capello. It has often been supposed that 
 before the juggler exhibits his snakes he has 
 carefully extracted the poison-fangs, and hence 
 that his tricks, daring as they sometimes are, may 
 be performed in perfect safety. This, however, is 
 not aUvays the case. Cobras from which the fangs 
 have been drawn are frequently among the snakes 
 which the charmers carry, but it has been proved 
 again and again that in many of them the veno- 
 mous powers are still unimpaired. The possession 
 or the abstraction of these powers does not aflect 
 the peculiar sensibility of the snakes to the influence 
 of the monotonous music of the Hindoo pipes; - 
 and in this undoubted susceptibility consists the 
 secret of the power and control of the conjurer over 
 the reptiles. 
 
 Many fatal accidents have arisen from persons 
 having vainly imagined that the jugglers' snakes 
 have been rendered harmless. Forbes, the author of 
 " Oriental Memoirs," thus relates his own narrow 
 escape: — "Among my drawings is that of a cobra 
 di capello, which danced for an hour on the table 
 while I painted it. I frequently handled it, to 
 observe the beauty of its spots, and especially the 
 spectacles on the hood, not doubting that its fangs 
 had been previously extracted. But the next 
 morning my upper-servant, a devout Mussulman, 
 came to me in great haste and desired I would 
 instantly retire and praise the Almighty for my good 
 fortune. Not understanding his meaning, I told 
 him that I had already performed my devotions. 
 Mahomet then informed me that, while purchasing 
 some fruit in the bazaar, he saw the man who had 
 been with me on the preceding evening entertain- 
 ing the country people with his dancing-snakes. 
 The peasants, according to the usual custom, sat 
 on the ground round the charmer, when, cither 
 from the music stopping too suddenly, or from 
 some other cause of irritation, the vicious reptile, 
 which I had so often handled, darted at the throat of 
 
19^ 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 a young woman, and inflicted a wound of which she 
 died in about half an hour." 
 
 The fact that a cobra may frequently be handled 
 with impunity, as in the case of Mr. Forbes, is 
 well known, and many of our readers will recall to 
 ininJ the cas3 of a keeper at the Zoological 
 Gardens in the Regent's Park, who was in the 
 habit of playing with the snakes, but at last lost 
 his life from the bite of one of the reptiles. But, 
 as a writer in the " Oriental Annual" observes, it 
 is a remarkable peculiarity in the cobra di capello, 
 and in most poisonous reptiles of this class, that 
 they seem to have a great reluctance to put into ope- 
 ration the deadly powers with which they are 
 endowed. The cobra scarcely ever bites unless 
 excited by actual injury or extreme provocation; 
 and even then, before it darts upon its aggressor, 
 it always gives him timely notice of his danger 
 in a way not to be mistaken. It dilates the crest 
 upon "its neck — a large flexible membrane, having 
 on the upper surface two black circular spots, like 
 a pair of spectacles ; it waves its head to and fro 
 with a gentle undulatory motion, the eye sparkling 
 with intense lustre, and commences a hiss so loud 
 as to be heard at a considerable distance— so that 
 the juggler always has warning when it is perilous 
 to approach his captive. The snake never bites 
 while the hood is closed ; and so long as this is 
 not erected, it may be approached and handled 
 with impunity. Even when the hood is spread, 
 while the creature continues silent there is no 
 danger. Its fearful hiss is at once the signal of 
 aggression and of peril. 
 
 Though the cobra is so deadly when under 
 excitement, it is appeased with astonishing rapidity 
 even from the highest state of exasperation, merely 
 by the droning music of the juggler's pipe. 
 
 THE CORONATION STONE AT 
 
 KINGSTON. 
 
 Some years back, a visitor to Kingston-on-Thames 
 might have seen lying in an ignominious position 
 near the Town Hall, a large square block of stone, 
 which was generally used for the purpose of a 
 stepping-stone to enable the goodwives of the town 
 to mount their horses. Tradition asserts, however, 
 that some ten centuries back this identical stone 
 was the stepping-stone to the throne of England 
 itself. No one could have supposed that this 
 rude, almost shapeless, and uncared-for mass of 
 stone was hallowed by historical associations of 
 deep and enduring interest to Enghshmcn, and that 
 upon it no less than seven of our Anglo-Saxon 
 sovereigns knelt and were anointed to the kingly 
 dignity. Yet such, we are assured, was the fact, 
 and the names of the monarchs were Edward the 
 EJdcr, son of the Great Alfred, Athelstan, Edmund, 
 
 Etheldred, Edred, Edwy, and Edward the Martyr. 
 After lying in this position for ages, the people 
 of Kingston, in the year 1850, resolved that this 
 interesting relic should be rescued from further 
 desecration, and preserved as a monument of the 
 times when the constitution and the laws of our 
 country had their birth. A neat and substantial 
 monument, enclosed by handsome iron railings, was 
 therefore erected in front of the Court House and 
 facing the Town Hall, the stone was elevated to 
 the summit', and its inauguration as the " Kingston 
 Coronation Stone" was celebrated on the 19th of 
 September, 1850, with much rejoicing. 
 
 THE ELECTRICAL EEL. 
 
 The gymnotus, or electrical eel, is rather more 
 serpentine in form than the common eel, and fre- 
 quently attains a great size. It is found in the 
 rivers and marshes of South America, where the 
 natives fish for it in a singular manner. M. 
 Bonpland describes a scene witnessed by him in 
 one of the marshy pools of Venezuela. About 
 thirty horses and mules were driven into the water 
 by a number of Indians, who, armed with long 
 canes and harpoons, prevented them from returning 
 to the banks until the object of the battue was at- 
 tained. The trampling of the horses and the shouts 
 of the Indians soon produced a scene of wild ex- 
 citement. Writhing on the surface of the water, 
 and gliding under the bellies of the animals, the 
 gymnoti discharged through them repeated shocks 
 from their electric batteries, while the poor be- 
 wildered brutes, convulsed and terrified, their manes 
 erect, and their eyes staring with pain and anguish, 
 made unavailing efforts to escape. The eels, from 
 four to six feet in length, and livid in colour, had 
 the appearance of great water serpents, and one in 
 particular was observed which discharged the whole 
 power of its battery along the belly of a horse. In 
 less than a quarter of an hour the electrical energy 
 of the eels became exhausted, and though some of 
 the horses and mules had been benumbed and 
 drowned, the greater number scrambled ashore and 
 recovered. The eels in their exhausted state were 
 easily captured. 
 
 The extraordinary power of the gymnotus was 
 placed beyond doubt a few years ago, when living 
 specimens of this fish were exhibited in the Adelaide 
 Gallery and the Polytechnic Institution. The illus- 
 trious Faraday took the opportunity of experiment- 
 ing upon it, and established to his own satisfaction 
 the identity of its peculiar power with that of voltaic 
 electricity of peculiar intensity. The eel he experi- 
 mented with was only forty inches long, yet it pro- 
 duced a succession of shocks at short intervals, 
 affected the galvanometer, and imparted magnetism 
 to iron. 
 
THE ELECTRICAL EEL. 
 
 197 
 
 The diagram (Fig. i) shows the gymnotus lying 
 with its belly turned a little on one side towards 
 the eye. The mouth is shown at a, a portion of 
 the skin turned back at bb. The ventral fin is 
 marked cc, and the fin-muscles lid. The electrical 
 organs (for there are two pairs, a larger and a 
 
 presuming too much on its exhaustion, the fisher- 
 man handles it fearlessly, its shock is more severe 
 than usual — one of the many proofs which might 
 be cited that the discharge depends upon the 
 animal's will. No muscular movement is observed 
 with the shock. 
 
 THE GYMNOTUS, OR ELECTRICAL EEL. 
 
 smaller) range along the whole body, from the head 
 to the tail, as shown by the blank spaces. The 
 appearance they present to the eye is shown by the 
 lines e e and// (Fig. 2). These are to some extent 
 parallel with the axis of the body, and represent the 
 thin membranes of which the organs are composed. 
 They occupy nearly half the thickness of the body, 
 and one pair is placed on either side of the spinal 
 column. At the end near 
 the head the electricity 
 is positive, at the other 
 end negative. The full 
 power of the battery is 
 elicited when a connection 
 is made between the head 
 and the tail, the effect 
 being diminished in any 
 intermediate part, pre- 
 cisely as in a voltaic bat- 
 tery. Professor Faraday having put a few small 
 live fish into the water with the gymnotus, the 
 latter formed itself into a circle, enclosing the fish 
 by joining its head to its tail, and sent a shock 
 through the water which instantly stunned its prey. 
 When the hand was held in the water whilst the 
 charge was transmitted, a shock was felt, though 
 not so strong as when the eel was touched at its 
 two extremities. It may sometimes happen, when 
 the gymnotus is seriously wounded by the fishing 
 operations which we have described, that it gives a 
 very weak shock on being touched, If, however, 
 
 The facts we have recited sufficiently demonstrate 
 to our minds that there is an intimate relation be- 
 tween nerve-power and electricity, in spite of all that 
 may be said as to the purely chemical origin of this 
 power in animals. In fact, it is not yet in the 
 power of any physiologist to say with certainty 
 through what organ the effects of animal electricity 
 may not be exhibited under certain conditions 
 of mind and body. Dr. 
 Golding Bird states, in his 
 " Elements of Natural 
 Philosophy," that " the 
 human body is always in 
 an electric state, though 
 of the feeblest tension, 
 never exceeding that 
 evolved by the contact of 
 a plate of zinc with a 
 plate of copper ;" and that 
 "it increases with the irritability of the person, 
 appearing to be greater in the evening than in the 
 morning, and disappearing altogether in very 
 cold weather." The science of animal magnetism 
 is but an expression of belief in this natural fact, 
 and in the power of the will to control the phe- 
 nomena. This is a subject, however, upon which 
 it will not be convenient at present to enter, though 
 there can be little doubt that it stands in direct 
 relationship with the wonders of animal electricity. 
 It may be added that the gymnotus is not the only 
 inhabitant of the \vater that possesses this property, 
 
198 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 A STORY OF A DIAMOND. 
 
 Tpie diamond has always enjoyed an undisputed 
 pre-eminence among precious stones, not only on 
 account of its rarity, but also from its unequalled 
 brilliancy. Some of these stones have been sold 
 for almost fabulous prices, and many of the most 
 celebrated diamonds known to exist have changed 
 hands from time to time under strange and romantic 
 _ circumstances. 
 
 Among the jewels formerly in the regalia of 
 England was a diamond of great beauty and value, 
 with which is connected a very remarkable history. 
 It was once the property of Charles the BoM, last 
 Duke of Eurgundy, wlio v.'ore it in his hat ai the 
 battle of Nancy, in which he lost his life. 
 
 The diamond was found on the field after the 
 battle by a Swiss, who sold it to a priest for a trifle, 
 and it afterwards became the property of a French 
 nobleman named De Sancy. The treasure remained 
 in the possession of his family for more than a 
 century, when one of his descendants, who was 
 captain of the Swiss guard under Henry III. of 
 France, was commissioned by the king to raise a 
 new force from the same nation. Henry at length 
 found himself unable to pay his soldiers, and in 
 this emergency he borrowed the diamond from the 
 Count de Sancy, that he might place it in the 
 hands of the Swiss government as a pledge for the 
 fulfilment of his engagements. 
 
 The count entrusted the diamond to one of his 
 most faithful followers for conveyance to the king ; 
 but the messenger and the treasure disappeared, to 
 the great consternation both of Henry ^and De 
 Sancy. The most diligent search was made, 
 but without furnishing any clue to the mystery. 
 So strong was De Sancy's confidence in the perfect 
 probity of his servant, that he felt convinced some 
 misfortune must have happened to him ; and he 
 persevered in his inquiries, until he at length dis- 
 covered that his follower had been waylaid and 
 murdered by a band of robbers, and the body con- 
 cealed in a neighbouring forest. 
 
 De Sancy ascertained the locality, and instituted 
 a careful search, which resulted in the discovery of 
 his messenger's remains. He next gave directions 
 to have the body opened; when, to the astonish- 
 ment of all but De Sancy himself, the treasure was 
 discovered. It was now clear that the poor fellow, 
 on finding himself beset beyond the possiblKty of 
 escape, had swallowed ttie diamond rather tlian that 
 it should fall into the hands of the robbers. The 
 story has been commemorated in the appellation 
 the diamond has ever since borne of " the Sancy." 
 
 The diamond was purchased for the Crown of 
 England; but James II. carried it with him in his 
 flight to France in 1688. Louis XV. is said to have 
 worn it at his coronation. In 1835 it was purohcieed 
 by a Russian nobleman for ^80,000. 
 
 THE ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH. 
 
 There is nothing difficult, now that the thing is an 
 accomplished fact, in grasping the idea that cables 
 more than 2,000 miles in length lie underneath 
 the Atlantic, joining together, by unbroken cords, 
 the Old World and the New. The real wonder 
 of the first Atlantic cable consisted in the gigantic 
 scale on which it had to be carried out in every 
 detail. The thing itself was not a novelty. 
 
 The longest telegraphic conductor that had pi-e- 
 viously been submerged was that between \'arna 
 and Balaklava, which had been hurriedly put down 
 to meet the exigencies of the Crimean War. The 
 length of this was 360 miles, of which only twelve 
 were really cable, the remainder being simply copper 
 v/'re covered with gutta-percha, and the longest 
 cable previous to 1858 had been only 123 miles in 
 length; while the Atlantic cable was to be twenty 
 times this length, was to be laid in water two miles 
 deep, and was to cost nearly ^400,000. 
 
 The "conductor" of this cable — that is, the part 
 which conveys or conducts the electric currents — 
 consisted of seven small copper wires twisted to- 
 gether, the object of this being that if one of the 
 wires broke, others might yet remain uninjured to 
 keep up the continuity. 
 
 To protect this conductor from contact with tire 
 water — which, being itself a conductor of electricity, 
 would, if it touched the copper, allow the electric 
 current sent into the wire to escape and return to 
 its source before it had traversed the entire length — 
 it was entirely enveloped in gutta-percha. 
 
 The soft gutta-percha had, however, to be care- 
 fully protected from external injury, for upon its 
 integi-ity depended the success of the undertaking. 
 To effect this, it was first well wrapped with jute 
 yarn, saturated with a compound of tar, pitch, 
 linseed oil, and beeswax, and laid over this was the 
 outer covering of iron. This covering consisted of 
 eighteen strands twisted spirally round the jute, 
 each strand composed of seven small iron wires. 
 The weight of the finished cable was a ton a mile, 
 and 3,000 miles were stowed on board the two cable- 
 ships, the Niagara and Agamemnon, at one time, 
 each ship carrying 1,500 tons. 
 
 The vessels sailed from Valentia on the 7th of 
 August, 1857 ; and all went well until 385 miles had 
 been paid out, the depth of water reached being 
 rather over two and a quarter miles ; when a sudden 
 rise of the ship's stern, and a want of care in releas- 
 ing the " break," caused the cable to snap, and put 
 an end to all further attempts for that year. 
 
 An additional length of nearly 900 miles was 
 made, to compensate for that already lost, and to 
 be in readiness to supply the room of any future 
 losses. The risk which would attend making the 
 splice between the two halves of the cable in mid- 
 ocean — one end, supporting the weight of nearly 
 
CEREMONY AMONG SAVAGES. 
 
 199 
 
 three miles, hanging over the stern of the ship — 
 had also been carefully discussed, and it was 
 resolved that both cable-ships should upon this 
 next attempt proceed direct to mid-ocean, and 
 await the opportunity of favourable weather to 
 make the splice. This being made, the two ships 
 would steam in opposite directions, and the cable 
 be laid in half the time. 
 
 This was the arrangement, then, which was 
 carried out in 1858. The vessels met in mid-ocean, 
 the cables were united, and the " paying out " com- 
 menced ; but before the two ships were fairly " hull 
 down," the cable broke on board the Againemnon. 
 Another meeting of the ships, another splice, and 
 another commencement of the laying followed ; 
 but before 100 miles had been laid, a stoppage of 
 signals occurred between the two ships. In this 
 case, the cable had broken on board neither of the 
 ships, nor was any difference of strain indicated 
 upon the cable \ the inevitable conclusion, therefore, 
 was that the break had occurred in the depths of 
 the ocean, but from what cause was never known. 
 
 The vessels again met, and resolved to proceed 
 to Cork for further instructions. These instruc- 
 tions were to re-coal and to proceed to sea for 
 another attempt. The perseverance shown was 
 upon this occasion crowned with success. The 
 splice was made at one o'clock p.m. on July the 
 29th, 1858 ; and early on the morning of the 6th 
 of August the Atlantic was bridged by a tele- 
 graph, from which time until half-past one o'clock 
 p.m. on September the ist, the cable continued 
 intermittently in use. Altogether, 400 messages, 
 averaging rather over ten words each, were trans- 
 mitted by the first Atlantic cable. 
 
 The difficulty of working through the 1858 cable 
 was always exceedingly great, and at length all 
 attempts to transmit signals through it failed. 
 Various efforts to " underrun " or to raise the cable 
 were made, hoping the faulty part might be 
 reached and rectified, but all to no purpose, and 
 the entire cable was at length reluctantly abandoned. 
 Several years elapsed before another attempt 
 was made to put telegraphic connection between 
 the two continents, and the time was employed in 
 making experiments upon the best form of cable, 
 and the means of submerging it. In 1865 all was 
 again ready ; an improved cable 2,300 miles in 
 length had been constructed, and the Great 
 Eastern, steamship — the only suitable vessel — was 
 employed to receive the whole of its vast bulk, in 
 three separate coils, weighing together 4,000 tons. 
 In July the Great Eastern started from Valentia, and 
 she had proceeded about ten days on her journey, 
 paying out considerably more than 1,000 miles 
 of the cable, when it suddenly snapped from over- 
 straining. Attempts were made to recover the 
 parted end of the cable by dredging along the 
 bottom of the ocean with powerful grapnels, but 
 
 after some days had been spent in this work, and 
 all the material available for the purpose had been 
 exhausted, the effort was reluctantly abandoned. 
 Careful note was taken, however, of the latitude 
 and longitude of the spot where the cable had dis- 
 appeared, and buoys were placed to mark it. 
 
 The want of success which had hitherto attended 
 the operations did not discourage the projectors, 
 nor prevent the public from again displaying con- 
 fidence in the eventual result, by subscribing the 
 necessary capital. By the following year another 
 cable had been made, and the Gt'eat Easterti. was 
 again chartered for its submersion. On this voyage 
 it was attended by three other vessels, the Terrible, 
 the Medway, and the Albany, for it was designed not 
 only to lay another cable, but to make every effort to 
 recover and complete that of 1865. On the 13th 
 of July, 1866, this expedition started from Valentia 
 as before ; and on the 27th of the same month the 
 Great Eastern reached Newfoundland, having this 
 time brought its mission to a triumphant end, by 
 leaving a continuous cable in its track. Congratu- 
 latory measures were immediately exchanged be- 
 tween the two shores, and the attendant vessels 
 then proceeded in search of the buoys which 
 marked the spot where the 1865 cable had vanished. 
 One of these buoys was found, although others had 
 been carried away by the storms ; and the Great 
 Eastern arriving on the spot a few days afterwards, 
 the telegraphic flotilla commenced another scries of 
 drcdgings to get hold of the cable. It was hooked 
 several times, and raised a considerable distance, 
 but slipped down again. 
 
 At length, after the search had proceeded in this 
 way for nearly three weeks, the end of the cable 
 was caught and retained on the ist of September, 
 and the long line of more than 1,000 miles proved 
 to remain uninjured. A splice was then made with 
 the portion of the same cable conveyed by the 
 expedition for that purpose, and within a week this 
 cable also was completed. 
 
 CEREMONY AMONG SAVAGES. 
 
 Disraeli, in his " Curiosities of Literature," has 
 some curious remarks on the customs of different 
 nations in their modes of salutation. The Philip- 
 pine Islander, he says, in saluting a friend, takes 
 hold of his hand or foot and rubs it on his own 
 face. The Lapland salutation is even more peculiar ; 
 when they meet they rub their noses together. A 
 traveller named Houtman tells us that to be polite 
 in the islands situated in the Straits of the Sound 
 is a matter of considerable difficulty, and then he 
 describes his own reception : " They raised my left 
 foot, which they passed gently over my right leg, 
 and from thence over my face.'' 
 An Ethiopian takes the robe of another and ties 
 
200 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 it about his own waist, so that he leaves his friend 
 half naked. " This custom," says Disraeh, " of 
 undressing on these occasions takes other forms : 
 sometimes men place themselves naked before the 
 person whom they salute, to show their humility, 
 and that they are unworthy of appearing in his 
 presence. This was practised before Sir Joseph 
 Banks, when he received the visit of two people 
 of Otaheite. The Japanese only take off a slipper, 
 the people of Arracan their sandals in the street, 
 and their stockings in the house." 
 
 In personal civilities the Chinese surpass all 
 nations, dealing in the most extravagant compli- 
 ments and loving greetings in the market-place. 
 If two people meet after a long separation, they 
 both fall on their knees and bend the face to the 
 earth, and this ceremony is repeated two or three 
 times. Their expressions are as exaggerated as 
 their gestures. If a Chinese is asked after his 
 health, "Very well, thanks to your abundant felicity." 
 If you render him a service, " My thanks shall be 
 immortal." If you praise him, " How shall I daYe 
 to persuade myself of what you say to me?" The 
 strangest part of the system is, that these replies 
 are prescribed by a regular academy of compliments. 
 There are determined the number of bows, the 
 genuflexions, the salutations, and the gestures of 
 the whole nation. The lower orders are as punctilious 
 as the grandees, and ambassadors pass forty days 
 in practice before they are allowed to appear at 
 court. _________ 
 
 ^iirmal Sagadtij. 
 —   — 
 
 Remarkable Instinct of the Martin. — 
 For some years the writer occupied a cottage near 
 Esher. Under the trcllised porch was a martin's 
 nest, which was repaired every season for at least 
 three years, and from which a brood of four or five 
 young birds took their flight year by year. The 
 porch was covered with zinc, and the nest was built 
 against the wall, close against the angle formed by 
 the slanting sides of the roof. One morning, before 
 the brood was hatched, one of the old birds was 
 found in the porch dead, owing probably to the un- 
 usual heat of the sun shining upon the zinc cover- 
 ing, which was only a few inches above the nest. 
 Opposite the porch, and separated from it by the width 
 of the garden walk, was an arch of wire covered with 
 roses and honeysuckles. About eleven o'clock on 
 the morning of the day when the bird had been found 
 dead, the writer's attention was attracted by an un- 
 usual twittering, and looking towards the porch, 
 he observed a martin, which he presumed to be the 
 male bird, flying in and out of the porch on to the 
 arch, and evidently endeavouring to coax another 
 bird into his snug quarters. After a while the second 
 martin took several short flights, and dived under the 
 porch along with her companion, who twittered and 
 
 flew round her in a state of the greatest ex- 
 citement. This continued for about half an hour, 
 until the stranger took possession of the nest, where 
 she finally hatched the brood. 
 
 A Camel's Revenge.— A valuable camel, work- 
 ing in an oil mill in Africa, was severely beaten by 
 its driver. Perceiving that the camel had treasured 
 up the injury, and was only waiting a favourable 
 opportunity for revenge, he kept a strict watch upon 
 the animal. Time passed away ; the camel, per- 
 ceiving that it was watched, was quiet and obedient, 
 and the driver began to think that the beating was 
 forgotten, when one night, after the lapse of several 
 months, the man was sleeping on a raised platform 
 in the mill, whilst, as is customary, the camel was 
 stabled in a corner. Happening to awake, the 
 driver observed by the bright moonlight that, when 
 all was quiet, the animal looked cautiously around, 
 rose softly, and stealing towards a spot where a 
 bundle of clothes and a bernous, thrown carelessly 
 on the ground, resembled a sleeping figure, cast 
 itself with violence upon them, rolling with all its 
 weight, and tearing them most viciously with its 
 teeth. Satisfied that its revenge was complete, the 
 camel was returning to its corner, when the driver 
 sat up and spoke. At the sound of his voice, and 
 perceiving the mistake it had made, the animal was 
 so mortified at the failure and discovery of its 
 scheme, that it dashed its head against the wall 
 and died on the spot. 
 
 A Pointer's Contempt. — In proof of the dis- 
 like a pointer will show to a bad shot, Mr. Jesse 
 adduces the following anecdote, given on reliable 
 authority. A gentleman, on his requesting the 
 loan of a pointer dog from a friend, was informed 
 by him that the dog would behave very well so long 
 as he could kill his birds ; but if he frequently 
 missed fire, it would run home and leave him. 
 The dog was sent, and the following day was fixed 
 for trial ; but, unfortunately, his new master was 
 a remarkably bad shot. Bird after bird rose and 
 was fired at, but still pursued its flight untouched, 
 till at last the pointer became careless, and often 
 missed his game. As if seemingly willing, how- 
 ever, to give one chance more, he made a dead stop 
 at a fern-bush, with his nose pointed downward, 
 the fore-foot bent, and his tail straight and steady. 
 In this position he remained firm till the sportsman 
 was close to him with both barrels cocked ; then, 
 moving steadily forward for a few paces, he at last 
 stood still near a bunch of heather, the tail express- 
 ing the anxiety of the mind by moving regularly 
 backwards and forwards. At last out sprang a 
 fine old blackcock. Bang ! bang ! went both 
 barrels, but the bird escaped unhurt. The patience 
 of the dog was now quite exhausted, and, instead of 
 dropping to charge, he turned boldly round, placed 
 his tail between his legs, gave one howl, long and 
 loud, and set off as fast as he could to his own home. 
 
THE WONDERS OF LIGHT. 
 
 pepper's ghost. 
 
 THE WONDERS OF LIGHT. 
 
 Just as an india-rubber ball bounds from any 
 surface it strikes against, so light is reflected from 
 any object which lies in its path. Perhaps this 
 comparison is hardly correct ; for all the light does 
 not rebound from the reflecting surface, but only a 
 portion of the ray is reflected, the rest either being 
 absorbed by the body, or, if the body be transparent, 
 passing through it. The quantity of light which is 
 thus reflected entirely depends on the state of the 
 surface. Silver, for example, which admits of a very 
 high polish, when excessively bright reflects almost 
 all the rays which fall upon it ; whereas, if its 
 surface be dull, only very few are thrown back. 
 Any surface which is not highly polished is really 
 made up of innumerable small projections, which 
 the process of polishing either lays flat or shaves 
 off ; and when a beam of light strikes such a 
 surface, each of these projections throws back some 
 of it, and scatters the light in a thousand ways — or, 
 as science expresses it, the light is dispersed. This 
 
 26 
 
 is the reason why you cannot see your face in a 
 sheet of paper ; the light which shines from your 
 face reaches the paper, but instead of being thrown 
 back regularly, as it is by a polished surface, it is 
 scattered in every direction. 
 
 If the surface be perfectly smooth, the light which 
 comes from any object is reflected from the surface 
 unbroken, just as it comes from the object, and, 
 therefore, carries an image of the object to the eye. 
 This is the case with a looking-glass ; and it wiU 
 be noticed that the image is apparently just as far 
 behind the glass as the object is really before it. 
 This fact has been ingeniously taken advantage of 
 to exhibit that popular wonder, Pepper's ghost. 
 The appearance of this mysterious spectre is at 
 once explained by our sketch. The " original " of 
 the ghost is below the stage, highly illuminated by 
 the oxy-hydrogcn light. The reflection of this 
 figure is thrown upon the audience by the sheet of 
 plate glass erected on the front of the stage. This 
 glass is invisible on account of the gloom which 
 always surrounds the appearance of a ghost. Of 
 
THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 course the actor behind the glass does not see the 
 spectre, but a warning from an accomplice tells 
 him of the " mysterious presence." The illusion is 
 really wonderful ; but how often has the reader, 
 sitting in the dusk of the early winter evening, 
 before the gas was lit, seen the reflection of the 
 fire in the window ? and had he been ignorant of 
 the existence of the glass, he well might have 
 supposed that there was a fire in the garden. 
 
 That other wonder, which has astonished crowded 
 audiences — "The Sphynx" — is only another illustra- 
 tion of this property of light. The exhibitor prepares 
 a three-legged table, and fits two sheets of looking- 
 glass from one leg to the other two legs — that side 
 of the table which has no looking-glass between its 
 legs is away from the audience. The floor of the 
 stage is covered with green baize, and the sides and 
 back are hung with plain red material. The audience 
 see the reflection of the sides from the looking- 
 glasses, and fancy they are looking under the table 
 to the back of the stage. Of course, the owner of 
 the head is kneeling under the table. The conjuror 
 carefully abstains from going behind the table, or 
 another wonder, not included in his startling pro- 
 gramme, would be produced — that of a legless 
 wizard ! 
 
 VENETIAN GLASS. 
 
 Venice possessed the art of glass-making almost 
 as early as the foundation of the city itself An 
 immense trade in beads, imitations of pearl and 
 precious stones, was carried on with the coasts of 
 Asia and of Africa, and extended to India and to 
 China. The revival of art in Italy improved the 
 design and colours of Venice glass ; her mirrors, 
 her table-glass, of variegated colours and spiral 
 stems, her bottles and cups, obtained high reputa- 
 tion, and for a time supplied the wants of Europe, 
 Africa, and Asia. Judging from curious specimens 
 extant, the Venetian glass-blowers must have been 
 skilful artists. A glass Venetian knife-handle, with 
 a coating of white transparent glass, including dif- 
 ferently-coloured glass fused into one variegated 
 mass, is very beautiful, and the Venetian ball is a 
 similar specimen of ingenuity. But the white glass 
 of Venice was far inferior in pellucid refractibility 
 to modern English crystal glass. The finest ancient 
 Venetian glass is rather celebrated for its lightness 
 than crystalline beauty. The Venetians also origi- 
 nated the modern style of glass engraving : the 
 first specimen was scratched with a diamond, or 
 broken steel file, but the engravings produced by 
 copper and lead wheels are far superior. The 
 Vertetians also revived the curious ancient art of 
 forming mosaic glass pictures, and in the present 
 day Venice is unrivalled for its cheap and excellent 
 glass bugles and beads. The Venetians were cele- 
 brated for their filagree spirally twisted white and 
 
 coloured enamel glasses, cased in transparent glass, 
 much used in the stems of wine-glasses ; viillefiore 
 glass — ends of fancy-coloured tubes, cut sectionally 
 at right angles with the filagree cone, to form lozenges 
 and tablets, massed together by transparent glass ; 
 and vitro di trino — fine lace-work, intersected with 
 white enamel or transparent glass, in diamond- 
 shaped sections, the centre of each having an air- 
 bubble, executed almost with the precision of engine 
 lathe-turning. 
 
 THE ITALIAN POISONERS. 
 
 The wonderful lengths to which human nature can 
 go in a course of deliberate and atrocious crime 
 are nowhere more strongly exemplified than in the 
 history of the secret poisoners of Italy and other 
 countries. With Italy their diabolical art is more 
 particularly identified, but, unhappily, it has not 
 been confined to any nation or time. There are 
 traces of its practice among the ancient Greeks, and 
 allusions to it are frequent with the Roman writers. 
 We are told, among other instances, that the 
 Empress Agrippina, being determined to compass 
 the death of Claudius, her husband, ordered an 
 infamous woman named Locusta to procure for her 
 a poison which should slowly consume him in mind 
 and body, and that this was administered to him in 
 a dish of mushrooms. Nero, the son of Agrippina, 
 afterwards employed the same woman's agency to 
 get rid of his relative and rival Britannicus, and 
 not only liberally rewarded her, but gave her pupils 
 whom she was to instruct in the processes of her 
 fiendish art. Its secrets were but too well trans- 
 mitted to after ages, for in Rome and Italy generally 
 it appears to have been continually practised, and 
 it prevailed enormously in the sixteenth and seven- 
 teenth centuries. The Borgias — Pope Alexander 
 VI. and his children Ca;sar and Lucrezia — will for 
 ever be infamous for this among other crimes, and 
 the father at last met his death through poison pre- 
 pared for some of the cardinals, but partaken of 
 both by himself and his son through the misplacing 
 of some vessels at a banquet. 
 
 About the middle of the seventeenth century, the 
 practice of secret poisoning reached its height in 
 Rome. It became the subject of common remark 
 that great numbers of husbands died shortly after 
 marriage, and the clergy, who were in the constant 
 habit of hearing confessions, made known to the 
 government the fearful prevalence of the crime of 
 poisoning, although without betraying the names 
 of individual criminals. A careful search was made 
 to discover the prime movers in the matter, and 
 attention was drawn to a society of young married 
 women who were in the habit of meeting at the 
 house of an old " fortune-teller " named Hicronyma 
 Spara. A woman was engaged to visit this house 
 in the guise of a lady of rank, and by her means it 
 
THE ITALIAN POISONERS. 
 
 was discovered that Spara was a preparer and 
 seller of poisons, and that large numbers of the 
 women of Rome were in her confidence. Spara 
 was put to the torture and hanged, with several of 
 her accomplices ; many were whipped through the 
 streets, and others, of the highest rank, were heavily 
 fined and banished. 
 
 Spara had a successor in her diabolical trade in 
 a woman named Tophania or Tofana, who prac- 
 tised it extensively in the cities of Palermo and 
 Naples. According to some writers, Spara herself 
 had learnt it from this Tophania, who, at any rate, 
 was second to none in the extent to which she 
 engaged in it. She is said to have carried it on, 
 and eluded the efforts of the police, for nearly half 
 a century — from her very girlhood to old age. It 
 was her practice, when in danger of arrest, to take 
 refuge in the sanctuary of a monastery or convent, 
 and from one of these places she was at last forced 
 by a band of soldiers under the command of the 
 Viceroy of Naples. Both the clergy and the people 
 were highly indignant at this violation of what they 
 considered the sacred right of refuge in such a holy 
 place ; but the Viceroy was firm. He produced a 
 revulsion in the popular feeling by ordering a report 
 to be spread that Tophania had poisoned the wells, 
 and then had her strangled and her body thrown 
 back into the building from which she had been 
 taken, that the clergy might have the satisfaction 
 of giving her burial. Being tortured before her 
 death, she confessed to having been instrumental 
 in the poisoning of 600 persons. 
 
 The liquid sold by this woman in small phials was 
 known as aqua Tophania; a few drops were suffi- 
 cient to kill a man, and its strength was so regu- 
 lated that death might be produced from its effects 
 either instantaneously, or at any interval, from days 
 to months. It was colourless and tasteless, and 
 gave rise to no suspicion on administration. All 
 the phials of the aqua bore the inscription, " Manna 
 of St. Nicholas of Bari," with an image of the saint. 
 From the tomb of this saint the people believed 
 that there exuded at times an oil of miraculous 
 power, and the deadly phials were therefore held too 
 sacred for examination, even when they passed 
 through the hands of the officers of the customs. 
 
 In the time of Tophania, as well as previously, to 
 such an awful extent did slow poisoning prevail, 
 that it was a very common practice for ladies to 
 keep on their toilet-tables, among their scent- 
 bottles, &c., a phial of this fatal mixture, the qualities 
 and design of which were known only to them- 
 selves. 
 
 The arts of the Italian poisoners were trans- 
 mitted to France, where also they were so largely 
 practised that Madame de Sevigne expressed her 
 belief that Frenchmen and poisoners would become 
 synonymous terms. The case of the greatest 
 notoriety in that country was that of the Marchioness 
 
 BrinviUiers, a young and profligate woman, who was 
 taught the art of poisoning by an officer named 
 Sainte Croix. He himself had learnt it from an 
 Italian while in prison with him in the Bastile, 
 where he had been placed by the influence of the 
 father of the marchioness. This wicked woman 
 set to work in the most deliberate way to make 
 herself an adept in the science, experimenting on 
 animals, and then on the sick in the hospitals, 
 whom she visited under the guise of charity. The 
 firstfruits of her diabolical skill were shown in the 
 poisoning of her father and her brothers. She then 
 extended her practice to any one against whom she 
 entertained a dislike, or by whose death she or her 
 accomplice might hope to reap advantage. To 
 some of their preparations they gave the name of 
 " succession powder," meaning a powder to pro- 
 mote the succession to an estate. The marchioness 
 attempted to poison her husband, but Sainte Croix 
 secretly gave him antidotes to preserve him ! Their 
 crimes were at last revealed by a singular accident, 
 which seemed like a providential retribution. 
 
 Sainte Croix, while preparing his poisons, was in 
 the habit of wearing a glass mask, to protect him- 
 self against their deadly fumes. One day, having 
 been probably less careful in affixing it than usual, 
 this guard dropped from his face, and he was found 
 suffocated in his laboratory. The Government, 
 obtaining information of his death, caused his 
 effects to be searched, and there was found among 
 them a box addressed to the marchioness, with a 
 letter affixed to it, urgently requesting that if it 
 could not be delivered to her it should be burnt. 
 This was sufficient to excite curiosity ; the box was 
 opened, and in it were found prepared poisons of 
 every conceivable kind and degree of strength, all 
 labelled with their effects as proved by actual 
 experiment. 
 
 A servant who came forward to claim his master's 
 goods was arrested and put to torture ; he con- 
 fessed a full knowledge of the crimes which had 
 been so long unsuspected, and was sentenced to be 
 broken upon the wheel. The marchioness escaped 
 to England, and, after a stay of three years in this 
 country, went to a convent in Liege ; but an officer 
 pursued her in the disguise of an abbe, obtained 
 admittance and an interview with the fugitive, and 
 so far gained her confidence as to prevail upon her 
 to leave the convent walls on an excursion. When 
 clear of the sanctuary, he made himself known and 
 arrested her. Among her effects in the convent 
 was found a paper containing a complete catalogue 
 of her crimes, which included the confession that 
 she had set fire to houses, as well as caused the 
 death of a large number of persons by poison. But 
 I she denied everything when she was placed on her 
 \ trial in Paris. She was found guilty upon over- 
 I whelming evidence, and was sentenced to bo drawn 
 ^ through the streets upon a hurdle, with a rope 
 
204 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 round her neck, to the Cathedral of Notre Dame, 
 and afterwards to be beheaded, her body burned, 
 and her ashes scattered to the winds. This sen- 
 tence was carried into effect ; but some of the 
 people sought her ashes, and preserved them as 
 those of a saint ! 
 
 Kotwithstanding this terrible example, secret 
 poisoning continued to prevail in France, and a 
 secret tribunal, known as the Chambre ardcnte, or 
 Fiery Chamber, was appointed, in 1679, to search 
 out the poison-dealers and their followers. Two 
 of the dealers, both women, were discovered and 
 burnt alive, and several of their accomplices were 
 hanged or otherwise punished, those of the highest 
 rank generally escaping after a brief imprisonment. 
 
 THE FIRE SYRINGE. 
 
 All things differ in their capabilities of containing 
 heat. Any one may easily satisfy himself of this 
 fact by putting two jars of different liquids, say 
 water and quicksilver, at the same distance before 
 the same fire for the same length of time. If now 
 the experimenter dip his finger into the jars, he 
 will find that the quicksilver is very much hotter 
 than the water. How is this ? for the same quantity 
 of heat has entered each liquid. The secret is, 
 that the water is more capable of containing heat 
 than the quicksilver. Just as if a few drops of 
 water fell on a sponge and some on the floor ; in 
 the latter case the water would lie on the surface, 
 and be easily seen ; in the former the sponge would 
 absorb it, and not even appear damp. Thus we 
 should say the sponge had a greater "capacity" 
 for water than the floor. 
 
 The specific heat of water, as this capacity for 
 containing heat is scientifically termed, is gi'eater 
 than that of any other substance — a wonderful pro- 
 vision ; for, when we consider the vast surface of 
 water which is exposed to the rays of the sun, we 
 shall see that the ocean acts as a great reservoir of 
 heat, and equalises the temperature of the climates 
 of countries which bound its waters. 
 
 Where the sea is very distant, as in the centre of 
 continents, the extremes of temperature are very 
 great. In the centre of Africa the cold in the night 
 freezes the pools of water ; while the sun in the day 
 absolutely scorches the face of the earth. 
 
 Bodies under altered circumstances have different 
 powers of containing heat. This is the case with 
 gases especially. When they are compressed they 
 cannot contain so much heat as when more rare- 
 fied. It is chiefly due to this fact that the tops 
 of high mountains are covered with eternal snow. 
 The air is very rarefied, and as the rays of the sun 
 stream through it, its temperature is raised but very 
 little ; hence the cold of those regions. The reader 
 may have noticed that, when a bottle of champagne 
 
 or of soda-water is uncorked a white smoke issues 
 out of the bottle. The unlearned are accustomed 
 to pronounce this to be carbonic acid gas, but 
 unfortunately such gas is quite invisible. The true 
 explanation of the wonder is that the air and gas 
 between the cork and the liquid is in a state of great 
 compression. The moment the cork is blown out 
 the air expands : when it was compressed it had a 
 certain temperature ; and now, when rarefied, 
 having acquired a greater capacity for heat, it 
 absorbs the heat instead of throwing it out ; or, in 
 other words, its temperature falls. Now, having 
 been in contact with water, it is full of moisture, 
 which this sudden fall of temperature condenses. 
 This white smoke, therefore, is a little cloud of mist. 
 
 The fire syringe shows the very opposite effect. 
 It is a tube of strong glass, or of brass, stopped at 
 one end, in which an air-tight piston moves. The 
 end of this piston is hollow, so that a little piece of 
 tinder or amadou may be placed in it. When the 
 piston is suddenly forced down, the air, being com- 
 pressed, has its capacity for heat lessened, and 
 therefore is compelled to give out that which it con- 
 tained, and so the tinder is ignited. 
 
 Doubtless on this principle may be explained the 
 frequent accidents which have happened by the ex* 
 ploding of gun-cotton when rammed into a gun. 
 
 THE DIONiEA, OR VENUS' FLY-TRAP. 
 
 Fly-traps are well known in the animal kingdom 
 to every one who has eyes, or at least who uses 
 them. The delicate web of the spider, and the 
 deeply cut and broad mouth of the swallow, at once 
 suggest themselves as illustrations from among our 
 British animals. The spider, sitting at home at 
 ease, waits the entanglement of his prey in his stake- 
 nets, while the swallow opens his large sweep-net, 
 and, dashing through myriads of May-flies or clouds 
 of midges, secures hundreds of them. Both ani- 
 mals thus obtain their food ; and other singular fly- 
 traps could be enumerated from the animal king- 
 dom equally well adapted to supply the necessities of 
 their different owners. But that a vegetable should 
 have an exquisitely constructed and perfect ap- 
 paratus of this kind is very remarkable, when it 
 is remembered that plants differ very markedly 
 from animals in regard to their food. For, while 
 animals live on organised substances — that is, on 
 plants or other animals — vegetables live on inorganic 
 substances, and a plant or an animal is of use to 
 a living vegetable only when by decay it is resolved 
 into its inorganic constituents. It is, then, unlikely 
 that a fly could supply a plant with food, and yet a 
 more perfect fly-trap than the leaves of the diona^a 
 cannot be imagined. 
 
 This little plant is a native of the sandy bogs in 
 the pine barrens of Carolina, in the United States. 
 
THE DION^A, OR VENUS' FLY-TRAP. 
 
 205 
 
 THE DION/liA. 
 
 It grows to a height of from six to twelve inches, 
 producing a loose head of large whitish flowers, not 
 unlike the flower of the Lady's Smock, so common 
 in English meadows. The flower-stalk rises from 
 a rosette of yellowish-green leaves, spreading on 
 the ground. Each leaf is divided by a deep in- 
 cision into two portions, the lower being a broadly- 
 winged footstalk, and the upper the blade or true 
 leaf itself. This upper portion is the fly-trap — the 
 most curious part of the plant — and demands a 
 careful description. It is roundish, and divided into 
 two equal parts by a strong mid-rib. The margins 
 are fringed with a row of strong spiny bristles, 
 so that it maybe likened to two upper eyelids joined 
 at their bases. The leaf is a httle hollow on either 
 side of the mid-rib, the upper surface is dotted with 
 minute reddish glands, and each hollow is furnished 
 with three slender bristles. The sensitiveness of 
 the leaf chiefly resides in these bristles. If an insect 
 alights on the leaf, and touches one or more of them, 
 the sides suddenly close with a force so great as to 
 imprison the little creature, notwithstanding all its 
 efforts to escape. The fringe of bristles on the op- 
 posite sides of the leaf interlace like the fingers of the 
 two hands clasped together, or like the teeth of a steel 
 trap. The insect is not crushed or suddenly des- 
 troyed, but is retained firmly imprisoned until it 
 ceases to move, which would generally mean until 
 it was dead, and then the leaf slowly expands. 
 Curtis, in his interesting account of the plant, says 
 
 he has " often liberated captive flies and spiders, 
 which sped away as fast as fear or joy could hasten 
 them." 
 
 The first description given in England of this 
 curious plant was by Ellis, who formed a some- 
 what fanciful notion of the functions of the different 
 parts of the leaf. The minute red glands, appear- 
 ing, when magnified, like " compressed arbutus 
 berries," were the bait scattered over its upper 
 surface, which " perhaps discharge sweet liquor, 
 and so tempt the unhappy insect to taste them. 
 The instant these tender parts are touched by its 
 feet the two lobes rise up, grasp it fast, lock the 
 rows of spines together, and squeeze it to death ; 
 and, further, lest the strong efforts for life in the 
 creature thus taken should serve to disengage it, 
 three small erect spines are fixed in the middle of 
 each lobe, that effectually put an end to all its 
 struggles." The illustration which we give of this 
 singular plant will serve to show the reader more 
 plainly the action of the " fly-trap." 
 
 The two lobes are enfolded at night, but spread 
 open in the day. When the bristles are irritated 
 by man, the leaf quickly closes, remains closed for 
 a short time, then slowly expands ready to close 
 again if newly irritated. But if it be caused to 
 make repeated efforts at short intervals, its move- 
 ments become languid, or the sensibility is alto- 
 gether exhausted, and is recovered only by a period 
 of repose. 
 
206 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 FIERY DRAGONS. 
 
 Among the most marvellous physical phenomena 
 must be included the Fiery Dragons, or Fiery 
 Drakes, which, at very remote periods, have been 
 observed in the heavens. They have been so called 
 from their fancied resemblance to the supposed 
 dragon and serpent. The drake was originally 
 called a " brenning " or " dipsas." Reference is 
 made to this reptile in Drayton's " Nymphidia :" 
 
 " By the hissing of the snake, 
 The rustHng of \^<i.fire-drakt." 
 
 And again in the tragedy of " Caesar and Pompey" 
 (a.d. 1607) allusion is made thereto : — 
 
 "So have I seen A/ire-drttke glide along 
 Before a dying min, to point his grave. 
 And in it stick and hide." 
 
 These fire-drakes, however, must not be con- 
 founded with the " ignus fatuus," or " will-o'-the- 
 wisp," which manifestation is of common occur- 
 rence, nor with that " light o'er graves " to which 
 the Irish poet refers in his " Melodies." 
 
 In the year 1532 flying dragons were seen in 
 various countries — and possibly for the first time — 
 " flying by flocks or companies in the ayre, having 
 swines' snowtes ; and sometimes were there scene 
 foure hundred flying togithir." So remarks the 
 author of the "Contemplation of Mysteries" 
 (published during the reign of Queen Elizabeth), 
 who, oddly enough, ascribes this wonder to the 
 " poUicie of devils and inchantments of the 
 wicked." The following is his quaint descrip- 
 tion of this remarkable phenomenon : — "The flying 
 dragon is when a fume kindled appeereth bended, 
 and is in the middle wrythed like the belly of a 
 dragon ; but in the fore part, for the narrow- 
 nesse, it representeth the figure of the neck, from 
 whence the sparkes are breathed or forced forth 
 with the same breathing." 
 
 In a singular book printed in London in the year 
 1704, entitled, "A Wonderful History of all the 
 Storms, Hurricanes, Earthquakes, &c.," there is an 
 account of " fiery dragons and fiery drakes appear- 
 ing in the air." These strange, and indeed startling 
 sights, have appeared under certain peculiar and 
 favourable conditions of the atmosphere, and, philo- 
 sophically considered, are easily and satisfactorily 
 accounted for. When vapours of an inflammable 
 kind collected in the air and ascended to a cold 
 region, the vehement agitation thereby produced 
 induced a flame. The highest part, being more 
 subtle, assumed the singular form of what was 
 presumed to be the dragon's neck, and then, having 
 been made crooked by the repulse it received, 
 formed the dragon's belly, while the hind part, 
 turned upwards by the force of the same collision, 
 represented the monster's tail. Then, with im- 
 petuous motion, it fled through the heavens — all 
 
 ablaze, as it were — striking deadly terror into the 
 hearts of the ignorant and superstitious. 
 
 Blout thus observes of this astronomical marvel: 
 " There is a fire sometimes seen flying in the night 
 like a dragon ; it is called a fire-drake. Common 
 people think it is a spirit that keeps some treasure 
 hid, but philosophers affirm it to be a great unequal 
 exhalation inflamed between two clouds — the one 
 hot, the other cold (which is the reason why it 
 smokes) ; the middle part whereof, according to 
 the proportion of the hot cloud, being greater than 
 the rest, makes it seem like a belly, and both ends 
 like a head and tail." 
 
 In the " Statistical Account of Scotland," pub- 
 lished in Edinburgh a.d. 1793, we are informed 
 that rare appearances were noticed in the air about 
 the end of November and the beginning of Decem- 
 ber, 1792. The country people called these very 
 uncommon sights by the appellation of "dragons." 
 They had " a red fiery colour," we are told ; ap- 
 peared first in the north, and then flew rapidly in 
 an easterly direction. Many people regarded such 
 phenomena with terror, whilst others considered 
 that they were the sure harbingers of fierce winds 
 and boisterous weather, and their suppositions 
 proved correct. 
 
 MEN WITH TAILS. 
 
 Colonel du Corret, a French traveller, in a 
 report to the French Academy of Science, gave the 
 following account of his inquiries into the existence 
 of such a race, which has been often questioned : — 
 
 " 1 inhabited Mecca in 1842, and being often at 
 the house of an Emir with whom I was intimate, I 
 spoke to him of the Ghilane race, and told him how 
 much the Europeans doubted of the existence of 
 men with tails — the vertebral column elongated 
 externally. In order to convince me of the reality 
 of the species, the Emir ordered before me one of 
 his slaves, called Belial, who was about thirty years 
 old, who had a tail, and who belonged to this tribe. 
 On surveying this man, 1 was thoroughly convinced. 
 He spoke Arabic well, and appeared rather intelli- 
 gent. 
 
 " He told me that in his country, far beyond the 
 Sennaar, they spoke a different language ; that of 
 his compatriots, whom he estimated at 30,000 or 
 40,000, some worshipped the sun, moon, and stars ; 
 others the serpent, and the sources of an immense 
 river, in which they immolated their victims — 
 probably the sources of the Nile ; that they ate 
 with delight raw flesh, and that human flesh was 
 their favourite food. This Ghilane had become a 
 devout Mussulman, and had lived fifteen years in 
 the Holy City. 
 
 " Belial was thin, but nervous and strong. His 
 skin was black-bronzed, shining, and soft to the 
 touch like velvet. His feet were long and flat ; his 
 
SOME WONDERFUL BIRDS. 
 
 207 
 
 arms and legs appeared feeble, but well supplied 
 with muscles ; his ribs could easily be counted. 
 His face was repulsively ugly: his mouth was 
 enormous ; his lips thick ; his teeth strong, sharp, 
 and very white ; his nose broad and flat ; his ears 
 long and deformed ; his forehead low and very 
 receding ; his hair not very woolly or thick, but 
 nevertheless curly. He had no beard, and his body 
 was not hairy. He was very active and hardy ; his 
 height was about five feet. His tail was more than 
 three inches long, and almost as flexible as that of 
 a monkey. His disposition, setting aside oddities 
 in taste and habits, was good ; and his fidelity to 
 his master was beyond all praise." 
 
 ; THE ARABIAN HORSE. 
 
 It is only (says Colonel Chesney) in Arabia that 
 the horse is found in a state bordering upon perfec- 
 tion. Here he is remarkable for a small head with 
 pointed ears, peculiarly clean muscular limbs, a 
 corresponding delicate slender shape, rather small 
 size, and large animated eyes, expressing that 
 intelligence which, as in the dog, is the consequence 
 of being constantly with the members of his master's 
 family — in fact, he generally shares their meals. 
 He is frequently allowed to frolic through the camp 
 like a dog ; and at other times he is piqueted at 
 the entrance of the tent. He is exposed to the 
 ■weather at all times ; and, compared to the treat- 
 ment of his species in Europe, he is scantily fed. 
 A meal after sunset, consisting of barley in some 
 parts of the country, and camel's milk in others, 
 or a paste of dates and water, sometimes mixed 
 with dried clover and other herbs, constitute his 
 usual sustenance ; but on any extraordinary exertion 
 being required, flesh is frequently given, either raw 
 or boiled. 
 
 The Bedawins count five noble breeds of horses, 
 all, as they say, derived originally from Nedjid (the 
 desert region of Arabia). Of these there are many 
 ■branches ; and there are other breeds which are con- 
 sidered secondary ; while every mare of noble blood, 
 if particularly swift and handsome, may give rise to 
 a new stock. The catalogue of distinct breeds in the 
 desert is therefore almost endless, and the pedigrees 
 of individuals are verified by certificates which are 
 handed down from father to son with infinite care ; 
 and not unfrequently they belong to more than one 
 family ; for there is often a copartnership in mares, 
 and hence arise the difficulties attending the 
 purchase of one. It is, however, certain that the 
 Arab horses deteriorate when taken elsewhere, 
 although both sire and dam may be of first-rate 
 breeds. By the latter, and not the former, as with 
 us, the Arabs trace the blood. 
 
 The number of horses in Arabia is comparatively 
 few ; their places, for almost every purpose in life, 
 being supplied by camels. 
 
 SOME WONDERFUL BIRDS. 
 
 Many strange old stories, which are so improbable 
 that they are not believed at the present time, 
 often have some truth in them, and many have 
 been founded on actual facts. Some great animal 
 may have excited the wonder of savages by whom 
 it was exterminated ; they may have told the 
 history of their hunting exploits and their dangers 
 to their children, who, in their turn, recounted to 
 their descendants the prowess and success of their 
 ancestors. No tale loses by repetition, and thus 
 a very wonderful legend often results from a very 
 simple and ordinary account of facts. The Asiatics 
 were particularly fond of illustrating their ancient 
 poetry and histories with scenes in which great 
 animals, whose forms are now unknown, played 
 very prominent parts. One story was of such a 
 character as to cover the great traveller Marco 
 Polo, who brought it from India, with ridicule. But 
 from some recent discoveries there would seem to 
 be some truth in it. The old story is that often, 
 when huge elephants roamed along the river side, 
 savage rhinoceroses, impatient of their presence, 
 rushed to attack them. The tall elephant, with 
 its long tusks and flexible trunk, was no match 
 for the short yet bulky rhinoceros, with a sharp 
 horn on its snout and a skin as thick as armour. 
 The rhinoceros was gored as it rushed between the 
 legs of the tusk-bearing elephant, but it ripped up 
 the stomach of its enemy with its horn. The 
 elephant, mortally wounded, fell on the beast 
 beneath it, and a great bird, the roc, caught both 
 of the carcases in its talons and flew away to its 
 haunt with them. 
 
 Several years since, some bones of a huge bird 
 were found in the islands of Madagascar and New 
 Zealand, and they were supposed to belong to 
 extinct birds which were very much the same in 
 shape ; but lately some of the remains of the 
 cpiornis of Madagascar (named from the Greek for 
 tall bird), have been studied by an anatomist, who 
 asserts that they belonged to a gigantic bird of 
 prey, like the condor of the Andes, or the eagle of 
 the mountains of Europe. The great bird was at 
 least ten feet high, and its eggs, many of which 
 were found with the bones, are fourteen inches 
 long. A bird of prey, with its leg-bones longer and 
 thicker than the corresponding bones of the largest 
 man that ever lived, and which had eggs six times 
 the size of those of the ostrich, and 148 times the 
 size of those of the common fowl, must have been 
 at least many times larger than the greatest condor. 
 If the condor and the eagle can carry off a goat 
 or a lamb, what might not the epiornis have 
 pounced upon and removed ? The condor has a 
 great length of wing, and swoops down from 8,000 
 to 10,000 feet with great velocity, and when it is 
 attacked will give much trouble to a single man. 
 
2o8 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 A condor two feet eight inches high has an expanse 
 of wing of about 9 J feet, so that the epiornis, 
 with his height of ten feet, would have measured 
 thirty-seven feet from the tip of one wing to that 
 of the other. If this new idea of the habits of the 
 epiornis is correct, the bird may certainly have 
 carried off ten times the weight that a condor could 
 lift. 
 
 It is very probable, when the nature of the soil in 
 which the bones of the epiornis have been found 
 is considered with a view to calculate the lapse of 
 time since it was depo- 
 sited, that there is some 
 reason to believe that 
 the first men who emi- 
 grated to Madagascar 
 destroyed the great bird. 
 It is therefore probable 
 that the great epiornis 
 was the roc of Indian 
 story, and that as years 
 progressed the truth was 
 lost sight of in the desire 
 for the marvellous. 
 
 There are somedoubts 
 whether the epiornis was 
 not like a huge bird whose 
 remains are often found 
 in the caves and bogs 
 of the islands of New 
 Zealand. This bird was 
 something like a gigantic 
 ostrich or cassowary. 
 It had bones more like 
 those of a beast than a 
 bird, as regards their 
 length and strength ; 
 and one kind had what 
 is called the drumstick 
 bone of the leg at least 
 three feet in length, whilst 
 another had a foot which 
 covered as much space 
 as the sole of an ele- 
 phant. The bones of 
 
 this great foot were as large as the toe-bones of 
 an elephant, and the whole bird must have been 
 about ten feet in height. It had no wings, 
 but a long neck and a small head. The tail 
 was short, and the legs enormously long. The 
 feathers were very hair-like, and there was no 
 power of flight. The bird could stalk along like 
 a fowl, could stride over many yards, and was able 
 to run and jump at a great pace. The huge toes 
 were admirably suited for scraping and grubbing 
 up the tough roots and other vegetable substances 
 which were the food of the bird. The Dinornis, 
 as the bird was called (from the Greek for awful 
 or huge bird), was not a bird of prey, but a shy and 
 
 SKELETON OF THE DINORNIS. 
 
 fleet creature, whose strength of leg was enormous. 
 Over-topping the tallest men, and having a long 
 erect neck and a proud-looking head, this bird 
 must have astonished the earliest native settlers of 
 New Zealand, who have left many stories concern- 
 ing the gigantic Moa, as they called the dinornis. 
 It is probable that the great bird was becoming 
 scarce when the savages first discovered and 
 colonised New Zealand, and it is certain that it 
 became extinct before the period of the last gene- 
 ration of the natives called Maories. Whilst this 
 greatest of all running- 
 birds has gone from off 
 the face of the earth, 
 a miniature of it has 
 lived on, and is one of 
 the wonders of New 
 Zealand, from its long 
 legs and bill, its hairy 
 feathers, and its want 
 of wings. Birds without 
 such wings as will enable 
 them to fly up easily, 
 are more liable to be 
 destroyed by men and 
 animals than the others, 
 and it is well known 
 that such wingless birds 
 existed only a short time 
 since in the north of 
 Europe and America, 
 but have now disap- 
 peared. Formerly, the 
 great auk darkened the 
 rocks in the North Sea, 
 but now the bird has 
 been destroyed, and a 
 living one has not been 
 seen for years. The 
 dinornis was a bird, and 
 although so gigantic, still 
 it was as much a bird as 
 the tiny humming-bird, 
 which rarely rests upon 
 its feet, whose weight is 
 that of a large fly, and whose wings are immense 
 for the size of the creature, and gleam with all the 
 colours of the rainbow. Nature adapted both of 
 these kinds of birds for their peculiar life, and made 
 certain parts of the body do the duty of others. 
 The honey-sucking humming-bird is as hght as 
 the leaf of the flower it feeds upon ; it flies on hour 
 after hour, and hardly ever alights, for the honey- 
 bearing flower would tilt over. The giant birds of 
 old, especially those of New Zealand, had to dig 
 up tough roots, and to get over tall ferns and low 
 scrub. As their weight rendered flying impossible, 
 they had to walk ; hence the wingless birds were 
 long-legged, strong toed, and had hairy feathers. 
 
A WONDERFUL COUNTRY. 
 
 •209 
 
 VIEW OF THE CANONS OF THE COLORADO. 
 
 A WONDERFUL COUNTRY. 
 
 On looking at a map of North America, a large 
 river, called the Colorado of the North, will be seen 
 to flow from the Rocky Mountains into the Gulf of 
 California, on the western side of the continent. 
 In one part of its course the river passes through 
 one of the most wonderful countries in the world. 
 There are vast plains, rising one beyond the other 
 like enormous steps, and they extend for great dis- 
 tances. Range after range of cliffs, with flat table- 
 lands upon them, are seen to stretch away as far as 
 the eye can reach. There is hardly a tree to be 
 seen, no grass exists, and an occasional cedar and 
 prickly pear are the only living things in the land- 
 27 
 
 scape. It IS burning hot by day — terribly dry and 
 shadeless ; but by night it is bitterly cold, and snow 
 often falls. None of the wild animals which abound 
 around the region ever come into it, and the rattle- 
 snake and scorpion live there as the sole possessors 
 of the soil. There is no water on the surface of the 
 land, yet the great river and its side streams run 
 through the country, and enormous volumes of 
 water are constantly passing along. In this consists 
 the chief wonder of the country, for the river has 
 cut its way through the earth, along deep crack- 
 like precipices, and it flows 6,000 feet below the 
 plain. In one deep vaHey the river is even a mile 
 from the surface. There are no sloping valleys, but 
 numberless caSons, as they arc called, which have 
 
210 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 straight sides, and are generally not more than 200 
 feet across. At the bottom of them there is always 
 a gloom, and they are now and then worn away 
 into extraordinary shapes, so that, as the light 
 changes, grand castles, great cathedrals, amphi- 
 theatres, pinnacles, and towers seem to appear and 
 disappear. All the water which falls on to the 
 plains r,bove speedily makes its way down the 
 precipices, and there are so many of them that a 
 man may soon get lost and be constantly in danger, 
 for they are most abrupt. 
 
 Often in the evening, when the sun is blazing 
 red on the plains, the canons are as daVk and cold 
 as dungeons ; and when everything is dried up and 
 arid, and travellers are dying from thirst in the 
 bufning desert above, the river is flowing all around 
 them deep down the precipices, and is icy cold. 
 In some seasons one may almost walk along the 
 bed of the river, when suddenly a rush down of 
 water occurs, and the stream rises fifty feet in a few 
 days, and tears its way along towards the sea. All 
 the step-like plains are cut up in the same manner, 
 and it is a country where man can never exist for 
 any length of time. The precipices are so numerous 
 that the country is completely intersected by them, 
 and any soil which may collect is either blown 
 down them by the wind or washed into them by the 
 natural drainage. The illustration which we give 
 at the head of this account will enable the reader 
 to form for himself some idea of the extraordinary 
 character of .the country, showing the plateau cut 
 up into shreds by these gigantic chasms. If the 
 rivers were not so deeply situated, the country might 
 be fertile and populous ; but now it is as bad as the 
 deserts of Africa or Arabia, although water is close by. 
 
 —   — 
 
 Endurance of Physical Pain.— Among the 
 many extraordinary features in the character of 
 Charles XII. of Sweden, not the least prominent 
 were the entire contempt of danger he always 
 manifested, and his complete indifference to phy- 
 sical pain. Of this latter characteristic a very 
 remarkable instance is recorded by Voltaire in his 
 well-known history of that prince's life. In the 
 year 1709 the Swedish army, with Charles at their 
 head, had invested the Russian town of Pultowa, 
 now well known in history from the famous battle 
 which a few weeks later gave so fatal a check to 
 their victorious career. In spite of all their prowess, 
 hitherto invincible, and Charles's untiring energy, 
 they had failed to capture the place ; while, to 
 increase the difficulty of their task, it had lately 
 been reinforced by the Czar in person, at the head 
 of a large force. On the 27th of May, Charles went 
 out to reconnoitre, and had a slight skirmish with 
 one of the Russian outposts. In returning to the 
 
 camp he was struck by a musket-ball, which ripped 
 open his boot and broke his ankle-bone. He did 
 not give the slightest sign of feeling the wound, and 
 remained in the saddle for six hours after, giving his 
 orders as coolly as if. nothing had happened. At 
 length, some one noticed that the king's boot was 
 covered with blood, and a surgeon was at once sent 
 for, to see the wound. I!y the time he came it had 
 become so painful that Charles had to be lifted 
 from his horse and carried to his tent. At first the 
 surgeons were all of opinion that the only possible 
 remedy lay in amputating the limb, until one of 
 them, a surgeon named Neumann, declared that he 
 was confident he could effect a cure by making 
 deep incisions into the wound. " Go to work at 
 once, then," cried Charles; "cut as deep as you like, 
 and don't be afraid." The surgeon proceeded to his 
 task, the patient holding the wounded limb in his 
 hands, and attentively watching each incision the 
 knife made, to all appearance' as utterly indifferent 
 to the torture he was enduring, as if the operation 
 was being performed on somebody else. 
 
 A Father's Fortitude. — The following" inci- 
 dent in the native warfare of India is related by 
 the late Sir Herbert Edwardes in his " Year in the 
 Punjaub :" — AUadad, a native chief, being baffled 
 in the siege of a fortress, and amazed at the failure 
 of his well-planned measures, carried the son of 
 the Killadar, or warden, who had fallen into his 
 hands, before the walls, and surnmoned the garri- 
 son to surrender. " Give up the keys," he shouted 
 to the warden, " or your son's head shall be cut 
 off!" The intrepid warden replied, "If I lose my 
 son, I can get another; but honour lost is neither to 
 be recovered 'nor replaced." Tliis noble speech is 
 related to this day upon the border with enthu- 
 siasm and pride, but it found no echo then in the 
 inhuman and vindictive heart of AlLadad. " Strikcl " 
 he cried to the guards, and the youth's head rolled 
 in the dust before his father's eyes. A volley from 
 the garrison replied to this atrocious act, but Alladad 
 escaped unscathed, and, having plundered and fired 
 the town, retired to the hills as rapidly as he had 
 come. 
 
 Extraordinary Coolness under Fire. — At 
 the assault of Badajos, when the slaughter had 
 been terrific, and the British had as yet been unable 
 to eflect an entrance into the town, Lieut. Shaw, of 
 the Forty-third — afterwards Major-General Shaw 
 Kennedy— and Captain Nicholas, of the Engineers, 
 collecting a small body of men together, rushed up 
 the slope of the ruins of the Sa»Jta Maria fort ; but 
 before they reached two-thirds of the ascent, nearly 
 the whole of them were destroyed by a concentrated 
 fire of musketry and grape. Shaw stood alone, and 
 he was seen deliberately to pull out his watch, and, 
 repeating the hour aloud, declare that the breach 
 could not be carried that mght-^JVapUr's History 
 0/ the Pcninsidcir War, 
 
SAGACITY AND STRENGTH OF THE ELEPHANT. 
 
 211 
 
 SAGACITY AND STRENGTH OF 
 
 THE ELEPHANT. 
 
 The enormous physical strength of the elephant is 
 scarcely so wonderful as the extreme sagacity with 
 which he often exercises it. At Maliro, on the 
 coast of Malabar, M. Toreen relates that he had the 
 opportunity of witnessing a remarkable instance of 
 this. An elephant had been hired out for a certain 
 sum per day, and its employment was to carry 
 with its trunk timber for a building, out of a river. 
 This it did very dextrously under the command 
 of a boy, laying the pieces one upon another in 
 such exact order that a man could not have done 
 better. 
 
 M. Phillipe saw a ship in course of construc- 
 tion at Goa, and at a short distance from it a 
 number of heavy logs of wood. The men engaged 
 in the work fastened a rope to the end of the beam 
 that required moving, and handed the other end of 
 the rope to an elephant, who twisted it round his 
 trunk and dragged the timber to the ship without 
 any conductor. One of the elephants sometimes 
 drew beams so large that twenty men could not 
 have moved them. What is still more surprising, 
 when other pieces of timber lay in his way, the 
 elephant had the sense to lift up the end of his own 
 beam, and run it over them with the intelligence of 
 a human being. 
 
 Some years ago two elephants, a male and female, 
 were taken from the menagerie of the Prince of 
 Orange, at the Hague, to Paris, to a place suitably 
 prepared for their reception. The enclosure, formed 
 of strong and thick beams, was in two divisions 
 or apartments, separated by a gate. The male 
 elephant entered first, and looked suspiciously 
 about him. He then proceeded to examine every 
 bar with his trunk, as if trying their solidity. They 
 were held together by large screw-bolts, the heads 
 of which were outside ; these the elephant found 
 out, and tried to turn the screws, but was not able. 
 When he came to the gate between the two apart- 
 ments, he soon discovered that it was only secured 
 by an iron bar which rose perpendicularly. He 
 raised it with his trunk, pushed up the door, and 
 entered into the second apartment, where he found 
 a breakfast had been prepared for him, with which 
 he made himself quite comfortable. 
 
 From the instances of sagacity and strength 
 already related, it may be inferred that the elephant 
 can be trained to perform almost any suitable task 
 in the absence of his master. M. d'Obsonville re- 
 lates that he saw two elephants engaged by them- 
 selves in breaking down a wall, in accordance with 
 orders previously received, their reward for which 
 they well knew was to be a dessert of fruits and 
 brandy. Their trunks were protected from injury 
 by leather, and they had the sagacity to combine 
 their efforts. DoubHng up their trunks, they thrust 
 
 against the strongest part of the wall, carefully ob- 
 serving and following with their eyes what effect 
 they produced upon its equilibrium. At last, when 
 it was sufficiently loosened, they made one violent 
 push together, and, on their suddenly drawing back, 
 that they might not be hurt, the wall came tumbling 
 to the ground. 
 
 The most widely different statements have been 
 made concerning the size of the elephant. For 
 example, it was said that an elephant, the property 
 of a certain Indian prince, was 14 feet high ; while 
 Mr. Corse, who relates the circumstance, judged him 
 to be 12 feet, but was desirous of making an accurate 
 measurement. The driver was certain it would be 
 found 1 5 or 1 6 feet in height. When carefully measured 
 it was found to be no more than 10 feet. There is, 
 however, the skeleton of one at .St. Petersburg, 
 which was sent to Peter the Great by the Shah of 
 Persia, measuring 16 feet 6 inches in height. 
 Major Denham met with some in Africa which he 
 judged to be 16 feet high, but one that he saw killed 
 and measured was but 12 feet 6 inches, though he 
 seemed to the major " an immense fellow." The 
 greatest height ever measured by Mr. Corse was 
 10 feet 6 inches. The height of Chuny, the famous 
 elephant destroyed at Exeter Change in 1824, is 
 not given with the other measurements, but these 
 are stupendous. The height of the body as it lay 
 was 6 feet 3 inches, the girth of it 19 feet 4 inches, 
 and the length of the spine 10 feet. The heart was 
 nearly 2 feet long and 18 inches broad, and w.is 
 found immersed in five or six gallons of blood. 
 The length of the forehead, taken in a straight line, 
 was 4 feet 6 inches. The food daily consumed by 
 Chuny consisted of two trusses of hay, ten or twelve 
 bunches of carrots, or an equal quantity of tares, a 
 truss of straw (given as a bed, but generally eaten), 
 and from thirty to thirty-five gallons of water. 
 
 THE DISTANCE OF A STAR FROM 
 THE EARTH. 
 
 For many ages this question puzzled astronomers : 
 How far off are the stars ? It was known that their 
 distance was great, very great. It was known 
 that they were immeasurably failher off than the 
 sun, the moon, or any of the planets ; but it is only 
 in the present century that the question has been 
 even partially answered. 
 
 Of the countless thousands of stars which stud 
 the universe, the distance of perhaps about twenty 
 has been determined. Others which have been 
 tried have defied the powers of the most skilful 
 astronomers, aided by the most elaborate instru- 
 ments'; their distances are too great to allow of 
 measurement, while the rest of the vast host which 
 stud our firmament have not yet been examined 
 with this object. 
 
 The inquiry is one of the most delicate and 
 
212 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 subtle which can engage the attention of an as- 
 tronomer. It is impossible to explain here the 
 manner in which it is conducted ; we must endea- 
 vour rather to realise the result which has rewarded 
 these successful labours. There is a beautiful star 
 in the southern hemisphere, the brightest in the 
 constellation Centaur, one of the most brilliant 
 stars in the heavens. This was diligently observed 
 by the skilful astronomer who managed the obser- 
 vatory at the Cape of Good Hope in the years 1832 
 and 1833. He found, as the result of his labours, 
 that the distance of this star — Alpha Centauri, as it 
 is called — is twenty billions of miles. 
 
 It requires a little consideration to estimate what 
 the words twenty billions of miles really mean. A 
 billion contains one million millions, and we shall 
 endeavour to convey an idea of this amount by a 
 few simple illustrations. Supposing our great fore- 
 father Adam had commenced to count as quickly 
 as he could, and that when his life was ended his 
 son commenced to count, taking up from the 
 number at which Adam left off, and spent his 
 whole life, day and night, counting as fast as he 
 could, and supposing that at his death he enjoined 
 on his heirs an eternity of counting, and that they 
 had continued doing so up to the present moment, 
 their united efforts would not yet have reached the 
 amount of one quarter of a billion ; and yet the 
 distance of the star is twenty billions of miles ! 
 
 Another illustration may be given to convey an 
 idea of this vast distance. If we were to take a 
 sum equal to five times our national debt, and were 
 to expend this in postage-stamps, we should get one 
 billion of them ; and if we were to draw a line 
 round London, including every house in the suburbs, 
 and then take an area equal in size to this cleared 
 and arranged for the purpose ; if we then com- 
 menced to stick them side by side over the entire 
 area of London, we should not be able to get them 
 all in. After we had covered every inch of the 
 surface over completely, there would be countless 
 thousands still remaining. 
 
 Such, then, is the distance of the nearest fixed 
 star. We cannot grasp it in our imagination, nor 
 are we more successful if we try to make a map. 
 Suppose we proceed by first laying down the sun, 
 and then placing the earth one inch distant from it. 
 If we inquire at what distance the nearest star 
 should be placed, using the same scale, we find it 
 to be eleven miles. A map is therefore impossible. 
 
 Knowing, however, the distance of the nearest 
 star, what can we say of the distance of the farthest 
 of those that are visible ? Here precise knowledge 
 fails us. We can, indeed, grope after the truth, and 
 make guesses of greater or less probability. We 
 believe that it is, at all events, some hundreds of 
 times as great as the astounding magnitude of 
 which we have endeavoured to convey an impres- 
 sion, 
 
 PILGRIMS BATHING IN THE RIVER 
 
 JORDAN. 
 Mr. Lynch gives us the following account of the 
 spectacle annually witnessed, when the pilgrims 
 flock to bathe in that part of the river which tradi- 
 tion declares to have been the immediate scene of 
 the labours of St. John the Baptist:— "In all the 
 wild haste of a disorderly rout, Copts and Russians, 
 Poles, Armenians, Greeks, and Syrians, from all 
 parts of Asia, from Europe, from Africa, and from 
 far-distant America — on they came, men, women, 
 and children, of every age and hue, and in every 
 variety of costume, talking, screaming, and shout- 
 ing in almost every known language under the sun. 
 Mounted as variously as those who had preceded 
 them, many of the women and children were sus- 
 pended in baskets, or confined in cages ; and, with 
 their eyes strained towards the river, heedless of 
 all intervening obstacles, they hurried eagerly for- 
 ward, dismounted in haste, and, disrobing with 
 precipitation, rushed down the bank and threw 
 themselves into the stream. They seemed to be 
 absorbed in one impulsive feeling, and perfectly 
 regardless of the observations of others. Each one 
 plunged himself, or was dipped by another, three 
 times below the surface, in honour of the Trinity, 
 and then filled a bottle or some other utensil from 
 the river. The bathing-dress of many of the pil- 
 grims was a white gown with a black cross upon 
 it. Most of them, when they were dressed, cut 
 branches of the Aj^uus casius, or willow, and, dipping 
 them in the consecrated stream, bore them away as 
 memorials of their visit. In an hour they began 
 to disappear, and in less than three hours the trod- 
 den surface of the lately crowded bank reflected no 
 shadow," 
 
 WONDERS OF WOOD CARVING BY 
 THE NEW ZEALANDERS. 
 Amongst works of art wrought by savages, the 
 extraordinary and elaborate carvings in wood 
 executed by the New Zealanders previously to their 
 contact with Europeans, are well worthy of notice, 
 and may be regarded as wonderful examples of 
 ingenuity and skill, especially when we consider the 
 rude nature of the tools by which they were wrought. 
 
 Ignorant of the use of iron, the New Zealand 
 artist produced his carvings out of hard red pine, 
 by the aid of an adze and chisel, formed of green- 
 stone or jade, fastened into a wooden handle; whilst 
 the edge of a sharp mussel-shell was employed to 
 give the finishing touches to the more intricate 
 portions of the design. 
 
 The men most skilled in wood carving were 
 frequently " tohungas," or heathen priests, and 
 were always regarded amongst the people with 
 veneration and respect. Some tribes were more 
 celebrated than others for the beauty and skill of 
 
WONDERS OF WOOD CARVING. 
 
 2^3 
 
 their carvings, many of which took years of patient 
 labour to accomplish. 
 
 Perhaps the greatest amount of ornamentation 
 was bestowed on the wooden monuments erected in 
 honour of warriors of note, or chiefs of high rank and 
 distinction. Domestic affection would also suggest 
 a richly carved tomb to be raised to the memory of 
 a deceased wife 
 or child. These 
 tombs vary in 
 form and size, but 
 usually consist of 
 a box for the 
 reception of the 
 body, about ten or 
 twelve feet high, 
 covered by a pro- 
 jecting and slant- 
 ing roof supported 
 by pillars. These 
 pillars represent 
 human figures, 
 one above the 
 other, of gro- 
 tesque forms, with 
 enormous protru- 
 ding tongues, and 
 eyes inlaid with 
 pearl shell. The 
 entire front of the 
 tomb is covered 
 with similar faces 
 in bas-relief, the 
 space between 
 them displaying 
 the most elabo- 
 rate arabesques 
 intertwining with 
 each other, min- 
 gled with double 
 spiral curves, 
 which have a very 
 rich effect. Each 
 of the human 
 figures in its turn 
 is similarly co- 
 vered with the 
 arabesque and 
 spiral patterns; so 
 that the tomb, viewed as 
 mass of intricate carving. 
 
 The flat gable-boards of the verandahs of their 
 houses, and their " patukas," or raised storehouses 
 for food, were carved in a precisely similar way, 
 the double spiral pattern, with the grotesque faces, 
 forming the same characteristic feature in all. Life- 
 size grotesque figures, finely carved all over, fre- 
 quently supported the roofs, whilst the door and 
 window-frames were still more elaborately adorned. 
 
 CARVED MONUMENT IN NEW ZEALAND. 
 
 a whole, presents one 
 
 The heads and stem-posts of their war-canoe« 
 vied, in the richness of their design and the gratse 
 of their spiral curves and flowing arabesques, with 
 the ornamentation of their tombs and houses ; 
 whilst their boxes for holding decorative feathers 
 are wonders of New Zealand art. 
 Huge wooden images, precisely similar in pattern 
 
 to the figures on 
 the houses and 
 tombs, were erec- 
 ted about their 
 "pahs," or forti- 
 fied towns, either 
 to commemorate 
 a victory or to 
 honour some war- 
 rior chief; and in 
 all these images 
 theprotruding, de- 
 fiant tongue is a 
 constant feature. 
 
 So great is the 
 love of the New 
 Zealander for 
 wood carving, 
 that he does not 
 content himself 
 with covering his 
 houses, tombs, 
 and canoes with 
 the most intricate 
 designs,but in like 
 manner he deco- 
 rates his weapons 
 of war, his axe- 
 handles, and his 
 walking sticks ; 
 and, not content 
 with wood for his 
 material, he fur- 
 ther displays his 
 skill in tattooing 
 minute spiral lines 
 with tiny chisels 
 on the faces of his 
 chiefs, and on the 
 lips and ankles of 
 his women. 
 
 Since the colo- 
 nisation of New Zealand by Great Britain, the 
 natives have gradually abandoned their ancient 
 art ; and at the present time scarcely an example 
 remains of these wonderful carvings, excepting such 
 smaller objects as are preserved in the museums of 
 the curious. In the mild and humid climate of New 
 Zealand, the wooden structure soon rots away ; and, 
 ere long, not a tomb or a carved house will exist 
 amidst the ruin of their deserted "pahs" to bear 
 evidence of an art now passed away. 
 
214 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 LATENT HEAT. 
 
 It 16 a wonder which must have struck the obser- 
 vant reader, that the water in a kettle never be- 
 comes hotter than that temperature at which it 
 boils. If we place on the fire a kettle of cold water, 
 we know that heat passes froni the fire into the 
 water, and it gradually becomes warmer and warmer 
 until at last it tosses and bubbles, and we say it 
 boils. If we had placed a thermometer in the 
 liquid, we should have found that this temperature 
 was 212" Fahrenheit ; but when oace the thermo- 
 meter gains this height there it stays, although the 
 heat is still passing from the fire into the water. 
 What becomes of this heat ? Where is it ? Where 
 has it gone to ? It evidently has had no effect upon 
 the thermometer, and therefore, since it exists 
 somewhere, it is called latent heat, or heat which 
 has hid itself. The truth has been discovered ; it 
 is this : that all bodies seem capable of existing in 
 three states — solid, liquid, gaseous — and the power 
 which causes them to change their state is heat. 
 Before the water could become steam — that is, 
 before it could exist in the gaseous state— it required 
 a large quantity of heat ; and this heat was so 
 occupied ^\■ith its own particular work that none of 
 it came out to affect the thermometer, and there- 
 fore it does not in the ordinary way make known its 
 presence. 
 
 The quantity of heat which thus is latent in steam 
 is enormous. Of course we cannot measure heat 
 by yards or pints ; but the nnit of heat, or the 
 vieasure of heat, has been agreed upon to be that 
 quantity which can raise a pound of water one 
 de^ee. Now to turn a pound of water into a 
 pound of steam, it requires 967 of these units of 
 heat ; that is to say, if we boil a pound of water 
 until it all goes away into steam, we shall have used 
 in doing so a quantity of heat which would have 
 raised 967 pounds of water one degree higher in 
 temperature. 
 
 Of course, when steam condenses, it gives off all 
 this heat again. This fact is of the utmost import- 
 ance in the economy of nature. Water gives off 
 steam at all temperatures ; ice and snow even eva- 
 porate, and thus give off steam. In this way there 
 is a constant absorption of heat. If it were not for 
 this, the heat of the sun would make the waters of 
 tropical countries so warm that it would be fatal to 
 the animals which live in them, and the inhabi- 
 tants would have no means of cooling themselves 
 in the intolerable heat. When the rays of the sun 
 fall upon a surface of water, they cause rapid 
 evaporation, and the steam thus produced absorbs 
 the heat, which would otherwise ha\-e entered into 
 the water. Then again, when that vapour con- 
 denses, it gives off its latent heat ; so that the cold 
 blades of grass, &c., at night receive warmth when 
 the dew settles upon them, and this tends greatly to 
 
 their rapid growth — so wonderfully is the tempera- 
 ture balanced. 
 
 The knowledge of the above facts enables us to 
 explain many homely truths. Why is it that our 
 hand feels cold when we blow upon it ? — blow upon 
 it too with warm breath ! The reason is this : the 
 skin is that organ which equalises the temperature 
 of the body. This it docs by allowing more or less 
 perspiration to come to the surface and be evapo- 
 rated, as the occasion requires. For example, when 
 we run we cause greater activity in all the functions 
 of the body. The blood passes through the heart 
 more quickly; the action of the lungs is correspond- 
 ingly increased ; we breathe more rapidly : but 
 this causes a greater generation of heat ; the skin 
 becomes aware that the body is getting too hot, so 
 it opens its pores, and allows an extra quantity of 
 perspiration to come to the surface. This evapo- 
 rates, but requires for the change of state a large 
 quantity of heat, which it takes from the body, and 
 so the temperature is kept down. Wonderful pro- 
 vision ! The steam when formed floats in the air ; 
 but the air can only contain a certain quantity, and 
 when it has its complement it is said to be satu- 
 rated, and can take up no more ; so that when such 
 an atmosphere rests on a moist surface, no evapora- 
 tion can go on at all. The hand is alwaj-s enve- 
 loped with a layer of air very full of moisture, and 
 consequently little evaporation goes on ; but when 
 we blow upon the hand, we drive away this moist 
 air, and it is replaced by dry air, and the evapora- 
 tion proceeds rapidly, taking its necessary heat 
 from the hand, thus causing the sensation of cold. 
 
 Some liquids, such as ether, alcohol, bisulphate 
 of carbon, &c., evaporate more rapidly than water ; 
 and by causing ether to evaporate very quickly in a 
 chamber of metal from which the air is exhausted, 
 great cold is produced ; for evaporation goes on 
 very rapidly in a vacuum, as might ha\-e been 
 expected. 
 
 We said that to transform a solid into a liquid, 
 there was also a disappearance of heat. In melting 
 a pound of ice, 142 units of heat are consumed, and 
 the resulting water is of the same temperature as 
 the ice before it melted ; and what may seem more 
 wonderful is, that if a piece of ice be placed in a 
 vessel on the fire, a thermometer will indicate the 
 temperature of 32° Fahrenheit — the freezing point 
 — so long as there is a particle of ice not melted ; 
 and only when the last piece has disappeared will 
 the water begin to warm. 
 
 The quantity of heat required to melt ice may be 
 comprehended from a calculation by Faraday, who 
 found that to melt a cubic yard of ice, the heat 
 given out by the burning of a bushel of coals would 
 be required ; and Pouillet, the French Faraday, said 
 that if the globe were covered with a layer of ice 
 104 feet thick, it would require the heat of the sun's 
 rays for a whole year to melt it ! 
 
SPONGE. 
 
 9IS 
 
 HUMAN AND ANIMAL BONES. 
 
 It is remarkable how frequently the bones of horses, 
 cows, dogs, and sheep are mistaken for those of 
 human beings. " In an antiquarian collection of 
 relics obtained from a neighbouring Roman cas- 
 trum, I saw (says Dr. Alfred Taylor) the tibia of a 
 dog carefully labelled and religiously preserved as 
 the bone of an ancient Roman. The same collec- 
 tion contained fragments of bones of various 
 animals — carnivorous and herbivorous — all marked 
 as human relics. This collection belonged to an 
 antiquary who preferred adopting his own view of 
 the nature of the relics to taking the opinion of 
 any one acquainted with anatomy. Even well- 
 informed men may be easily mistaken on such 
 subjects. Belzoni, the celebrated traveller, brought 
 from Egypt, with his sarcophagi, a number of bones 
 taken from the interior of the Pyramids, which he 
 pronounced to be the boiies of King Cephrcnes, and 
 of some of the Shepherd kings. The late Mr. 
 Clift, of the Royal College of Surgeons, by the 
 request of a friend, went down to examine them 
 after they had been submitted to public exhibition, 
 and he found that they were nothing more than the 
 bones of oxen. The osseous relics of saints, as 
 they are collected and preserved in glass and crystal 
 cases in Roman Catholic countries, often present 
 anomalies which would surprise an anatomist. 
 Supernumerary ribs and vertebras are not un- 
 common, and intermixed with them I have seen 
 bones which certainly never appertained to a human 
 being. 
 
 " These facts show the importance of entrusting 
 the examination of bones, in all judicial inquiries, 
 to well-educated medical men. The lamentable 
 effects of popular ignorance were displayed in a 
 case that occurred at Damascus in 1840, which at 
 the time excited great public notice. A Roman 
 Cathohc priest and a boy suddenly disappeared in 
 the early part of that year, and a strong suspicion 
 arose that they had been murdered. Certain Jews 
 were charged with having murdered them. The 
 sewer in the quarter of the town in which they lived 
 was examined, and some bones were there found. 
 These were pronounced by the persons who dis- 
 covered them to be human bones, and the discovery 
 was considered sufficient to confirm the suspicion of 
 murder which had arisen. Several of the accused 
 Jews died under the tortures to which they were 
 subjected. Some persons who inspected the 
 bones pronounced that they must have been lying 
 in the sewer for a great length of time, and that 
 they were those of an animal. A proposition was 
 then made that the bones should be packed in 
 a box and forwarded to the Parisian Academy of 
 Medicine for their decision. I believe it was sub- 
 sequently clearly proved that they were animal 
 remains." 
 
 SPONGE. 
 
 Among the wonders of the sea there is none more 
 remarkable than the common sponge. For a long 
 while it was disputed whether the creature belonged 
 to the animal or vegetable world, and until quite 
 lately the opinion pre^•ailed that it v/as a subject 
 of the vegetable kingdom. Modern science has 
 ascertained that sponge is beyond all question .an 
 animal production — not the work of any highly 
 organised animal, but still of creatures distinctly 
 animal. Sponge, as we commonly see it, is an 
 intricate network of filaments of a horny substance, 
 and solid, having here and there in their midst 
 caverns or cells, into which the passages that honey- 
 comb the sponge converge. Imbedded in these 
 filaments are numerous tiny, needle-shaped pieces 
 of calcareous matter, with a knob at one end and a 
 point at the other. These calcareous pins arc, in 
 reality, closed tubes ; for, according to Dr. Grant, a 
 principal authority upon sponges, " when the spicula 
 are examined through a microscope after exposure 
 to heat, we distinctly perceive a shut cavity within 
 them, extending from the one point to the other ; 
 and on the inflated side of each spiculum we 
 observe a ragged opening, as if a portion had been 
 driven out by the expansion of some contained 
 fluid. In those spicula, which had suffered little 
 change of form by their incandescence, I have 
 never failed to observe the same cavity within, 
 extending from one end to the other, and a distinct 
 open rent on their side, by which the contained 
 matter has escaped before the usual globular dis- 
 tension had taken place." 
 
 The filaments and spicula together make up an 
 abode in which dwell, not crabs or fish, or anything 
 of their respective kinds, but an infinity of small 
 gelatinous cells, each one possessing a perfectly 
 independent existence, and able, when detached 
 from its fellows, to move onwards by the extension 
 of its substance. Examine a living sponge in its 
 home in the water, and a rapid stream of water will 
 be seen issuing from the large orifices of the struc- 
 ture, bearing with it a number of minute particles 
 from the interior of the sponge. Water has been 
 absorbed through all the small openings with which 
 the surface of the sponge is studded, and after 
 having traversed the many passages into which 
 those openings lead, is thrown out into the canals, 
 and by them conveyed through the greater adits to 
 the open water. The function of this stream and 
 of this circulatory system is manifold ; it conveys 
 nutriment to the cells, which are the sponge- 
 creatures, and also serves for the purpose of respira- 
 tion, besides assisting materially in the propagation 
 of the sponge. 
 
 There arc many different sorts of sponge ; some 
 of them inhabit our own coasts, some live in fresh 
 water, but the finest specimens of the best kinds of 
 
9t6 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 sponge are to befound in tropical waters, in the Medi- 
 terranean, in the Grecian Archipelago, in the East 
 and West Indies. The most valued sorts are found 
 at sc«Tie depth below the water, and must be dived 
 for, as they never allow themselves voluntarily to ap- 
 pear above the surface. They anchor themselves to 
 any good holding-ground that comes in their way — 
 a branch of coral, a jutting piece of rock, anything 
 that happens to be convenient. Dr. Johnston, in 
 his " History of British Sponges," mentions an 
 instance of a large British sponge being found 
 attached to the back of a living crab. Sponges 
 resemble coral in this, that when exposed to the 
 action of a rough sea they become larger and 
 thicker, and grow more rapidly than when in situa- 
 tions where the condi- 
 tions are gentler — a fact 
 which is perhaps due to 
 the frequently-changing 
 medium which brings at 
 every turn and roll a 
 fresh supply of food for 
 the gelatinous aggrega- 
 tion of cells which is the 
 true sponge, and a fresh 
 supply of material to 
 strengthen the horny 
 fibres and siliceous or 
 calcareous spicula which 
 are the skeleton and 
 framework of the sponge 
 animal. 
 
 Some sponges have a 
 generic shape, as a cup, 
 globe, or tree ; while 
 others grow, as it were, 
 anyhow, covering the 
 rock, shell, or what- 
 ever else it may be to 
 
 which they are attached with a formless cover 
 of soft spongy material. If two sponges of 
 different kinds meet in their wide home in the 
 depths of the sea, it is not found that they ever 
 unite, nor do they ever cross the breed. A me- 
 chanical union there may be, nay, there often is ; 
 but so far from any disposition to unite having been 
 seen, experience declares that disunion is the 
 invariable rule. No matter how much the sponges 
 may be interlaced and intertwined, they remain ever 
 distinct and distinguishable. 
 
 Certain sponges have tha faculty of boring into 
 substances of which the hardness would seem to 
 defy any but the best mechanical contrivances. 
 Shells, coral, rock, are pierced with surprising 
 facility. The sponges bore their way into the rocky 
 substance, maintaining their communication with 
 the water, and by continuous attacks disintegrate 
 the mass, so furnishing rubble and small stones for 
 the building which coralUa and the other handi- 
 
 SPONGE. 
 
 craftsmen of the ocean are perpetually rearing to 
 the glory of their Maker. 
 
 Concerning the method in which sponges are 
 propagated, there have been many opinions. Some 
 sponges undoubtedly are propagated by eggs, others 
 by buds, which detach themselves at maturity, and 
 are the embryo and nucleus of new sponges. In 
 most of the sea-sponges, minute buds arc formed 
 in the gelatinous coating of the sponge-comb, as it 
 may be called ; these are borne out by the current 
 which rushes through the larger openings on the 
 surface of the sponge, and are borne hither and 
 thither for a time till an object is found to which 
 they can attach themselves. The object once 
 found, the germ is faithful for ever to it, and 
 remains embracing it 
 during the whole period 
 of its existence. In fresh- 
 water sponges a different 
 system is observed. 
 Seed-like substances are 
 formed in the body of 
 the sponge, consisting 
 of several cells united 
 in a globular mass. After 
 a while this mass be- 
 comes enveloped in a 
 capsule, on the outer sur- 
 face of which a radiated 
 series of spicula is de- 
 veloped. As the body 
 matures, the contents 
 increase in size, till the 
 confederated cells, be- 
 coming ripe and of equal 
 dimensions, burst their 
 cover and are diffused 
 through the water. In a 
 few days they re-unite 
 in groups resembling in appearance the gelatinous 
 substance of the mature sponge ; but in their transi- 
 tion state they undergo many changes of form, and 
 are of insatiable appetite. Mr. H. J. Carter, of 
 Bombay, says in one case he saw " one of these 
 creatures approach a gelatinous body, something 
 like a sluggish or dead one of its own kind, and 
 equal to itself in size, and having lengthened itself 
 out, so as to encircle it, send processes over and 
 under it from both sides, which, uniting with each 
 other, at last ended in a complete approximation of 
 the two opposite folds of the cell wall throughout 
 their whole extent, and in the complete enclosure 
 of the object. Even while the protean was thus 
 spreading out its substance into a mere film, to sur- 
 round so large an object, a tubular prolongation was 
 sent out by it in another direction, to seize and en- 
 close in the same way a large germ which was lying 
 near it. It took about three quarters of an hour to 
 pcrfoim this." 
 
I.KINS, ALHAMr.KA. 
 
VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS. 
 
 217 
 
 VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS. 
 
 The great volcano named Vesuvius, which is now 
 so constantly in eruption, was described by the 
 ancients as a cone-shaped mountain with a flat top, 
 on which was a deep circular valley filled with vines 
 and grass, and 
 surrounded by 
 high precipices. 
 A large popula- 
 tion lived on 
 the sides of 
 the mountain, 
 which was co- 
 vered withbcau- 
 tiful woods, and 
 there were fine 
 flourishing ci- 
 ties at its foot. 
 So httle was the 
 terrible nature 
 of the valley on 
 the top under- 
 stood, that in 
 A.D. 72, Sparta- 
 cus, a Roman 
 rcbcl,encampcd 
 there with some 
 thousands of 
 fighting . men, 
 and the Roman 
 soldiers were let 
 down the preci- 
 pices in order to 
 surprise and 
 capture them. 
 There had been 
 earthquakes 
 around the 
 mountain, and 
 one of the cities 
 had been nearly 
 destroyed ; but 
 no one was pre- 
 pared for what 
 occurred seven 
 years after the 
 defeat of Spar- 
 
 tacus. Suddenly a terrific rush of smoke, steam, 
 and fire belched from the mountain's summit ; one 
 side of this treacherous valley was blown off, and 
 its rocks, with vast quantities of ashes, burning 
 stones, and sand, were ejected far into the sky. 
 They then spread out like a vast pall, and fell far 
 and wide. For eight days and nights this went 
 on, and the enormous quantity of steam sent up, 
 together with the deluge of rain that fell, pro- 
 duced torrents on the mountain-side, which, carry- 
 28 
 
 ing onwards the fallen ashes, overwhelmed every- 
 thing in their way. Sulphureous vapours filled the 
 air, and violent tremblings of the earth were con- 
 stant. A city six miles off was speedily rendered 
 uninhabitable, and was destroyed by the falling 
 stones ; but two others — -Herculaneum and Pompeii 
 — which already had suffered from the down-pour 
 
 of ashes, were 
 gradually filled 
 up with a flood 
 of water, sand, 
 and ashes, 
 which came 
 down the side 
 of the volcano, 
 and finally were 
 covered up en- 
 tirely. In suc- 
 ceeding erup- 
 tions much lava 
 was poured out ; 
 and in A.D. 472, 
 ashes were cast 
 forth over a 
 great part of 
 Europe, so that 
 much fear was 
 caused at Con- 
 st ant ino pie. 
 The cities were 
 more and more 
 covered up, and 
 were only dis- 
 covered in A.D. 
 17 1 3, wl>en, in 
 digging a well, 
 a theatre with 
 some statues 
 was disclosed. 
 Since then nu- 
 merous curio- 
 sities have been 
 dug up, won- 
 derfully pre- 
 served by the 
 ashes. 
 
 The eruptions 
 ofthevolcanoes 
 in Iceland have 
 been amongst the most terrible of those carefully 
 recorded. The cold climate of the island and the 
 height of the mountains produce vast quantities of 
 snow and ice, which cover the volcanoes and fill 
 up the cracks and valleys in their sides. When, 
 therefore, the eruption commences, the intense heat 
 of the boiling lava, and of the steam which rushes 
 forth from the crater, makes the whole mountain 
 hot, and vast masses of ice, great fields of snow, 
 and deluges of water roll down the hill-side into 
 
 ERUPTION OK VESUVIUS. 
 
2l8 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 the plains. The lava pours from the top and from 
 cracks in the side of the mountain, or is ejected 
 hundreds of feet, to fall amongst the ice and snow ; 
 and the great masses of red-hot stone cast forth, 
 accompanied by cinders and fine ashes, splash into 
 the roaring torrent, which tears up rocks in its course 
 and devastates the surrounding country for miles. 
 An eruption of Kothigja, in 1 860, was accompanied 
 by these dreadful floods. It began with a number 
 of earthquakes, which shook the surrounding 
 country. Then (writes Dr. Lindsay) a dark 
 columnar cloud of vapour was seen to rise by day 
 from the mountain, and by night balls of fire (vol- 
 canic bombs) and red-hot cinders to the height of 
 24,000 feet (nearly five miles), which were seen at 
 a distance of 180 miles. Deluges of water rushed 
 from the heights, bearing along whole fields of ice 
 and rocky fragments of every size, some vomited 
 from the volcano, but in great part torn from tlie 
 flanks of the mountain itself and carried to the 
 sea, there to add considerably to the coast-line 
 after devastating the intervening country. The 
 fountain of volcanic bombs consisted of masses 
 of lava, containing gases which exploded, produc- 
 ing a loud sound, which was said to have been heard 
 at a distance of 100 miles. The size of the bombs, 
 and the height to which they must have reached, 
 were very great. The great volcano of Hecla, in the 
 same island, had been nearly quiet for eighty years, 
 but in 1 845 a violent eruption took place, which lasted 
 a long time. A mass consisting of no less than 500 
 feet of the top of the mountain was blown away by 
 the rush of the lava, which poured down the valleys 
 on the side of the volcano in such a vast quantity 
 as to reach ten miles. Its thickness was from fifty 
 to eighty feet. Another Icelandic volcano, Skaptar 
 Jokul, burst forth in 1783, and cast out enormous 
 streams of lava, one about fifty miles long and 
 fifteen broad, and the other forty in lengtli and 
 seven wide. The thickness of these streams of 
 molten rock was in some places more than 500 
 feet, and it has been calculated that the entire mass 
 exceeds in bulk the highest mountain in Europe. 
 
 One of the large volcanoes in the Sandwich 
 Islands has, when quiet, a lake of liquid lava in 
 the hollow or crater on its summit. This lava, 
 like all others, consists of different rocks which 
 have been dissolved deep down in the earth below 
 the volcano by steam confined in a small space, 
 and therefore by what is called high-pressure steam. 
 It resembles dark bottle-glass, but under the micro- 
 scope pieces of the original rocks may be detected. 
 On the surface of the lake the lava is cooled more 
 or less by the escape of steam and by the wind, 
 and a sort of fine slag is formed : this is pumice- 
 stone ; and when the lava is ejected, the pumice 
 becomes red-hot and is cast up in vast quantities. 
 Thus, when the volcano Tomboro, in the Eastern 
 Sea, was in eruption in 1815, the first notice of it 
 
 was a number of explosions, which were heard at 
 Sumatra, nearly 1,000 miles off in a straight line. 
 Three distinct columns of flame were seen to rise 
 from the mountain to a vast height, and its whole 
 surface soon appeared as if covered with fiery lava 
 streams. The flames were really vast masses of 
 the pumice or scoriae shooting up into the air, and 
 they fell for miles around. The pumice and the 
 powder of it were in such quantities that they 
 darkened the air, and although we cannot imagine 
 it in England, these ashes caused complete dark- 
 ness in Java, 800 miles off, and covered the ground 
 and roofs of houses to a depth of several inches. 
 The floating pumice upon the sea around formed 
 a layer two feet thick, through which vessels with 
 difficulty forced their way. Sometimes the force 
 with which the light pumice is cast up is so great, 
 that upper currents in the air blow vast col- 
 lections of it to a great distance, and the first 
 notice of the eruption of some volcanoes in out-of- 
 the-way countries has been given by showers of 
 ashes in well-known localities, often several hun- 
 dreds of miles distant. 
 
 THE WONDERS OF PREJUDICE. 
 
 How far many truths, which are now regarded as 
 commonplace, formerly excited the prejudice and 
 the intense antagonism of the ignorant, is well 
 illustrated in the following passage from Baron 
 Liebig : — 
 
 " When Columbus had to defend his views 
 concerning the shape of the earth, and the possi- 
 bility of circumnavigating it, in Salamanca, the 
 first seat of learning of the age, before an assembly 
 consisting of the most learned professors of as- 
 tronomy, geography, and mathematics of the 
 Spanish kingdom, along with the wisest and most 
 respected dignitaries of the Church, he appeared to 
 the majority as a dreamer worthy of ridicule, or as 
 an adventurer deserving of contempt. And yet 
 never had a learned disputation a greater influence 
 on the development of the human intellect than 
 that one in the collegiate church of St. Stephen 
 at Salamanca. It was the dawn of a new day 
 — the forerunner of the great victory of truth over 
 the blind faith of the age. 
 
 "In these remarkable discussions, mathematical 
 demonstrations lost their validity when they seemed 
 to contradict passages of Holy Scripture, or the 
 interpretation of those passages by the Fathers of 
 the Church. ' How could the earth be spherical 
 when it is said in the Psalms that the heavens were 
 stretched out as a garment ?' ' How was it possi- 
 ble to regard the earth as otherwise than flat, when 
 the sacred writer compares the heavens to a taber- 
 nacle or tent spread out over the earth .'" ' Had 
 not Lactantius thus pronounced against the existence 
 of antipodes? Is there any one so mad as to 
 
WHITE CHALK, 
 
 219 
 
 believe that there are men whose feet stand 
 opposite to ours, and who are able to walk with 
 their legs upwards and their heads hanging down ; 
 that there is a part of the world where all things 
 are topsy-turvy — where the trees grow with their 
 branches downwards, and where hail, snow, and 
 rain fall upwards?' 'Did not St. Augustine say 
 that the doctrine of the antipodes was altogether 
 irreconcilable with the historical foundation of the 
 Christian faith ? for whoever said that there were 
 inhabited countries on the opposite side of the 
 earth asserted that there existed in those countries 
 men who were not derived from Adam, since it 
 was impossible for his progeny to pass the inter- 
 vening ocean. Such an opinion must destroy our 
 belief in the Bible.' 
 
 " Thus spoke the opponents of the great man. 
 Two years later Columbus returned from the West 
 Indies. The earth was small and spherical, and 
 there were inhabited countries at the other side of 
 it. But not only the earth, the heavens also con- 
 tradicted the doctrines of the great luminaries of 
 the church. For, in consequence of the discoveries 
 of Copernicus, the earth had ceased to be con- 
 sidered the centre of the universe. It was not only 
 small, narrow, and spherical — it was a mere point 
 in endless space — a small planet revolving round 
 the sun." =—=——— 
 
 WHITE CHALK. 
 
 Chalk is such a common thing that it is difficult 
 to think there can be anything wonderful about it ; 
 but when carefully studied and examined, few sub- 
 stances turn out to be more extraordinary. Chalk 
 is wonderful on account of its forming a large part 
 of the crust of the earth, and because it consists of 
 countless fragments of minute creatures which were 
 once alive ; moreover, the manner in which the 
 bold white cliffs stand up against the sea, century 
 after century, is worth considering, as is also the 
 way in which the long layers of flints, one over the 
 other, were formed. Chalk is a very old substance, 
 for the cliffs have stood by the sea-shore longer 
 than the oldest history tells of ; and when inland, 
 the white chalk is often found in sinking deep wells 
 through clay and sand. Geologists have proved 
 that although most of the chalk now forms dry 
 land, high hills, and bold cliffs, yet it was pro- 
 duced layer after layer at the bottom of a very deep 
 sea, and was gradually lifted up by the internal 
 forces of the globe to its present position. It is 
 found in a great many of the counties of England 
 quite on the surface of the ground, and in others 
 it is situated deep down in the earth, being covered 
 up with other soils. Vast regions in North and 
 .South America, Ireland, Denmark, Belgium, Ger- 
 many, France, Algiers, and India arc covered with 
 the powdery-looking mineral we call white chalk, and 
 
 much of it is under the sea, and is occasionally found 
 out in sinking foundations for lighthouses. Not only 
 docs the chalk form the surface of the ground over a 
 large portion of the earth, but it is also very deep. 
 A cliff, although 500 or 600 feet high, does not show 
 all the chalk, for boring proves that it goes down 
 deeper than the level surface at its foot. In Eng- 
 land, especially in the south-eastern counties, the 
 chalk is very deep, and extends downwards for 
 1,200 feet. The upper part, as is well known, has 
 many layers of black flints in it, one over the other, 
 and extending for miles ; the lower 700 feet of 
 chalk has no flints in it, but forms in many foreign 
 countries high mountains with tall peaks and pre- 
 cipices, very unlike the rounded downs and sloping 
 valleys in England. It was mentioned that some 
 soils were on top of the chalk in certain places. 
 Now, there is a capital example of this in London. 
 There is chalk on the Surrey side of the Thames, 
 but it does not appear on the north side. When 
 a well is dug on the south side, chalk is soon come 
 to ; but in London itself a dark blue clay is found, 
 and it is no less than 800 feet deep. The clay must 
 be pierced by the boring-machine for rather more 
 than this depth before chalk is reached. Of course, 
 all this great mass of clay, double the height of St. 
 Paul's, was collected gradually on the top of the 
 chalk, and it was not done in a day. Many thou- 
 sands of years must have elapsed whilst it was being 
 made, for it was the washings of distant hills 
 brought down by many streams, like the clays which 
 are now forming at the bottom of lakes. There are 
 all sorts of wonderful things in this clay, such as 
 skeletons of great crocodiles, alligators, beavers, 
 fish, birds, and turtles, masses of decayed fruits like 
 cocoa-nuts and pineapples, and vast quantities of 
 small shells. But the chalk is under all these, and 
 is therefore older. If a small piece of chalk is 
 moistened and rubbed on a slip of glass, and 
 placed under a powerful microscope, myriads of 
 very small things are seen. Some are fragments 
 of larger things, but the greater part consists of 
 the tiny skeletons and shells of what are called 
 animalcules. Much of the chalk consists, also, of 
 round grains, which, when broken down, are found 
 to contain other grains arranged in circles round 
 a centre. These are all remnants of very small 
 creatures, which were once alive. .So small were 
 they, that 10,000 of them placed in a row would 
 not make up an inch in length. The shapes of 
 the little shells are very pretty, and they are beauti- 
 fully marked with dots and lines, so as to form very 
 interesting objects under a good microscope. Every 
 piece of chalk contains a vast quantity of these 
 things, and also grains of what is called carbonate 
 of lime. 
 
 By diligent search amongst the chalk quarries 
 many curiosities have been found, and the skeletons 
 of flying reptiles, huge lizards, crocodiles, and beau- 
 
THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 tiful shells, and great quantities of sea-urchins and 
 star-fish, may be seen in the British Museum taken 
 from the chalk. Some of these are very large, but 
 the bulk of the chalk all over the world is made up 
 of very minute things invisible to the naked eye. If 
 the chalk extends for thousands of square miles, 
 and is 1,200 feet thick, what incalculable millions 
 of the remains of minute creatures there must be 
 in it ! The tiny animalcules lived in the old ocean, 
 and as they died their hard shells fell to the bottom, 
 and in course of ages the mass of the chalk was 
 thus formed as a sediment in the deep sea. It is 
 impossible to conceive how long this sediment took 
 to collect, but it is easy to form an idea how long a 
 small portion of chalk takes to be removed. Thus, 
 the island of Thanet is about ten miles long and 
 five broad, and the chalk is, in round numbers, 1,200 
 feet thick : there are, therefore, about 42,000,000,000 
 tons weight of it. Supposing 1,000 men and 1,000 
 horses and carts to do always what is called a good 
 day's work, it would take them 20,000 years to re- 
 move the chalk, provided it were dug up ready for 
 carting. The history of chalk is, therefore, very 
 wonderful, for it was gradually deposited in the 
 deep ocean, being formed of the remains of the 
 smallest sea animalcules and of the skeletons of the 
 large creatures that died in the water. After 1,200 
 or more feet of this fine white sediment we'-e formed, 
 the whole was lifted up nearly to the surface, and 
 then a clay was formed on the top in many places. 
 The creatures whose remains are found in the clay 
 are not of the same kind as those found in the chalk, 
 and were in existence when this country was in a 
 tropical climate. 
 
 REMARKABLE SLEEPERS. 
 
 The actual amount of sleep necessary to certain 
 individuals depends in a great measure upon their 
 bodily disposition, or upon habits acquired by 
 necessity or choice. Soldiers during a siege, or 
 sailors on board ship, soon form a habit of falling 
 asleep in any easy position the moment the eyes 
 are closed. King George's statement that only a 
 fool required so much as eight hours' sleep is not 
 quite true, for many clever men have been remark- 
 able sleepers. It may be sufficient for the present 
 purpose to mention that Dr. Reid, the celebrated 
 metaphysician, has been known to consume as 
 much food, and afterwards to take as much sleep, 
 as would have sufficed for two days. And there 
 are numerous cases on record in which sleep has 
 been prolonged for weeks or even months. 
 
 Blanchet, a French physician, in the " Comptes 
 Rendus," 1864, records three cases of what he 
 terms " constitutional lethargic slumber." In one 
 of these cases the patient, a lady aged twenty-four 
 years, slept for forty days when she was eighteen, 
 and for fifty days when she was twenty ; and the 
 
 last recorded sleep was for nearly a year — from 
 April 20th, 1862, to March, 1863. She was sup- 
 plied with liquid nourishment during this period 
 by having a false front tooth removed. She was 
 motionless and insensible ; the pulse was low, and 
 her breathing scarcely perceptible ; she showed no 
 signs of leanness, and her complexion continued 
 florid and healthy. The following letter, copied 
 from a rare book in the possession of the writer of 
 the present article, entitled " British Curiosities in 
 Nature and Art," &c., published in London in 17 13, 
 gives an account somewhat similar to those quoted 
 above, of a remarkable sleeper whose name is not 
 mentioned in the letter, but it is similar to the case 
 of Samuel Clinton, recorded in the " Philosophical 
 Transactions," and quoted on page 122 of the 
 present work. The letter is introduced by the 
 following remarks from the author of the " British 
 Curiosities :" — 
 
 " Not far from Wells, some years agoe, was a 
 wonderful instance of a Man's sleeping- j it was sent 
 in a Letter from a Clergyman to my Worthy and 
 Ingenious Friend, Charles Bowles, late of Windsor, 
 Esquire ; who was so kind to oblige me with it. I 
 think the Man slept at least a Month or 6 Weeks 
 longer than the time mentioned in the Margin of 
 the Letter. Which take as follows. 
 
 '"Sir, "'Tiverton Octob. 19. 
 
 " ' The last visit I made to see this un- 
 accountable Sleeper, was on Wednesday last, the 
 13th of this Instant, where I found him in the same 
 Posture, as he hath continued in ever since his first 
 Seisure;* for he lies confin'd to his bed; eats his 
 Victuals once or twice a Day, but never in the Sight 
 of any one ; and looks as fresh as if he went daily to 
 his Labour. The Observation of him, that is fresh, 
 is this ; that on Sunday the loth of this Month, his 
 Brothers wishing to try an Experiment, put on all 
 his Clothes, brought him down Stairs from his Bed, 
 and set him in a Chair by the Kitchin Fire ; but 
 this, they thought would have cost him his Life ; for 
 they visibly perceived a great alteration in his 
 Countenance, which as he lay in his bed, was fresh 
 and lively, was converted into a dark Paleness, like 
 Death ; his head hang'd on his Shoulder, as though 
 he had been really Departing, which obliged them 
 to put him away to his old Apartment, where in a 
 little time he recovered his former Sanguine Com- 
 paction ; He is removed from his Brothers to his 
 Mothers-House again. This is the only and best 
 account I can a present give you ; if there be any 
 other change you shall be sure of it ; 
 
 " ' From Your most Humble Servant, 
 
 "'John Rich.'" 
 
 Learned John Stow, the London antiquary, 
 records the following: — "April 27th, 1546, was 
 Tuesday in Easter week, William Foxley, pot 
 maker for the Mint in the Tower of London, fell 
 
 • August the i2th to Octo. 14th is 10 Weeks. 
 
THE FRIGATE-BIRD. 
 
 331 
 
 THE FRIGATE-BIRD. 
 
 asleep, and he continued sleeping, and could not be 
 wakened with pinching, cramping, or otherwise 
 burning whatsoever, till the first day of term, which 
 was fourteen days, and fifteen nights. The cause of 
 his thus sleeping could not be known, although the 
 same were diligently searched after by the king's 
 physicians and other learned men : yea, and the 
 king himself examined the said William Foxlcy, 
 who was in all points found at his waking to be as 
 if he had slept but one night ; and he lived for more 
 than forty years after in the Tower." 
 
 —   — 
 
 THE FRIGATE-BIRD. 
 One of the greatest wonders in natural history is 
 the flight of birds. We have been all our lives so 
 accustomed to see birds, that we are not now prone 
 to marvel at the wonders of their flight. We must 
 meditate on the beautiful arrangements by which 
 they are enabled to raise themselves in the air and 
 propel themselves through it, and we must remember 
 how utterly futile all man's attempts to fly or make 
 flying-machines have proved, and then we are in a 
 condition to appreciate the marvel which is daily 
 before our eyes. 
 
 The frigate-bird, which is represented in the 
 
 engraving, is endowed with magnificent powers of 
 flight. His wings stretch to an expanse of about 
 ten or twelve feet ; his body is about three feet 
 long ; his bill is very powerful, and adapted for 
 seizing. His feet are webbed, but very small; he 
 has but little use for them, his home being in the air, 
 hundreds of leagues away from land. He is seen 
 soaring high above the ocean, but on its bosom he 
 never rests. When he seeks repose he finds it 
 aloft in the air. His foot rarely touches land 
 except at the time for pairing, making nests, and 
 rearing young. How is all this ? The expanse of 
 his wing is so vast, and his body is so light, that he 
 can soar with little or no exertion. Still it is diffi- 
 cult to see how this would enable him actually to 
 sleep on the wing, as it is believed he does. A more 
 close examination shows, however, that his bones 
 are hollow, and that there is a large pouch com- 
 municating with his lungs and with the cavities in 
 the bones. This pouch he can inflate with air, and 
 thus render himself buoyant : the sustaining power 
 thus acquired, added to that of the wings, is sufficient 
 to keep him up. 
 
 If his home be in the air, if he neither dive into 
 the sea for fish, nor search on the land for other 
 food, whence does he derive his sustenance ? Im- 
 pelled by hunger, he descends from the lofty re- 
 gions where it is his delight to dwell. Whether the 
 
THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 sea be rough or calm, he ghdes along over the 
 water, and any unwary fish approaching the surface, 
 on being detected by his keen eye, is pouncc-d upon 
 instantaneously and swallowed. 
 
 But the frigate-bird has other resources : though 
 he cannot dive into the sea to catch fish, he avails 
 himself of the labours of birds which can. -He 
 watches one of the birds which dive ; he sees him 
 emerge successfully, and fly off with his prey. 
 Instantly the frigate-bird is down upon him with a 
 swoop of terrific velocity. The frightened diver 
 drops his fish in mid-air ; the frigate-bird poises 
 himself again, darts down with another swoop, and 
 seizes the fish ere it reaches the water. 
 
 — • — 
 
 AUTOMATA. 
 
 Automata, or self-moving machines to imitate any 
 actions of men or animals, are of very ancient date, 
 and show that considerable success has attended 
 this class of inventions ; thus, Dasdalus is stated by 
 Plato and Aristotle to have made statues which 
 could not only walk, but required to be tied up 
 that they might not move. Aristotle speaks also of 
 a wooden Venus which moved about in conse- 
 quence of quicksilver being poured into its interior. 
 
 To come to more recent times. Bonnet, in his 
 "History of Music," 1774, relates that a certain 
 Alex, an ingenious Provencal mathematician 
 and mechanician, having discovered the sympathy 
 of sound in two instruments tuned in unison, to 
 illustrate his discovery, constructed an automaton 
 skeleton and placed in its hand a guitar, while 
 by a mechanical contrivance the fingers moved as 
 though playing it ; he then set it at a window, and 
 at a proper distance placed another guitar, which 
 produced sound in the instrument held by the figure. 
 The inhabitants of Aix (the town in which this was 
 exhibited), believing that the skeleton really played 
 on the guitar, denounced Alex as a sorcerer, and 
 he was condemned by the Parliament to be burnt 
 alive, together with his figure. 
 
 Camus, the mathematician, constructed for the 
 amusement of Louis XIV. a small coach drawn by 
 two horses. The coachman cracked his whip, and 
 the horses set off, drawing the coach about on a 
 table ; and when opposite the king it stopped, the 
 page got down and opened the door, on which a 
 lady alighted, with a curtsey presented a petition to 
 the king, and then re-entered the carriage. The 
 page then shut the door, the carriage proceeded, 
 and the servant running after it jumped up behind 
 it. This is gravely related by Dr. Hutton in his 
 •' Mathematical Recreations." The automaton 
 coach and horses was a common street exhibition 
 in our da\'. 
 
 Maillardct, a noted mechanician, constructed an 
 
 automaton boy, which both wrote and drew with a 
 pencil, kneeling on one knee. When the figure 
 began to work, an attendant dipped the pencil in 
 ink, and adjusted the drawing-paper upon a brass 
 tablet. Upon touching a spring, the figure proceeded 
 to write, or to execute landscape drawings. Mail- 
 lardct also constructed a magician, who answered 
 questions inscribed in oval medallions upon a wall; 
 one of which the spectator having selected, it was 
 shut up in a spring drawer. The magician then 
 rose, consulted his book, and striking the wall with 
 his wand, two folding doors flew open, and displayed 
 the answer 'to the question. The door again closed, 
 and the drawer opened, to return the medallion. 
 The machinery being wound up, the movements, in 
 about an hour, answered fifty questions ; and the 
 means by which the medallions acted upon the 
 machinery, so as to produce the proper answers to 
 the questions, are stated to have been very simple. 
 Maillardet also constructed other automata, includ- 
 ing a spider made of steel, and a caterpillar, lizard, 
 mouse, and serpent, all with their natural move- 
 ments. His automatic figures, including a harpsi- 
 chord player, a rope-dancer, and a singing bird, 
 were exhibited in Spring Gardens, London. 
 
 M. Houdin, in 1844, exhibited an automaton 
 writer, which attracted the notice of Louis Philippe 
 and his family. The figure drew as well as wrote 
 answers to questions, and, by a curious coincidence, 
 its performance on one occasion was particularly 
 ominous. When the Comte de Paris requested it 
 to draw a crown, the automaton began drawing the 
 outline demanded, but its pencil broke, and the 
 crown could not be finished. Houdin was about to 
 recommence the experiment when the king declined 
 with thanks. " As you have learned to draw," he 
 said to the Comte de Paris, "you can finish this for 
 yourself." This incident is characteristic as regards 
 the tact of the king. 
 
 Houdin had remarkable resources in his art. He 
 once received a commission from a merchant at 
 St. Petersburg to construct an automaton night- 
 ingale, and he agreed, for a large sum, to make a 
 perfect imitation of the bird. He had already made 
 several musical birds, but their singing was 
 quite arbitrary. The imitation of the nightingale's 
 pipe was much more delicate, for he had to copy 
 notes and sounds which were almost inimitable. 
 Houdin resolved to take the skilful songster as his 
 teacher. For this purpose he went constantly to 
 the wood of Romainville, which almost joined the 
 street in which he lived, and here he repaired for 
 lessons; for the nightingale sings both by night and 
 by day, and the slightest whistle makes him strike 
 up directly. Houdin had to analyse the bird's 
 melodies by a musical process. To imitate its 
 flexibility of throat, and reproduce the harmonious 
 modulations, Houdin made a small quill-like copper 
 tube, in which a steel piston, moving very freely, 
 
THE UPAS TREE. 
 
 223 
 
 produced the different sounds required ; thus the 
 tube represented, in some respects, the nightingale's 
 throat. The instrument had to work mechanically; 
 clockwork set in motion the bellows, opened or 
 closed a valve which produced the twittering, the 
 modulation, and the sliding notes, while it guided 
 the piston according to the different degrees of 
 speed and strength wanted. Houdin had also to 
 impart motion to the bird. It must move its beak 
 in accordance with the sounds it produced, flap its 
 wings, and leap from branch to branch — which, 
 however, was purely a mechanical labour. After re- 
 peated experiments, and practice in the wood, Houdin 
 succeeded in creating a system, half musical and 
 half mechanical, which only required to be improved 
 by fresh studies from nature; and thus, by frequent 
 rehearsals and comparisons, he persevered until 
 the nightingale's song was perfectly imitated. 
 
 CURIOUS CUSTOMS. 
 
 The Grace Cup.— The origin of the grace cup, 
 or, as it is sometimes called, the "loving cup," passed 
 round from guest to guest at state banquets and 
 city feasts, is thus accounted for by Miss Strick- 
 land, in her "Historic Sketches:" — "The grace 
 cup derives its name and use from an amusing 
 little fact illustrative of the manners and customs 
 of the Scotch nobles in the eleventh century. That 
 royal Christian civiliscr, Margaret Atheling, tlie 
 consort of Malcolm Kenmore, observing that they 
 had an irreverent habit of rising and quitting the 
 table before grace could be pronounced by her 
 chaplain, promised to reward all who could be 
 induced to tarry for that ceremony with a draught 
 ad libitum from a large gold cup of the choicest 
 wine, which was passed from hand to hand round 
 the board, after the thanksgiving for the meal had 
 been duly said. The bribe offered by the beautiful 
 young queen was too agreeable to be resisted by 
 the hitherto graceless northern magnates ; each 
 was eager to claim his share of the grace cup, as 
 this social goblet was called ; and the custom thus 
 instituted in the palace became so popular, that it 
 was observed in the barons' halls, and wherever 
 festive cheer was to be found throughout the land. 
 The fashion of the grace cup was of course adopted 
 in England by all degrees who could afford to 
 honour a custom so much in unison with national 
 taste. Every person of consequence could boast 
 of a grace cup in the Middle Ages, and even at 
 the period of the Reformation they are occasionally 
 enumerated and described in inventories of plate 
 and jewels, and bequeathed in wills." 
 
 The Freedom of Alnwick. — By an ancient 
 charter of the town of Alnwick, in Northumberland, 
 every freeman, on his initiation, is compelled to 
 jump into a muddy pool, and scramble to the 
 opposite bank. This custom was imposed by King 
 
 John, who is said, when travelling once in the 
 neighbourhood, to have stuck in a morass and been 
 bemired. As a punishment to the townsfolk for not 
 keeping their roads in better condition, he ordered 
 that thenceforth this disagreeable rite should be 
 observed by every new freeman of the town ; and, 
 as its charter has never been altered, the custom 
 has continued down to the present day. 
 
 Monberful Cms. 
 
 . — « — 
 
 THE UPAS TREE. 
 Few trees have had a more remarkable history 
 than the famous poison tree of Java and the Indian 
 Archipelago. For two centuries its strange story 
 had been accumulating, each traveller who visited 
 the islands where it grew adding some marvellous 
 particulars to the narrative, and generally attesting 
 his statements by the declaration that he saw the 
 marvels he records. At last, in 1783, the record 
 became complete in the account given by Foersch, 
 a Dutch physician, which has been justly characte- 
 rised as one of the most impudent fabrications that 
 has ever been palmed on popular credulity. He 
 described it as growing in a desert tract, all vegeta- 
 tion being destroyed for a distance of ten or twelve 
 miles around it by its deadly exhalations. No 
 quadrupeds, not even rats or mice, arc seen in this 
 region of desolation. When any birds fly within 
 reach of the poisonous effluvia they instantly 
 perish, and even the waters are destitute of fish. 
 The imagination cannot conjure up a more desolate 
 picture than this tyrant tree in the centre of its 
 barren waste — every trace of life, both animal and 
 vegetable, destroyed — nothing but the dark dry soil 
 and the silent atmosphere, except in that small 
 central spot where the verdant grove is ever distilling 
 its poisonous vapours. The old priest from whom 
 Foersch says he got his information, assured him 
 that " there is a continual perspiration issuing from 
 the tree, which is seen to rise and spread in the air, 
 like the putrid steam of a marshy cavern." Cri- 
 minals condemned to death were offered the chance 
 of life if they would go to the upas tree and collect 
 some of its poison. They were furnished with 
 proper directions, and armed with due precaution, 
 but not more than two out of twenty ever returned. 
 One who had thus saved his life, Foersch says, told 
 him that the ground around the tree was covered 
 with the bones of those who had perished ; and on 
 one occasion civil war drove a population of some 
 1,600 to within t\yelve or fourteen miles of the tree, 
 and within two months 1,300 of them perished. 
 The poison was obtained from the tree by piercing 
 it with a long bamboo rod furnished with a sharp 
 point, so that the person using it should not come 
 in contact with the juice, which would stiffen and 
 contract his joints. The poison was of great value, 
 as arrows dipped in it were so destructive in the 
 
224 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 native wars. A slight wound, even in the heel, 
 just sufficient to draw blood, not only produced 
 death, but rendered the flesh within half an hour so 
 putrid as to separate easily from the bones. This 
 extraordinary piece of fiction, being published in a 
 popular Enghsh journal, was speedily copied into 
 other British and many foreign periodicals, and 
 was generally 
 believed. The 
 introduction of 
 the whole story 
 into Darwin's 
 " Loves of the 
 Plants," embel- 
 lished with all 
 the artifices of 
 a florid style 
 of versification, 
 confirmed this 
 belief. Although 
 warned of the 
 falsehood of 
 the statement, 
 the poet was 
 stronger in him 
 than the phi 
 losopher ; he 
 could not con 
 sent to lose or 
 mutilate so fine 
 a digression. 
 
 Our illustia 
 tion conveys to 
 the eye what a 
 tissue of error 
 the whole nana 
 live is, as has 
 been clearly 
 proved by Hois 
 field, Blume,and 
 Bennett. The 
 inquirer will fi 1 
 in the work of the 
 last - mentioned 
 author an inte 
 resting histori 
 cal account of 
 the growth of 
 the fable, and 
 
 an accurate description of the plant itself and its 
 properties. 
 
 As in most other travellers' tales, there is in this 
 also a grain of truth, though nearly obscured by the 
 mass of error. The tree produces a milky juice, 
 from which one of the most virulent of vegetable 
 poisons is prepared ; but the growing tree is in 
 itself not actively injurious. It gives off no subtle 
 poison to taint the air around it. Vegetation 
 flourishes at its base, and it may be approached 
 
 or ascended by man like the other trees of the 
 forest. Only when a tree is extensively wounded, 
 or cut down, and a large quantity of the juice is 
 exposed to the action of the atmosphere, are its 
 injurious effects at all felt, and then it produces a 
 slight heat or itching of the eyes. The inner bark 
 —which is of a close fibrous texture, like a very 
 
 coarse piece of 
 linen — is, after 
 being carefully 
 bruised, steeped 
 and washed, 
 made into rude 
 garments which 
 the poorer la- 
 bourers wear in 
 the field. But 
 they can never 
 get the fibre com- 
 pletely rid of the 
 juice that origi- 
 nally abounded 
 in it ; for if the 
 wearer happens 
 to get wet, an 
 mtolerable itch- 
 ing is produced 
 by the covering, 
 which makes it 
 unbearable. 
 
 Horsficld,dur- 
 mg his residence 
 m Java, made 
 numerous ex- 
 periments with 
 the poison on 
 \-irious quadru- 
 peds. He found 
 that a monkey 
 1 Ld in seven 
 minutes, a cat 
 in fifteen, dogs 
 at different in- 
 tervals up to 
 one hour, and 
 so on. 
 The tree has 
 THE t;rAS tree of java. a very noble 
 
 aspect. It rises 
 from sixty to eighty feet without a branch, then 
 sends off a few stout horizontal branches, which 
 sub-divide, and form a somewhat irregular crown. 
 At the base, the trunk produces numerous broad 
 wings, which gradually decrease upwards until 
 they disappear. These processes greatly in- 
 crease the circumference of the base of the stem, 
 making a stem which is nine feet round where 
 they disappear as much as thirty feet round at 
 the base. 
 
THE GREAT IRISH DEER. 
 
 225 
 
 THE GREAT IRISH DEER. 
 
 In the caves, gravels, and peat-bogs of these islands 
 we find not unfrequently the remains of animals 
 which no longer inhabit Western Europe. Some 
 of these animals still exist, as the aurochs, or Eu- 
 ropean bison, in Russian Poland, the reindeer in 
 Lapland, and the musk-ox, of which fossil remains 
 occur in Devonshire, but which now is only found 
 existing in extreme northern regions. Others, again, 
 are entirely extinct, as the mammoth and the 
 woolly rhinoceros, both of which were formerly 
 
 and the fallow-deer, but was much larger than 
 either. Its antlers were magnificent, measuring a;s 
 much as ten feet across from tip to tip, and weigh- 
 ing, with the skull, as much as a hundred pounds 
 in some instances. The antlers have broad palms, 
 and arc furnished with a large number of tines. 
 When, however, the palm is well developed, the 
 tines are smaller and the spread of the horns less 
 considerable. The name megaceros, big-iwrn, 
 is well suited to a creature whose head must have 
 formed such a noble object. The height of the 
 animal was about six feet at the shoulders, while the 
 
 SKELETO.N AND OUTLINE OF THE GREAT IRISH DEER. 
 
 extremely common, especially in England. To 
 the last category belongs the animal {Megaceros 
 Hibernicns) which is the subject of the present 
 notice, and it has generally received the name of 
 the Irish elk, owing to the great abundance of 
 specimens found in Ireland. The megaceros has, 
 however, also been discovered in parts of Western 
 Europe. The creature has generally been called 
 an elk, probably because the largest member of 
 the deer family still existing bears that name, but 
 it does not resemble the elk in any way. The true 
 elk is a clumsy-looking beast, with broad antlers 
 furnished with few tines. The megaceros was 
 intermediate in character between the reindeer 
 
 29 
 
 hind-quarters drooped only very little, so that it 
 was somewhat taller than a horse. The most re- 
 markable feature about the skeleton is the develop- 
 ment of long processes on the dorsal vertebrae, which 
 were undoubtedly intended as points of attachment 
 for the muscles required to move the heavy head. 
 The female had no horns, as is almost always the 
 case in the deer family. This deer inhabited the 
 outskirts of the forests, and its remains are found 
 almost without exception in the marl at the outside 
 of peat-bogs. In such abundance do they occur, 
 that in one small bog near Lough Gur, in the 
 county of Limerick, upwards of seventy heads were 
 dug up in the autumn of 1864, in addition to a very 
 
226 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 large number which had been obtained in previous 
 
 years. 
 
 The point about which there has been most dis- 
 cussion regarding the megaceros, is as to whether 
 it was contemporaneous with man or not ; and on 
 this it is not easy to arrive at a satisfactory con- 
 clusion from the evidence obtainable here. 
 
 The instances which have been adduced of the 
 discovery of the bones associated with implements 
 of human manufacture have all been explicable on 
 the supposition that they were accidentally thrown 
 together in a bog-hole. Traditionary evidence of 
 the existence of the megaceros is very vague. The 
 most positive statement is that, in an old History of 
 Ireland, published by Pepper about the middle of 
 the seventeenth century, it is stated that the ancient 
 Irish lived on the flesh of a large black deer. The 
 same statement is said to have been found on some 
 brass tablets which came under the notice of the 
 late Sir William Betham. However, the tablets 
 are not now forthcoming, and the history is a very 
 scarce book, having been suppressed by the English 
 Government, owing to its treasonable nature, after 
 the rebellion of 1641. Accordingly, neither of the 
 statements can be considered as traceable to tho- 
 roughly authentic sources. 
 
 In old Irish manuscripts there are frequent allu- 
 sions to field sports; and in one of them particularly, 
 called the " Book of Lismore," the descriptions of 
 deer and deer-hunts are not uncommon. Most of 
 these would suit red-deer as well as the animal which 
 we are now discussing ; however, one of them seems 
 to refer to a deer with very large antlers, and to 
 show that it was existing in the time of St. Patrick. 
 The Irish name for the great deer was the " Ox of 
 the Deluge." The passage in question was dis- 
 covered by the late Professor O'Curry, and was 
 read before the Geological Society of Dublin some 
 years ago. 
 
 Although Pausanias was certainly wrong in his 
 idea of the structure of the elephant, we see that he 
 certainly knew of a large deer, and, as he describes 
 it as inhabiting the country of the Celts, it may 
 possibly have been the megaceros, as the elk is 
 found in Eastern Europe, and is not peculiar to 
 France and these islands. 
 
 As regards the occurrence of this giant deer on 
 the continent, the evidence is pretty conclusive as 
 to its existence simultaneously with man in Switzer- 
 land ; but then we must remember that that country 
 was inhabited by men long before they found their 
 way to these islands. The traditionary evidence is, 
 however, uncertain. In the famous mythical ballad 
 of Germany called the " Nibelungen Lied," it is 
 said of one Sifrid — 
 
 "Then he slew outright a buffalo and an elk, 
 
 Four powerful aurochscs, and one fierce scJtekh.^^ 
 
 Three of these animals are well known ; but as to 
 the fourth, there is nothing to show what it was, and 
 
 the only character attributed to it is fierceness. 
 However, it has been assumed to be the megaceros, 
 simply because that was an animal which might 
 probably be classed among game. 
 
 For a reason somewhat similar to the foregoing, 
 it has been asserted that at the time of the Roman 
 invasion of England the giant deer existed here. 
 The statement is, that at that period the forests 
 lying round Manchester were inhabited by a large 
 animal called a " segh," which was subsequently 
 exterminated. 
 
 The foregoing statements can scarcely be said 
 to lead us to a definite cor elusion, but still there 
 seems a {mt prima facie probability that under all 
 this smoke there was some fire, and that an animal 
 different from any deer now existing was meant. 
 
 The remains themselves are in a very good state 
 of preservation in many instances. The bones and 
 antlers, though almost of the consistence of leather 
 when first exhumed, soon dry and become as hard, 
 or h.arder, than fresh bones. The organic matter in 
 them is scarcely changed, for they will burn freely 
 when thrown on the fire, and when holes are drilled 
 in them in order to insert the iron supports for 
 setting up a skeleton, a very strong and unpleasant 
 odour is emitted. There is a .itory current that a 
 leg-bone was once discovered witli remains of hair 
 upon it ; but, though diligent search has been made 
 with the view of testing such an interesting fact, it 
 has failed to elicit anything as to where the specimen 
 now is, or what has become of it. 
 
 THE PHAROS OF ALEXANDRIA. 
 
 This structure was so famous that all lighthouses 
 after it were called by the common name Pharos, 
 from the island on which it stood. The tower was 
 so high that it could be seen at the distance of a 
 hundred miles. It cost Ptolomrcus Philadelphus 
 800 talents, and was with justice considered one 
 of the Seven Wonders of the World, not only on 
 account of its grandeur, but utility ; and dedicated 
 to " the gods protectors of the safeguard of sailors." 
 It has been rebuilt ; "but," says Mr. Lane, "the 
 modern Pharos is a poor successor of the ancient 
 building erected by Sostratus Cnidius, though from 
 a distance it has rather an imposing appearance." 
 Several Arab historians mention the telescopic 
 mirror of metal which was placed at the summit 
 of the ancient Pharos. In this mirror, vessels 
 might be discerned at sea at a very great distance. 
 El Makreczce relates that part of the Pharos was 
 thrown down by an earthquake, in the year of the 
 flio-ht 177 (a.d. 793—4) ; that Ahnad Ibu-Tooloon 
 surmounted it with a dome of wood ; and that an 
 inscription upon a plate of lead was found upon 
 the northern side, buried in the earth, written in 
 ancient Greek characters, every letter of which 
 was a cubit in height and a span in breadth. This 
 
THE TARANTULA SPIDER. 
 
 227 
 
 was, perhaps, the inscription placed by the original 
 architect, and which, according to Strabo, was to 
 this effect : " Sostratus Cnidius, the son of Dexi- 
 phanes, to the protecting gods, for the sake of the 
 mariners." It is also related by Es-Sooyootee, 
 that the inhabitants of Alexandria likewise made 
 use of the mirror above mentioned to burn the 
 vessels of their enemies, by directing it so as to re- 
 flect the concentrated rays of the sun upon them. 
 
 The ancient Pharos was 450 feet in height, or 50 
 feet higher than St. Paul's Cathedral. 
 
 WONDERS OF TEMPERATURE. 
 
 Every one knows that there is no such separate 
 existence as " cold." Cold is only an absence of 
 heat ; hence, when we require great cold, we must 
 use some body which is demanding large quantities 
 of heat. In a previous paper we described " latent 
 heat," showing that every solid, to become a liquid, 
 absorbed a large quantity of heat ; that this heat 
 was so pre-occupicd in keeping the body in a fluid 
 state that it could do nothing else, and refused to 
 have any effect upon a thermometer placed in it. 
 Just so with steam. Although the temperature of 
 the steam as it issues from the spout of a kettle is 
 just the same as that of the water, yet we know 
 that, weight for weight, the steam contains more 
 than five times the heat which is in the water. If, 
 then, we require for any purpose a low temperature, 
 we must force some solid to become a fluid, or some 
 fluid to become a vapour. 
 
 The confectioners apply this principle in making 
 " ices." The creamy preparation, placed in a 
 metallic vessel, is immersed in broken ice mixed 
 with salt. Now it happens that, for some unknown 
 reason, salt and ice so act upon each other as to 
 force the ice to liquefy, but this it is unable to do 
 unless it has heat : this it abstracts from the 
 cream, which consequently freezes. Two parts of 
 pounded ice mixed with one of common salt can 
 reduce the temperature 36 deg. below the freezing- 
 point of water ; or if, instead of the salt, three parts 
 of crystallised chloride of hme be used, so low a 
 temperature is produced that mercury will freeze. 
 Yet, low as we can get the temperature by these 
 " freezing " mixtures, it is nothing to the wonderful 
 degree of intense cold which the vaporisation of 
 some liquids can produce. 
 
 There is every reason to believe that gases are in 
 reality hquids in vapour. Many of them, by being 
 forced into a wrought iron receiver by means 
 of a forcing-pump, can be liquefied. Of course, 
 when the liquid is taken out of the receiver, and 
 relieved of the enormous pressure under which it 
 existed, it immediately endeavours to go back to its 
 gaseous state. It is in a tremendous hurry to do 
 this, and, seeing it is unable to become a vapour 
 without it receives a large increase of heat, it 
 
 commands all the surrounding bodies to deliver up 
 their heat in the most peremptory manner. Laugh- 
 ing-gas, or nitrous oxide, so condensed under a 
 pressure of 450 lb. on every square inch of the 
 receiver which held the gas, and then liberated, 
 can produce a temperature by its rapid evaporation 
 nearly 200 deg. below the freezing-point of water ; 
 and, by causing this process to go on under the 
 exhausted receiver of an air-pump, the greatest 
 cold has been produced — very nearly 300 deg. below 
 the temperature of ice. 
 
 But perhaps a more remarkable fact is this : that 
 it is possible to cause extremes of temperature to 
 exist in the closest juxtaposition. If some of 
 the liquefied gas above mentioned be placed in a 
 red-hot platinum crucible, and then a little water 
 dropped on it, the water will go into ice. Imagine 
 freezing in a red-hot crucible! nay, even mercury 
 can be made to take the solid state under similar 
 circumstances, and frozen mercury is so cold that 
 when held in the hand it will blister it as though 
 it had been a piece of red-hot iron. The reason 
 that the liquefied gas was not instantly dissipated 
 by the heat is the same as that which causes a 
 drop of water to dance about on an almost red- 
 hot plate of metal: the drop does not really 
 touch the plate, but is surrounded by an atmo- 
 sphere of vapour, upon a thin layer of which it 
 rests, as shown on page 128 of this work. An in- 
 genious application of this really wonderful fact has 
 been long in use in glass-works. The mode of 
 making British plate-glass is to blow a cyhnder of 
 glass, then cut it open and spread it out. To make 
 the cylinder even and symmetrical, the glass is 
 blown in a wooden mould, the sides of which are 
 wetted with water ; the red-hot glass converts this 
 into steam, which keeps the glass from burning the 
 wood, and also from touching the water, which 
 would at once spoil it, rendering it brittle. 
 
 If possible, more wonderful, and indeed, all but 
 incredible, is the finding of ice over which a lava- 
 bed has been poured centuries ago. The ice was 
 first covered with a layer of cinders, which are bad 
 conductors of heat, then came the molten lava ; and 
 the non-conducting power of the ashes proved 
 sufficient to prevent the heat of the lava from melt- 
 ing the ice. -____^;^:= 
 
 THE TARANTULA SPIDER. 
 
 This name is given to a large spider, observed at 
 first in the neighbourhood of Tarentum, in Italy, and 
 for the bite of which, considered poisonous, music 
 and dancing were said to be the only remedy. 
 Certain songs and airs were solemnly used for the 
 occasion, and the tarantula itself danced to the 
 air of the " tarantella." The truth is that the bite 
 produced disorders of the nervous system, with 
 strong convulsive movements, which was exag- 
 gerated into dancing. This disorder seems to have 
 
228 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 occurred frequently in the kingdom of Naples 
 during the sixteenth century ; to have been nearly 
 similar in its character to the disease which was 
 originally called " St. Vitus' Dance ;" and to that 
 which has occasionally prevailed in parts of Scot- 
 land, and has been called the " leaping ague." 
 
 The patients, nearly all of whom were women, 
 soon after being bitten, as it was supposed, used 
 to fall into a stupor, from which nothing rescued 
 them but the sound of such music as pleased them, 
 on hearing which they had an irresistible desire 
 to dance. So long as the music continued, and 
 was in tune and sufficiently lively, they would go 
 on jumping and dancing till they fell exhausted, and 
 all the time some used to shriek, some to laugh and 
 sing, some to weep. When, after a short rest, they 
 had recovered from their fatigue, they would again 
 begin to dance with as much vigour as before, unless 
 the music were played slowly or confusedly, when 
 they would stop and grOw anxious or melancholy ; 
 or even, if the music were not soon made agreeable 
 to them, would fall into a dangerous state of stupor. 
 The disease used to last about four days, and 
 seemed to be cured by the profuse perspirations 
 brought on by the active exercise ; but it often 
 returned at the same time in the following year, 
 or even for a succession of years, and on every 
 occasion required the same treatment. The nervous 
 affection was called the Tarantismus. Since it 
 has been found that the bite of the tarantula can 
 produce no such strange effects as these, many have 
 suspected that the disease ascribed to it never 
 really existed, but was feigned for the purpose of 
 exciting pity, or for the pleasure of dancing. There 
 is good reason to believe that in most instances it 
 was merely counterfeited ; but there can be no doubt 
 that such a disease had occurred, and had given 
 occasion to the practice of the fraud. 
 
 The habits of the tarantula are very curious. 
 Its jaws and feet are large and strong ; its legs and 
 feet are furnished with long stiff spurs, with which 
 the animal seizes its prey ; and its foremost two pair 
 of feet are furnished with a down, like a brush, which 
 the tarantula employs in making its toilette, and 
 in crawling on smooth surfaces ; the feet are ter- 
 minated by two strong nails. When full grown, 
 it inhabits underground passages, forming a burrow 
 sunk to the depth of a foot beneath the surface ; 
 and this burrow not only protects the animal from 
 the pursuit of its enemies, but serves it as an ob- 
 servatory, whence it may dart on its prey. At 
 first the hole sinks perpendicularly, then bends 
 and forms an almost horizontal elbow, after which 
 it resumes its direction downwards. At this elbow 
 the tarantula stands sentry, never losing sight of 
 the door of its dwelling ; and here the creature's 
 eyes glitter hke diamonds, rendered bright, like 
 those of a cat, by darkness. Externally, the open- 
 ing of the tarantula's burrow is surmounted by a 
 
 funnel, constructed of pieces of dry wood, united 
 by clay, and lined with a web spun by the spider, 
 which is continued through the whole interior of 
 the burrow. This prevents the fall of earth, and 
 enables the tarantula by its claws quickly to ascend 
 or scale its fortress. 
 
 M. Leon Dufour has described the mode of hunt- 
 ing the tarantula, mostly in May and June, at 
 Valencia, in Spain. The Apulian peasants imitate 
 at the mouth of the hole the humming of an insect 
 by means of an oaten stalk, and so lure the taran- 
 tula to the mouth of the burrow, and capture him. 
 It is easily tamed. M. Dufour put two full-grown 
 and very vigorous male tarantu-las together in a 
 glass vase, and then witnessed a combat fought 
 with wonderful strategy, until the ferocious van- 
 quisher mortally wounded his enemy in the head, 
 and then devoured him. 
 
 BOILING BROTH IN THE HIGHER 
 ANDES. 
 In Byam's "Wanderings in Chili and Peru," we 
 find the following remarkable illustration of one of 
 the well-known laws of heat : — " Feeling very cold, 
 we determined to make some soup to warm us, and 
 as we had plenty of meat and onions, we cut them 
 up, put them into a saucepan with salt and Cayenne 
 pepper, and set them on to boil. I only relate this 
 for the information of those who have not been to 
 great heights, those who wish to go there, and also 
 of those who, perchance, may believe that boiling 
 must be the same thing all over the world. After 
 our soup had bubbled away in the most orthodox 
 style for more than two hours, we naturally con- 
 cluded that our ' bouillon ' was ready and the meat 
 perfectly done, especially as the last had been cut 
 into rather small pieces ; but, to our great surprise, 
 we found the water almost colourless, and the meat 
 almost as raw as when it was first put into the pot. 
 One of the miners told us it was of no use trying to 
 boil anything, as nothing could be cooked by water 
 on the top of that mountain ; for, although the water 
 bubbled away very fast, the heat was not great 
 enough to boil a potato. 
 
 " At great altitudes the water begins to boil long 
 before it arrives at the heat of 212 deg. of Fahren- 
 heit, and as water cannot get hotter than boiling- 
 point, except by the compression of the steam, 
 nothing can be cooked unless some safe means of 
 confining the steam be adopted. I saw directly 
 how the matter lay, and, sticking the lid tight on 
 the pan, made it fast with heavy lumps of silver 
 ore that were lying about, attaching them to the 
 handle, and putting others on the top of all. In a 
 very short time the steam got up, and, though it 
 made the lid jump a little, I managed to get a good 
 broth, to the great surprise of the miners, who could 
 not conceive what I was about." 
 
WATERSPOUTS. 
 
 229 
 
 WATERSPOUTS. 
 
 Waterspouts are among those curious phenomena 
 of nature which have long been the subject of dis- 
 cussion with scientific observers, without any de- 
 finite conclusion being arrived at as to their origin. 
 Appearing in all countries of the world, they have 
 attracted much attention and speculation, but no 
 theory yet started to account for them has met 
 general acceptance. Some have ascribed them to 
 whirlwinds, others to electrical origin, and others, 
 again, to a combination of both these causes. They 
 
 After continuing in this form a short time, the 
 waterspout bursts, in some cases with terrific vio- 
 lence, and to the destruction of anything in the 
 vicinity. Many a ship has been overwhelmed in 
 this manner, and sunk in a moment, with all on 
 board. In November, 1855, five vessels were thus 
 sunk by a waterspout in the harbour of Tunis. 
 
 It may be imagined, therefore, that the appearance 
 of a waterspout at sea is often the cause of alarm 
 to the mariner ; but this is not always the case. 
 Sometimes in stormy weather they are seen in the 
 distance, forming and dispersing again with great 
 
 WATHRsrours; at sea. 
 
 are usually seen at sea in windy and cloudy weather, 
 but occasionally appear in inland districts. In 
 the latter case, however, there is generally water in 
 the locality in the form of lakes and rivers. 
 
 Waterspouts at sea are usually formed in the 
 following manner: — A dense cloud is seen to project 
 from its centre a body of vapour, in form something 
 like a sugar-loaf, with the apex pointing downward. 
 This cone is agitated by the wind until it sometimes 
 assumes a spiral form, and it gradually dips more 
 and more toward the sea. As it approaches the 
 water, a similar cone is seen to form upon the sur- 
 face of the latter, with the point directed upwards, 
 and both the clouds above and the waters below 
 are evidently violently agitated by the influence at 
 work to produce the phenomenon. Suddenly the 
 descending and the ascending cones of water or 
 vapour meet in mid-air, and form one united pillar, 
 which traverses the sea with great velocity. The 
 junction of the two cones is generally accompanied 
 by an electrical flash.   
 
 rapidity, and a group of waterspouts may be ob- 
 served at the same instant. But when a waterspout 
 forms in the neighbourhood of a vessel, there is 
 more or less of danger to the ship, in proportion to 
 the size of the column ; and it is customary in such 
 cases to fire a cannon, in the hope that the concussion 
 of the air may burst the spout before it arrives suffi- 
 ciently near to swamp the vessel in its dispersion. 
 
 The whirlwind theory accounts for waterspouts 
 in the following manner: — The winds meet from 
 opposing quarters, and their mutual violence causes 
 them to act and re-act upon each other, so that they 
 travel round a common centre, neither current of 
 air being sufficiently strong to overcome and pass 
 the others. This whirling of the air causes a va- 
 cuum to be formed in the middle, and, according 
 to the principle that "nature abhors a vacuum," 
 the water or vapour from the clouds and that from 
 the sea rush in to fill it, and remain united so long 
 as the opposing forces in the air retain their balance 
 of strength. This theory has at least the merit of 
 
230 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 being easy of comprehension, but it is not in itself 
 sufficient to account for all the circumstances at- 
 tendant on the phenomenon, such as the manifest 
 discharge of the electric fluid, which is so frequently 
 observed. Therefore some have attributed it to a 
 purely electrical influence between the water and 
 the clouds in certain states of the atmosphere, 
 although there is no sufficient knowledge of the 
 modes in which this influence operates. 
 
 The waterspouts observed on land are cones or 
 pillars of vapour which in many cases proceed from 
 the clouds alone. One observed at Dum Dum, 
 near Calcutta, was calculated to be about 1,500 feet 
 in height ; its duration was about half a minute, 
 and on its bursting it covered half a square mile 
 with about six inches of water. Waterspouts of 
 this kind are often most destructive in their effects. 
 Many such have been observed in this country, and 
 we extract the following record of some of the most 
 noteworthy from Townsend's " Manual of Dates :" 
 — One burst in Lancashire in 1718, and caused 
 considerable damage. Another, at Brackenthwaite, 
 in Cumberland, September 9th, 1760, tore away the 
 gravel and soil from a field. A great waterspout 
 descended upon Dungavell Hill, in Scotland, July 
 2nd, 1768, and made an opening about twenty- 
 four yards broad and three feet deep. A similar 
 phenomenon occurred at Clapham Common during 
 a violent thunderstorm, June i8th, 1782 ; and at 
 Ramsgate, where it flooded several cellars to the 
 depth of four feet, July 14th, 1798. One burst over 
 the Wheal Abraham and Creuve mines, in Corn- 
 wall, in November, 1806, and choked up the 
 shaft, causing the death of several miners, and 
 considerable destruction of property. Another, 
 consisting of a torrent of water nearly six feet in 
 diameter, descended upon the town of Silkstone, in 
 Yorkshire, May 9th, 1807, and several of the in- 
 liabitants were drowned. A waterspout of very 
 destructive character overwhelmed the village of 
 Kingscourt, county Cavan, Ireland, September 
 1 2th, 1838. 
 
 Waterspouts have occasionally been observed in 
 the seas round the British coasts. In 1864 a re- 
 markable one was seen in the Channel off Brighton. 
 It lasted about a quarter of an hour, travelling with 
 the wind, but dispersed without doing damage. Its 
 duration was attended with thunder, and on its 
 breaking up a heavy hailstorm swept over the 
 locality. 
 
 . CURIOUS METHOD OF POISONING. 
 
 "As in the Steppe," says Baron von Humboldt, 
 " tigers and crocodiles fight with horses and cattle, 
 so in the forests on its borders, in the wildernesses 
 of Guiana, man is ever armed against man. Some 
 tribes drink with unnatural thirst the blood of their 
 enemies ; others^ apparently weaponless and yet 
 
 prepared for murder, kill with a poisoned thumb- 
 nail. The Otomacs often poison the thumb-nail 
 with curare. A mere scratch of the nail is deadly 
 if the curare mixes with the blood. We obtained 
 specimens of the chmbing plant from the juice of 
 which the curare is prepared at Esmeralda, on the 
 Upper Orinoco, but unfortunately we did not find 
 it in blossom. Judging by its physiognomy, it ap- 
 pears to be related to strychnos. Richard Schom- 
 burgk found the plant in blossom in Guiana on 
 the banks of the Pomeroon and the Sururu in 
 the territory of the Caribs, who are not, however, 
 acquainted with the manner of preparing the poison. 
 Probably the curare or ourari poison does not kill 
 by mere external absorption, but only when ab- 
 sorbed by living animal substance which has been 
 wounded slightly, and its particular effect is to take 
 away the power of voluntary muscular movement, 
 whilst the involuntary functions of the heart and 
 intestines still continue." 
 
 Serpents Changed into Rods.— The Egyp- 
 tian cobra is unlike the Asiatic species, wanting 
 the curious spectacle-like mark that distinguishes 
 the latter. It is of a somewhat dark and greenish 
 hue, marked with brownish, and attaining the 
 length of from three to five feet. The Egyptian 
 conjurers know how to render this serpent stiff and 
 immovable by pressing the nape of the neck with 
 the finger, and thus throwing it into a sort of cata- 
 lepsy. The serpent is thus apparently converted 
 into a rod or stick. Traces of this trick occur in 
 Scripture, and it affords a striking illustration of 
 the passage where Pharaoh's wise men cast down 
 their rods, which were turned into serpents, but 
 were devoured by the serpent of Aaron. 
 
 White Monkeys. — Pliny alludes to the fact 
 that white monkeys are occasionally found in India ; 
 but it has generally been supposed that the speci- 
 mens seen were albinos. Sir Emerson Tennent 
 had one brought to him in Ceylon, which certainly 
 could not have been an albino, as it had a black 
 face and black eyes, all the rest of the body being 
 white. He was told by the natives that this kind 
 was not uncommon. Others are occasionally found 
 entirely white, face and all. The Rev. R. Spence 
 Hardy mentions in his work on " Eastern Mona- 
 chism," that on the occasion of his visit to the great 
 temple of Dambool, he met with a troop of white 
 monkeys on the rock where the temple is situated. 
 There can be no doubt of the fact, therefore, that 
 white monkeys are really one of the varieties of the 
 race. 
 
 Sagacity of Ants. — When Dr. Franklin was in 
 Paris, as he sat quietly and alone at his breakfast 
 one morning, he saw a number of black ants busy 
 
THE SPECTRUM ANALYSIS. 
 
 231 
 
 with the contents of the sugar-bowl. He drove 
 them away, but they returned. Again he dispersed 
 them, but in a few minutes they were seen climbing 
 from lump to lump, as if nothing had happened. 
 To try their ingenuity, he had the sugar-bowl sus- 
 pended by a string from the ceiling. They en- 
 deavoured to reach it by standing on each other's 
 backs ; several mounted in that manner and reached 
 upwards, but in vain ; the chain of ants fell down as 
 fast as it was raised. After repeated attempts they 
 went away, and he supposed they had given up the 
 matter ; but presently he saw them descending the 
 string, and dropping down upon the lumps of sugar. 
 They had scaled the walls, traversed the ceiling, 
 and discovered another road to the treasure. 
 
 THE SPECTRUM ANALYSIS. 
 
 Every one must have observed the beautiful 
 coloured image formed by allowing a ray of light 
 to pass through a triangular-shaped bar of glass 
 called a prism. Thus, suppose a ray of solar light, 
 S,- to fall upon a prism, a, allowing the image to 
 
 Fig. I. 
 
 fall on a screen, we shall find that, instead of 
 coming out in its original direction and appearance, 
 we shall have it diverted and projected as a long 
 streak of gorgeously-coloured light, I H. White 
 light thus treated is said to be " decomposed," and i 
 the ray is said to be " refracted " from its original 
 course. 
 
 Sir Isaac Newton was the first to notice this 
 power of the prism, and hence came to the con- , 
 elusion that ordinary light was composed of seven '■ 
 coloured rays united in one, each being of dif- , 
 ferent refrangibility. The violet, being the most i 
 diverted or refrangible, is the farthest from the 
 red, which is the least so ; the other rays occu- 
 pying intermediate positions. That such is the 
 case may be proved in the following manner :— 
 Having cut out a circular piece of cardboard, ' 
 divide it, with a pencil, radially into portions , 
 varying in width proportionate to the space , 
 occupied by the colours in the " spectrum," as 
 
 the band, I H, is called, and colour them with the 
 seven primitive colours in the order in which they 
 appear. These seven colours are called "primitive," 
 from our inability, in the present condition of science, 
 to further decompose them. When placed on a 
 centre, and rapidly rotated, the coloured face of 
 the card resolves itself into a dirty white, which 
 would be pure if we could divide the card with per- 
 fect accuracy, and could also obtain pure prismatic 
 colours. 
 
 A favourite theory with regard to the spectrum is 
 that the primitive colours arc three in number, blue, 
 yellow, and red; the violet and indigo are shades of 
 blue, the green is formed by the overlapping of 
 the yellow and blue, and the orange is similarly 
 produced by the commingling of the yellow and 
 red. 
 
 Dr. WoUaston discovered in the year 1 802 that the 
 solar spectrum was crossed by dark, non-luminous 
 bands, varying considerably in thickness and defi- 
 nition ; he also observed that if the light of an 
 electric spark were treated in a similar manner to 
 the solar ray, the spectrum produced was found on 
 examination to differ considerably from the solar 
 spectrum in the arrangement of these lines. Herein 
 lay the foundation of one of the greatest marvels of 
 science. 
 
 Nothing more was done in the matter till the year 
 18 1 5, when a German optician, Fraunhofcr by 
 name, devoted his attention to the study of this 
 phenomenon. The immediate result of his investi- 
 gation was important, showing that the solar spec- 
 trum, so far from being a continuous luminous 
 band, was crossed by at least 600 dark lines, which 
 have ever since gone by the name of" Fraunhofcr's 
 lines." The principal of these have been distin- 
 guished by the letters of tlic alphabet, as in Fig. 2. 
 In 1835 Wheatstonc discovered that the alteration 
 of the metals forming the electrodes* varied the 
 spectrum obtained by passing an electric spark 
 between them, and the spectra so obtained were 
 sufficiently distinctive to point out the metal com- 
 posing them. Here, then, was the spectrum analysis 
 fully developed : different substances gave different 
 spectra. PlUcker, in 1858, discovered that im- 
 ponderable traces of gas could be discovered in 
 this way. 
 
 To analyse the spectrum two things are essential— 
 a good prism and a spectroscope. The latter is con- 
 structed as follows (see Fig. 4) : — 
 
 To a pedestal, T, are fixed two arms, A A, one of 
 which is so constructed as to move round the pedes- 
 tal as a centre. To one arm is attached a telescope, 
 l!,to the othera tubc,C, having at its further extremity 
 a lens. The width of the orifice of the tube is regu- 
 lated at pleasure by a sliding mouthpiece and screw, 
 D ; to the centre of the pedestal is fixed a prism, E. 
 
 • The " electrodes " are the terminations of the poles of an e!cctric 
 battery. 
 
232 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 Everything is now ready, and the observer, taking 
 some of the subject under examination, introduces it 
 into the flame of a Bunsen gas-burner. The tube, c, 
 and telescope, B, are now so arranged that the hght 
 from the burner passes down the tube, c, through 
 the prism, E, where the ray is decomposed and 
 refracted up the telescope, b, down which the ob- 
 server looks. The spectrum is thus projected on to 
 
 Violet Indigo Blue 
 
 giving a brilliant, well-defined yellow line, coinciding 
 in position with the line D of the solar spectrum. 
 
 Sodium, the base of our common soda, is so 
 universally diffused, that it is almost, if not quite, 
 impossible to obtain a spectrum in which the broad 
 yellow band distinctive of the metal is not visible. 
 Such a minute quantity as the Bdboiioth part of a grain 
 of this metal will give a spectrum. Bunsen and 
 
 Green Yellow Orange Red 
 
 the retina, and may be easily identified by its own 
 peculiar arrangement of " Fraunhofer's lines." 
 Some more highly-finished spectroscopes are fitted 
 with a third arm, the further end of which is closed 
 by a ground-glass screen, on which is cut a fine 
 scale ; the other end of the tube is furnished with a 
 lens ; an indepen- 
 dent light is placed 
 opposite to this tube, 
 and the bright lines 
 of the scale are thus 
 refracted through 
 the prism and up 
 the telescope, B, 
 being thereby visi- 
 ble at the same time 
 as the spectrum, by 
 means of which 
 the latter may be 
 easily measured. 
 Some instruments 
 are arranged with 
 two prisms at d, by 
 which, using two 
 
 burners, two subjects may be examined at the 
 same time and their spectra compared. It is not 
 always practicable to analyse the subject by a 
 Bunsen's burner. If a metal, it may be made 
 the electrodes of an electric circuit, and the light 
 be obtained by means of an electric spark ; or 
 in some cases the burner of an ordinary lamp 
 may be fed with an alcoholic solution of the 
 subject. Certain subjects must be treated in cer- 
 tain ways. 
 
 To give some idea of the difference between the 
 solar spectrum (Fig. 2) and other spectra, the 
 spectrum of sodium is given in Fig. 3. It is more 
 easily distinguished than perhaps any other metal, 
 
 Kirchhoff have been the foremost pioneers in this 
 branch of science, and their diligence has been 
 rewarded by the discovery of two metals, till then 
 unknown, to which they gave the names of cssium 
 and rubidium — the one called so from ccesiiis, sky- 
 coloured, the distinctive spectrum of this metal 
 
 bcingtwobluelines; 
 the latter from rubi- 
 dus, dark red, this 
 metal giving two re- 
 markable red lines. 
 Mr. Crookes, in 
 1 86 1 , added another 
 metal, to which he 
 gave the name of 
 thallium, from BaK- 
 \bs, a budding twig, 
 alluding to the bril- 
 liant green line visi- 
 ble in its spectrum. 
 This minute ana- 
 lysis of bodies with- 
 in our reach may 
 seem wonderful, but 
 a still more remarkable fact is that this method of 
 analysis has been applied to the celestial bodies 
 with great success, traces of our own metals ap- 
 pearing in the sun and in numbers of the stars. It 
 has been observed, during a total eclipse of the 
 sun, that that luminary appears to be surrounded 
 by immense jets of gas in an incandescent state. 
 It had been found impossible (on account of their 
 light being overpowered in the usual condition of 
 affairs) to investigate them, but recently the spec- 
 troscope has been applied to them, and although 
 they are invisible, the observer can determine, by 
 means of their spectra, the position and any fluc- 
 tuations of these enormous flames. 
 
THE MAMMOTH. 
 
 233 
 
 THE MAMMOTH. 
 
 There is a vast country, of which Siberia forms 
 a part, in the north of Asia, stretching from the 
 mountains which separate Europe from Asia, and 
 reaching as far as the straits which are between 
 that continent and America. On the north of this 
 region, which is larger than Europe, is the Polar 
 Sea ; and the great mountains — whose southern 
 chain, the Himalayas, contains the highest peaks in 
 the world — bound it on the south. 
 
 It is a dreary land, high and rocky on the south, 
 and flat and frozen to the north. Some of the 
 
 it had long black bristles all over it, and they were 
 from a foot to sixteen inches long ; it had also 
 long red hair covering the whole body, and short 
 fur. The chief waited and watched for five years. 
 By the end of that time the ice had melted, and 
 the mammoth presented itself in its flesh and hairy 
 hide to the astonished natives. The tusks were cut 
 off and sold, the neighbouring inhabitants came 
 with their dogs and feasted on the carcase, and 
 the wolves picked the bones. Fortunately, a 
 naturalist heard of it, and collected the bones and 
 specimens of the hair, thirty pounds weight of 
 which were gathered from the wet sand-bank on 
 
 DISCOVERY OF THE MAMMOTH. 
 
 longest rivers in the world flow across it in a course 
 nearly straight from south to north, and it is often 
 warm and showery on the mountain sides when 
 everything is frozen for hundreds of miles inland 
 near the Polar Sea. Consequently, the water flow- 
 ing down the long rivers meets the ice, floods it, 
 and inundates the country for great distances ; 
 moreover, the gravel and stones carried down are 
 piled on to the ice, and formed into sheets over the 
 neighbourhood. In the year 1799, a chief of a 
 native tribe was searching for ivory along the banks 
 of the Lena, when, to his great horror and fright, 
 he saw in a cliff of the gravel just mentioned a 
 huge block of ice, and in it what he considered a 
 beast of evil omen. He became ill from terror, but 
 on his recovery, remembering that the beast had 
 tusks which were like those he was searching for, 
 he again visited the spot. There stood, all encased 
 in transparent ice, a creature like an elephant in 
 shape, nine feet high and sixteen long, and with 
 enormous tusks projecting for eight or ten feet, and 
 curving at their tips. The huge brute was hairy ; 
 
 3^ 
 
 I which the mammoth rested, and the tusks he re- 
 purchased. He carried the whole to the nearest 
 capital, St. Petersburg, a distance of 7,330 miles, 
 where it became one of the Wonders of the World, 
 and where it may still be seen in the museum of 
 which it forms a most remarkable feature. Our 
 illustration shows the gigantic carcase as it ap- 
 peared to the astonished eyes of the chief, still half 
 encased in the ice-block which had preserved it for 
 so many years. 
 
 The mammoth, or hairy elephant, is extinct, and 
 a live one has never been seen since men have 
 known how to read and write ; but its bones are 
 found over the whole of Europe, Northern Asia, 
 and North America. The elephants now living are 
 the African with large, and the Indian with small 
 ears ; these are both dwellers in hot climates, and 
 would die if left to themselves even in the tem- 
 perate countries of Europe. But the hairy mam- 
 moth was an elephant which lived in cold and 
 temperate climates, and it is a most interesting 
 creature, because its teeth, tusks, and bones, which 
 
234 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 are by no means uncommon in old bogs, gravel- 
 pits, and brick-fields, are often associated with the 
 weapons of the first men who travelled from the 
 East to colonise Europe, then a country full of 
 wild beasts. It is supposed that the mammoth 
 lived amongst the forests of the great plain of 
 Siberia, and that it was often overtaken by floods 
 and drowned. The carcases would float until 
 covered with ice, gravel, and sand, and would 
 generally decompose, and only the tusks and bones 
 would be left. Thousands of mammoth tusks had 
 been found in Siberia before the chief discovered 
 the whole animal, and it is believed that there 
 are as many more mammoths still covered up 
 in Siberian gravel and mud as there are living 
 elephants in India and Africa. 
 
 Doubtless the mammoth was larger than the 
 elephant, but it fell beneath the constant attacks 
 of savage men ; and, moreover, it lived in regions 
 where the rivers were constantly flooded and loaded 
 with stony sediment, and where bogs were common. 
 It died out very early in the history of man, but 
 it lived when Europe was very different to what 
 it is now. Many animals, some still living and 
 others extinct, roamed through the country with 
 the mammoth. There was a great tiger, a hyena, 
 a rhinoceros covered with hair, the rein-deer, and 
 many kinds of bears. These companions and 
 enemies of the mammoth left their bones in the 
 earth, and were either destroyed by men or died 
 off from alterations in the climate. The mammoth 
 liad teeth which were coarser in structure than 
 those of the elephant, and it fed upon tougher 
 food ; its hairy coat, so different from the skin of 
 the existing elephants, adapted it for a cold climate, 
 and its tusks arc sold by the thousand for ivory. 
 Even in North America, on the shore of Behring's 
 .Straits, the frozen clifl's of mud and sea break away 
 and disclose ivory tusks and mammoth bones, and 
 lately, in making explorations in Rome, mammoth 
 bones were discovered in tlie mud by the side of 
 the Tiber. Its teeth are common in England, and 
 a great skull was found at Ilford, in Essex. An 
 elephant fitted to live in a cold climate appears 
 at first to be a very strange thing, but it must be 
 remembered that the zebra can only live wild in 
 hot climates, though the horse lives in cold ; and 
 the buflalo can only flourish in the warm countries, 
 yet the ox, his near relation, does very well in 
 Europe. 
 
 THE TEMPLE OF DIANA OF THE 
 EPHESIANS. 
 
 At Ephesus, the capital of the twelve Ionian cities 
 in Asia Minor, stood this famous temple of Diana. 
 The edifice was burnt down on the night in which 
 Alexander was born. It was set fire to by Erato- 
 Stratus, a native of Ephesus, with no other view than 
 
 to immortalise his name. His townsmen, however, 
 passed a decree forbidding his name to be men- 
 tioned ; nor would it soon have been known unless 
 Theopompus had introduced it into his writings. 
 Hence the incendiary has come down to our times 
 as " the youth that fired the Ephesian dome." 
 
 Alexander made an offer to rebuild the temple, 
 provided he could inscribe his name on the front, 
 which the Ephesians refused. Aided, however, by 
 the whole of Asia Minor, they erected a still more 
 magnificent temple, which occupied them two 
 hundred and twenty years. Pliny describes it as 
 425 feet long by 220 broad. Chersiphron was the 
 architect. It was built of cedar, cypress, and even 
 gold ; and within it were treasured offerings to the 
 goddess Diana, the value of which almost exceeded 
 computation. Nero is said to have despoiled the 
 temple of many of these treasures ; but it existed 
 until it was finally burnt by the Goths, a.d. 253 — 
 26S. Vitruvius considers this temple as the first 
 edifice in which architecture was brought to perfec- 
 tion, and the first in which the Ionic order was 
 employed. 
 
 Ephesus, once the pride of Asia, is now repre- 
 sented by a poor village of a few cottages, and a 
 castle and mosque built with fragments taken from 
 the ruins of Ephesus, half a mile distant. The 
 stadium, now converted into a corn-field, the theatre, 
 the circus, and the magnificent gymnasium, may all 
 be distinguished in outline, and their area is 
 strewed with fine fragments. There is a particular 
 part of the entablature of a Corinthian temple, 
 which, in the richness and variety of its ornaments, 
 as well as in their fine execution, has perhaps 
 never been surpassed. But it is not without diffi- 
 culty, and even doubt, that we can determine the 
 spot where stood that proud boast of antiquity — 
 the temple sacred to Diana of the Ephesians. All 
 that constituted the splendour of this edifice— its 
 columns, of which 127 were the gifts of kings, its 
 works of art, comprising the masterpiece, of Apelles 
 and Praxiteles, and the one column sculptured by 
 Scopas — have disappeared. After the temple had 
 been repeatedly pillaged by the barbarians, Justinian 
 removed the columns to adorn the church of St. 
 Sophia, at Constantinople. The temple site can now 
 be identified only by the marshy spot on which it was 
 erected, and by the prodigious extent and magnitude 
 of the arches raised as a foundation. The vaults 
 formed by them compose a sort of labyrinth. 
 There is not an apartment entire ; but walls of 
 immense blocks of marble, in the fronts of which 
 are perforations wherein were sunk the shanks of 
 the brass and silver plates with which the walls were 
 faced — these, and shafts of columns, are all that 
 remain of this splendid edifice, once pointed out as 
 that which all Asia worshipped when the people 
 cried out in their enthusiasm, " Great is Diana of 
 the Ephesians, to whom such a temple belonged!" 
 
THE SPEAKING-TRUMPET. 
 
 235 
 
 INTELLIGENCE IN THE HORSE. 
 
 In Stephens's "Book of the Farm" the following 
 examples of equine inteUigencc are recorded: — " It 
 is remarked by those who have much to do with 
 blood-horses, that when at liberty, and seeing two or 
 more people standing conversing together, they will 
 approach, and seem, as it were, to wish to listen to the 
 conversation. The farm-horse will not do this, but he 
 is quite obedient to call, and distinguishes his name 
 readily from that of his companions, and will not 
 stir when desired to stand till his own name is 
 pronounced. He distinguishes the various sorts of 
 work he is put to, and will apply his strength and 
 skill in the best way to effect his purpose, whether 
 in the threshing-mill, the catt, or the plough. He 
 soon acquires a perfect sense of his work. I have 
 seen a plough-horse walk very steadily towards a 
 directing pole, and halt when his head had reached 
 it. He seems also to have a sense of time. I have 
 heard a horse neigh almost daily about ten minutes 
 before the time of ceasing work in the evening, 
 whether in summer or in winter. The horse is 
 capable of distinguishing the tones of the voice, 
 whether spoken in anger or otherwise, and can 
 even distinguish between musical notes. There 
 was a work-horse of my own who, even at his corn, 
 would leave off eating and listen attentively, with 
 pricked and moving ears and steady eyes, the instant 
 he heard a low note sounded, and would continue to 
 listen so long as it was sustained; and another that 
 was similarly affected by a particular high note. The 
 recognition of the sound of the bugle by a trooper, 
 and the excitement occasioned in the hunter when 
 the pack give tongue, are famihar instances of the 
 power of horses to discriminate between different 
 sounds. They never mistake one call for another." 
 
 THE SPEAKING-TRUMPET. 
 
 The ancient contrivances of this kind resembled 
 hearing rather than speaking-trumpets. The great 
 horn described in an old manuscript in the 
 Vatican Library as having been used by Alexander 
 the Great to assemble his army, has been con- 
 sidered the oldest speaking-trumpet on record ; 
 but the description does not expressly state that 
 Alexander spoke through the horn. 
 
 To Sir Samuel Morland, Master of Mechanics 
 to Charles II., we are indebted for the speaking- 
 trumpet in its present form. Athanasius Kircher, 
 the learned Jesuit, warmly contests the credit of the 
 invention, asserting that he had published the 
 description of a speaking-trumpet several years 
 before Morland described his invention in a 
 pamphlet of eight pages, published in 1671. But 
 Kircher's work resembled a hearing-trumpet, and 
 he does not appear to have tried a proper speaking- 
 
 trumpet until two years after Morland's trumpet 
 had appeared. 
 
 To Sir Samuel Morland must, therefore, be 
 awarded the priority of the invention. His pam- 
 phlet is entitled "A Description of the Tuba 
 Stentorophonica, an instrument of excellent use, as 
 well by sea as by land." In this rare tract he 
 gives an account of the various experiments that 
 he made before his instrument attained a certain 
 degree of perfection. The first trumpet that he 
 constructed, "although," says Sir Samuel, "the 
 invention had been long before digested in my 
 thoughts," was made of glass in the year 1670, 
 being about two feet eight inches in length, the 
 diameter of the greater end eleven inches, and that 
 of the other end two and a half inches. "With 
 this," he says, " I was heard speaking at a consider- 
 able distance by several persons, and found that it 
 did very considerably multiply the voice." After 
 giving a description of some experiments with other 
 trumpets, he enters into a philosophic disquisition 
 on the nature of sound, and the best form of the 
 speaking-trumpet, which he leaves doubtful ; and 
 concludes with "an account of the manifold 
 uses " of his instrument, which are very excusably 
 exaggerated. 
 
 The next trumpet he made was of brass, twelve 
 inches in diameter at the large end and only two 
 inches at the small end, to which was affixed a 
 mouth-piece, "made somewhat after the manner 
 of bellows," to move with the mouth, and thereby 
 prevent the escape of the breath. This was tried 
 in St. James's Park, and rendered the voice 
 audible at a distance of nearly half a mile. The 
 third instrument was of copper, recurved in the 
 form of a common trumpet ; its total length was 
 sixteen feet eight inches, the large end nineteen 
 inches, and the small end two inches in diameter ; 
 with this the voice was heard about a mile and a 
 half. Morland made other trumpets. With one of 
 the largest, tried at Deal Castle, the voice was 
 conducted a distance of between two and three 
 miles over the sea. Morland appears to have 
 overrated the power of his trumpet ; for in his 
 " Urim of Conscience " he says that he has no 
 doubt but that it might be improved so as to 
 carry the voice for the distance of ten miles ! 
 Dr. Young, by the way, records that at Gibraltar 
 the human voice has been heard at a distance of 
 ten miles. 
 
 In an advertisement prefixed to a French trans- 
 lation of his pamphlet, it is stated that Morland's 
 "tubes," as they were called, were sold by Moses 
 Pitt, a bookseller, in St. Paul's Churchyard, at 
 the price of £2 5s. The invention excited much 
 interest at the time. Butler makes Hudibras say : 
 
 " I heard a formidable voice, 
 Loud as the Stentophonic noise." 
 
 There is one of Morland's original tubes now 
 
236 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 preserved in Trinity College Library, Cambridge. 
 This trumpet is about six feet long ; it is in bad 
 condition, and no one knew what it was until about 
 thirty years since, when it was identified by a 
 member of the college. 
 
 WONDERFUL WATERFALLS. 
 
 When Dr. Livingstone, the celebrated African 
 explorer, reached the river Zambesi, he often was 
 asked by the natives, " Have you smoke that sounds 
 in your country?" and they assured him that 
 some way off " smoke did sound." He went in the 
 direction pointed out by the natives, and whilst 
 sailing down the river Zambesi, saw, at a distance 
 of five miles, vast columns of what looked like the 
 smoke caused by burning large tracts of grass. 
 There were five columns, which bent with the wind, 
 and their tops appeared to blend with the clouds ; 
 they were white below, and higher up became dark, 
 so as to appear like smoke. There was a dull roaring 
 sound, which was heard as far as the columns were 
 visible. Livingstone pulled down the river, and 
 came upon the most gigantic waterfall ever seen ; 
 and he found that the smoky columns that sounded 
 were vast masses of vapour and spray hurled up- 
 wards for hundreds of feet above the level of the 
 water, and that the sound was caused by the deafen- 
 ing rush of a vast river over a great precipice. 
 After risking himself in a small canoe, Livingstone 
 got upon an island just above the falls, and creep- 
 ing with awe to the verge, he peered down a large 
 rent in the earth which had been made from one 
 side of the river to the other, and saw a stream a 
 thousand yards wide tumbling down a hundred 
 feet. There was no great river flowing straight 
 away from the bottom of the falls, for the other 
 side of the rent was not more than eighty feet from 
 where the river jumped down ; consequently, all 
 this vast rush of foaming water, after a fall of 100 
 feet all surging and bubbling, could find no stream 
 in front and only a moderate opening on one side. 
 The great fissure down which the Zambesi falls is 
 in hard rocks, which are quite perpendicular ; and 
 * on looking into it nothing but a dense white cloud 
 could be seen. From this cloud rushed up a great 
 jet of vapour, exactly like steam, and it mourited 
 200 or 300 feet high ; there condensing, it changed 
 its hue to that of dark smoke, and came back in 
 a constant shower. This shower falls chiefly on 
 the opposite side of the fissure, and a few yards 
 back from the top there stands a straight hedge of 
 evergreen trees, whose leaves are always wet. From 
 their roots a number of little rills run back into the 
 gulf, but as they flow down the steep well there, the 
 column of vapour, in its ascent, licks them up clean 
 off the rock, and away they mount again. They are 
 constantly running down, but never reach the bottom. 
 
 Two bright rainbows were seen in the vapour, and 
 the grandeur and sublimity of the scene were in- 
 creased by the beauty of the surrounding country, for 
 the everlasting spray fertilised the soil, and the 
 forest trees, with their tropical underwood, clothed the 
 banks for miles. When the falling water reaches 
 the bottom of the fissure it is compressed, for there 
 is not so much space there as above, and the 
 rent is not more than sixty feet wide down below. 
 The five columns ascending from this abyss are 
 formed in consequence of this compression. One 
 side of the fissure is said to be very much deeper, 
 and there is one part where the walls are so sloping 
 that people accustomed to it can go down. The 
 river looks then like a white cord at the bottom 
 of a precipice 300 feet in depth. Livingstone 
 named this wonderful cataract the Victoria Falls. 
 
 Thecclebrated Falls of Niagara, in North America, 
 are situated between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, 
 which are about thirty-three miles apart. Lake 
 Erie is 334 feet higher than Lake Ontario, and 
 when the river Niagara leaves the first-named lake 
 it is about a mile wide, and the current is gentle, 
 hardly exceeding two and a half miles an hour. 
 About ten miles down, the river is two miles wide ; 
 and a little lower down, at the mouth of the Wol- 
 land river, it suddenly contracts to less than a 
 mile, and its current rapidly increases from three 
 to seven or eight miles an hour. The bed of the 
 river descends here at a considerable inclination, 
 so that its banks are high on each side, rising 
 upwards from twenty to fifty feet above the surface 
 of the water. The river separates Canada, which is 
 on the north, from the United States of America 
 on the south. The waters of this great river are 
 borne down with tremendous force against the 
 Canadian side, and are driven back by the rocky 
 banks, and after giving a slight twist to their course, 
 they are hurled down over a perpendicular height 
 of 160 feet into a terrific gulf. 
 
 Goat island, which is 320 yards wide, divides the 
 cataract ; and the water-fall between it and the 
 American side is 320 yards wide and 162 feet high. 
 Between the island and the Canadian side the falls 
 are 700 feet wide and 152 feet high. Both falls 
 unite before they are lost in the abyss below. 
 Below the falls, the river, foaming with agitated 
 waves, rushes along between banks which are 
 nearly perpendicular, and between 200 and 300 feet 
 high. They are, however, only between 200 and 
 400 yards apart, and the violence of the stream is 
 increased by this narrowing of its breadth. Four 
 miles below the falls there is a terrific whirlpool 
 formed by the water, which descends into a deep, 
 basin-shaped place with great velocity, and then 
 passes forth to flow into Lake Ontario. 
 
 In bright summer weather the beauty of the 
 rainbows produced by the action of the sun upon 
 the great volumes of spray which rush up from below 
 
"DOMESDAY BOOK." 
 
 237 
 
 the falls, is beyond conception, and the rocky shores 
 with the islands above render the scene very grand. 
 The rush of the waters is so rapid, and their volume 
 is so enormous, that the more the fall is examined 
 the more gigantic does it appear. As the day ad- 
 vances the shadows alter their position, and the 
 light falls upon different parts of the plunging tide, 
 so that there is an ever-changing view of this fine 
 cataract. In winter the spectacle is no less wonder- 
 ful. There is a deep blue sky, and everything near 
 is covered with snow ; and the view of the grotesque 
 and gigantic icicles hanging to the rocks, and of the 
 masses of ice tumbled over the fall, and struggling, 
 as it were, in the pool at its foot, are sights never to 
 be forgotten. At one spot, the cliff over which 
 the river falls is worn away so that the top over- 
 hangs ; consequently, there is a passage between 
 the rock and the awful plunge of water, which is 
 occasionally visited. It is very evident that this 
 cliff wears away, and every now and then pieces of 
 it fall. If the steep cliffs on either side of the river, 
 between the falls and Lake Ontario, into which it 
 rushes, are examined, no one can doubt that the 
 cataract was once near this lake, and that it receded 
 during a vast period of time to its present position 
 by the gradual wearing away of the rocks. 
 
 THE ESCAPES OF MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 Our ancestors were great hiders of documents. 
 Dr. Dee's singular MSS. w-ere found in the secret 
 drawer of a chest which had passed through many 
 hands without being discovered ; and that vast 
 collection of Thurloe's (the secretary of Cromwell), 
 which formed about seventy volumes in the original 
 manuscript, accidentally fell out of the false ceiling 
 of some chambers in Lincoln's Inn. 
 
 Sir Robert Cotton, one day at his tailor's, dis- 
 covered that the man was holding in his hand, 
 ready to cut up for measures, an original Magna 
 Charta, with all its appendages of seals and signa- 
 tures. This anecdote is told by Colomies, who 
 long resided in this country, and an original 
 Magna Charta is preserved in the Cottonian library 
 exhibiting marks of dilapidation. 
 
 Cardinal Granvellc left behind him several chests 
 filled with a prodigious quantity of letters written 
 in different languages, commented, noted, and 
 underlined by his own hand. These curious 
 papers, after his doath, were left in a garret to the 
 mercy of the rain and the rats. Five or six of 
 these chests the steward sold to the grocers. It 
 was then that a discovery was made of this 
 treasure. Several learned men occupied them- 
 selves in collecting sufficient of these literary relics 
 to form eighty thick folios, consisting of original 
 letters by all the crowned heads in Europe, with 
 instructions for ambassadors, and other state 
 papers. — Disraeli's " Curiosities of Literature!' 
 
 "DOMESDAY BOOK." 
 
 Amoxg the public and historical records of this 
 country there is none more interesting and curious 
 than the ancient manuscript which is known by the 
 name of " Domesday " or "Doomsday Book." It 
 consists of an account, compiled by order of 
 William the Conqueror, of all the lands and estates 
 throughout the greater part of England, with 
 their ownership both before and after the Nor- 
 man Conquest ; the conditions of the holding, the 
 number of tenants, the character of the land, &c. 
 The name by which it is known is ascribed to 
 various sources. By some it is considered to refer 
 to the " day of doom," or day of judgment, in allu- 
 sion to the fact that it was intended to last as a 
 permanent record of the apportionment of the 
 country among William's followers. By others, 
 again, it has been traced to the Celtic dom (" a 
 lord ") and deya ("a proclamation "), hence meaning 
 the king's proclamation or advertisement to the 
 tenants who held land under him. Lastly, and 
 perhaps most probable, is the account given by the 
 old chronicler, Stowe, that the word " Domesday" 
 was simply a corruption of Domiis Dei {" God's 
 house "), which was the name of the apartment in 
 the Treasury where the book was kept in former 
 times. 
 
 "Domesday Book" is now in the Public Record 
 Office in London. It is in two volumes, the larger 
 comprehending the survey of the chief counties of 
 England, with the exception of the most northern 
 (which were omitted from the record) and the 
 three eastern counties — Essex, Suffolk, and Nor- 
 folk. These last are included in the second and 
 smaller volume of the book. The returns are all 
 recorded in the Latin tongue, with many abbre- 
 viations ; the character in which they are written 
 is the old English text, and the style of the writing 
 is remarkably neat and legible. 
 
 As an example of the contents of the book, we 
 extract the following translation of a passage in 
 the smaller volume, referring to the hundred of 
 Beventre, in Essex : — " Essex, the king's land ; the 
 hundred of Beventre. Harold held Haveringe, in , 
 the time of Edward the Confessor, for i manor and 
 10 hides. Then there were 41 villeins, now 40; 
 there were always 41 bordars,* and 6 slaves, and 2 
 carucatest in demesne, on the lord's lands ; there 
 were 41 carucates among the men, now 40 ; wood 
 sufficient for 500 hogs, 100 acres of meadow ; now 
 I mill, and 2 working-horses or pack-horses, and 
 10 young growing beasts, 160 hogs, and 269 sheep. 
 To this manor there belonged 4 freemen, who had 
 4 hides in the time of Edward the Confessor, pay- 
 ing an accustomable rent ; now Robert, son of Cor- 
 butio, holds 3 of those hides, and Hugh Mont- 
 
 • Cottagers. 
 
 t A measure of land. 
 
238 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 fort the fourth, and have paid no rent since they 
 held them. This manor was worth, in the time of 
 King Edward, 36 pounds, now 40 ; and Peter the 
 viscount receives from it 80 pounds for rent, and 
 10 pounds for an income or fine." 
 
 The survey was commenced in 1085, and the 
 " Anglo-Saxon Chronicle " thus records the pro- 
 ceedings :— " The king had a great consultation (at 
 Gloucester), and spoke very deeply with his witan 
 concerning this land, how it was held, and what 
 were its tenantry. He then sent his men over all 
 England, into every shire, and caused them to 
 ascertain how many hundred hides of land it con- 
 tained, and what lands the king possessed therein, 
 what cattle there were in the several counties, and 
 how much revenue he ought to receive yearly from 
 each. He also caused them to write down how 
 much land belonged to his archbishops, to his 
 bishops, his abbots, and his earls ; and— that I 
 may be brief— what property every inhabitant of 
 all England possessed in land or in cattle, and how 
 much money this was worth. So very narrowly 
 did he cause the survey to be made, that there was 
 not a single hide nor a rood of land, nor — it is \ 
 shameful to relate that which he thought no 
 shame to do — was there an ox, or a cow, or a pig I 
 passed by, and that was not set down in the ! 
 accounts 
 to him." 
 
 THE INDIAN THUGS. 
 
 We have given an account of one of the wonders 
 of Eastern fanaticism in the case of the Indian 
 Fakirs, and have now to speak of another even 
 more terrible — namely, that of the Thugs of the 
 same country. In the Fakirs, fanaticism leads 
 merely to self-torment and imposture ; but in 
 the Thugs we see it making treacherous and 
 systematic war upon the rest of the human race. 
 
 The word Thug is of Hindoo origin, and means 
 deceiver; but in the southern provinces of India 
 the same people arc called Phnnsigars, which has 
 the more significant sense of stranglers. The 
 Thugs form a class among themselves, their iden- 
 tity being concealed even from other Hindoo castes 
 and religious fraternities. They are professedly 
 worshippers of the goddess Kali, wife of Siva, the 
 destroying power, according to the Hindoo mytho- 
 logy. In her honour they profess to set themselves 
 apart as instruments of destruction, and they deem 
 it highly meritorious to murder any unsuspecting 
 person who may fall in their path, whether man, 
 woman, or child. 
 
 Robbery forms a kindred element and a further 
 incentive to their highest crimes. To waylay un- 
 suspecting travellers, and even whole caravans of 
 
 and then all these writings were brought [ merchants, to strangle them and carry off their 
 The work was completed in 1086. | booty, forms the height of their ambition ; and 
 
 The book as a whole forms a most striking record ' they frequently amass considerable wealth 
 of the complete subjugation and despoilment of a ' doing. 
 
 nation by its ruthless conquerors. Many of the 
 entries illustrate forcibly the degradation into 
 which the Saxon people had fallen as a conse- 
 quence of WiUiam's success. The roll shows that 
 freemen were not only counted by the head, but 
 sold, given away, or lent among the Norman rulers. 
 Thus in one place it is recorded that King William 
 had lent the Saxon Edwig to Raoul Taillebois, to 
 keep him as long as he lived ; in another, that a 
 certain viscount had in the town of Ipswich two 
 Saxon burgesses— one in pledge, and the other for 
 debts ; and a Saxon was sometimes the property ol 
 two Norman chieftains in half-shares. Sometimes, 
 as a very special favour, particular Saxons were 
 allowed to hold small possessions as " an alms," or 
 to retain their land on conditions which involved an 
 indignity. Thus, one woman was allowed to enjoy 
 her husband's estate on condition of feeding the 
 king's dogs. A mother and son received their 
 ancient inheritance as a gift, on condition of their 
 offering up prayers daily for the soul of Richard, 
 the king's son. 
 
 The book in which all these particulars are 
 recorded has been considered an invaluable his- 
 torical monument, such as is possessed by scarcely 
 any other nation. Its preservation for 800 years 
 is itself a remarkable fact, and almost suggests the I 
 idea of endurance conveyed in its familiar title. 
 
 With so much secresy arc the operations of the 
 Indian Thugs carried on, that when the Government 
 under Lord William Bentinck, in 1 828, were actively 
 engaged in suppressing them as far as possible, it 
 was frequently found that many of the Thugs were 
 in the habit of carrying on trade in the principal 
 towns, whence they would occasionally start on an 
 expedition of Thuggee, as their fearful pursuit is 
 called. They would return from these expeditions 
 with goods and merchandise, which it was believed 
 by their neighbours were obtained from afar in the 
 legitimate operations of their business ; and the 
 greatest consternation was often created in the 
 places where they resided by the discovery of their 
 real character a,s Thugs, which had never been 
 suspected, even by the peaceful Hindoos around 
 them. 
 
 Others, and sometimes entire families and tribes, 
 would carry on the operations of agriculture, re- 
 maining equally unknown to the people immediately 
 around them. For none but those whose ancestors 
 were Thugs arc admitted into this horrible fi-ater- 
 nity, the profession being carried on from genera- 
 tion to generation, and confined to the descendants 
 of Thugs as rigidly as other avocations in the 
 general Hindoo law o{ caste. 
 
 It is a singular fact that Europeans had been 
 long in India before the existence of Thugs, in 
 
GREEK FIRE. 
 
 239 
 
 their real character, was ever suspected. It was 
 not until towards the close of the last century that 
 this true character was ascertained by the English 
 authorities. That gangs of robbers, unscrupulous 
 as to the sacrifice of life, existed in all parts of 
 India, was well known ; but it was never imagined 
 that these were part of an hereditary organisation 
 which deemed the destruction of human life its 
 chief religious duty. One of the earliest travellers 
 who gave any account of them was a Frenchman 
 named Thevenot, although he was not aware that 
 they were a professedly religious fraternity. He 
 thus described their operations : — 
 
 " One had best have a care of robbers, and, 
 above all things, not to suffer anybody to come 
 near one upon the road. ' The cunningest robbers 
 in the world are in that country. They use a 
 certain slip with a running noose, which they can 
 cast with so much sleight about a man's neck when 
 they are within reach of him, that they never fail, 
 so that they strangle him in a trice. They have 
 another cunning trick, also, to catch travellers with. 
 They send out a handsome woman upon ,the road, 
 who, with her hair dishevelled, seems to be all in 
 tears, sighing and complaining of some misfortune 
 which she pretends has befallen her. Now, as she 
 takes the same way that the traveller goes, he 
 easily falls into conversation with her, and, finding 
 her beautiful, offers her his assistance, which she 
 accepts. But he hath no sooner taken her up on 
 horseback behind him, but she throws the snare 
 about his neck and strangles him, or at least stuns 
 him, until the robbers, who lie hid, come running to 
 her assistance, and complete what she hath begun. 
 But besides that, there are men in those quarters 
 so skilful in casting the snare, that they succeed as 
 well at a distance as near at hand ; and if an ox 
 or any other beast belonging to a caravan run 
 away, as sometimes it happens, they fail not to 
 catch it by the neck." 
 
 The practice of strangulation by means of a 
 running noose was the mode of assassination 
 adopted by the Thugs of ail parts of India. The 
 office of strangler is, according to Thuggee law, the 
 highest honour to which a man can attain. We 
 are told by Colonel Sleeman that, " After a man has 
 passed through the different grades of Thuggee, 
 and shown that he has acquired sufficient dexterity, 
 or what we may call nerve or resolution, and which 
 they call ' hard-breastedness,' to strangle a victim 
 himself, the priest, on a certain day, before all the 
 gang assembled, before they set out on their cri- 
 minal expeditions, presents him with the angocha 
 or romal (the handkerchief with which the strang- 
 ling is performed) tells him how many of his family 
 have signalised themselves by the use of it, how 
 much his friends expect from his courage and 
 conduct ; and implores the goddess to vouchsafe 
 her support to his laudable ambition and endeavours 
 
 to distinguish himself in her service. The inves- 
 titure of the romal is knighthood to these monsters ; 
 it is the highest object of their ambition, not only 
 because the man who strangles has so much a head 
 over and above the share which falls to him in the 
 division of the spoil, but because it implies the 
 recognition by his comrades of the qualities of 
 courage, strength, and dexterity, which all are 
 anxious to be famed for." 
 
 The bodies of the victims are usually disposed of 
 immediately by burial, or, if time will not allow of 
 this, by being thrown into watercourses or jungles, 
 and thus no trace of murder is left upon the road. 
 In the burial, the Thugs use an implement called 
 the " sacred pickaxe," which is prepared with much 
 ceremony, and held in high veneration. If the 
 pickaxe should drop from the hands of the sexton 
 Thug while in use, it is regarded as a terrible omen 
 of calamity to the tribe. 
 
 It was computed thirty years ago, when the 
 Government were trying to root out the Thugs, that   
 at least from 1,000 to 1,500 people annually lost 
 their lives by Thuggee. In the years 1826 to 1835 
 more than 1,500 prisoners were tried for this crime, 
 •and 1,400 of these were either hanged or trans- 
 ported for life. But the ramifications of Thuggism 
 extended too far for effectual suppression, and even 
 at the present day the Thugs still infest the roads 
 traversed by pilgrims in the more remote parts of 
 India. _____^__^ 
 
 GREEK FIRE. 
 
 " Greek fire " — or, as it was sometimes called, 
 " Saracen fire " — was the most important war mate- 
 rial men had before the invention of gunpowder. 
 Twice the city of Constantinople was saved by the 
 use of it. It is said to have been invented by a 
 Syrian, who, deserting from the service of the 
 caliph, revealed his secret to the emperor. The 
 ingredients, if not also the mode of darting the fire, 
 were kept a secret for upwards of 400 years, and 
 it is quite uncertain now what were actually the 
 component parts of that which, Joinville says, 
 " came flying through the air like a winged, long- 
 tailed dragon, about the thickness of a hogshead, 
 with the report of thunder and the velocity of 
 lightning ; and the darkness of the night was dis- 
 pelled by this deadly illumination." It is generally 
 considered, however, that " the fire" was composed 
 of naphtha, mingled in certain proportions, now 
 unknown, with sulphur, and with pitch obtained 
 from evergreen fir. This mixture, ignited and blown 
 or pumped through long tubes of copper, which were 
 mounted in the prows of galleys, and fancifully 
 shaped into the form of monsters, produced a thick 
 smoke with a loud explosion, and a flame, fierce 
 and obstinate, which no amount of water could put 
 out, When used for the defence of walls, it was 
 
2 40 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 poured in large boilers from the ramparts, or was 
 hurled on javelins by means of tow which had 
 previously been steeped in the inflammable material. 
 Against it the bravest soldiers went in vain ; their 
 imagination recoiled from a thing so subtle and 
 terrible. Horses fled from it in dire fright ; ships 
 were burnt by it ; there was no way of standing 
 against it. 
 
 The Greek emperors, sensible of the enormous 
 advantage which an offensive wetipon of such a 
 kind gave them, invested it with a mysterious his- 
 tory, and appealed to the superstition of their 
 subjects for the preservation of the secret of the 
 manufacture. They said that an angel had re- 
 vealed the composition of Greek fire to the first 
 Constantine, for the express purpose of maintaining 
 the superiority of the empire over the Barbarians ; 
 and that whoever betrayed the secret to foreigners 
 would incur not only the penalties of treason 
 and sacrilege, but the special vengeance of the 
 Almighty. In the twelfth century, however, we 
 find it used by the Mahometans in their wars with 
 the Christians ; and from that time it came into 
 pretty general use, until the invention of gunpowder 
 put it out of date, and caused an entire revolution in 
 the art of war. 
 
 soft and abundant fleeces. At the poles it is 
 
 Monlrtrs of ^nimal fife. 
 
 Sense of Hearing in Seals.— Captain Thomas 
 Brown, in his " Anecdotes of Quadrupeds," makes 
 the following remarks on this subject : — " These 
 animals (the Phoca vitulina) have a very delicate 
 sense of hearing, and are said to be much delighted 
 with music. The fact was not unknown to the 
 ancient poets, and is thus alluded to by Sir Walter 
 
 Scott- 
 Rude Heiskar's seals through surges dark 
 Will long pursue the minstrel's bark. 
 
 Mr. John Laing, in his account of a voyage to 
 Spitzbergen, mentions that the son of the master of 
 the vessel in which he sailed, who was fond of 
 playing on the violin, never failed to have a numerous 
 auditory when in the seas frequented by seals ; and 
 Mr. Laing has seen them follow the ship for miles 
 when any person was playing on deck. It is a 
 common practice in Cornwall, when persons are in 
 pursuit of seals, as soon as the animal has elevated 
 its head above water, to halloo to it till they can 
 approach within gunshot, as they will listen to the 
 sound for several minutes. I have seen this method 
 pursued by the fishermen at Newhaven." 
 
 The Natural Clothing of Animals.— The 
 clothing which grows from the bodies of animals 
 is always suitable in quality and quantity to the 
 climate and season under which they live. In hot 
 climates the coat of quadrupeds is short and thin, 
 but it thickens with increasing latitudes, and yields 
 
 externally shaggy and coarse, internally shorter and 
 fine, as in the skin of the Arctic bear. How 
 
 . defensive is the fur of amphibious animals, the 
 beaver, for example ! How abundant and smooth 
 
 '. upon birds are feathers, shutting up the heat of 
 their warm blood, and opposing no resistance to 
 the air through which they fly ! The birds of very 
 cold regions have plumage almost as bulky as their 
 
 , bodies ; and those which live much in the water 
 
 ; have additionally both a defence of oil on the 
 surface of the feathers, and the interstices of the 
 ordinary plumage filled with delicate down — a bad 
 conductor, which abounds particularly on the 
 breast, as it, in swimming, first meets and divides 
 the cold wave. Then there are animals with warm 
 blood which live in the water — for example, the 
 whale, seal, and walrus ; but neither hair nor 
 feathers oiled would have been a fit clothing for 
 them. They accordingly derive protection from the 
 cold water by the enormous amount of blubber or 
 fat which surrounds their bodies, and acts as a non- 
 conductor. — Dr. Arnot. 
 
 I A Magpie's Amusement.— There is a story 
 told of a tame magpie which was seen busily em- 
 ployed in a garden gathering pebbles, and, with 
 much solemnity and a studied air, dropping them 
 into a hole about eighteen inches deep, made to 
 receive a post. After dropping each stone, it cried 
 " Currack !" triumphantly, and set off" for another. 
 On examining the spot, a poor toad was found in 
 the hole, which the magpie was stoning for his 
 amusement. — Thompson's "Passions of Animals." 
 
 EFFECTS OF VIOLENT WIND. 
 
 The power of violent wind, when accompanied by 
 rain, to say nothing of snow and frost, in exhausting 
 the physical powers, is little appreciated, and would 
 hardly be believed if certain evidence of it did not 
 exist. The chilling effect of a current of air is 
 familiarly known. Arctic travellers have no diffi- 
 culty in bearing a cold of thirty or forty degrees 
 below zero if the atmosphere be perfectly still ; 
 but the smallest wind, with a temperature even of 
 zero, is almost insupportable. Even in the tempe- 
 rate climate of Great Britain, and at very moderate 
 elevations, not unfrequent cases of death from ex- 
 posure have come to our knowledge which have 
 taken place in the summer months. One remarkable 
 instance occurred in August, 1847. Two English- 
 men travelling on foot by a well-marked road from 
 King's House to Fort William in Scotland, during 
 a storm of wind and rain — violent, yet not exces- 
 sively cold, and without a flake of snow — sank down 
 and died on the path. Similar instances have hap- 
 pened of late years in Westmoreland. — Quarterly 
 Review. 
 
WONDERS OF ANT LIFE. 
 
 241 
 
 AN ANT-HILL. 
 
 WONDERS OF ANT LIFE. 
 
 Every one is familiar with the common ants, which 
 are to be met with all over the country. The 
 ant is a small insect ; about twenty of them could 
 stand together on a threepenny-piece. It is very 
 fond of the society of its kind, and where one is 
 seen, others are generally not far distant. Like 
 our common bee, they live in large communities. 
 
 The ant-hill, the residence of these communities, 
 is a wonderful construction, made of earth. It is 
 about the form and size of a washing-basin turned 
 upside-down, and contains within it innumerable 
 chambers and galleries, made by the energy and 
 industry of its little inhabitants. If a small piece 
 of this house be broken, and the interior examined, 
 it presents a scene of wondrous activity. Some 
 ants rush hither and thither ; some seize the eggs 
 which have been exposed, and hurry with them to 
 a place of safety ; others apply themselves to repair- 
 ing the breach. While thus engaged, the ants, on 
 meeting, are often observed to stop, and, touching 
 each other with their feelers, apparently have the 
 power of communicating their ideas. 
 
 Wonderful are the observations which have been 
 made about these little animals ; not the least of 
 
 31 
 
 them is the discovery that some ants keep what may 
 be called milch cattle. This fact has, however, 
 been proved by its discoverer, M. Huber. 
 
 There is a small insect inhabiting trees, and the 
 leaves and stems of plants. It is well known in green- 
 houses, where its presence is greatly detested by 
 gardeners, who use all means in their power to get 
 rid of it. This little insect, called the aphis, is the 
 milch cow to which the ants are indebted for an 
 important part of their sustenance. At certain 
 times of the year the plants tenanted by the aphis 
 are frequented by multitudes of ants, their object 
 being to obtain a fluid which is secreted in the body 
 of the aphis. This fluid, scarcely inferior to honey 
 in sweetness, comes from them in drops, and is 
 eagerly sought by the ants. The aphis, with its 
 mouth fastened into the bark of the tree, is con- 
 tinually drinking in the sap, which, after having 
 passed through its body, comes out as this sweet 
 fluid. An ant is seen to caress an aphis with its 
 feelers, and immediately the latter yields a drop of 
 its honey, which is greedily swallowed by the ant. 
 
 More than this, by common consent it appears 
 to be arranged that the aphides on a particular 
 branch shall belong to the ants of a particular nest, 
 and any other ant intruding on their preserves is 
 
342 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 treated with summary justice. The ants love their 
 useful allies, will defend them from aggression, and 
 may be seen to carry them about in their mouths. 
 Some kinds of ants treat their cattle in a still more 
 curious way — they keep them in their own nest 
 and supply them with their necessary food. When 
 the aphis lays eggs the ants undertake the charge 
 of them, bringing them out to the sun, and moisten- 
 ing them with their tongues, thus using all means 
 to increase their stock of cattle by successfully 
 hatching the eggs. 
 
 Such valuable property as the aphides are natu- 
 rally tempt the attacks of robbers. Tenants of a 
 neighbouring hill often make a raid with a view to 
 capture them, and their owners fight for them 
 with valour, knowing as they do how essential to 
 the life of the colony is their stock of milch cattle. 
 
 ^tontrerful Jfis^. 
 
 The Pilot-Fish. — Ligon, writing in 1657, men- 
 tions a pilot-fish which was captured with a shark 
 by his ship's company. " This little guide of his 
 swims sometimes a yard before him, sometimes 
 more or less, at his pleasure ; and in his greatest 
 adversity often cleaves to him, and, like a dear 
 friend, sticks closest when he needs him most ; for 
 when he is taken, this little fish never fails to fasten 
 himself to his head, or some part near that, and 
 resolves to die with him. The experience of this 
 we formed not only in this great fish, but in all the 
 rest we had formerly taken, for we never took the 
 one without the other." 
 
 The Shooting-Fish. — This aquatic sportsman, 
 a native of the East Indies, derives its name from 
 the somewhat novel but wonderful way in which 
 it provides its daily food. Nature has provided it 
 with a hollow cylindrical tube, which it uses in the 
 following manner : — On observing an insect on a 
 reed, or other substance overhanging the water, 
 it retires to a distance of between five and six feet, 
 and after appearing to take careful aim with its 
 tube, ejects from it a single drop of water with such 
 surprising force and accuracy, that the insect is 
 invariably precipitated into the water below, where 
 the keen eye of the shooting-fish soon detects it, 
 and ends its unfortunate career. 
 
 Change of Colour in Fish.— It is a well- 
 known fact amongst anglers that in nearly every 
 case the colour of fish, especially trout, is parti- 
 cularly adapted to the portion of the stream which 
 they inhabit. If a hving black trout be placed 
 in a light-coloured basin filled with clear spring- 
 water, within half-an-hour its colour will be of a 
 perceptibly lighter tinge, while if it be placed in 
 a similar coloured jar for some days, it will become 
 absolutely white ; but if, when in this state, it be 
 placed in a dark-coloured or black jar, although 
 
 at first it contrasts strongly with the dark ground, 
 in tne course of a quarter of an hour its colour will 
 assimilate so completely with that of the jar, that 
 it will be a difficult matter to distinguish it. No 
 doubt this faculty of changing colour is furnished 
 to enable them to escape from their numerous 
 enemies, both within and without their native 
 element ; but whether the act is voluntary or in- 
 voluntary on their part, has not yet been satis- 
 factorily determined. 
 
 THE FIRST DESCENT INTO A 
 VOLCANO. 
 
 Popocatepetl— the hill that smokes, in the Mexi- 
 can language — the huge mountain clothed in eternal 
 snows, and regarded by the idolaters of old as a 
 god, towers up nearly 18,000 feet above the level 
 of the sea, and in the days of the conquest of 
 Mexico was a volcano in a state of fierce activity. 
 It was looked upon by the natives with a strange 
 dread, and they told the white strangers with awe 
 that no man could attempt to ascend its slopes and 
 yet live ; but, from a feeling of vanity, or the love 
 of adventure, the Spaniards laughed at these fears, 
 and accordingly a party of ten of the followers of 
 Cortes commenced the ascent, accompanied by 
 a few Indians. But these latter, after ascending 
 about 13,000 feet to where the last remains of 
 stunted vegetation existed, became alarmed at the 
 suDterranean bellowings of the volcano, and re- 
 turned, while the Spaniards still painfully toiled on 
 through the rarefied atmosphere, their feet crushing 
 over the scorice and black glazed volcanic sand, 
 until they stood in the region of perpetual snow, 
 amidst the glittering, treacherous glaciers and cre- 
 vasses, with vast, slippery-pathed precipices yawn- 
 ing around. Still they toiled on in this wild and 
 wondrous region. A few hours before, they were 
 in a land of perpetual summer : here all was snow. 
 They suffered the usual distress awarded to those 
 who dare to ascend to these solitudes of nature ; 
 but it was not given to them to achieve the sum- 
 mit, for suddenly, at a higher elevation, after lis- 
 tening to various ominous threatenings from the 
 interior of the volcano, they encountered so fierce 
 a storm of smoke, cinders, and sparks, that they 
 were driven back half suffocated to the lower 
 portions of the mountain. 
 
 But some time after another attempt was made ; 
 and upon this occasion with a definite object. The 
 invaders had nearly exhausted their stock of gun- 
 powder, and Cortes organised a party to ascend 
 to the crater of the volcano, to seek and bring 
 down sulphur for the manufacture of this necessary 
 of warfare. This time the party numbered but 
 five, led by one Francisco Montano ; and they 
 experienced no very great difficulty in winning 
 their way upwards. The region of verdure gave 
 
SHOWERS OF TOADS AND ICE. 
 
 243 
 
 place to the wild, lava-strewn slope, which was 
 succeeded in its turn by the treacherous glaciers ; 
 and at last the gallant little band stood at the very- 
 edge of the crater, a vast depression of over a 
 league in circumference, and 1,000 feet in depth. 
 Flame was issuing from the hideous abysses, and 
 the stoutest man's heart must have quailed as he 
 peered down into the dim, mysterious cavity to where 
 the sloping sides were crusted with bright yellow 
 sulphur, and listened to the mutterings which 
 warned him of the pent-up wrath and power of the 
 mighty volcano. They knew that at any moment 
 flame and stifling sulphureous vapour might be 
 belched forth, but now no cowardice was shown. 
 They had come provided with ropes and baskets, 
 and it only remained to see who should descend. 
 Lots were therefore drawn, and it fell to Montano, 
 who was accordingly lowered by his followers in 
 a basket 400 feet into the treacherous region of 
 eternal fires. The basket swayed and the rope 
 quivered and vibrated, but the brave cavalier 
 sturdily held to his task, disdaining to show fear 
 before his humble companions. The lurid light 
 from beneath flashed upon his tanned features, and 
 a sulphureous steam rose slowly and condensed 
 upon the sides ; but, whatever were his thoughts, 
 the Spaniard collected as much sulphur as he could 
 take up with him, breaking off the bright incrusta- 
 tions, and even dallying with his task as if in 
 contempt of the danger, till he had leisurely filled 
 his basket, when the signal was given and he was 
 drawn up. The basket was emptied, and then he 
 once more descended into the lurid crater, collected 
 another store, and was again drawn up ; but far 
 from shrinking from his task, he descended again 
 several times, till a sufficiency had been obtained, 
 with which the party descended to the plain. 
 
 Perhaps, in these days of Alpine climbing and 
 visits to eruptive Vesuvius, such a feat would excite 
 no attention ; but it should be borne in mind that 
 it was performed at a time when the unknown was 
 peopled always with strange terrors, and men 
 shrank, as a rule, from explorations even of the 
 most common character. Science had not then 
 spread her enlightening rays, and to most men the 
 New World was a region of mystery and wonders, 
 which only the more restless spirits of the age dared 
 to penetrate. 
 
 SHOWERS OF TOADS AND ICE. 
 
 In the year 1835 several letters were addressed to 
 the French Institute on the occurrence of a shower 
 of toads, by persons to whose characters credit 
 might be attached. They mention that small toads 
 or frogs were seen falling, and were caught on an 
 umbrella, a handkerchief spread out for the purpose, 
 and various other receptacles. Some of these little 
 creatures, hardly the size of a small nut, presented 
 
 a rudiment of tail, proving that they were very near 
 to their period of metamorphosis. So much for the 
 facts. The explanation of the phenomenon gene- 
 rally admitted by those who admit the fact itself, is 
 that the solar evaporation carries up with it the 
 spawn of the frogs and toads contained in the 
 water of marshes ; that this spawn, retained in the 
 cloud formed of the condensed watery vapour, is 
 hatched there, undergoes its changes, and is pre- 
 cipitated when the cloud which bears it is resolved 
 into rain. The electricity of the clouds would 
 facilitate and hasten the development of these 
 animals. 
 
 M. Duparoque, the writer of one of the above- 
 mentioned letters, attributes the phenomenon, which 
 he has witnessed, to the action of waterspouts. 
 According to him, one of those whirlwinds which 
 precede storms in the great heats of summer, in 
 crossing marshy situations at the period of the 
 transformation of tadpoles into frogs in the fields, 
 raises up masses of these animals with a portion of 
 the water they abide in ; and, the waterspout be- 
 coming larger, and forming a stormy cloud, will, at 
 a later period, vomit them forth, with the lightning 
 and water it contains. The carrying off these 
 animals is facilitated by their leaving their sub- 
 terranean retreats and coming to the surface of the 
 water on the approach of rain. 
 
 In support of this theory, M. Arago related that 
 when in England, Dr. Dalton told him that he had 
 several times collected in a pluviometer, or rain- 
 gauge, at the distance of six or seven leagues from 
 the coast, sea-water which had been brought thither 
 by the winds. 
 
 A very remarkable shower of ice is recorded to 
 have fallen upon H.M.S. Simoom, in i860, by 
 Captain Blakiston, in a letter to General Sabine, 
 President of the Royal Society. The captain says :— 
 "On the 14th of January, when two days out from 
 the Cape of Good Hope, about 300 miles S.S.E. of 
 it, we encountered a heavy squall, with rain, at 
 ten a.m., lasting one hour, the wind shifting sud- 
 denly from east to north (true). During the squall 
 there were three vivid flashes of lightning, one of 
 which was very close to the ship ; and at the same 
 time a shower of ice fell, which lasted about three 
 minutes. It was not hail, but irregularly-shaped 
 pieces of solid ice of different dimensions, up to the 
 size of half a brick. The squall was so heavy that 
 the topsails were obliged to be let go. There ap- 
 pears to have been no previous indication of this 
 sudden squall. 
 
 " As to the size of the pieces of ice which fell, 
 two, which were weighed after having melted con- 
 siderably, were three and a half and five ounces 
 respectively, while I had one piece given me a good 
 quarter of an hour after the squall which would 
 only just go into an ordinary tumbler ; and one or 
 two persons depose to having seen pieces the size 
 
244 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 of a brick. On examining the ship's sails after- 
 wards, they were found to be perforated in numerous 
 places with small holes. A very thick glass cover 
 to one of the compasses was broken. Although 
 several persons were struck, and some knocked 
 down on the deck, fortunately no one was seriously 
 injured." 
 
 CURIOUS ANTICIPATION OF THE 
 ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH. 
 
 Addison, writing at the beginning of the last 
 century, thus described what appeared to him to 
 be an utterly chimerical idea, but which has since 
 been realised with remarkable exactness in the 
 discovery of the electric telegraph. " Strada, in 
 one of his Prolusions, gives an account of a cor- 
 respondence between two friends by the help of 
 a certain loadstone, which had such a virtue in it 
 that, if touched by two several needles, when one 
 of these needles so touched began to move, the 
 other, though at ever so great a distance, moved 
 at the same time and in the same manner. He 
 tells us that two friends, being each of them pos- 
 sessed of these needles, made a kind of dial-plate, 
 inscribing it with twenty-four letters, in the same 
 manner as the hours of the day are marked upon 
 the ordinary dial-plate. They then fixed one of the 
 needles on each of these plates in such a manner 
 that it could move round without impediment, so 
 as to point to any of the twenty-four letters. Upon 
 their separating from one another into distant 
 countries, they agreed to withdraw themselves 
 punctually into their closets at a certain hour of 
 the day, and to converse with one another by this 
 their invention. Accordingly, when they were some 
 hundred miles asunder, each of them shut himself 
 up in his closet at the time appointed, and im- 
 mediately cast his eye upon the dial-plate. If he 
 had a mind to write anything to his friend, he 
 directed his needle to every letter that formed the ' 
 words that he had occasion for, making a little 
 pause at the end of every word or sentence, to avoid 
 confusion. The friend in the meanwhile saw his 
 own sympathetic needle moving of itself to every 
 letter which that of his correspondent pointed at. 
 
 " By this means they talked together across a 
 whole continent, and conveyed their thoughts to 
 one another in an instant over cities or mountains, 
 seas or deserts. If any writer of romance," con- 
 tinues Addison, "had introduced a necromancer, who 
 is generally in the train of a knight-errant, making 
 a present to two lovers of a couple of those above- 
 mentioned needles, the reader would not have been 
 a little pleased to have seen them corresponding 
 with one another, when they were guarded by spies 
 and watches, or separated by castles and adventures. 
 In the meanwhile, if ever this invention should be 
 revived or put in practice, I would propose that 
 
 on the lover's dial-plate there should be written, 
 not only the twenty-four letters, but several entire 
 words, which have always a place in passionate 
 epistles— as flames, darts, die, language, absence, 
 Cupid, heart, eyes, hang, drown, and the like. 
 This would very much abridge the lover's pains 
 in this way of writing a letter, as it would enable 
 him to express the most useful and significant 
 words with a single turn of the needle." 
 
 WONDERFUL CAVES. 
 
 Caves are mentioned very frequently in Holy Writ, 
 and they were used as habitations, or as burial- 
 places, by the earliest Hebrews. Some caves were 
 made or dug out by those who required them, but 
 most of the caverns and grottoes of the limestone 
 rocks of the Holy Land were made by nature, just 
 as they have been formed in other parts of the world. 
 A natural cave, of wonderful size, exists in Ken- 
 tucky. Its main comoartment is 150 feet high, and 
 the floor covers an expanse of ten acres ; this leads 
 to passages and smaller caves, which have been 
 traced for ten miles ; moreover, many winding off- 
 shoots of the caverns have never been carefully 
 examined. These caves are situated in the solid 
 rock, and are not cracks or rents in the earth, but 
 have been formed by the removal of so much lime- 
 stone. The extent of the series of caves is so great 
 that animals peculiar to them have lived there for 
 centuries, and many have their eyes comparatively 
 wasted on account of the total darkness. Our illus- 
 tration shows one of the chambers of this cavern. 
 
 There are some caves in the island of Cuba 
 formed out of a white marble rock, and they are 
 being gradually filled up in a most remarkable 
 manner. The caves are inland, and are situated 
 at least 1,000 feet above the level of the sea, in 
 the midst of dense forests. The snails, of which 
 there are many kinds in Cuba, retire to the caves; 
 and the water which drops from the roof of the 
 caves on to the floor contains much carbonate of 
 lime, a sort of chalk. When the water dries up it 
 leaves the carbonate of lime behind, and it cements 
 the shells together; and as this process goes on 
 year after year, a layer some feet thick soon forms 
 on the floor. Often lumps of the marble fall from 
 the roof and are glued on to the shells. Multi- 
 tudes of bats resort to the caves, and their dung, 
 which is of a bright red colour, from the berries 
 on which they feed, falls on to the layers of shell 
 and rock, and gives them a red tint ; moreover, 
 the bats often die in the caves, and their bones are 
 mixed up with the shells by means of the carbonate 
 of lime. Besides this, at certain seasons of the 
 year the soldier-crabs, which live in the shallow 
 sea-water and on the shore during part of the year, 
 retire to the forests and caves. Every soldier-crab 
 
WONDERFUL CAVES. 
 
 245 
 
 INTERIOR OF THE MAMMOTH CAVERN IN KENTUCKY. 
 
 lives in a shell of some dead whelk or top, and 
 when he moves he carries his house on his back. 
 These crabs start from the shore in vast numbers, 
 and they have been traced through eight or ten 
 miles of forest, and up to the caves in the hills. 
 There many die or desert their shells, pulling weaker 
 fellow-soldiers out of larger and more comfortable 
 ones. The floor, with its moist cement, ever ready 
 to envelop everything upon it and to harden, soon 
 begins to rise, and after many years the cave be- 
 comes filled with the substances just described. 
 
 There are large caverns in Derbyshire, and Kirk- 
 dale Cave, in the North of England, has long been 
 as celebrated as Kent's Cavern, near Torquay. 
 What has rendered these last-named places cele- 
 brated is the extraordinary collection of bones 
 and teeth found in them, all jumbled together 
 and cemented by the same kind of carbonate of 
 lime noticed in the Cuban caves. Now the water 
 which dripped from the roof of the cave must have 
 come through the limestone rock either by means 
 of cracks, or simply by filtering. It is found that 
 
246 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 rain-water often collects within itself the gas called 
 fixed air, or carbonic acid gas, and when this is 
 the case the water can dissolve small quantities of 
 limestone. When once a crack occurs in a lime- 
 stone rock opening on the surface, the rain flows 
 down, and gradually cats away the rock ; when 
 the opening becomes large enough, a stream flows 
 down and finds its way out, taking away more of 
 the rock, and forming gradually a long system of 
 passages, large caverns, and tunnels. When the 
 supply of water fails the caves become dry, and 
 the same thing occurs if, during the lapse of years, 
 the river out of which the stream flowed has cut 
 its bed deeper, or if the country has gradually 
 become higher. When the caves were liable to be 
 flooded from the crack leading to the open country, 
 gravel, rolled stones, leaves, shells of snails, and 
 decomposing drowned animals were often washed 
 down pell-mell. When the caverns became dry, 
 the dripping from the roof commenced, and the 
 deposit of the cement of carbonate of lime began 
 its office of hardening the jumble of things on the 
 floor. Caverns exist in limestone countries for 
 ages before they are discovered, and usually a 
 landslip or the wear and tear of the rain and frost 
 suddenly expose their open mouths. Many of the 
 great animals that lived before man was created 
 were washed down into caves, and their bones 
 were cemented together on the floor, and thus the 
 old wild beasts of a country have been preserved 
 to the scientific man. In England the bones of the 
 mammoth, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, hon, hyena, 
 and of an immense cave bear, have been thus pre- 
 served by the thousand. It is clear that these crea- 
 tures once lived on our soil, and that some of them 
 werein existencewhen the first man lived in England. 
 
 There is a cave in Carmarthenshire about 280 
 feet above the sea level ; it has the height of about 1 2 
 feet, and is from 70 to 80 feet in length. Its floor is 
 composed of the bones of the early elephant, the 
 rhinoceros, the reindeer, and horse, and they have 
 all been gnawed by hyenas, whose teeth, jaws, and 
 excrement are abundant. 
 
 In Belgium there are some wonderful caves, 
 where men lived who did not know the use of 
 metals, and who were armed with flints sharpened 
 in a rude manner. In one the bones of animals, 
 broken up by the savages for the sake of the mar- 
 row, human bones, and no less than 30,000 flint 
 knives, scrapers, spear-heads, and chips, were found; 
 and in another 937 horse teeth, besides the bones 
 of the reindeer, lion, bear, and fox, were turned up, 
 all more or less marked by the primitive weapons. 
 Some of these animals now live in Africa and India, 
 but most of them belonged to kinds which were 
 probably destroyed by these early fierce men, or by 
 the great change of climate which must have oc- 
 curred since the lion, the rhinoceros, and the hippo- 
 potamus lived in Europe. 
 
 THE VEHMGERICHTE. 
 
 In a former article on the Corsican Vendetta, we 
 gave an illustration of the evils which take their 
 rise in social anarchy. In the Vehmgerichte we 
 find another example of the expedients to which 
 men resort in the absence of established laws and 
 good government to enforce them. 
 
 The Vehmgerichte, or Fehmgerichte, as it is 
 sometimes written, is a name given to the secret 
 tribunals which existed in some parts of Germany, 
 but especially in Westphalia, in the Middle Ages. 
 The precise derivation of the title is disputed j but 
 it is generally supposed to have proceeded from 
 fehm, punishment, and gericht, court, meaning a 
 court of punishment, or court of justice. Others also 
 have conjectured that it may have been derived 
 from the Latin fama, as the tribunals frequently 
 proceeded on the basis of common report or fame. 
 
 The origin of these courts, like their name, is a 
 matter of some doubt. They have been ascribed 
 to the age of Charlemagne; but the first authentic 
 record of their existence occurs about the middle 
 of the thirteenth century. They were formed of 
 individuals associated together for the primary 
 purpose of punishing crimes and offences ; for in 
 the Middle Ages the law was too weak, and its 
 administrators too corrupt, to secure the ends of 
 justice. Bold and powerful barons could defy the 
 authority of the sovereign, and inflict acts of 
 tyranny and oppression upon the people, without 
 any efficient check to their lawlessness ; and to 
 meet such cases, as well as others in which grievous 
 wrong was perpetrated by any member of the com- 
 munity, the secret tribunals were instituted. 
 
 They were divided into sections having authority 
 in different parts of the country, with a central 
 tribunal at their head. They recognised as their 
 president the lord of the land, who was, in West- 
 phalia, the Archbishop of Cologne, but nominally 
 the Emperors were also their chief officers. Each 
 offshoot of the central tribunal was presided over 
 by a person of position, entitled a free count ; and 
 the members of the court were divided into the 
 two classes of sclwppen, or ignorant, and the wis- 
 sende, or knowing — i.e., those who were initiated 
 into the hidden secrets of the order. All who 
 joined the tribunals were pledged by the most 
 solemn oaths to secresy as to their proceedings ; 
 and, although the members of these societies are 
 supposed at one time to have been more than 
 100,000 in number, it does not appear that any 
 were ever known to break the vows they had taken. 
 
 The meetings of the tribunals were held some- 
 times in the open day and in a public place, but 
 this was chiefly for the determination of civil dis- 
 putes. Criminal offences, such as robbery and 
 murder, were usually dealt with secretly, and the 
 mode of proceeding was as follows : — If a charge 
 
GIGANTIC SILVER FOUNTAIN. 
 
 247 
 
 had been brought against any person, or if com- 
 mon rumour ascribed to him the commission of a 
 crime, he was cited to appear before the tribunal 
 of the district, and answer the accusation. The 
 highest noble in the land was as liable to citation 
 as the humblest peasant. The summons to attend 
 was generally affixed to the door of the individual 
 in the night, and bore the seal of the tribunal. If 
 he refused to attend after two citations, he was 
 considered guilty, and the members of the tribunal 
 were empowered, and bound by their oaths, to 
 hang him or kill him wherever they could find him. 
 If he attended, he was heard, and allowed to clear 
 himself, if he could, by the evidence of witnesses. 
 If he could not do so, ho was either fined or 
 summarily executed, according to the nature of his 
 offence. It was customary, when the punishment 
 was inflicted, to leave a knife by the body, to show 
 that the death was not attributable to murder, but 
 to the sentence of the Vehmgerichte. 
 
 As the tribunal was acting under the counte- 
 nance of the highest power in the land, no punish- 
 ment could reach those who were obeying its 
 decrees. The number of the members and their 
 wide dispersion, rendered the sentence certain of 
 execution in almost every case and the name of 
 the Vehmgerichte was long the terror of all evil- 
 doers. In process of time, however, great abuses 
 crept into this rude administration of justice. At 
 a Diet held at Triers in 15 12, it was declared that, 
 "by the Westphalian tribunals many an honest 
 man had lost his life, honour, body, and property ;" 
 and the Archbishop of Cologne, their nominal 
 head, admitted that "by very many they were 
 shunned and regarded as seminaries of villains." 
 They were therefore gradually suppressed by the 
 rising powers of the State, although never formally 
 abolished ; and when Jerome Bonaparte was King 
 of Westphalia, a remnant of the old tribunals is 
 said to have been discovered in action as a society 
 for the suppression of vice. 
 
 These secret tribunals have their counterpart in 
 many respects in what are known in some of the 
 Western States of America as Vigilance Com- 
 mittees, of the action of which we still read oc- 
 casionally in the newspapers. 
 
 GIGANTIC SILVER FOUNTAIN. 
 
 The manufacture of large works in silver is not 
 confined to countries in which that metal is most 
 abundantly found. True it is that we read of a 
 kitchen in South America being furnished with all 
 sorts of kitchen utensils made of silver, and even 
 a drinking trough for horses at an inn being en- 
 tirely of that metal ; but these works exhibit no 
 specimens of taste in form, and possess all the 
 clumsiness of rude art. 
 
 In England we have produced a work alike re- 
 
 markable for its stupendous size and ornamental 
 design, which is believed to be the largest " piece of 
 plate " ever executed in this country. It originated 
 as follows. The Court of Directors of the East 
 India Company, being anxious to acknowledge the 
 friendly deportment of the Pacha of Egypt towards 
 our country, " in a manner worthy of the greatest 
 political and military power of the East," had con- 
 structed a silver fountain of extraordinary magni- 
 tude and exquisite workmanship, as a present to 
 Mohammed Ali from the company. 
 
 This truly magnificent fountain is upwards of ten 
 feet high, and contains 10,000 ounces (about 7f 
 cwt.) of silver. The base is of quadrangular fonn, 
 resting on a slab of black marble. It is four feet in 
 diameter, and terminates in fluted claws ; presenting 
 altogether the appearance of a massive and enriched 
 pedestal. In the centre rises a sort of altar, or 
 column, also quadrangular, whence rises a shaft 
 containing the first and largest of the basins ; 
 within and around the edges undulates a wreath of 
 oak-leaves and acorns, twined and banded together 
 with excellent effect, the overhanging portions being 
 characteristically festal. The design of the two 
 upper basins is of corresponding character, as is 
 also the ornamental shaft. At each of the four 
 corners of the basement is placed a vase of elegant 
 design, containing a bouquet of flowers in frosted 
 silver ; and falling from the scrolls of the upper 
 table, or altar, towards these vases, are cornucopias 
 filled with fruit and flowers. Their execution is 
 very beautiful and artistically accurate. 
 
 The interior works are as follows : —From the top 
 water is thrown by a jet worked by machinery, 
 consisting of a force-pump, and a weighted plunger 
 working in an air-tight vessel ; and the water being 
 thus thrown up, falls into the three successive 
 basins in the form of the Pyramid, and returns 
 through the centre of the lowermost basin into the 
 reservoir, whence it is again taken up and used, on 
 the pump being set in motion. It will play for 
 nearly two hours, after being pumped for six or 
 seven minutes by means of a handle inserted in one 
 corner of the base. 
 
 The style of the ornament throughout the ex- 
 terior of the fountain is that of Louis Quatorze. On 
 the sides of the base is a convex shield bearing the 
 following inscription in four languages : — 
 
 TO HIS HIGHNESS 
 
 MOHAMMED ALI, 
 
 PACHA or EGYPT. 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 THE EAST INDIA COMPANY, 
 
 LONDON, A.D. 1845. 
 
 The other languages are Turkish, Arabic, and 
 Latin. 
 
 The cost of this magnificent work was £y,ooo. 
 It occupied somewhat more than seven months in 
 the actual manufacture, and is in every respect a 
 superb work of art. 
 
248 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 ELECTRICITY AS A MOTIVE POWER. 
 
 For many years the employment of electricity as a 
 means of obtaining power has been a favourite idea 
 with electro-mechanicians. The enormous attractive 
 force of electro-magnetism — a force apparently only 
 limited by the size of the magnets and the power 
 of the battery — seems at first thought to favour the 
 supposition that it might be used practically ; 
 indeed, in 1839, Professor Jacobi illustratsd the 
 possibility of doing so, by fitting up a boat capable 
 of accommodating ten persons with an electro- 
 magnetic engine, and propelled it on the river 
 Neva at the rate of four miles an hour, the battery 
 he employed being a " Grove's," and the surface of 
 the platinum plates very large. 
 
 It has already been explained how magnetism 
 is produced by electricity ; it will therefore be 
 sufficient just to state that 
 electro-magnets can be 
 made which will lift a 
 weight of tons. We will 
 now briefly glance at 
 the reasons which have 
 hitherto prevented this 
 powerful agent from being 
 employed in this way. 
 It will be found by ex- 
 periment that, when a 
 piece of iron called an 
 armature is placed before 
 the poles of a magnet, 
 
 and at such a distance from them that it requires 
 a force of 81 pounds to withdraw it, if the distance 
 be doubled, it will need a force of only nine pounds 
 to pull the armature away, and if the distance be 
 again doubled, the force necessary is reduced to only 
 three pounds. Suppose, for instance, the magnet 
 is capable of attracting an armature when at a dis- 
 tance from it of one-eighth of an inch, with a force 
 of three tons. Such a magnet would justly be said 
 to possess enormous force ; but now remove the 
 armature to a distance of only one inch, and this 
 immense attractive power is reduced to very little 
 more than three pounds. 
 
 It is thus seen that the power of a magnet de- 
 creases very much more rapidly than the distance 
 of the armature increases ; and it is proved that 
 what is called the " law of squares " obtains with 
 respect to magnetic attraction — that is to say, whilst 
 the distance increases by doubles the magnetic 
 force diminishes by squares. The practical result 
 of this is, that the distance through which even 
 an exceedingly powerful magnet exerts any really 
 useful force is very limited, and hence an enormous 
 amount of power is wasted. In a steam-engine, 
 the force of the steam upon the piston is uniform 
 unless worked " expansively," no matter how long 
 the "stroke." In some degree to obviate this 
 
 serious objection in the use of electro-magnetism, 
 an arrangement called a "sucking-coil" has been 
 employed. This consists of a hollow cylinder 
 made of a coil of insulated wire. If inside this 
 coil a rod of soft iron be inserted a little way, when 
 the battery is applied to the ends of the coil-wire 
 the rod will be drawn entirely inside the coil ; and 
 if, instead of iron, a rod of magnetised steel be 
 inserted, the power of suction is increased ; and 
 if the battery-poles be reversed, the suction is 
 changed into propulsion. These forces are nearly 
 uniform throughout the whole length of the coil, 
 and so far this is an improvement over the re- 
 stricted action of the magnet ; but the highest 
 force exerted by the sucking-coil falls far below 
 that of the magnet when exerting its maximum 
 power. 
 An ingenious magnetic engine has been devised, 
 in which has been com- 
 bined, to a certain extent, 
 length of stroke with mag- 
 netic power. A number 
 of magnets are arranged 
 one behind the other, the 
 poles all pointing in the 
 same direction as shown 
 in Fig. I. A rod, A A, 
 passes through the whole 
 from end to end, upon 
 which are as many arma- 
 tures I, 2, 3, 4, as there are 
 magnets, the armatures 
 not being fixed to the rod, but merely strung 
 upon it by a hole in the centre of each. Fixed to 
 the rod are bosses which the armatures cannot 
 pass, and arranged at increasing distances apart ; 
 these bosses are seen at a, b, c, d. When, now, 
 the battery current is sent through all these 
 magnets, they attract their respective armatures, 
 which, pressing against the bosses, push forward 
 the rod, A A. As soon as th&right-hand magnet has 
 drawn its armature close to its poles, it is left there, 
 arkd the next magnet, now continuing to draw its 
 armature, propels the rod further forward, pushing 
 it through armature No. i. When armature No. 
 2 is pulled close to its own magnet, the next magnet 
 keeps up the motion, and so on tliBOUghout the 
 series. Fig. i shows the system at the beginning 
 of the stroke, and Fig. 2 the same arrangement 
 at the end of the stroke. A namber of arrange- 
 ments have been contrived, and a great deal of 
 ingenuity displayed to render electricity useful as 
 a motive power, but as yet all attempts have failed, 
 not so much upon mechanical grounds, as on that 
 of expense, for the amount of force obtained by 
 the consumption of a given value of zinc is vastly 
 less than that produced by the consumption of the 
 same value of coal employed in the production of 
 steam. 
 
MINUTE PLANTS. 
 
 249 
 
 MINUTE PLANTS. 
 
 The microscope has revealed no objects more 
 beautiful than the minute plants called Diatoms. 
 They belong to the class of sea-weeds, and occupy 
 one of the lowest places in the class because of 
 their extremely simple structure. While most plants 
 are made up of an immense number of little cells, 
 each diatom is formed of only a single cell ; and 
 this so minute that it would require 2,500 of one of 
 the most common forms {Gomphoneina violaceum), 
 laid end to end by their long diameters, to make one 
 inch! while nearly eighty of one of the long and 
 slender forms {Pleurosigmaforinosuiii) are needed 
 for the same length. 
 
 They differ from all other sea-weeds in their 
 having the power to 
 form in their skin a 
 shield of transparent 
 silex. In preparing these 
 plants for examination, 
 the student, by means 
 of a powerful acid or fire, 
 generally gets rid of 
 everything except this 
 exquisite glassy shell. 
 When such a prepared 
 specimen is placed un- 
 der the microscope, we 
 sec a miniature pill-box 
 with a richly-ornamented 
 lid and bottom united 
 by a plain glass rim. 
 This is the structure of 
 all of them, whatever 
 their shape may be ; and 
 their shapes are very 
 variable. Some are like 
 slender wands, others are 
 
 cubes, sometimes tied at the corners like woolpacks, 
 and others arc perfect spheres. Several large groups 
 are boat-shaped, some are oval, many are disc or pill- 
 box shaped, a few arc triangular or wedge-shaped, 
 and others are crooked and twisted. The upper and 
 under surfaces are marked in the most beautiful 
 manner with regular patterns. No engraver, no 
 engine-turner could produce such perfect designs 
 on the largest surface ; for, magnify the diatom 
 with the highest power you can produce, and you 
 only disclose more exquisite beauty and more per- 
 fect finish than you had observed before. 
 
 Diatoms inhabit fresh water as well as the ocean; 
 indeed, there is scarcely a pool of water anywhere 
 in which they cannot be found, not a roadside 
 ditch, or water-trough, or a cistern which will not 
 yield to the diligent searcher several forms of these 
 microscopic plants. Their favourite fresh-water 
 haunts are clear lakes, on the stones in mountain 
 Streams, and on the rocky faces of waterfalls ; 
 
 32 
 
 DIATOMS IN THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 marine forms abound in shallow pools left by the 
 retiring tide. Some are attached to rocks, or grow 
 upon other plants, but they have very little cohesion, 
 and the slightest disturbance sends them detached 
 and floating through the water. Others are always 
 free, and have the power of moving about in the 
 water. On this account they were for some time 
 believed to be animals, and now that they are held 
 by all to be plants there is great difficulty in under- 
 standing how they move. A satisfactory explanation 
 of this is much wanted. The motion is slow, the more 
 active requiring somewhat more than three minutes 
 to move over the space of an inch, while the slower 
 kinds require an hour to perform the feat. Many 
 of the large and beautiful species are free oceanic 
 forms, swimming about in myriads in mid-ocean, 
 and supplying food to 
 the multitudes of simple 
 protozoan animals, which 
 in their turn become the 
 prey of swimming mol- 
 luscs and fish, and these 
 again are the food of the 
 sea-birds and the larger 
 vertebrates of the ocean. 
 One is filled with wonder 
 on reflecting that all these 
 mighty monsters of the 
 deep depend ultimately 
 for their food on organ- 
 isms so minute as di- 
 atoms, which are indi- 
 vidually so insignificant, 
 but exist in nature in such 
 abundance that their 
 amount cannot be real- 
 ised. The northern seas 
 are frequently coloured, 
 over patches of hun- 
 dreds of square miles, of a dark deep green, by the 
 myriads of these minute plants. Dr. Hooker says 
 that the universal presence of this invisible vegeta- 
 tion throughout the South Polar Ocean is a most im- 
 portant feature, since there is a marked deficiency 
 in this region of higher forms of vegetation, and were 
 it not for them there would neither be food for aquatic 
 animals, nor could the ocean water be purified of the 
 poisonous carbonic acid which animal respiration 
 and decomposition are continually imparting to it. 
 The indestructible nature of their shields have 
 caused their remains to be preserved in the most 
 remarkable way. The oceanic forms, after passing 
 through the stomachs of various animals, as de- 
 scribed, and being deprived of all their vegetable 
 matter, are stored up in immense profusion in guano 
 deposits, and add, it is believed, a special virtue to 
 those manures when used for cereals, as they supply 
 in a finely divided condition the silex that so many 
 of the grasses require in their growth. 
 
250 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 The deposits now forming in lakes and in the ocean 
 iibound in their glassy skeletons, and it is more 
 than probable that they supplied the greater por- 
 tion of the silex of which the flints of our great 
 chalk beds arc found. 
 
 Wherever a lake has been dried up, a fine whitish 
 powder is always found, composed more or less 
 entirely of diatoms ; .and as the stratified rocks 
 are generally old sea-bottoms, they abound more 
 or less in these organisms. Small though these 
 plants are, they have left a greater bulk of sub- 
 stance to testify to their former existence than all 
 the huge mammoths, elephants, and other mammals 
 which were their contemporaries in some of the past 
 ages of our globe. So small are they that c\'ci'y 
 cubic inch in a bed of fourteen feet thick, at Bilin 
 in Bohcmi.-i, contains 41,000,000,000 of them. At 
 Egea, also in Bohemia, a bed twenty-eight feet 
 thick has been traced for a distance of two miles. 
 The city of Richmond, in Virginia, is said to be built 
 upon a similar bed eighteen feet in thickness. 
 Deposits occur in several places in Britain, though 
 not so extensive as those mentioned. At Dolgelly, 
 in Wales, at Mull, and other places in Scotland, 
 and at Lough Mournc, in Ireland, considerable beds 
 exist. The illustration shows a number of these 
 plants as they appear in the microscope. 
 
 TRIBUNALS OF ROOKS. 
 
 Rooks (says M. Diarmid), like men, have not all the 
 same nice sense of justice. Some of them are honest, 
 obliging, and industrious, others knavish, idle, and 
 mischievous. In the spring months in particular, 
 when they are all busy building nests or repairing 
 old ones, certain evil-doers invade their neighbours' 
 store of sticks to save themselves the trouble of 
 collecting materials in a more laborious and lawful 
 way. This to some may appear a very venial crime, 
 but what a plank is to a carpenter a twig is to a 
 crow, and to pilfer the one is as b.id as to purloin 
 the other. But as often as offences of this kind are 
 detected, a complaint is made to the proper quarter, 
 and the delinquent tried and punished by his peers. 
 Some veteran bird acts as chief justice, and from 
 the bustle that goes forward, the cawing of some 
 rooks and the silence of others, it is plain that the 
 court proceed upon system, though I cannot sub- 
 scribe to the startling opinion that they examine 
 witnesses and empanel a jury. 
 
 The presiding rook, who sits on a bough above 
 all the others, is heard croaking last of all, and 
 when sentence is pronounced punishment follows 
 very promptly. Either the culprit is seized and 
 pecked most severely, or the nest containing the 
 ill-gotten twigs is pounced upon and demolished 
 until not one stick is left upon another. 
 
 BLUNDERS AND ABSURDITIES IN 
 
 ART. 
 
 In looking over some collections of old pictures, 
 it is surprising what extraordinary anachronisms, 
 blunders, and absurdities are often discoverable. 
 
 In the gallery of the convent of Jesuits at Lisbon, 
 there is a picture representing Adam in paradise, 
 dressed in blue breeches with silver buckles, and 
 Eve with a striped petticoat. In the distance 
 appears a procession of Capuchin monks bearing 
 the cross. 
 
 In a country church in Holland there is a paint- 
 ing representing the sacrifice of Isaac, in which 
 the painter has depicted Abraham with a' blunder- 
 buss in his ha.nd, ready to shoot his son. A similar 
 edifice in Spain has a picture of the same incident, 
 in which the patriarch is armed with a pistol. 
 
 At Windsor there is a painting by Antonio 
 Verrio, in which the artist has introduced the 
 portraits of himself, Sir Godfrey Kneller, and May, 
 the surveyor of the works of that period, all in 
 long periwigs, as spectators of Christ healing the 
 sick. 
 
 A painter of Toledo, having to rci)rcsent the 
 three wise men of the East coming to worship on 
 the nativity of Christ, depicted tliree Arabian or 
 Indian kings, two of them white and one black, and 
 all of them in the posture of kneeling. The position 
 of the legs of each figure not being very distinct, 
 he inadvertently painted three black feet for the 
 negro king, and three also between the two white 
 kings ; and he did not discover his error until the 
 picture was hung up in the cathedral. 
 
 In another picture of the Adoration of the Magi, 
 which was in the Houghton Hall collection, the 
 painter, Brughel, had introduced a multitude of 
 little figures, finished off w ith true D utch exactitude, 
 but one was accoutred in boots and spurs, and 
 another was handing in, as a present, a little model 
 of a Dutch ship. 
 
 The same collection contained a painting of the 
 stoning of Stephen the martyr, by Lc Soeur, in 
 which the saint was attired in the habit of a Roman 
 Catholic priest at high mass. 
 
 A picture by Rubens, in the Luxembourg, re- 
 presents the Virgin Mary in council, with two 
 cardinals and the god Mercury assisting in her 
 deliberations. 
 
 SENSITIVE FLAMES. 
 
 TllE sensitive flames are very favourite exhibitions 
 with the public, for the experiments by which they 
 are shown are very simple, and yet apparently very 
 wonderful. You are shown into a moderate-sized 
 room, where there is a table with some short gas 
 lamps upon it. The lamps are connected with the 
 
SENSITIVE FLAMES. 
 
 251 
 
 g:is-pipes of the house, and the burners are rather 
 long, and liave a wide opening. There are no 
 glasses used, and the gas, when ignited, is allowed 
 to form a tall light, just short of flaring and making 
 a noise. The experimenter then informs the com- 
 pany that any unusual noise, certain words contain- 
 ing the letters s or z, and certain musical notes, will 
 alter the shape of the flame. When the violin is 
 played, on the high notes being produced, the flames 
 begin to dance, to shorten and spread out widely, 
 and then return to their original length. If the 
 audience talk, the flames jump up and down ; and 
 if they hiss, the light nearly goes out, and then 
 rushes up again. It is really very difficult to 
 persuade people that there is not a trick in the 
 whole affair, and that some one is not stopping the 
 rush of the gas at the sound of particular noises. 
 
 This pretty experiment was first undertaken by 
 Mr. Barrett, in 1865. Whilst preparing for the 
 Christmas lectures at the Royal Institution, he 
 noticed that some very shrill sounds he was produc- 
 ing with a violin bow upon a thin brass plate, had 
 a remarkable effect upon a tall and slender gas 
 flame that happened to be burning near. At the 
 sound of any shrill note the flame shrank down 
 several inches, at the same time spreading out side- 
 ways into a flat flame, which gave an increased 
 amount of light from the more perfect combustion 
 of the gas. Many attempts were made to find out 
 the cause. It was evident that the shape and size 
 of the burner had something to do with the sensi- 
 tive flames. Burners were formed of glass tubing 
 drawn out and the points broken off, so as to 
 obtain orifices of different sizes. Flames of various 
 lengths and volumes were thus produced, but 
 sensitiveness was only obtained with the longest 
 and largest flames. 
 
 The shape of the burner had much effect, and 
 the opening which resembled a V in shape was the 
 best. The stem of a tobacco-pipe would not answer, 
 its bore being too small ; but by heating a glass 
 tube three-eighths of an inch in diameter, and 
 drawing it out so that the orifice was about one- 
 sixteenth of an inch in diameter, and cutting it 
 across, capital burners were made. These burners 
 were connected with the gas-pipes by a length of 
 india-rubber tubing ; the gas was turned on, and a 
 flame of fifteen inches in length was obtained. A 
 noise of any kind — walking on the ground, shutting 
 a book, or stamping a chair, for example — caused 
 the flame to shrink down more or less. Its action 
 was like that of a sensitive, nervous person uneasily 
 starting and twitching at every little noise. Some 
 tuning-forks were struck, and then it was proved 
 that their proper notes had no effect upon the 
 flames ; but if they were violently struck and the 
 shrill upper note was produced, the flames danced 
 immediately. A large bell was sounded with a 
 violin bow drawn across its edge, and tlie fine 
 
 upper or harmonic notes, as they arc called, in- 
 fluenced the flame intensely. 
 
 On running up the scale of a pianoforte, when 
 the high notes were approached the flame became 
 very uneasy, and at last it shortened and became 
 very wide. This shortening of the flame is not due 
 to the effects of puffs of air ; for if, when a few yards 
 off, the hands be brought forcibly together without 
 touching the palms, the flame does not alter ; but 
 the slightest noise being made by finishing the 
 clapping, the length of the flame alters immediately. 
 It is astonishing how far-off a sound affects the 
 flame. Whistling has a powerful result, especially 
 if a key is used; and the effect continues as the 
 whistler, after closing the door, whistles his way 
 up-stairs. In one experiment the flame jumped 
 although the sound was being produced three 
 stories away, and the doors were closed. 
 
 The amount of pressure of the gas has a great 
 deal to do with the sensitive flames, and the pipes 
 must be well supplied with gas, which will roar if 
 allowed to escape through the burner. The pres- 
 sure is so arranged that the roaring noise would 
 commence upon the least extra amount of it. Mr. 
 Barrett noticed that if the sensitive flame be blown 
 upon through a fine tube, it shortens and widens ; 
 and it does so when a.violin bow is drawn over the 
 burner, or a finger is scratched down it. Moreover, 
 if the tube connecting the burner with the gas-pipes 
 is of india-rubber, shaking it produces a fluttering 
 of the flame. Professor Tyndal found that when 
 a very long flame was sensiti\'e, and the sound 
 used to make it shorten lasted a very little while, 
 the shortening did not take place, but luminous 
 tongues shot out on either side of the flame. He used 
 a burner made of steatite, and had extra pressure 
 of gas, and obtained a long flame of twenty-four 
 inches. The slightest tap on an anvil reduced its 
 height to seven inches ; shaking a bunch of keys 
 agitated the flame which moreover roared ; dropping 
 one sixpence on to another shortened the flame ; 
 and crumpling paper, or the tick of a watch, did 
 the same. The winding up of a watch produced a 
 tumult in, and the patter of rain agitated, the flame. 
 All sounds will not affect the flame, but it is by the 
 influence of the nature of sound that the sensi- 
 tiveness is produced. When a large instrument 
 produces a powerful sound, any wood on which the 
 hand may be placed trembles or vibrates, and 
 this trembling takes place also in the air. .Sounds 
 are produced by the tremblings in the air going 
 down the canal of the ear, and producing a tremu- 
 lous condition of the drum of the ear. Now, the 
 gas is being forced through a hole in a long burner 
 in a manner which just stops short of making a 
 noise, and of producing trembling in the metal or 
 glass in which tlie hole is formed. Any additional 
 trembling acting in the surrounding air diminishes 
 the size of the hole, and acts as if the gas were 
 
352 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 shut off for a second. Down goes the flame, and 
 when the trembling or vibration ceases it rises up 
 again. Vibrations and trembhngs arc produced in 
 a variety of manners, and most of them act at first 
 on the burner and then on the flame. Other gases 
 besides coal gas will produce the sensitive flames. 
 
 OUR ANCESTORS' SHIPS. 
 
 Our ancestors' ships were as wonderful as our 
 ancestors. It is difficult to understand how they 
 could have rendered the service required of them. 
 In Cassar's time they were light boats, with keel 
 and ribs of wood joined together with wicker-work, 
 the latter being covered over with stout leather. 
 They were capable of holding some four persons, 
 were not decked, and had a small sail on a single 
 mast, a paddle over the quarter for a rudder, and a 
 set of oars. In these frail barks the ancient Britons 
 crossed to France and to Ireland, and coasted 
 along their own shores. During the time that the 
 Romans held the land, the Britons do not seem to 
 have improved upon their old-fashioned craft ; but, 
 on the other hand, the Romans found that galleys 
 which suited the waters of the Mediterranean were 
 not adapted to the British waters, and had to modify 
 their ship-building upon the British model. 
 
 Speaking generally, the vessels of the Anglo- 
 Saxons and of the Danes were only large, deep, 
 open boats, none of them exceeding fifty tons 
 burden ; their prows and stems considerably ele- 
 vated, and usually ornamented with effigies of men, 
 birds, and beasts. To a single mast, supported by 
 a few shrouds, a large square sail was suspended, 
 and formed the means of propulsion when the wind 
 was fair ; but the sailors depended chiefly on oars, 
 by means of which they also steered. The helms- 
 man kept one hand on the steering-paddle, and 
 held the sheet of the sail in the other ; the sail was 
 bent on a sort of yard, which was hoisted by means 
 of halyards secured at the foot of the mast. In 
 boats of this kind, which accommodated at no time 
 more than sixty men, the expeditions of sea-kings 
 were made, and voyages completed whicli would 
 now-a-days be considered risky, unless made in 
 well-formed steamers. The Danes appear some- 
 times to have come down with " long ships," in 
 which wooden turrets were erected, and a half-deck 
 laid, for greater convenience in fighting ; but the 
 majority of the sea-going ships of the period were 
 of the kind mentioned, and were navigated by 
 means of the stars and by local geographical know- 
 ledge, upon voyages of commercial and national 
 importance. 
 
 King Alfred improved the British ship in order 
 to let it cope with the Danish " cescs," or war 
 vessels. The ships he built "were full twice as 
 long as the others ; sorne lifid sixty ovs, and some 
 
 had more ; they were both swifter and steadier, 
 and also higher, than the others. They were 
 shapen neither like the Frisian nor the Danish, 
 but so, as it seemed to him, that they would be 
 most efficient," and they seem to have been a sort 
 of galley. Improvements were made subsequently 
 by other princes, and at the time of the Norman 
 Conquest our ancestors' ships were very respectable 
 things, quite capable of keeping the sea, and of 
 holding their own against the ships of other nations. 
 The Norman Conqueror's vessels, if we may judge 
 from the Bayeux Tapestry — and there is no other 
 contemporary guide — were inferior in build and 
 accommodation to those of the English ; but then 
 most of them were built expressly for the invasion 
 service, and were probably not specimens of the 
 best Norman ship-building. They were large open 
 boats, with high stem and stern, driven by sails and 
 oars, had high gunwales, round which the shields 
 of the soldiers were hung, forming an additional 
 bulwark, and held from twenty to sixty men. The 
 horse-boats were flatter and broader, and had low 
 gunwales, over which the horses on arrival were made 
 to leap on to the beach. It may be easily imagined 
 that vessels of this cranky nature were not over 
 safe, and though it docs not appear that any 
 disaster happened to the Norman fleet in transitu, 
 a storm which blew on the night after the fleet's 
 arrival in Britain, destroyed several hundreds of 
 them, so that William, rather than lose all means 
 of retreat, spent ten days in hauling up the re- 
 mainder of his ships within the confines of his 
 camp. 
 
 For many years the Normans were content with 
 such ships as they had, but about the time of 
 Richard Cceur de Lion (a.d. 1189), vessels of much 
 larger size, and of various classes, began to be built. 
 The ships of the navy, if such an expression may be 
 used, consisted of large galleys, afterwards called 
 galliasses, or galiones, small war-boats, and busses, 
 which were large vessels with bluff" bows and bulg- 
 ing sides, and were chiefly used for the conveyance 
 of troops, stores, and merchandise. There is no 
 authority, though some slight evidence, for saying 
 that these vessels had more than one mast, but 
 they were decked, and had fore-castles and after- 
 castles, .and wooden nests or tops on the masts, 
 from which the mariners hauled the sail and the 
 soldiers shot arrows and flung down stones in an 
 engagement. Vissers were horse-boats, or sea- 
 going barges. "Snakes" and "serpents" were 
 long, swift pinnaces, used in war for " cutting out," 
 and for despatch boats. The large galleys were 
 double-decked, accommodating two banks of rowers, 
 and were capable of carrying 300 men. Some of 
 them had stone-throwing instruments fixed upon 
 the forecastle, and some, in .addition, were fitted at 
 the prow with copper shoots for the purpose of 
 projecting Greek fire. King Richard's own galley 
 
OUR ANCESTORS' SHIPS. 
 
 2S3 
 
 Sllli' OF WAR AND GALLEY, I5TH CENTUKY. 
 
 was called " Trench-the-mer," because of licr fleet- 
 ness, and gave her name not only to a class of 
 vessel, but also to the families of those who sailed 
 in her. " Escomers," or foam-makers, were light, 
 fast vessels, introduced soon after Richard's time, 
 probably under John, who, with all his faults, may 
 be said to have been the founder of the British 
 navy properly so called. 
 
 In 1228 a cabin is mentioned for the first time, 
 in a royal warrant for a ship to be sent to Gascony 
 with the king's effects ; four shillings and sixpence 
 being paid " for making a chamber in the said 
 ship, to place the king's things in." In 1242, when 
 the king and queen went to Gascony, convenient 
 cabins were ordered for their use, which were to be 
 wainscoted. 
 
 About this time mention is made of sorneks, 
 nascellas, and cogs, the former being apparently 
 of the "lighter" or "billyboy" class, the latter large 
 vessels used both for warlike and commercial pur- 
 poses. Not till late in the thirteenth century does 
 it appear that ships had two masts, and of these 
 the fore-mast hung over the bows, its sail serving 
 the function now discharged by a fore-staysail. 
 Rudders were still unknown, and remained so till 
 well on into the reign of Edward III., by which 
 time also the art of ship-building and navigating 
 
 had become greatly improved. "Ships" of this 
 period averaged 200 tons burden, and carried a 
 crew of si.xty-five men besides soldiers. " Barges " 
 were also of considerable size, and much used as 
 guardships ; but "cogs" appear to have been the 
 first-class ships of the fourteenth century. The cog 
 Thomas, in 1360, had a master, two constables, two 
 carpenters, 124 sailors, and eight boys. 
 
 One sail to each mast is all that is ever mentioned, 
 but it seems that when it was desired to "mowe 
 saile nerc," " lionncts," " wynwes " (wind-wooers), 
 or what are now called studding-sails, were fastened 
 to the great sail or "trief ;" and sometimes as many 
 as three " bonnets " were fastened to a sail. 
 
 As to wages paid by our ancestors to shipmen, 
 it seems that in 1360 a master, a carpenter, a con- 
 stable, and a clerk, were paid at the rate of six- 
 pence a day ; seamen received threepence, and 
 boys a penny. .Sometimes, it appears, the king 
 gave the master of the vessel " sixteen shillings to 
 buy a robe." 
 
 Ships and shipping remained in pretty much the 
 same state after the reign of Edward, until Henry 
 VII. came to the throne. With Henry, who built 
 the Great Harry, began the modern system of 
 ship-building, and our ancestors' ships went out 
 of date. 
 
254 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 The Afterglow in Egypt.— I do not remember 
 (says the author of " Eastern Life") to have read of 
 one great atmospheric beauty in Egypt — the after- 
 glow, as we used to call it. I watched this nightly 
 for ten weeks on the Nile, and often in the desert, 
 and was continually more impressed with the 
 peculiarity as well as the beauty of this appearance. 
 That the sunset in Egypt is gorgeous e\crybody 
 knows ; but I, for one, was not aware that there is 
 a renewal of beauty some time after the sun has 
 departed and left all grey. Among the Alps, the 
 flame-coloured peaks become grey and ghastly as 
 the last sunbeam leaves them. But here every- 
 thing begins to brighten again in twenty minutes ; 
 the hills are again purple or golden, the sands 
 orange, the palms verdant, the moonlight on the 
 waters a pale green ripple on a lilac surface, and 
 this afterglow continues for ten minutes, when it 
 slowly fades awa\-. 
 
 Extraordinary Light.— In one of the Gen- 
 tleman's Magazines of 1756, what must have been 
 a brilliant example of Aurora Borealis was thus 
 described : — " On the 2nd of January, 1756, at four 
 in the afternoon, at Tuam, in Ireland, an unusual 
 light, far above the brightest day, struck all the be- 
 holders with amazement. It then faded away by 
 invisible degrees ; but at seven, from west to east, a 
 sun of streamers appeared across the sky, undulat- 
 ing like the waters of a rippling stream. A general 
 feeling of alarm was excited by this singular pheno- 
 n^non. The streamers gradually became dis- 
 coloured, and flashed away to the north, attended 
 by a shock which all felt, but which did no damage." 
 
 The Table-cloth at the Cape.— The Table 
 Mountain at the Cape of Good Hope rises like a 
 broad and flat wall to the height of 3,500 feet above 
 the sea, and derives its name from being perfectly 
 flat on the top. Here a remarkable circumstance 
 connected with the south-east wind presents itself. 
 The mist which gathers on the mountain gradiuilly 
 spreads over its surface and falls over the perpen- 
 dicular sides like a table-cloth. The wind then 
 pours down upon Cape Town with a terrific roar, 
 while the Table Mountain remains covered with its 
 misty table-cloth, from which fragments seem to be 
 torn and whirled about in mid-air like rags. The 
 whole of this phenomenon generally occurs between 
 noon and five o'clock, when the storm clears away, 
 and the table-cloth begins to be folded up. A serene 
 night generally follows. 
 
 Remarkable Lunar Phenomenon. — The jour- 
 nal of Captain Parry's voyage in the Arctic regions 
 in 1 82 1 contains the record of a very rare pheno- 
 menon, under date of December 20th. The officer 
 of the watch, at seven on that day, observed that 
 the moon, in rising, assumed the appearance of two, 
 pn hearing of which C.ipluin Parry himself went on 
 
 deck and verified the statement. The moon was 
 about half a degree high at the time, and a second 
 crescent appeared a little below it. Mr. .Scallon, the 
 gunner, stated that the reflection had at first appeared 
 as distinct as the moon itself, and it was nearly so 
 when the captain arrived on deck. Afterwards it 
 faded away, having continued visible from first to 
 last for about five minutes. 
 
 A WONDER OF PRIDE. 
 
 Near the village of Edgware, on a plain now 
 verdant and " smiling in scorn," there once stood a 
 palace of such gorgeous magnificence that it seemed 
 suited rather to a prince than to a subject. The 
 most eminent architects had been employed in 
 its construction ; artists came from Italy to adorn 
 its walls, and costly marbles formed the pillars. 
 Such was the abode of James Brydges, Duke of 
 Chandos, a nobleman whose unbounded magnifi- 
 cence, lavish expenditure, and overweening vanity 
 obtained for him the designation of " princely." 
 
 It was not to architectural grandeur alone that 
 the Duke of Chandos confined his views ; his stylo 
 of living corresponded with the magnificence of his 
 mansion, and fell little short of tlie state of a 
 sovereign prince. He dined in public ; and, when 
 he repaired to chapel, he was attended by a military 
 guard. The Divine service he had performed with 
 all the aid that could be derived from vocal and 
 instrumental music. To this end he retained some 
 of the most celebrated performers of the day, and 
 engaged the greatest masters to compose the 
 anthems. Handel, who acted as maestro di capella, 
 produced, while at liiis palace, his famous oratorio 
 of " Esther ; " and the eminent musician Pepusch, 
 also employed by the duke, composed there some 
 of his finest works. But how fleeting is all earthly 
 magnificence ! The fortune of the " grand duke " 
 experienced injury from speculation. His lavish 
 disbursements added to his embarrassments, and 
 at length the South Sea Bubble came to decrease 
 still further his means of enjoyment. He continued, 
 however, to reside at " The Canons " — though, it 
 would appear, with diminished splendour — till his 
 death in 1744. When the duke died, this magnifi- 
 cent mansion was, after fruitless attempts to dispose 
 of it entire, pulled down, and the materials sold by 
 auction. — Burke's " Anecdotes of the Aristocracy." 
 
 THE MAELSTROM. 
 
 The Maelstrom is a whirlpool off the coast of 
 Norway, between the islands of Loffoden and Mos- 
 koe ; and because of its propinquity to the latter is 
 sometimes called the Moskoestrom. Many stories 
 have been written about it which border on the 
 confines of the marvellous rather than of the truth. 
 Poets have been busy with the f^ct of its existence, 
 
EXTINCT REPTILES. 
 
 2SS 
 
 and ancient legends have told with wonderful 
 exactness how heroes have dived into the vortex in 
 order to show their zeal for their lady loves, and 
 how virtue and courage have come unharmed out 
 of the great depths, while wickedness and vice have 
 so weighted men that they have been overwhelmed 
 in the whirlpool. Old-world thought led to the 
 Ijelicf that at the spot where the Maelstrom was, 
 there was a great hole in the earth, through which 
 the water poured, and that those tilings or men 
 which were engulfed in the pool were either 
 passed through the earth to its other side, or were 
 returned broken and drowned to the place whence 
 they came by a return coil in the mysterious water 
 spiral. Water jotuns, or water giants, were of 
 course supposed to preside over the whirlpool, and 
 to arrange according to the dictates of their own 
 fancy who should be saved and who destroyed. 
 One hero whom they permitted to re-visit the 
 upper world was speechless ever after, unable, by 
 sign or word, to give an account of the marvellous 
 things he had seen. Many a ship was sucked down 
 into the watery grave, many a fair cargo lost, and 
 yet the water dt-mon was not satisfied ; no amount 
 of sacrifices seemed to propitiate the hungry ocean 
 gnome. 
 
 Modern science, with its secret-searching light, 
 has scared the water-demon from his lair, and has 
 given an explanation of the causes of the whirlpool, 
 quite incompatible with the existence of such a con- 
 trivance as the Maelstrom was represented to be. 
 When the configuration of the land between 
 Droutheim and the North Cape is seen, it will not 
 surprise any one that the rush of the tide, cooped 
 up as it is in its passage through the Loffoden 
 Islands, should result in a wash of the whirlpool 
 kind. The strong tide flowing down from the 
 northern sea is caught in a rocky angle, which 
 causes a kink in the stream, twisting it round with 
 violence enough to cause the Maelstrom, the most 
 dangerous whirlpool in the world. The whirlpool is 
 thus described by an American writer : — " I had 
 occasion, some years since, to navigate a ship from 
 the North Cape to Droutheim, nearly all the way 
 between the islands, or rocks, and the main. On 
 inquiring of my Norwegian pilot about the practi- 
 cability of running near the whirlpool, he told me 
 that with a good breeze it could be approached 
 near enough for examination without danger, and I 
 at once determined to satisfy myself. We began to 
 near it about ten a.m. in the month of September, 
 with a fine leading wind N.W. Two good seamen 
 were placed at the helm, the mate on the quarter- 
 deck, all hands at their stations for working the ship, 
 and the pilot standing on the bowsprit between the 
 night-heads. I went on the main topsail-yard with 
 a good glass. 1 had been seated but a few minutes 
 when my ship entered the dish of the whirlpool. 
 The velocit)' of the water altered her course three 
 
 points towards the centre, although she was going 
 eight knots through the water. This alarmed me 
 extremely for a moment. I thought that destruction 
 was inevitable. The vessel, however, answered 
 her helm sweetly, and we ran along the edge, the 
 waves foaming round us in every form while she was 
 dancing gaily over them. The sensations I expe- 
 rienced aredifficult todescribe. Imagine an immense 
 circle running round, of a diameter of a mile and a 
 half, the velocity increasing as it approximated 
 towards the centre, and gradually changing its dark 
 blue colour to white — foaming, tumbling, rushing, 
 to its vortex ; very much concave, as much so as the 
 water in a funnel when half run out ; the noise too, 
 hissing, roaring, dashing — all pressing on the mind 
 at once, presented the most awful, grand, solemn 
 sight I ever experienced. We were near it about 
 eighteen minutes, and in sight of it two hours." 
 
 Vessels caught in the inner swirl, and having no 
 means of escape, must inevitably be upset and 
 broken by the violence of the waves, or dashed to 
 pieces on the rocks which underlie the sea. Whales 
 are sometimes caught and destroyed in the whirl, 
 and it is related that a bear, having put off from 
 one island on a predatory expedition after some 
 sheep on another, was sucked in, and that his roar- 
 ing and bellowing were for a long time heard at 
 Moskoc, until the waters of the whirlpool quenched 
 his spirit and his voice. 
 
 €^t'uut JlcjjiiUs. 
 
 The Ichthyosaurus.— This gigantic creature no 
 longer exists, and is only known to us by the bones 
 which are often found in such abundance as to 
 form perfect skeletons. The general shape of the 
 reptile can be gleaned from the study of the skele- 
 tons of it which have been found in chalk quarries, 
 and in the dark blue stone from which lias cement 
 is made. The bones have become stone, but their 
 shape has been preserved. The word ichthyosaurus 
 means fish-lizard, and it is a remarkable fossil, 
 because it combined in itself the characters of other 
 animals. Thus it had the general form of the kind 
 of whale which is called the grampus, it had the 
 snout of a porpoise, the teeth of a crocodile, the 
 head of a lizard, the back of a fish, the paddles of a 
 turtle, and it was as savage and destructive as all 
 these creatures put together. 
 
 As its name implies, the ichthyosaurus was a fish 
 with many peculiar structures in it, which were 
 usually only found in reptiles. It lived in the sea 
 and attained the length of thirty feet, much of 
 which belongs to the head. The eyes were most 
 extraordinary, for their sockets, or the holes in the 
 skull into which they fitted, were a foot or more 
 across, and there were some curious bony plates in 
 the form of a circle on the white of the eye. Some- 
 
256 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 thing like this is seen in eagles and in other birds 
 which move through the air at a great rate in pursuit 
 of prey ; and the use of the apparatus is to enable 
 the bird to see a thing a long way off, and not to 
 lose sight of it by approaching very rapidly. When 
 the ichthyosaurus saw its prey deep in the sea, 
 its peculiarly shaped eyes did not lose sight of the 
 required object, 
 although the rush 
 through hundreds 
 of feet of water 
 might have taken 
 but a few seconds. 
 
 The tail of the 
 ichthyosaurus was 
 a huge fin, and on 
 each side of the 
 body were two pad- 
 dles, formed of thick 
 skin covering a sort 
 of hand, in which 
 were a hundred 
 small bones. The 
 snout and jaws 
 
 were long, sharp, and furnished with sharp teeth. 
 These were two and a half inches in length, like 
 lancets in shape, and there were at least a hundred 
 of thenr in each jaw. The jaws were very strong, 
 and could open very widely ; moreover, there was 
 an arrangement by which the creature could take in 
 air like a whale, and 
 go down into the depth 
 of the sea. It preyed 
 on fish and the numer- 
 ous reptiles that lived 
 in those old oceans, 
 and its principal com- 
 panions were the other 
 two reptiles about to 
 be noticed. 
 
 The Plesiosaurus. 
 — This extinct reptile 
 was less like a fish than 
 the ichthyosaurus, and 
 was the oddest-looking 
 animal ever created. 
 Like the other reptile, 
 it combined the pecu- 
 liar forms of several 
 
 creatures, and lived by the sea shore or up 
 rivers. The plesiosaurus was not a land animal, 
 however, but it could not dive nor swim quickly in 
 the sea water. It had the head of a lizard, the long 
 neck of a snake, the body and paddles of a turtle, 
 and a tail. The reptile had the appearance of a 
 great turtle, with a long snake nearly pulled through 
 its body. The head was small, and the teeth like 
 those of the crocodiles and ichthyosaurians ; the 
 neck was used like that of a swan, and the plump 
 
 SKELE'I'ON OF THE PLESIOSAURUS. 
 
 SKELETON OF THE PTERODACTYL 
 
 body was kept on the surface of the sea by the 
 large side paddles, which were made very much on 
 the same plan as those of the whale-like reptile 
 just described. It was a snapping reptile, which 
 plunged its head down into the water, picking up 
 small fish, and which could catch any bird or reptile 
 flying over the water. Perhaps in its turn it was 
 
 eaten bythc ichthyo- 
 saurus, or by some 
 of the great croco- 
 diles whose bones 
 are found in the 
 same strata. 
 
 The Pterodac- 
 tyls.— At the time 
 when the ichthyo- 
 saurus was the ty- 
 rant of the sea, and 
 the plesiosaurus 
 raised its long neck 
 above the water 
 to seek its prey, 
 there were won- 
 derful dragon - like 
 lizards that lived on the land and flew over vast 
 tracts of country. The ptcrodact)l had a head 
 and neck like those of a bird, as far as the general 
 shape was concerned, and its wings resembled 
 those of bats, whilst the body and tail might have 
 been taken from any young land animal. The 
 jaws were not beaked 
 I'ke a bird, but had long 
 lancet - shaped teeth, 
 often sixty in num- 
 ber, which could kill 
 creatures much larger 
 than their owners. 
 The eye was large, 
 and the head was very 
 movable ; so that with 
 great wings, occasion- 
 ally measuring eigh- 
 teen feet across, these 
 reptilian birds were 
 just as terrible in the 
 air as the plesiosaurus 
 and ichthyosaurus 
 were in the sea. The 
 wings of the pterodac- 
 tyl were not feathered, and they were furnished 
 with claws attached to a hand, whose little finger 
 was enormously lengthened to form the support 
 on which the wing, or rather membrane, was hung. 
 Hence the name pterodactyl, or wing-finger. Some 
 of the skeletons of these creatures were not bigger 
 than tliosc of a snipe ; others must have belonged 
 to pterodactyls larger than the biggest condor. 
 A small flying lizard still lives, but it is not very 
 much like the flying lizard with the wing-finger. 
 
THE WONDERS OF THE ALPS. 
 
 257 
 
 THE WETTERIIORN, FROM ROSENI.AIU, 
 
 THE WONDERS OF THE ALPS. 
 
 o 
 
 On looking at a map of Europe, it will be noticed 
 that the longest rivers— the Rhine, the Rhone, and 
 the Danube— can be traced from the seas into 
 which they flow up to a space in the centre of the 
 continent included in the countries of Switzerland, 
 Savo)-, and the Tyrol. They arise from small 
 streams or lakes whose waters are derived from the 
 springs in, or from the melting of the ice amongst, 
 the mountains called the Alps. They come from 
 the highest ground on the Continent, and their 
 length is produced by the gradual rise of the 
 surface of the land from the sea to the sides of the 
 hills. If there were no Alps there would be no 
 rivers. 
 
 There is a splendid sight, which can never be 
 forgotten by any one who has passed over the low 
 range of hills called the Jura, soon after daybreak 
 33 
 
 on a clear morning. After leaving the uninteresting 
 road through France, and ascendingthc Jura, the vast 
 panorama of the Western Alps suddenly bursts into 
 sight. The gentle descent at one's feet ends in a 
 large plain studded with forests, vineyards, and 
 hamlets, and traversed by winding streams ; it 
 bounds a large lake, whose calm surface reflects the 
 snow-covered peaks and pinnacles of a great 
 mountain range far beyond it. The water is in- 
 tensely blue, and the fleecy layers of soft clouds 
 through which the huge rocks rise are reflected 
 upon it, and they soften down the sharp lines of the 
 everlasting snow where they are not broken by the 
 rippled surface of the beautiful lake. The hills 
 thus figured on the broad sheet of the Lake Leman 
 rise up on its further coast, at first in cliffs, and 
 then in undulating hills, rolling away to the foot of 
 the snowy range which reaches far into the sky in 
 the form of a gigantic frozen sea — Mont Blanc, 
 
258 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 whose summit is a vast pyramid, being the highest 
 and most stupendous mass. The distant hills of 
 Central France are on the right hand, and there 
 extends far away on the left a diminishing series of 
 gigantic mountain chains, dark at their bases, but 
 covered above with the never-melting snow, which 
 is faintly tinged by the bright hue of the rising sun. 
 The Rhine and the Danube arise far away in the 
 east, but the Rhone mainly comes from the lake 
 below; and this is fed by a river running through a 
 dark valley, whose narrow gorge is seen on the left, 
 crushed in between two enormous and precipitous 
 mountains. There, all is still dark in the valleys ; 
 but the sun has tinted the tops of the hills since 
 daybreak, and in the evening, long after the dark- 
 ness has commenced in the lowlands, the snowy 
 peaks will be illuminated by the last rays of the 
 setting sun. Rugged and jagged as the tops of 
 many of the mountains appear, they are neverthe- 
 less covered with snow, and between them arc the 
 vast seas of ice called glaciers. From the spot 
 where all this can be seen, the whole looks like a 
 great rocky projection starting upwards from the 
 plain and lake. The clearness of the atmosphere 
 renders the distances very deceptive ; for the great 
 pile of Mont Blanc, which appears very close, is 
 really sixty miles off. Its summit is 15,781 feet 
 above the level of the sea, but it must be remem- 
 bered that the plain out of which it rises is at least 
 3,500 feet higher than the sea. Some other moun- 
 tains are nearly as high as Mont Blanc, such as 
 Monte Rosa, 15,585 feet, and the Jungfrau, which is 
 13,729 feet in height. The snow is everlasting on 
 such mountains, and it rarely disappears, even in 
 the hottest summers, on any of them which are 
 more than 8,500 feet high ; so that this height is 
 called the snow-line. Below this, many plants are 
 found in little valleys, or on the rocks where there 
 is some mould, and still lower down the forests of 
 pine and fir trees commence. When the height of 
 the mountains which are always covered with snow 
 is considered, it is at first sight rather strange that 
 their summits, being thousands of feet nearer the 
 sun than the plains, should be so cold. They 
 derive much heat from the sun, but they do not get 
 it from any surrounding thing as well ; and when 
 the sun goes down their heat passes off into space. 
 The Alpine valleys are often very hot, and even at 
 very considerable heights ice may be touched with 
 one hand and flowers gathered with the otiier. The 
 clouds which constantly cover up the tops of the 
 mountains deposit moisture upon them ; this is 
 turned to snow and ice, and as much of it as melts 
 during the day passes down the streams and torrents 
 into the small rivers in the deep valleys, and finally 
 falls into the great rivers. When a closer view of 
 the Alps is obtained, and the great valleys, narrow 
 gorges, awful precipices, and magnificent waterfalls 
 arc examined, thcv command as much admiration 
 
 as the wonderful rocky hills that tower above them 
 all. The questions arise at once in the mind : How 
 did all this come to pass ? how long have these 
 mountains stood, being worn away as they arc and 
 have been, by every stream, and ground-scratched 
 and split by the glaciers ? and of what are they 
 composed ? 
 
 Geologists prove that many of the mountains 
 which rise to the height of 10,000 feet arc princi- 
 pally composed of shells, and that they are not 
 mounds of earth, but vast layers of old sea bottoms, 
 on which the inhabitants of the shells formerly 
 lived, tilted up at right angles — ^just as we may lift 
 a book by one end from a table, and stand it up 
 on the other end. They show that thousands of 
 feet of many great mountains, like the Righi, are 
 masses of rolled pebbles formed by the action of 
 running water on rocks which have been quite worn 
 away ; and that vast precipices, extending for 
 miles, have been the sides of glaciers or of torrents 
 that have cut their way through a fine, dark, slaty 
 rock, which must have been deposited at the greatest 
 depths of the ocean. There are no volcanoes in the 
 Alps, and they were not pushed up out of the earth 
 by volcanic agency. The shells and the rolled 
 pebbles tell part of the story of the upheaval of the 
 Alps : their deposits were once in deep water ; but 
 the whole of Europe arose from the sea inch by 
 inch, and became dry land. Then the deep force 
 which did this continued to act in the region of the 
 Alps, which attained a great elevation ; and then 
 I granite and other rocks, which are molten when in 
 the depths of the earth, were forced upwards. They 
 pierced the crust, and formed the greatest moun- 
 tains of the Alps, and they threw off and uptilted 
 the old shelly hills on their sides. The Alps look 
 as if they were from everlasting ; but they are much 
 younger than our Welsh hills, and they are of the 
 same age as the Andes and the Himalayas of 
 India. 
 
 'WLlon"C)crs ai K)oxola%^. 
 
 M.-^GNETic Clock and Watch.— When the 
 
 ' Grand Duke of Tuscany, in 1669, visited the Royal 
 
 ' Society at Arundel House, he was shown " a clock 
 
 whose movements are derived from the vicinity of 
 
 a loadstone ; and it is so adjusted as to discover 
 
 ; the distance of countries at sea by the longitude." 
 
 ' The analogy between this clock and the electrical 
 
 ! clock of the present day is not a little remarkable. 
 
 The Journal-book of the society for the above year 
 
 contains many allusions to " Hookc's magnetic 
 
 watch, going slower or faster according to the 
 
 greater or less distance of the loadstone, and so 
 
 moving regularly in every posture." 
 
 Thk Pyramids ov Egypt as Sun-dials. — 
 Sir Gardner Wilkinson conjectures that these stu- 
 
THE SALINAS OF IVIZA. 
 
 259 
 
 pendous monuments were built for astronomical 
 purposes. " The form of the exterior might lead to 
 many useful calculations. They stand directly due 
 north and south ; and while the direction of the 
 faces to the east and west might serve to fix the re- 
 turn of a certain period of the year, the shadow cast 
 by the sun, or the time of its comciding witli their 
 slope, might be observed for a similar purpose." 
 
 Horology has enabled us to discover that when 
 the wind passes at one mile per hour it is scarcely 
 perceptible ; while at the rate of 100 miles per hour 
 it acquires sufficient force to tear up trees, and 
 destroy the produce of the earth ; and without the 
 aid of a seconds clock it would have been scarcely 
 possible to ascertain that a cannon-ball flics at the 
 rate of 600 feet in a second. 
 
 A True Watch. — It lias been said that "no 
 man ever made a true circle, or a straight line, 
 except by chance;" and the same maybe said of 
 any machine which measured time exactly ; indeed, 
 positive accuracy can never be attained until an 
 unchangeable material is discovered, of which the 
 works may be constructed. 
 
 SMALL FEET OF CHINESE WOMEN. 
 
 The diminutive feet of the women of China was 
 long regarded as a national peculiarity, asserted 
 to be of natural growth, and has thus been a wonder 
 in the books of travellers ; but by our less restricted 
 intercourse with China the secret has been let out. 
 There were certain small-footed ladies at Hong- 
 Kong who gained a very fair livelihood by exhibiting 
 their feet to sea-captains, and other curious Euro- 
 peans, at a dollar a head, and the evidence satisfied 
 a superficial examination and belief. But it ap- 
 pears that in the missionary schools may be seen 
 numbers of little girls whose feet are in the various 
 stages of torture, as narrated by a visitor who had 
 the opportunity of witnessing what he has well 
 described. On an appointed day the children were 
 all seated in a row, and their feet, which had under- 
 gone a preparatory washing, were unbound by their 
 mothers. The first was a child of two years old. 
 Her penance had but just commenced. When the 
 bandage of blue cotton was taken off it was seen 
 that the great toe had been left untouched, but the 
 other four had been forced down under the ball of 
 the foot, and closely bound in that position. The 
 child, therefore, walked upon the knuckle-joints of 
 her four toes. The toes were red and inflamed, 
 and the ligaturc caused evident pain. In the next 
 three children, of ages advancing at small inter- 
 vals, the preparation was only to the same extent ; 
 it was confined to the four toes. Gradually, how- 
 ever, these four toes, according to the continual 
 pressure, lost their articulation and identity as 
 limbs, and became amalgamated with the sole of 
 the foot, In the eldest of the four the redness and 
 
 inflammation had entirely disappeared ; the foot was 
 cool and painless, and appeared as though the foiir 
 toes had been cut off by a knife. The foot was 
 somewhat of the shape of a trowel. 
 
 In the fifth girl was seen the commencement of the 
 second operation — a torture under which sickly 
 children frequently die. The sole of the foot was 
 now curved into the shape of a bow ; the great toe 
 and the heel being brought together as near as 
 possible. This is done very gradually. The ban- 
 dage is never slackened ; month by month it is 
 drawn tighter. The foot inflames and swells, but 
 the mother perseveres. As the bones and tendons 
 accommodate themselves to the position constrained 
 by the bandage, so it is drawn tighter. At last the 
 ball of the natural foot fits into the hollow of the 
 sole, and the root of the great toe is brought into 
 contact with the heel. The foot is a shapeless lump. 
 The instep is where the ankle was, and all that is 
 left to go into the slipper and to tread the ground 
 is the ball of the great toe and the heel. 
 
 This is the small foot ot the Chinese woman ; a 
 bit of toe and a bit of heel, with a mark like a 
 cicatrice left after a huge cut, running up between 
 them. Two of the girls seen by the narrator were 
 yet suffering great pain, and their feet were hot and 
 inflamed, but in the eldest the operation was com- 
 plete. She had attained to the position of a small- 
 footed woman, and her feet were quite cool, had 
 no corns, and were not tender to the touch. One of 
 the mothers solved the mystery. Sometimes, it 
 seems, when a wonian is expected to have to do hard 
 work, her toe and heel are not drawn together so as 
 to produce the true " small foot." To disguise this 
 imperfection upon her marriage day she has recourse 
 to art. A piece of cork, shaped like an inverted 
 sugarloaf, is strapped on to her foot, and the small 
 part goes into her slipper, and passes for her foot. 
 
 THE SALINAS OF IVIZA. 
 
 The remarkable salt-fields of Iviza, whose existence 
 is known to very few unconnected with Spain, 
 occupy a tract of level ground near the south-west 
 corner of the island. They are several acres in 
 extent, and are divided by low walls into many 
 square compartments, each about 100 yards square. 
 As they are situated near the coast, the first impres- 
 sion of the visitor is that the sea- water is admitted, 
 as upon the coast of Hampshire, and evaporated by 
 the sun. This, however, is not the case. The salt 
 appears to be an exudation from the ground, and 
 the process of obtaining it is as follows : — The 
 ground is cleaned and flattened previous to the 
 November rainfalls, during which the rain-water is 
 allowed to fill the compartments to the depth of 
 about a foot. When the rains cease, the sun 
 warms the water, and there then appears at the 
 bottom a formation of bubbles, which increase in 
 
26o 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 violence from day to day, until, in about a week, 
 white crystals gradually form, and spread branch, 
 like over the ground. This crystalline structure, 
 which is, in fact, the salt, increases in extent and 
 thickness, undl a mass of a uniform thickness of 
 about two inches remains over the entire ground. 
 When the water has all evaporated, the salt remains 
 behind beautifully white. This is then broken 
 up with spades and sorted ; the lower portion, which 
 is discoloured by contact with the soil, is thrown 
 into heaps, and the finer and whiter crystals carefully 
 selected and stored under cover. 
 
 This salt is intensely pungent and powerful in 
 action, and will keep for years in an ordinary dry 
 room without melting. 
 
 This wonderful process of saline formation goes 
 on year after year, and forms a large source of 
 revenue to the Spanish government, to whom the 
 property belongs. 
 
 The fact that there are no noxious reptiles in 
 Iviza is attributed to the saline character of the 
 soil, which is observable in a greater or less degree 
 throughout the island. 
 
 AN ATTEMPT TO STEAL THE CROWN 
 OF ENGLAND. 
 
 In the reign of Charles IL a desperate attempt 
 was made to carry off the crown and other regalia 
 of England from the Tower of London, which was 
 all but successful. The chief perpetrator of the 
 deed was a man named Colonel Blood, who had 
 previously beeu engaged in other crimes of an 
 equally daring nature. He had once, with several 
 accomplices, waylaid the Duke of Ormond, Lord 
 Lieutenant of Ireland, and was about to hang him 
 at Tyburn Gate, and it was only with great difficulty 
 that the Duke escaped. 
 
 The mode in which Blood set to work to gain 
 possession of the crown was as follows : — The 
 regalia were then, as now, shown to the public in 
 the Tower, and he visited it disguised as a clergy- 
 man, with a lady on his arm. While the keeper 
 — a man named Edwards — was showing them his 
 treasures, the lady pretended to be taken suddenly 
 ill, and the keeper's wife, being called to her assist- 
 ance, conducted her to her private apartments, 
 and treated her with great kindness. A few days 
 afterwards Blood called with a present for Mrs. 
 Edwards, in acknowledgment of this civility, and 
 so ingratiated himself into the favour of herself and 
 her husband that he became on constant visidng 
 terms. 
 
 The keeper had a daughter for whom his new 
 friend the clergyman professed great admiration, 
 and he offered to find her a suitable spouse in the 
 person of his nephew, who, he said, was a young 
 man of good property. A meeting was agreed 
 upon between the young couple, and Blood was to 
 
 bring his fictitious nephew to the Tower for that 
 purpose. One morning, accordingly, he presented 
 himself at the jewel-house with a young man and 
 two others, who, he said, were friends of his who 
 were just about to start for the country, but were 
 anxious to see the crown jewels before they de- 
 parted, 
 
 They proceeded Immediately to the room in 
 which the regalia were kept, the keeper meanwhile 
 having sent his wife and daughter notice to be 
 presently in readiness to receive their expected 
 guests. One of Blood's party, on some pretence or 
 other, was left at the door to give an alarm to the 
 rest if occasion required. As soon as the keeper 
 with his three visitors had entered the jewel-room, 
 he was seized and gagged, while his life was 
 threatened if he made any disturbance. Notwith- 
 standing this, he made desperate efforts to create 
 an alarm, but was beaten about the head with a 
 mallet until he was compelled to silence. 
 
 Blood now secured the crown and thrust it under 
 his cloak ; one of his companions took the orb, 
 and another the sceptre, which he was proceeding 
 to file in two for convenience of carrying it away, 
 when some relatives of the Edwardses unexpectedly 
 arrived at the jewel-house. The signal was given 
 by the accomplice at the door, and the whole party 
 now hastened out with their booty. As they 
 departed, the keeper I'enewed his efforts to attract 
 attention, and soon brought some of his family to 
 his assistance. 
 
 The alarm was immediately spread, and several 
 persons started in pursuit of the thieves, who, 
 however, were so far ahead that they reached the 
 drawbridge before any one attempted to stop them. 
 A warder now tried to arrest Blood, but he was 
 knocked down by a pistol-shot, and the thieves 
 pursued their course in safety to Tower Hill. Here 
 some of the keeper's party overtook them, and one. 
 Captain Beckman, grappled with Blood, and escap- 
 ing his fire, tore the crown from his clutches. 
 Several of the jewels rolled out of it upon the 
 ground ; the principal gem — a ruby valued at ten 
 thousand pounds, and which was given to Edward 
 the Black Prince by the King of Castile— was not 
 found until several days had elapsed, when it was 
 picked up by an old woman who was sweeping a 
 crossing. 
 
 Blood's companions were likewise arrested and 
 their booty seized, and the whole party were lodged 
 in the Tower. The King, when he heard of the 
 crime, gave orders that Blood, and the man who 
 had pocketed the orb, should be brought before 
 him at Whitehall ; but he was so impressed by 
 Blood's boldness and effrontery, and with his 
 plausible address, that he not only pardoned him, 
 but gave him an allowance for his subsistence, and 
 until the end of his days this unworthy miscreant 
 enjoyed the royal favour. 
 
THE MAUSOLEUM, OR TOxMB OF KING MAUSOLUS. 
 
 20 1 
 
 THE MAUSOLEUM, OR TOMB OF KING 
 
 MAUSOLUS. 
 
 King Mausolus, the oldest of the three sons of 
 Hecatomnus, the wealthiest of the Carian dynasty, 
 died B.C. 353, when his widow, Artemisia, mixed 
 the ashes of her husband with wine, which she 
 drank, and erected to his memory at Halicarnassus 
 
 when the artists are said to have finished the work 
 for their own honour and the glory of art. Strabo 
 in the first century, Pausanias in the second cen- 
 tury, Gregory of Nazianzen in the fourth, Constan- 
 tine Porphyrogenitus in the tenth, and Eudocia in 
 the eleventh centuries, respectively speak of the 
 Mausoleum in terms which imply that it was still 
 existing during these periods ; wliile Fontanus, 
 
 FRAGMENTS OK THE TOMB OF MAUSOLUS, HvOM IHE liRITISII MUSEUM. 
 
 (now Budrum) a superb tomb, which was esteemed 
 one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and, by its 
 artistic celebrity, has given the name of Mausolemn 
 to tombs and sepulchres of stately character. 
 
 The tomb of Mausolus was designed by the 
 architects Satyros and Pythios ; the names of the 
 sculptors were the celebrated Scopas of Paras, and 
 Bryaxis, Timotheus, Lochares, and also Pythios ; 
 and we know the part of the structure which each 
 of the sculptors embellished with his work. Arte- 
 misia died before the monument was completed ; 
 
 the historian of the siege of Rhodes, states that 
 a German knight, named Henry Schelegellott, 
 constructed the citadel at Budrum out of the Mau 
 soleum, and decorated the walls with its marbles 
 and bas-reliefs. 
 
 To the indefatigable exertions of Mr. Newton, 
 now the keeper of the Greek and Roman antiqui- 
 ties at the British Museum, we owe the recovery 
 of the best part of the remains of this famous tomb. 
 They consist chiefly ,of a large portion of the frieze 
 (one of the slabs preserves its original sharpness of 
 
262 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 sculpture in a remarkable manner) ; several of the 
 lions which stood in the intcrcolumniations ; the 
 head of a lion, treated in the best style of art, 
 and for which Mr. Newton paid a dollar ! part of a 
 colossal equestrian statue finely modelled, probably 
 one of the corner decorations; the statue of Mausohis 
 himself, of which, however, Professor Wcstmacott 
 doubts the genuineness ; the companion statue, that 
 of the goddess who stood in the quadriagca \\ith 
 Mausolus, acting as his charioteer ; portions of the 
 hoi'ses ; a head, in very fine condition, with part of 
 the bronze bit, &c., and a fragment of the chariot 
 itself; the head of the statue, which is believed to 
 have represented Artemisia, and torsoes, heads, and 
 pieces of several other statues, as well as portions of 
 the architectural ornairicnts. 
 
 The existence of these marbles had long been 
 known, when, in 1846, they were, through the in- 
 fluence of Sir .Stratford Canning, presented by the 
 Turks to the British nation, and are now in the 
 British Museum, which thus possesses fragments of 
 two of the Seven Wonders of the World — the Mau- 
 soleum, and a fragment of the carving of one of 
 the Pyramids of Kgypt. That the bas-reliefs now 
 in the Museum were inserted in the Budrum walls 
 by the Knights of Rhodes is proved by the escut- 
 cheons, Latin sentences, and date, 1510, as well as 
 by an inscription on a shield borne by one of the 
 figures. 
 
 The entire tomb was raised on a platform, a 
 parallelogram, 469 feet on the outside, in the centre 
 of the finest street of the city which Mausolus 
 himself delighted in — Halicarnassus, now the 
 cheerful little town of liudrum. It comprised a small 
 chamber in the basement for the remains of Mau- 
 solus ; a podium, or temple, upwards of fifty feet 
 high, in which the admirers of the deceased might 
 assemble to pay homage to his memory ; a pteion, 
 or colonnade, above this, consisting of thirty-six 
 graceful Ionic columns, thirty-seven and a half 
 feet high ; a pyramid of steps and pedestal, with a 
 base 108 feet long and eighty-six wide, resting 
 upon these columns ; and on the top of all a 
 colossal group, representing the apotheosis of Mau- 
 solus — Mausolus carried to heaven by his favourite 
 goddess in a chariot drawn by four horses abreast. 
 At the corners of the basement, and level with the 
 ground, were placed colossal groups of sculpture ; 
 above, between the columns, deities and heroes re- 
 clined, while lions and other animals guarded the 
 cella. The material was Parian marble, parts 
 being coloured, some pure red, the others pure blue. 
 When Anaxagoras saw this costly work he exclaimed, 
 " How much money is here changed into stone I" 
 
 From the description of this monument by Pliny 
 has been modelled the upper part of the steeple of 
 St. George's Church, Bloomsbury, London, the sur- 
 mounting figure, instead of Phaeton, b<'.ing that of 
 George 1. in Ron)an ;;i"nioiir. 
 
 In our illustration we give a view of some of the 
 fragments grouped together of this celebrated tomb, 
 which are now to be seen in the British Museum, 
 
 ARTIFICIAL PRODUCTION OF AN 
 AURORA BOREALIS. 
 Sir John Ross, the well-known Arctic voyager, 
 laid before a meeting of the British Association at 
 Belfast an interesting account of some experiments 
 he had made to test his own theory respecting the 
 phenomena of the Aurora Borealis. He believed 
 that these phenomena were " occasioned by the 
 action of the sun, when below the pole, on the 
 surrounding masses of coloured ice, by its rays 
 being reflected from the points of incidence to clouds 
 above the pole which were before invisible;" and ^ 
 he thought they might be artificially produced. 
 " To accomplish this," he observed, " I placed a 
 powerful lamp to represent the sun, having a lens, 
 at the focal distance of which I placed a rectified 
 terrestrial globe, on which bruised glass of the 
 various colours we had seen in Baffin's Bay was 
 placed, to represent the coloured icebergs of that 
 locality, while the space between Greenland and 
 Spitzbergen was left blank, to represent the sea. 
 To represent the clouds above the pole which 
 were to receive the refracted rays, I applied a hot 
 iron to a sponge, and by giving the globe a regular 
 diurnal motion I produced the phenomena vulgarly 
 called ' the merry dancers,' and e\ery other ap- 
 pearance, exactly as seen in the natural sky, while 
 it disappeared as the globe turned. In corrobora- 
 tion of my theory," continued Sir John, " I have to 
 remark that during my last voyage to the Arctic 
 regions (1850-51) we never, among the numerous 
 icebergs, saw any that were coloured, but all were 
 a yellowish white, and during the following winter 
 the aurora was exactly the same colour ; and when 
 that part of my globe was covered with bruised 
 glass of th.at colour, the phenomena produced in 
 my experiment were the same as the Aurora Aus- 
 tralis, in the Antarctic regions, where no coloured 
 icebergs were ever seen." 
 
 FIRE-PROOF CLOTHING. 
 
 In Savoy, Corsica, Cornwall, and Scotland, is to 
 be found a fibrous mineral, which is woven into a 
 fire-proof cloth, whence its name Asbestos, uncon- 
 sumable. It occurs also in the United States of 
 America, where it is sometimes used as a wick for 
 an oil-lamp. The ancients were acquainted with 
 the art of weaving this curious cloth, and they 
 made asbestos garments and gloves to imitate the 
 human skin. 
 
 Nearly two centuries since, the fire-proof property 
 cf asbestos was publicly pro\ cd iu ICn^land. Ur. 
 
WONDERFUL INSECTS. 
 
 203 
 
 Plot records thai, at a meeting of the Royal Society 
 in the year 1676, a merchant, lately come from 
 China, exhibited a handkerchief made oi salaman- 
 der's wool, or asbestos, and, to try whether it were 
 genuine or no, it was put into a strong charcoal fire, 
 in which not being injured, it was taken out, oiled, 
 and put in again. The oil being burnt off, the 
 handkerchief was taken out, and had lost only 
 two drams five grains of its weight, but was more 
 brittle than ordinary ; when cold, however, it nearly 
 recovered its tenacity and weight. The merchant 
 stated that he had received the handkerchief from 
 a Tartar, who told him that among the Tartars this 
 sort of cloth was sold at ^80 sterling per China ell, 
 which is less than our ell. He added that the 
 Chinese greatly used this cloth in burning the 
 bodies (to preserve the ashes) of great persons ; 
 and that in Tartary, asbestos 's "affirmed to be 
 made of the root of a tree." 
 
 Sir Hans Sloane possessed in his museum a 
 purse made of asbestos, which he purchased of Dr. 
 Franklin, who notes in one of his letters : — " Sir 
 Hans Sloane heard of it, came to see me, and 
 invited me to his house in Bloomsbury Square ; 
 showed me all his curiosities, and persuaded me to 
 add that (the asbestos purse) to the number, for 
 which he paid me handsomely." 
 
 In our own times, the Chevalier Aldini, of Milan, 
 has applied asbestos as a protection against fire. 
 The incombustible pieces of dress which Aldini 
 used for the head, feet, and hands, were made of 
 asbestos, or mountain flax, as it is also sometimes 
 called. The head-dress was a cap enveloping the 
 head down to the neck, having perforations for the 
 eyes, nose, and mouth. The gloves were made of 
 double asbestos cloth, to enable a fireman to 
 handle burning or red-hot bodies. Over these was 
 worn a dress of iron wire gauze. To prove the 
 safety of this apparatus to the fireman, Aldini 
 showed that a finger first enveloped in asbestos, 
 and then in a double case of wire gauze, might be 
 held for a long time in the flame of a spirit-lamp 
 or candle before the heat became inconvenient. 
 A fireman wearing a double asbestos glove, and 
 the palm protected by a piece of asbestos cloth, 
 seized with impunity a large piece of red-hot iron, 
 and carried it 1 50 feet, ignited straw with it, and 
 brought it back to the furnace. On other occasions 
 the fireman handled blazing wood and burning 
 substances, and walked during five minutes upon 
 an iron grating placed over flaming fagots. 
 
 A rocky substance has been found in Australia, ! 
 which, after being exposed to the atmosphere, | 
 becomes changed into a material resembling the ' 
 finest staple of wool, and soft and pliant as any 
 silk. In sinking a well, a correspondent of the 
 Orange Guardian has in one day got as much 
 of this mineral as would make a suit of clothes. 
 Should asbestos ever come into general use, it will, 
 
 in some measure, from its incombustible nature, 
 supersede the evils of crinoline. Besides this great 
 advantage, it will also set aside the expense and 
 use of soap and water ; for all a lady will have to 
 do will be to put her articles of wearing apparel 
 into a glowing fire*, and when they have become 
 as white as a snow-flake, she may resume them at 
 her pleasure. 
 
 Maubcrftil |itscfts. 
 
 INSECTS IN ROCKS. 
 There is a very thick layer of earth in the centre 
 of France which is composed of countless numbers 
 of the old burrows of caddis-worms. This indusial 
 stone, as it is called, contains so much lime that 
 the layer of earth has become a rock. If a clear 
 shallow brook with a sandy bottom be examined 
 on a summer evening, many small things with 
 heads, eyes, and jaws will be seen struggling about 
 and dragging a kind of sand>', tubular coat which 
 covers them. The caddis-worms, and many others, 
 collect small stones, grains of sand, and pieces of 
 hard clay, and glue them together in the form of a 
 short tube by means of some sticky stuff which 
 exudes from the skin. The worms live inside these 
 curious coats, and when they die the sandy tube 
 remains. This is called an indusium, and the 
 indusial limestone of France is made up of these 
 remains of ancient caddis-worms. 
 
 In one of the geological formations of England, 
 which is called the lias, there are layers of earth 
 almost entirely formed by the wing-cases of beetles. 
 There is lime in the earth, which has turned the 
 original matter of the wing-cases into a sort of 
 hard chalk, and the layers are called insect lime- 
 stones. It is at first difficult to form an idea how 
 such a vast number of beetles could be got together 
 to form thick layers of their wing-cases. These 
 cases are the parts which last the longest after 
 death, and doubtless all the rest of the insects was 
 destroyed. Geologists prove that the layers con- 
 taining the insect remains were deposited as silt at 
 the bottom of a large lake or quiet river ; so it 
 must be supposed that during many years the 
 beetles frequented the neighbourhood of the lake, 
 and died on its surface. 
 
 LOCUS'I'S. 
 
 These great, grasshopper-looking insects have 
 been sad scourges to mankind, and the Egyptian 
 plague of them has happened more than once since 
 that early date. Africa, especially that part near to 
 Egypt, has been at different times infested by 
 myriads of these creatures, which have consumed 
 nearly every green thing. The effects of the havoc 
 committed by them may be estimated by the famine 
 they occasioned. St. Augustine mentions a plague 
 of this kind in Africa which destroved no less than 
 
2t)4 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 800,000 men in the kingdom of Massinissa alone, 
 and many more in the territories bordering upon 
 the sea. It is also related that in the year 591 
 great hosts of locusts migrated from Africa into 
 Italy, and after grievously ravaging the country 
 were cast into the sea, and there arose a pestilence 
 from their stench which carried off nearly a million 
 of men and beasts. In the territory of Venice, in 
 1478, more than 30,000 persons arc said to have 
 perished in a famine occasioned by the devasta- 
 tions of the locusts, and instances of their dreadful 
 numbers have been recorded in France, Spain, and 
 Germany. In different parts of Russia, Hungary, 
 Poland, Arabia, India, and other countries, the 
 locusts have come at regular inter\'als. In the 
 
 ANIMALCULES. 
 If some hay is placed in a glass of pure rain- 
 water, and allowed to soak for a few days in a 
 sunny place, and if it be then removed, the water 
 will be found, under a powerful microscope, to 
 contain many very small moving things, which arc 
 called infusoria, from their being produced after 
 infusing the hay. The eggs which were on the hay 
 bred there myriads of small things, which often 
 have a very beautiful coat of transparent flint or 
 silica. If the water is kept clean, and is not 
 allowed to decompose or smell, generation after 
 generation of the infusoria live, die, and fall to the 
 bottom of the glass. They form a very delicate 
 film there, and minute portions of it, when examined 
 
 .MK.RAIORV LOCliSl. 
 
 accounts of the invasions of locusts, the statements 
 which appear most marvellous relate to the pro- 
 digious mass of matter which encumbers the sea 
 wherever they are blown into it, and the pestilence 
 arising from its putrefaction. Their dead bodies 
 are said to have been in some places heaped one 
 upon the other to the depth of four feet in Russia, 
 Poland, and Lithuania ; and when, in Southern 
 Africa, they were driven mto the sea by a north- 
 west wind, they formed, says Barrow, a bank three 
 or four feet high along the shore. When we consider 
 that forests are stripped of their foliage, and the 
 earth of its green garment for thousands of square 
 miles, it may well be supposed that the volume of 
 animal matter produced may equal that of herds 
 of large animals accidentally falling into the sea. 
 Nevertheless, unless Augustine had been a saint, 
 the death of so many men would have been 
 doubted. 
 
 under a high magnifying power, show the siliceous 
 skeletons or shells very distinctly. Now many 
 strata in the earth are formed entirely of the 
 remains of infusoria, and a very familiar example is 
 the Tripoli-powder, from the polishing slate of 
 Bilin, in Bohemia. A single grain of Tripoli- 
 powder contains no fewer than 187,000,000 of the 
 transparent flinty skeletons of dead animalcules ; 
 yet the layers of earth whicii are made up of them 
 at Bilin extend for miles. In the harbour of Wisenar, 
 in the Baltic, they increase and multiply at a great 
 rate, for 17,496 cubic feet of mud are formed every 
 year there, and every grain of it contains 100,000,000 
 of the beautiful siliceous remains of the infusoria. 
 In the island of Barbadoes there is a thick mass of 
 the most beautiful flinty sea animalcules, and they 
 are in such numbers that it must be supposed the 
 dead minute things were constantly falling in 
 showers from the sea to the bottom, 
 
FLYING-MACHINES. 
 
 265 
 
 FLYING-MACHINES. 
 
 The first attempt at flying in this country occurred 
 early in the sixteenth century, when an Itahan 
 adventurer visited our island. He was very 
 favourably received by James IV. of Scotland, 
 and having promised to gratify the Court with 
 the exhibition of a plan which would enable any 
 person to visit the most distant regions in a few 
 hours, he had an apparatus made consisting of huge 
 wings, to be propelled by cords. Thus equipped, 
 the adventurer leaped from the wall of Stirling 
 Castle, and, as might have been expected, speedily 
 
 body, at each end, was a pair of bellows, to be blown 
 when there was no wind ; two globes of metal, 
 to cover two loadstones to draw the ship after 
 them ; the body was of thin iron plates covered with 
 straw mats for ten or twelve men besides the con- 
 structor. Above the body was a network of iron 
 wire, on which were fastened large amber beads, 
 " which, by a secret operation, would help to keep 
 the ship aloft ; also by the sun's heat the mats that 
 lined the ship would be drawn towards the amber 
 beads. The artist, by the help of the celestial 
 globe, a sea-map, and compass, was to take the 
 height of the sun, thereby to find out the spot of 
 
 FLYING-MACHINE, 1 709. 
 
 reached the ground. His reasoning on this un- 
 lucky result is worthy of being preserved : " My 
 wings," said he, " were composed of various fea- 
 thers ; among them were the feathers of a dunghill 
 fowl, and they, by a certain sympathy, were at- 
 tracted to the dunghill on which I fell ; whereas, 
 had my wings been composed of the feathers of 
 eagles alone, as I proposed, the same sympathy 
 would have attracted my machine to the higher 
 regions of the air." This sophistry is at least 
 ingenious. 
 
 The Evening Post newspaper of 20th — 22nd 
 December, 1709, contains a curious description of 
 a Flying Ship, stated to have been invented by a 
 Brazilian priest, of which we give an illustration, 
 copied from an old cut. The ship, which at both 
 ends was scallop-wise, had sails which turned as 
 they were directed ; there were two wings to keep 
 the ship upright, and a stern to govern it. In the 
 34 
 
 land over which they were on the globe of the 
 earth." There were pulleys and ropes to hoist 
 or furl the sails ; but we do not find that the design 
 was at all practicable. 
 
 Dr. Darwin proposed to use wings similar to 
 those of a bird, and to these motion was to be 
 given by a gigantic power worked by high-pressure 
 steam. The details of his plan were not fully 
 drawn out ; but a few years afterwards Sir George 
 Cayley attempted to show, by reference to mathe- 
 matical data, that a flying chariot might readily be 
 constructed so as to rise in the air. We believe 
 this ingenious inventor expended a large sum of 
 money in endeavouring to mature his plans, but 
 they ended in failure. The rocket of Colonel 
 Congreve, and its application to the conveyance 
 of passengers by Mr. Perkins,' come next in the 
 list ; and though a steam conveyance rocket is a 
 very ingenious invention, yet there are few persons 
 
266 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 who would like to demonstrate its practical utility 
 by making the first trip. 
 
 In the spring of 1843, ^■■- Hanson, a mechanician, 
 proposed the use of light frames, to be covered 
 with silk or linen, and placed in such a position as 
 to form with the body of the aiirial vehicle an 
 angle similar to that of a bird when in the act of 
 " skimming " through the air. The first impulse 
 was to be given to the machine by means of an 
 inclined plane, down which it was to slide. With 
 an apparatus thus constructed, there was no ques- 
 tion but that a velocity might be attained capable 
 of supporting the framework with the necessary 
 co\-ering for a short period of time ; but a very 
 few seconds must ensure its descent to the earth, 
 despite the operation of the steam-propellers. Mr. 
 Henson properly went to nature for the position 
 of the bird's wing, but he lost sight of the important 
 fact that in animal mechanics the prime mover 
 possesses an organisation altogether different from 
 that of elastic vapour giving motion to brass and 
 iron. In the same wa)-, it was proposed by another 
 inventor to move propelling wings by human 
 power, when one of our most eminent anatomists 
 demonstrated that the muscular power of a man 
 is not one-eighth that of a bird. A pigeon has 
 been known to fly a hundred and ninety miles 
 in five hours and a half— a speed that no human 
 being can ever attain ; whilst the velocity that must 
 be imparted to the propellers for the mere support 
 of such a machine, under the most favourable cir- 
 cumstances, must be vastly greater than was ever 
 yet imparted to any machine constructed by the 
 ingenuity of man. There is another fact of which 
 we ought not to lose sight in estimating the prac- 
 tical utility of the aerial carriage. Its framework, 
 or wings, on which everything must necessarily 
 depend, were 1 50 feet long by thirty feet wide, offer- 
 ing an area of 4,500 feet ; and when we look at 
 the mechanical resistance offered by the air to 
 that extent, it is hardly possible to conceive a plane 
 so knit together by human workmanship as to 
 preserve its stability. Garnerin descended in a 
 parachute with perfect safety, and so did Mr. 
 Hampton, at Cheltenham, by the tension of a 
 woven fabric ; but as soon as a framed parachute 
 was opposed to the resistance of the air, with an 
 increased velocity, which would be the case in the 
 present instance, the machine was broken into 
 shreds. 
 
 To the spectator, the most striking part of Mr. 
 Henson's machine was the immense web, which, 
 in the most important respects, was to fulfil the 
 office of wings. The framework had neither joints 
 nor the peculiar motion of wings, but was perfectly 
 stiff from end to end. One of its long sides went 
 foremost, and was a little raised ; to the middle of 
 the other was jointed the tail, fifty feet in length, 
 below which was a rudder. A small vertical web, 
 
 placed across the wings at their middle point, served 
 to check lateral oscillation. The sexeral parts, 
 like the main frame, combined strength with ex- 
 treme lightness : for this purpose, upright posts or 
 standards were used, to the tops and bottoms of 
 which various points in the horizontal frame were 
 connected with metallic braces. These parts were 
 all shaped so as to pass through the air with the 
 least possible resistance. The car, and a very light 
 and powerful steam-engine, were suspended from 
 the middle of the wings, and were close to its under 
 surface. This steam-engine set in motion two sets 
 of vanes of twcnt>- feet diameter, and six vanes, 
 each placed at the hinder edge of the wings, and as 
 near to each other as the joint of the tail permitted. 
 The engine was of nearly twenty-horse power. The 
 condenser was composed of a number of small tubes, 
 into which the steam was admitted, and which were 
 exposed to the current of air produced by the rapid 
 flight of the machine. The plan was found perfectly 
 efficient, and it dispensed with the necessity for 
 carrying water, cither to supply the place of that 
 which was discharged as steam when it had per- 
 formed its work, as in high-pressure engines, oi- 
 to condense it that it might be returned to the 
 boiler. Though the engine was of the power of 
 twenty horses, it was worked with twenty gallons of 
 water, and its entire weight, with its boiler filled, 
 was not more than 600 pounds. A large model 
 of Mr. Henson's aerial machine was constructed 
 and patented, but its principle was .altogether defec- 
 tive, and one of his critics observed that, to enable 
 Mr. Henson's machine to go up, he must first 
 have succeeded in putting a horse-power engine, 
 with its boiler, water, condenser, and fuel for a long 
 voyage, into a weight of ten pounds ! We need 
 scarcely add that no ascent was ever made, 
 
 —   — 
 
 Lace Mechanism.— Mr. Dabbage, on a visit to 
 Nottingham, sat for two hours looking at a par- 
 ticular machine, by which some surprising results 
 were accomplished, and gave the reason for his 
 narrow inspection of the machine, which was that, 
 though effectual for its purpose, it had been put 
 together by a man whoso contrivances showed that 
 he was no mechanic at all, but merely felt his way 
 from stage to stage. 
 
 The Steam- Engine. —The late INTr. Kennedy, 
 of Ardwick House, who was on intimate terms of 
 personal friendship with Watt, on one of his last 
 visits to Soho, asked him if he had discovered any- 
 thing new in the ste.am-engine. " No," he replied ; 
 " I am devoting the remainder of my life to perfect- 
 ing its details, and to ascertaining whether in any 
 respect I am wrong." 
 
 The Calculating Machine, in its simplest 
 
tHE EAGRE, OR BORE. 
 
 267 
 
 form, effects the operation of addition by causing a 
 figured wlieel to advance a given number of unit 
 spaces, by moving through the same number of 
 spaces a wheel with which it is in gear. The 
 process of multiplication is merely that of succes- 
 sive additions, and subtraction and division arc 
 the inverse processes of the former. 
 
 The Magneto-electric Light, based on Fara- 
 day's discovery in 1831, and produced by steam- 
 power, causing the rotation of sets of magnets, is 
 stated to be the most brilliant and continuous arti- 
 ficial light yet known. It has been successfully 
 employed in certain lighthouses since 1858. 
 
 The Stereoscope. — Till its discovery, natu- 
 ralists could hardly believe the possibiHty of a 
 shigle image resulting from double vision, and Gall 
 and Spurzheim endeavoured to explain it by the 
 supposition that one eye only was active at a time, 
 the other merely admitting light, and that Nature 
 had given us two merely to provide against the 
 accidental loss of one. 
 
 Printing. — By the abstraction of two screws 
 Gutenberg's formes of type fell to pieces ; and 
 within comparatively few years, similar screws have 
 been substituted for " quoins " or wedges in locking 
 up formes — a revival of Gutenberg's screw method 
 of 400 years since. 
 
 The Thames Tunnel is spoken of as a great 
 novelty. There was, however, a tunnel under the 
 Euphrates at Babylon, and another under the wide 
 mouth of the harbour at Marseilles. 
 
 THE EAGRE, OR BORE. 
 
 The singular tidal phenomenon known as the 
 Eagre, or Bore, has been observed on the estuaries 
 of several rivers, and is thus accounted for : — 
 
 If a river subject to very high tides gradually ex- 
 pand towards the sea into a broad mouth, the tidal 
 wave passing up the river, meeting with banks 
 gradually approaching one another, is compelled to 
 flow in a channel continually diminishing in sec- 
 tional area ; the consequence is that the water 
 accumulates in the estuary more rapidly than it 
 can flow up the river, and so becomes piled, as it 
 w-ere, upon itself in the form of a huge wave, or 
 wall of water, several feet in height, which, tra- 
 velling up the river with great rapidity, meets the 
 descending stream with such violence as in some 
 cases to be accompanied with a noise like thunder. 
 This is the phenomenon of the bore, which occurs 
 regularly at high water of spring-tides in the Bristol 
 Channel and in the Solway Firth, and at unusually 
 high tides in the rivers Trent and Wye, and in 
 some other rivers of Great Britain. The most 
 celebrated bores are those of the Tsin-tang in 
 China, and of the Brahmaputra, Ganges, Hooghly, 
 and Indus, in India. 
 
 But before we proceed to give an account of 
 any one particular bore, it may be well to say a 
 few words in explanation of what is called the 
 tidal wave. 
 
 Every one knows that the phenomenon of the 
 tides is due to the attracting influence of the 
 moon upon the water in the ocean — sometimes in 
 conjunction with that of the sun, and sometimes 
 opposed to it. 
 
 If the earth and the moon were relatively fixed, 
 and there were no other disturbing influence, the 
 water of the ocean would be heaped up in one huge 
 wave under the moon, and at that point there would 
 be perpetual high water ; but, owing to the motions 
 of the earth and moon, this wave, instead of re- 
 maining over one spot on the earth, is, as it were, 
 left behind, and in a negative way tends to follow 
 the apparent motions of the moon. The coasts, 
 being brought alternately to the crest and trough of 
 this wave, experience what we call high and low 
 water. 
 
 There is just such another wave produced by the 
 sun, which wave endeavours to follow the apparent 
 motions of the sun, just as the lunar wave tries to 
 follow those of the moon. These two waves are 
 sometimes superposed the one on the other, their 
 crests being together, producing spring-tides ; and 
 sometimes the crest of the solar wave is in the 
 trough of the lunar, which it in part neutralises, 
 giving us neap-tides : in other words, spring-tides 
 •are the result of the sum of these two u'aves, and' 
 neap-tides of their difference. 
 
 Owing to differences in the configuration of the 
 land and in that of the sea-bottom, some places 
 have greater range of tide and stronger tidal cur- 
 rents than others, and it is when these latter arc 
 great that the tidal wave most favours the pheno- 
 menon of the bore. 
 
 From this, it may be a matter of surprise that 
 among the many rivers having great range of tide, 
 we hear of so few that are visited by the bore ; but 
 it must be remembered that the configuration of 
 the coast-line of the estuary is a more important 
 element in its production than either the depth or 
 speed of the tidal wave. 
 
 This phenomenon occurs regularly at the times 
 of new and full moon on the river Seine, where it 
 is known as le flat. Here it appears as a wall of 
 water, six or seven feet in height, which extends the 
 whole widthiof the river, and sweeps upwards with 
 great velocity. It takes place when the tide begins 
 to flow, bringing high-water with it to places along 
 its course. The calm, clear river is immediately 
 turned by it into a surging, muddy sea, and it is 
 a considerable time before it assumes its wonted 
 tranquillity. 
 
 Though of fortnightly occurrence, it is a source 
 of unfailing attraction to the people of Caudebec 
 and the neighbouring villages, who invariably gather' 
 
268 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 in crowds along the banks to await its approach 
 whenever it is expected. 
 
 The bore of the river Tsin-tang presents a still 
 grander example of this curious phenomenon. It 
 attains its greatest magnitude opposite the city of 
 Hang-chow-foo. Loud shouting from the craft in 
 the river announces the appearance of the flood, 
 which seems like a glistening white cable stretched 
 athwart the bay as far down as the eye can see. 
 Its noise, compared to that of thunder, speedily 
 drowns that of the boatmen ; and, as it approaches 
 with prodigious velocity, it assumes the appearance 
 of an advancing cataract, five miles across and 
 about thirty feet high, which threatens to submerge 
 everything afloat ; but they all vault, as it were, 
 to the summit with perfect safety. This grand and 
 exciting season is but of a moment's duration ; the 
 wave passes up the river in an instant, but from this 
 point with gradually diminishing force, volume, and 
 velocity, disappearing entirely a few miles above 
 the city. From ebb to flood tide the change is 
 almost instantaneous ; a slight flood continues after 
 the passage of the wave, but it soon begins to ebb. 
 
 This sudden change from low to high water 
 appears to be a general characteristic of the bore ; 
 indeed, it seems as if all the water of the flood-tide 
 waited to accumulate itself into one heap, and then 
 rolled in, in as many minutes as it usuallytakes hours. 
 
 The effect of a bore is always greatest at the time 
 of the equinoxes, but the direction of the wind, by 
 either accelerating or retarding the force of the tidal 
 wave, can very much add to or take away from its 
 effect. For the phenomenon to be seen in its maxi- 
 mum grandeur, it is necessary for the flow of the 
 river to be at its greatest speed, with an equinoctial 
 gale blowing up-stream at the time of an unusually 
 high spring-tide. 
 
 THE PITT DIAMOND. 
 
 The great diamonds of the world are few in 
 number, and nearly all possess a very remarkable 
 history. We have previously related the story of 
 the De Sancy diamond, which is, perhaps, the 
 most curious of all ; but we will now tell the tale 
 of a gem which is still more important, as regards 
 size and value. 
 
 Towards the close of the seventeenth century, 
 a gentleman named Thomas Pitt, grandfather of 
 the great Earl of Chatham, was appointed to the 
 governorship of Fort St. George, Madras. The 
 palmy days when large fortunes were constantly 
 made by Englishmen in the East had not yet arrived, 
 and the wealth and power of England in the Indies 
 were comparatively insignificant. But Governor 
 Pitt was one of those shrewd men who can always 
 find the opportunity of amassing riches, and he 
 entered into commerce with some of the native 
 merchants on his own account. Among other 
 
 traders with whom he trafficked was a diamond- 
 dealer named Jourcund, who possessed one of the 
 finest stones ever found in the mines of Golconda. 
 He offered this to the governor for sale, but the 
 price asked — about ;{;ioo,ooo — was too enormous 
 for his means as well as his inclination. He not 
 only doubted the high value of the jewel, but enter- 
 tained, as he stated, a reluctance to trust anything 
 like the sum in one venture. 
 
 By degrees, Jourcund came down in his price, 
 and, after much haggling on either side. Governor 
 Pitt at length secured the prize for a little over 
 j^2o,ooo sterling. He returned to Europe shortly 
 after, and found that in all respects the diamond 
 was of the very highest quality and worth. He 
 was offered ;^8o,ooo for it, but refused this sum, and 
 spent /5,ooo in having it cut as a brilliant. Its 
 weight before cutting was 400 carats, but it was 
 reduced in the process to 136^. The fragments 
 detached in the cutting were sold for £S,ooo. 
 When so prepared, the jewel was the most beautiful 
 that had been seen in Europe. 
 
 A purchaser was at length found for the diamond 
 in the Duke of Orleans, Regent of France during 
 the minority of Louis XIV., it being bought as an 
 ornament for the French crown. ;^ 130,000 was the 
 sum given for the treasure, and it became known 
 as the " Regency diamond," from the authority 
 by whom it had been acquired. 
 
 When the story of its purchase and re-sale at so 
 high a profit was known, scandalous rumours be- 
 came current as to the means by which Governor 
 Pitt had become its owner. He was accused of 
 extorting it from Jourcund by threats for a sum 
 greatly beneath its value, and his character be- 
 came blackened with infamy. To clear himself 
 and his descendants from so great a disgrace, 
 he left behind him a paper narrating at full the 
 circumstances attending its original purchase, 
 appealing to credible witnesses who had been with 
 him at Fort St. George, in testimony of its truth. 
 But the calumny died out. The great fame of the 
 Governor's descendants, the Earl of Chatham and 
 that other William Pitt, the rival of Fox, almost 
 obliterated his own memory, and the paper does 
 not appear to have been publicly used until the 
 year 1825, when it was pubhshed as a curiosity 
 in the GetitlemaH^s Magazine. 
 
 The Pitt or Regency diamond continued in the 
 possession of Louis XIV. and the succeeding 
 monarchs, by whom it was worn on state occasions. 
 After the Revolution, it was still preserved among 
 the state jewels, and the first Napoleon, on his 
 accession to power, used it as an ornament in 
 the hilt of his sword. The sword was found, with 
 other personal effects of the Emperor, on the field 
 of Waterloo, by the Prussians after the battle, and 
 was presented to the King of Prussia, in whose 
 possession it has since remained, 
 
THE BAROMETZ, OR TARTARIAN LAMB. 
 
 269 
 
 THE BAROMETZ, OR TARTARIAN 
 LAMB. 
 
 Among the strange stories to be found in the 
 narratives of the early travellers, few are more 
 strange than that of the vegetable lamb of Tartary. 
 This story, as believed by the reading public, and 
 even by the na- 
 turalists of two 
 centuries ago, 
 is so marvellous, 
 and so obviously 
 absurd, that the 
 greatest wonder 
 is that it ever 
 could have been 
 thought to be 
 true, even by the 
 most credulous 
 in a dark age. 
 
 It was be- 
 heved that in an 
 elevated and un- 
 cultivated salt- 
 plain of great 
 extent, west of 
 the river Volga, 
 there was to be 
 found a wonder- 
 ful creature, half 
 animal and half 
 plant, to which 
 the natives gave 
 the name of Ba- 
 rometz, mean- 
 ing little lamb. 
 Struys informs 
 us that the Tar- 
 tars and Musco- 
 vites- esteem it 
 very much, and 
 the greater part 
 preserve it with 
 great care in 
 their dwellings, 
 where he had 
 seen many of 
 them. To ob- 
 tain it the Tartars sow in the ground a seed like 
 that of a melon, from which in due time rises the 
 strange plant, having the figure of a lamb, with the 
 feet, hoofs, ears, and the whole head, except the horns, 
 of that animal, distinctly formed. It grows on a stalk 
 about three feet in height, being, according to one 
 version, rooted to the ground by its four feet, while 
 another account raises the whole lamb, feet and all, 
 from the ground on a single stem, on which it is able 
 to turn, and also to bow itself downwards to the 
 herbs on which it feeds. It lives as long as there 
 
 SPECIMENS or THE BAROMETZ. 
 
 is grass and herbage around it, but when it has 
 consumed all within its reach it dies and withers 
 away. Its skin is covered with a very white down, 
 as fine as silk, and is greatly prized by the Tartars, 
 who pull it off, and wear it as a cover for the head. 
 Inside, it is composed of flesh and bones, and 
 when wounded it gives out a liquid resembling 
 
 blood. Wolves 
 are said to be 
 the only animals 
 that will eat it, 
 and they are 
 very fond of it. 
 
 Specimens of 
 this remarkable 
 production were 
 looked upon as 
 the rarest trea- 
 sures in the col- 
 lections of the 
 curious in days 
 gone by. Two 
 different speci- 
 mens have been 
 described in the 
 " Philosophical 
 Transactions," 
 and a third has 
 its portrait given 
 in an engraving 
 in Mr. Darwin's 
 " Flower Gar- 
 den," and its 
 history told in 
 the florid verse 
 of that work. 
 These Various 
 figures have 
 been introduced 
 by the artist into 
 the accompany- 
 ing illustration, 
 which not only 
 gives the old 
 fable, but its mo- 
 dern interpreta- 
 tion as well. 
 The "lamb" 
 is a natural production, greatly helped in the 
 development of the particulars in which it most 
 resembles that creature by the ingenuity of the 
 natives. The body is a portion of the creeping 
 stem of a tribe of ferns, which generally grow 
 as erect as trees. This stem is densely covered 
 with beautiful jointed silky hairs of a rich golden 
 colour. On the surface next the ground a few 
 roots are given off, while the leaves — or fronds, 
 as they are called in ferns — spring from the upper 
 surface. The fronds are as much as twelve ot 
 
2'JO 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 fourteen feet high, and have a long bare stalk 
 before tlie leaf is spread out. The Tartar takes 
 a suitable portion of this creeping stem for a body, 
 deprives it of the roots, and of all the leaf stalks 
 except four, which are intended to be the legs, two 
 short ones for the ears, and a stump for the tail, 
 and then, turning it upside-down, trims the stem, 
 and so produces this marvel of the early explorers. 
 The fern (known to botanists by tlie name of 
 Cibotium Baroinetz) is a native of Eastern Asia ; 
 it has been introduced into our conservatories, 
 where it flourishes, producing, after a few years' 
 growth, good specimens of the " lamb." 
 
 The silky hairs of this fern form a favourite 
 remedy among the Chinese for checking the flow 
 of blood by applying them to a wound, in the same 
 way as felt or cobwebs are used by some people 
 in this country. The more fibrous and clastic 
 hairs of several species of the same group, natives 
 of the Sandwich Islands, are largely exported 
 from these islands to California and Australia for 
 stuffing cushions, and similar purposes. 
 
 " thirteen wine quart bottles of fluid." Mr. Strick- 
 land appears to doubt this, but there seems no 
 reason to do so. Allowing a pint and a half to 
 each of the so-called quarts, the egg would hold 
 19J pints. Now the larger egg exhibited by St. 
 Hilaire held i/f pints, as he himself proved. The 
 difference is not so very great. 
 
 Captain Cook found, on an island near the north- 
 cast coast of New Holland, a nest " of a most 
 enormous size. It was built with sticks upon the 
 ground, and was no less than six-and-twenty feet 
 in circumference, and two feet eight inches high" 
 (Kerr's " Collection of Voyages and Travels," xiii. 
 318). Captain Flinders found two similar nests on the 
 south coasts of New Holland, in King George's Bay. 
 
 GIGANTIC BIRDS' EGGS. 
 
 With the eggs of the ostrich we are tolerably 
 familiar, from their shells being often preserved, 
 mounted as drinking-cups and sugar-vases. The 
 moa's egg is a mucli greater rarity. In 1865 one 
 of these eggs was brought to England for sale from 
 New Zealand, where it was alleged to have been dis- 
 covered under these circumstances : — Whilst some 
 labourers were working upon a site to build upon, in 
 Waizakie district, a pick struck upon a cave. On 
 opening ft, it was found to contain the skeleton of 
 a Maori in a crouching position, with botli hands 
 on a gigantic egg, and in such a manner as if death 
 came upon the unfortunate native while in the act 
 of partaking of its contents. Although the shell 
 was slightly broken, the large proportions of the 
 egg yet remained perfect.' It measured about nine 
 inches in length, and seven inches in diameter. 
 
 It may be interesting to recall a few facts on the 
 subject of other gigantic birds' eggs. In 1854, M. 
 (jeoffroy de St. Hilaire exhibited to the French 
 Academy some eggs of the epiornis, a bird which 
 formerly lived in Madagascar. The larger of these 
 was 12.1 inches long, and ii.i inches wide. The 
 smaller one was slightly less than this. The Museum 
 d'Histoire Naturelle, at Paris, also contains two 
 eggs, both of which are larger than that offered for 
 sale as above. 
 
 Mr. Strickland, the naturalist, in some " Notices 
 of the Dodo and its kindred," published in the 
 " Annals of Natural History" for 1849, says that in 
 the previous year a M. Demarele, a highly respect- 
 able French merchant at Bourbon, saw at Port 
 Leven, Madagascar, an enormous egg which held 
 
 AVALANCHES. 
 
 We have spoken in a previous number of one of the 
 niost remarkable phenomena to be seen among the 
 loftiest ranges of mountains — namely, glaciers. The 
 chief perils which those who visit such scenes have to 
 encounter are from avalanches. These are immense 
 falls of snow or ice suddenly detached from the ridges 
 and high slopes of mountains. They may be divided 
 into three kinds, those of snow, neve, and ice. Snow, 
 when it first falls, is not compact ; and when, during 
 the winter, it accumulates in large quantities on 
 the ledges and in the crevices of the mountains, it 
 requires but a small force — a strong wind or its 
 own weight— to set it in motion. The movement 
 makes itself felt for some distance, and the snow, 
 gathering in quantity as it increases in velocity, 
 rushes down in one large mass into the valley 
 beneath. Snow avalanches fall mostly in winter, 
 and are very destructive to property, sometimes 
 filling up a valley and overwhelming villages in a 
 few minutes. They are called in German Staiib- 
 hiwiiien (dust avalanches), from the fineness of the 
 particles of sno\\', and how appropriate is the term 
 may be learnt from the account of an avalanche that 
 fell on the village of Saas, in Switzerland, on the 3rd 
 of April, 1849. In its path was a pine wood, but its 
 progress was not arrested by the trees, the snow 
 gliding through the branches like dust or smoke. 
 
 A species of snow avalanche is often to be met with 
 on the higher parts of a glacier, where freshly-fallen 
 snow rests on the steep slopes of neve or ice. 
 They are dangerous to mountain travelling, for, as 
 has been said, a trifling cause, such as a small 
 stone falling, or even, as it is popularly believed, the 
 sound of a human voice, is sufficient to set them in 
 motion. They come down with a sound like the 
 prolonged dwelling with the voice on the word 
 " hush," and happy is the man whom they over- 
 take if he is only partially buried, and not carried 
 down by them into the Bergschrund, or deep 
 crevasse, that they generally overhang. In Dr. 
 Hamel's attempt to ascend Mont Blanc, three ot 
 
AN AVALANCHE. 
 
 {Si^e page 27c. ) 
 
WONDERS OF VEGETATION. 
 
 271 
 
 the party lost their lives from this kind of ava- 
 lanche. 
 
 When snow is allowed to get somewhat con- 
 solidated, it becomes, by the same process by 
 which glaciers are formed, partial ice or neve. 
 This is slightly melted by the heat of the sun in 
 tlie spring and early part of the summer, and the 
 action of the water that percolates through the 
 mass causes it to slide down the incline it rests 
 upon. Like a huge snow-ball, getting bigger and 
 bigger as it rolls along, it makes its way down 
 into the valley in a semi-compact condition, des- 
 troying e\'er)'thing that comes in its way, uprooting 
 and snapping asunder large trees, damming up 
 the courses of rivers, and making a pine forest 
 appear like a field of stubble. Avalanches of this 
 kind rarely descend to the lower valleys, but they 
 are particularly destructive to villages in the higher 
 valleys. In 1720 one overwhelmed the village of 
 Obergestelen in the Bernese Oberland, killing 
 eighty-four persons and 400 head of cattle. The 
 village of Ruiiras, in the Grisons, has more than 
 once been partially destroyed from the same cause. 
 To travellers in the spring they are very dangerous ; 
 and it is not uncommon to find in many of the 
 Alpine passes a memorial cross marking the spot 
 where a life has been lost through the fall of one of 
 these spring avalanches. 
 
 Ice avalanches are very frequent in the summer. 
 Seen at a distance, they are disappointing ; and 
 though the noise that they make in their fall is like 
 thunder, it is difficult to believe that it is caused by 
 what appears but a thin stream of falling water. It 
 is possible, however, to see them closer. At the foot 
 of a deep ravine on the northern face of the Jung- 
 frau there is a spot where they may be viewed in 
 all their sublimity, and in perfect safety to the 
 spectator. They fall from the upper portion of the 
 Giessen glacier, the continuity of which is broken 
 by the steepness of the sides of the mountain. A 
 large block of ice, often many tons in weight, 
 breaks off and falls with a loud crash, repeated 
 again and again by the echoes to a distance of 
 about two thousand feet, breaking itself by its fall 
 into smaller fragments, till it reaches the head of 
 the ravine already mentioned. The ravine is 1,000 
 feet deep, and down this the ice-balls leap and 
 dash on to the head of a long uniform slope, which 
 is really the continuation of the glacier above. 
 Wind, in moderate blasts, accompanies the fall, and 
 occasionally gushes of water, occasioned by the 
 bursting of some sub-glacial reservoir. When the 
 ice-balls reach the slope, they proceed along it in 
 a swift but orderly manner to a distance of about 
 2,000 feet, and it is then that the nature of the ice 
 can be seen. The diameter of the balls averages 
 one foot. The larger balls are on the top, and 
 help to grind those beneath them almost into 
 powder. Between the first fall of the ice and the 
 
 noise it makes is a sensible interval. The sound 
 is not always continuous, but broken again into a 
 sharp rattle, like the rolling fire of musketr\-, 
 caused by the rebound of the larger pieces as they 
 fall. An idea of the size of the blocks may be 
 ' gathered from the measurement of the fragments 
 of one that was found carried more than 1,000 
 yards down the Lower Grindlewald glacier. It 
 was ten feet long, eight feet high, and six feet wide, 
 and contained 480 cubic feet of ice. The powdered 
 fragments, consolidated once more into a solid 
 lump, help to form smaller glaciers, as is the case 
 with the lower Giessen glacier, already mentioned. 
 Except to adventurous travellers and explorers, the 
 fall of these smaller ice aval.'urches is attended 
 with little or no danger, as from their nature they 
 occur only in the higher districts of the mountains. 
 But sometimes it happens that the lower portion of 
 a glacier, or even a glacier itself, breaks off or 
 slides from its bed, with most disastrous results to 
 the valley beneath. The Bies glacier, which lies 
 on the steep eastern slope of the Weisshorn, 1,500 
 feet above the level of the valley, has on more than 
 one occasion given way, and partially or wholl)- 
 crushed the village of Rauda, which it overhangs. 
 In December, 1819, a large mass of ice fell, which, 
 though it did not touch the village itself, created 
 so great a blast of air that most of the houses were 
 levelled, and roofs and large beams were blown to 
 a distance of more than a mile. 
 
 Trees Struck by Lightning.— Fig-trees and 
 cedars are rarely struck by lightning ; the beech, 
 larch, fir, and chestnut are obnoxious to it ; but the 
 trees which attract it most are the oak, yew, and 
 Lombardy poplar ; whence it follows that the last 
 are the trees most proper to be placed near a 
 building, since they will act as so many lightning- 
 conductors to it. Again, the electric fluid attacks 
 in preference such trees as are verging to decay by 
 reason of age or disease. 
 
 Gigantic Trees of California.— Professor 
 Brewer describes the " big trees " as in great 
 abundance on the western flanks of the Sierra 
 Nevada, at from 5,000 to 7,000 feet altitude for a 
 distance of more than twenty-five miles. One of 
 the largest seen by Professor Brewer measured 
 106 feet in circumference at four feet from the 
 ground, and was 276 feet in height. 
 
 Caoutchouc. — There is no possibility of the 
 demand exceeding the supply of this gum. The 
 belt of land around the globe, 500 miles north and 
 500 miles south of the equator, abounds in trees 
 producing the gum, and they can be tapped, it is 
 said, for twenty successive seasons. Forty-three 
 thousand of these trees have been counted in a 
 
272 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 tract of country thirty miles long and eight wide. 
 Each tree yields an average of three tablespoonfuls 
 of sap daily ; but the trees are so close together 
 that one man can gather the sap of eighty in a day. 
 
 A BALL OF STARS. 
 
 A FORTUNATE person who has the opportunity of 
 looking at the heavens through a first-rate telescope, 
 should always ask to be shown a " globular cluster." 
 There is no object in the sky which can compare 
 with these systems in respect of the sublimity of 
 the ideas which their contemplation evokes. 
 
 There are about a dozen of these wonderful 
 clusters of stars known to astronomers, some of 
 which are figured in the illustration. One or two 
 of these clusters can, on a very dark night, be just 
 seen with the naked eye as a faint spot of light on 
 
 Astronomers know but little more of the nature 
 of these clusters than what has been here described. 
 The forces which are in action there by which 
 these suns are held in the positions which they 
 appear to maintain, are unknown. Some of these 
 clusters are less dense than others. The illustra- 
 tion gives three. In two of these the stars are 
 piled together in the manner described, while in 
 the third they appear more open ; but in this one 
 the decrease in number is fully counterbalanced 
 by the increase of size in the individual stars. 
 
 Increase of size ! But what may be the size of 
 these constellated suns? We think ourselves the 
 great ones of the universe, and that the heavens 
 were hung with their starry lamps to give light to 
 our night. Have we any reason for our pride .^ 
 Certainly none, if we measure our importance by 
 our size. When compared with tliat our own sun 
 
 BALLS OF STARS SEE.N THROUGH THE TELESCOPE. 
 
 the black sky. The others are totally invisible with- 
 out the aid of a telescope. 
 
 These bodies, or rather congregations of bodies, 
 are small in apparent size ; that is to say, they are 
 not nearly so large as the apparent magnitude of 
 the moon. They are round in outline, but they are 
 composed of nothing else than myriads of stars j 
 clustered together. To give an idea of the enor- 
 mous multitude of minute stars which compose one 
 of these bodies, the following illustration suggested 
 itself to an observer who had examined several of 
 these objects through one of the finest telescopes : 
 in the world : — Take a piece of writing-paper cut j 
 into a circle about three inches in diameter, and | 
 shake a pepper-castor held over the centre of this 
 piece of paper until the pepper is piled up in the 
 middle so as to form a heap, gradually getting 
 thinner at a distance from the centre, and finally 
 ending with separate grains near the edge. Now, 
 if we imagine each grain turned into a brilliant star, 
 and the piece of white paper darkened into a black 
 background, we get some idea of the marvellous 
 way in which the stars are crowded together. 
 
 Herschel has calculated that in some of these 
 clusters there are more than 2,000 stars visible; 
 and when it is remembered that each star is 
 brilliant, like our sun, we see how dazzling must be 
 the splendour amid such a host of luminaries. 
 
 is mighty. Conceive his size. Suppose that the 
 fiery globe were hollow, and that our earth were 
 placed at the centre ; the moon could still hold on 
 her way, though she is distant from us 240,000 
 miles ; and yet there would be 200,000 miles 
 beyond the moon ere the shell of the sun were 
 reached. What a mighty mass ! and yet, though so 
 great, our sun is a speck of dust compared with 
 the very smallest of the numberless stars which 
 twinkle so peacefully above us. The nearest star is 
 18,918,000,000,000 miles from us ; and Sir J. Her- 
 schel calculates that if a person stood upon that star 
 and looked towards our earth, not only would 
 our mighty sun be utterly invisible, but if the sun 
 were so enlarged as to fit the earth's orbit — that 
 is, instead of being 800,000 miles in diameter, he 
 were more than 1 80,000,000 of miles in diameter — 
 even then that stupendous orbit would be covered 
 by a human hair held twenty-five feet from the 
 edge, presuming the pupil of the eye were a point ! 
 
 In other words, those stars which cluster to form 
 these mysterious balls cannot be less, and they 
 maybe infinitely greater, than luminous orbs having 
 diameters of 180,000,000 of miles : orbs compared 
 with which our earth is as an orange to the dome 
 of St. Paul's ; and yet there are thousands of such 
 suns in one of these faintly luminous patches, 
 scarcely visible to the eye ! 
 
UnDYSTONK I.IGimiOUSE. 
 
FORMS OF SOUND. 
 
 273 
 
 FORMS OF SOUND. 
 
 In a former article we have shown how sound is 
 generated. We now propose to say something of 
 the various forms which its vibrations can be fflads 
 to produce. These phenomena are illustrated in 
 the following manner : A plate of glass or metal 
 >nust_be held between the finjjcr and thunib at ode 
 'cdrner, having been 
 previously strevVn over 
 With some fine sand ; 
 then, if a fiddle-bow be 
 drawn near one of its 
 angles, the sand be- 
 comes agitdtedt arid 
 finally resolves itself 
 into the form of a Latin 
 cross, as in Fig. i. If 
 the bow be drawn near 
 the middle of oneof the 
 sides, a St. Andrew's 
 Cross will be formed. 
 If the plate is pinched 
 at the point O, in Fig. 
 2, the sand will im- 
 mediately commence to 
 form itself according 
 to the shape therein 
 shown ; but if the plate 
 be pinched a little 
 nearer to the centre, 
 the lines will become 
 curves, as in Fig. 3. 
 
 In Sir David Brew- 
 ster's letters on Natural 
 Magic, addressed to Sir 
 Walter Scott, and pub- 
 lished by Murray in 
 1832, the figures we 
 have alluded to are 
 elaborately described, 
 as are also the forms 
 that sand will assume 
 
 when sprinkled upon a membrane that is agitated 
 by sound, these forms varying with atmospheric 
 influences. After describing the effects produced 
 on a square plate, he says, "If the plate of glass 
 is circular and pinched at its centre,' and also at a 
 point of its circumference, and if the bow be applied 
 at a point 45 degrees from the last point, the 
 figure of the sand will be as in Fig. 4. If with 
 the same plate, similarly pinched, the bow is drawn 
 over a part 30 degrees from the pinched point of 
 the circumference, the sand will form six radii. 
 When the centre of the plate is left free, a dif- 
 ferent set of figures is produced from those obtained 
 before. When the plate is pinched near the edge, 
 and the bow applied 45 degrees from the point 
 pinched, a circle of san4 will pass through that 
 
 35 
 
 SOUND FORMS. 
 
 point, and two diameters of sand, at right angles to 
 each other, will be formed, as in Fig. 5. When a 
 point of the circumference is pressed against a 
 fixed obstacle, and the bow applied 30 degrees 
 frdin that point, Fig. 6 will be produced:'' 
 
 These fdrms, induced by sound, may be also 
 seen upon a disc, which is agitated solely by the 
 vibrdtiyns of air communicated from a plate in 
 
 the manner before 
 described. If a goblet 
 glass, or any large 
 glass ,with a Stand, 
 be taken, ahd some 
 damp paper stretched 
 across the mouth, the 
 edges having been pre- 
 viously gummed to 
 cause the paper to ad- 
 here, and some sand 
 strewn on the surface 
 when dry, the experi- 
 ment made with a plate 
 in any of the preceding 
 forms will, if the plate 
 is held horizontally 
 over the tumbler, be 
 repeated on the paper 
 disc, any variation from 
 the horizontal position 
 in which the plate is 
 held producing a va- 
 riety of distinct mathe- 
 matical forms in the 
 disposition of the 
 sand, which may be 
 also varied if it be 
 breathed upon, the 
 sand, influenced by the 
 temporary moisture, 
 assuming a number of 
 forms, until the perfect 
 evaporation is com- 
 plete, when the original 
 shape is reproduced. Most of these experiments 
 were tried, and may be occasionally yet practised, 
 at the Polytechnic Institution, in London. An 
 organ, or pitch-pipe, or a flute blown at the dis- 
 tance of a few feet, will produce a variety of figures 
 in the sand, upon the stretched disc of paper ; in 
 the practice of which experiment our readers may 
 make themselves acquainted with the varied 
 shapes of the forms of sound. 
 
 The above are, of course, only a few specimens of 
 the many curious and interesting experiments which 
 may be made in this branch of science. The wonders 
 of sound, like those of light, are inexhaustible, and 
 some new marvel is continually being revealed. Of 
 some others of the phenomena of sound it is our 
 intention to treat in a future number. 
 
=74 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 THE GEORAMA, AND COLOSSAL 
 
 MODEL OF THE EARTH 
 
 One of the most pleasing contrivances for re- 
 presenting the Earth's surface was exhibited in Paris 
 about thirty years since by its inventor, M. Lang- 
 lard, who is said to have had his project in 
 contemplation, and to have laboured in its com- 
 pletion for fifteen years. It was styled the Georama, 
 and its mechanism was at once simple and ingenious. 
 Ascending through the inferior pole of a colossal 
 transparent globe 130 feet in circumference, the 
 spectator, placed at the axis, contemplated, on the 
 concave side of this spacious sphere, the uninter- 
 rupted representation of the surface of our terra- 
 queous planet. This was given on a scale so 
 considerable, and was so artistically executed, that 
 while he had the satisfaction of comprehending 
 clearly and instantaneously, and with the strongest 
 impression, the forms and relative position, dis- 
 tance, and dimensions of all parts of the earth, 
 he was astonished and delighted by the grandeur 
 of the sphere, and the beautiful effects of painting 
 and transparency which it presented to him. The 
 varied outlines of the continents, islands, and coasts, 
 the shading of the mountains, the traced lines of 
 perpetual snow, the divers lines of the other regions, 
 the fire of volcanoes, the contrasts between the 
 aqueous parts, which were lucid, and the opaque- 
 ness of the tint of the ten'n firma, combined to 
 produce a most interesting general picture. The 
 general combination of this apparatus may be 
 thus briefly described. Adopting the conventional 
 divisions of geographers, the inventor employed the 
 thirty-six meridians of the ordinary globe in as 
 many curved vertical bars of iron, and seventeen 
 circles of the same metal, marking the equator and 
 parallels to constitute the skeleton of the sphere. 
 The map was spread on the concave side, and the 
 interior thus formed was illuminated by a soft and 
 agreeable light, admitted through the blue trans- 
 parency of the waters. 
 
 The manner in which the sphere was upheld was 
 not disclosed to the public. The ascent into the 
 globe was by an elegant spiral staircase passing 
 through the antarctic pole, where the vast unexplored 
 space admitted of this encroachment without pre- 
 judice to the map ; three circular galleries projecting 
 outwards from the staircase— one opposite the 
 equator, the other two nearly on a level with the 
 tropics — afforded accommodation for a numerous 
 company, and opportunities for closer inspection 
 and study of the geographical details. 
 
 In 1 85 1 there was commenced the construction 
 of a similar work to the above in the centre of 
 Leicester Square, London, by Mr. Wyld, the well- 
 known geographer. The ground was leased for ten 
 years for ;£3,ooo, and Mr. Abraham, the architect, 
 designed a circular building, ninety feet across. In 
 
 this was placed a large globe, eighty feet four inches 
 in diameter, lighted by day from the centre of the 
 dome, as at the Pantheon at Rome, and by gas ai 
 night. The frame of the globe consisted of hori- 
 zontal ribs, battened to receive plaster modelling ; 
 so as to figure the earth's surface inside instead of 
 the outside of the sphere, and thus to show at oho 
 view the physical features of the world. The 
 visitor passed into the interior by a winding stair- 
 case, and proceeded round it, viewing every part 
 of the model at four feet distance from the eye. The 
 scale upon which this model was constructed was 
 of such magnitude as effectually to exhibit the 
 details of hill and valley, lake and river, the 
 great oceans occupying nearly 150,000,000 square 
 miles ; and the old and new continents, with all 
 the islands, only 60,000,000 square miles ; the 
 gigantic model being made up of some thousand 
 castings in plaster. The circumpolar regions were 
 similarly illustrated, and by these ingenious means 
 " the desert of Leice'^ter Square was converted 
 into a great geographical school." 
 
 MoniJtrs of l^ninta! "Kxit. 
 
 — » — - 
 
 A GiG.\NTic Tortoise.— There are some hills 
 in the East Indies, close to the great Himalaya 
 mountains, which have large bones in them. These 
 bones are found at some depth from the surface of 
 the ground, and are of enormous size. They were 
 washed down from higher ground by floods out of 
 the bogs and marshy land, like those into which 
 large animals, even at the present day, constantly 
 stray and get drowned. One of the most wonderful 
 animals whose bones are preserved in these hills 
 is the Colossochelys Atlas. This Colossochelys 
 (iiftmense tortoise) is now extinct, and died out at 
 the same time as a gigantic cameleopard and many 
 kinds of immense elephants whose bones are very 
 common in the same place. It was a tortoise which 
 had a shell six and a half inches thick, twelve feet 
 long, eight feet broad, and six feet high. There is 
 a curious legend which states that the world is 
 supported on the back of an elephant, and that this 
 creature rests on the back of a great tortoise ; and 
 it is from this legend that the creature has obtained 
 the name of Atlas. 
 
 Spiders. — There are in Ceylon spiders, with 
 legs which would span an ordinary-sized breakfast- 
 plate ; and it seems to be now pretty well ascer- 
 tained that these creatures seize small birds and 
 feast upon their blood. There are also such spiders 
 known in Australia and Hindostan. Their webs 
 are strong enough to entangle and hold the small 
 birds ; and one species weaves threads, or rather 
 cords, athwart the pathways, which once actually 
 lifted Sir Emerson Tennent's hat off his head in 
 riding. Small house-lizards are sometimes seized 
 and devoured by these spiders. 
 
CURIOUS BIRDS' NESTS. 
 
 The Gorilla.— Dr. Wright states that a friend 
 of his, who went out to report on the habits of the 
 gorilla, observed that a female gorilla took her 
 young to the sea-shore for the purpose of feeding 
 them on oysters, which they opened with great 
 facility. 
 
 Earliest Life.— The earhest distinctly or- 
 ganised animal to be found in the rocks is a 
 trilobite, which ranks as the first created being, 
 having a distinct and intelligible organisation. 
 
 Coral Formations. — From the rate at which 
 coral reefs are known to increase, Agassiz calcu- 
 lated the total age of those surrounding the penin- 
 sula of Florida at 135,000 years, and that of some 
 human remains found in them at 10,000 years. 
 
 27s 
 
 COPPER. 
 
 Everybody knows the weight and value of an 
 ordinary penny-piece, and that it is principally com- 
 posed of copper ; so that if any one were to find a 
 great lump of that metal in the earth, weighing 
 420 tons, there would be a fine fortune. Such 
 a mass of pure native copper was found in the 
 Minnesota mine in 1857, and it was forty-five feet 
 long, twenty-two feet broad, and eight feet thick. 
 There is a piece of copper in the museum of Lisbon 
 which came from Peru, and it weighs 2,616 pounds ; 
 and near Brunswick, in New Jersey, there was a 
 thin sheet of pure copper found in the rocks which 
 could be traced for several square yards. There 
 are some very profitable mines near Lake Superior, 
 between Canada and the United States, which 
 often yield 8,000 tons a year of pure copper, and 
 in 1853 a great lump of copper was found at 
 Kewenaw Point, which weighed 200 tons, and was 
 forty feet in length. It contained, moreover, much 
 silver, and when the copper was cut and polished 
 it looked very beautiful. In most parts of the 
 world small pieces of pure copper have been found 
 in cracks in the hardest rocks ; and man, soon 
 after he turned his attention to a civihsed hfe, 
 began to use copper. Then he mixed it with tin 
 and produced weapons of bronze, which were used 
 for a very long period before iron was discovered. 
 The early natives of North America, like all others, 
 first of all used sharpened stones as their knives and 
 spcar-heads, but they soon began to make use of 
 the yellow metal they found every now and then 
 amongst the rocks. They even tried to find copper, 
 and obtained it from the mines on Lake Superior, 
 for the present miners come upon the old diggings 
 whilst working in places where gigantic trees and 
 dense vegetation must have existed for thousands 
 of years. Copper is usually found combined with 
 other substances to form an ore, and this has to 
 be burned and run into shapes before the pure 
 copper is obtained. It is most probable that all 
 
 I copper, and even the great lumps of pure native 
 
 I copper, were once in the form of ore, or combined 
 
 I with other substances. Native copper is found 
 
 i close to rocks which are exactly like the lava and 
 
 slag which are cast out of volcanoes. These rocks 
 
 were forced into the earth whilst in a molten state, 
 
 and their intense heat affected the copper ores 
 
 dose by. The substances combined with the 
 
 copper to form the ore were destroyed by the heat, 
 
 and the pure metal remained. 
 
 ^^anbas 0f €amtxndmx. 
 
 CURIOUS BIRDS' NESTS. 
 A LARGE volume might easily be written on the 
 wonders of birds' nests. Every different kind of 
 bird has a different kind of nest, and each pair 
 always adhere to the peculiar style of architecture 
 of the particular species to which chey belong. So 
 characteristic is the nest, that an experienced col- 
 lector could, when shown one, immediately name 
 the bird by which it was constructed. 
 
 Birds themselves differ so much in form, in size, 
 and in their modes of life, that we should expect to 
 find great diffefences in the requirements of their 
 young; but it would be a hopelessly long task to 
 attempt to give even an outline of the various 
 constructions which are employed. All we shall 
 do will be to mention some of the most curious 
 of these beautiful contrivances, and to point out, 
 wherever possible, the reasons which appear to 
 have guided the little architects in their plan. 
 
 Our first illustration represents the nest of a 
 little bird found in India, and known, for a reason 
 that will presently appear, by the name of the tailor- 
 bird. On a leaf or two at the extremity of a slender 
 twig is the little cradle made. If one leaf be suffi- 
 ciently large, the edges are drawn together so as to 
 form a pouch, in which the nest is formed. To 
 preserve the pouch, the parent birds twist vegetable 
 fibre into a fine thread, and by the help of their 
 bills and feet actually bore holes through the edges 
 of the leaf and stitch them together. If one leaf 
 be considered too small, then another growing by, 
 or a dead one, is stitched on to it, so as to form a 
 pouch roomy enough to contain the expected 
 family. The inside is then completed by being 
 carefully lined with down and feathers. This is 
 truly a rocking-cradle, far, hanging from a leaf, it 
 is, of course, moved by every breath of wind; but 
 the little tailor-bird has a formidable enemy, which 
 it is necessary to avoid. Tree-snakes infest the 
 trees in India, and young birds and eggs form their 
 favourite prey. Did the tailor employ his art any- 
 where but on the finest twigs, the snake wo«ld be 
 able to visit his domicile ; but by placing his nest 
 in the position he selects, the unwelcome intrusioRS 
 are completely prevented. 
 
276 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 The nests of the Pensile weaver-bird are repre- 
 sented in the second figure. They are always sus- 
 pended from the twigs of trees overhanging water, 
 and form an object of curiosity to the traveller in 
 Africa. Each consists of a hollow globe, which, 
 when rendered soft and warm by being lined with 
 feathers, constitutes the nest properly so called ; 
 
 doubtless the same fear of snakes which guides the 
 tailor-bird. The instinct of these ingenious crea- 
 tures shows them how to evade their active and 
 insinuating enemy, who dares not venture out upon 
 the slender twigs from which these nests are sus- 
 pended. The weaver-birds arc so called from the 
 mode in which they make their nests and the tubes 
 
 Fig. 1, 
 
 CURIOUS birds' nests. 
 
 but the peculiar feature of this construction is the 
 passage by which the weaver enters his home. 
 There is a tube about a foot or fifteen inches in 
 length, made of the same material as the nest ; one 
 end of this tube opens into the chamber, the other 
 goes down to within a few inches of the surface of 
 the water. Into this nest none but a flying creature 
 could enter. It cannot be approached but by the 
 tube, and to the mouth of this tube there is access 
 neither by land nor water, but only through the 
 air. The object of this curious contrivance is 
 
 which hang from them. These are formed of dried 
 grasses, which are so beautifully interwoven as to 
 form a very compact and strong case. Thus these 
 birds have anticipated man in weaving, as the tailor- 
 birds have in sewing. 
 
 Figure 3 represents the nests of the sociable 
 grosbeak, a bird found in South Africa. It may 
 be described as a colony of nests packed under 
 one roof. Like our common rook and many other 
 birds, the grosbeak is fond of the society of its 
 kind; but, unlike them, it is not satisfied with having 
 
CURIOUS BIRDS' NESTS. 
 
 277 
 
 its neighbours' nests on adjacent branches of trees; 
 they must all be close together. When a number 
 of these birds agree in forming a habitation, the first 
 thing to be made is the roof. A large and lofty 
 tree is selected, and in the topmost branches of 
 this the birds, numbering perhaps some hundreds, 
 commence their labours. With coarse grass they 
 form the roof, strengthening it by interweaving the 
 fibres : this having been accomplished by the joint 
 efforts of the community, each individual pair con- 
 
 remembered that the humming-birds are the smallest 
 of the feathered tribes. Some of them are not 
 larger than the humble-bee, which we know so well 
 in this country. Their nest is proportionately small, 
 consequently it and the eggs or young can be easily 
 sustained, even by the very small support which they 
 appear to have in the illustration. 
 
 From the nest of the smallest bird we pass to 
 that of a great bird upwards of five feet high. It is 
 found on the sea-coast of Africa, and is called the 
 
 IHE KLAMINGO AND IIS NEST. 
 
 structs its own nest under the shelter thus pro- 
 vided. These are placed side by side, and when 
 the whole are finished the entire under surface is 
 covered with the circular openings leading to each 
 nest. Three or four eggs are laid by each female, 
 and as many as 320 nests have been counted under 
 one roof. The feeding and rearing of a thousand 
 young makes a very busy scene. It is not known 
 what may be the object which is gained by this 
 union of birds into a republic ; possibly it may be 
 for mutual protection against some common enemy. 
 The fourth illustration shows a pair of humming- 
 birds from South America, and the nest which they 
 have constructed at the end of a leaf. A slender 
 support indeed has the nest, but then it must be 
 
 Flamingo. The plumage of these noble birds is 
 most splendid, being a combination of carnation 
 hues with delicate white. A row of them standing 
 together is a most striking spectacle. The neck is 
 long, but the bill is so strangely shaped that it 
 seems difficult to understand how it is used for 
 procuring food. The nest is curiously constructed, 
 and their mode of sitting upon it is most extraor- 
 dinary. They scrape together a hillock of earth, as 
 shown in the illustration above ; then, a hole having 
 been made in the top, two or three eggs, each as large 
 as goose-eggs, are laid. The female sits upon them, 
 with her legs resting at either side on the ground, 
 or sometimes even in shallow water, from which, 
 as a sort of island, the hillock rises. 
 
578 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 PALISSY THE POTTER. 
 
 A LITTLE over three hundred years ago sat Bernard 
 Palissy, troubled in spirit, rugged of brow, and worn 
 with patient watching. Poor in this world's goods, 
 he had devoted himself to the idea that by discover- 
 ing the secret of enamelling pottery, and joining 
 that to his skill as a draughtsman, he might bring 
 up his family in a creditable fashion. He was a 
 glass-painter by trade, but finding his profession 
 thriftless, and unable to draw from it a sufficiency 
 to meet his increasing expenses, like many another 
 great man, he had taxed his powers of invention 
 till there shone before him, like some ignis falitus, 
 the briglit object of his desires, and sixteen long 
 years passed before he could grasp and hold it 
 with the conqueror's hand. For Palissy lived at 
 a time when inen groped blindly amongst the 
 wonders of chemical science, and the task he had 
 set himself to achieve was almost superhuman. 
 But, steadfastly setting his face towards the object 
 in view, he persevered to the end. 
 
 Palissy's aim was in the first place to discover 
 such chemicals as, when mixed and laid upon a 
 rough clay vessel, should, upon the application of 
 heat, fuse, and form upon that rough earth a beau- 
 tiful white enamel, similar to that seen upon the 
 chinawarc of our own day : no light task, when 
 it is taken into consideration that he was entirely 
 ignorant of the nature of the articles he used. The 
 white enamel once discovered, to give to it various 
 tints would be a task of far less difficuky ; and 
 in his imagination he designed endless forms 
 of fictile beauty — dreams destined to be realised 
 only after a long and arduous struggle. The 
 difficulties to be encountered were innumerable, 
 for Palissy was poor, and wanting in the ordinary 
 appliances for his work ; but he toiled on, break- 
 ing and powdering his drugs, and applying them 
 in various experimental quantities to fragments of 
 earthenware before exposing them to the heat of 
 a small furnace or the kiln of some friendly potter. 
 Now one drug vi'ould fuse, while another remained 
 untouched ; now every mixture grew calcined, and 
 fell away in powder ; but no appearance of a glaze 
 was formed. He devoted every instant that he 
 could steal from the bread-winning for his wife 
 and children, and every coin he could spare to the 
 purchase of new preparations, but still with the 
 same ill-success ; till, amidst poverty, despair, and 
 ruin, he grew to be the reproached of his wife and 
 neighbours ; and still he strove on patiently, ever 
 keeping his aim in view. Great as were the diffi- 
 culties he had to contend with in discovering earthy 
 substances that should answef his purposes, there 
 was one greater still, and that was poverty. With 
 brightening eye he would watch the preparations 
 he had made, each time feeling sure of success; 
 and, as he exposed them to heat, and fed his fur- 
 
 nace with scrap after scrap of fuel, the longed-for 
 moment was expected when the powdery substance 
 should begin to fuse, melt gently, and flow over 
 the rough clay, forming a beautiful glaze, after- 
 wards to be applied to many a varied form of 
 beauty. But the moment did not come, the salts 
 and powdered flints remained stubborn. The heat 
 was not sufficient, and with trembling hands scrap 
 after scrap of fuel was applied to increase that 
 heat, until in his eagerness the garden palings 
 were torn down and burned bit by it. No effect: 
 more heat must be had, though he was penniless, 
 and could purchase no fuel. This time might be 
 the one when the difficulty would be solved, and 
 then riches would follow. The furniture was cast 
 into the furnace piecemeal, even the very boards 
 of the floor of his house were burned ; and then, 
 as he gazed on till the glowing and waning fire sank 
 slowly and paled, he turned away with aching 
 heart to meet the despairing looks of reproach from 
 his wife, and sighed as he gazed upon his ill-clad 
 and poorly-nurtured children. 
 
 For he had failed again, as he had failed scores 
 of times; but, unconquerable, he fought on, mixing, 
 powdering, weighing, and noting down, year after 
 year, whenever he could steal a few coins from his 
 household necessities ; and his hopes were realised 
 at last — the white enamel was upon a piece of pot- 
 sherd, and then followed enamels of various tints, 
 with which he coated vases, ornamented with rep- 
 tiles, fishes, fruits, and flowers in strong relief; and 
 in time his rustic ware became the rage, so that his 
 difficulty was to fulfil his manifold commissions 
 for this new and strange ware, rich with objects 
 of nature standing out in enamel of their own 
 proper hue, and so valued that at the present day 
 large sums arc given for their possession. 
 
 But, though wealth rewarded his discovery, the 
 life of Palissy was not to be one of peace ; he lived 
 in the troublous times of the Reformation, and 
 narrowly escaped death in the massacre of the 
 Huguenots; even the patronage of the French king 
 not sufficing to save him from dying a prisoner for 
 his religion in the Bastile. 
 
 <§dcittifie Mtonbers. 
 
 The Diffusion of Powerful Odours. — It is 
 said tliat a grain of musk is capable of perfuming 
 for several years a chamber twelve feet square 
 without sustaining any sensible diminution of its 
 volume or its weight. But such a chamber contains 
 2,985,984 cubic inches, and each cubic inch con- 
 tains 1,000 cubic tenths of inches, making in all 
 nearly three billions of cubic tenths of an inch. 
 Now it is probable, indeed almost certain, that 
 each such cubic tenth of an inch of the air of the 
 room contains one or more of the particles of the 
 
WONDERS OF COAL. 
 
 musk, and that this air has been changed many 
 thousands of times. Imagination recoils before a 
 computation of the number of the particles thus 
 diffused and expended. Yet have they altogether 
 no appreciable weight and magnitude. — Moseley's 
 " Illustrations of Science.''' 
 
 Velocity of Light.— Foucault condensed into 
 his own apartment an experimental proof of the 
 velocity of light, and within a tract of thirty feet 
 determined the rate of the movement through all 
 the vast planetary spaces of millions and thousands 
 of millions of miles, more exactly than had been 
 inferred by astronomers from observations of the 
 satellites of Jupiter. Foucault ascertained the 
 velocity to be 160,920 geographical miles in a 
 second. 
 
 A MAGXETtc MOUNTAIN has been discovered in 
 Swedish Lapland. It is traversed by a vein of 
 magnetic iron, several feet in thickness, and said 
 to be the richest hitherto known. The owner hopes 
 to supply all the world with loadstones of great 
 power. One of these, weighing sixty-eight Swedish 
 pounds, has been acquired by the eminent elec- 
 trician. Professor Dare, of Berlin. 
 
 ~}^^ 
 
 what became of the produce of Northumberland 
 and Durham coal in 1867: — 
 
 Coal exported to foreign countries 
 
 Coke computed as coal 
 
 Coal sent coast-ways 
 
 Coke ,, computed as coal 
 
 Coal carried away by rail 
 
 Coke ,, computed as co.al 
 
 Colliery consumption 
 
 Consumption in the district, .-.nd in the district 
 manufactures ... 
 
 WONDERS OF COAL. 
 
 When it is remembered that it takes ten sacks, 
 each being a tolerable load for a strong man, to get 
 rid of one ton of coal, we may indeed wonder how 
 104,500,480 tons of it were dug out of the earth of 
 the United Kingdom and supplied to consumers 
 in 1 867. The average price of a ton of coal in the 
 London market was i8s. id. in 1867, so that the 
 value of the mineral to the country can be calcu- 
 lated easily ; but it must be also borne in mind 
 that more than 10,500,000 tons were supphed to 
 foreign countries, which had to be paid for by the 
 foreigner at an advanced price. All this coal was 
 derived from 3,258 mines, and was got out of the 
 coal seams deep down in the earth by thousands 
 of men, horses, and steam-engines, who were paid, 
 fed, and kept going by the expenditure of millions 
 of money. Even the counties of Durham and 
 Northumberland yielded 24,867,444 tons in 1867, 
 and the value of this great mass to the coal-owners 
 must have been at least eight millions and a half of 
 sovereigns, and to this the ship-owners, the rail- 
 ways, and the coal-merchants added their profit, 
 which came to as much more. 
 
 It is the amazing amount of labour, perseverance, 
 and intelligence required to carry out such great 
 transactions that excites the wonder of those who 
 look into the coal question. These two counties 
 consume very little of their coal, which is sent to 
 all parts of the world, even to Iceland and the 
 Sandwich Islands, but principally to the great 
 towns of England. The following is a table of 
 
 Tons. 
 4,810.277 
 
 429.837 
 fi.065.457 
 2i,6g7 
 5,082,303 
 3,632,874 
 1,850,000 
 
 2,975,000 
 
 Total ... 24,867,444 
 
 This quantity came from 307 mines, and was all 
 used. Other countries have coal-mines besides 
 England, and many millions of tons of coal are 
 dug up and used in North America, France, 
 Belgium, and even in Australia. One set of coal- 
 mines — or, as it is called, a coal-field— in North 
 America, is much larger than the whole of England, 
 being 730 miles long and 180 miles broad, and the 
 importance of this region may be estimated when 
 the size of the counties of Durham and North- 
 umberland is considered with reference to the 
 whole of England. 
 
 The great value of coal arises from its power of 
 producing a great amount of heat from a small 
 bulk in a short space of time. The amount of heat 
 that a pound weight of coal, set on fire in a good 
 draught, will produce, is wonderful, and it can be 
 measured by the warmth it will impart to a kettle 
 of cold water suspended over it. This heat is 
 produced by the burning of the gases of the coal 
 in the air of the atmosphere, and by the capacity 
 for retaining heat which the solid part of the coal 
 possesses. If a piece of coal be placed in the bowl 
 of a pipe, and we then cover it with a lump of clay, 
 and put it in a fire, leaving the end of the pipe 
 outside, some steam comes off, and then a strong- 
 smelling gas, which is the same as is burned in gase- 
 liers. This gas can be collected by letting it bubble 
 up through water into a phial full of water turned 
 upside down. When all the gas has coine away, 
 if the bowl of the pipe be examined, what is called 
 coke will be found instead .of the piece of coal. 
 Coal consists, therefore, principally of gas and 
 coke, and there is besides a liquid which is 
 produced during the gas-making, called coal-tar. 
 The gas we burn in large quantities, and when 
 properly managed is a great source of comfort ; 
 but when it collects in a room it will explode if 
 a light be brought in, just as it does in the long 
 tunnels of coal-mines. When the gas burns, it 
 combines with a part of the air called ox)gen gas, 
 and the products of the combination or burning 
 are heat, light, and water. Water is made up of 
 oxygen gas and hydrogen gas, and the roal-gas is 
 impure hydrogen. Besides the water, there is 
 produced — in small quantities in a room, but in 
 great cjuantities in coal-mines — a gas called choke 
 
28o 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERa 
 
 gas, and it is this that is so fatal to the poor miners 
 who have been fortunate enough to have escaped 
 the first results of the explosions. 
 
 Coke often looks like chari'ed wood, and it is 
 really so, for many years since it was discovered 
 that coal was altered wood and vegetable matter. 
 The coals we burn are carefully picked out for 
 that purpose ; but when the mineral is brought up 
 from the mine it contains impressions of fern- 
 leaves and of trunks of palm-like trees. Some of 
 these impressions are very beautiful, and geologists 
 have studied, described, and drawn no less than 
 934 kinds of plants which have been noticed in 
 the coal of all parts of the world, some of which 
 arc very much like plants now living in tropical 
 climates. Large succulent trees arc often found in 
 the coal turned into that mineral, and their roots 
 are still fixed in the clay beneath the layer or seam 
 of coal. Besides leaves and fir-cones, many other 
 vegetable matters are found, and they are frequently 
 so well preserved that the microscope detects the 
 delicate structure which characterises them at the 
 present day. Many animals and insects are found 
 in the coal, such as huge toad-like reptiles with 
 beautiful teeth, small tree-lizards, water-lizards, 
 great fish with tremendous jaws, tiny water mites, 
 a sort of snail, hundred-legs, and many insects of 
 the grasshopper and dragon-fly tribes. But none 
 of these are of the sam^ kind as those now living 
 on the globe. 
 
 Before coal is found, many layers of soil, sand, 
 clay, and stone have to be dug through ; and, after 
 passing through hundreds of feet of them, it is 
 found as a thin layer or seam extending over a 
 large surface. A clay is found beneath it, then 
 more sand and water, then a thicker seam with 
 clay beneath, and so on for many feet down. 
 One monster seam is as much as thirty feet thick. 
 It is evident that the lowest coal-scam was formed 
 first ; it was a swampy forest, and the rotten 
 branches and fallen leaves mixed with the water- 
 plants and formed a black bog. Sand and mud 
 gradually covered it up, and it sank beneath the 
 surface of the ground, for rolled pebbles and sand 
 are found on it, and they can only be produced by 
 running water. After a while a fresh forest formed, 
 decayed, and was covered up in its turn ; and this 
 destruction and re-formation went on for ages, for 
 in the cliffs of Nova Scotia the coal-seams can be 
 seen one over the other for many hundred feet. 
 Beneath the coal-seams there is a limestone which 
 forms great mountains in some parts of England ; 
 and when a piece of it is polished and examined, 
 many beautiful shells, corals, feather stars, and 
 minute creatures may be seen. It is supposed that 
 this limestone was principally formed by coral 
 ' insects and the other minute beings that live on 
 coral reefs and near coral islands. If this is correct, 
 what a wonderful amount of life there must have 
 
 been during the ages when the coral was being 
 deposited ; and how much the state of things then 
 is like those now in existence round and about the 
 coral islands, with their mangrove swamps in hot 
 climates ! The sun gave his heat and light to the 
 forests now turned to coal, and when we burn it, 
 although ages afterwards, we return some of the 
 heat and light kept so long entombed, 
 
 Effects of strong Ulcntal ^maiion. 
 
 Death from Joy.— In the time of Queen 
 Mary, there was a gentleman of Shropshire, 
 Edward Burton, of Longnor, who was strongly 
 attached to the reformed doctrine. He was an 
 aged man, but his feelings were alive to the 
 miseries of his country and the afflictions of the 
 church. The reports of the queen's illness had 
 reached his residence, near Shrewsbury, when one 
 morning the church bells of St. Chad's were heard 
 to ring merril)', and he thought these sounds 
 might announce the accession of Elizabeth to the 
 throne. His son undertook to go and learn the 
 news ; and, as the road by which he would return 
 passed in front of the house on the opposite side of 
 the river, to reach the bridge below, it was agreed 
 that, if the surmise should prove true, he should 
 wave his handkerchief as he passed, to signify it to 
 his father. The old man watched for his return, 
 and saw the signal : it told of restored peace and 
 liberty, not to himself only, but to his country and 
 j his religion ; and he went into his house, breathed 
 his Nicnc dimittis, and laid him down and died. 
 — Massingberd's " English Reformation." 
 
 The Hair turned White by Grief. — Many 
 instances are recorded to establish the fact that 
 sudden alarm or great distress will, as Sir Walter 
 Scott has said, " blanch at once the hair." The 
 hair of Ludwig of Bavaria, who died in 1294, on 
 his learning the innocence of his wife, whom he 
 had caused to be put to death on a suspicion of in- 
 fidelity, became almost suddenly white as snow. 
 The same thing happened to the Hellenist Van- 
 villiers, in consequence of a terrible dream ; and 
 also to the French comedian Blizard, who, having 
 fallen into the Rhone, remained for some time in 
 imminent danger of his life, clinging to an iron 
 ring in one of the piles of a bridge. A like change 
 was wrought in the case of Charles I., in a single 
 night, when he attempted to escape from Caris- 
 brookc Castle. Marie Antoinette, the unfortunate 
 queen of Louis XVI., found her hair suddenly 
 changed by her distresses, and. gave to a faithful 
 friend her portrait inscribed, " Whitened by .afflic- 
 tion." The beard and hair of the Duke of Bruns- 
 wick whitened in twenty-four hours, upon his learn- 
 ing that his father had been mortally wounded ir^ 
 the battle of Aurstadt. 
 
THE IVORY PLANT. 
 
 281 
 
 THE IVORY PLANT. 
 
 So different are the products of the animal from 
 those of the vegetable kingdom, that even the most 
 careless observer may be expected at once to dis- 
 tinguish them. Yet multitudes are in the daily use 
 of ivory buttons, boxes, and small ornaments, who 
 never doubt that they are made from the tusks of the 
 elephant, while tliey are really the product of a plant. 
 The ivory plant is a native of the northern 
 regions of South America, extending northwards 
 just across the Isthmus of Panama, large groves of 
 it having been recently discovered in the province 
 
 stamens and pistils, as in most of the British plants, 
 but, like our willows, one tree produces only staminal 
 flowers, while another has only pistillate ones. 
 Such plants are said by botanists to be dioecious. 
 Both kinds of the plants of the vegetable ivory 
 have the same general appearance, and differ only 
 in the form and arrangement of the flowers. In 
 the one kind an innumerable quantity of staminal 
 flowers are borne on a cylindrical fleshy axis, four 
 feet long, while in the other a few pistillate flowers 
 spring from the end of the flower-stalk. Each 
 plant bears several heads of flowers. Purdie, who 
 visited the plants in their native locality in 1846, 
 
 GROVE OF IVORY PLANTS (rHYTELEPHAS MACROCARPA). 
 
 of that name. It is found in extensive groves — 
 in which it banishes all vegetation from the soil 
 it has taken possession of~or scattered among the 
 large trees of the virgin forests. 
 
 It has the appearance of a stemless palm, and con- 
 sists of a graceful crown of leaves twenty feet long, 
 of a delicate pale green colour, and divided like the 
 plume of a feather into from thirty to fifty pairs of 
 long narrow leaflets. It is not, however, really stem- 
 less, but the weight of the foliage and the fruit is 
 too much for the comparatively slender trunk, and 
 consequently pulls it down to the ground, where 
 it is seen, like a large exposed root, stretching for 
 a length of nearly twenty feet in old plants. The 
 long leaves are employed by the Indians to cover 
 the roofs of their cottages. 
 
 Each flower of the ivory plant does not contain 
 36 
 
 says, " The fragrance of the flowers is most power- 
 ful, and delicious beyond that of any other plant ; 
 and so diffuse, that the air for many yards around 
 was alive with myriads of annoying insects, which 
 first attracted my notice. I had afterwards to carry 
 the flowers in my hands for twelve miles, and though 
 I killed a number of insects that followed me, the 
 next day a great many still hovered about them, 
 which had come along with us from the wood 
 where the plants grew." 
 
 The group of pistillate flowers produce a large 
 roundish fruit, from eight to twelve inches in dia- 
 meter, and weighing when ripe about twenty-five 
 pounds. It is covered by a hard woody coat, every- 
 where embossed with conical angular tubercles, and 
 is composed of six or seven portions, each contain- 
 ing from six to nine seeds. These seeds, when ripev 
 
282 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 are pure white, free from veins, dots, or vessels 
 of any kind, presenting a perfect uniformity of 
 texture surpassing the finest animal ivory ; and its 
 substance is throughout so hard, that the slightest 
 streaks from the turning-lathe are observable. 
 Indeed, it looks much more like an animal than a 
 vegetable product ; but a close comparison will 
 enable one to distinguish it from the ivory of the 
 elephant, by its brightness and its fatty appearance, 
 but chiefly by its minute cellular structure. 
 
 This curious hard material is the store of food 
 laid up by the plant for the nourishmenf of the 
 embryo, or young plant contained in the seed. It 
 corresponds to the white in the egg of the hen, 
 and has been consequently called the albumen 
 of the seed. In its early condition this ivory exists 
 as a clear insipid fluid, with which travellers allay 
 their thirst ; afterwards the liquor becomes sweet 
 and milky, and in this state it is greedily devoured 
 by bears, hogs, and turkeys ; it then gradually 
 becomes hard. It is very curious that this hard 
 mass again returns to its former soft state in the 
 process of germination. The young plant for some 
 time is dependent upon it for its food, and if the 
 seed be taken out of the ground after the plant 
 has appeared, it will be found to be filled with a 
 substance half pulp and half milk, on which the 
 plant lives until it is old enough to obtain its food 
 on its own account. 
 
 From the small size of the seed, the largest not 
 being more than two inches across their greatest 
 diameter, the vegetable ivory can be employed in 
 the manufacture of only small articles, such as 
 beads, buttons, toys, &c. What is wanting in size 
 is, however, often made up by the skill and in- 
 genuity of the workman, who joins together several ' 
 pieces so as to make a long object (especially when i 
 such articles are made by the turning-lathe, when I 
 it is easy to hide the joints- from view), or makes 
 a lid from one seed, and the box from another. 
 In some years as many as 150 tons of seeds have 
 been imported into England, and they have been 
 sold in the market at the rate of a thousand nuts 
 for seven shillings and sixpence. 
 
 up the sides of the curious conical mountains ; and 
 from their level course, width, and regularity, they 
 simulate the careful work of engineers. How were 
 these terraces produced? It is clear that man had 
 nothing to do with them, and that the water close 
 by might have fashioned them. The parallel roads 
 of Glen Roy, as these terraces are called, and those 
 on the Fraser River were formed before the valleys 
 were as much scooped out as they are now. Dur- 
 ing the ages of time the river, Avhich formerly 
 flowed on a level with the highest terrace, had huge 
 blocks of ice upon it during the winter, and these 
 scored the sides of the hills and wore away the 
 cone above the highest terrace of the Fraser. 
 Then, as the land rose and the river cut its way 
 deeper, a terrace was left as far above the river 
 as the lowest terrace now is. The same wearing 
 away was exercised upon the mountain below the 
 upper terrace, and the stones rolled down and 
 formed a bank, which, when worn by ice, became 
 the second terrace, and so on. Since the land has 
 ceased to rise, the present banks of the river are 
 the lowest terrace ; but should the river cut more 
 deeply into its bed, the bank-terrace would be 
 higher than it now is, and, therefore, would become 
 a more prominent feature in the landscape. 
 
 WONDERFUL TERRACES. 
 
 There are many instances of curious fiat projec- 
 tions from the sides of mountains, like roads, in 
 many parts of the world. They are well known 
 in Glen Roy, in Scotland, where, from their re- 
 gularity one over tlie other up the valley for miles, 
 they have been considered the roads of some old 
 Scottish king. On Lake Superior, in North America, 
 the hills by the side of the shore have many terraces 
 or roads, one over the other, and the topmost are 
 many scores of feet above the present level of the 
 water. On the Fraser River, in the far west of 
 Nncth America, the terraces rise one over the other 
 
 ^nnircrs oi Animal ^ife. 
 
 Crabs Moulting. — According to the observa- 
 tions of Sir John G. Dalyell, the time occupied 
 by crabs in moulting varied from 64 to 194 days 
 from one moult to another ; and in all cases no 
 separation of wounded, mutilated, or destroyed 
 parts took place till after the moult following the 
 injury. The process of shedding seems to be in 
 great measure under the control of the animal, as 
 when watched it frequently suspended this opera- 
 tion, or when excited hastened it, and was more 
 pugnacious than at any other period. 
 
 Marine Vermin. — The skeleton of a marine 
 bird was lately presented to the Boston Natural 
 History Society, which had been prepared in the 
 short space of two hours, by exposure to vermin on 
 the banks of Newfoundland. The creatures live 
 at or near the sea-bottom, and are said to be very 
 destructive to the cod-fish frequenting the banks. 
 The bird was lowered to the bottom by means of 
 a loaded line, and drawn up in two hours, a perfect 
 ligamcntary skeleton, the flesh having been entirely 
 consumed. 
 
 An Animal poisoning itself by its own 
 Virus. — The virulence of the poison of the rattle- 
 snake is well known. Dr. W. J. Burnett, of the 
 Boston Society of Natural History, states there is 
 good reason for belief that the action of this poison 
 is the same upon all living things, vegetables as 
 well as animals. It is even just as fatal to the 
 snake itself, as to other animals j for Dr. Dearing 
 
THE DIVINING ROD. 
 
 283 
 
 states that one of his specimens, after being irritated 
 and annoyed in its cage, in moving suddenly, 
 accidentally struck one of its fangs into its own 
 body, when it soon rolled over and died. Here, 
 then, we have the remarkable, and perhaps unique 
 physiological fact, of a liquid secreted directly 
 from the blood, which proves deadly when intro- 
 duced into the very source (the blood) from which 
 it was derived. 
 
 Pouch of the Marsupials.— The distinguish- 
 ing characteristic of Australia, the true land of 
 n>arsupials, is its extreme dryness ; and it has been 
 supposed by physiologists that the object of this 
 peculiar organisation of these animals is to enable 
 them to transport their young, when they are 
 obliged to traverse great distances in order to 
 obtain the means of quenching their thirst. If no 
 such contrivance as the pouch of the marsupials 
 existed, the young would probably perish while 
 the mother wandered about in search of water. 
 
 The Elephant. — The erroneous idea, formerly 
 prevalent, that elephants only sleep standing, may 
 probably be attributed to some such circumstance 
 as that of the wild animals, when undergoing the 
 process of domestication, having occasionally been 
 known to stand for twelve months without lying 
 down to sleep : this is regarded as a symptom of 
 want of confidence in their keepers, and of a long'- 
 ing desire to regain their liberty ; whereas, when 
 they are perfectly at ease, and reconciled to their 
 fate, they will lie down on their sides, and sleep 
 like other beasts. 
 
 THE DIVINING ROD. 
 
 The employment of this pretended power to dis- 
 cover water or mineral treasure is no longer 
 common, as it was in the last century. Still, in 
 mining districts it is more believed in than is 
 generally supposed. In Cornwall, less than twenty 
 years ago, not only the miners placed much confi- 
 dence in its indications, but many highly intelligent 
 men employed the divining rod, or engaged the 
 diviner in seeking for mineral wealth on their 
 estates. In Lancashire and Cumberland the belief 
 of the powers of the magic rod was then widely 
 spread. The divining rod was commonly a forked 
 stick, which, when grasped in both hands, was 
 supposed, by spontaneously turning in the hands 
 of the operator, to indicate the presence of water, 
 metals, or hidden treasure beneath the surface of 
 the earth. Sometimes a simple stick was used for 
 the purpose of ascertaining whether a person 
 possessed the power of causing the rod to turn ; 
 for, after all, the property seems to have been 
 attributed to the holder more than to the stick, 
 since with many no movement whatever took place. 
 To ascertain the possession of this faculty, the stick 
 was laid flat on the hand, and the hand passed over 
 
 a vessel of water ; when, if the stick showed the 
 least indication of motion, the holder was supposed 
 to possess the requisite faculty. A believer in the 
 virtues of the divining rod gives the following 
 directions for its use : — The rod being properly 
 held by those with whom it will answer, when 
 the toe of the right foot is within the semi- 
 diameter of a piece of metal (placed under the foot 
 for the purpose of experiment), or other subject 
 sought to be discovered by the use of the rod, it 
 will be repelled towards the face, and continue to 
 be so while the foot is kept from touching, or being 
 directly over the object, in which case (that is, 
 when the foot is over the object), it will be sensibly 
 and strongly attracted, and be drawn quite down. 
 The rod should be firmly and steadily grasped ; 
 for when it has begun to be attracted, if there be 
 the least imaginable jerk or opposition to its attrac- 
 tion, it will not move any more till the hands are 
 open and a fresh grasp taken. The stronger the 
 grasp, the livelier the rod moves, provided the grasp 
 be steady and of equal strength. When the rod 
 is drawn down, the hands must be opened, the rod 
 raised by the middle fingers, a fresh grasp taken, 
 and the rod held again in the manner described. 
 
 The working of the deception is plainly to be 
 seen : First, the operator must have entire confidence 
 in the virtues of the rod. A man possessing full 
 faith in its power will readily fancy, after moving a 
 short distance, that he feels some indication of 
 motion in the rod. Unwilling to be deceived, he 
 grasps the rod more firmly to prevent this move,- 
 ment ; the tendency to point to the earth increases ; 
 he exerts his whole power to restrain it, but the 
 more firmly he opposes the motion, the less able he 
 is to prevent it ; he becomes satisfied of its powers, 
 and relates his experience to others. 
 
 In Blackwood's Magazine for May, ibjo, we 
 read that " the seekers for water carry a rod of 
 willow ; this they hold horizontally, and by the . 
 bending of the rod towards the ground, they dis- 
 cover the favourable places for sinking wells ; a 
 matter of considerable importance in a province so 
 ill-watered as the northern district of Somersetshire, 
 and for twenty miles round Wrington, the birth- 
 place of Locke. Nobody sinks for wells without 
 their advice. A Scottish family built a house in 
 Somersetshire; and resolved to find water without 
 help from \^^ jowser (as the diviner is called). But 
 after sinking to a greater depth than ever had been 
 known before, and spending nearly ^200, they were 
 finally obliged to consult the jowser, who found 
 water at once." Some of our readers may have 
 seen the assurance on the sign-boards of well- 
 sinkers — " engages to find water in any part of the 
 country " — which is a relic of this practice. 
 
 The Abbe Richard is stated in the Monde tc 
 possess the singular faculty of discovering water. 
 " We do not exaggerate,'' says the account, " in 
 
f84 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 affirming that the Abbe Richard possesses such an 
 intuitive knowledge of the law which regulates the 
 circulation of water in the bowels of the earth, 
 that he can detect springs at a distance without 
 labour, or any mental exertion. Examples of his 
 extraordinary skill (continues the Monde) are not 
 wanting. At Glouchow, between Cracow and Lcm- 
 berg, in a close belonging to Count Potocki, where 
 there were three wells dried up, although they were 
 thirty metres deep, he pointed out a spot between 
 those wells where water might be found at a depth 
 of four metres, and his prophecy was confirmed on 
 the following day. The commune of Metternich, 
 near Coblentz, was so sparingly provided with 
 water that there was not enough for the common 
 uses of the inhabitants. The Abbe Richard dis- 
 
 When she came to the place where the water was 
 under the ground, the twig immediately bent, and 
 the motion was more or less rapid as she approached 
 or withdrew from the spring. When just over it, 
 the twig turned so quick as to snap, breaking near 
 the fingers, which, by pressing it, were indented and 
 heated, and almost blistered; a degree of agitation 
 was also visible in her face. The exercise of the 
 faculty is independent of any volition." The editor 
 of the Quarterly Review adds, that upon the 
 narrator the most implicit confidence may be 
 placed. 
 
 The divining rod was commonly called Moses' 
 Rod, probably from the rod with which Moses 
 struck the rock when water gushed forth in the 
 wilderness. 
 
 Rey :AN 
 
 ^SlDET^bAROLD 
 
 ./// 
 
 i 
 
 of'- 
 
 Q D 
 
 CORONATION OF HAROLD. FROM THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY. 
 
 covered a spring there in the very centre of the 
 market-place, which now feeds the ' Christmas 
 Fountain,' solemnly inaugurated there on the 25th of 
 December, 1863. On M. de Metternich's celebrated 
 estate of Johannisberg, which, though rich in wine, 
 is poor in water, M. Richard pointed out a spring, 
 the supply from which is now conveyed in an 
 aqueduct to a spot near the palace." 
 
 Mr. W. Phillips, the geologist, tells us that the 
 divining rod was ably advocated by De Thouvenel, 
 in France, in the eighteenth century, and soon after 
 in our own country by a philosopher of unimpeach- 
 able veracity, and a chemist, Mr. Cooleworthy, of 
 Plymouth. 
 
 There is a long story in the Quarterly Review, 
 No. 44, showing that a Lady Noel possessed the 
 faculty of using the divining rod. " She took a thin 
 forked hazel-twig about sixteen inches long, and 
 held it by the end, the joint pointing downwards. 
 
 THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY. 
 
 In the H5tel de Ville at Bayeux, in Normandy, is 
 preserved one of the most curious and interesting 
 relics of the middle ages which have come down 
 to our own times. It is a pictorial representation, 
 in needlework, of the chief events connected with 
 the Norman Conquest of England ; and tradition 
 asserts that it was the work of Matilda, queen of 
 William the Conqueror, and the ladies of her court. 
 It is nuc questioned that this tapestry is a work of 
 great antiquity, and of date almost contemporaneous 
 with the period to which it is assigned ; but some 
 critics have ascribed it to the twelfth instead of the 
 eleventh century, and given the credit of its design 
 to another Matilda, the daughter of Henry I. As 
 professed antiquaries disagree upon the matter, we 
 cannot take upon ourselves to decide the point ; 
 but it may be remarked that, while the wife of 
 
HEAVY RAINFALLS, AND THEIR CAUSES. 
 
 285 
 
 William might more naturally desire to make such I 
 a commemoratian of her husband's achievement, 
 nothing that we know of the Empress Matilda, his 
 restless and warlike granddaughter, warrants the 
 supposition that she would be so hkely to engage 
 in a peaceful pursuit of this laborious nature. 
 
 Seventy-two different scenes are represented in 
 the tapestry, some of them containing a great 
 number of figures — men, horses, ships, buildings, 
 warlike implements, &c. They are executed with 
 remarkable spirit, and, although the drawing is that 
 of a rude age, and there is an entire absence of 
 perspective, the scenes are exceedingly well exe- 
 cuted, considering the state of pictorial art at the 
 time, and the material in which they are worked 
 out. Each scene has a compartment to itself, and 
 
 illustration in the course of this highly interesting 
 scries of pictures ; and the needlework of the fair 
 Matilda and her maids therefore ranks in importance 
 with any of the written records of the time. 
 
 The tapestry was originally deposited in the 
 cathedral of Bayeux, as a memorial of the aid 
 rendered to William in the invasion by Odo, his 
 half-brother, who was bishop of that city. Its 
 existence appears to have been unknown or forgotten 
 until early in the last century, when it was dis- 
 covered through the researches of some French 
 antiquaries. Afterwards it was the custom to 
 exhibit it once a year to the people in the nave of 
 the church. When Napoleon I. was meditating 
 the invasion of England, he had the tapestry taken 
 to Paris, and displayed in the National Museum, 
 
 WILLIAM ADDRESSING HIS SOLDIERS BEFORE THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS. 
 
 an explanatory inscription in Latin. Collectively, 
 they embrace the whole history of the Conquest, 
 from the departure of Harold for the court of 
 William, in Normandy, and the circumstances 
 which transpired there, onward to the death of 
 Edward the Confessor, the crowning of Harold, the 
 landing of William, the battle of Hastings, and 
 Harold's death on the field. 
 
 The total length of the tapestry is about 220 feet, 
 and its width is twenty inches. The material of 
 which it is composed is canvas or linen cloth, 
 embroidered in wool of various colours. The 
 figures are made by lines of woollen thread laid 
 down upon the canvas, and stitched over crosswise 
 to secure them. In the parts intended to represent 
 flesh, the surface of the canvas is untouched. The 
 canvas itself has become brown with age, but the 
 wool has apparently retained its original colours. 
 
 Some incidents are depicted in the Bayeux 
 Tapestry which have not been mentioned by his- 
 torians ; but what makes it peculiarly valuable is 
 the light it throws upon the manners and customs 
 of the times. As regards costume, arms, &c., there 
 is nothing at once so graphic and authentic in 
 existence relative to the period. The sports of the 
 time, the regal state of kings, the character of the 
 buildings, and similar subjects receive incidental 
 
 apparently with a view of exciting the ardour of the 
 populace, and encouraging them to enter into his 
 project. It was returned to Bayeux, where it is 
 now exhibited under glass in the public library. 
 
 HEAVY RAINFALLS, AND THEIR 
 CAUSES. 
 
 We measure rain by catching it in a vessel called 
 a rain-gauge, the area of whose mouth is accurately 
 known, and then calculate how deep the layer of 
 water would have been if all the rain that fell into 
 the gauge had been spread out evenly on a surface 
 of the size of its mouth. A gallon of water would 
 only cover a space of two feet square if spread out 
 in a layer an inch thick. Accordingly, an inch of 
 rain falling on an acre of land amounts to 100 tons 
 of water, and the same fall per square mile would 
 give 60,000 tons. Now an inch of rain falls not 
 very unfrequently at stations on our west coast in 
 the course of a day, so that we can easily see why 
 two or three days' heavy rain cause floods in most 
 of our rivers. The area drained by the Thames is 
 65 square English miles, or five square geographical 
 miles, as stated by Sir J. Herschel ; and accordingly, 
 an inch of rain falling on that district would give 
 us 4,000,000 tons of water, which must almost all 
 
286 
 
 THE WORLIJ OF WONDERS. 
 
 of it drain off the high lands and flood those .lying 
 lower before it ultimately finds its way to the sea. 
 
 However, the wettest weather with us is almost 
 dry when compared with that experienced between 
 the tropics during the rainy season. Old Dampicr, 
 in his " Theory of the Winds," says of the Island of 
 Gorgonia, which lies not far from Panama : " I 
 have been at this isle three times, and always found 
 it very rainy, and the rains very violent. I re- 
 member when we touched there in our return from 
 Cape Sharp, we boiled a kettle of chocolate before 
 we cleaned our bark, and having every man his 
 calabash full, we began to sup it off, standing all 
 the while in the rain ; but I am confident not a man 
 among us all did clear his dish, for it rained so fast 
 and such great drops fell into our calabashes, that 
 after we had supped off as much chocolate and rain- 
 water together as sufficed us, our calabashes were 
 still above half full." 
 
 The heat of the sun is the power that causes the 
 water to rise into the air. It has been very truly 
 said that the world may be considered as a gigantic 
 steam-engine. The fire is the sun, the boiler the 
 sea near the equator, the condenser the cold air of 
 high latitudes like our own, while the work done 
 is the growth of all vegetables and animals. 
 
 Let us look a little closer into this, and see how 
 the operation goes on. The action in virtue of 
 which the water rises is called evaporation. Water 
 boils at a certain temperature, but long before it 
 boils steam may be seen rising from the vessel in 
 which the water is being heated. In fact, steam — 
 or, to speak more correctly, aqueous vapour — rises 
 from every free water surface, and even from ice 
 at all temperatures. This steam is not the white 
 thing you see coming out of the funnel of a loco- 
 motive, but a perfectly transparent gas. When 
 this is first cooled it forms little drops of water 
 called " bubble steam," and these bubbles floating 
 in the air make an opaque cloud, just as a heap 
 of pounded glass is opaque, although the glass 
 itself may have been quite clear and transparent. 
 The reason is that the light is unequally refracted 
 in passing through the air and the water on the 
 glass, and so the rays cannot get through at all, 
 and the cloud looks opaque. 
 
 The best mode of accelerating evaporation is 
 to cause a current of dry air to pass over the sur- 
 face of the liquid from which the vapour is rising. 
 This is precisely what takes place in the trade- 
 wind zone at all periods of the year, and also in 
 higher latitudes whenever an east wind is blowing. 
 As fast as the vapour is generated it is carried off, 
 being absorbed by the air in its passage, and the 
 place of the partially saturated air is at once taken 
 up by a fresh supply of air, whose absorbing power 
 is as yet unimpaired. Now warm air can contain 
 a much greater quantity of vapour than cold air; 
 and accordingly, as an east wind is always becom- 
 
 ing warmer and warmer the nearer it gets to the 
 equator, we see that the trade-winds at the time 
 tliey reach the limit of the equatorial calms will 
 be nearly quite charged witli moisture. 
 
 Let us now see what would cause a mass of air 
 so charged to give up its moisture. The simplest 
 answer to this is, if we can cool it, we shall, so to 
 speak, squeeze the water out of it. This cooling 
 may be effected in various ways. The simplest 
 is by causing the air, when charged with moisture, 
 to rise up to a great height in the atmosphere, 
 where it finds a very low temperature prevailing. 
 Every one knows that it is, as a general rule, colder 
 the higher you ascend on a mountain ; but balloon 
 ascents have shown us that not unfrequently 
 temperatures extraordinarily low may be met with 
 at no very great distance from the earth's surface. 
 In July, 1850, two gentlemen, MM. Barral and 
 Bixio, ascended from Paris. At a height of 6,000 
 feet they entered a cloud which enveloped them 
 till they reached the height of 20,000 feet, where 
 the temperature was — 9" Fahr., and on ascending 
 1,000 feet further the temperature fell 10—40° Fahr., 
 so that the mercury in their thermometers froze. 
 
 Such a change of temperature as this, amounting 
 to upwards of 100°, would be sufficient to render 
 the air, to all intents and purposes, perfectly dry ; 
 and as we know that enormous volumes of air do 
 rise at the equator into the higher strata of the 
 atmosphere, a slight calculation will show us how 
 much rain might be produced by this simple action. 
 
 A layer of air a foot thick, covering an acre of 
 ground, and possessing a temperature of 80", as 
 it not unfrequently does close to the line, could 
 contain nearly nine gallons of water. Accordingly, 
 a column five miles high covering the same space, 
 would contain 1,000 tons of water if completely 
 saturated at that high temperature. Now this is 
 not at all an impossible condition for those latitudes, 
 so that, when we take into account the constant 
 motion of the atmosphere, the place of air partially 
 dried being constantly taken by a fresh supply 
 charged with aqueous vapour, the prodigious tor- 
 rents which pour from the sky in the wet seasons 
 become quite intelligible. 
 
 Dampier's account gives a lively impression of 
 what these rains are ; and we hear from one 
 observer that the rain in the West Indies falls "not 
 in drops, but in streams of water." These state- 
 ments are confirmed by accurate measurements 
 made by means of instruments. Capt. Roussin 
 says of Cayenne, that between Feb. ist and Feb. 
 24th, 1820, twelw: feet seven inches of rain fell. 
 
 The wettest region on the earth is not, however, 
 Cayenne, or even a district situated between the 
 tropics. This distinction is justly claimed by 
 Cherra Ponjee, in the Cossia Hills, lying north-east 
 of Calcutta. There, in June, 185 1, at an elevation 
 of 4,500 feet, 12 feet 3 inches were measured, 
 
WONDERFUL INSECTS. 
 
 287 
 
 while the total annual rainfall is 600 inches or 50 
 feet ! The average rainfall on our own west coasts 
 is about 30 inches, so that at Cherra Ponjee, twenty 
 times as much falls, and that within the space of 
 about six months. The reason of this unequal 
 distribution of the fall is that when the monsoon 
 changes, and the warm and moist south-west wind 
 is blowing north-eastwards towards Central Asia, it 
 meets a ridge of high land which it must pass over, 
 and in its passage it is chilled, and deposits its 
 burden of water on the western slopes of the hills. 
 
 CEPHRENES, THE SECOND PYRAMID. 
 
 Of the many wondrous discoveries made by Bel- 
 zoni, perhaps none was more noteworthy than that 
 of tlie entrance to Cephrenes, the second of the 
 mighty pyramids of Ghiza — those huge structures 
 that for countless ages have bid defiance to time : 
 vast, solitary, and grand. Seated during his travels 
 at the foot of this second pyramid, Belzoni mused 
 as to the probability of there being an entrance to 
 its interior, arguing that it was highly improbable 
 that such a magnificent structure should have been 
 reared without containing chambers and a means 
 of entrance thereto. He knew that the first pyramid 
 had been explored, but every historical account, 
 from those of Herodotus downward, joined in 
 declaring the second pyramid, at whose foot he 
 mused, to be one huge monumental blank. But 
 Belzoni was of too inquiring a mind to be satisfied, 
 and, carefully examining the exterior, he at length 
 came to the conclusion that there must be a way to 
 the interior, and set himself boldly to the discovery. 
 The first step to be taken was to obtain permission 
 from the Bey, and that accorded, he collected sixty 
 workmen, and set them to break with their hatchets 
 through a heap of debris joined together by the 
 pulverised mortar that had fallen from far up the 
 side of the pyramid, and then been moistened by 
 the heavy night dews. 
 
 A long period of toil then followed, ending in the 
 discovery of a cavity in the side, but no means of 
 entrance. Disappointed but not daunted, Belzoni 
 again surveyed the vast sides of the building, and 
 determined to try in another spot, where, after the 
 labour of many days, first one and then another 
 block of granite was uncovered, and at last the 
 entrance to the pyramid reached — a low passage 
 choked up with fallen stones, which required 
 arduous toil to draw them out. But in spite of the 
 opposition and idleness of his Arab labourers, Bel- 
 zoni persevered, till a passage large enough to 
 admit one of the men was cleared, and soon after, 
 armed with a torch, the traveller stepped in, and 
 began to look for the reward of his thirty days of 
 incessant labour. 
 
 His light burned dimly in the gloomy echoing 
 
 passage leading to the vast solitudes that had not 
 been invaded for perhaps two thousand years, and 
 it was with a strange feeling of awe that this enter- 
 prising man passed on, breathing the dust of a vast 
 antiquity, and with lifted torch trying to pierce the 
 gloom. Passage after passage he explored through 
 the huge rock-built structure ; peering anxiously 
 forward lest he should be plunged unawares into 
 some deep pit yawning to engulf him ; but he 
 passed on in safety till he reached a door, evidently 
 leading into some great chamber, and then, stepping 
 boldly forward, he stood in the centre of the huge 
 building, trying to pierce the darkness around, and 
 gazing wonderingly at this mausoleum of an 
 antiquity so great that human history gives but a 
 poor clue to its age. His steps echoed upon the 
 stony floor, and seemed to die away in strange 
 whisperings from the sides of the great tomb as he 
 eagerly explored it, now with lowered torch, now 
 with it elevated towards the roof, and listened again 
 and again to some sound, to break the death-Uke 
 stillness of the place. 
 
 The contents proved to be a large sarcophagus 
 of granite ; but far from satisfied with this result of 
 his research, Belzoni sought on, and explored 
 passage after passage, and echoing gloomy chambers, 
 evidently formed to be the last resting-places of the 
 kings of some ancient dynasty ; but the grandeur 
 of this solemn temple of the dead seemed to lie in 
 its vast solidity and massiveness of construction, 
 qualities which have been the admiration of travel- 
 lers of every country. Oppressed at length by the 
 strange stifling air of the place, Belzoni returned 
 to the light of day once more, but only to recruit 
 himself, and then, better provided with lights, to 
 return through the long passages, and explore once 
 more the many chambers, which brought to his 
 mind visions of the past grandeur of Egypt, and 
 the scenes that had been enacted upon earth when 
 this pyramid was first declared by its architect 
 complete. 
 
 WONDERFUL INSECTS. 
 
 The scavenger beetle is one of the most useful 
 of all insects, as it really performs the duties 
 indicated by its narnc. In hot climates they 
 abound in many villages, which are always sweet 
 and clean, and very unlike those that have to trust 
 to the cleanliness of the natives. No sooner are 
 any pieces of offal or excrement dropped than, 
 attracted by the scent, the scavengers are heard 
 coming humming along as fast as their wings will 
 carry them. They roll away the droppings of 
 cattle at once in round pieces, often as large as 
 billiard balls ; and when they reach a place fitted 
 by its softness for the deposit of their eggs and the 
 safety of their young, they dig the soil out from 
 beneath the ball till they have quite let it down and 
 
THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 covered it. They then lay their eggs within the mass. 
 While the young grubs are growing, they devour the 
 inside of the ball before coming above ground to 
 begin the world for themselves. The beetles with 
 their gigantic balls look like Atlas with the world 
 on his back ; only they go backwards, with their 
 heads down, and push with their hind legs as if a 
 boy should roll a snowball with his legs while 
 standing on his head. Dead birds, lizards, and 
 all sorts of unpleasant things are thus got rid of 
 and made useful to the young of this important 
 little beetle. 
 
 There is a fly in South Africa whose bite is 
 very fatal to oxen, and as these are the drawers of 
 the great wagons of the travellers, this very tire- 
 some insect often prevents very important journeys. 
 The tsetse is not much larger than a common 
 house-fly, and is nearly of the same brown colour 
 as the honey-bee. The after part of the body has 
 three or four yellow bars across it ; the wings project 
 beyond this part considerably, and 
 it is remarkably alert, avoiding 
 most dexterously all attempts to 
 capture it with the hand. Its pe- 
 culiar buzz when once heard can 
 never be forgotten by the traveller 
 whose beasts of burden are do- 
 mestic animals ; for it is well 
 known that the bite of this poi- 
 sonous insect is certain death to 
 the ox, horse, and dog. In one 
 journey, Livingstone, who was not 
 aware of any great number of the 
 tsetse having alighted on his cattle, lost forty-three 
 fine oxen by its bite. He watched the animals care- 
 fully, and did not believe that a score of the flies were 
 ever upon them. A remarkable feature of the bite 
 of the tsetse is its perfect harmlessness to man and 
 wild animals, and even calves so long as they continue 
 to suck the cows. The poison is not inserted by 
 a sting, but by the long proboscis which comes from 
 the mouth. This consists of three blades, the two 
 external being shields to protect the central lancet, 
 which has a poison-bag at its root. The fly simply 
 sticks this into the skin just like a gnat or a gad-fly, 
 and after sucking the blood until its body swells 
 up, it departs. In the case of oxen no immediate 
 effects of the bite come on ; but in a few days the 
 eyes and nose begin to run, the coat stares as if the 
 animal were cold, and although it continues to graze 
 it gets thinner and weaker. After a while diarrhoea 
 carries it off Very often fine cattle in good con- 
 dition perish soon after the bite from an affection 
 of the brain. All the tissues of the animals become 
 rotten. The mule, ass, and goat do not become 
 poisoned by the sting of the tsetse ; and buffaloes, 
 zebras, and antelopes do not suffer more from 
 these pests than from other flies. The tsetse keeps 
 to certain places, otherwise no cattle could exist in 
 
 THE TSETSE-FI.Y AND PROBOSCIS 
 (magnified). 
 
 South Africa ; and although it does not poison 
 the antelopes, yet it sucks their blood and evi- 
 dently lives upon them. Consequently, when any 
 country infested by the fly has its game driven 
 away, the tsetse die off. 
 
 Amongst the insects injurious to men, there is 
 one which is better known from its effects than 
 from its peculiar structure. Every now and then 
 in hot summers, people are bitten in England, 
 France, and in Germany by a small fly. A 
 complaint is soon made, for the bite is fierce, and 
 it is usually in a tender spot like the lip or finger. 
 After a few hours the person bitten becomes feverish, 
 and the spot where the bite occurred swells up and 
 becomes very painful and throbbing. The fever 
 continues, and there is great depression of the 
 powers of life ; fainting and vomiting come on, 
 and very often severe shivering. The bite, having 
 swollen up to the size of. an apple, becomes less 
 painful, but all the veins leading from it look turgid. 
 After from thirty-six to forty-eight 
 hours the unfortunate person dies 
 almost putrid. 
 
 Another insect, common in 
 Eastern Africa, is a kind of tick, 
 and it gets between the toes or 
 fingers, for it is not bigger than 
 a pea. It sucks the blood until 
 quite full, and becomes of a dark 
 blue colour. The skin, although 
 very yielding, is so tough that no 
 pressure will destroy the insect. 
 After the bite there are sensations 
 of tingling and itching which gradually ascend the 
 limb ; and the pains in the stomach commence 
 and are accompanied with violent vomiting. Re- 
 covery is slow under these circumstances, but if 
 these peculiar symptoms do not take place, the 
 poison which produces them gets into the larger 
 veins, and severe and often fatal fever sets in. 
 
 In the same district where these ticks live there 
 is a kind of ant, red in colour, very fierce, although 
 small, and which attacks every living thing. It is 
 very fond of meat, and when an ox is slaughtered 
 in the neighbourhood of its nests, fires of straw 
 have to be burned all night around the carcass. 
 They have no fear, and attack with equal ferocity 
 the largest as well as the smallest animals. They 
 are very useful in ridding the country of dead 
 animal matter, and when they visit a hut they clear 
 it completely of the destructive white ants and 
 other vermin. Rats, mice, lizards, and even large 
 snakes surfeited from feeding fall a prey to these 
 tiny but numerous ants. The tsetse and this ant 
 have a great enemy in a large, gaunt, long-legged, 
 hornet-looking fly which is about an inch in length. 
 It is a tiger in its way, for it springs upon the 
 smaller insects, and after sucking their blood throws 
 their bodies aside. 
 
THE THRONE OF THE SHAHS OF I'ERSIA. 
 
 2S9 
 
 THE THRONE OF THE SHAHS OF PERSIA. 
 
 THE THRONE OF THE SHAHS OF 
 PERSIA. 
 
 Eastern potentates have in all ages displayed 
 a magnificence which the Sovereigns of the west, 
 notwithstanding their occasional extravagance and 
 taste for splendour, have never attempted to reach. 
 No embellishments were ever too costly to decorate 
 the person and the court of an eastern king. The 
 great empires have long passed away, but in such 
 countries as Persia there may still be seen some- 
 thing of the pomp and ceremonial of former ages. 
 Sir Robert Ker Porter, in the account of his travels 
 in the east, has given us a vivid description of the 
 grandeur which characterises the court of the Shah 
 on state occasions. He pictures the scene on the 
 day of his first presentation, when the ministers, 
 attendants, and favoured visitors were waiting 
 the monarch's entry into the grand reception hall. 
 His sons occupied the positions nearest the throne, 
 the eldest on the right, and the others, according to 
 seniority, on the opposite side. Officers of all kinds 
 stood about the throne in the order of their rank, 
 and the gorgeous attire of the chief persons as- 
 sembled made the scene already highly impressive. 
 37 
 
 Sir Robert Porter continues: — "At last the 
 sudden discharge of the swivels, with the clang 
 of trumpets, and I know not what congregation 
 of uproarious sounds besides, announced that his 
 majesty had entered the gate. But the most extra- 
 ordinary part of the clamour was the appalling 
 roar of two huge elephants, trained for the express 
 purpose of giving this note of the especial move- 
 ments of the great king. He entered the saloon 
 from the left, and advanced to the front of it with 
 an air and step which belonged entirely to a sove- 
 reign. I never before had beheld anything like 
 such perfect majesty ; and he seated himself on his 
 throne with the same indescribable, unaffected 
 dignity. 
 
 " He was one blaze of jewels, which literally 
 dazzled the sight on first looking at him. A lofty 
 tiara of three elevations was on his head, which 
 shape appears to have been long peculiar to the 
 crown of the great king. It was entirely composed 
 of thickly-set diamonds, pearls, rubies, and emeralds, 
 so exquisitely disposed as to form a mixture of the 
 most beautiful colours in the brilliant light reflected 
 from its surface. Several black feathers, like the 
 heron plume, were intermixed with the resplendent 
 
290 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 aigrettes of this truly imperial diadem, whose 
 bending points were finished with pear-formed 
 pearls of an immense size. The vesture was of 
 gold tissue, nearly covered with a similar disposi- 
 tion of jewellery ; and crossing the shoulders were 
 two strings of pearls, probably the largest in the 
 world. ]}ut for splendour nothing could exceed 
 the broad bracelet round his arms, and the belt 
 which encircled his waist; they actually blazed 
 like fire when the rays of the sun met them. 
 
 " The throne was of pure white marble, carpeted 
 with shawls and cloth of gold, on which the king 
 sat in the fiishion of his country, his back supported 
 by a large cushion, encased in a network of pearls. 
 The spacious apartment in which it was erected is 
 open in front, and supported by two twisted columns 
 of white marble, fluted with gold. The interior 
 was profusely decorated with carving, gilding, ara- 
 besque paintings, and looking-glass, which latter 
 material was interwoven with all other ornaments, 
 gleaming and glittering in every part, from the 
 vaulted roof to the floor. 
 
 "While the great king was approaching his 
 throne the whole assembly continued bowing their 
 heads to the ground till he had taken his place. 
 A dead silence then ensued, the whole scene pre- 
 senting a most magnificent and, indeed, awful 
 appearance. In the midst of this solemn stillness, 
 while all eyes were fixed on the bright object before 
 them, which sat radiant and immovable, a sort of 
 volley of words, bursting at one impulse from the 
 mouths of the mollahs and astrologers, made me 
 start, and interrupted my gaze. This strange oratory 
 was a kind of heraldic enumeration of the great 
 king's titles, dominions, and glorious acts, with an 
 appropriate panegyric on his courage, liberality, 
 and extended dominion." 
 
 The throne of the Shahs, depicted in our illustra- 
 tion, is a work of the seventeenth century, having 
 been constructed for Shah Abbas the Great, who 
 held his court at Ispahan. Towards the close of 
 last century, Teheran became the capital, and 
 thither this throne was removed with other trea- 
 sures. It appears to be kept, however, rather as a 
 memorial of past magnificence than for actual use 
 at the present time, the throne on which the present 
 monarch holds his state, as described by Sir Robert 
 Porter, being of much less elaborate design. 
 
 the moon, when the star Sirius was not far from 
 the horizon, it was seen to perform a series of ec- 
 centric movements. It rose and sank, moved left 
 and right, and sometimes seemed to move in a 
 curved line. The observers were M. Keune, a 
 student, and M. Thugutt, a sadler, both certified 
 to be reliable persons. The family of the latter 
 also beheld the phenomenon. M. Keune, with his 
 head leaned immovably against a wall, saw Sirius 
 rise in a right line above the roof of a neighbouring 
 house, and immediately again sink out of sight 
 behind it, and then again appear. Its motions 
 were so considerable that for some time the be- 
 holders thought it was a lantern suspended by a 
 kite. It also varied in brilliancy, growing alter- 
 nately brighter and fainter, and now and then being 
 for moments quite invisible, though the sky was 
 perfectly clear. This phenomenon had been re- 
 marked twice, but, so far as is known, only twice 
 before, once in 1799, from the Peak of Teneriffe, 
 by Humboldt himself, and again, nearly fifty years 
 later, by a well-informed and very careful observer, 
 Prince Adalbert of Prussia. 
 
 ECCENTRIC MOVEMENT OF THE 
 FIXED STARS. 
 At a meeting of the Beriin Academy of Sciences, 
 on the 31st of May, 1851, the celebrated Alexander 
 von Humboldt made a very remarkable communi- 
 cation on the subject of some singular movements 
 which had been observed in the fixed stars. In 
 this he related that at Trieste, January 17, 1851, 
 between seven and eight p.m., before the rising of \ 
 
 THE STATUE OF JUPITER OLYMPIUS. 
 
 This colossal statue was the masterpiece of Phi- 
 dias, who flourisned 444 B.C., and was the greatest 
 sculptor of his r.ge. It was executed by him for 
 the people of Elis, and surpassed his celebrated 
 statue of Athene, in the Parthenon. The Jupiter 
 was set up in a temple at Olympia, near Elis, where 
 the Olympic games were celebrated. Pausanias 
 described the statue from personal observation, 
 which Strabo corroborates. The god was formed 
 of gold and ivory, and measured 58 feet in height ; 
 he was seated on a throne, and almost touched the 
 roof of the temple. Upon his head was an olive 
 crown ; in his right hand he bore a winged figure 
 of Victory, crowned, and holding a wreath. The 
 Jupiter, in his left hand, bore a lofty sceptre sur- 
 mounted with an eagle. His sandals and robe were 
 of gold, and the latter was painted with animals and 
 flowers, chiefly lilies. The faces of the steps bore 
 bas-reliefs of classic myths, and the footstool rested 
 upon four couchant lions. In this work, Phidias 
 embodied Homer's impersonation of the god. 
 
 The heathen historians tell us that Phidias re- 
 ceived for his skill the testimony of Jupiter himself. 
 When the artist prayed the god would make known 
 if he was satisfied, immediately the pavement of 
 the temple was struck by lightning; the spot 
 was afterwards marked by a bronze vase. Crowds 
 flocked to Elis to behold this wonder. Nor was 
 the admiration merely the superstition of the 
 multitude; for even a Roman senator, when 
 looking at this statue of ivory and gold, professed 
 to have had his mind moved as though the god 
 
THE LOSS OF THE "KENT. 
 
 291 
 
 were present. The able restoration of this figure 
 has been learnedly commented on by M. Qiiatre- 
 mere de (2uincy. 
 
 The statue was placed in a Doric temple built of 
 marble. Many of the blocks v/eigh nearly nine tons 
 each ; each of two remaining capitals is computed to 
 weigh more than twenty tons each, and the flutings 
 of the columns would contain a man in their hol- 
 lowings as in a niche. The pediments were sculp- 
 tured with the Wars of the Giants, and the Siege of 
 Troy. Upon the entablature stood a row of Atlantes, 
 each twenty-five feet high, and supporting an upper 
 entablature at 110 feet above the floor. The nave 
 of the temple was eighteen feet higher, and two feet 
 broader, than the nave of St. Paul's Cathedral. 
 
 THE LOSS OF THE "KENT." 
 
 Heavily laden with shot and shell, and bearing 
 besides a considerable portion of the 31st Regiment 
 of Foot, with forty-three women, and some sixty or 
 seventy children, the Kent, East Indiaman, set 
 sail from England on the 19th of February, 1825, 
 nearly 650 souls on board ; but the vessel was fine 
 and new and well officered, and under a brisk breeze 
 she stood down the Channel. But the weather soon 
 grew foul, and on the eleventh day the vessel lay 
 to, labouring heavily in a pitiless storm, the waters 
 thundering against her sides, timbers creaking and 
 groaning, people fresh to the sea helpless and de- 
 jected, the women frightened, the children cross 
 and weary ; while, worn out with extra work and 
 anxiety, the crew clung about the deck, ready to 
 attend to any new order for casing the pitching 
 and rolling of the huge vessel that wallowed amidst 
 the seething waters. 
 
 Officers and men were anxious, for the vessel, 
 heavily laden with military stores, rolled more and 
 more, so that in cabin and hold articles broke 
 loose, dashing from side to side of the vessel, and 
 in consequence, one of the officers descended to 
 the hold to endeavour to secure a cask that was 
 rolling at every plunge of the ship. He had hardly 
 attempted to get it wedged in its place when a 
 heavy lurch made him drop his lantern, and in an 
 instant the cask, which was full of rum, was stove 
 in ; the spirit had reached the lantern, and a bright 
 blue flame was darting and flickering about the 
 hold. As noiselessly as possible, attempts were 
 made with bucket and wet sail to extinguish the 
 flames, but in vain, and in a short time the blue 
 spirit flames became livid and fierce ; dense pitchy 
 smoke rolled up the hatchway, and the passengers 
 learned that the ship was dangerously on fire. The 
 extreme peril necessitated extreme measures, and 
 Captain Cobb, aided by the colonel and officers 
 of the regiment, was indefatigable in his efforts 
 to check the flames. But the efforts were those 
 
 almost of despair ; the hatchways and lower ports 
 were opened, and the waves rushed in, flooding 
 the ship, but only to make her water-logged, and 
 the flames still fiercely burned, threatening spirit- 
 room and magazine. There seemed, too, now 
 every prospect of the vessel settling down head- 
 long, and between the two perils men and women 
 were seen praying, weeping, calling despairingly 
 upon God for help, while others, old sailors and 
 soldiers, stood calm and unmoved, or sought the 
 powder-magazine, so as to meet instant death when 
 the vessel blew up. 
 
 In the agony of the time hope seemed lost to 
 every heart, and in a stolid despair many clung 
 to the sides of the labouring vessel half-choked 
 with the blackened smoke, waiting for the end they 
 believed so nigh ; husband and wife bidding fare- 
 well, their children at the same time clinging won- 
 deringly to them. The sea rose more fiercely, and 
 the burning vessel was tossed like a cork upon the 
 waters, when a man who had gone aloft, suddenly 
 electrified the crowd below with the shout of " A 
 sail !" Hope once more came to the trembling 
 crew, and the rapidly advancing vessel was watched 
 with straining eyes till she hove-to as near as was 
 safe to the burning vessel. And then the bravery 
 and discipline of the soldiers and sailors were dis- 
 played, as in obedience to the orders given, there 
 was an utter absence of crowding and rushing 
 forward, but the boats were lowered, three to be 
 lost, but three to do good duty in the tempestuous 
 sea, bearing away first the women and children, and 
 then soldiers and crew, each man in his turn, 
 although at any moment the magazine might have 
 exploded, or the vessel gone down. And a 
 dangerous task was that of being lowered into the 
 boat — men clinging to the end of the spanker- 
 boom, and then sliding down a rope to try and 
 reach the boat rising and falling on the vast waves 
 — so dangerous a task, that many of the soldiers 
 would not run the risk, but preferred to cling to 
 the last to the burning vessel. Many missed the 
 boat and were lost in the seething waves ; but to 
 and fro, hour after hour, the boats toiled, till the 
 little brig that had come to their rescue was densely 
 crowded by those who had so bravely acted their 
 part in the dire struggle ; officers remaining to 
 the last, men struggling to save their wives and 
 children, and some leaping overboard with them 
 to swim to the boat. 
 
 The last boat-load had put off, leaving those who 
 would not quit the vessel ; and as it reached the 
 brig, the Kent was seen to be one mass of flames. 
 The towering masts toppled overboard, laden with 
 men who clung to them, and then a bright light 
 darted into the air, the blazing fragments of the 
 vessel shot up, and then for awhile the hull burned 
 like a golden skeleton on the waters, till the crew 
 of another vessel coming up, picked up a few 
 
ig'i 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 stragglers clinging to spars in the water. Two or 
 three journeys their boats made, when the fl.-xming 
 hull was seen to roll for a few moments, and then 
 to plunge down, to leave all black and still as 
 the death it had encompassed. 
 
 When day broke, two more men were picked up, 
 clinging to the fore-mast ; but eighty-one men, 
 women, and children perished in the horrors of that 
 day and night. Meanwhile the brig, laden as she 
 was, and ill-provisioned, sped on homeward with her 
 helpless crew of unfortunates — eighty, closely packed 
 in a cabin intended for ten ; but, though the gale blew 
 fiercely, the captain of the little vessel kept up a press 
 of sail, and landed his charge safely at Falmouth. 
 The sufferings had been terrible, but throughout 
 a noble display of self-denial and gallantry had 
 been shown — men willingly risking their own lives 
 again and again to succour the feeble, giving up 
 their own chances of escape to some one more 
 helpless, while in the case of the soldiers discipline 
 was maintained to the last. The whole of the 
 rescue was marked by strange and providential 
 circumstances, for it was only by chance that the 
 brig encountered the burning vessel, since she had 
 but that morning changed her course ; while the 
 length of time that the Ive/i/ kept afloat seemed 
 marvellous, attacked as she was by the two de- 
 structive elements, one of which was for hours 
 momentarily expected to »each the magazine. 
 
 5!^oiTt)crfuI Infants. 
 
 Natural Hygrometer.s. — The fact that the 
 tissues of plants expand when they are in a moist 
 state and contract when dry has been put to use 
 by employing some plants as indicators of the 
 amount of moisture in the atmosphere. The 
 whole class of sea-weeds are specially suited for 
 this purpose. They are composed of a mass of 
 cells, which very readily absorb water, and the 
 membrane or skin which encloses the substance 
 of the leaves is so delicate that it presents but 
 little obstacle to the passage of the liquid. The 
 long slender frond of the saccharine Laminaria is 
 a favourite weather-teller among the cottagers at 
 the sea-side. In dry weather it is dried up and 
 brittle, while the least moisture tells upon it, and as 
 the moisture increases the leaf enlarges, becomes 
 pliable, and green, and looks as if it had not been 
 long out of its native element. Scientific instru- 
 ment makers have taken advantage of the same 
 property in making their instruments. Strips of 
 wood, carefully adjusted, firmly fixed at one end, 
 and carrying a pointer at the other and free end, 
 indicate with great accuracy the degree of humidity 
 in the atmosphere by the amount of their expansion. 
 Various woods have been thus employed, and 
 among others, strips of box-wood, the most homo- 
 
 geneous and close-grained wood known, and on 
 this account employed in wood engraving. Sub- 
 stances formed of vegetable tissues are also used as 
 hygrometers, such as strips of paper or pieces of 
 twine. A piece of twine six or eight feet long, the 
 one end fastened to a nail, and the other to a ro- 
 tating axis, to which a lever index is attached, forms 
 a remarkably sensitive and very good hygrometer. 
 The awn, or long bristle attached to the seed of 
 some species of oats, has singular hygrometric pro- 
 perties, and is on this account sometimes placed 
 along with the thermometer as a part of the fur- 
 nishing of a complete barometer. The absorption 
 of moisture causes the awn to twist, carrying its 
 free end more or less round the arc of a circle. 
 But the most remarkable examples of such awns 
 occur in the sterile oat, the animal oat of gardeners. 
 The ripe grains are enclosed in hard, hairy, brown 
 husks, from the back of which rises a stout bent 
 and twisted awn. Two of the husks generally grow 
 together, and separate from the straw by a deep 
 oblique scar. The hairy husks have a striking 
 resemblance to the body of a spider, and the 
 oblique scar represents its head, while the two 
 bent awns look like legs. When ripe, the oat falls 
 from the plant, and in warm dry weather rolls and 
 turns about on its long legs, as they twist from their 
 hygrometric property. It is a strange sight to see 
 these animated seeds tumbling and sprawling about 
 in different directions. By-and-bye they become 
 quiet, the heat having twisted the awns till they 
 can twist no further. But their activity is speedily 
 restored if they are sprinkled with water, or when 
 the dew or rain falls, the moisture causing them to 
 untwist and turn about with renewed activity. 
 
 The Compass, or Polar Plant. — In the 
 western prairies of the United States there grows 
 a plant which is sometimes of great value to the 
 wanderer in these trackless regions. It grows 
 to the height of from three to six feet, and has a 
 head of yellow flowers somewhat resembling our 
 hawkweed. The peculiar help it renders to the 
 wanderer arises from the fact that the long leaves 
 at the base of the stem, which are placed, not flat 
 on the ground, as in plants generally, but in a 
 vertical position, have a decided tendency to pre- 
 sent their edges north and south. Several careful 
 observers testify that this is the case, but it has 
 been somewhat discredited, because of the strong 
 language employed regarding it by some authors, 
 who say that it is " a guide unerring as the mag- 
 netic needle," &c. A recent observer gives, in the 
 America)!, Journal of Science, the result of an ex- 
 amination of a large number of specimens. " One 
 half of them," he says, " bore within half a point 
 of north, and two-thirds within a point." This 
 curious plant is also called the pilot-plant, and from 
 the quantity of resin which exudes from its stem 
 it is sometimes known as the rciin-weed. 
 
WONDERS OF CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 293 
 
 ENTRANCE TO THE CAVES Ot 1IU1I\MA 
 
 Monbers cf ConslrudtaiT. 
 
 THE CAVES OF ELEPHANTA. 
 
 A FEW miles from Bombay, in the harbour of that 
 city, stands the island of Elephanta, which possesses 
 a very remarkable Buddhist temple, dug out of the 
 solid rock or mountain. The island derives its 
 name from the colossal figure of an elephant, also 
 hewn out of the rock, which used to form the most 
 conspicuous object from the principal landing-place, 
 but has now almost entirely disappeared under the 
 gradual influence of wind and weather. The temple 
 itself is also being rapidly affected in the same way, 
 so that in a time, perhaps not very far distant, its 
 chief beauties will have vanished. There is no 
 record of the date of its construction, but, from the 
 fact of its being perceptibly influenced by the causes 
 just mentioned, it is judged that its formation must 
 be assigned to no very remote period. At the time, 
 however, when the temple was in use by the natives, 
 its entrances, which are now decayed, may have 
 been sufficiently substantial and protected to guard 
 against this danger. 
 
 The temple consists of four rows of massive 
 columns, which were left standing to support the 
 ceiling when the rock itself was hewn out. Colossal 
 figures adorn the walls, and, from the manifest con- 
 nection of these figures with the Hindoo religion, 
 the purpose of the temple as a Buddhist place of 
 worship is made evident. The columns forin three 
 
 avenues, by which the most important figure is 
 approached. It represents the triad deity in the 
 Hindoo mythology: Brama, the creator; Vishnu, 
 the preserver ; and Siva, the destroyer. The coun- 
 tenances of the first two have a mild aspect ; that 
 of the third is marked by severity and revenge. In 
 one hand it holds a cobra di capello, while the hands 
 of the others are occupied with flowers and fruit, the 
 symbol of blessings to mankind. 
 
 The total length of the temple is about 220 feet, 
 and its width 150 feet. The height is in no part 
 more than from fourteen to fifteen feet, and, in spite 
 of the impressive character of the columns and 
 figures, the spectator cannot divest himself of the 
 impression that he is really in a cave. From the 
 right and left avenues there are passages to smaller 
 excavations on each side ; a pool of water pene- 
 trates from one into a cavern far under the rock, but 
 whether this pool is natural or artificial in its origin 
 is not known. A corresponding chamber en the 
 opposite side contains two baths, one elegantly 
 finished, while the chamber itself is ornamented by 
 sculptures different in character from those of the 
 interior of the temple. 
 
 The columns convey the idea that they have been 
 pressed by the weight of the mountain into smaller 
 proportions than were originally designed for them, 
 but this is of course an erroneous notion. One 
 third of the total height of each pillar is occupied 
 by the base on which it rests. Although graceful 
 
294 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 in form, they are too stunted to be elegant in pro- 
 portion, but the effect of the entire group in either 
 of the avenues is highly impressive. 
 
 " I once," says Mr. Forbes, the celebrated oriental 
 traveller, " accompanied an eminent English artist 
 on his first visit to Elephanta ; he had seen the 
 most striking objects of art in Italy and Greece, 
 but never anything which filled his mind with such 
 extraordinary sensations as to the general effect." 
 However these gigantic statues and others of similar 
 form, in the caves of EUora and Salsette, may 
 astonish a common observer, the man of taste looks 
 in vain for proportion of form and expression of 
 countenance. The Elephanta caves especially 
 cause admiration when we contemplate the immen- 
 sity of the undertaking, the number of artificers 
 employed, and the extraordinary genius of its first 
 projection, in a country until lately accounted rude 
 and barbarous by the enlightened nations of 
 Europe. It is a work which would be admired by 
 the curious had it been raised from a foundation 
 like other structures ; but when we consider it is 
 hewn inch by inch in the hard and solid rock, we 
 cannot but be astonished at the conception and 
 completion of the undertaking. 
 
 The illustration given on the preceding page 
 represents the exceedingly picturesque entrance 
 to these wonderful caves ; the peculiar shape and 
 sculpture of the capitals being especially notice- 
 able as strikingly characteristic of, and peculiar 
 to eastern architecture. 
 
 SOUNDS DURING THE NIGHT. 
 
 The great audibility of sounds during the night is 
 a phenomenon of considerable interest, and one 
 which had been observed even by the ancients. In 
 crowded cities, or in their vicinity, the effect was 
 generally ascribed to the rest of animated beings, 
 while in localities where such an explanation was 
 inapplicable, it was supposed to arise from a favour- 
 able direction of the prevailing wind. Baron Hum- 
 boldt was particularly struck with this phenomenon 
 when he first heard the rushing of the great cata- 
 racts of the Orinoco in the plain which surrounds 
 the mission of the Apures. These sounds he re- 
 garded as three times louder during the night than 
 during the day. 
 
 Some authors ascribed this fact to the cessation 
 of the humming of insects, the singing of birds, and 
 the action of the wind on the leaves of the trees ; but 
 Baron Humboldt justly maintains that this cannot 
 be the cause of it on the Orinoco, where the buzz 
 of insects is much louder in the night than in the 
 day, and where the breeze never rises till after sun- 
 set. Hence he was led to ascribe the phenomenon 
 to the perfect transparency and uniform density 
 of the air, which can exist only at night after the 
 
 heat of the ground has been uniformly diffused 
 through the atmosphere. When the rays of the 
 sun have been beating on the ground during the 
 day, currents of hot air of different temperatures, 
 and consequently of different densities, are con- 
 stantly ascending from the ground and mixing with 
 the cold air above. The air thus ceases to be a 
 uniform medium, and objects seen through it 
 which are very indistinctly visible have a tremulous 
 motion, as if they were " dancing in the air." The 
 very same effect is perceived when we look at ob- 
 jects through spirits and water that are not per- 
 fectly mixed, or when we view distant objects over 
 a red-hot poker or over a flame. In all these cases 
 the light suffers refraction in passing from a medium 
 of one density into a medium of a different density, 
 and the refracted rays are constantly changing their 
 direction, as the different currents rise in succes- 
 sion. Analogous effects are produced when sound 
 passes through a mixed medium. — Sir David 
 Brewster. 
 
 UPTILTED MOUNTAINS. 
 
 When the cliffs on the coast of Kent and Sussex 
 are examined, the long lines of flint are seen to be 
 level. One line is over the other, but the lowest 
 is level with the sea, and is said to be horizontal. 
 But if the same kind of cliffs are examined in the 
 Isle of Wight, the lines of flint are either very 
 slanting or else quite upright ; they are then called 
 vertical. In the Jura mountains there are parts 
 where large cliffs are quite curved, and the grain 
 of the rock is like the top of a succession of large 
 waves. There must have been a tremendous force 
 to have tilted the chalk in the Isle of Wight from 
 its flat condition up on end, and even a corres- 
 ponding amount would hardly have bent and 
 crumpled a mountain as in the Jura range. 
 
 The beautiful mountain, the Righi, near Lucerne, 
 in Switzerland, was once a great mass of pebbles 
 cemented together, and was a horizontal cliff. 
 A force from below tilted it up on end, and 
 geologists assert that it fell over, and that the top, 
 where visitors now admire the rising sun, was 
 once the bottom. Something of the power of the 
 forces hidden deep down in the globe can be 
 learned when it is noticed that whole continents 
 have been moved upwards inch by inch, and 
 mountains of granite and other stones which origi- 
 nate within the earth are forced up through the 
 soil and underlying rocks to the height of 27,000 
 feet. In their passage upwards tliese mountains 
 tilt up the strata on either side, and the formerly 
 flat deposits- become vertical, or nearly so. Not 
 only do they tilt the strata, but they lift them 
 up for thousands of feet. Thus sea- shells are 
 found in abundance fossilised ten or eleven thou- 
 sand feet above the sea level in the Alps. 
 
THE INDUCTION COIL. 
 
 295 
 
 Moitti£rs of %nm-d fife. 
 
 Migrations of Insects. — There is a very pretty- 
 butterfly called the Painted Lady, which is very com- 
 mon in some parts of England, and it is very cele- 
 brated for its swarms, which have been known to pass 
 over great distances. Most insects, and especially 
 moths and butterflies, live exclusively in one country, 
 in some particular island or on part of a continent, 
 but the Painted Lady is common in England, Europe, 
 Asia, and at the Cape of Good Hope, in Southern 
 Africa ; moreover, it has been found in Australia, 
 Japan, and America. A vast swarm of these butter- 
 flies, forming a column from ten to fifteen feet 
 broad, was seen in 1826, in one of the Swiss can- 
 tons. The myriads of beautiful winge J creatures 
 flew onwards in regular order from north to south 
 with great rapidity. In the month of March of the 
 same year, a similar swarm was observed, south of 
 Switzerland, flying from north to south, and at 
 night the butterflies alighted and covered the plants 
 and flowers. These insects must have congregated 
 together, in the first instance, from considerable 
 distances, and a common impulse directed them in 
 their flight. These emigrations from one country 
 to another do not occur in the lifetime of every 
 Painted Lady, but only now and then after the lapse 
 of many years. Many insects emigrate pretty re- 
 gularly from one country to another, and yet live 
 solitary lives until the time for moving commences ; 
 then, like the swallows, they collect together by 
 some wonderful instinct, and fly away in enormous 
 multitudes. The lady-birds, the locusts, and the 
 daddy-longlegs, are familiar examples. 
 
 The Cocoa-nut Crab. — Mr. Darwin, in his 
 " Naturalist's Voyage," thus describes a crab which 
 makes its diet of cocoa-nuts, and which he found 
 on Keeling Island, in the South Seas. " It is very 
 common on all parts of this dry land, and grows 
 to a monstrous size. It has a front pair of legs, 
 terminated by strong and heavy pincers, and the 
 least pair by others which are narrow and weak. It 
 would at first be thought quite impossible for a crab 
 to open a strong cocoa-nut covered with the husk ; 
 but M. Liesk assures me he has repeatedly seen 
 the operation effected. The crab begins by tearing 
 the husk, fibre by fibre, and always from that end 
 under which the three eye-holes are situated. When 
 this is completed the crab commences hammering 
 with its heavy claws on one of these eye-holes, 
 till an opening is made ; then turning round its 
 body by the aid of its posterior and narrow pair 
 of pincers, it extracts the white albuminous sub- 
 stance. I think this is as curious a case of instinct 
 as ever I heard of, and likewise of adaptation 
 in structure between two objects apparently so 
 remote from each other in the scheme of nature 
 as a crab and a cocoa-nut." 
 
 Two-HORNED Rhinoceros. — M. Casanova has 
 just brought from Nubia to Hamburg one of the 
 two-horned species of rhinoceros, a fine, healthy 
 young animal. It differs much from the Indian 
 rhinoceros ; the lower lip is pointed. This rhino- 
 ceros has not been seen in Europe alive since the 
 time of the Romans. 
 
 THE INDUCTION COIL. 
 
 iNDtrcTlON is one of the most interesting features 
 of electricity, and from a general point of view it 
 may be explained as an influence exerted by an 
 electrified body upon one non-electrified — the two 
 bodies noi icing a //owed ^o touc/i each otlter. If a 
 glass rod be electrified by friction, and caused to 
 approach a gold-leaf electroscope, the gold leaves 
 will separate, and when the rod is withdrawn they 
 will collapse ; but if the rod be allowed to touch 
 the cap of the electroscope, the leaves will remain 
 separated after the rod is withdrawn. The action 
 is evidently different in the two cases ; in the first 
 the effect is i-.tc/uctive, in the second, transmitted. 
 Again, when two wires are placed parallel and close 
 to each other witlwict touching, every time a current 
 of electricity is passed through one wire, a current 
 or " wave " of electricity is observable in the other. 
 It is generated at the instant the current enters the 
 first wire, and then ceases, and another wave in the 
 opposite direction is produced in the second wire 
 at the instant the current ceases to flow in the first. 
 This " wave " is an inductive effect, and the current 
 so produced is said to be induced. 
 
 We will notice another instance of induction. If 
 a magnetised steel bar be quickly inserted into a 
 hollow coil of insulated wire, a wave of electricity 
 is produced in the wire, and if the bar be quickly 
 withdrawn a second wave is produced in the oppo- 
 site direction. These waves are induced currents 
 of electricity. An electro-magnet may be employed 
 instead of a permanent magnet with advantage, 
 because the bar of iron can remain inside the coil 
 and be magnetised or de-magnetised without re- 
 moval. If a bar of soft iron be encircled with an 
 insulated wire, the bar becomes magnetic when a 
 current of electricity traverses the wire, and ceases 
 to be so when the electric current ceases to flow, 
 and by placing this arrangement witliin a second 
 coil, we induce a wave of electricity in the wire 
 composing it every time we magnetise and de- 
 magnetise the bar. This, then, is the principle of 
 the induction coil. Its arrangement is as follows : 
 — A bundle of iron wires is encircled by a coil of 
 thick insulated copper wire, called the " primary " 
 wire ; the bundle being preferred to a solid bar, 
 because it more quickly becomes magnetic. The 
 ends of the primary wire are arranged as in 
 Fig. I, in which B is the bundle of iron wires, 
 and C the coil of thick wire. One end, A, is 
 
296 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 Fig 
 
 led direct to the battery, and the other end, A', to a 
 brass cock, to which is tixed by a spring a small 
 disc of iron, D, placed in front of the iron wires, 
 and having a stud of platinum inserted into its 
 centre. The other end of the battery is connected 
 with a pillar of brass, S, through which works a 
 screw with a platinum tip, the screw being allowed 
 to enter far enough 
 to bring its point 
 into contact with the 
 platinum in the disc. 
 When these connec- 
 tions arc completed, 
 the battery current 
 flows round the coil, 
 making the enclosed 
 wires magnetic. These 
 immediately attract the 
 disc, D, and in so doing 
 
 break the battery circuit at the point where the 
 two pieces of platinum touched ; the wires being 
 tlicn no longer magnetic, the disc springs back, 
 the circuit is again completed, and the disc again 
 attracted ; thus a constant and rapid succession 
 of battery currents 
 traverses the coil ; 
 the motion of the 
 disc being so rapid 
 that the vibration of 
 the spring produces 
 
 a musical note. The object of the primary coil 
 is simply to produce magnetism in the iron core 
 in as sudden a manner as possible. Outside this 
 coil is wound another, consisting of insulated wire, 
 much finer than the primary, and at least a hun- 
 dred times as long. 
 This is called 
 the " secondary " 
 coil, and has 
 to be wound with 
 very great care, 
 because the elec- 
 tric current which 
 is induced in it 
 is capable of leap- 
 ing, in the form of 
 a spark, through 
 a space of air 
 
 greater or less according to the dimensions of the 
 coil. Here, indeed, is a wonderful effect of induc- 
 tion. The battery current traverses the primary 
 wire ; it is sluggish in character, and may be handled 
 with impunity, and yet it induces in another and 
 totally distinct coil — the secondary — a current so 
 fierce and intense in its nature that if the coil be 
 large its effect upon the human frame is painful, 
 and may be fatal. 
 
 The intensity of the induced or secondary current 
 is increased by the addition of a piece of apparatus 
 
 «•«• 3- 
 
 called a " condenser." This, which is shown in 
 Fig. 2, consists of many pieces of tinfoil sepa- 
 rated from each other by some thin insulating 
 material. The tinfoil is arranged so that the 
 alternate pieces i, 3, 5, are connected together 
 at B, and the others, 2, 4, 6, at A. These two 
 sets of foil are then joined into the primary cir- 
 cuit, one upon each 
 side of the platinum 
 points. 
 
 Fig. 3 snows an in- 
 duction coil complete 
 with the condenser ar- 
 rangement, S being the 
 secondary coil wound 
 outside the primary, in- 
 side which is the bundle 
 '• of iron wires D B. 
 
 The condenser c is 
 usually placed below for convenience, the wires 
 E E leading from it going respectively to D and d'. 
 The extremities of the secondary wire are led to 
 well insulated terminals, one of which is shown at T. 
 The most powerful coil yet constructed is one 
 made by Mr. Apps 
 for Professor Pepper, 
 and weighs without 
 the battery, three- 
 quarters of a ton. 
 The iron core con- 
 sists of a bundle of about 2,500 soft iron wires, 
 each as large as a good-sized knitting-needle, 
 five feet long, the entire bundle weighing 123 lbs. 
 Over this is coiled the copper primary wire, rather 
 larger than the iron wires, and more than two 
 
 miles long. This, 
 
 S /^^^ ^^'''^ ''^'^ '■'^'^ core, 
 
 is inserted into an 
 ebonite tube, eight 
 feet long and 
 half an inch thick, 
 projecting beyond 
 each end of the 
 coil about eigh- 
 teen inches, and 
 upon this is wound 
 the secondary 
 wire, also of cop- 
 per, as thick as a small pin, and 1 50 miles long, 
 forming a helix four feet two inches long. The 
 eight-foot ebonite tube thus separates the two coils, 
 and, being an excellent non-conductor, it prevents 
 any of the electricity induced in the fine wire coil 
 from leaking into the primary wire. The whole is en- 
 cased in an outer tube of ebonite weighing 477 lbs. 
 The condenser exposes a surface of 375 square 
 feet. The length of the spark varies with the 
 amount of battery power employed ; with the highest 
 power yet tried it exceeds two feet. 
 
THE ricp:-paper plant. 
 
 297 
 
 THE RICE-PAPER PLANT. 
 
 It is only within a very few years that the true 
 nature has been ascertained of the beautifully 
 smooth and uniform, though very brittle, paper 
 so largely used by the Chinese for drawings of 
 birds, butterflies, 
 and other objects 
 of natural his- 
 tory. It received 
 its popular name 
 of rice-paper 
 from an erro- 
 neous notion 
 that it was made 
 in som? way 
 from rice. It is; 
 however, the pith 
 of a plant not 
 very distantly 
 related to our 
 common ivy, 
 though having 
 a very different 
 appearance. The 
 plant is called 
 by the Chinese 
 Tung-tsau (hol- 
 low plant). It 
 grows wild in 
 great abundance 
 on the hills in 
 the northern 
 districts of the 
 island of For- 
 mosa, where it is 
 gathered by the 
 natives, and ex- 
 changed on the 
 coast for Chinese 
 produce. It is a 
 small tree, at first 
 growing with a 
 simple stem ; 
 after flowering, 
 two or more 
 branches are 
 produced, and 
 the tree increases in size until it reaches a height of 
 twenty or thirty feet ; but as the pith deteriorates 
 in the parts of the tree that have become old, it 
 is generally cut down before it is twelve feet high. 
 The large, sycamore-like leaves crown the slender 
 stem, and, when in flower, are surmounted by 
 several wand-like bunches of small, pale-yellowish 
 flowers. A single flower is very insignificant, but 
 the great number of them borne on thin whitish 
 stalks have a striking and beautiful effect, especially 
 38 
 
 THE CHINESE RICE-PAPER PLANT [Tetrafanax papyrifera). 
 [The figure represents the method of preparing the paper.] 
 
 from the great contrast between them and the 
 crown of large dark green leaves. The stem is 
 strongly marked by the transverse scars formed by 
 the fallen leaves. It is covered by a thickish 
 bark, and the wood is hard, heavy, and durable. 
 
 The collectors cut the stems into lengths of nine 
 or twelve inches. The pith is about two inches in 
 
 diameter, and is 
 very uniform in 
 texture, except 
 in the centre, 
 where it is bro- 
 ken into a series 
 of doubly con- 
 cave cavities. 
 A straight stick 
 is inserted into 
 the end of each 
 piece, and the 
 pith is forced out 
 at the other end 
 by hammering 
 on the ground. 
 The pith is then 
 placed in hollow 
 bamboos, where 
 it swells to its 
 natural bulk and 
 dries straight. 
 The pith is then 
 dexterously cut 
 by workmen, 
 who hold against 
 the cylinder a 
 long sharp knife, 
 which is kept 
 quite steady 
 
 while the pith 
 is moved round 
 and round. The 
 paring thus goes 
 on continuously 
 until the inner 
 broken pith is 
 reached. Each 
 cylinder pro- 
 duces a smooth, 
 continuous scroll 
 about four feet 
 long. The sheets as they are cut are placed one 
 on the other, then pressed and cut into squares 
 of the required size. These are about three inches 
 and a quarter square, and are sold in packets of 
 100 each at rather less than one penny the packet. 
 The small squares arc dyed different colours, and 
 made into artificial flowers for ornamenting the 
 hair of the Chinese ladies. 
 
 Large piths occur in other plants besides the 
 Tung-tsau. An Indian plant named Shola, belonging 
 
tgS 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 to the Leguminous or pea tribe, was by many 
 believed to be the source of the rice-paper. It is 
 extensively employed in Singapore for the manufac- 
 ture of floats and buoys for fishermen, and for the 
 light sun-hats worn in the east : but it is greatly 
 inferior in colour and quality to the true rice-paper. 
 The Taccada, an erect shrub growing on the shores 
 of India and Ceylon, has a pith of considerable 
 size, and of a firm, white appearance. It is much 
 used by the Malays and Siamese for making artifi- 
 cial flowers, small figures, and other articles used 
 as decorations at feasts and on festivals. Among 
 British plants the elder tree has a very large pith, 
 which has not, however, been applied to any prac- 
 tical use. It can be readily pushed out of the stem 
 in the same way by which the Chinese get the pith 
 of the Tung-tsau. The hollow stems that remain 
 have given to the tree its popular name of bore tree. 
 
 GAD-FLIES. 
 
 THE BOX TUNNEL. 
 
 The Box Tunnel, upon the Great Western Railway, 
 is a triumph of engineering skill. It is 9,680 feet 
 long, and, being constructed for the broad gauge, 
 is wider than usual. It is thirty-five feet wide and 
 thirty-nine feet high ; it contains thirteen shafts, 
 originally constructed to facilitate the excavation 
 of the tunnel, but now employed for ventilation. 
 The lowest of these shafts is eighty feet high, and 
 the highest 306 feet. 
 
 Four hundred and fourteen thousand cubic yards 
 of earth and rock were taken out of the tunnel, and 
 30,000,000 bricks were employed to line its sides, 
 although in many places the rock is sufficiently 
 hard and compact to stand by itself. It required 
 two and a-half years to complete the work, and for 
 every week during that period one ton of gunpowder 
 and one ton of candles were consumed in it. The 
 rock is freestone. Eleven hundred men and 250 
 horses were at work incessantly upon the excava- 
 tion, and it is said that as many as 100 men were 
 killed during the progress of the work. 
 
 Upon one occasion the water poured in with such 
 violence from some hidden cavity or subterranean 
 lake that, in spite of the ordinary pumping ap- 
 pliances in use, it filled the uncompleted tunnel, 
 and rose fifty-six feet in the adjoining shaft. An 
 extra pumping-engine of fifty-horse power was at 
 length brought into action, and this, which dis- 
 charged at the rate of 32,000 hogsheads a day, at 
 last kept the water down. The tunnel inclines 
 towards Bristol at the rate of one foot in 600 ; the 
 London end is, therefore, sixteen feet higher than 
 the other extremity. 
 
 A remarkable fact in connection with this tunnel 
 is, that upon two days in the year, provided the 
 tunnel be free from steam and smoke, the setting 
 sun throws its beams completely through it. 
 
 If on a fine hot summer day the caterpillar which 
 eats away all the leaves of the gooseberry bushes, 
 leaving the stalks sticking up, is watched, a very 
 small black fly with a very long body, a sharp- 
 looking tail, and long wings, will be often seen 
 hovering about. This fly moves quickly, and 
 finally sees the plump caterpillar. It rushes at it 
 like a tiger, and pokes its tail under the skin of 
 the unfortunate gooseberry-leaf eater. From that 
 moment the caterpillar has a small egg under its 
 skin which soon becomes a grub. The grub lives 
 on the juices of the wretched caterpillar, and when 
 it dies comes forth ready to attack the next gene- 
 ration of gooseberry-leaf eaters. 
 
 Now the same sort of occurrence has rendered 
 the gad-fly an intolerable nuisance to horses and 
 cattle. Nearly every quadruped, whether wild or 
 tame, has a special gad-fly. In June or July 
 swarms of the (Estrus ovis, or sheep gad-fly, oc- 
 casionally attack flocks, and the sheep have the 
 instinct to put all their heads together and lie down 
 on the ground. But if the fly has the opportunity, 
 it darts at the sheep's nose, and passing just inside 
 lays a small egg. The warmth and moisture soon 
 hatch it, and a little wonn escapes and crawls 
 upwards into some of the folds of the membrane 
 of the nose. The sheep gallops furiously about, 
 snorting violently and almost mad. But the worm 
 moves about until it has found a snug spot, and 
 then, digging the two hooks with which it is 
 provided into the fine membrane of the nose, it 
 remains quiet until April or May in the next year. 
 Then, having grown to its full size, the grub crawls 
 down the nose again, giving the sheep great pain, 
 and drops at last on to the ground. It then bur- 
 rows in the soil, becomes a chrysalis, and after a 
 month or two emerges as a fly, ready for mischief. 
 
 The gad-fly of thc-ox is the largest, and chooses 
 a nice plump young ox, and alighting on its back 
 like any other fly, close to the back-bone, it pierces 
 the hide and lays an egg in the fine fat. The ox 
 darts away bellowing, and if there are others near, 
 they know what has happened, and rush away 
 either into the bushes or into the water, where the 
 fly cannot follow. A small swelling forms over the 
 so-called bite, and if it is cut open a small white 
 worm is seen. It lives on the fat, and grows until 
 the next year. Then it has to eat its way out of 
 the skin, and when it has done so there are plenty 
 of starlings and other birds ready to devour it. But 
 if it falls safely to the ground it burrows, and after 
 living as a chrysalis, turns to the perfect fly in 
 August. 
 
 The gad-fly of the horse has a still more 
 wonderful life. It is often seen late in the summer 
 very busy about horses, and if waiched will be 
 
CYCLONES. 
 
 299 
 
 observed to dart suddenly upon some part of the 
 hair which the horse is in the habit of licking. 
 The fly balances itself for a moment and then 
 deposits an egg on one of the hairs, and fixes it by 
 a gummy secretion. Perhaps fifty or a hundred 
 eggs are thus laid, and then the fly dies. If a 
 horse at grass is examined in August hundreds of 
 these eggs may be found on its legs and shoulders. 
 In two or three days the eggs are ready to be 
 hatched. Possibly the horse feels the stiffness of 
 the hairs on which they are stuck, and licks the 
 part. The warmth of the tongue and the moisture 
 dissolve the egg, and a tiny worm escapes into 
 the horse's mouth. It is carried into the stomach 
 with the food, and gives no pain to the horse. 
 When in the stomach it fixes itself to the coats by 
 means of a set of hooks, and scoops out a little 
 hole into which its head is plunged ; and there it 
 remains until the early part of the summer of the 
 following year, feeding on the secretions of the 
 stomach. It becomes an inch in length, breaks off 
 from its hooks, and passes out with the dung. 
 Once on the ground the grub digs down, becomes 
 a chrysalis, and in a few weeks changes into a 
 perfect gad-fly. 
 
 CYCLONES. 
 
 Cyclone is the name given to a revolving stonn 
 of wind anywhere, but practice has appropriated 
 this title to storms of this kind occurring in the 
 east. The same phenomenon in the western world 
 is called, if on a large scale "hurricane," if on a 
 smaller scale " pampero," or " tornado." 
 
 A revolving storm is simply this : — A stratum of 
 hot air, made hot by contact with the hot earth, 
 and by the power of the sun, is overlaid by a stra- 
 tum of cold air. From the greater weight of the cold 
 air the natural tendency of the hot air to rise is 
 restrained ; some cause, local or general, forces an 
 intermixture of the two strata at a particular point, 
 and establishes the nucleus of the storm. The 
 intermmgling of the unwilling elements gives rise 
 to considerable atmospheric disturbance, and the 
 particles of air rubbing against one another get 
 whirled round in a direction suggested by the 
 motion of the earth at the place of disturbance ; 
 the example set is followed by adjacent blocks of 
 air ; and great bodies of wind, co-extensive with the 
 masses of hot and cold air, arc set in motion, 
 taking their revolving rate and direction from the 
 heat or nucleus of the storm. The storm acquires 
 strength in rolling, until the whole attains a circular 
 velocity in severe hurricanes of 100 miles an hour. 
 But the storm travels, that is to say it has two 
 motions, its own circular motion at the rate just 
 mentioned, and also the direct motion of the wind 
 prevailing outside its circumference at the time. 
 The whole body of the storm is moved along, still 
 
 gyrating, at the rate of the general wind, and is 
 borne in whatever direction that wind may be going. 
 In the West Indies hurricanes almost always begin 
 from some point eastward of Barbadoes, whence 
 they proceed in a north-westerly course till the 
 resistance of the land and their own exhaustion 
 cause them to flag. Their track is marked by 
 ravages the most terrible and desolating it is pos- 
 sible to imagine. The great hurricane which swept 
 the West Indies in August, 1831, destroyed, in the 
 space of seven hours, in Barbadoes alone, no less 
 than 1,477 persons, and many thousands of pounds' 
 worth of property ; it carried destruction the most 
 complete along a course of 2,500 miles, and was 
 not checked till it had made its way some distance 
 inland on the continent of America. Trees of 
 seventy feet in height were uprooted, houses were 
 blown down as if made of cardboard, men were 
 blown through the air to some distance, and guns 
 in the forts were dismounted and flung down many 
 yards away from where their carriages stood. The 
 tremendous force of the wind piled up the waters 
 so that they stood in a heap in Carlisle Bay, and 
 ships that had been anchored half a mile from 
 the landing-place were floated and driven half a 
 mile inland to be put down in cane fields, or in 
 what had been cocoa-nut groves. Storms of 
 some violence are not unfrequent in the West 
 Indies, but hurricanes of great fury are specially 
 remembered, and people take them for chronolo- 
 gical guides, speaking of what happened in such 
 a year after "the wind." 
 
 The premonitory signs of a hurricane are a 
 stifling heat, a lurid appearance in the sky, fitful 
 puffs of wind, a sickly look about the sun, moon, 
 and stars ; sometimes an atmospheric condition 
 that makes all light-coloured objects look blue, 
 and a falling barometer ; the last being the surest 
 sign of all. There are certain months called 
 "hurricane months," viz., August, September, and 
 October, during which revolving storms may be 
 expected, and so reasonably expected that under- 
 writers have made a practice of charging a higher 
 rate of insurance for ships going to or returning 
 from the West Indies during those periods than at 
 other times. 
 
 One remarkable fact in connection with these 
 circle-going storms is the shifts of wind which occur 
 at the places over which they pass. The wind 
 that has been blowing furiously from south-west 
 suddenly drops, there is a treacherous lull for a 
 few minutes, and then, just as the inexperienced 
 in such things fancy that the tyranny is overpast 
 there comes a dreadful blast from the north-east, 
 with power equal to that which so lately made 
 signs of giving up its wild sport. A cross sea is 
 set up, in which it is scarcely possible for a ship to 
 live, and in the trough of which, if she be allowed 
 to fall into it, she must inevitably be drowned. 
 
300 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 CURIOUS LOCKS AND KEYS. 
 
 The antiquity of locks and keys testifies to the 
 insecurity which has prevailed among mankind 
 from the earliest ages of the world, as proved by 
 the discovery of an actual wooden lock of Egyptian 
 manufacture. Mr. J. Chubb states this to be the 
 most ancient lock of whose form and construction 
 there is any certain knowledge, and which has been 
 in use upwards of 4,000 years. When the P'rench 
 invaded Egypt, at the beginning of the present cen- 
 tury, they found among the ruins around the cata- 
 combs this lock, very in- 
 genious in its construction, 
 whi ch was as follows : — 
 A staple was fixed to the 
 side of the door, a bolt at 
 a right angle with it, three 
 loose pins in the upper 
 part of the staple, drop- 
 ping into three consecutive 
 holes, so as to fasten the 
 door when the bolt was 
 pushed to its full extent. 
 The key, a straight piece 
 of wood, having at one 
 end three pegs, corre- 
 sponding in position with 
 the movable pins or tum- 
 blers in the lock, was in- 
 seited lengthwise through 
 the shot or hole formed in 
 the bolt; and then the 
 pegs in the key corre- 
 sponding with the vertical 
 holes in the bolt into which 
 the movable pins of the 
 lock had dropped, lifted 
 up the said pins flush with 
 the top side of the bolt, 
 thus disengaging the 
 
 movable pins, and allowing it to be moved back- 
 ward and forward, fastening or unfastening the 
 lock. No key but that which was made for it could 
 open the lock, because from the movable pins being 
 of different lengths, the pegs in the key must be of 
 corresponding lengths, or they would not free the 
 bolt. 
 
 The evidence of the antiquity of this lock is chiefly 
 derived from the figure of one sculptured upon the 
 great temple of Karnac. By this it was proved that 
 during forty centuries the lock had undergone no 
 sensible alteration, and this lock was satisfactorily 
 shown to be the foundation upon which most of the 
 ingenious inventions of late years have been based, 
 differing only in the forms of the movable obstruc- 
 tions of the bolts, some of which act vertically, 
 others horizontally; some with a rotatory motion, 
 
 AN'CIENT KLYS, 
 
 and many others in an endless variety of ways ; in 
 short, the patent locks of our time are but an 
 adjustment of the principles exhibited in the old 
 wooden locks of the land of the Pharaohs. 
 
 Metal locks were in use at an early period. The 
 illustration on the opposite page shows an Arabian 
 padlock, and is remarkable as a specimen of 
 Arabic art, and for mechanical ingenuity. The 
 key is held in a horizontal position, and is intro- 
 duced into the lock at the aperture A ; its point, 
 marked A also, entering first. A bar of iron placed 
 behind the outer plate enters the ward of the key 
 as far as B ; the key is then raised so as to make 
 it pass the elevated parts 
 indicated by c. A pres- 
 sure is then exerted upon 
 the springs in the interior, 
 the ends of which are 
 visible at B and D; the 
 upper ward is allowed to 
 rise, and the curved bolt 
 is withdrawn from its 
 sheaths. 
 
 Locks were very well 
 known in the east at a 
 very early period. There 
 is an allusion to the com- 
 mon wooden lock in the 
 Book of Nchemiah, and 
 in Solomon's Song. 
 
 Some of the ancient 
 keys appear to have been 
 made in the shape of a 
 sickle, and not being easily 
 carried in the hand, were 
 borne on the shoulders as 
 reapers carry their sickles. 
 Mr. Syer Cuming, the 
 archseologist, has ably il- 
 lustrated the history of 
 keys. We have mentioned 
 the primitive wooden locks 
 and keys of the ancient Egyptians. Mr. Cuming 
 describes the iron keys of Egypt by examples 
 from Thebes, and points out the curious fact 
 that nearly similar specimens are met with in 
 Western Africa. After a brief notice of Greek 
 keys, attention is directed to the Roman era, and 
 a minute description given of the fixed and movable 
 locks, the dentated, piped, and broached keys, 
 and of the variously formed bows surmounting the 
 stems. Small keys were attached to finger-rings, 
 and the Roman housebreaker had his false or 
 skeleton key. The Anglo-Saxon and the Norman 
 keys were of various forms and fashions. There 
 was a superstitious belief in the magical powers of 
 the key, of its employment as an heraldic bearing, 
 and it was frequently adopted as a sign in former 
 times, being frequently used by the apothecary. 
 
POISONOUS EXHALATIONS. 
 
 301 
 
 The latch-key has been found at Salisbury with 
 other keys, at least as old as the fifteenth century. 
 The two specimens of antique metal keys are en- 
 graved chiefly on account of the elegance of their 
 ornamentation. 
 
 A ring for holding keys together appears to have 
 been the earliest as well as the best contrivance 
 for the purpose. Two objects were frequently found 
 appended to the keys of the doors of stables and 
 cow-houses, namely a perforated flint and horn, 
 the former of which was declared to be an amulet 
 to guard the creatures 
 from the attacks of 
 nightmare ; and the lat- 
 ter an emblem of Pan, 
 the protector of cattle, 
 and hence regarded as 
 a charm. 
 
 It has been proved that 
 in a patent lock, with 
 an averaged sized key 
 having six steps, each 
 capable of being reduced 
 in height twenty times, 
 the number of changes 
 will be 86,400 ; further, 
 that as the drill-pins and 
 the pipes of the keys 
 may be made of three 
 different sizes, the total 
 number of changes 
 would be 2,592,600. In 
 keys of the smallest size 
 the total number would 
 be 648,000, whilst in 
 those of the largest size 
 it would be increased to 
 7,776,000 changes. 
 
 A wooden Chinese 
 lock, in the possession 
 of Mr. Chubb — which 
 is very superior to the 
 Egyptian, and in fact is 
 founded on exactly the 
 same principle as the modern Bramah lock — long 
 enjoyed the reputation of being the most secure 
 lock ever invented ; for it has sliders, or tumblers, 
 of different lengths, and cannot be opened unless 
 they are all raised just to the proper height. It is 
 said that until about ninety years ago, we had no 
 lock so good as this in England. 
 
 The security of Bramah's locks depends on the 
 doctrine of combinations, or multiplication of num- 
 bers into each other, which is known to increase 
 in the most rapid proportion. A lock of five slides 
 admits of 3,000 variations, while one of eight will 
 have no less than 1,935,360 changes ; or in other 
 words, that number of attempts at making a key, 
 or picking it, may be made before it can be opened. 
 
 ARABIAN PADLOCK. 
 
 POISONOUS EXHALATIONS 
 
 Formerly there used to be a very curious but 
 cruel exhibition in Italy. There is a cave in the 
 volcanic region of Naples which can be explored by 
 men safely, but on dogs it has a very different effect. 
 When visitors came to the cave's mouth, an at- 
 tendant would bring a dog in his arms that 
 looked very miserable and was in great fear. The 
 creature was simply put down on its legs in the 
 cave, and after running about for a few seconds, 
 it would fall down ap- 
 parently dead. It was 
 then taken out, and it 
 soon recovered. But if 
 allowed to remain in the 
 cave, another dog had 
 to be obtained, for death 
 would be found to have 
 claimed the miserable 
 cur. In the island of 
 Java there are some 
 pretty dells and circular 
 valleys where trees and 
 shrubs grow vigorously ; 
 but woe be to the man 
 or beast that steps many 
 feet down into them. A 
 sensation of suffocation 
 commences, and unless 
 the traveller has the 
 nerve to turn and rush 
 out of the fatal place 
 death is sure to ensue. 
 Tigers in abundance, 
 deer and cattle leave 
 their bones on the sur- 
 face as a warning to 
 men, but at night they 
 cannot be seen, and 
 many lose their lives. 
 The same cause pro- 
 duces the death of the 
 dog in Italy and of the 
 men and animals in Java. The circular valley 
 was once the top of an active volcano, and the 
 cave is close to an extinct burning mountain. In 
 either case a gas called carbonic acid gas filters up 
 through the soil. It is heavier than air, and con- 
 sequently it cannot rise, but forms a layer just 
 above the ground ; the dog is so close to the 
 ground that when he is put down, the gas speedily 
 chokes him. In the instance of the basin-shaped 
 valley, the gas rises up far towards the edges, 
 and there may be a depth of sixteen or twenty feet 
 ' of it in the centre. 
 
 When a close charcoal stove is placed in a room, 
 and the windows and chimney are stopped up, this 
 gas is formed, and being heavy rests on the flooc 
 
302 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 As it gradually rises, anybody sleeping in the room 
 becomes covered with it, and death ensues. The 
 same kind of gas collects at the bottom of old wells, 
 and in brewers' vats. A candle will not keep burn- 
 ing in it, so the workmen always send one down, 
 and if it goes out it is clear that there is too much 
 of the vapour present for them to venture with safety. 
 When carbonate of soda or chalk are mixed with 
 water and a strong acid, this gas is set free ; and 
 effervescing soda always contains it. Water takes 
 a good deal of it into its bulk, and when charged, 
 as it is termed, with the gas, can dissolve large 
 quantities of hard rocks. It is a colourless gas 
 without any smell, but is heavier than air. 
 
 THE MANUFACTURE OF BANK-NOTES. 
 
 About the year 1819 a great outcry was raised 
 against the Bank of England for not adopting a 
 style of note which could not be imitated, so as to 
 prevent the sad sacrifice of life which at this period 
 was too common, the punishment for forgery being 
 death. The subject at last became so pressing 
 that the government appointed commissioners to 
 investigate the causes of the numerous forgeries, 
 and whether a mode could be devised whereby 
 the forging of bank-notes might be prevented. Pre- 
 vious to this investigation the directors of the Bank 
 had been endeavouring to remedy the evil, many 
 plans having been submitted to them, all of which 
 they were obliged to reject. At one time they 
 were about to adopt a curious and very costly 
 machine for printing the note on both sides so 
 exactly alike as to appear one impression, when a 
 workman came forward and showed that the same 
 thing might be done by the simple contrivance of 
 two plates connected by a hinge. The Bank placed 
 before the commissioners a hundred and eighty 
 different projects which had been recommended 
 for their adoption, and seventy varieties of paper 
 made at their manufactory by way of experiment, 
 in which almost every alteration recommended for 
 adoption had been tried. 
 
 The result of this laborious investigation was the 
 bank-note of the present day. The colour of the 
 paper is peculiar, and cannot exactly be imitated 
 by a forger except at great expense. The com- 
 bined thinness and strength of the paper are also 
 unique. The paper is made in pieces large enough 
 for two notes ; each note before it is sized weighs 
 about eighteen grains, and if then doubled it is 
 strong enough to suspend a weight of thirty-six 
 pounds. The texture of the paper is also peculiar ; 
 it has a crisp feel, invariably the same, and such 
 that bank clerks of experience can readily detect 
 forgeries by this test alone. Then the wire mark, 
 impressed in the makintj by a frame, costly to make 
 and difficult to use, is practically inimitable. Each 
 
 note has thin rough edges, uncut, not to be pro- 
 duced by any mode of cutting paper that is not 
 made expressly for the purpose. The paper for 
 printing is damped with water in the exhausted 
 receiver of an air-pump. The ink used in the plate- 
 printing is made of Frankfort black, which is com- 
 posed of the charcoal of the tendrils and husks of 
 the German grape ground with linseed oil. This 
 ink has a peculiar and very deep shade of black, 
 common black inks being tinted either with blue or 
 brown. — From Lawson's ''■History of Banking" 
 
 Wonders Revealed by Modern Science. — 
 "What mere assertion," says Sir John Herschel, 
 " will make any one believe that in one second of 
 time, in one beat of the pendulum of a clock, a ray of 
 light travels over 192,000 miles, and would therefore 
 perform the tour of the world in about the same time 
 that it requires to wink with our eyelids, and in much 
 less than a swift runner occupies in taking a single 
 stride "i What mortal can be made to believe with- 
 out demonstration that the sun is almost a million 
 times larger than the earth ? and that, although 
 so remote from us that a cannon ball shot di- 
 rectly towards it, and maintaining its full speed, 
 would be twenty years in reaching it, it yet affects 
 the earth by its attraction in an inappreciable 
 instant of time ? Who would not ask for demon- 
 stration when told that a gnat's wing, in its ordi- 
 nary flight, beats many hundreds of times in a 
 second, or that there exist animated and regularly 
 organised beings, many thousands of whose bodies, 
 laid close together, would not extend an inch ?" 
 
 Density of Bodies at Different Depths. — 
 Professor Leslie observes that air compressed into 
 the fiftieth part of its volume has its elasticity fifty 
 times augmented ; if it continue to contract at that 
 rate it would, from its own incumbent weight, ac- 
 quire the density of water at the depth of thirty-four 
 miles. But water itself would have its density 
 doubled at the depth of ninety-three miles, and 
 would attain the density of quicksilver at the depth 
 of 362 miles. In descending, therefore, towards 
 the centre of the earth, through nearly 4,000 miles, 
 the condensation of ordinary substances would sur- 
 pass the utmost powers of conception. Dr. Young 
 says that steel would be compressed into one-fourth, 
 and stone into one-eighth, of its bulk at the earth's 
 centre. However, we are yet ignorant of the laws 
 of compression of solid bodies beyond a certain 
 limit, though, from the experiments of Mr. Perkins, 
 they appear to be capable of a greater degree of 
 compression than has been generally imagined.— 
 Mrs. So7nerville. 
 
 Gun Cotton has been prepared in the United 
 States by treating nowly-prepared gun-cotton with 
 
INSIDE OF THE WORLD. 
 
 303 
 
 a saturated solution of chlorate of potash. A pistol 
 loaded with one grain of this cotton has sent a ball 
 through a yellow pine door one inch thick, at the 
 distance of twenty feet. 
 
 INSIDE OF THE WORLD. 
 
 There is abundant scope for speculative philo- 
 sophers in the matter of the condition of the interior 
 of the globe, and there are a few facts which will 
 assist any one in gaining an idea of the impossibility 
 of ever obtaining a correct notion on the subject. 
 The crust of the earth, as far as is known to geolo- 
 gists, consists of the oceans and continents, with 
 their seas and islands. The highest mountain may 
 perhaps be nearly 30,000 feet, but it is not larger 
 than a grain of sand on a globe three feet across, 
 and the deepest sea would be a very slight depression 
 on the outside. If all the mountains and hills were 
 levelled, and the whole of the land made flat, it 
 would be 1,000 feet above the level of the sea. But 
 if all the deep oceans, shallow seas, and lakes were 
 upon a level bottom, the water of the earth would 
 just be fifteen times deeper than the land is high. 
 There would be 1,000 feet of dry land, and 15,000 
 feet deep of water. But there is part of the crust 
 under the water, and some seas cover beds of earth 
 which are visible elsewhere on dry land. For in- 
 stance, the English Channel has much chalk beneath 
 it ; and the chalk of Kent, which has been raised 
 above the sea level, has many other beds of earth 
 below it, such as green sand and gault clay. The 
 whole thickness of the crust of the earth under the 
 oceans, of these and of the land, can be estimated 
 within a slight amount, for in many places the 
 different beds of the earth— the chalk, sands, oolite 
 layers, the lias, the coal formation, and the rocks 
 beneath have been tilted from their original flat 
 position upwards and sideways, so that we do not 
 no'v walk upon the upper surface, but upon the 
 edges or thickness of the strata. Every mile thus 
 walked over is a mile of depth. By adding the 
 depth of one set of tilted strata to others, the depth 
 of about twenty miles is calculated. The lowest of 
 the tilted beds or strata is well seen in Canada, and 
 geologists call them the Laurentian strata ; but they 
 are formed of sediments, rolled stones, and lime- 
 stones, and these must have come from the wearing 
 down of still older mountains and shores ; so that 
 there are strata still deeper in the crust of the earth 
 of which nothing is known. 
 
 When a thermometer is taken down very deep 
 mines, and the temperature or heat of the top is 
 noticed first of all, it will be found that as a rule 
 the heat increases one degree for every fifty feet of 
 depth. The deep wells of Crenelle, near Paris, 
 which reach down 1,800 feet, are much hotter at the 
 bottom than at the surface. Their heat increases 
 
 one degree in every sixty feet of depth. If the heat 
 went on increasing at this rate, water would boil at 
 two miles deep, and at thirty-four miles deep iron 
 would melt. In many parts of the world springs 
 come up to the surface whose water is boiling ; and 
 it must be remembered that he great agent in all 
 volcanic eruptions is steam, and that the lava 
 thrown out is nothing more than solid rock dis- 
 solved at a great depth in the earth by steam pent 
 up and intensely hot. In one eruption Mount 
 Hecla, in Iceland, threw up lava in such quanti- 
 ties that the whole bulk of it must have been as 
 large as the highest mountain in Europe. There 
 must be, then, great lakes where the steam collects 
 in the crust of the earth, so low down that the heat 
 is enough to melt iron, and they must communicate 
 with the volcanoes. When one volcano is in erup- 
 tion, either the nearest to it are quieter than usual, 
 or else all are belching forth steam and lava ; and 
 this proves that the hot lakes have a great extent 
 under the earth's surface, and that they communi- 
 cate with each other. Now, what can be the state 
 of the inside of the globe lower down than these 
 lakes.' Is it all solid or fluid? Mathematicians 
 have proved that our globe is five times heavier 
 than it would be if it were all made of water ; but 
 many of the rocks are so formed that if the globe 
 were made entirely of them, it would only weigh 
 three times heavier. If the globe were all made of 
 iron, it would be seven times heavier than the globe 
 of water ; and if it were made up of some other 
 metals, it would even be twenty-one times heavier. 
 
 From this it is considered that as the centre of 
 the earth is reached, the part under the crust 
 cannot be fluid, for the pressure of such thousands 
 of miltes of substances one upon the other would 
 make every fluid a solid. Water, if it reached down 
 only 362 miles, would be like quicksilver, and steel 
 would be compressed into one fourth of its bulk at 
 the centre of the globe. But the heat down there 
 may counteract the effects of pressure, and the kernel 
 of the globe may be a glowing fluid mass. A great 
 philosopher — Mr. Hopkins, of Cambridge — calcu- 
 lated that the solid crust of the earth was 800 to 
 1,000 miles thick, and that the rest was a liquid. In 
 this crust he supposed the lakes just mentioned to 
 be. He based his calculations on the following 
 facts. Everybody knows that the sun attracts the 
 earth, and the earth the moon, and this great body 
 attracts the earth in return to a certain extent, for it 
 draws the water more or less towards it, and pro- 
 duces the tides in the sea. Our globe is not quite 
 globular, but is slightly flattened at the top and 
 bottom— the North and South Poles — and it bulges 
 out in the middle all round : its shape is something 
 like that of an orange. Now this bulging is nearer 
 the sun and the moon than the rest of the globe, 
 and Mr. Hopkins considered that their attraction 
 would be different ir the ceritre of the world was 
 
3°4 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 fluid and not solid. The denser the substance the 
 greater the attraction. 
 
 It is, then, a reasonable supposition that the 
 crust of the earth is made up of mountains, land, 
 oceans, and flowing waters, sediments of old rocks, 
 and vast lakes containing molten rocks commu- 
 nicating with volcanoes ; that it forms but a small 
 portion of the globe ; and that all the rest is made 
 up of a mass consisting of a vast number of metals 
 and gas intensely hot and submitted to enormous 
 pressure. This globe, five times heavier than 
 water, and so hot within, is absolutely covered with 
 eternal ice and snow at its poles, and the only 
 proofs most of us have of the heat within are from 
 hot springs and volcanic eruptions. 
 
 There must have been a time when the globe, 
 generally speaking, was hotter than it is now, 
 because as it rolls along it gives off some heat to 
 space ; and if this be true, at some time, long ages 
 since, the whole world glowed with heat like any of 
 those great meteorites that are often seen far off, 
 and as the smaller shooting stars do that come 
 closer to us. What may be 
 the future destiny of the 
 world is a question preg- 
 nant with interest. There 
 are small bodies revolving 
 round the sun that s6em 
 once to have formed a 
 large one ; and certainly, if 
 ever a great crack were to 
 open out in the crust of the 
 globe, and the ocean should rush down, such an 
 evolution of steam and explosive gases would 
 result as would break up the world into thousands 
 of pieces. 
 
 SEA-CUCUMBERS. 
 
 The sea-cucumbers, or as they are known in the 
 scientific world, the holothuria, are extraordinary 
 looking creatures, which vary in size from two or 
 three inches in length, to more than a yard. They 
 bear some resemblance to a cucumber, being a long 
 worm-like cylinder open at one end. Their ex- 
 terior is rufiled with little projections, which are 
 usually armed with minute sharp hooks, by which 
 the animal can hang on to foreign bodies for a 
 few seconds. 
 
 Many of the species are able to produce from 
 their external pores a most irritating fluid, which 
 causes the hand that touches them to itch in- 
 tolerably. But the creature possesses a most 
 wonderful power : when from any cause it fears 
 death, it can eject all its teeth, its stomach, its 
 digestive apparatus, and reduce itself to a simple 
 membraneous sac. Dr. Johnston kept one of 
 these animals in an aquarium ; for some reason or 
 Other he neglected to feed it, and when after some 
 
 days he visited it, he found all its internal ap- 
 paratus thrown out on the floor of the vessel, and 
 the holothuria itself was a shrunken, dilapidated, 
 and empty tube. Yet it was alive, and in three 
 months had reproduced all its organs anew. 
 Another singular property they possess is that 
 of being able to divide themselves into two parts, 
 each part becoming a separate creature. When 
 this phenomenon is in progress, the middle of the 
 animal begins to contract, and the extremities 
 enlarge. This goes on until the centre is but a 
 thread ; at last it snaps, and forms two distinct 
 creatures, which in time furnish themselves with 
 all the necessary organs. Our fishermen throw 
 away the sea-cucumbers, which are sometimes 
 brought up in their nets, and the South-Sea Is- 
 landers cannot even look upon them without 
 loathing. But this is not universally the case. 
 The Chinese relish them greatly, and " trepang," 
 as they call the holothuria, forms a very prominent 
 article in all the Chinese markets. The great 
 trepang fishers are the Malays. The expertncss 
 with which they capture 
 the creatures is marvellous. 
 By long experience they 
 can see a trepang at a 
 depth of thirty yards. 
 They then poise a harpoon 
 made of a long bamboo, 
 and seldom or never 
 THE SEA CUCUMBER. miss their aim. To pre- 
 
 it, the fish is boiled, 
 
 pare 
 
 then beaten flat with stones, and finally dried in 
 the sun. It is said that a soup can be made with 
 it, little if at all inferior to that made from the 
 turtle. 
 
 The synapta, a peculiar genus of the holothurias, 
 is a native of the English Channel. It is a beauti- 
 ful creature, a cylinder of which seems as if it were 
 made of rose-coloured crystal, and passing through 
 this tube appear five narrow ribbons of white silk, 
 which mingling together form the head. The tis- 
 sues are finer than the thinnest gauze ; and yet this 
 creature lives on a sandy bottom, and it is gorged 
 from one end to the other with sand ; the sharp 
 angles of the grains can be seen with the naked 
 eye, and yet they do not injure the fine membranes 
 through which they pass. The synapta has also a 
 peculiar mode of meeting famine : just as a general 
 turns out of a beleaguered city all the useless 
 mouths, so does this creature cut off the useless 
 parts of its body. It effects this by first forming 
 a compression or ring, which gradually tightens 
 until all that part of the cylinder which is below 
 it drops off. A synaota has been known to con- 
 tinue this self-destruction until only the head was 
 left, and in that head resided the life, which, as soon 
 as food was supplied to it, began to reconstruct the 
 body it had so unceremoniously rejected. 
 
ROTATION. 
 
 305 
 
 ROTATION. 
 
 Possibly many of our readers have never thought 
 that it is a very wonderful thing that a top should 
 stand in a perpendicular position when spinning. 
 Let any one try to balance a peg-top upon its point, 
 and, after pronouncing the feat to be impossible, 
 spin it, and see how readily the upright position is 
 maintained ; then possibly the peculiar fact may 
 be realised. 
 
 Doubtless the velocipede will come into common 
 use as a mode of locomotion. If it be true that 
 100 miles can be travelled in a day with little 
 fatigue, there is quite sufficient reason why it 
 should be used. But the velocipede of the present 
 day is a very different machine from that with 
 which we have been for some time familiar. 
 
 Hitherto the ma- 
 chine has been a 
 light frame - work 
 with four wheels, 
 which were turned 
 by the feet of the 
 driver alternately 
 pressing down two 
 treadles attached 
 to cranks upon the 
 axles of the wheels. 
 But the velocipede 
 of to-day only pos- 
 sesses two wheels, 
 and these are in a 
 line, so that the 
 hinder wheel runs 
 in the track of the 
 former. The driver 
 sits upon a saddle, 
 a, astride the frame-work 
 axles of the wheels, and 
 
 BICYCLE VELOCIPEDE. 
 
 which holds the short 
 works the former or 
 driving-wheel, by treadles, c and d; he guides the 
 machine by the handle, e. But what keeps the 
 velocipede in its upright position, for two wheels 
 in a line are as difficult to balance as a single 
 wheel by itself? The very same power which holds 
 the spinning-top in its upright position. Of course 
 the machine must be mounted while in motion, or 
 the passenger must be supported until the motion 
 is commenced. The same force is illustrated in 
 the gyroscope, which is a heavy rim of metal round 
 an axis. When this is set in swift rotation the axis 
 will remain stationary in any position provided one of 
 its ends be supported. This strange property which 
 a revolving body possesses is called the fixity of the 
 axis of rotation, and it is the result of a general 
 law that when matter is in rotation its axis, or the 
 line upon which it rotates, remains stationary. So 
 the axes of the top, of the velocipede, and of the 
 gyroscope, all remain in their various positions in 
 defiance of the ordinary law of gravitation. 
 
 39 
 
 This is a great law, and we are much indebted to 
 it ; for it is owing to its operation that our zones and 
 the succession of our seasons remain unchanged. 
 The earth rotates on her axis, and because of that 
 rotation the position of her axis is fixed. Were 
 this not so the Esquimaux might in a few hours be 
 under a burning tropical sun, and the efforts of the 
 people in India to keep themselves cool might be 
 rendered unnecessary by suddenly finding them- 
 selves within the Arctic Circle. And so it comes to 
 pass that the earth's motion is absolutely necessary 
 to her stability. 
 
 Another of the effects of rotation is to throw away 
 at a tangent all the particles of the revolving body. 
 If, for instance, a piece of clay or putty be stuck on 
 the surface of a humming-top, when the top is spun 
 the clay will fly off. If the whole body of the top 
 
 were clay, the effect 
 would be to bulge 
 out the middle, and 
 the more rapid the 
 rotation the flatter 
 would the top be- 
 come. This is pre- 
 cisely the way in 
 which our earth has 
 been flattened at 
 the poles. The polar 
 diameter is twenty- 
 six miles shorter 
 than the equatorial. 
 Some geologists 
 have held the 
 opinion that the 
 thirteen miles of 
 matter from each 
 pole was denuded 
 or washed by the rain, and carried by the ocean 
 currents towards the equator ; but this can be 
 disproved by the astronomical effects our earth has 
 upon the moon's motion. 
 
 There is then no doubt that the rotation of the 
 earth causes the matter of which the globe is com- 
 posed to endeavour to place itself, as far as its own 
 cohesion will permit it, from the cixis of rotation, so 
 producing a flattened spheroid. If the earth rotated 
 seventeen times faster than she now does — that is, 
 if a point on the equator passed through 17,000 
 miles in an hour— the force which tends to throw 
 off bodies from the surface would be so increased 
 as to overcome the attraction of gravity, and conse- 
 quently bodies at the equator would be without 
 weight. This effect of rotation will account also 
 for the fact, that things if weighed by a spring 
 balance, are found to have less weight on the sum- 
 mit of a mountain than in the valley beneath. 
 How "the fact of the earth's rotatory motion has 
 been proved, will form the subject of a future 
 paper. 
 
3&6 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 CROWNS. 
 
 Crowns, ornaments of the head denoting imperial 
 or royal dignity, have a curious history, traceable 
 from a mere fillet, or circlet of gold, to their adorn- 
 ment with the richest jewels. The radiated appears 
 to be the earliest form of the royal cro.wn with 
 which we are acquainted. It is found upon Persian, 
 Syrian, and Greek coins, and on that of Augustus 
 and other emperors, down to the destruction of 
 the Roman empire. 
 
 The strophium, bandelet or fillet, and the laurel 
 wreath were used as crowns in very remote 
 ages. In Constantino's time the fillet of pearls 
 came into use, which the later Byzantine emperors 
 turned into a coronet. It was originally a mere 
 fillet, then a garland, subsequently stuff adorned 
 with pearls. Manuel Pateologus, crowned in 1363, 
 wore a close crown studded with pearls. 
 
 The trefoil upon the crown is thought to be of 
 Gothic introduction. We find it upon the coins of 
 Clovis and his sons, which has induced antiquaries 
 to call it the fleur-de-lis ; but the truth is, these 
 trefoils were used on Constantinopolitan crowns 
 before the time of the Franks, and afterwards 
 on those of German princes in no way allied to 
 Charlemagne. Aubrey, the antiquary, was of 
 opinion that the fleur-de-lis is really a spear-head 
 adorned, no flower of the lily kind having the 
 middle part solid. 
 
 The Iron Crown of Lombardy takes its name 
 from the narrow iron band within it, which is about 
 three-eighths of an inch broad, and one-tenth of an 
 inch in thickness. This band is traditionally said 
 to have been made out of one of the nails used at 
 the crucifixion, and given to Constantine by his 
 mother, the Empress Helena, the discoverer of the 
 cross, to protect him in battle. Afterwards it was 
 used at the coronations of the Lombard kings, 
 primarily at that of Agilulphus, at Milan, in the 
 year 591. The outer circlet of the crown is com- 
 posed of six equal parts of beaten gold, joined to- 
 gether by hinges, and set with large rubies, 
 emeralds, and sapphires, on a ground of blue gold 
 enamel. Within the circlet is the iron band 
 without a speck of rust, although it has existed for 
 more than 1,500 years. When the Emperor 
 Napoleon was crowned king of Italy (at Milan, 
 May 23rd, 1805), he placed the iron crown upon 
 his head with his own hands, exclaiming, " Dieu 
 me Pa domie, gare a. qui la louche " (God has given 
 it to me, beware who touches it), which was the 
 haughty motto attached to it by its ancient owners. 
 " Luke's iron crown " was a punishment inflicted 
 anciently on regicides, or othercriminals, in Hungary, 
 and consisted of placing- a crown of iron, heated red- 
 hot, upon the head. The Earl of Athol, who was 
 executed for the murder of James L, king of Scots, 
 was previously to his death, crowned with a hot iron. 
 
 It may be in reference to this that m Shakespeare's 
 " Richard III.," act iv. sc. i., we read— 
 
 " Oh, would to God that the inclusive verge 
 Ofgolden ract.-il that must round my brow. 
 Were red-hot steel, to sear me to the brain ! ' 
 
 Tlio Hungarian crown, worn at their accession 
 by the emperors of Austria, as kings of Hungary, 
 is the identical one worn by Stephen, 800 years 
 ago. It is of pure gold, and weighs 9 marks 6 
 ounces (14 pounds). It is adorned with 53 sap- 
 phires, 50 rubies, i emerald, and 338 pearls. 
 
 With regard to the crown used in our own 
 country, a fillet diadem of pearls appears on several 
 of the Saxon Sceattas. Similar diadems or fillets 
 adorn the heads of many of the Heptarchic kings. 
 Alfred's crown has two little bells attached ; it is 
 said to have been long preserved at Westminster, 
 and may have been that described in the Parlia- 
 mentary inventory taken in 1649. The circle, sur- 
 mounted by three small projections, first occurs 
 upon the coins of Athelstan ; on some of Edred's 
 coins the projections end in pearls. A radiated 
 cap appears first on a coin of Ethelred II., and 
 the trefoil ornament is upon a few of the coins of 
 Canute. Several varieties of arched cap and crown 
 appear upon the coins of Edward the Confessor. 
 The close or arched crown, which appears on some 
 of the Confessor's coins, is used on all the types of 
 Harold, and was adopted by the earlier Norman 
 kings. On the Confessor's and the Conqueror's 
 coins we see Labels appended at each car ; these, 
 as we learn from an anecdote related by William 
 of Malmesbury, in wearing the crown, were fastened 
 by a clasp or button beneath the chin. William I. 
 wore his crown on a cap adorned with points 
 and leaves alternately, each point being tipped 
 with three pearls, while the whole crown was sur- 
 mounted by a cross. William Rufus discon- 
 tinued the leaves. On the coins of Stephen and 
 Henry 11. the open crown, with fleur-de-lis, 
 appears. Henry III. was crowned with a plain 
 circle of gold, in lieu of the crown, which had been 
 lost with the other jewels and baggage of King 
 John, in passing the marshes of Lynn, on the 
 Wash near Wisbech. Edward III. wore his crown 
 ornamented with ^omis fleurs-de-lis alternately, and 
 fleurs-de-lis and crosses, as at present. Selden 
 had read that Henry V. was the first of them who 
 wore the arched crown, and in a window of Ockholt 
 manor-house, in Berkshire, 1465, there certainly 
 remained, till within a few years, the arms of 
 Henry VI. and his queen, Margaret of Anjou, in 
 separate coats, both surmounted by the arched 
 barred crown ; from Henry VII. downward, this 
 arched crown, with the globe and cross, has been 
 continued. 
 
 " St. Edward's crown " was made in imitation 
 of the ancient crown said to have been worn by 
 the Confessor, and kept in Westminster Abbey 
 
THE VENDETTA. 
 
 307 
 
 till the beginning of the civil war in England, when, 
 with the rest of the reralia, it was seized and sold. 
 A new crown was prepared for Charles II. 
 
 A magnificent crown was made for George IV. 
 with the jewels of the old crown, and jewels 
 borrowed of Rundell and Bridge, the Crown 
 jewellers. This crown was fifteen inches in height ; 
 the arches were not flat as in the former crown, 
 but rose almost to a point, and were surmounted 
 by an orb of brilliants, upon which was placed 
 a Maltese cross of, brilliants, with three fine pearls 
 at its extremities. The arches were wreathed and 
 fringed with diamonds, and four Maltese crosses of 
 brilliants surrounded the crown, with four large 
 diamond flowers intervening. On the centre of the 
 back cross was the ancient ruby, which was worn 
 at Cressy and Agincourt by the Black Prince and 
 Henry V. ; while the centre of the front cross was 
 adorned with a unique sapphire, more than two 
 inches long, and one inch broad ; and a band of 
 large diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, and rubies 
 completed this magnificent diadem. It was esti- 
 mated to be worth ^150,000, and the expenses upon 
 it, preparatory to the coronation of George IV., 
 amounted to ^^50,000 or ^60,000, over and above 
 the addition of the inestimable sapphire. 
 
 The state crown of Queen Victoria was made 
 for Her Majesty, by Rundell and Bridge, in 1838, 
 with jewels taken from old crowns, and others 
 furnished by the queen's command. The following 
 is a summary of jewels in the crown ; I large ruby, 
 I large broad sapphire, 16 sapphires, ii emeralds, 
 4 rubies, 1,363 brilliant diamonds, 1,273 rose 
 diamonds, 147 table diamonds, 4 drop-shaped 
 pearls, and 273 pearls. Unlike most other princely 
 crowns in Europe, all the jewels in the British 
 crown are really precious stones ; whereas, in other 
 state crowns valuable stones have been replaced 
 by coloured glass. 
 
 Odd mischances befall crowns. At the close 
 of the late Abyssinian war, the true crown of 
 King Theodore was bought at the capture of Mag- 
 dala, from a common soldier, by a Prussian officer 
 attached to the expedition, and was by him pre- 
 sented to his sovereign. His Majesty had his 
 attention drawn to Lord Napier's order, forbidding 
 the sale of articles taken by the army, and the 
 crown was forwarded to the British Government. 
 
 THE DIAMOND MILL AT AMSTERDAM. 
 
 The diamond mill is one of the most interesting 
 objects in Amsterdam. It belongs to a Jew, whose 
 son, a clever lad, obligingly conducted us through 
 the rooms, and explained the various parts of the 
 process of polishing diamonds. Four horses turn 
 a wheel, setting in motion a number of smaller 
 wheels in the room above, whose cogs, acting on cir- 
 cular metal plates, keep them in continued revolu- 
 
 tion. Pulverised diamond is placed on these, and the 
 stone to be polished, fastened at the end of a piece 
 of wood by means of an amalgam of zinc and quick- 
 silver, is submitted to the friction of the adaman- 
 tine particles. This is the only mode of acting on 
 diamond, which can be ground, and even cut, by 
 particles of the same substance. In the latter 
 operation diamond dust is fixed on a metal wire 
 that is moved rapidly backwards and forwards over 
 the stone to be cut. You are probably aware of 
 the distinction between a rose diamond and a bril- 
 liant. The one is entire and set vertically, the other 
 is divided and set horizontally. The largest dia- 
 monds are reserved for roses, which always rise in 
 the centre to an angle ; the smaller are used as 
 brilliants, and have a flat octagon on the upper 
 surface. — Elliot's " North of Europe." 
 
 THE VENDETTA. 
 
 The manners and customs of savage tribes often 
 seem wonderful to people like ourselves, but there 
 are to be found in communities professedly civilised 
 many things equally strange and even barbarous. 
 A striking instance of this is seen in what is known 
 in the islands of Corsica and Sardinia, where it 
 flourishes, as the vendetta, or the vengeance. The 
 term is used to designate what has long been an 
 established usage in these islands — namely, the 
 taking personal revenge for the shedding of blood, 
 instead of leaving retribution to the ministers of 
 the law, according to the fundamental principle and 
 practice of civilised society. 
 
 The origin of the vendetta may be traced to those 
 rude and troubled times when civilisation, in the 
 proper sense of the term, was only dawning in 
 Europe. Even in what are called the middle ages, 
 the great families of Italy were constantly engaged 
 in this kind of conflict, and the same thing was 
 seen in our own land, in the incessant feuds which 
 ravaged the Scottish Border. 
 
 The Italians are proverbially a revengeful race, 
 and to this fact it is, no doubt, chiefly owing that 
 this open and recognised practice of personal 
 vengeance lingered longer in Italy than elsewhere, 
 and that its vestiges are still to be found in the 
 vendetta of Corsica, and the adjacent island of 
 Sardinia, whose inhabitants by descent are purely 
 Italian. In Sardinia especially, the pnactice pre- 
 vails at the present hour ; but in Corsica it has lately 
 been kept in check by the energetic measures of 
 the French authorities. 
 
 In the minds of the people of those islands the 
 vendetta is an institution held in the highest re- 
 spect. It is regarded as a paramount duty that 
 if an individual be murdered, his nearest male 
 relatives shall slay the murderer. If they cannot 
 reach him, they are bound by this immoral code of 
 
3o8 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 honour to take blood revenge upon his relations ; and 
 as this practice has been going on for many genera- 
 tions, there are always numbers of people in both 
 islands who are engaged in this deadly feud, thirst- 
 ing for blood on the one hand, and living in con- 
 stant terror of the vendetta upon the other. Some 
 have been known to live for years with their houses 
 barricaded, and never to stir out, even to their or- 
 dinary occupations, without being well armed and on 
 their guard against the enemy, who may be lurking 
 in ambush. For any amount of treachery may be 
 practised in accomplishing the vengeance, without 
 incurring the reproach or the hatred of the rest of 
 the community. Only one thing is disgraceful in 
 the eyes of a true Corsican or Sardinian, and that 
 is to leave the stain of blood without fresh blood 
 shed upon it. The women, even, incite the men to 
 follow this hateful practice, and in many cases are 
 the most active in keeping up the vendetta, by 
 reproaches against their male relatives for neglect 
 or delay in its pursuit. 
 
 It will easily be imagined what must be the re- 
 sult of such a fearful institution in secluded com- 
 munities, such as are found in these islands. Both 
 the French and the Italian governments liave made 
 many efforts to reach and punish offenders, but 
 their search after culprits was frequently ineffectual, 
 the murderers betaking themselves to the moun- 
 tains, where they resorted to brigandage for sub- 
 sistence, as they dared not show themselves where 
 the officers could reach them. The sympathies of 
 the people were, as a rule, with the criminals pur- 
 sued ; and their places of concealment, if known, 
 were rarely divulged to the authorities. The chief 
 result of these attempts to suppress the vendetta 
 was, therefore, to cause the islands to be infested 
 with bandits, while the murderous institution 
 flourished as vigorously as ever. 
 
 Corsica was becoming positively uninhabitable, 
 when the French government, under the present 
 Emperor, determined, with its accustomed vigour, 
 to adopt a more effectual measure of repression. It 
 decided upon disarming the entire population, and 
 making it a punishable offence for any of the in- 
 habitants to be seen carrying a gun. Shooting of 
 any kind, even by visitors, was strictly forbidden in 
 Corsica, unless a special licence had been granted 
 by the authorities. Tliese regulations are in force 
 at the present time, and the result has been to give 
 an effectual check to the system. No doubt the 
 old spirit still slumbers, but it may be hoped that 
 the continued exercise of the same firm rule will in 
 time destroy this terrible habit. 
 
 In the island of Sardinia the Italian authorities 
 have never yet ventured upon the same decided 
 step, and therefore the vendetta goes on very much 
 as it has done from time immemorial. Other in- 
 fluences, however, are at work to alleviate it, and 
 although they cannot effecttially cope with it, they 
 
 are yet occasionally productive of good. Only a 
 few weeks back the Italian papers contained a 
 curious account of the extinction of a blood feud 
 in the island. In the village of Agiuo two hostile 
 bodies, who for more than two years had been per- 
 secuting and murdering each other, agreed, ap- 
 parently through the persuasion of the priests, to 
 forget their animosities and join hands in friend- 
 ship. The two hostile families, we are told, entered 
 the church simultaneously, amidst the ringing of 
 bells and the acclamations of the people, and 
 ranged themselves on opposite sides, one party, 
 more than sixty in number, along one wall of the 
 building, and the rest, fifty-four in number, on the 
 other. The cure then pronounced a discourse on 
 mutual forgiveness, which produced a deep sensa- 
 tion, and the hostile parties, moved even to tears, 
 threw themselves into each other's arms, promising 
 a permanent reconciliation. After leaving the 
 church the two families separated for a short time, 
 and then met again at the house of the cure, where 
 the friendly compact was confirmed in presence of 
 the authorities. 
 
 BOHEMIAN GLASS. 
 
 I N the manufocturo of glass the Bohemians followed 
 the Venetians, and the art is still largely practised 
 in that country. The glass works of Bohemia at 
 this day afford subsistence to more than 30,000 
 persons. 
 
 Glass was first used by the Italians for cameos 
 and intaglios, by impressing it while warm into a 
 mould of tripoli, the glass being sometimes baked 
 with plaster of Paris ; thus are made copies of 
 antique gems. The more ancient productions were 
 only partially enclosed, as we see in the picture 
 of a duck described by Winckelmann, or the ara- 
 besque mosaic in the British Museum, the paint- 
 ings being neither completely enclosed nor pro- 
 tected from the air. Among the celebrated ancient 
 specimens is the Naples Vase, exhumed at Pompeii, 
 1839. It has white enamel figures upon a dark blue 
 transparent ground, being raised or embossed out 
 of the white exterior coating by first-rate engravers, 
 probably Grecian artists working in Rome, about 
 70 years after the Christian era. The mode of 
 casing, or placing two or more coats of glass upon 
 each other, and then cutting out the design, is very 
 curious. 
 
 There is also a beautifully engraved glass vase, 
 by a Bohemian artist, the subject from Lc Brun's 
 painting of the conquest and final overthrow of the 
 Persians at the battle of Arbela, by Alexander the 
 Great. For depth of workmanship and artistic 
 execution, as a modern intaglio engraving, this vase 
 was unrivalled. We have been informed that the 
 artist lost his sight through its execution. 
 
ST. MARK'S, VENICE. 
 
 309 
 
 WESTERN FRONT OF ST. MARK S. 
 
 ST. MARK'S, VENICE. 
 
 Of all the wondcM's of architecture in the city of 
 Venice, the church of St. Mark is by far the 
 greatest, both for beauty of conception and beauty 
 of design. To describe it in detail would require 
 a volume, it will therefore be the object of the 
 present article to point out, with its origin, its chief 
 characteristics. 
 
 St. Theodore was originally venerated as the 
 patron saint of the city, and before the ninth 
 century, a church on the site now occupied by 
 St. Mark's was erected to him, this churcli after- 
 wards serving as chapel to the adjoining Ducal 
 Palace. But when, in 82S, the Venetians acquired 
 the body of St. Mark, and deposited it in the 
 church of St. Theodore, they thought it only right 
 that a relic so prized should have a suitable rest- 
 ing-place. Accordingly, the old church was de- 
 stroyed and a new one built to St. Mark, who 
 thenceforth became the patron saint of the city. 
 This church, however, was destroyed by fire in 
 976. It was partly rebuilt on a much grander 
 scale by the Doge Pietro Orseolo, and the work 
 
 I was carried on for nearly 100 years, the main 
 part of the building being finished in 1071, and 
 consecrated between 1084 and 1096. It was again 
 injui-ed by fire in 1 106, but repaired, added to, 
 and embellished by each successive generation, 
 so that it bears the marks of several successive 
 schools of architecture. The principal part of the 
 building of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth 
 centuries is Byzantine, of which the chief charac- 
 teristics arc the round arches to the doors and 
 windows, and the cupolas ; the Gothic pinnacles, 
 upper archivolts, and window-traceries were added 
 to the exterior at the close of the fourteenth 
 century, as well as the great screen and various 
 chapels in the interior, while the restored mosaics 
 are of the seventeenth century. 
 
 The great characteristics of the building, are the 
 exquisite proportion of all its parts, its incrustation 
 with precious marbles, and the number of its varie- 
 gated columns. It has been computed that there 
 are in the exterior and interior more than 500 pillars. 
 The early builders of Venice were unable to procure 
 marble and stone in sufficient quantities to make 
 their buildings entirely of these materials, they 
 
310 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 therefore built them of brick, and the marbles and 
 other precious stones, obtained from Constantinople 
 and other cities, were split up into layers and 
 fastened on to the surface of the bricks, the surface 
 of the layers being often wrought with delicate 
 tracings and sculpture. St. Mark's is the finest 
 example of this method of treatment. There are 
 five doors, all of bronze, in the principal or western 
 facade fronting St. Mark's place — the grand en- 
 trance, under a succession of beautifully sculptured 
 arches, being in the middle. From this the arches of 
 the two doors on each side, v/ith those of the two 
 porticoes, one at each extremity of the fa9ade, are 
 arranged in a gradually lessening proportion. The 
 archivolts of these are wonderfully carved, while 
 the recesses above the doors are filled with mosaics. 
 On each side of the doors arc clusters of pillars — 
 in two ranges — of porphyry, alabaster, deep green 
 serpentine, and fine marble, with their capitals 
 richly sculptured. Above the arches of the doors 
 is a round-arched balustrade running round the 
 whole of the exterior of the building. 
 
 At different intervals in the walls are inserted 
 tablets of ancient sculpture. From the lower 
 storey of the building springs another series of 
 white arches, edged with scarlet flowers, shelter- 
 ing another series of Scriptural mosaics, their crests 
 bearing statues of saints, and at their sides other 
 canopied statues ; and above these again spring- 
 ing from the roof, are seen five white domes, a 
 large one rising over the middle of the Greek cross, 
 which is the plan of the church, and a smaller 
 one at each of the four sides. In the archivolt of 
 the large upper central arch, is a sculptured lion of 
 St. Mark, in a blue field covered with golden stars. 
 In the interior of the building a vestibule extends 
 along the whole of the front, the roof covered with 
 mosaics, and supported by many columns of pre- 
 cious marble. The choir is divided from the nave 
 by a rich screen of fourteenth century work. The 
 principal pillars that carry the nave and transepts 
 are fourteen in number, each a single block of 
 white alabaster veined with grey and amber, fifteen 
 feet in height, and six feet two inches in width. 
 The walls are sheeted with alabaster, the roof and 
 the interior of the domes are filled with mosaics on 
 a golden ground, while the floor is a tesselated pave- 
 ment of many colours, and of varied and fantastic 
 designs. 
 
 The interior of the church is but very dimly 
 lighted by small apertures like stars set in the 
 domes of the roof, and by the silver lamps that 
 are always burning before the altars of the numerous 
 chapels, so that it is difficult, even after the eye 
 has become accustomed to the "dim religious 
 light," to examine minutely all the wonders that 
 the place contains, so beautifully described by 
 Mr. Ruskin in the following passage from the 
 " Stones of Venice." " Under foot and over head, 
 
 a continual succession of crowded imagery, one 
 picture passing into another as in a dream : forms 
 beautiful and terrible mixed together ; dragons 
 and serpents, and ravening beasts of prey, and 
 graceful birds, that in the midst of them drink 
 from running fountains and feed from vases of 
 crystal : the passions and the pleasures of human 
 life symbolised together." 
 
 Our illustration, taken from the celebrated Piazza 
 of St. Mark, will serve to give the reader an idea 
 of the wonderful beauty of the exterior of this 
 building, though it cannot show the marvellous 
 beauty of the mosaics, and the colouring with which 
 the cathedral is so profusely decorated. 
 
 THE YARD MEASURE. 
 
 Every one is acquainted with the nature and 
 utility of the yard measure. It is the British stan- 
 dard of length, regulating all other measures, and 
 consequently is the foundation of business transac- 
 tions and professional operations of many different 
 kinds. But its high utility is entirely dependent 
 upon its fixed and uniform dimensions. It would 
 be in the greatest degree inconvenient and unsatis- 
 factory if a yard in one part of the kingdom meant 
 something difterent to the measure which passed 
 under the same name in another, or if the least 
 variation were found in the yard measures of 
 different parts. Hence it is necessary to have 
 some authoritative standard by which the dimen- 
 sions of the yard shall be accurately adjusted, and 
 according to whfch the legality or otherwise of any 
 measurement may be determined. 
 
 Many curious particulars are connected with the 
 formation of this authoritative standard of the 
 country ; and few persons unacquainted with the 
 facts would have any idea of the interest which 
 thus attaches to so common an object as the yaixi 
 measure. In our early history disputes often arose 
 in the measurements of cloth, &c., and frauds were 
 frequently committed. To check them Henry I. 
 ordered a standard yard to be made and kept at 
 Winchester, and decreed that it should be of the 
 length of his own arm. This was a rough and 
 ready mode of settling the matter, which presents 
 the greatest contrast to the formation of a standard 
 measure at the present time. The disadvantage 
 attending it was that, in the event of the standard 
 being lost or destroyed, it would be next to impossible 
 to construct another of precisely the same dimen- 
 sions. To avoid any such difficulty, a scientific 
 basis has been taken in modern times for the forma- 
 tion of the standard yard measure. Plainly stated, 
 this basis is the length of a clock penduhtm, which 
 vibrates seconds of time in the latitude of London. 
 This may appear to some to be a simple rule, by 
 which the standard may be determined with com- 
 
ANIMALCULES. 
 
 3" 
 
 parative ease ; but on the contrary, it is a matter 
 requiring the most minute and accurate research, 
 which only astronomers and mathematicians of the 
 highest attainments are competent to undertake. 
 
 Down to the year 1824, the standard yard of the 
 country was a rod which had been deposited in the 
 Court of Exchequer in the time of Ehzabcth. All 
 measures intended for general use were brought to 
 be examined by an officer of the court, placed 
 parallel with the standard, and stamped with 
 certain marks if found correct. Their use for 
 business purposes was thenceforth legal. By an 
 Act of Parliament passed in 1824, this old standard 
 was superseded by another which had been con- 
 structed under the auspices of the Royal Society in 
 1760. The act provided that " The straight line or 
 distance between the centres of the two points in 
 the gold studs in the brass rod, now in the custody 
 of the Clerk of the House of Commons, shall be the 
 original and genuine standard of a yard ; and the 
 same straight line, the brass being at the tempe- 
 rature of 62° of Fahrenheit's thertnometer, shall 
 be the unit or only standard measure of exten- 
 sion." The provision as to the comparison with 
 the thermometer was founded on the well-known 
 fact of the extension or contraction of metals at 
 different temperatures, and illustrates the nicety 
 with which all circumstances relating to the stan- 
 dard of measure are considered and adjusted. 
 
 This standard was destroyed by the fire which 
 consumed the Houses of Parliament in 1834, and a 
 commission was appointed to replace it. It had 
 previously been enacted that " If at any time here- 
 after the imperial standard yard shall be lost, or in 
 any manner destroyed, defaced, or otherwise injured, 
 it shall be restored by making, under the directions 
 of the Lords of the Treasury, a new standard yard, 
 bearing the proportion to a pendulum, vibrating 
 seconds of mean time, in the latitude of London, in 
 a vacuum, and at the level of the sea, as 36 inches 
 to 39'i393 inches." 
 
 The labour of reconstruction in accordance with 
 this enactment was commenced by the celebrated 
 astronomer, Mr. F. Baily. He died in 1844, leaving 
 his researches to be continued by Professor Sheep- 
 shanks ; and on the death of the latter gentleman 
 in 1855, the work was taken up and completed by 
 the present Astronomer Royal, Mr. G. B. Airy. 
 Nearly a quarter of a century thus elapsed between 
 the destruction of one standard and the completion 
 of another to succeed it. 
 
 The new standard yard measure is deposited in 
 the Houses of Parliament, and authenticated copies 
 of it at the Court of Exchequer, the Royal Mint, 
 the Royal Society, and the Royal Observatory at 
 Greenwich. 
 
 The French standard measure of length is the 
 metre, which is founded on the measurement of the 
 earth from the pole to the equator in the meridian 
 
 of Paris. This distance is divided into 10,000,000 
 equal parts, one of which parts is taken as the unit 
 of length, and called a metre from the Greek metron, 
 a measure. 
 
 ANIMALCULES. 
 
 If some water is taken out of a pond, from near the 
 edge or close to the flags and grasses which grow 
 close to the side, it will usually be found to contain, 
 during the summer months, a number of large 
 globular animalcules. A common magnifying 
 glass will just distinguish some specks which 
 appear to move very slightly, but a good micro- 
 scope proves that these small points are animalcules 
 in the form of transparent orange-shaped masses. 
 Each consists of a fine membrane covered with 
 lace markings, and at the edge there is a delicate 
 fringe of moving hairs (cilije) which causes the 
 animalcule to turn round and round, and oc- 
 casionally to move forwards. These hairs are 
 found all over the globular mass, and they move 
 with great rapidity, so that the animalcule, which 
 is called a Volvox, is never still. Inside the mem- 
 brane, and as it were in the middle of the creature, 
 are several others of the same shape, and possess- 
 ing the same lace-like markings and fine cilia;. 
 These revolve and turn about, and there may be 
 even others inside them having the same construc- 
 tion and power of motion. They clearly float in 
 water and within each other. There is no mouth, 
 and in fact no opening whatever in the skin of the 
 Volvox, and a very highly magnifying power shows 
 that the outside membrane is without any passage 
 by which food can get within. It shows that the 
 lace-like markings where they cross each other, 
 have small swellings, some being larger than 
 others. The smallest swellings are animalcules 
 with a delicate round body full of granules, and 
 from their outsidcs the hairs project which are the 
 cilite. Every small swelling has its animalcule 
 and two cilias, and the cross-markings between the 
 swellings are evidently the means of communica- 
 tion, for there is an extraordinary regularity in the 
 general movement of the hairs so as to produce a 
 constant and very slow twisting round of the whole 
 Volvox. Volvox is, then, a family or colony of 
 animalcules, each being independent and united 
 to the others by the fine membrane and the cross- 
 markings. When the larger swellings are examined 
 they do not .appear to be simply large animalcules, 
 but there are three, four, or more of the smaller 
 kind collected together and encircled by a layer of 
 the thin membrane. 
 
 Several specimens of the Volvox may be exa- 
 mined in a drop of water at once, and nothing 
 is more beautiful than their regularity of ornament, 
 their colour, transparency, and complexity, or more 
 wonderful than their graceful rotation. If left in 
 
312 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 a proper glass, and if fresh water is supplied, 
 the Volvox grows larger, and the single ani- 
 malcules on the cross-markings, in many instances 
 turn to those of the larger kind. The inside 
 animalcules increase in size, and after awhile the 
 outside membrane bursts and 
 breaks up. Each of the round 
 creatures within becomes a Volvox 
 and bursts in its turn. But the 
 animalcules of the outside mem- 
 brane, those formed at the cross- 
 markings, escape from the colony 
 and swim about as free crea- 
 tures. They are then recognised 
 as round, green creatures, very ac- 
 tive, and not at all like the old 
 Volvox. During some time they 
 remain in this shape, but at last 
 they begin to enlarge, and their 
 outside skin begins to have hairs 
 upon it and lace-like markings. 
 Finally they turn to the great globular animalcules. 
 The rapidity with which the Volvox grows, and 
 produces animalcules within it and on its outside, 
 which are again to become like the parent, is one 
 of the most wonderful things in nature. The 
 membrane which connects 
 the colony together is as trans- 
 parent as an air-bubble, and 
 it is quite evident that the sepa- 
 rate animalcules on the cross- 
 markings have a tiny stomach 
 and mouth. Sometimes when 
 plants which grow in the 
 water are examined in the hot 
 weather, large pieces of soft 
 stuff like jelly may be found 
 upon them, looking very much 
 like frog spawn without the 
 dark part. Some of these 
 pieces are as large as an 
 apple, but usually they are of 
 the size of a small pea. The 
 stuff looks like pure white 
 of egg ; it is quite trans- 
 parent, slightly tinged with 
 green, and when placed on a 
 piece of glass it drains away. 
 But the microscope reveals 
 that it is a colony of innu- 
 merable animalcules, each creature being about 
 the hundredth part of a line in thickness, and the 
 tenth of a line in length. The centre of the mass 
 is hollow and contains water, and the animalcules 
 are embedded in the jelly. Their numbers are 
 enormous, for they are placed in close rows, one 
 over the other. They have movable hairs upon 
 one end, and they produce a great whirl amongst 
 the small grains and minute animalcules which 
 
 THE VOLVOX GLOBATOR. 
 
 THE VORTICELLA, 
 
 come near them. There are about 9,216 of these 
 creatures in the space of a square line, and in the 
 space comprised by a mass measuring an inch in 
 height, breadth, and length, or a cubic inch as it 
 is called, there are about 8,000,000. 
 
 When the jelly-like mass breaks 
 up, each animalcule has a sepa- 
 rate existence, and in time may 
 become a small transparent body, 
 which as it grows produces the 
 young within it, and which at 
 last is like the original colony. 
 But other animalcules, fish, and 
 birds prey upon the jelly, and 
 very few of its animalcules come 
 to maturity. If they were not 
 thus prevented from increasing, 
 all the ponds in the world would 
 soon become choked up by them. 
 One of the most wonderful 
 anim.ilculcs is in the shape 
 of a wine-glass with a bell mouth. The 
 bottom of the body is attached by a long 
 thread to substances in the water, and the 
 rim is covered with the long hairs called cilias. 
 Several round grains are seen in the inside 
 of the body, which is very 
 transparent, and inside the 
 delicate thread there is one 
 long muscular fibril. When 
 the hairs begin to move, the 
 creature stretches its thread 
 out and anchors. As soon 
 as it cannot move any more 
 the hairs produce a whirl- 
 pool all round the rim of 
 the glass-shaped body, and 
 the minute particles in the 
 water, and sm.ill animalcules 
 of different kinds arc guided 
 into the creature's stomach. 
 When too large a piece comes 
 in contact with the hairs, 
 the thin fibre in the thread 
 pulls the body back violently 
 and curls itself up like a 
 spiral spring, or in cork-screw 
 fashion. After awhile the 
 animalcule sets its cilia: at 
 work again, and the spiral 
 shape of the thread is undone. When the animal- 
 cule is well nourished it begins to split in two, and 
 each division becomes a separate creature. If the 
 thread should happen to break the animalcule must 
 go forward until checked, and it is very common 
 to see them swimming about without this attach- 
 ment. After awhile they seem to lose it altogether 
 and to become fixed before producing anothT 
 elastic cable. 
 
OPIUM-EATING. 
 
 31- 
 
 OPIUM-EATING. 
 
 Probably more than half the human race live in 
 the constant use of opium as a stimulant and 
 narcotic. In Eastern countries it is almost uni- 
 versal, and people find means to procure a small 
 portion of the drug, if they can barely obtain 
 sufficient food to prolong existence. Some, like 
 the Turks, eat it, or swallow it in the form of 
 pills ; others, like the Chinese, smoke it ; while 
 in European countries, where its use is far less 
 common, it is mostly taken liquid, as in laudanum. 
 Opium is procured from the unripe fruit, or 
 
 and seems to expand the mental faculties ; but this 
 temporary elevation is followed by a corresponding 
 period of depression. As it is taken in larger 
 quantities, and it becomes necessary to increase 
 the dose to produce the same effect, the digestive 
 organs suffer, the energies of mind and body are 
 weakened, until at last stupefaction and vacuity 
 are the characteristic conditions of the opium-taker, 
 after his first excitement has passed away. In 
 excessive quantities it seems to destroy the mental 
 faculties, and to reduce its wretched votary to the 
 lowest state of misery, ending at last in premature 
 death. It is rarely that a man habituated to the 
 
 OPIUM-SMOKERS. 
 
 heads, of the common or white poppy {Papaver 
 somiiiferum) ; and the usual way of collecting it is 
 to make incisions in the skin of these heads while 
 they are still on the stalk, when there oozes from 
 them a creamy juice, which becomes hardened on 
 exposure to the air. This is afterwards scraped 
 from the heads and made up into small cakes. 
 The culture of the poppy for this purpose is an 
 important branch of industry in India and in 
 Asiatic Turkey. China alone imports from India 
 opium to the value of ten millions sterling per 
 annum, although it produces large quantities at 
 home. 
 
 The narcotic effects of opium are occasionally 
 of high utility in medicine, lulling pain, producing 
 sleep, &c. But under ordinary circumstances, the 
 use of opium as a stimulant is invariably attended 
 with effects injurious in proportion to the quantity 
 taken. In small doses it excites the nervous system 
 
 40 
 
 use of opium is able to break from his infatuated 
 indulgence. In our own country, Coleridge and 
 De Quincey, both opium-eaters, have left on re- 
 cord, in glowing language, their experience of the 
 effects of this exciting but pernicious drug, and 
 the difficulty they had to encounter in their deter- 
 mination to renounce it. 
 
 As regards the general effects of opium, the 
 picture given by Dr. Madden, in his " Travels in 
 Turkey," affords perhaps the best illustration : — " I 
 commenced with one grain. In the course of an hour 
 and a-half it produced no perceptible effect. The 
 coffee-house keeper was very anxious to give me an 
 additional pill of two grains, but I was contented 
 with half a one ; and in another half-hour, feeling 
 nothing of the expected reverie, I took half a grain 
 more, making in all two grains in the course of 
 two hours. After two hours and a-half from the 
 first dose, my spirits became sensibly excited ; 
 
314 
 
 THE WORLD OF WOxNTDERS. 
 
 the pleasure of the sensation seemed to depend on 
 a universal expansion of mind and matter. My 
 faculties appeared enlarged ; everything I looked 
 at seemed increased in volume ; I had no longer 
 the same pleasure when I closed my eyes which I 
 had when they were open. It appeared to me as 
 if it was only external objects which were acted on 
 by the Imagination, and magnified into images 
 of pleasure : in short, it was ' the faint, exquisite 
 music of a dream' in a waking moment. I made 
 my way home as fast as possible, dreading at every 
 step that I should commit some extravagance. In 
 walking, I was hardly sensible of my feet touching 
 the ground ; it seemed as if I slid along the street, 
 impelled by some invisible agent, and that my blood 
 was composed of some ethereal fluid, which rendered 
 my body lighter than air. I got to bed the moment 
 I reached home. The most extraordinary visions 
 of delight filled my brain all night. In the morning 
 I rose pale and dispirited ; my head ached ; my 
 body was so debilitated that I was obliged to 
 remain on the sofa all day, dearly paying for my 
 first essay in opium-eating." 
 
 •So far as to the effects of a single dose ; but the 
 condition of the confirmed opium-cater is thus de- 
 picted by another writer : — " A total attenuation of 
 body, a withered yellow countenance, a lame gait, 
 a bending of the spine, frequently to such a degree 
 as to assume a circular form, and glassy, deep- 
 sunken eyes betray him at the first glance. The 
 digestive organs are in the highest degree dis- 
 turbed ; the sufferer eats scarcely anything. His 
 mental and bodily powers are destroyed ; he is 
 impotent. His torments, when deprived of the 
 stimulant, are as dreadful as his bliss is complete 
 when he has taken it. After long indulgence he 
 becomes subject to nervous pains, to which opium 
 itself brings no relief. He very seldom attains 
 the age of forty if he have begun the practice 
 early." 
 
 The excitement of opium acts differently on per- 
 sons of different constitution, and individuals of 
 different race. The apathetic Turk shows little 
 sign of its influence ; the Malay under it often be- 
 comes a raving and dangerous madman. 
 
 Lord Macartney describes as follows an effect of 
 opium often witnessed among the people of Java:— 
 " The Javanese, under an extraordinary dose, be- 
 come frantic as well as desperate. They acquire 
 an artificial courage, and when suffering from mis- 
 fortune and disappointment, they not only stab the 
 objects of their hate, but sally forth to attack in like 
 manner every person they meet, till self-preservation 
 renders it necessary to destroy them." As they 
 run they cry/^ Amok / amok/" meaning, "Kill! 
 kill !" and hence the term which has become 
 adopted into English usage, " running amuck " at 
 anything. 
 There is no reason to believe that the use of 
 
 opium for private consumption is large in England, 
 but it is a frequent ingredient in " cordials " and 
 "balsams," which are sold for children, and its 
 effects in that form are most pernicious. 
 
 The illustration represents three opium-smokers 
 one of whom has already succumbed to the 
 soporific effects of the drug, while the other two 
 are in the earlier stages of enjoying it. 
 
 THE MARQUIS OF WORCESTER'S 
 INVENTION OF THE STEAM-ENGINE. 
 A COMPENDIOUS statement of facts, with its elabo- 
 rate notes and references, drawn up by Mr. Benet 
 Woodcroft, of the Patent Office, may be considered 
 to set at rest the claim of Edward Somerset, the 
 second Marquis of Worcester, to the invention of 
 the steam-engine. In his " Century of Inventions," 
 written in 1655, lost, re-written, and published in 
 1663, appears the first published account of his 
 invention, which Mr. Woodcroft describes as " the 
 marquis's fire-engine, or water-commanding engine ; 
 an elementary steam-engine ; a modern name 
 applied to an old invention, previously known as a 
 fire-engine, and afterwards as an atmospheric 
 engine." There is every reason to believe that the 
 MS. of 165s contained the same or a similar account 
 of the marquis's " water-commanding engine " to 
 the one printed in 1663. This year, in May, he 
 obtained an Act of Parliament for the sole use of 
 his invention, and, according to its requirements, he 
 would have to deposit a model of his invention. 
 The same year (1663), the French traveller, Samuel 
 Sorbiere, saw the same engine at work at Vauxhall ; 
 and Lord John Somerset, the marquis's eldest 
 brother, was living at Vauxhall in 1664. Cosmo 
 III., Grand Duke of Tuscany, saw the engine at 
 Vauxhall in 1669 ; and Walter Travers, a Roman 
 Catholic priest, writes in reference to it in 1670 
 — " Its existence must also have been known to 
 Dr. Thomas Sprat, F.R.S., who criticised Sorbiere's 
 'Book of Travels' in 1665, and also to the 
 Hon. Robert Boyle, F.R.S., to whom Dr. Hooka 
 sent the marquis's ' Definition ' of his invention. 
 The celebrated Dr. Robert Hooke, F.R.S., who, 
 early in 1667, went to see the engine, wrote to 
 Boyle on the subject. Lord Brercton is named by 
 Dr. Hooke as having made a bet that the invention 
 would not answer. The Earl of Lotherdalc was 
 written to in 1660 by the marquis, with a copy of 
 his ' Definition.' The marquis's widow, the Dow- 
 ager Marchioness of Worcester, re-married, and 
 died in 1681, to whjch time the engine itself, or 
 models, or drawings, no doubt were carefully pre- 
 served." 
 
 The marquis died in 1667, and it is related that 
 the model of his engine was placed in his coffin, or 
 in the family vault in Raglan Church, where he was 
 
ANTIQUARIAN CURIOSITIES. 
 
 315 
 
 interred. There is another story that the model 
 was deposited in the Tower of London, but there is 
 no foundation for either of these anecdotes. 
 
 His son and heir, Henry Somerset, first Dulce of 
 Beaufort, died in 1699. It was not until five 
 months after the dulce's death tliat Thomas Savary 
 exhibited the model of his alleged invention before 
 the Royal Society in 1699. 
 
 Of the hundred inventions described in the 
 marquis's " Century of Inventions," the last three 
 may justly be considered as the most important ; 
 and if to this we add another, No. 68, says Mr. 
 Partington, they appear to suggest nearly all the 
 data essential for the construction of a modern 
 steam-engine. 
 
 Mr. Woodcroft, as the working chief of the 
 Patent Office, has accumulated a very considerable 
 amount of information on the origin of inventions, 
 and has made an interesting discovery respecting 
 the confidence felt by the Marquis of Worcester in 
 the ultimate success of his engine. He was so poor 
 during the Protectorate that a document still in 
 existence, signed by Oliver Cromwell, requests the 
 Treasury to pay him ^3 weekly. Charles I. had 
 given him a warrant for the sum borrowed from 
 the marquis, of ;^40,ooo ; and on the restoration of 
 Charles II., that sovereign is said to have offered 
 him two estates in lieu of the money. But, accord- 
 ing to one of the patent rolls, the marquis preferred 
 to take back one tenth " royalty," then due to the 
 king on the eventual profits of his patent. 
 
 Antiquarian: Curiosities. 
 
 —   — 
 
 The Sirloin Table. — There is now, or was 
 lately, at Friday Hill House, in the parish of Ching- 
 ford, Essex, the oak table upon which King Charles 
 knighted the loin of beef. The house is a large 
 building, containing more than thirty rooms, and is 
 in a dilapidated state, but has lately been repaired. 
 Report has it that it was originally a hunting seat 
 of Queen Elizabeth. The table is thick, and has 
 a clumsy appearance, is made of English oak, and 
 from the effects of time is a little decayed. Some 
 of the knots of wood have been lately taken out, 
 and pieces of oak of the same age neatly let into it, 
 and the top newly polished. 
 
 A Very Stale Loaf.— The antiquary may be 
 gratified with the sight of a loaf of bread upwards 
 of 600 years old. It was included in a grant of the 
 crown in the reign of King John, and has remained 
 with the writings of the estate in the Soar family, 
 of Ambaston, in Derbyshire, ever since. A cor- 
 respondent says he has seen and handled it, at 
 intervals, during the last fifty years, and finds no 
 alterations, except what may have arisen from the 
 pilfering of a few crumbs by the curious. — Not- 
 tinghamshire Review, August, 1838. 
 
 Origin of High Pews.— Bishop Burnet com- 
 plained that the ladies of the Princess Anne's 
 establishment did not look at him while preaching 
 his " thundering long sermons," as Queen Mary 
 called them, but were looking at other objects. He 
 therefore, after much remonstrance on this impro- 
 priety, prevailed on Queen Anne to order all the 
 pews in St. James's Chapel to be raised so high that 
 the fair delinquents could see nothing but himself 
 when he was in the pulpit. The princess laughed at 
 the complaint ; but she complied when Burnet told 
 her that the interests of the church were in danger. 
 The whim of Bishop Burnet was imitated in many 
 places which had not been pewed in this fashion 
 before. — Strickla7id's "Lives of the Queens" 
 
 Origin of Blind Man's Buff.— This favourite 
 sport of childhood and youth is of French origin 
 and very high antiquity, having been introduced 
 into England in the train of the Norman con- 
 querors. Its French name, " Colin Maillard," was 
 that of a brave warrior, the memory of whose ex- 
 ploits still lives in the chronicles of the Middle Ages. 
 In the year 999 Liege reckoned among its valiant 
 chiefs, one Jean Colin. He acquired the name of 
 Maillard from his chosen weapon being a mallet, 
 wherewith in fight he used literally to crush his 
 opponents. In one of the feuds whic^ were of per- 
 petual recurrence in those times, he encountered 
 the Count de Louvain in a pitched battle, and, so 
 runs the story, in the first onset Colin Maillard 
 lost both his eyes. He ordered his esquire to take 
 him into the thickest of the fight, and, furiously 
 brandishing his mallet, did such fearful execution 
 that victory soon declared itself for him. When 
 Robert of France heard of these feats of arms he 
 lavished favours and honours upon Colin, and so 
 great was the fame of the exploit that it was com- 
 memorated in the pantomimic representations that 
 formed part of the rude dramatic performances of 
 the age. By degrees the children learnt to act 
 it for themselves, and it took the form of the fa- 
 miliar sport. The blindfolded pursuer, as, with 
 bandaged eyes and extended hands, he gropes for 
 a victim to pounce upon, seems in some degree 
 to repeat the action of Colin Maillard, the tradition 
 of which is also traceable in the name, blind man's 
 buff. 
 
 The Order of the Horse-shoe.— Oakham, 
 in Rutland, is remarkable for an ancient custom 
 still in vogue, that every peer of the realm, the first 
 time he passes through that town, shall give a horse- 
 shoe to nail upon the castle gate. If he refuses, 
 the bailiff of the manor is believed to have the 
 power, by right of this ancient usage, to stop the 
 coach and take a shoe from one of the horses. 
 This is called the " Order of the Horse-shoe," and 
 it is common for the donor to have a large one 
 made, with his name engraved on it, and often in 
 gilt. The gate of the old castle is completely 
 
3i6 
 
 THE WORLIJ OF WONDERS. 
 
 studded with shoes presented in conformity with 
 this custom. Over the judge's seat in the assize 
 hall, is one of very curious workmanship. 
 
 A COAL FOREST. 
 
 That the hard stony substance coal should have 
 anything in common with wood, except that they 
 both easily burn, seems at first sight very impro- 
 bable. It is nevertheless true that they difler very 
 little except in appearance ; that their properties are 
 nearly the same ; and that, indeed, coal was ori- 
 ginally formed of wood and other vegetable matter. 
 
 True coal is found associated with some of the 
 older rocks of the crust of the earth, and so 
 abounds in one series of them as to give to it the 
 name of the Coal Measures. The earth has seen 
 many changes since the rocks of these measures 
 were laid down as mud or sand at the bottom of 
 lakes and seas. And these changes have left in- 
 delible records in the rocks of the earth. An 
 extensive group of deposits was added to the older 
 or Primary rocks, and the whole of the immense 
 thicknesses of sand, clay, and lime, which form the 
 Secondary and Tertiary periods of geologists, have 
 been deposited since the plants of the Coal period 
 flourished on the surface of the earth. In tracing 
 back the history of vegetation through these various 
 deposits, as shown by the remains of the plants 
 preserved in them, we get an unbroken series 
 exhibiting the changes that have taken place in 
 converting soft wood into the hard stony substance 
 coal. The peat mosses which are now forming on 
 the surface of the earth are composed of the de- 
 composing remains of the vegetation which but 
 recently flourished on the places where they occur. 
 With a little care the different plants can be suffi- 
 ciently separated from the decaying mass to deter- 
 mine what they are. A considerable change has 
 taken place in their appearance. They have 
 become dark in colour and friable. But the oak, 
 alder, and fir can easily be identified as similar to 
 trees now growing in Britain. A further step 
 towards coal is found in the tertiary brown coal of 
 Germany, in which the form and structure of the 
 plants are still very obvious, but the substance is 
 harder, and more like stone. And then in the jet 
 and secondary coal of Yorkshire and the North of 
 Scotland, we have a substance intermediate between 
 the brown coal of Germany, and the true primary 
 coal. All these different substances — wood, peat, 
 brown coal, jet, and true coal, when subjected to 
 examination by the chemist, by means of the 
 retort, yield similar products, and are found to 
 differ chiefly in the amount of oxygen which has 
 been given off from the older specimens, and 
 in the smaller bulk into which they have been 
 compressed. 
 
 The substance of the coal, although entirely com- 
 
 posed of vegetable matter, seldom contains frag- 
 ments that can be recognised. These abound in 
 the beds above and below the coal itself. The 
 coal always rests on a bed of fine mud changed 
 into stone, and called shale. I'his is generally 
 much lighter in colour than the other shales of 
 the series, and it abounds in a fossil named Siig- 
 maria, from the rfUmber of dots or pits all over 
 its surface. This very common fossil was long 
 believed to have been a water-plant, which, when 
 it died, sank down into the mud, and was there 
 buried and preserved. It is now known to be the 
 roots of the great trees whose remains have chiefly 
 formed the coal which rests on the shale, in which 
 these roots are still embedded. They were large 
 fleshy roots, and gave off numerous long cellular 
 rootlets from the pits, with which they are com- 
 pletely covered. The soft structure of the rootlets 
 and their great number, would enable the trees to 
 withdraw a large amount of moisture from the wet 
 soil in which they grew. 
 
 The trees to which the Stigmaria belonged, had 
 a very singular aspect. They were straight, simple, 
 or branched stems, growing to a height of from fifty 
 to eighty feet, entirely bare throughout the greatest 
 portion of their length, but densely covered on the 
 upper part with very long and slender leaves. 
 The bare portion of the stem was marked with 
 parallel flutings, and the elevated flattened ridges 
 were ornamented with the impressions of the fallen 
 leaves, which, as they were very regular, both in 
 their form and arrangement in each species, gave 
 rise to the name Sigillaria, by which the fossils are 
 known. The trees had an appearance similar to 
 that of the immense leafless cactuses of America, 
 except that, instead of spines or hairs, the fossil 
 bore true leaves. From this resemblance some 
 naturalists have believed them to have been ancient 
 cactuses, but the structure of the stem, and es- 
 pecially of the fruit, proves most conclusively that 
 they occupy a much humbler place in the vegetable 
 kingdom, and are true Cryptogams. The fruits 
 which are preserved in the coal measures are very 
 rarely found so connected with plants as to indi- 
 cate the particular species to which each kind be- 
 longed. Only one observer has hitherto detected 
 the fruit of Sigillaria connected with the foliage 
 and stem. He found it to consist of several small 
 roundish cases, borne on the somewhat enlarged 
 bases of the leaves. These cases did not contain 
 seeds but spores, and the structure and arrange- 
 ment of the spores show that these remarkable 
 trees are very nearly related to the small creeping 
 plants called club-mosses, found on our mountains. 
 The Sigillaria lived not only in the clay below 
 the coal, but found also a suitable soil in the in- 
 creasing mass of decaying vegetable matter which 
 subsequently formed the coal. When, from a change 
 in the level of the surface of the land or other 
 
A COAL FOREST. 
 
 317 
 
 Lci'iii'v^outiroo 
 Calatuitls. 
 
 A COAL FOREST. 
 
3i8 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 cause, the coal was submerged, and gradually 
 covered with mud or sand, these trees stood erect 
 and were surrounded by the mud or sand. They 
 withstood decomposition until several feet of the 
 deposit was formed. These short trunks in the 
 roof shale of a coal mine are a source of serious 
 danger to the miner, for when the coal is removed 
 from below, the bed containing them dries to some 
 extent, and the trunks, sometimes two yards in 
 diameter and several feet high, easily separate from 
 the rock because of the layer of coal which sur- 
 rounds them, and often fall on the workmen. 
 
 The Lepidodendron was as abundant as the Si- 
 gillaria, and though nearly related to it, it had a 
 very different appearance. The stem was covered 
 with beautiful markings, arranged spirally, and was 
 repeatedly branched like our ordinary forest trees. 
 The leaves were short and flat, and the fruit was a 
 cone produced at the end of the branches. Although 
 as large as the cones of many fir trees, it has all the 
 characteristics of the small cones of the club-moss. 
 This tree grew to a height of fifty to seventy feet. 
 
 The aspect of the abundant fossil known as Cala- 
 mitis was very different from that of the other 
 plants associated with it, and of any tree in our 
 forests ; but it exhibited at that early period of the 
 earth's history the form and appearance of one of 
 our humble marsh plants, the cquisetum, or horse- 
 tail. It had a tall, slender, smooth stem, marked 
 on the lower naked portion with rings of pits from 
 which branches had fallen. The branches were 
 given off at intervals in rings or whorls, and these 
 again branched and re-branched in the same way. 
 The leaves were needle or wedge-shaped, and ar- 
 ranged also in whorls. The fruit was borne at the 
 ends of the branches, and agreed in the most minute 
 particulars with those of the horsetail. 
 
 These three types of plants formed the principal 
 trees of the coal period. The dense damp forests 
 in which they flourished had a very different aspect 
 from anything to be seen on the earth at the present 
 day. But the plants themselves have very near 
 allies, from which they differ chiefly in the great 
 size to which they attained, and the necessarily 
 more highly organised stems they possessed. Ferns 
 are the only Cryptogams which reach the size of 
 trees at the present day ; but it is remarkable that 
 the ferns which abounded in the coal period were 
 generally humble plants, only in one or two cases 
 having a stem of any length, while on the other 
 hand the small club-mosses and horsetails of our 
 day attained at that early period a size that equals 
 or even surpasses the trees of our forests. 
 
 The animals which most abound in the coal mea- 
 sures were inhabitants of the water, and breathed by 
 gills ; besides these a few air-breathing animals have 
 been found, such as insects and lizards. One of the 
 largest of these lizards has been introduced into the 
 landscape — the Archegosaurus, or primeval lizard. 
 
 oitb^rs of i;afunxl Pbtarir. 
 
 A Wonderful Floating Sn.'^il.— There is a 
 small snail which is so fond of the sea that it never 
 comes to land, and it builds such a capital boat for 
 itself and its eggs that whilst large ships are sink- 
 ing and steamers are unable to face the storm, it 
 tosses about in perfect safety. The httle snail is of 
 a violet colour, and is therefore called lanthina ; it 
 has a small shell, and there projects from the under 
 part of the body a long tongue-like piece of flesh. 
 This is the raft, and it is built upon most scientific 
 principles, for it has compartments in it for air. 
 It is broad and the air compartments are under- 
 neath, so that it cannot capsize. Moreover, the 
 snail knows how to stow away its cargo, for the 
 oldest eggs, and those which hatch the soonest are 
 placed in the centre, and the lightest and newest 
 on the sides of the raft. The lanthina fills its own 
 air compartments by getting a globule of air under- 
 neath its head ; the body is then curved downwards 
 beneath the raft, and the head being tilted on one 
 side, the air rushes up and fills the spaces. It 
 feeds on a beautiful little jelly-fish which has a flat 
 raft-like form, with a pretty little sail upon it, and 
 they congregate in multitudes when the sea is calm. 
 Sometimes specimens are washed upon the south- 
 western coasts of England, and when they are 
 handled they give out a violet d>T;. 
 
 Waterton. — Some forty years ago, Mr. Water- 
 ton, when travelling in South America, had an 
 adventure which was then received with incredulity. 
 This was his riding on the back of a hving alligator. 
 But the truth of it is attested by Mr. Verbckc, of 
 British Guiana, who, when travelling on the Upper 
 Essequibo River, fell in with a half-caste Indian, 
 who had been the steersman of Waterton's 
 canoe, and confirmed the truth of the statement, 
 he himself being present at the capture of the 
 alligator. 
 
 Animal Life at Great Depths in the Sea. 
 — Sir Jolm Ross, in many of his soundings, found 
 living sea-worms, or Annelids, at depths varying 
 from 192 to i,CKX> fathoms. At the depth of Soq, 
 fathoms, he found a beautiful Caput Medusa, en- 
 tangled on the sounding-line, which is still in the 
 British Museum. It measured two feet in length 
 when fully expanded. 
 
 Ape'.s Nest.— M. du Chaillu discovered that the 
 bald-headed ape, Shiego Mbouve, builds a nest 
 from fifteen to twenty feet from the ground, in the 
 branches of trees, which stand apart from others, 
 and have no limbs below that on which the nest is 
 placed. Our traveller could scarcely persuade 
 himself that human hands had not built the nest, 
 so perfect was its construction, and impervious to 
 rain ; yet the ape never occupies a nest more tlian 
 eight or ten days. 
 
THUNDER-STORMS. 
 
 319 
 
 THUNDER-STORMS. 
 
 Thunder-storms may be fairly classed with hurri- 
 canes and earthquakes, among the most appalling 
 of all the convulsions of nature which are presented 
 to our senses. When we come to look into them 
 more closely, we find that their cause is easily dis- 
 covered, and that the laws which govern them are 
 well defined. 
 
 The rain which falls in tropical countries is 
 almost always accompanied by thunder. Boussin- 
 gault assures us that in South America, close to 
 the equator, an observer gifted with very delicate 
 hearing would perceive the thunder rolling con- 
 tinuously about him. In Abyssinia, D'Abbadie, after 
 four years' experience, gives 4io'6 as the annual 
 average number of storms. Many of these are, 
 however, only of very short duration, and they 
 occur principally in the summer. The usual time 
 at which the storms occur is in the afternoon, just 
 after the hottest period of the day. Captain Cald- 
 cleugh says of Rio Janeiro, " Formerly, it was usual, 
 in forming parties of pleasure, to arrange whether 
 they should take place before or after the storm." 
 D'Abbadie, out of 1,909 storms, only observed 
 twenty-two between midnight and eleven o'clock in 
 the morning. Thunder-storms are much rarer in cold 
 climates ; the four Russians who were compelled 
 to spend six years on an island near Spitzbergen, 
 only heard thunder once during the whole period. 
 These storms are less common in Ireland than 
 in England, because the weather there is cooler 
 in summer than it is here ; and Sir John Herschel 
 tells us that they are far rarer in Cape Colony, 
 than in Natal, because the former is a dry district, 
 the latter well watered. 
 
 Ever since Franklin, in 1752, flew a kite during 
 a thunder-storm, and drew sparks from a key tied 
 on the end of the string, the fact of the pheno- 
 menon being electrical has been recognised. The 
 effects of lightning on the human system are all 
 reproduceable in kind, though happily not in 
 degree, by means of strong electric shocks. Only 
 a year after Franklin's discovery, the first noble 
 victim fell to the resistless power of the lightning 
 flash. Professor Richman, at St. Petersburg, had 
 erected an apparatus for experimenting on the 
 question. He saw a thunder-storm coming on, 
 went home, and on entering his study, went over 
 to the conductor of the machine, when a ball of 
 fire leaped to his head and he fell dead to the 
 ground. Long before this time, at Duino Castle, 
 on the Adriatic, experiments of the nature of 
 Franklin's had been performed. A bar of iron was 
 placed in an upright position, and whenever a 
 storm appeared to be coming on, the sentinel on 
 duty was bound to present to its end his iron 
 halbert. If a spark passed from one to the other, 
 the alarm bell was sounded. 
 
 Electrical effects of a very remarkable nature 
 have been observed on mountains, just before a 
 storm. In 1762, Saussure, Pictet, and Jallabcrt 
 were upon the Brevin, in Switzerland, and they 
 observed flashes darting from their bodies, attended 
 by a crackling sound. Jallabert heard a buzzing 
 sound about his hat, which had a gold band ; on 
 placing it on his companions' heads they heard 
 the same sound, and sparks were obtained from it. 
 After loud thunder and heavy rain the storm 
 passed off, and with it the remarkable charge of 
 electricity in the air. 
 
 The greatest experimenter on atmospherical 
 electricity was Mr. Crosse, who had a number of 
 conductors erected in his park, in the west of 
 England, connected by wires with an apparatus 
 in his house. During a severe storm he has ob- 
 served a continuous stream of fire passing from 
 the knobs at the end of his machine, while the 
 windows of the room in which it was placed 
 vibrated constantly, as if every pane must be 
 shattered. 
 
 Lightning, whenever we see the actual flash, is 
 usually forked, as the fluid finds its way along the 
 particles of air which afford it the readiest passage, 
 and these do not lie in a straight line. Sheet 
 lightning is only the reflection of a storm at such 
 a distance that the thunder cannot be heard. The 
 reason of the rolling of thunder is to be sought for 
 in the clouds, which produce the echoes. Two 
 gentlemen were out once in a thick cloud, in Swit- 
 zerland, on one of the mountains. They chanced 
 to fire a shot, and were surprised to hear a roll 
 like the noise of thunder. On repeating the experi- 
 ment with the like result, they went on till they 
 got out of the cloud, and then no echo followed the 
 report. 
 
 Thunder-storms always arise from the mixture of 
 cold and wann air, and accordingly, when they come 
 on during a hot summer's day we sec them work 
 up against the wind, being actually caused by a 
 cold wind forcing its way into the warm air near 
 the earth's surface. The thunder-clouds are, how- 
 ever, seldom close to the ground, but drift clear 
 over the summits of the highest mountains. Many 
 travellers tell us that they have seen thunder-storms 
 below them when they were high on the mountain 
 sides, but on inquiry it will always almost be found 
 that the clouds were seen on adjacent mountains, so 
 that their height above the valley has been probably 
 miscalculated. Professor Dove one day ascended 
 the Brocken in a thunder-storm, and was greeted 
 on reaching the inn at the summit, by a party who 
 had gone up some hours sooner, and who assured 
 him that the storm had been under their feet. The 
 professor pointed to the ground outside the inn, 
 which was soaked with rain, and asked whether 
 the rain had come upwards, or had fallen from 
 clouds above them. Lightning, however, does 
 
320 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 sometimes ascend, and a melancholy occurrence at 
 Malvern, some forty years ago, was clearly proved 
 to have been caused by it. A party took refuge 
 from a storm in a hut roofed with iron, on a 
 hill-side. A gentleman standing at the door, 
 saw a ball of fire coming towards him along 
 the ground, it knocked him down, killed two of 
 the party in the hut and seriously injured the 
 others. 
 
 We have said that thunder-storms arc caused 
 by the mixture of two different currents of 
 air ; this shows us that the air must be in 
 motion, or that there must be wind. In fact, 
 serious squalls with hail-showers are among the 
 inost common accompaniments of a summer storm. 
 The severe storms of August 19th, 1867, and of 
 May 28th, 1868, were both preceded a few hours 
 by a sudden gale on the west coast. The French 
 have long recognised that the barometer falls 
 slightly before such a storm, so that its approach can 
 be foretold with some certainty, while the adoption 
 of lightning conductors has enabled us to some 
 extent to protect builditigs and ships from its effects. 
 
 THE HEAVIEST WATER. 
 
 The wonder is, not that we die but that we live ; 
 for life seems strung upon so many threads, and 
 each so frail that if we know the threads and 
 their frailty we cannot help trembling even in life. 
 But how is the wonder heightened when we may 
 say this of a world ; that even the very habitability 
 of our country is dependent upon what may well 
 be called, in comparison to the other vast laws, a 
 mere thread. 
 
 Each of our readers must be well aware of the 
 universal law that heat expands all bodies, and 
 of necessity, that cold contracts them. Every- 
 day life is full of illustrations of the working 
 of this law. There is not a wind that blows 
 which is not caused by the heated and expanding 
 air in some locality rising, while the cooler and 
 denser atmosphere rushes in to fill its place, and 
 so the wind blows. 
 
 The wearied traveller in vain tries to sleep 
 in the train, for as often as he rests his head 
 against the woodwork of the carriage, so often 
 does the jolting wake him. "Why cannot they 
 make the rails dove-tail into each other ? " he 
 asks, again and again. But the great law forbids ; 
 for, if the iron rails touched each other, the first 
 warm day each would expand a httle, and in many 
 miles yards would be added to the line ; so the 
 rails would rise from the sleepers and no train 
 could run with safety. 
 
 In every large structure of metal allowance has 
 always to be made for the expansion and contrac- 
 tion due to a change of temperature. At page 195 
 of our work an example is cited of the practical use 
 
 which has been made in straightening crooked 
 walls by the powerful contracting force of cooling 
 iron. To this otherwise universal law there is but 
 one exception— apparently so small, so insignificant 
 in itself, and yet our existence depends upon it- 
 water disobeys the law, but only for the short space 
 of 7i deg. Fahrenheit, or nearly one-thirtieth of the 
 alteration of temperature between the boiling and 
 freezing of water. 
 
 Suppose we have a long tube of water in a room, 
 the temperature of which is that of an ordinarily 
 mild day, about 60 deg. Fahrenheit, and suppose we 
 have the means of causing the temperature of the 
 room to fall gradually till the freezing point of water 
 is reached, which is 32 deg. Fahrenheit. The water 
 in the tube will gradually contract, obedient to the 
 great law, until it reaches the temperature of 37 j deg. 
 Fahrenheit, and then, instead of still contracting, 
 as every other liquid in the world would have done, 
 it begins to expand, and continues to do so until 
 it reaches the freezing point and turns to ice. Thus 
 we see that at the temperature of 37^ deg. the 
 water occupied the smallest possible space, or, in 
 other words, the water had reached its point of 
 maximum density, or of greatest heaviness, and 
 that ice, having a larger bulk weight for weight 
 than this water, therefore swims. Suppose this 
 had not been the case, and that the great 
 contracting law had been permitted to carry 
 on its work : ice would then have been heavier 
 than water and would have sunk. The summer's 
 sun would never have been able to melt the 
 winter's work, and each succeeding winter would 
 have added to the last season's ice, and the 
 accumulation would have proceeded until at 
 length England would have been an icebound 
 and uninhabitable land. 
 
 But more wonderful still, as light traverses 
 a transparent medium of a different density 
 to that through which it has passed, its course 
 is changed, and the alteration in its path is 
 more marked the denser the new body. Now 
 should we not expect to find, that since the 
 water at 37J deg. had reached its greatest 
 possible density, that its refractive power on the 
 light could not be increased ? But strange to 
 say, although the water in its expansion has 
 been disobedient to the law, yet light seems to 
 have excused the deviation, and its own refraction 
 goes on increasing as though the ordinary law were 
 being obeyed and the water were still contracting 
 and becoming more dense. 
 
 There cannot, in the whole range of science, be 
 produced a stronger proof that this world has an 
 Omniscient Director. We stand as we look at the 
 little isolated fact — so small, so seemingly insignifi- 
 cant — and we can only wonder at the hand which 
 rescued the water from obeying his own great law 
 to the detriment of the world. 
 
VOLCANOES UNDER WATER. 
 
 321 
 
 EFFECT OF THE ERUPTION OF VESUVIUS UPON TllF. SEA. 
 
 VOLCANOES UNDER WATER. 
 
 In November, 1867, a volcano suddenly began to 
 show signs of activity beneath the deep sea of the 
 Pacific Ocean. There are some islands nearly 
 2,000 miles to the east of Australia called the 
 Navigator's Group, and there had been no history 
 of an eruption amongst them, nor had such an 
 event been handed down by tradition. Most of 
 the islands in the Pacific Ocean are old volcanoes, 
 or are made up of rocks cast forth from extinct 
 burning mountains. They rise up like peaks through 
 the great depths of the ocean, and the top, which 
 just appears above the sea-level, is generally en- 
 circled by a growth of the coral insect. Hence they 
 are termed coral islands. These islands every now 
 and then rise higher than the sea-level, owing to 
 some deep upheaving force, and then the coral is 
 lifted up above the water, and becomes a solid rock. 
 But occasionally the reverse of this takes place, 
 and the islands begin to sink into the sea, owing 
 to a force which causes the base of the submarine 
 
 41 
 
 mountain to become depressed. Sometimes they 
 disappear. All this shows that some great disturbing 
 forces are in action at the bottom of the sea, and 
 just within the earth's crust, and that they are of a 
 volcanic nature. For some time before the erup- 
 tion, earthquakes shook the surrounding islands of 
 the Navigator's Group, and caused great alarm, and 
 when the trembling of the earth was very great, the 
 sea began to be agitated near one of the islands, 
 and vast circles of disturbed water formed. Soon 
 the water began to be forced upwards, and dead 
 fish were seen floating about. After a while, steam 
 rushed forth, and jets of mud and volcanic sand. 
 Moreover, when the steam began to rush up out of 
 the water, the violence of the general agitation of 
 the land and of the surface of the sea increased. 
 When the eruption was at its height, vast columns 
 of mud and masses of stone rushed into the air to 
 a height of 2,000 feet, and the fearful crash of 
 masses of rock hurled upwards and coming in 
 collision with others which were falling, attested 
 the great volume of ejected matter which accumu- 
 
322 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 lated in the bed of the ocean, although no trace of 
 a volcano could be seen above the surface of the 
 sea. Similar submarine volcanic action has been 
 observed in the Atlantic Ocean, and crews of ships 
 have reported that they have seen in different 
 places sulphurous smoke, flame, jets of water, 
 and steam, rising up from the sea, or they have 
 observed the waters greatly discoloured and in 
 a state of violent agitation, as if boiling .=n large 
 circles. 
 
 New shoals have also been encountered, or a 
 reef of rocks just emerging above the surface, where 
 previously there was always supposed to have been 
 deep water. On some few occasions, the gradual 
 building up of an island by submarine volcanoes 
 has been observed, as that of Sabrina in 1811, off 
 St. Michael's, in the Azores. The throwing up of 
 ashes in that case, and the formation of a conical 
 hill 300 feet high, with a crater out of which spouted 
 lava and steam, took place very rapidly. But the 
 waves had the best of it, and finally washed .Sabrina 
 into the depths of the ocean. Previous eruptions 
 in the same part of the sea were recorded as liaving 
 happened in 1691 and 1720. 
 
 In 1831, a submarine volcanic eruption occurred 
 in the Mediterranean Sea, between Sicily and that 
 part of the African coast where Carthage formerly 
 stood. A few years before. Captain Smyth had 
 sounded the spot in a survey of the sea ordered by 
 Government, and he found the sea-bottom to be 
 under 500 feet of water. On June 28, about a fort- 
 night before the eruption was visible, Sir Pulteney 
 Malcolm, in passing over the spot in his ship, felt 
 the shock of an earthquake as if he had struck on a 
 sandbank, and the same shocks were felt on the 
 west coast of Sicily, in a direction from south-west 
 to north-east. About July 10, the captain of a 
 Sicilian vessel reported that as he passed near the 
 place, he saw a column of water like a waterspout, 
 sixty feet high, and 800 yards in circumference, 
 rising from the sea, and soon after a dense rush of 
 steam in its place, which ascended to the height of 
 1,800 feet. The same captain, on his return eighteen 
 days after, found a small island twelve feet high, 
 with a crater in its centre, throwing forth volcanic 
 matter and immense columns of vapour, the sea 
 around being covered with floating cinders and 
 dead fish. The eruption continued with great 
 violence to the end of the same month. By the 
 end of the month the island grew to ninety feet 
 in height, and measured three-quarters of a mile 
 round. By August the 4th it became 200 feet 
 high and three miles in circumference ; after 
 which it began to diminish in size by the action 
 of the waves. Towards the end of October 
 the island was levelled nearly to the surface of 
 the sea. 
 
 The subiTKirine volcano must have been formed 
 by ejections under water, which collected and 
 
 attained a height of 500 feet. Then they became 
 visible, and the hill grew in breadth and height, 
 until at last a great conical mountain started from 
 the deep sea and reached upwards into the air to 
 200 feet. Shoals still exist where the mountain 
 once was, so that its base and some 400 feet of it 
 still remain under the water. 
 
 The illustration on the preceding page shows the 
 submarine volcanic action which has been observed 
 in the bay of Naples during an eruption of Vesuvius. 
 
 REMARKABLE ECHOES. 
 
 In the sepulchre of Mctella, the wife of Sulla, in 
 the Roman Campagna, there is an echo which re- 
 peats five times, in five different keys, and will also 
 give back with distinctness a hexameter line which 
 requires two and a half seconds to utter it. On 
 the banks of the Naha, between Bingen and Cob- 
 Icntz, an echo repeats seventeen times. The 
 speaker may scarcely be heard, and yet the re- 
 sponses are loud and distinct, sometimes appear- 
 ing to approach, at other times to come from a 
 great distance. 
 
 Echoes equally beautiful and romantic are to be 
 heard in our own islands. In the cemetery of the 
 Abercorn family, at Paisley, when the door of the 
 chapel is shut the reverberations are equal to the 
 sound of thunder. If a single note of music is 
 breathed, the tone ascends gradually with a mul- 
 titude of echoes, till it dies in soft and bewitching 
 murmurs. In this chapel is interred Margery, 
 the daughter of Bruce, and the wife of William 
 Wallace. 
 
 The echo at the " Eagle's Nest," on the banks 
 of Killarney, is renowned for its effective repeti- 
 tion of a bugle call, which seems to be repeated 
 by a hundred instruments, until it gradually dies 
 away in the air. At the report of a cannon, the 
 loudest thunders reverberate from the rock, and 
 die in seemingly endless peals along the distant 
 mountains. 
 
 At the Castle of Simonetta, a nobleman's seat 
 about two miles from Milan, a surprising echo is 
 produced between the two wings of the building. 
 The report of a pistol is repeated by this echo sixty 
 times, and Addison, who visited the place on a 
 somewhat foggy day, when the air was unfavour- 
 able to the experiment, counted fifty-six repetitions. 
 At first they were very quick, but the intervals were 
 greater in proportion as the sound decayed. It is 
 asserted that the sound of one musical instrument 
 in this place resembles a great number of instru- 
 ments playing in concert. This echo is occasioned 
 by the existence of two parallel walls of considerable 
 length, between which the wave of sound is rever- 
 berated from one to the other until it is entirely 
 spent. 
 
SPOTS ON THE SUN. 
 
 323 
 
 Monbcrs 0f ^niiital f iff. 
 
 — » — 
 
 A Wonderful Worm.— There is a kind of 
 sponge which grows in the depths of the Mediter- 
 ranean Sea, and in its tissues a most wonderful 
 worm is found. This Sylhs, as it is called, has a 
 blunt head, a long body, and is marked with rings 
 like other worms ; it has a number of short legs 
 sticking out from the rings and covered with bristles. 
 The worm buds like a plant, and each bud turns to 
 a worm like the parent. Hundreds of these buds 
 occur on the head and on the two legs nearest the 
 neck, and they speedily grow into long ugly things, 
 which in their turn will produce buds and new 
 crops of worms. When these budding young 
 worms are nearly full grown, the parent appears 
 to be very tired of their company, and wriggles 
 about and endeavours to move backwards so as to 
 leave its attached children behind. Considering 
 that all these worms produce eggs, which when 
 hatched become worms, and that every individual 
 produces others by budding also, there can be no 
 doubt that nature has some good reason for placing 
 a vast number of these creatures on a certain spot 
 during a short time. Probably there are many 
 fish that consume the majority of these young 
 worms before they have been a long time separated 
 from their parent. 
 
 Spider Silk. — Reaumur found that 2,304 silk- 
 worms will produce one pound weight of silk ; and 
 as he considered the work of twelve spiders only 
 equal to one silkworm, a pound of silk would 
 require the labours of 27,648 spiders. Each thread 
 of spider's web contains 5,000 separate fibres. The 
 male spiders are not workers ; so that in order to 
 get enough silk from the web that encloses the 
 eggs of the female, 55,296 spiders would have to 
 be kept. How many flies ? 
 
 SPOTS ON THE SUN. 
 
 It seems strange to say that the geography of the 
 moon, or at least of much of that portion of her 
 surface which is presented to our view, is better 
 known than that of many parts of our own earth ; 
 and yet this is quite true. Our telescopes are of 
 such power that if there were an object on the 
 moon's surface as large as the Crystal Palace, they 
 would infallibly reveal it to us, and so the astrono- 
 mer would be able, if not to " visit it," at least to 
 " give it a name, and get it at last into guide-books," 
 as Clough says in the " Bothie." Most elaborate 
 maps of the moon have been made, and it has been 
 satisfactorily proved that she herself is a solid 
 body, probably composed of rocks much like those 
 on our planet, but not provided either with water or 
 with any trace of an atmosphere. 
 About the sun's geography we know much less ; 
 
 in fact, we can hardly see the sun himself at all, for 
 the solid core is surrounded by a sort of atmosphere 
 called the " photosphere," or light-sphere, whence 
 it is, on good grounds, believed that the light and 
 heat proceed. 
 
 When we come to examine the sun by the aid of 
 a telescope, we find that all parts of the surface do 
 not give out light to the same extent, and that there 
 are certain places on it darker, and some brighter, 
 than the remainder of the disc. The former are 
 called sunspots, the latter faculce, which are always 
 associated with spots. 
 
 The first person who examined sunspots closely 
 was the illustrious Galileo, who proceeded to deter- 
 mine from them the sun's velocity of rotation on 
 his axis ; for he perceived that they moved across 
 the sun's body. However, since his time, it has 
 been shown that the spots have a motion of their 
 own ; those at the sun's equator moving faster than 
 those at his poles ; so that observations on the 
 spots alone cannot tell us the rapidity of the revolu- 
 tion of the sun's entire mass. It has also been 
 noticed that the number of these spots visible at 
 one time does not remain the same from year to 
 year, and, in fact, that about every ten years there 
 is an epoch at which they are especially abundant. 
 General Sabine has pointed out that these periods 
 of frequency of sunspots are coincident with the 
 periods of greatest magnetic disturbance on our 
 own globe. Accordingly, we see that there exists a 
 distinct and close connection between variations 
 in the appearance of the sun, and changes in the 
 physical constitution of our earth. 
 
 The interesting question now arises : What are 
 the sunspots ? and what is their cause ? The very 
 careful investigations carried on at Kew Observa- 
 tory for some years by Messrs. De La Rue, Stewart, 
 and Loewy, have thrown much light upon this 
 interesting subject. 
 
 One of the most remarkable features of the spots 
 is, that their central portion is darker than the 
 edge ; and accordingly, nearly a century ago, 
 Alexander Wilson, of Glasgow, had suggested that 
 they were pits in an envelope which surrounded 
 the sun. The results of the Kew experiments 
 seem to confirm this idea. They further go to show 
 that the facute, or bright patches, are really of the 
 nature of luminous clouds, placed, relatively to the 
 sun, above the level of the spots. These faculas 
 are generally seen behind the spot, a position 
 which they would necessarily assume if they were 
 thrown up to a greater distance from his centre, and 
 would move more slowly. The same observers 
 have shown that spots are produced below the level 
 of the sun's photosphere, while the facula; are 
 suspended in that medium. If this be admitted, it 
 seems to follow that the two phenomena are effects 
 of a vertical circulation in the gaseous matter 
 surrounding the sun, the facute being produced 
 
324 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 when a portion somewhat denser than the medium 
 m which it is suspended is raised into or above the 
 photosphere, while spots are observed when such a 
 mass is below the photospheric stratum. In fact, 
 Mr. Lockyer, one of our most dihgent sun observers, 
 has seen a facula, apparently in the act of sinking, 
 lose its brightness and gradually pass into a spot, 
 its form remaining unchanged during the process. 
 The same gentleman has been recently engaged, 
 with most brilliant success, in the investigation 
 of the constitution of the photosphere itself, but 
 on this subject we cannot enter in the limits of the 
 present paper. 
 
 The labours of Messrs. De La Rue and Stewart 
 have thrown some light on the possible causes of 
 the vertical circulation in the solar atmosphere. 
 We have already alluded to the ten-yearly periods 
 of frequency of the spots. These gentlemen have 
 discovered that there is a shorter period of twenty 
 months' duration observable in the recurrence of 
 spots, and that this coincides with the periods of 
 recurrence of the same relative position of Venus 
 as regards the sun and the earth. A similar rela- 
 tion between Jupiter and the sun is also indicated. 
 These discoveries are of the very greatest interest, 
 as they show us how intimately all the bodies of 
 our solar system are related to each other, and how 
 the slightest change in any one of them exerts a 
 definite influence on the condition of the entire 
 system, despite the great magnitude and the distance 
 from each other of the bodies which compose it. 
 
 INDIAN JUGGLERS. 
 
 The jugglers of Madras are famed all over the 
 world. A person of this description, but of a 
 hio-her native caste, a Cuddapah Brahmin named 
 Sheshah, in 1828, appeared seated in the air, 
 apparently without any support — an exploit which 
 he performed with great success. In person he was 
 a slender, middle-sized man, and had attained a 
 considerable age. He wore a long chintz gown, a 
 yellow-dyed turban, and a high waist-band. Around 
 his neck was suspended a row of large beads. 
 A person who witnessed the performance says, 
 " He exhibited before me to examine a stool about 
 eighteen inches in height, on the seat of which were 
 two brass stars inlaid, somewhat larger than a 
 dollar. He then displayed a hollow bamboo, two 
 feet in length, and two and a half inches in diameter. 
 The next article was a roll of antelope skin, four 
 inches in circumference and two feet in length. 
 The man then concealed himself in a large shawl, 
 with these three articles and a large bag. After a 
 delay of five minutes, during which he appeared 
 very busy under the shawl, he ordered the covering 
 to be taken off him, and he was discovered actually 
 sitting cross-legged in the air, but leaning his right 
 
 arm on the end of the antelope skin, which com- 
 municated horizontally with the hollow bamboo, 
 which again was connected perpendicularly with 
 the stool immediately over one of the brass stars. 
 He sat for more than half an hour, counting his 
 beads in his right hand, and as calmly as if this 
 new mode of sitting was no exertion to him. A 
 large bribe was offered to induce him to reveal his 
 mode of performance, but he declined to explain the 
 secret. It has been thus accounted for : — The 
 brass stars conceal a receptacle for a steel bar 
 passing through the hollow bamboo ; the antelope 
 skin conceals another steel rod, which is screwed 
 in the one in the bamboo ; other machinery of the 
 same kind passes through the man's sleeves and 
 down his body, and supports a ring on which he 
 sits." A small cut of this feat appears on page 326. 
 
 The bodies of some of the jugglers are so lithe 
 and supple as to resemble those of serpents rather 
 than men. Swallowing the sword is a common 
 feat with them ; others walk upon thin linen cloth, 
 stretched out slightly in the hands of four persons, 
 without ruffling it or forcing it from the grasp of 
 the holders. Some of the optical deceptions are 
 exceedingly curious, and inquirers are to this day 
 provoked to guess how plants and flowers can be 
 instantaneously produced from seeds. The Madras 
 jugglers travel to all parts of India, but it is not 
 often that the most celebrated are to be met with 
 at a distance from the theatre of their education. 
 
 An exhibition of Indian jugglers took place in 
 London from 1810 to 1815, and was very popular. 
 Upon a raised platform the chief performer took 
 his seat, and behind him sat the second juggler, 
 with an attendant boy to beat two cymbals and 
 at the same time utter an unremitting sound like 
 the clucking of a hen. 
 
 The first tricks were performed with cups and 
 balls, with great dexterity. The cups seemed en- 
 chanted ; the balls flew, they increased in number, 
 they diminished, now one, now two, now none, 
 under the cup. .A.nd now the serpent, the cobra di 
 capella, usurped the place of a small globule of 
 cork, and wound its snaky folds as if from under the 
 little vessel. During his performance the juggler 
 kept up an unremitting noise, striking his tongue 
 against his teeth, like the clack of machinery, and 
 uttering sounds as if he were repeating with incon- 
 ceivable rapidity the words " Crickery-tick," "atow," 
 " gerat-tow," &c. 
 
 The next feat was that of breaking a cotton thread 
 into the consistency of scraped lint, as used by sur- 
 geons, and reproducing it continued and entire. The 
 juggler then lays in the palm of his hand a small 
 quantity of common sand, which by rubbing with 
 his fingers he changes in colour— the colourless 
 grains become yellow ; he rubs them again — they 
 are white ; again, and they are black. 
 
 Next was a series of evolutions with four hollow 
 
INDIAN JUGGLERS. 
 
 325 
 
 GRul 1' i)l IMJIAN JUGGLERS. 
 
 brass balls, the size of oranges. His power over 
 these was almost miraculous. He caused them to 
 describe every possible circle, horizontally, perpen- 
 dicularly, obliquely, transversely; round his legs, j 
 under his arms, about his head, in small and in \ 
 large circumferences, with wondrous rapidity, and 
 keeping the whole number in motion at the same 
 time. 
 
 He then exhibited his astonishing capability of 
 balancing. He placed on his two major toes a 
 couple of thin rings, four inches in diameter ; a pair 
 of similar rings he placed on his forefingers, and 
 then he set the whole in motion, when round they 
 
 whirled, and continued describing their orbits with- 
 out cessation, as if set to work by machinery, to 
 realise the problem of perpetual motion. Throw- 
 ing himself back, the juggler then balanced a sword 
 upon his forehead, and with his mouth strung a 
 number of very small beads upon a hog's bristle, 
 which he held between his lips. All the rings 
 were kept in regular motion, the sword was nicely 
 poised, and the bead-stringing carried on, of ne- 
 cessity, in quiet. 
 
 The juggler then executed this exploit :— Upon 
 the tip of his nose he balanced a small wooden 
 parasol, from the circumference of which about a 
 
326 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 dozen of cork tassels were pendent. With his 
 mouth he inserted into eacli of these tassels a 
 quill about twelve inches long, the thickness of 
 that of the porcupine. The bases of these he placed 
 with his tongue between his upper lip and nose, the 
 rings on his toes all this time performing their cir- 
 cuits. Having put a quill into every tassel, he 
 took out the centre stick on which the parasol 
 was originally supported on the tip of his nose, and 
 it then remained balanced on the quills. Thus far 
 the -work was difficult enough, but he then under- 
 mined the supports by a cjuill at a time till only 
 three remained. Of these he took one away, and the 
 top, which resembled the roof of a pagoda, swung 
 down and hung by two, the juggler preserving the 
 balance even throughout the motion ; the last prop 
 but one was then removed, and on that one the 
 erect balance of the machine rested. 
 
 After other extraordinary performances the jug- 
 gler placed a stone of about fourteen pounds weight, 
 resembling in size and shape a Dutch cheese, between 
 his feet. With an apparently slight exertion with 
 his heels he threw up the stone, which performed a 
 
 parabola over his head from behind, alighting upon 
 the bend of his arm, where it rested. He then 
 tossed it to the same part of the other arm, where 
 it also rested, as if held by the hand ; thence he 
 threw it to various parts of his frame — to his wrists, 
 and the back of his neck. He again tossed it to 
 his arm, back again to his neck, and finally, by a 
 masterly jerk, threw the stone of fourteen pounds 
 weight round, his head/ 
 
 The famous feat of swallowing the sword closed 
 this wonderful exhibition. I5cing performed by a 
 juggler, most persons supposed there to be some 
 deception in the feat ; but this was not the case, 
 for this wonderful man actually and before your eyes, 
   palpably and fairly thrust a spit, of nearly an inch 
 in breadth and twenty in length, down his throat 
 into his belly, and there left it sticking, with the 
 handle, which was solid, and not thicker than a lady's 
 little finger, and therefore not capable of favouring 
 any trick, held by his mouth. He then drew the 
 sword from this odd scabbard, made his obeisance, 
 and the performance ended. 
 
 Consumption of Air in Activity and 
 Repose. — Dr. Radclyffe Hall makes the following 
 interesting statement with regard to the amount of 
 air we consume in repose, and at different degrees 
 of activity. When still, we use 500 cubic inches of 
 air in a minute ; if we walk at the rate of one mile 
 an hour, we use 800 ; two miles, 1,000 ; three miles 
 an hour, 1,600; four miles an hour, 2,300. If we 
 run at six miles an hour, we use 3,000 cubic inches ; 
 trotting a horse, 1,750 ; cantering, 1,500. 
 
 The Value of Labour. — Cast iron of the value 
 of ;^i sterling is worth, converted into ordinary 
 machinery, £i, ; in larger ornamented work, £\'i ; 
 in buckles and similar kinds of fancy work, ^600 ; 
 in neck chains, £i,yx>. Bar iron of the value of 
 £1 sterling is worth, in the form of knives, ^36; 
 needles, £10 ; penknife blades, ^950 ; pohshed 
 buttons and buckles, ^890 ; balance springs of 
 watches, ;£5,ooo. 
 
 Interest of Money. — Dr. Price, in the second 
 edition of his " Observations on Reversionary Pay- 
 ments," says : — " It is well known to what prodigious 
 sums money improved for some time at compound 
 interest will increase. A penny so improved from 
 our Saviour's birth, as to double itself every four- 
 teen years — or, what is nearly the same, put out at 
 five per cent, compound interest at our Saviour's 
 birth — would by this time have increased to more 
 money than could be contained in 1 50 millions of 
 globes, each equal to the earth in magnitude, and 
 all solid gold. A shilling, put out at six per cent, 
 compound interest would, in the same time, have 
 increased to a greater sum in gold than the whole 
 solar system could hold, supposing it a sphere 
 equal in diameter to the diameter of Saturn's orbit. 
 And the earth is to such a sphere as half a square 
 foot, or a quarto page, to the whole surface of the 
 earth." 
 
 RESISTLESS FORCE OF GROWING 
 TOADSTOOLS. 
 Four years ago a portion of the pavement in the 
 Goswell Road, London, was heaved out of its place 
 in a mysterious manner. Before it could be re- 
 placed, numerous toadstools made their appearance 
 in the gaping spaces between the stones. When 
 the stones were removed it was found that they 
 rested over an immense spongy mass of toadstool 
 growth, which had gone on increasing until it made 
 a way through which it could push its head into 
 the air. One of the stones raised by it measured 
 four feet by two feet, and weighed two hundred- 
 weight. A more extensive injury was done in the 
 same way some years ago at Basingstoke. Not 
 many months after the town had been paved, the 
 pavement was noticed to exhibit an unevenness. 
 
THE BRITANNIA BRIDGE. 
 
 327 
 
 which could not be accounted for. As soon, how- 
 ever, as the unevenness was sufficient to make open- 
 ings between the stones, the hidden enemy made 
 his appearance in the sh.ipe of innumerable toad- 
 stools. So completely had the spores or spawn 
 got possession of the material on which the pave- 
 ment was laid, that it had to be completely taken 
 up, and the whole town had to be rspaved. 
 
 The toadstool and its kind seem to flourish in 
 places where the light is exgluded, as in dark 
 cellars, under flagstones, and in hollow trees. 
 They require, however, the air, and a certain, 
 though it may be a small, amount of light, that 
 they may reach their perfect condition. Unless 
 they are able to produce seed, they go on develop- 
 ing this amorphous spongy mass, until it attains 
 sometimes a fabulous dimension. Every one has 
 heard of the eRormous growths of fungi in some 
 wine-cellars. A case is on record in which a cask 
 of wine, having been left without attention for three 
 years in a dark cellar, was at the termination of 
 that period found to have been borne on the sur- 
 face of a mushroom growth until it was forced 
 against the roof. The fungus, moreover, had got 
 access to the wine, and had drunk it all, living 
 upon its sugar, and so the more easily raising the 
 gradually emptying cask from the ground. Fungi 
 have, sometimes, taken possession of worked-out 
 mines, and occupied enormous spaces. 
 
 THE BRITANNIA BRIDGE. 
 
 This structure consists of two rigid tubes of iron 
 placed side by side, 9 feet apart, resting upon three 
 stupendous towers of masonry, the centre one 
 being 20 feet higher than the Monument, and con- 
 necting by a continuous double line of railway 
 the coast of North Wales with the Isle of Angle- 
 sey. Each entire tube is 1,511 feet long, originally 
 constructed in four pieces, the whole being after- 
 wards united into one. The great tubes were 460 feet 
 long, and the smaller 230 feet, united in the several 
 towers by shorter tubes which filled in the gaps. 
 They were constructed upon the beach adjoining on 
 strong timber stagings, covering nearly three and 
 a half acres, and containing upwards of 110,000 
 cubic feet of timber. This staging was liable to 
 destruction, from the falling of the red-hot rivets 
 employed in binding the plates of the tubes to- 
 gether ; and to prevent an outburst, two fire-engines 
 were kept at hand in constant readiness. The 
 level of the staging was slightly above that of high 
 spring-tides, so that the great pontoons or barges 
 intended to convey the tubes to their destinations 
 could be floated under them at the rise of the tide, 
 and lift them bodily off. 
 
 The tube is a built-up structure of wrought iron, 
 the iron being employed in the form of plates. 
 
 angles, and rivets. The four middle tubes each 
 weigh 2,000 tons, and the entire weight of all the 
 tubes, including the rails, is 10,540 tons. In their 
 construction, 83 miles of angle-iron are employed 
 for strengthening and stiffening the plates, and the 
 whole is bound together by more than 2,000,000 
 rivets, to receive which 7,000,000 holes had to be 
 pierced in the iron, of which latter there are 186,000 
 separate pieces. All these figures are on so 
 gigantic a scale that it is difficult to realise their 
 magnitude. 
 
 The mass of iron in the tubes would weigh down 
 a solid iron ball whose diameter is 45 feet, which 
 is higher than the generality of houses. Taking 
 the rivets at the average length of 3J inches, the 
 two millions employed would, if placed end to end 
 extend in a line 1 10 miles long. 
 
 The form of the tube is shown in Fig. r, which 
 represents a portion of the top and bottom floors, 
 and their connection with the side. It will be seen 
 that these floors are cclhilar, this mode of construc- 
 tion having been decided upon to gain strength, 
 after a prolonged series of experiments extending 
 over fourteen months. A slight difference exists 
 in the dimensions of the cells in the top and bottom 
 floors. Their height is the same, but the breadth 
 of the lower ones is greater, and the cells con- 
 sequently fewer. It has been proved by experi- 
 ment that the strength of the upper floor should be 
 the greater, and from it the lower floor is, as it were, 
 suspended by the sides. These latter are streng- 
 thened by the angle-irons A, A, and by a vertical 
 rib or angle-iron, B, extending from the top to the 
 bottom. The cells are made large enough to admit 
 a man, for the purpose of painting or repairing 
 them. 
 
 The furnaces for heating the rivets were forty- 
 eight in number, and each furnace could heat 
 1,000 a day. Constant practice enabled the boys 
 who attended the rivetters to throw the red-hot 
 rivets a height of thirty-three feet with almost 
 unerring precision, and about 8,000 rivets a day 
 were driven in. 
 
 The pontoons, or barges upon which the tubes 
 were floated to the towers, were 98 feet long, 
 25 feet broad, and 8 feet deep, and when loaded 
 to the water's edge would each support a weight 
 of 460 tons. They cost ^1,500 each. The floating 
 of the tubes, and the guiding them to their ultimate 
 positions below the towers, was a process of great 
 difficulty. The t^tjes in the Menai Straits run 
 furiously fast, and only a short interval elapses of 
 comparatively quiet water. One of the Anglesey 
 tubes was the first floated, and in course of piloting 
 it an eight-inch hawser snapped like pack-thread 
 under the pressure of the tide upon the pontoons. 
 One great capstan was torn bodily from its seat, 
 and the tube only arrested from being dashed upon 
 the Britannia Rock bv the spare end of the huge 
 
328 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 cable, twelve inches round, which was thus left free, 
 being seized hold of by the crowd of spectators 
 thronging the beach. 
 The tube, after having been guided into its place, 
 
 of 277 tons, and this was very evident whilst the 
 tube was being raised and depending from the 
 chains, causing it to oscillate like a pendulum 
 against the sides of the masonry. The larger 
 reposed upon the bed prepared for it above the tubes bent in the middle by their own weight, 
 reach of the tide for fifty days, during which period resting upon the ends, 12 inches ; but after all 
 the hydraulic presses and hfting-chains were being \ the tubes were connected in one length this de- 
 prepared and fitted near the summit of the towers, j flection was diminished, and the variable bending 
 Three presses were employed, one large one having \ of the tubes under the weight of the heaviest goods 
 
 a " ram " or plunger twenty 
 inches diameter, placed in 
 the Anglesey Tower, and 
 two smaller ones, having 
 each 18-inch rams, fixed in 
 the Britannia Tower. The 
 pressure of water was three 
 tons upon a circular inch, 
 and it was forced in by a 
 steam-engine of 13J horse- 
 power. These presses had 
 a " lift " of six feet, which 
 was equal to one link of the 
 suspending chains, and at 
 the end of each lift the 
 chain was gripped by a 
 strong clamp, and the brick- 
 work of the tower filled in 
 under the tube ; the presses 
 were then lowered and at- 
 tached to the next link of 
 the chain, and a fresh hoist 
 of six feet made. The 
 enormous pressure of water 
 actually drove the fluid 
 through the pores of the 
 iron, and a gruel of oatmeal 
 and sal - ammoniac was 
 forced into the iron, and 
 allowed to harden, by which 
 much of the leakage was 
 prevented. 
 
 Upon one occasion, the 
 tube having attained aheight 
 of 24 feet, the bottom of 
 a press was forced out by 
 the pressure, and the mass 
 
 of iron, weighing 2i tons, fell from a height of 
 60 feet upon the top of the tube, striking down a 
 sailor who was ascending the tower by a ladder, 
 and seriously damaging the tube. Upon another 
 occasion, a severe frost caused the water in the 
 presses to freeze, and the expansion caused by it 
 actually lifted the ram, with its cross-head and 
 chains weighing more than 100 tons, through a 
 space of one inch and a quarter. After this, fires 
 were kept under the cylinders. The tubes are now 
 103 feet clear of the water at high tide. 
 
 The effect of a gale of wind upon the tube is 
 considerable ; it is estimated as exerting a pressure 
 
 trains is under half an inch. 
 It is estimated that a weight 
 of 1,792 tons may be safely 
 suspended from the centre 
 of either of the tubes, and 
 double this if the weight be 
 distributed over its length. 
 Thus one of the tubes 
 v^'ould almost bear another 
 laid across its centre. 
 
 The tubes expand and 
 contract under the influence 
 of heat, to a great extent. 
 They are fixed only in the 
 centre tower, and rest upon 
 a bed of rollers in other 
 places. The expansion is, 
 therefore, visible at both 
 ends to the extent of half 
 the whole. Sunshine has 
 a marked effect upon the 
 tubes ; falling only upon the 
 top and one side, it expands 
 those faces only, causing 
 them to curve towards the 
 sun to the extent often of 
 2i inches. Passing clouds 
 obscuring the sun tempo- 
 rarily reduce the deflection, 
 but even upon a cloudy day, 
 when the sun is wholly 
 obscured, the solar heat is 
 proved to pass through the 
 clouds by its effect upon 
 the tubes. 
 "' The cells in the roof and 
 
 floor form excellent speak- 
 ing-tubes, and conversation can be easily carried 
 on across the whole length. The inside of the 
 tubes is wide enough to allow a man to stand 
 whilst a train is passing. 
 
 An ingenious sliding rail, shown in Fig. 2, is 
 fixed at the extremities of the tube, to allow of a 
 continuous road-way under all effects of contrac- 
 tion of the tube. The two adjoining rails are 
 divided where they overlap, as seen at a, the two 
 flat sides sliding by one another, and thus the 
 wheels of the trains have always a continuous 
 bearing. The entire cost of the Britannia Bridge, 
 preliminary experiments included, was ;^6oi,865. 
 
THE LATTICE PLANT. 
 
 ,329 
 
 THE LATTICE PLANT. 
 
 About seventy years ago a French botanist col- 
 lected in Madagascar specimens of this singular 
 plant, but for more than fifty years no living 
 specimens were brought to Europe. The Rev. 
 William Ellis, whose connection with Madagascar 
 has produced marvellous changes in the past, and 
 will influence all its future history, brought from 
 that island the first living specimens some fifteen 
 years ago, and now it is to be found in most 
 botanic gardens and in many private collections. 
 It grows without much trouble, and in a short time 
 
 mainder of the leaf is like a living fibrous skeleton, 
 formed by the interlacing of two sets of veins. The 
 one set are longitudinal, and nearly parallel to 
 the mid rib and the margin of the leaf ; the others 
 spring from the mid rib and pass outwards towards 
 the margin, crossing the longitudinal series at right 
 angles, and forming quadrangular meshes. 
 
 Leaves, as a rule, are composed of numerous 
 veins, with cellular matter spread out between them, 
 and uniting them so as to form a flat continuous 
 surface. The leaf of the lattice plant seems as if it 
 were composed entirely of the veins ; but when a 
 leaf is examined by the microscope it is seen that 
 
 THE LATTICE PLANT [fOuvirandrafenestralis). 
 
 will be an ornament in the windows of every cottager 
 or artisan who is fond of plants. 
 
 There is little of interest in the inconspicuous 
 flowers, but it would be difficult to imagine any- 
 thing more delicate and beautiful than the exquisite 
 network of the leaves. 
 
 The plant grows under water near the margins 
 of running streams. Its thick root, or rather, 
 horizontal stem, creeps along the surface of the 
 mud, throwing out long, fine roots below, and at 
 intervals, on its upper surface, clusters of leaves. 
 The leaves are supported on stalks which are long 
 enough to bring them just under the surface of the 
 water, where they arc spread out more or less 
 horizontally. The leaves are of an oblong form, 
 nine or ten inches long, and two or three inches 
 broad. They have a strong mid rib. but the re- 
 42 
 
 the delicate veins are surrounded by a layer of 
 cells. These cells are more numerous in some 
 leaves which have the meshes oval — this form 
 being produced by the filling up the angles of the 
 ordinary form of mesh. Leaves are also occasion- 
 ally found in which the meshes are entirely filled 
 up, so as to form a perfect blade. 
 
 At first the leaf is of a pale yellowish colour ; in 
 the several stages of iJs growth it passes through 
 every gradation of colour, from that named to a 
 dark olive, becoming, before it finally decays, brown 
 or nearly black. 
 
 Mr. Ellis thus describes the aspect of the living 
 plant : — " It is scarcely possible to imagine any 
 object of the kind more attractive than a full-grown 
 plant, with its dark green leaves forming the limit 
 of a circle two or three feet in diameter, and pre- 
 
350 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 senting in the transparent water, within that circle, 
 leaves in every stage of development, both as 
 regards colour and size. Nor is it less curious to 
 notice that these slender and fragile structures, 
 apparently not more substantial than the gossamer, 
 and flexible as a feather, still possess a tenacity and 
 wiriness which allows the delicate leaf to be raised 
 by the hand to the surface without injury." 
 
 The beauty of the growing plants is greatly en- 
 hanced by the innumerable bells of oxygen entan- 
 gled among its meshes, and glittering in the sun 
 which it has disengaged from the carbonic-acid 
 gas on which it lives. 
 
 The flowering stalk rises from the middle of the 
 cluster of leaves. As it pushes itself up to the 
 surface of the water it is covered by a singular 
 little cap, which falls off entire, and liberates tlic 
 two short and fleshy branches on which the nu- 
 merous small colourless flowers are borne. 
 
 At the period of the year when the thick fleshy 
 root or creeping stem is stored with starcli, the 
 natives of Madagascar collect it and use it as an 
 article of food. It is called by them "ouvirandrano,'' 
 which means water-yam, because when cooked it 
 tastes like the yam. Botanists have adopted the 
 native name for the genus, giving it, in accordance 
 with their invariable practice, a Latin termination — 
 Ouvirandra, and adding /c/wsiralis as the designa- 
 tion of the species in allusion to the remarkable 
 structure of the leaf 
 
 THE FIRE OF LONDON. 
 
 A FLICKERING, dancing light seen over the tops of 
 the houses of the busy London of 1666 ; the usual 
 hurrying crowd to look upon the glowing sight ; the 
 feeble engines of the day ; and the customary 
 crowding and confusion. Rumour, the news-bearer, 
 whispering that the fire was at a baker's shop 
 close to the bridge, and, except in the near neigh- 
 bourhood, very little notice taken. But a strong 
 easterly wind blowing, the flames were fanned 
 till they roared in the blast ; rose up higher and 
 higher, licking up with their myriad tongues the 
 combustible material, and then making a rush to 
 the adjoining premises. And soon rumour, busier 
 than ever, bearing the news to eastward, to west- 
 ward, and around, that the little fire at the old 
 wooden house had spread, and those on either side 
 were burning ; that, the flames had leaped across 
 from one low-beamed dwelling to another on the 
 other side of the street ; and that, gathering strength 
 moment by moment from that upon which they fed, 
 a whole street was burning ; two streets ; and the 
 flames growing fiercer, when reverencing nothing in 
 their wild rage, a church had been attacked, and 
 the darting tongues of fire were soon seen curling 
 higher and higher round the tower till the glare 
 reddened the sky, a storm of sparks flew over the 
 
 houses, and here and there, in unexpected spots, 
 where, whirled up by the mighty draught caused 
 by the ascending heat, a fragment of burning wood 
 had been thrown, fresh fires began to start into life 
 with a wondrous activity, till the panic-stricken 
 inhabitants of the district commenced hurriedly 
 moving their goods and securing the valuables they 
 possessed from the calamity that threatened. 
 
 No need was there for rumour ; soon the mighty 
 fire announced itself, roaring and raging like a vast 
 furnace, heating the very atmosphere and sending 
 its glow and a large army of smoke-clouds miles 
 away into the country. The streets thronged 
 with sight-seers or fleeing families ; the ways 
 choked with vehicles furniture-laden ; and blank 
 faces everywhere listening to the tidings that the 
 engines were useless and had been burned up 
 by the ever-advancing fire. Church after church 
 was now falling a victim to the flames, and con- 
 tinued to fall till one hundred were laid in ashes. 
 As the fire spread, the timber houses flashed into 
 light and disappeared like match-wood, till 13,000 
 had helped to feed the conflagration, and streets to 
 the number of 400 formed now but rugged choked 
 ways, amidst piles of ashes, crumbling chimneys, 
 and thousands of charred beams, glowing with an 
 intense heat, and at every gust of wind sending up 
 a very storm of golden dancing sparks, to alight 
 upon yet untouched portions of the city. 
 
 The great cathedral, even though standing high 
 and massy, did not escape ; and in spite of the 
 expectations that the flames would find it invulner- 
 able, it was pierced at last by a spear of flame in 
 the roof, and in its turn was soon a burning fiery 
 furnace, ejecting bursts of golden fragments, and a 
 rain of molten silver, glistening in the light, as its 
 six acres of sheet-lead which covered ridge, roof, 
 and gutter, melted and poured trickling down. 
 
 From a wild activity at first displayed, the 
 frightened citizens began to look on the [doomed 
 city with stolid apathy. The very thieves were 
 gorged with plunder, while the inhabitants of streets 
 far distant began to flee in dismay as morning after 
 morning brought its news of the rapid approach of 
 the flames. Finding the utter uselcssncss of the 
 ordinary plans for arresting a fire, the authorities 
 at length, setting at naught the opposition they 
 encountered, adopted extraordinary means, and in 
 all directions where the fire was found to be spread- 
 ing, houses were blown down, and large gaps made, 
 from out of which everything inflammable was re- 
 moved. This, save in extreme cases was found to 
 be effectual, and by being carried on energetically, 
 arrested the further progress of the ruin ; but for 
 days the vast waste of many square acres was burn- 
 ing fiercely; the flames ceasing and again bursting 
 forth from some pile of smoking ashes; then sinking 
 for awhile perhaps to dart forth again. The heated 
 stones of the streets, and the suffocating, lurid state 
 
AFRICAN SPIDERS. 
 
 331 
 
 of the atmosphere, greatly hindered the efforts of 
 those who were appointed or volunteered to assist ; 
 and after the fire had once thoroughly obtained 
 the mastery, but little was done beyond keeping it 
 within the huge bounds which it had marked out. 
 
 But a few months and the inhabitants had been 
 fleeing from the plague, and many had hardly re- 
 turned to their homes before they were once more 
 compelled to flee — to return once more and seek in 
 vain for the very site where their houses had stood. 
 And now, the fiercer part of the excitement over, 
 and the dread of a further spread of the catastrophe 
 at an end, rumour was again busy, but now as to 
 its origin, spreading the news that the city had 
 been fired by the Papists, an idea perpetuated in 
 the inscription to be seen to this day upon the 
 Monument, though the cause was plainly due to 
 the narrow, crooked ways and timber-built houses, 
 so designed that the ignition of one would neces- 
 sarily have resulted in the fire spreading to many. 
 
 However, in spite of its devastating effects, good 
 sprang from the fire, in the shape of wider streets, 
 better sanitary arrangements, and an ever-increasing 
 city, which, if not the handsomest, is certainly one 
 of the most healthy in the world. 
 
 WXaixUnB of Science. 
 
 —   — • 
 
 A Grain of Gold has been found by Muncke 
 to admit of being divided into ninety-five thousand 
 millions of visible parts j that is, by the aid of a 
 microscope magnifying one thousand times. A 
 sovereign is thus capable of division into ten mil- 
 lions of millions of visible particles, being ten 
 thousand times as many such particles as there are 
 men, women, and children in all the world. 
 
 Spontaneous Combustion. — Liebig, in his 
 "Familiar Letters on Chemistry," has proved the 
 unsoundness of spontaneous combustion. Yet Dr. 
 Lindley gives nineteen instances of something akin, 
 or the rapid ignition of the human body by contact 
 with flame as a consequence of the saturation of 
 its tissues by alcohol. 
 
 Vibrations of the Air.— If a person stand 
 beneath a railway girdei'-bridge with an open um- 
 brella over his head, when a train is passing, the 
 vibration of the air will be distinctly felt in the 
 hand which grasps the umbrella, because the out- 
 spread surface collects and concentrates the waves 
 into the focus of the handle. 
 
 Motion of Waves. — The progressive motion 
 of a wave on the water exactly corresponds in speed 
 with that of a pendulum whose length is equal to 
 the breadth of the wave ; the same law, gravity, 
 governs both. 
 
 The Earth's Centre.— All bodies weigh less 
 the further removed they are from the centre of the 
 earth. A block of stone weighing 700 pounds upon 
 
 the sea-shore, will weigh only 699 pounds if carried 
 up a mountain three miles high. A pendulum 
 oscillates more quickly at the poles than at the 
 equator, because the earth is flatter by twenty-six 
 miles at the poles— that is, the " bob " of the pendu- 
 lum is that much nearer the earth's centre, and 
 therefore heavier, and so swings more quickly. 
 
 Light of the Sun.— A photometric experiment 
 of Huygens, resumed by Wollaston, a short time 
 before his death teaches us that 20,000 stars 
 the same size as Sirius, the most brilliant in the 
 firmament, would need to be agglomerated to shed 
 upon our globe a light equal to that of the sun. 
 
 AFRICAN SPIDERS. 
 
 Livingstone was once bitten, when half asleep, 
 by a light-coloured spider. Feeling something 
 running across his forehead, he put up his hand to 
 wipe it off, when he was sharply stung on the hand 
 and head, and the pain was very acute, but it ceased 
 after two hours. The natives declare that there is a 
 small black spider in the country whose bite is fatal, 
 but the great traveller did not meet with an instance 
 in which death could be traced to this insect, though 
 he saw a very large black hairy spider an inch and 
 a quarter long, and three-quarters of an inch broad, 
 which had a hook at the end of its front claws 
 similar to that at the end of the scorpion's tail. 
 When these hooks were pressed the poison came 
 out. There are spiders in South Africa which 
 seize their prey by leaping upon it from a distance 
 of several inches. When alarmed, they can spring 
 about a foot away from the object of their fear. A 
 large reddish spider obtains its food in a different 
 manner from either, by patiently waiting in ambush, 
 or by catching it with a bound. It runs about with 
 great velocity in and out, behind and around, every 
 object, searching for what it may devour, and from 
 its size and rapid motions excites the horror of 
 every stranger. It does no harm to men except to 
 make the nervous, and those that hate spiders, very 
 uncomfortable. This active little insect is very 
 clever, for it imitates the mason- spider, and makes 
 a nest in the earth lined with beautiful soft silk, 
 covered with a nicely-fitting trap-door about the 
 size of a shilhng. When this is shut it is so cleverly 
 covered with hard earth that it cannot be distin- 
 guished from the rest. 
 
 In some parts of the country there are great 
 numbers of a large beautiful yellow-spotted spider, 
 the webs of which are about a yard across. The 
 lines on which these webs are spun are hung from 
 one tree to another, and are as large as coarse 
 thread. The fibres of the web itself are so thick 
 that it is a common thing in walking through the 
 forest to get one's face covered by them like a 
 lady's veil. Another kind of spider lives in society. 
 
332 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 and forms so great a collection of webs, placed at 
 every angle, that the trunks of trees cannot be se;n 
 through them. A piece of hedge is often so hidden 
 by this spider that the branches are invisible. 
 Another is seen on the inside of the walls of the 
 huts of the natives. It is round in shape, spotted, 
 brown in colour, and the body is half an inch across. 
 The spread of the legs is an inch and a half. It 
 makes a smooth spot for itself on the wall, covered 
 with white silky stuff. There it is seen standing the 
 whole day. It has no regular web but the soft 
 silky carpet, and it is a harmless though an ugly 
 neighbour. 
 
 BABYLON AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 Babylon, the capital of the large province of 
 Assyria, on the banks of the Euphrates, is a spot 
 to which recollection gives an almost unrivalled 
 interest. Here, over a 5;)ace extending five or six 
 miles in every direction, are spread the undoubted 
 remains of that ancient "glory of nations" which 
 none of the proud capitals of the ancient world ever 
 equalled in magnitude and the grandeur of its struc- 
 tures ; and which is rendered still more imposing 
 by the awful antiquity to which its origin ascends. 
 It is said to have owed its foundation, or at least its 
 splendour, to Semiramis, whose era is placed at the 
 formation of the first of the great empires ; and 
 large additions were afterwards made to it, par- 
 ticularly by Nebuchadnezzar. Babylon was thus 
 the work of successive ages ; but we have no 
 means of tracing the share taken by each in its 
 erection and embellishment. The walls, according 
 to Herodotus, were sixty miles in circumference, 
 and by the most moderate reports at least forty- 
 five. They were 365 feet high, and so broad that 
 six chariots might drive abreast along the top. The 
 form of the city was that of a regular square, with 
 twenty-five gates of solid brass on each side. 
 
 Among its structures three were pre-eminent, 
 and ranked among the Wonders of the World. 
 One was the Palace, eight miles in circumference, 
 enclosed within three successive walls ; the interior 
 was covered with paintings. Near it was the 
 second wonder, that of the Hanging Gardens. 
 These were raised, it is said, by Nebuchadnezzar, 
 to gratify a Median spouse, accustomed to the 
 bold scenery of her native country, and disgusted 
 with the tame uniformity of the Babylonian plain. 
 Having undertaken to transport thither the land- 
 scapes of her own country, he raised masses of 
 huge extent, supported by arches upon arches, and 
 covered with deep earth, which not only produced 
 plants and flowers, but presented a range of 
 wooded steeps, similar to those in the mountains 
 of Media. Thirdly, the gigantic Tower of Babel, 
 or Belus, was a still more celebrated structure, 
 respecting which tradition, fable, and history are 
 
 strangely blended. Though dedicated by the 
 
 Babylonian kings to an idolatrous worship, it 
 traces its first origin to a much earlier period, 
 when men, intoxicated by their first successful 
 achievements, formed the daring project of an 
 edifice reaching to the skies. Converted into the 
 shrine of Belus, it was adorned by colossal images 
 and statues of solid gold, the value of which has 
 been rated by Hei-odotus, doubtless much too high, 
 at 5,000 talents, or ,£2 1,000,000 sterling. Equally 
 exaggerated has been its reputed height, which 
 some Jewish authorities fix at twelve miles ; and 
 even Jerome quotes contemporary authority for its 
 being four miles high. These estimates give way 
 to the sober testimony of Strabo, who states the 
 height at a stadium, or 660 feet English, exceeding 
 only a little that of the highest pyramid. 
 
 Even after the downfall of Babylon as the capital 
 of an empire, it continued to be the most splendid 
 city of Asia. Its decay seems to have been slow, 
 as the powers which held sway in the neighbour- 
 hood chose other positions in its vicinity for their 
 seats of empire. The kings of Syria chose Selcucia, 
 the Parthians Ctesiphon, the Saracens Bagdad ; 
 and each, according to the custom of the East, 
 sought to aggrandise his favourite city by trans- 
 porting to it the inhabitants of Babylon, and the 
 materials out of which it was built. 
 
 The site is at present a scene of utter desola- 
 tion : " the wild beasts of the forest lie there ; the 
 dragons howl in her pleasant palaces." Yet even 
 now, after so many ages of desolation, and after so 
 many great capitals have been built out of its ruins, 
 enough remains to attest the veracity of those who 
 described it as the greatest capital of the ancient 
 world, " the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the 
 Babylonio-Chaldean empire." Its mighty struc- 
 tures, indeed, are resolved nearly into their original 
 elements ; instead of walls and towers, we see only 
 confused heaps of earth, bricks, and rubbish ; but 
 these are piled almost in mountain masses, and, 
 seen afar along the J.Iesopotamian plain, proclaim 
 still the wonders of a distant age. 
 
 THE SALT-MINES OF CRACOW. 
 
 There are no salt-mines in the world more in- 
 teresting than those wonderful excavations -n 
 Austrian Gallicia at Wiehezka near Cracow. Some 
 believe they have been worked ever since the ninth 
 century ; but it is certain they were known as tar 
 back as 1250. 
 
 The town, which is populated by the miners and 
 their famihes, is completely undermined by the 
 labyrinth of passages and chambers which form 
 the approaches to the mine. The extent of the 
 excavations may be better realised by a comparison 
 with a given area of the metropolis. They extend 
 nearly 10,000 feet from east to west, and 3,600 from 
 
THE SALT-MINES OF CRACO^V. 
 
 VIEW OF THE SALT MINES OF WIEI.TEZKA. 
 
 north to south ; a space equal to that intervening 
 between Charing Cross and London Bridge, and 
 from the Thames to the Metropolitan Railway 
 Station in Farringdon Street. But the depth of 
 these excavations is proportionate to their area. 
 If four St. Paul's Cathedrals were piled one upon 
 another, from the church-yard to the top of the 
 cross, this immense pile would . not equal the 
 profundity of these mines. 
 
 This vast depth is divided into four distinct 
 storeys or fields, one below the other. In the 
 second storey is a great lake 650 feet long, and 40 
 feet deep, formed of the salt water which trickles 
 through the strata. The visitor is rowed across 
 this subterranean sheet of water, and after he has 
 arrived at the further shore and descended to the 
 
 third storey,_he learns, to his surprise, that the lake 
 he has just traversed is directly over his head. 
 The several storeys are simply immense excavations 
 out of the solid salt, but much artistic taste has 
 been displayed through successive generations in 
 the decorations of these chambers. The chapel 
 in particular, consists of a beautiful Gothic temple 
 dedicated to St. Anthony, and contains many 
 statues and obelisks, all formed of rock-salt, and 
 also an altar, pulpit, &c. The Grand Reception 
 Chamber is a gigantic hall, the height from the 
 floor to the ceiling being within fifty feet as great 
 as that of the Monument. In this hall the 
 members of the imperial family are received when 
 they visit the mines ; and this, together with the 
 principal passages and other chambers, is then 
 
334 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 brilliantly illuminated, the crystals of rock-salt 
 sparkling exquisitely in the blaze of torches. 
 There is room for at least i,ooo persons to dine 
 in this chamber without inconvenience, and its 
 dimensions are so vast, that despite the number 
 and the brilliancy of the torches, and notwith- 
 standing that the glittering walls and roof tend to 
 reflect the blaze, the eye in vain attempts to fathom 
 its vastness. 
 
 The mine is entered by eleven shafts, and the 
 total length of the passages is 270 miles — a dis- 
 tance considerably further than from London to 
 Plymouth. 
 
 The value of the mines is very great, and the 
 kings of Poland in former times derived the 
 greater part of their revenues from them, depend- 
 ing entirely upon them for the dowries of their 
 queens. At each election of a king, the nobles 
 exacted the right of taking the salt for their own 
 use, free of all cost, beyond that of the excavation. 
 The yield of the mines is about 60,000 tons a year, 
 about 6,000 persons being employed in them. 
 There is no foundation for the statement that 
 persons are born and die in the mines, vi'ithout ever 
 seeing the light of day, as the means of egress 
 are such that a person may ascend from the bottom 
 to the top in a very brief space of time. The 
 atmosphere is perfectly healthy, and a stream of 
 fresh water flows through the mine ; but the 
 labourers, beyond taking their meals in the mine, 
 never remain down at work longer than they would 
 if employed upon the surface. The horses when 
 once down, remain there until unfit for further 
 service. 
 
 SPEAKING MACHINES. 
 
 The speaking machines of antiquity have already 
 been glanced at (see pp. 137-139). The principle 
 of a speaking machine has, however, been de- 
 veloped by the moderns. Bishop Wilkins, in his 
 " Mathematical Magick," illustrating the mode by 
 which articulate sounds may be produced by 
 automata, says, " Walchius • thinks it possible 
 entirely to preserve the voice, or any words spoken, 
 in a hollow trunk or pipe, and that this pipe, being 
 rightly opened, the words will come out of it in 
 the same order wherein they were spoken, some- 
 what like that cold country where the people's 
 discourse doth freeze in the air all winter, and may 
 be heard in the next summer, or at a great thaw ; 
 but this conjecture will need no refutation." 
 
 Van Helmont, one of the first persons who wrote 
 upon the adaptation of the organs of the voice to 
 the articulations of the letters, considered that the 
 letters of the alphabet constituted the order in 
 which articulate sounds were naturally produced 
 by the structure of the tongue and larynx ; that 
 when one letter was uttered, the tongue was in its 
 
 proper position for the pronunciation of the sub- 
 sequent one. Thus, as several different sounds 
 are formed by merely raising or depressing the 
 tongue slightly, as in the sounds, Azo, Ah, Ac, A, 
 E, it was easy to produce them by means of a tube 
 with a reed, and terminating with a bell. Mr. 
 Willis effected this by using a long tube with a 
 reed, capable of being lengthened or shortened at 
 pleasure. In the pronunciation of the vowels /, e, a, 
 0, 11, it required to be shortest with the first, and 
 in uttering the subsequent letters to be gradually 
 lengthened. In this way it was easy to measure 
 the length necessary for each note. When Ae, 
 was pronounced, the tube was one inch long ; Aw, 
 3'8 inches ; Ah, 2'2 inches ; A, o'6 inch ; E, o'3 
 inch. 
 
 A speaking machine, invented in Germany, pro- 
 nounced distinctly, maiiuna, papa, mother, father, 
 summer. The instrument consists of a pair of 
 bellows, to which is adapted a tube terminating 
 in a bell, the aperture of which is regulated by the 
 hand, so as to produce the articulate sounds. This 
 machine was exhibited at the Royal Institution in 
 i835) by Professor Wheatstone. 
 
 Von Kempelen, the inventor of the Automaton 
 Chess-player, also constructed a speaking automa- 
 ton, which he made pronounce several sentences, 
 amongst the best of which were, " Romanorum im- 
 perator semper Augustus ;" " Leopoldus sccundus ;" 
 " Vous etes mon ami," " Je vous aime de tout mon 
 coeur." It was some years, however, before he 
 could accomplish more than the simple utterance 
 of the sounds, o, oil, and c. Year after year the 
 inventor devoted to this machine, but z, or n, or 
 any of the consonants, refused to obey his summons. 
 At length he added at the open extremity of the 
 vocal tube an apparatus similar in action and con- 
 struction to the hitman month with its teeth j when 
 he succeeded not only in making it pronounce the 
 consonants, but words, and even the sentences 
 quoted above. He had previously imitated the 
 tongue and its actions. The fact is interesting, not 
 only as a rare instance of human ingenuity, but also 
 as exhibiting in a most striking light the beautiful 
 adaptation of parts to their respective functions, 
 and that so perfect are the contrivances of Nature 
 for particular ends, that in order to arrive at any- 
 thing like an imitation of these functions, we must 
 follow closely the method she employs. 
 
 In 1843 there was exhibited before the American 
 Philosophical Society, a speaking machine of 
 various movements, by means of keys, and thus 
 made to enunciate various letters and words ; in 
 enunciating the simple sounds, could be seen the 
 movements of the mouth, the parts of which were 
 made of caoutchouc. The inventor, Mr. Reade, 
 however, in a frenzy, destroyed this machine, which 
 had taken him sixteen years to construct. 
 
 Three years later, in 1846, there was exhibited 
 
THE WHEEL ANIMALCULE. 
 
 335 
 
 at the Egyptian Hall, in Piccadilly, the Euphonia 
 of Professor Faber, of Vienna, the result of twenty- 
 five years' labour. It consisted of a draped bust and 
 wax-faced figure, which articulated language almost 
 as intelligibly as is done by the human organs in 
 individuals who do not speak very distinctly. The 
 sounds were produced by striking on si.xteen keys. 
 There was a small pair of bellows, which was 
 worked with the nozzle into the back part of the 
 head, and the mouth-formations were of caoutchouc, 
 and they moved up and down like the nutcracker 
 toy, and the sounds were heard in sentences. 
 Whispering was also managed with a very odd 
 effect, and from the mouth the wind of the bellows 
 was perceptible to feeling. Professor Faber's 
 machine is considered the nearest approach to per- 
 fect success, and the several attempts of Cagniard 
 la Tour, Biot, Miiller, and Steinb, to produce 
 jirtJculate sounds, or even to imitate the human 
 vorce, have not been successful. 
 
 Curbstfres ai Cfjaracttr. 
 
 A Man of Business. — According to Sir Richard 
 Baker, the versatility of the celebrated Cecil, Lord 
 Burleigh, as well as his untiring activity, was 
 astonishing. He tells us that besides attending to 
 business in council, he daily wrote twenty or thirty 
 letters on subjects of a domestic character, and many 
 despatches connected with foreign affairs ; while 
 there never passed a day during term time in which 
 he did not receive from sixty to a hundred petitions 
 which he commonly read the same night. Nothing 
 seems to have been considered too momentous for 
 him, or too minute. His opinion was solicited at 
 one and the same time on the succession of a queen 
 and the punishment of a schoolboy ; the terms 
 of a treaty and a regulation for the lining of a 
 sIope-hosG ; an insurrection in the north and a 
 brawl in the streets of London. 
 
 A Methodical Man. — Dr. Chalmers had an 
 eye to numerical arrangement in almost everything 
 he did. His biographer (Dr. Hanna) relates that 
 " it regulated every part of his toilet, down even to 
 the daily stropping of his razor. Beginning with 
 his minimum, which was two strokes, he added one 
 stroke more each day successively, till he got up to 
 a number fixed on as his maximum, on reaching 
 which he reversed the process, diminishing the 
 number by one each day, till the lowest point was 
 touched. His staff was put down to the ground 
 regularly at each fourth footfall ; and the number 
 of its descents gave him a pretty accurate measure 
 of the space over which he walked. Habit had 
 rendered the counting of these descents an easy, 
 indeed almost a mechanical operation ; so that, 
 though meeting friends and sustaining an animated 
 conversation, it still went on." 
 
 The Perfection of Politeness. — Mr. Lear, 
 in his "Journey of a Landscape Painter in the 
 East," relates an anecdote of the postmaster of 
 Pella, the birthplace of Alexander the Great. The 
 artist was taking a parting cup of coffee with 
 him, and had the misfortune to set his foot on a 
 handsome pipe-bowl. Crash went the bowl, but 
 the Mohammedan sat unmoved. Mr. Lear apolo- 
 gised. " The breaking of such a pipe-bowl," said 
 the postmaster, "would indeed, under ordinary 
 circumstances, be disagreeable ; but in a friend 
 every action has its charms." 
 
 THE WHEEL ANIMALCULE. 
 
 There are many kinds of animalcules found 
 amongst the leaves of water-plants and about sea- 
 weeds, which are just visible to the naked eye, and 
 whose movements can be traced by watching the 
 whirling motion of the small grains of mud in their 
 neighbourhood. These small creatures, when ex- 
 amined under a microscope, are very easily seen, 
 and the inside of their bodies is so transparent that 
 the whole process of eating and digesting can be 
 observed. They are furnished with one or more 
 bell-shaped ends, and the rim of the bell is covered 
 with the long movable hairs called cilise, and which 
 are found in all animalcules. The bottom of the 
 bell is covered with a funnel which leads to the 
 jaws, and then comes a gullet and a stomach with 
 a gut. The animalcule has a single eye close to 
 the bell-rim, and it has great powers of changing 
 its shape, owing to many muscles and fibres which 
 commence near the jaws and cilias, and reach down 
 to the tail. The creature is usually something like 
 a leech in shape, and the tail is cleft like a clothes- 
 peg, the two ends having the power of grasping 
 anything between them. All the body is surrounded 
 by a beautiful transparent coat. When the ciliae 
 of the bell-rim begin to move, they do so one after 
 the other in regular succession ; consequently the 
 appearance of a revolving wheel is produced, and 
 hence the name of the wheel animalcule or " rotifer." 
 It can move its ciliae as it likes, slowly or very 
 quickly, and the result is .a great disturbance 
 amongst all the small particles and tiny animalcules 
 close by. When there are two bell-rims, the ciliae 
 move at the same pace in both, and the appearance 
 is exactly like that of revolving wheels — really, there 
 is no movement of the rim, but the eye is deceived 
 by the rapid succession of the motion of the hairs. 
 When there are as many as seven wheels the sight 
 is wonderful, especially if a little carmine is added 
 to the water, for then the separate whirlpools of 
 each wheel can be seen. 
 
 The rotifers have nerves, and can regulate their 
 movements. They can see, and they evidently can 
 select their food and establish themselves in quiet 
 safe places. If they wish to swim about, they let 
 
336 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 go their hold by separating the ends of their tail and I rotifer that lives amongst this plant is not an un- 
 spreading out their bell-rims, and they move the , common creature in the streams of Yorkshire. 
 cilias with great rapidity. The rotifers then rush for- ' The tenacity for life is perhaps one of the most 
 
 ward, wheel in front, guiding themselves by 
 twisting their transparent bodies,or by using 
 the tail as a rudder. When they wish to go 
 slower, the rim of the wheel is contracted 
 and the ciliae do not move so quickly, and 
 when they wish to stop, the movement of 
 the delicate hairs ceases. The wheels are 
 often drawn down quite within the body, 
 and its fine glossy coat, and then a sort of 
 snout projects in their place. By means of 
 this and the tail the rotifer often crawls 
 about on the moss or at the bottom of the 
 pond. When hungry, the rotifer fixes itself 
 by its tail, stretches out its body, pushes 
 forth its wheel, and sets the hairs in 
 vigorous movement. Not only is a whirling 
 movement produced in the surrounding 
 water, but currents are formed which 
 draw small things from the water into the 
 funnel under the wheel. It is quite won- 
 derful to notice the rush down this hole 
 of things which cannot swim against the 
 stream, and most interesting to observe the 
 jaws champing and crushing everything 
 not too big for them. The stomach soon 
 gets full, and the microscope traces the 
 remains of the hard parts of many kinds 
 of smaller animalcules through its trans- 
 parent coats. When the rotifer attains 
 a certain size, some transparent eggs are 
 noticed inside it; these break out by some 
 means or other, and become attached 
 to the outside of the parent. The tiny 
 rotifer in the egg is always moving round 
 and round, and its growth can be studied 
 from the time when it was a simple 
 mass of jelly to when it becomes a minute 
 likeness of the old one. After awhile 
 it bursts the shell and rushes forth to 
 lead the same kind of life as its predeces- 
 sors. Some rotifers live inside the veget- 
 able tissue of mosses, and swim in and 
 out ; others frequent gutters and small 
 ponds, and they are generally not highly 
 coloured. One kind lives in the skin of 
 fishes, but is only carried about, for it does 
 not eat the fish or live on its juices. A 
 very interesting rotifer lives on the snow, 
 where it is tinted red by a curious micro- 
 scopic plant. Red snow occurs now and 
 then in the polar regions, and in the Alps, 
 and is produced by the rapid growth of a 
 microscopic plant which produces red granules 
 within its delicate tissues. It has nothing to do 
 with the snow except that it melts a small portion, 
 and lives in consequence of the moisture. The i 
 
 xtu 
 
 THE KOTIFEK, OR 
 WHEEL ANIMALCULE, 
 
 wonderful things about the rotifers. 
 This was discovered in 1702 by the great 
 Lcuwenhocck. He wrote as follows : — 
 " In October scoured the filth or dirt 
 of the gutters when there was no water 
 there, and the dirt was quite dry, to be 
 gathered together, and took a teacupful 
 of the same, and put it into a paper upon 
 my desk, since which time I have often 
 taken a little thereof, and poured upon it 
 boiled water. After the above-mentioned 
 dry substance had Iain nearly twenty- 
 one months in the paper, I put into a 
 glass tube the remainder I had by me, 
 and poured water into it. The water 
 was always boiled, because no anin 
 culcs can live in it, and therefore n31! 
 could be introduced through it into the 
 tube. Many round particles subsided to 
 the bottom of the tube, and some hours 
 after I disco\ered that they were animal- 
 cules, and that a few had unfolded their 
 bodies, swimming about the water, whilst 
 others had not unfolded themselves. 
 Now, ought we not to be astonished 
 to find that these small insects can 
 lie twenty-one months dry and yet live, 
 and as soon as ever they are placed in 
 water fall a swimming or fastening the 
 hinder parts of their bodies to the glass, 
 and then produce the wheels, just as if 
 they had never wanted water ? Some of 
 the bodies of these animalcules were so 
 strongly dried up that one could see the 
 wrinkles in them, and they were of a red- 
 dish colour. A few others were so trans- 
 parent that if you held them up between 
 your eye and the light, you might move 
 your fingers behind them and see the 
 motion through their bodies." 
 
 Instances have been given by the most 
 celebrated naturalists of the preservation 
 of dried-up rotifers in dry sand for four 
 years ; and Professor Owen witnessed the 
 revival of one after it had been in thia 
 position all the time. It is an experi- 
 ment readily made, for if some rotifers 
 are placed on a slip of glass, and the water 
 is drained off gradually, they begin to roll 
 themselves up within their transparent 
 cover, and w^hen the glass is dry they 
 stick to it and diminish in size, becoming 
 wrinkled. If some water is added in a few days, 
 and the tiny spots are examined, their gradual re- 
 turn to perfect rotifers will very generally be noticed 
 after a few minutes. 
 
FALLS OF THE ZAMBESI. 
 
 ■See ffitge 236. 
 
^1^ 
 
THE WONDERS OF BUTTERFLY LIFE. 
 
 337 
 
 THE WONDERS OF BUTTERFLY LIFE. 
 
 Some of the old workers in stained glass who made 
 the grand coloured windows for ancient cathedrals 
 and monasteries, were fond of producing figures 
 
 there is between a green and yellow caterpillar, 
 covered with bunches of hair here and there, and 
 not smelling over nice, that gorges cabbage-leaves 
 hour after hour and day after day, and the delicate 
 white butterfly, with its black spot on its large 
 
 THE SWAI.I.OW-TAII.EU l;l irEKFI.V {I'apllio Machacn), wrni CATKRI'ILLAR^ AND CHRYSALIS. 
 
 of a gaudy butterfly, when they wished to repre- 
 sent the idea of the resurrection from the dead. 
 The butterfly, with its expanded wings, gay colours, 
 and lively flight, was to them, as it is to us, a proof 
 that beauty could follow hideousness in the ordinary 
 course of nature, and it was an emblem that the 
 immortal spirit would cast off the gross body of 
 our senses and animal mind. What a difference 
 43 
 
 wings, its long; proboscis, which rarely is used, its 
 silky body, pretty long horns, and hesitating flight ! 
 The caterpillar becomes a chrysalis, and this the 
 perfect insect. To the eye there is a decided 
 change of form — a metamorphosis ; but to the 
 anatomist there are proofs of internal and external 
 changes in the construction of the tissues and 
 organs that are most wonderful. Whence does 
 
338 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 the butterfly derive its wings ? There is no trace 
 of them in the hairy and thick skin of the cater- 
 pillar. If a caterpillar is dissected, the skin is 
 noticed to cover some muscular fibres, by which 
 the insect lengthens or shortens its body and 
 crawls, and inside these is the cavity through which 
 the srecn blood circulates, and which surrounds 
 the great stomach. There arc no traces of wings, 
 and therefore it is not correct to say that the cater- 
 pillar contains the imperfect organs of the perfect 
 insect. But when the caterpillar has grown to its 
 full length, and cabbages have become rare, it re- 
 tires to a quiet nook and begins to diminish in 
 length. It fixes its hind legs tightly to a board or 
 tree, by weaving a little web with its mouth, then 
 it curves its body and fixes a silk thread on one 
 side of it on the wood, and throwing its head back- 
 wards, it curves its body to the other side, fixing 
 the thread on the opposite side on the wood. The 
 caterpillar then straightens itself, and, being securely 
 lashed by its feet, and tied tightly by its silken girdle 
 to the wood, it changes its skin, and from under 
 the old one appears the queer-looking thing, with- 
 out legs, mouth, or hairs, called the chrysalis. This 
 has a brown skin, and on either side of the body 
 is a sort of fold ; and within this the process of wing- 
 making is going on all through the winter, although 
 the chrysalis never moves, and does not eat or 
 drink. The pretty body and the delicate head are 
 being formed within the brown skin, and even the 
 stomach is undergoing alteration in form, while the 
 muscles of the caterpillar are being changed into 
 those which can move the wide wings and the 
 delicate legs of the butterfly. 
 
 At last, on some fine spring day, the brown skin 
 of the chrysalis splits, and the butterfly comes out 
 with its wings nicely folded. It soon gains energy 
 in the sun, .and breathes the fresh air, the wings 
 unfold and become stiff, and the little creature flies 
 off with a careless flight, but in a manner which no 
 mechanism yet invented can enable man to imitate. 
 Examined under a strong magnifying power, the 
 wings are most beautiful. They consist of a fine 
 membrane, quite transparent ; it has two layers, and 
 between them are the rib-like markings, which are 
 really tubes formed by myriads of rings of mem- 
 brane placed side by side. These tubes are the 
 breathing apparatus, and the air passes into them 
 and is carried by other tubes into the body, and 
 amongst the muscles, and even around the stomach. 
 On the layers of membrane arc rows of ^-ery small 
 dark dots, one row regularly succeeds another until 
 the wings outside and inside are co\-cred. These 
 dots are the spots where tiny scales arc fixed, and 
 each scale is a miniature wing ; when a butterfly's 
 wing is pinched, these come off, and if examined 
 under a good microscope, markings will be seen 
 on them like smaller scales, and there are also 
 some fine hairs attached to both ends. The 
 
 colours shown on these scales depend partly upon 
 the influence of very fine lines upon the light, and 
 partly upon the presence of grains of colouring 
 matter in their stnicturc. Nearly every kind of 
 butterfly or moth has its peculiar scales, and it is 
 very interesting to notice how the flat scales 
 gradually become hairs and spines on different 
 parts of the wings. The scales are attached to the 
 
 SCALES OF 
 
 UTTFKI-l.V S WING. 
 
 membrane of the wings by one spot onh', and 
 probably they hold the air when the buttHj^ 
 makes a stroke with its wing. The minuten^^ 
 of seme of the scales in very small moths is so 
 extreme, that they cannot be seen with the naked 
 eye, but the most powerful microscopes distinguish 
 other dots and imitation scales on them. 
 
 The beautiful proboscis, which is curled up under 
 the head of the butterfly, is very different from the 
 sharp, crushing, cabbage-eating jaws of the cater- 
 pillar. It is rarely used ; but when some very 
 tempting flowers are near, the insect may unfold it 
 and place its tip in the honey at the bottom of the 
 flower. There is a small bag in the gullet which 
 is connected with the proboscis, and it contracts 
 and expels all the air out of the sucker. Then, 
 when the end touches the honey, the bag dilates, 
 and the sugary liquid rushes up. The butterfly 
 takes but little food, for the caterpillar had laid in 
 such a store, that it furnishes the new clothes of the 
 perfect insect and its food as well. The caterpillar 
 has this use, that it can spin a thread, which in some 
 kinds is a true silk, but the butterfly has nothing of 
 the kind to do. The caterpillar's throat has a small 
 opening in it on cither side, just within the mouth. 
 This opening leads to a long tube ending in a bag- 
 shaped gland, which lies on either side of the 
 stomach. The liquid in this bag is the future 
 thread of the silk, and when the caterpillar wishes 
 to use it, cither to hang itself from a leaf, or to 
 make the cocoon which surrounds some of the 
 chrysalids, it glues the end of the thread to some- 
 thing steady, and by pulling back its head draws 
 forth a liquid which turns solid immediately. There 
 is not a reel of silk inside the caterpillar, but give 
 it plenty of food, and it will spin a great length 
 of very light but strong stuff from the liquid in its 
 glands. The butterfly lays eggs and glues them 
 to the dry substance nearest the future food of 
 the young, and every species regularly chooses 
 the same kind of tree or shrub, generation after 
 generation. 
 
THE p:lixir of life. 
 
 339 
 
 THE EXPANSIVE POWER OF WATER. 
 
 It is a well-known, but not less remarkable, fact 
 that if the tip of an exceedingly small tube be 
 dipped into water, the water will rise spontaneously 
 in the tube throughout its whole length. This may 
 be shown in a variety of ways ; for instance, when 
 a piece of sponge, or sugar, or cotton is just allowed 
 to touch water, these substances being all composed 
 of numberless little tubes, draw up the water, and 
 the whole of the piece becomes wet. It is said to 
 S7uk up or imbibe the moisture. We see the same 
 wonderful action going on in nature in the rising of 
 the sap through the small tubes or pores of the 
 wood, whereby the leaves and upper portions of the 
 plant derive nourishment from the ground. 
 
 This strange action is called "capillary," from 
 the resemblance the minute tubes bear to a hair, 
 the«Latin of which is capillus. It is, moreover, 
 singular that the absorption of the water takes 
 place with great force. If a dry sponge be enclosed 
 tightly in a vessel, it will expand when wetted with 
 sufficient force to burst it, unless very strong. 
 
 Wood, which is a more unyielding material, acts 
 with tremendous force when wetted, and advan- 
 tage has been taken of this fact in splitting blocks 
 of granite. This process is largely adopted in 
 Dartmoor. After a mass of granite has been rent 
 from the mountain by blasting, it is measured in 
 every direction to see how best to divide it into 
 smaller blocks. These are traced out by straight 
 lines on the surface, and a series of holes are 
 drilled at short intervals along this line. Wedges 
 of dry wood are then tightly driven into the holes 
 and wetted, and the combined action of the swelling 
 wood splits the block in the direction required, and 
 without any destructive violence. The same pro- 
 cess is then carried out upon the other faces, and 
 the roughly-shapen block finished with the hammer 
 and chisel. __________^ 
 
 THE ELIXIR OF LIFE. 
 
 How to preserve health, cure disease, and prolong 
 life, are problems which have naturally occupied 
 the anxious attention of mortals, ever since that 
 remote period when the first death startled sur- 
 viving humanity. Even philosophers have imagined 
 that there must be in nature some element or pro- 
 duction which, if found, would cure all bodily ills, 
 and enable man to attain a more than patriarchal 
 age. The old alchemists, in addition to their 
 search after the philosopher's stone, set themselves 
 to work to discover such a production, which they 
 termed elixir iiits, or the elixir of life. -Sometimes 
 they believed themselves that they had hit upon it, 
 and were reputed by others to have done so. The 
 great alchemist and chemist of our own country, 
 Roger Bacon— the discoverer of gunpowder and 
 
 the inventor of the magic lantern— was one of those 
 who firmly believed in the elixir. He held the 
 opinion which had been suggested by alchemists of 
 a much earlier date, that it was to be found in gold 
 reduced to a solution by a strong acid. There was 
 a story current in his time that an old man, while 
 ploughing, turned up in a field in Sicily a golden 
 vessel which contained some yellow water, and, 
 venturing to drink it, found his wrinkles and his 
 decrepitude pass away, so that he again enjoyed 
 youthful vigour. The tale was believed by Bacon, 
 and he had no doubt that this wonderful liquid 
 must have been the solution of gold. He drank, it 
 is said, repeated draughts, to enjoy its beneficial 
 effects ; and when he died, at the good old age of 
 eighty, many of his contemporaries believed that it 
 was not from natural causes, but from poison 
 administered by some of his brother monks. 
 
 After him rose others with equal faith in the 
 elixir. Roger Bacon died at the close of the 
 thirteenth century. Two hundred years after, the 
 Swiss chemist, Paracelsus, was reputed throughout 
 Europe to have made the grand discovery of the 
 elixir. He certainly cured diseases in what appeared 
 to be a marvellous manner, but it is now believed 
 that the means he employed were simply the free 
 use of mercury and opium, which remedies were 
 repudiated by the doctors of his time. He made 
 great pretence of having been initiated into many 
 of the hidden mysteries of alchemy in the East, 
 where he had accompanied the son of the Cham of 
 Tartary on his travels. But his credit as a possessor 
 of the elixir was very much shaken when he died 
 at the comparatively early age of forty-eight. 
 
 The pretended possession of an elixir vitce was 
 a fertile source of gain to quacks such as Dr. Dee, 
 who made alchemy a kind of accompaniment to 
 fortune-telling. But while the ignorant and credu- 
 lous were always ready to believe any impostor 
 who declared he had found it, there were others 
 of a widely different stamp who believed, with Roger 
 Bacon, that the elixir was really accessible to 
 scientific research. Francis Lord Bacon, a greater 
 man in science than his namesake, was one of 
 these, and he left in his works sundry precepts to 
 be observed in the investigation. The great P'rench 
 philosopher Descartes believed he had discovered 
 the elixir, and is said to have confidently expected 
 that he would attain the age of some hundreds of 
 years. Nevertheless, he died when he had reached 
 fifty-five only. His friends, however, as in Roger 
 Bacon's case, so firmly trusted the philosopher's own 
 opinion, that they persisted, on his death, that he 
 must have been poisoned. 
 
 Belief in the elixir has long faded away, or, if 
 held occasionally by individual enthusiasts, they 
 find the progress of knowledge and thought in 
 modern times has disposed the world to scout the 
 notion as preposterous. 
 
340 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 COMETS. 
 
 Any of the readers of the World of Wonders 
 who are old enough to remember the year 1858, 
 will probably never forget the magnificent pheno- 
 menon which was witnessed in the heavens that year, 
 when a comet of great brilliancy, size, and splendour, 
 was most favourably seen for several weeks during 
 autumn. Had this wonderful appearance happened 
 a thousand years ago, it would have been rather a 
 source of superstition to 
 the ignorant than of in- 
 telligent interest to the 
 learned ; but the pro- 
 gress of knowledge, and 
 the diffusion of educa- 
 tion, cause us now to 
 seek in these wonders of 
 nature some revelations 
 of her laws, and to en- 
 deavour to divest them 
 of the mysteries in which 
 they are shrouded. 
 
 These wonderful ap- 
 pearances have fre- 
 quently happened within 
 historic periods, but not 
 so often as to diminish 
 the admiration and 
 amazement with which 
 each new arrival is 
 greeted. Two of the 
 more remark.able of these 
 are figured in our illus- 
 tr.ations ; but before pro- 
 ceeding to a particular 
 account of them, it will 
 be well to give a short 
 outline of what astrono- 
 mers have been able to 
 make out with reference 
 to these curious objects. 
 
 A comet consists of a 
 vast mass of gaseous 
 matter surrounding a 
 
 central portion which appears to be of denser 
 material, and is called the nucleus. This vast 
 mass of luminous gas generally assumes the form 
 of a tail ; but this is not always nor even generally 
 the case, as a comet sometimes is nearly round, 
 and sometimes it docs not even present the nucleus, 
 and in that case it appears like a round ball of 
 luminous gas. Cases have, however, occurred 
 where a comet has been seen with several tails. 
 
 Though comets large enough to be conspicuous 
 to the naked eye are only seen at intervals of many 
 years, it is well known to astronomers that hardly a 
 year passes without one or more small comets 
 being brought witliin reach of our telescopes. 
 
 THE COMET OF l8n 
 
 These objects are very faint, the majority of them 
 are devoid of tails, but they always attract a great 
 deal of attention from those who have telescopes 
 sufficiently powerful to observe them. It is by the 
 careful examination of some of these small comets 
 that much information has been acquired as to 
 their real nature, and the laws which govern their 
 movements through the \-ast abyss of space. The 
 earth and the planets are retained ^in their orbits by 
 the attraction of the sun, and it is the same great 
 power which draws the 
 comets within reach of. 
 our eyes and telescopes. 
 The planets move around 
 the sun very nearly in 
 circles ; many comets 
 likewise revolve around 
 the sun, but not in cir- 
 cles ; their paths ^ are 
 oval or elliptical, and the 
 sun is not at the centre 
 of the ellipse, but near 
 to one end of it, in a 
 point which is known as 
 the focus of the ellipse. 
 These ellipses are gene- 
 rally very long, so that 
 the comet takes a great 
 period of time to travel 
 round in its path. The 
 one which takes the 
 shortest journey spends 
 three years in perform- 
 ing it. There are some 
 comets that, after pass- 
 ing near the sun in their 
 elliptical orbit, retreat to 
 the other end of their 
 ellipse, which is at such 
 a prodigious distance 
 that thousands of years 
 must ekipse ere they re- 
 visit the neighbourhood 
 of the sun again. One 
 of these was a great 
 comet which appeared in the year 1844. Its orbit 
 was calculated, and it was found tliat after leaving 
 the sun, it would retreat into space to a distance 
 equal to four thousand times the distance of the 
 earth from the sun, and that ere it returned again, 
 it would have performed a stupendous journey, 
 which would have taken it not loss than a hundred 
 thousand years to .accomplish. 
 
 But there are many comets which astronomers 
 can prove will never again return to the neighbour- 
 hood of the sun. They come from the remote 
 depths of space, at a stupendous distance from the 
 sun and all his train of planets ; on beginning to 
 feci the effect of his attraction, they move towards 
 
COMETS. 
 
 341 
 
 our system, and at length they come sufficiently 
 near to it to be visible through a telescope, and as 
 surely as they do so, so surely arc they detected by 
 the keen eyes of some of the numerous astronomers 
 who are always on the watch for these bodies. 
 They come on nearer to the sun, till their pace 
 exceeds that of the earth itself, but they do not 
 plunge headlong into him. Notwithstanding the 
 vast powers of his attraction, they just whirl round 
 the mighty lumi- 
 nary. Exposed 
 to the fearful 
 heat of his 
 beams, the tail 
 is developed 
 to an enor- 
 mous length. 
 By some un- 
 known law, 
 which Professor 
 Tyndal has re- 
 cently sought to 
 explain in a very 
 ingenious man- 
 ner, the tail 
 stands out away 
 from the sun as 
 the comet whirls 
 around it; then, 
 after having 
 passed the sun, 
 the comet re- 
 treats again. It 
 gradually be- 
 comes fainter, 
 gradually is lost 
 sight of by our 
 telescopes, gra- 
 dually plunges 
 again into the 
 depths of space, 
 never again to 
 revisit our sun, 
 never again to be 
 beheld by human 
 eye. Such is the 
 
 history of many of the great comets which at dif- 
 ferent times have struck terror into the inhabitants 
 of the earth — they have retreated never more to 
 return. 
 
 A celebrated comet, which showed itself in the 
 year 181 1, is represented on page 340. The appear- 
 ance of this produced a most extraordinary sensation. 
 It extended over a vast length in the sky, and formed 
 an object of attraction to millions while it lasted. 
 It was particularly remarkable for the enormous 
 length of its tail, which would reach from the earth 
 to the sun, and have some millions of miles to spare. 
 The head of this comet — that is, the round portion 
 
 from which the tail proceeds — was measured, and 
 found to be a vast globe 1 1 2,000 miles in diameter 
 — that is to say, a gigantic ball, amounting to more 
 than a thousand times the bulk of the earth. Con- 
 tained within the head was a bright luminous nucleus, 
 which appeared to be the densest part of the comet. 
 This portion had a diameter of 400 miles. 
 
 The material of which comets are constructed is 
 undoubtedly gas in a state of the most extreme 
 
 tenuity. Stars 
 so faint that the 
 slightest trace of 
 mist or fog would 
 utterly obliterate 
 them, are seen 
 with the greatest 
 case through the 
 densest portion 
 of a comet's tail ; 
 so that millions 
 of miles of this 
 i;as have not the 
 effect of a small 
 mist a few yards 
 thick. From this 
 and other rea- 
 sons it is thought 
 that the entire 
 mass of a comet 
 is something in- 
 credibly small 
 compared with 
 lis gigantic bulk. 
 Sir John Hcr- 
 schel has esti- 
 mated, taking 
 the fact above 
 mentioned and 
 others into ac- 
 count, that per- 
 haps the very 
 largest comet 
 does not weigh 
 more than a few 
 ounces. 
 
 In our second 
 illustration is seen the great comet of 1843, one of 
 the most remarkable that was ever observed. The 
 nucleus of this was so brilliant that it could be seen 
 with the greatest ease in full daylight. In our 
 drawing it is represented as near the moon, but a 
 comet so grand as this one would have lost but 
 little of its splendour by its vicinity to the bright 
 beams of our moon. This comet is remarkable 
 for coming nearer to the sun than any other of 
 these bodies whose paths have been determined 
 with accuracy. It was found to approach the sun 
 to within a distance of 33,000 miles. It is easy to 
 calculate, though not easy to imagine, what must be 
 
 Tllr. GREAT COMF.T OF 1S43. 
 
342 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 the heat in such a position. It would doubtless be 
 many thousand times greater than the temperature 
 of molten iron. 
 
 Speculations have often been indulged in as to 
 the possibility of a collision between the earth and 
 a comet. That such a colUsion, though highly 
 improbable, is yet possible, cannot be denied. In 
 fact, it can hardly be doubted that the earth has 
 ere now been enveloped in the tail of a comet, its 
 inhabitants being quite unconscious of the fact. 
 But if we recollect what is probably the case as to 
 the real weight of a comet, we can easily see that 
 even if a direct collision did occur, it could not 
 produce any destructive effects on the earth. 
 
 ^ntirjuarian Curiosities. 
 
 Invention of the Sun-dial. — To the Assyrians 
 Herodotus ascribes the invention of the hemispheri- 
 cal sun-dial, which he had seen in use in Egypt. 
 This was, in effect, a device which exhibited both 
 the daily and the annual motion of the sun. A 
 basin was formed of metal, from the middle of 
 which a vertical pin was set up, terminating in a 
 knob, which represented exactly the centre of the 
 hemisphere. It is plain that the shadow cast by 
 this knob on the side of the basin traced out, as it 
 moved from sunrise to sunset, the projection of the 
 sun's actual movement in the heavens day by da)'. 
 In the treeless plains of Mesopotamia and the Nile 
 delta, the sharp, definite shadows cast by obelisks 
 and other stiff architectural forms, could not fail to 
 attract earlier attention to the sun than would be 
 the case in the broken ground and wooded regions 
 of Europe. 
 
 Antiquity of Bee Keeping. — The earliest 
 Semitic records, the book of Job, the Vedas, Egyp- 
 tian sculptures and papyri, as well as the poems 
 of Homer, confirm the early cultivation of bees by 
 man for domestic uses. Sir Gardner Wilkinson, 
 moreover, makes mention of a representation of a 
 hive figured upon a very ancient tomb at Thebes, 
 which is evidence of their domestication there at 
 an early period of history. 
 
 Draughts and Chess in Ancient Egypt.— 
 Dr. Birch, of the British Museum, in a paper 
 read to the Royal Society of Literature, obser\es 
 that there is a tradition preserved by Herodotus, 
 that Rhampsinitus, King of Egypt, was led by 
 wolves down into Hades, where he played at 
 petteia (draughts), with I sis, the Greek Demeter, or 
 Proserpine. Rhampsinitus is probably the same 
 person as Rameses 111. The game appears as a 
 favourite diversion of the Egyptian aristocracy. 
 The hicroglyphical word for chess is abbo, probably 
 connected with ab, which means ivory ; but many 
 of the pieces are of glass and porcelain, and bear 
 the figures of cats, jackals, and other animals. 
 
 Representations of the game appear in graves of 
 the fifth century, and of the dynasty of Saygazah. 
 Each player has six pieces, each set lia\ing spherical 
 heads, but being of different colours. During the ' 
 Roman period, live pieces only were used. The 
 board was circular, with cylindrical lines, between 
 which flat circular pieces moved to the centre. A 
 game of chess called " se>mat " is represented on a 
 sarcophagus as played in the unseen world, with 
 pieces like pawns, coloured black, and with conical 
 heads. Sena, the game of six, formed the amuse- 
 ments of the shades in Hades. Rhampsinitus re- 
 ceived a doubled kerchief, or golden neck-circlet 
 (called a napkin by Herodotus), from Isis, with 
 whom he played a stake, possibly for his soul. The 
 Egyptian chess-board had thirty squares alternately 
 black and white. 
 
 Curious Custom relating to Inheritance. 
 — Salmon, in his "History of Hertfordshire," 
 states his belief that the East Saxon and Mercian 
 kingdoms were separated from each other by the 
 " Ermin Street," in the upper part of this county; 
 and in the lower part, in the parish of Cheshunt, by 
 a bank which anciently reached through Theobald's 
 Park, as far as Nincacres Wood. There is, he 
 says, a custom in the manor of Cheshunt, by which 
 the elder brother inherits above the bank, and the 
 younger below it, in the same fields ; which could 
 not have been introduced but from the different 
 laws of a different government. 
 
 A WONDERFUL ESCAPE. 
 
 The defence of the Residency at Lucknow, during 
 the Indian mutiny from June to November, 1857, 
 has been justly termed one of the most marvellous 
 that has ever been recorded in history ; and among 
 the great deeds of bravery done during the siege — 
 and the whole garrison was a band of heroes — the 
 greatest, by common consent, was that of Thomas 
 Henry Kavanagh, which gained him the \'ictoria 
 Cross and the honourable cognomen of "Lucknow" 
 Kavanagh. 
 
 When the mutiny broke out, Mr. Kavanagh, who 
 was not in the army, was enrolled as a volunteer 
 with the rest of the civilians at Lucknow, and nobly 
 and well did he perform his military duties. The 
 garrison was relieved by General Havelock on the 
 25th of September, 1857 ; but it was still sorely 
 pressed for provisions, and doubts were beginning 
 to arise whether it would be possible to hold out 
 much longer, when a native spy arrived on the 
 morning of the 9th of November, with a despatch 
 from Sir Colin Campbell to say that he was approach- 
 ing with relief To save loss of time and lives, plans 
 for effecting the entrance to the Residency had 
 been previously drawn up for the guidance of the 
 army of relief ; but without explanation from some 
 one knowing the place and approaches, they would 
 
■s 
 
THE ATMOSPHERIC RAILWAY. 
 
 343 
 
 have been of little use. Then it was that Kavanagh 
 volunteered to pass through the lines of the enemy 
 to take the required information. In the excitement 
 of a charge, or in the heat of a battle, men will 
 often do deeds of daring they would shrink from 
 in cooler moments ; and surely it is a higher kind 
 of Ijravery which induces a man, for the benefit of 
 others, deliberately to face almost certain death, 
 and a death, most likely, of slow torture ! Kava- 
 nagh's perfect knowledge of Hindustani was in his 
 favour, and the oriental disguise he assumed was 
 such that even his rnost intimate friends did not 
 recognise him when he appeared before them. 
 
 At half-past eight o'clock on the evening of the gth 
 of November, he st.irted on his perilous mission, 
 accompanied by the native spy who had brought 
 the despatch in the morning. Their perils began 
 immediately on quitting the Residency. They 
 had to strip and swim across the river Goomtee, 
 which bounds the city on one side, and narrowly 
 escaped being seen by a native who had come 
 down to wash in the river. They proceeded along 
 the left bank of the river, meeting several Sepoys, 
 and were stopped at the foot of one bridge by a 
 sentry. The answers given by the spy being 
 satisfactory, they continued their course along the 
 bank till they reached the stone bridge, over which 
 they crossed and entered the principal street of the 
 city. They advanced along the middle of the 
 street, as if courting observation, till they reached 
 the open country ; where, being stopped once more, 
 and again allowed to pass, they went on their way 
 for about four or five miles, when they found to 
 their dismay that they had taken the wrong road. 
 They had the greatest difficulty in finding the 
 right one. In going across the country in the 
 darkness, they fell into ditches and were nearly 
 drowned ; and they had to avoid with the greatest 
 care the native villages. 
 
 At last they were once more in the right path, 
 and at about one o'clock in the morning they 
 fell in with an advanced picket of the mutineers. 
 Kavanagh boldly and successfully answered the 
 challenge of the sentry, and they continued their 
 course for some time till they reached a mango 
 grove, where the native sentinel, hearing footsteps, 
 raised the alarm and called out the guard. The 
 spy lost his presence of mind, and had it not been 
 for Kavanagh's bold bearing and ready answers to 
 the questions put to him, most likely they would 
 have been discovered. They passed on, and 
 presently fell into a swamp, where the water was 
 often as high as their necks. Quite exhausted, and 
 nearly drowned, they managed, after two hours' 
 immersion, to get once more on to dry land. 
 Though the water had washed the paint off 
 Kavanagh's hands, it had not, fortunately, reached 
 his face ; and they resumed their journey till they 
 reached a native villagCj where they gave them- 
 
 selves out as spies, and asked to be directed to the 
 English lines, which were now close at hand. 
 They lost their way once more, and were once 
 more nearly taken, when, at about four o'clock, they 
 reached a grQ\e of trees, and Kavanagh, quite 
 exhausted with cold and fetigue, threw himself 
 down on the ground to sleep. He had hardly 
 done so when they heard a sentinel's challenge in 
 English, "Who goes there.'" and found, to their 
 joy, that they had come upon a picket of Sikhs, 
 and were therefore safe. It was not long before 
 Kavanagh was in the presence of the Commander- 
 in-Chief, narrating his adventures. The informa- 
 tion he had brought was the means of saving many 
 lives and much treasure ; and his wonderful escape 
 was, in the words of .Sir Colin Campbell's despatch 
 — the stern old man being ever chary of his 
 praise — "one of the most daring feats c\er 
 attempted." ^^^^^^^^^ 
 
 THE ATMOSPHERIC RAILWAY. 
 
 The idea of employing atmospheric pressure to the 
 propulsion of trains, dates as far back as 1824. 
 The Atmospheric Railway must not be confounded 
 with the Pneumatic Despatch ; for although in each 
 case air is the motive power, the two systems are 
 essentially different. In the case of the Pneumatic 
 Despatch, the pressure is the result of the great 
 velocity imparted to the air ; whereas in the Atmo- 
 spheric Railway system, it is the pressure of the 
 atmosphere which acts with equal force upon all 
 surfaces on a level with the ocean, exerting a weight 
 of between fourteen and fifteen pounds upon every 
 square inch, although only manifested when the 
 atmosphere is artificially removed from one side of 
 a body by exhaustion. The well-known and often- 
 stated fact that an ordinary sized man's body con- 
 tains a surface upon which the atmosphere presses 
 with an aggregate force of fourteen tons, is merely 
 repeated here as a proof that the natural pressure 
 of the air is no mean force when exerted upon a 
 large surface, and quite e.c[ual to the attainment of 
 great results when properly directed. 
 
 The first idea of an Atmospheric Railway was 
 more closely allied to the Pneumatic Despatch than 
 that subsequently developed. This was to cause the 
 carriages to pass through a large cylinder, the front 
 carriage having a disc attached to it which, fitting 
 the cylinder air-tight, acted as a piston, the air 
 being exhausted in front by a pump. This idea 
 lay dormant until 1827, when it was revived, but 
 only for a short time, by Mr. Mcdhurst, and then 
 finally abandoned. 
 
 In 1834 the idea occurred to Mr. Pinkus, that it 
 was by no means necessary that the carriages them- 
 selves should pass through the tube, provided a 
 piston could be arranged in connection with the 
 carriage, but outside it, which should be drawn 
 
344 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 through the tube, and thus drag the carriage along. 
 The only apparent difficulty was in devising an 
 opening in the tube, which, whilst it allowed the 
 rod connecting the piston with the carriage to pass 
 through it, should not allow air to enter in front of 
 the piston, and so impair the vacuum. Indeed, it 
 was wholly in consequence of this difficulty, and 
 the inefficiency of every plan that was tried in 
 order to fulfil these conditions, that the otherwise 
 beautiful system of atmospheric propulsion fell 
 to the ground, after hundreds of thousands of 
 pounds had been spent 
 upon it. 
 
 The tubes which formed 
 the long cylinder in 
 which the travelling pis- 
 ton moved, were of cast 
 iron, placed midway be- 
 tween the rails. The upper 
 part of the tube was made 
 open, the width of the 
 opening or slot being suf- 
 ficient to allow the con- 
 necting or piston-rod freely to pass along it. Upon 
 either side of the slot, and at a short distance from 
 its edge, was an upright plate of iron, shown at A D 
 in Fig. I, which represents an end view of the tube. 
 The slot is shown at c. The tube was strengthened 
 by the lugs D, D, D, cast in one piece with it, and 
 by which it was bolted down to the timbers E, E, of 
 the permanent way. The tubes were nine feet 
 long, and carefully joined 
 together, end to end, air- 
 tight. The first kind of 
 valve tried consisted of a 
 long band of strong pliant 
 leather, extending the 
 whole length of the tube 
 between the pumping- 
 engine houses, these 
 being placed at distances 
 of three miles apart. The 
 leather band was laid flat 
 over the slot C between 
 the upright pieces A, is, the 
 
 under surface being well greased to make it fit air- 
 tight. The piston was placed several feet in advance 
 of the front, or piston-carriage, to which it was con- 
 nected by the piston-rod, which was a strong iron 
 tube. This rod, after being straight for several j 
 feet, was suddenly bent upwards, and passing , 
 through the slot in the tube, was fixed to the piston- 
 carriage. 
 
 Fig. 2 shows the arrangement in longitudinal 
 section, t is the tube, P the piston, R R the hollow 
 connecting or piston-rod, and B B B the leather 
 band raised by the roller S as the rod passed. It 
 will be seen from the drawing that no air could 
 enter the tube in frotit of the piston, because the 
 
 leather band was not raised from the slot until the 
 piston had advanced in front of the opening shown 
 at the dotted line A A. As soon as the carriage had 
 passed, a second roller attached to it pressed the 
 band down into its place in readiness for the ne.xt 
 train. 
 
 Another arrangement for a valve consisted also 
 of a long leather band, but it was riveted to short 
 plates of iron placed above it, which were hinged 
 to the side of the upright piece A, Fig. i. The 
 piston-rod at the point where it passed through the 
 tube was furnished with a 
 kind of ploughshare, by 
 which the hinged leather 
 was raised upon one side 
 as it passed. This plan 
 secured a more certain 
 return of the valve to its 
 bed after the carriage had 
 passed. Other forms of 
 valve were tried, but it is 
 '• a remarkable fact that 
 
 after every mechanical 
 difficulty had been overcome, and in spite of the great 
 speed and safety attained by the system, it failed 
 wholly from the impossibility of obtaining a sub- 
 stance which, placed upon the leather to make it 
 lie air-tight upon the slot, should preserve a uniform 
 consistency in all temperatures ; that which froze 
 hard in winter became oil in summer, and hence 
 the vahe was always more or less leaking. 
 
 In the atmospheric sys- 
 tem, the power being ap- 
 plied directly, was both 
 more uniform and more 
 effective than where, as 
 in the locomotive, it is 
 transferred through the 
 intervention of a crank. 
 
 The guard had com- 
 plete control over the 
 speed of the train, in con- 
 sequence of the hollow- 
 "■ ness of the piston-rod. 
 
 If he wished to slacken 
 speed, he admitted air, by opening a cock, into the 
 tube in front of the piston, and so diminished the va- 
 cuum. When the cock was entirely closed, the whole 
 pressure of the air was exerted upon the piston. 
 
 There used to be a double set of rails parallel to 
 each other between New Cross and Croydon ; 
 upon one set the trains were propelled by a locomo- 
 tive, and upon the other by atmospheric traction ; 
 but the superiority of the latter over the former was 
 completely established, as shown in the constant 
 trials of speed between trains starting at the same 
 time upon the respective sets of rails. As two 
 trains could not possibly be upon the same length 
 pf tube at the same time, collisions wxre impossible. 
 
THE SMALLEST FLOWERING PLANT. 
 
 345 
 
 THE SMALLEST FLOWERLXG PLANT. 
 
 Everywhere the ponds and still waters arc 
 covered during summer with small floating green 
 leaves, which are known by the name of duck-weed. 
 Objects so com- 
 mon seldom re- 
 ceive any atten- 
 tion, except from 
 the special stu- 
 dent of botany. 
 Yet a world of 
 wonders may be 
 seen by any one 
 who will, with a 
 little care, ex- 
 amine a handful 
 of these weeds, 
 transferred from 
 theirnativepond 
 into a transpa- 
 rent glass jar, 
 and study the 
 endless variety 
 of minute ani- 
 mals which they 
 support. 
 
 In many pools 
 near London the 
 four different 
 kinds of duck- 
 weed which are 
 indigenous to 
 Britain may be 
 found growing 
 together. All of 
 them are repre- 
 sented in our plate. The most common form is 
 also the smallest ; it is a little roundish disc of 
 bright glistening green, generally with two smaller 
 discs, one growing from each side towards the one 
 end of the plant. The apparently varnished upper 
 surface of the 
 leaf is always 
 exposed to the 
 air. It at once 
 throws off any 
 water that may 
 fall upon it. A 
 single long and 
 slender root is 
 sent down into 
 the water. The 
 
 Leniua miiinr. 
 Lemna gib1)a. 
 
 ..MN.\>, 
 I-emn.T trisulti. 
 M'olflia arrhiza, 
 
 THE SMALLEST FLOWERING PLANT— WOLFEIA ARRHIZA, IN FLOWER, 
 
 Seen ftrom above. 
 
 (GREATLY MAGNIFIED.) 
 
 delicate growing end of this is protected by a cap, 
 something like a small' cap of hberty, which is 
 pushed before the growing point. Two of the 
 remaining three agree very closely with this small 
 form, except that one has a large number of roots, 
 and the other has a very thick leaf. 
 44 
 
 The fourth has a somewhat different appear- 
 ance, being oval, with a sharp point at one end, 
 and a little stalk at the other. It also wants the 
 glistening appearance on the upper surface, as it 
 does not grow floating on the water, but just a little 
 
 under it. These 
 little plants are 
 occasionally, but 
 very rarely, met 
 with in flower. 
 The flowers are 
 inconspicuous, 
 and are pro- 
 duced in little 
 slitson the edges 
 of the leaves. 
 
 Popularly, a 
 flower is the 
 opened petals of 
 the plant ; and 
 the more nume* 
 rous the petals, 
 thoughproduced 
 at the expense 
 of theother parts 
 of the flower, the 
 more perfect it 
 is to the florist 
 and the public. 
 On the other 
 hand, the bota- 
 nist places no 
 importance on 
 the petals ; they 
 arc to him only 
 the envelopes of 
 the true flower, 
 which is composed of stamens and pistils. Indeed, 
 a very large proportion of the flowers with which 
 he is acquainted are entirely destitute of petals, 
 and composed only of the essential parts just 
 named. Amongst these are the flowers of the 
 
 duck-weeds. 
 
 Three years 
 ago a fifth duck- 
 weed was found 
 in a pond near 
 London, which 
 is specially re- 
 markable for its 
 very minute size. 
 It is a small 
 speck of bright 
 green, somewhat oval in shape, with a flat upper 
 surface, and a swollen fleshy under surface. These 
 plants vary in size — it would require fifty of the 
 smallest placed end to end by their longest dia- 
 meter to make an inch. Yet in this minute speck 
 a flower is borne, which in due time produces a 
 
 v-wi,r,i)S. 
 
 Lcmn.-i lolyn-li 
 
546 
 
 THE WORLD OF WOiNDERS. 
 
 perfect seed, enclosed in its proper seed vessel. 
 The flower grows in a pit dug out of the upper 
 surface. It is composed of a single stamen and 
 pistil. The whole plant is entirely made up of 
 small cells, and in this respect it differs from all 
 other flowering plants, which invariably have some 
 vascular tissue entering into their composition. 
 
 WHITE ELEPHANTS. 
 
 Among the animals which in various countries 
 have been the objects of superstitious veneration, 
 few have ever received the attention accorded in 
 the kingdoms of .Siam and Ava to a white elephant. 
 Such an animal, when he makes his appearance in 
 the forest, is regarded as sacred ; no effort is spared 
 to capture him, and when caught he is housed in 
 regal state, a long train of attendants being allotted 
 to his service. "King of the White Elephants" 
 is considered one of the proudest titles of which 
 the monarchs of these countries can boast ; and 
 fierce wars have been waged for the possession of 
 one or more of the beasts. They are looked upon as 
 the symbol of all kingly authority, and to be without 
 one would be taken as an indication of the dis- 
 pleasure of heaven, and a certain omen of disaster. 
 
 In Ava especially the white elephant is held in 
 the highest honour. He bears the title of " lord," 
 and is ranked next to the king and before the 
 queen in dignity. His house is sumptuously deco- 
 rated, and he has a minister of high rank to super- 
 intend his household. When there are two or 
 more of these animals in the possession of the king 
 at the same time, all are treated with similar care. 
 
 "Their food," says one traveller, "is given them 
 in vessels of silver-gilt. Every day when they go 
 to the river to wash, each goes under a canopy of 
 cloth of gold, or silk, carried by six or eight men ; 
 and eight or ten men go before each, playing on 
 drums and shawms, and other instruments. When 
 each has washed, and is come out of the river, he 
 has a gentleman to wash his feet in a silver basin, 
 which office is appointed by the king. There is no 
 account made of the black elephants, be they never 
 so great ; and some of them are wonderfully large 
 and handsome, some being nine cubits high." 
 
 " While we were at Ava," says another, " a report 
 was brought that a white elephant had been seen ; 
 but it was stated at the same time that its capture 
 and transport on a sledge over the cultivated 
 country would be accpmpanied by the destruction 
 of ten thousand baskets of rice. His majesty 
 is said to have exclaimed, 'What signifies the 
 destruction of ten thousand baskets of rice in com- 
 parison with the possession of a white eleph.ant ?' 
 and the order was given for the hunt." 
 
 For the maintenance of these elephants, one of 
 the finest provinces in the kingdom was .lUotted by 
 
 a recent sovereign of Burmah. As, professedly, a 
 mark of high esteem, the monarch has occasionally 
 entrusted the keeping of a white elephant to one 
 of his nobility ; but the expense involved in the 
 charge has been, now and then, so great as to ruin 
 the unlucky recipient of this doubtful honour. 
 Hence, "to have a white elephant to keep" has 
 become a common saying when a person has an 
 expensive and unprofitable dignity or undertaking 
 upon his shoulders. 
 
 White elephants have been mentioned by very 
 ancient writers. The colour is not, strictly speak- 
 ing, white, but varies from a cream colour ,to a 
 tawny yellow or dull grey. The beasts are, in fact, 
 known as white chiefly by contrast with the 
 ordinary colour of their species. They are very 
 rarely found in any part of the East, and it is 
 thought by naturalists that the peculiar colour of 
 a " white elephant" arises from disease ; that is, a 
 kind of elephant leprosy. Nevertheless, the beasts, 
 in their dignified captivity, frequently show no 
 symptoms of ill health, but live for a very long 
 period. 
 
 Sir James Emerson Tcnnent remarks that 
 amongst the Singhalese a singular preference is 
 evinced for elephants that exhibit flesh-coloured 
 blotches about the head and extremities, which 
 " appear to be the result of some eruptive affection, 
 the irritation of which has induced the animal to 
 rub itself against the rough bark of trees, and thus 
 to abrade the outer cuticle." He considers the ad- 
 miration of the natives for beasts thus blemished 
 to have its origin in the general regard of Asiatics 
 for a white elephant. 
 
 Moiikrs of Scienre. 
 
 Magnesium Light. — The light from magnesium 
 is -jj^th that of the sun, and its chemical intensity 
 Jgth part. A magnesium wire Tooth of an inch in 
 diameter, emits a light equal to seventy-four stearine 
 candles of five to a pound. It burns at the rate of 
 three feet a minute. Two ounces of the wire of 
 this size will measure i,8oo feet in length, and will 
 take ten hours to be consumed. The relative cost 
 of light of equal illuminating power from mag- 
 nesium, stearine candles, and gas, is as follows : — 
 Magnesium 23, stearine 11, gas i. 
 ' P1.Y.MOUTH Breakwater cost one and a half 
 millions sterling, occupied twenty-nine years in 
 completion, is 5,100 feet long, and contains 3,369,261 
 tons of stone, and has an interstice space between 
 the blocks averaging thirty-seven per cent, of the 
 whole mass. 
 
 Speed of Sound. — In ordinary conditions of 
 the atmosphere, sound has been found to travel at 
 the rate of t,i 18 feet per second at the temperature 
 of sixty-one degrees ; but it travels much faster in 
 
WONDERFUL RIVERS. 
 
 547 
 
 a more rarefied atmosphere, and upon high moun- 
 tains this is very evident. The measurement of 
 the height of a rocket at the moment of explosion 
 cannot, in consequence, be made according to the 
 ordinary rule. 
 
 Reflection of Sound. — The reflection of sound 
 from a row of palings standing obliquely to the 
 observer, comes from each paling at a greater 
 interval of time as the distance increases ; but as 
 the distance of each from each is very small, the 
 effect of the rapidly-repeated reflection or echo is 
 to produce a musical note of a high pitch. The 
 sharp crack of a whip produces the effect very 
 distinctly. 
 
 NrrRO-GLYCERlNE is produced by mixing strong 
 nitric acid and sulphuric acid with glycerine. It 
 is poisonous, and the fourth of a grain would kill 
 a dog. Its explosive force is ten times that of an 
 equal weight of gunpowder. With less than an 
 ounce of it a wrought-iron block, weighing about 
 three hundredweight, has been rent into fragments. 
 
 BREATHING FIRE. 
 
 The deception of breathing out flames, which 
 excites the astonishment of the ignorant, is very 
 ancient. When the slaves in Sicily, about a 
 century and a half before our era, made a for- 
 midable insurrection, and avenged themselves in 
 a cruel manner for the severities which they 
 had suffered, there was amongst them a Syrian 
 named Eunus, a man of great craft and courage, 
 who, having passed through many scenes of life, 
 had become acquainted with a variety of arts. 
 He pretended to have immediate communication 
 with the gods, and was the oracle and leader of his 
 fellow-slaves. When heated by enthusiasm and 
 desirous of inspiring his followers with courage, he 
 breathed flames or sparks among them from his 
 mouth while he was addressing them. We are 
 told by historians that for this purpose he pierced 
 a nut-shell at both ends, and, having filled it with 
 some burning substance, put it into his mouth and 
 breathed through it. This deception at present is 
 performed much better. The juggler rolls together 
 some flax or hemp, so as to form a ball about the 
 size of a walnut, sets it on fire, and suffers it to 
 burn until it is nearly consumed ; he then rolls 
 round it, while burning, some more flax, and by 
 these means the fire may be retained in it for a 
 long time. When he wishes to exhibit, he slips 
 the ball unperceived into his mouth, and breathes 
 through it, which again revives the fire, so that a 
 number of weak sparks proceed from it ; and the 
 performer sustains no hurt, provided he inspire the 
 air not through the , mouth, but the nostrils. By 
 this art the Rabbi Bar-cocheba, in the reign of the 
 Emperor Hadrian, made the credulous Jews believe 
 
 that he was the hoped-for Messiah ; and two 
 centuries after, the Emperor Constantius was 
 thrown into great terror, when Valentinian, who 
 was afterwards emperor, informed him that he had 
 seen one of the body-guards breathing out fire 
 and flames in the evening. — Beckmann's ^'History 
 of Inventions.'' 
 
 WONDERFUL RIVERS. 
 
 Water always finds a level, and in doing so exer- 
 cises some force on the surface over which it passes. 
 A shower of rain falling on high ground produces 
 many little gutter-like streams, because the water, 
 in obeying the law of gravity, seeks the easiest path 
 downwards, and it causes the removal of sand, 
 small stones, and mud, from the surface of the soil 
 down the stream, because the weight and pressure 
 of the running water call force into operation. 
 After the fall of rain, much goes up again in the 
 form of mist or vapour, and some sinks into the 
 earth, but the greater part works its way by several 
 small channels into tiny brooks, and these, swollen 
 by others, enter torrents or streams, whose junction 
 produces a ri\-er. The longer the river, the greater 
 must be the quantity of water it has obtained from 
 the surface of the land around it, and the larger 
 must be the amount of sand, mud, and gravel its 
 streams produce and move. 
 
 In almost all cases rivers are found to arise from 
 high land, and usually there are hilly districts not 
 far from the sides of the main streams. The high 
 ground and the hills are called the watershed of the 
 river, and the space between them and the river is 
 termed the river-basin. All the running water from 
 the watershed falls at last into the river, after passing 
 along the basin. Every pint of water in its course 
 to the river carries along so much mud, and dis- 
 places as much more, and as the sea finally receives 
 the whole, it stands to reason that the streams are 
 constantly removing the dry land to the bottom of 
 the ocean. When there has been much rain, the 
 rivers overflow their banks, and as at those times 
 the rush of the water is great, so large quantities 
 of mud, sand, and gravel are carried along by it. 
 When the floods begin to diminish, the extra 
 quantity of solid matter they have brought down 
 sinks, and is finally left on the land on either side 
 of the river. Gravel consists of stones from the 
 hard rocks over which the river passes, which have 
 been rolled and rounded by the action of the water ; 
 sand is the product of this rolling and wearing, 
 and mud is sand mixed with a large quantity of 
 soil, upon which grass or plants have grown, and 
 which has been washed into the river. 
 
 The longer the river the greater is the quantity 
 of mud thrown out on either side of its banks 
 during floods, and, therefore, the greater is the com- 
 pensation for the wear and tear that goes on in the 
 
348 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 high lands of the watershed. Very large and long 
 rivers have thrown out so much mud, both side- 
 ways and into the sea, that after awhile tlieir 
 course is lengthened seawards, and they pass along 
 over their own sediment. Such collections of sedi- 
 ment are called deltas, and they are of enormous 
 extent in such rivers as the Mississippi, the Nile, the 
 Ganges, and the Amazon. The depth of the deltas 
 is regulated by the original depth of the sea at the 
 river's mouth, the number of years that the mud 
 has been collecting, and the quantity of water con- 
 tinually rushing by. 
 
 The Mississippi, in North America, rises more 
 than 3,000 miles from the spot where it falls into 
 the Gulf of Mexico, and its length, including its 
 windings, is 4,424 miles. It can be navigated for 
 4.396 miles, and its basin occupies the enormous 
 space of 1,345,974 square miles. That is to say, 
 the running waters of a country as large as Europe, 
 without Russia, Norway, and Sweden, fall into it. 
 The size of the delta is 12,300 square miles, and 
 the thickness is 528 feet or the tenth part of a mile. 
 In some places the depth of this mud is more than 
 630 feet, for in boring for water at New Orleans 
 this depth was attained without coming to anytliing 
 but old river deposit; even at the depth of 153 feet, 
 a bog of cedar trees and shrubs was bored through. 
 Every 1,245 grains weight of water that passes New 
 Orleans contains one grain weight of mud, and 
 the relation of the weight of water to its bulk being 
 easily known, it is possible to estimate (if the yearly 
 amount of water passing into the sea is found) how 
 much solid matter is annually carried down by the 
 Mississippi into the sea, and by these means it has 
 been calculated that every year 3,702,758,400 cubic 
 feet of mud, sand, and gra\el are worn from the 
 surface of the basin of this river, and are cast into 
 the sea at its mouth. 
 
 The Ganges is shorter than the Mississippi, and 
 the immense chain of mountains, the Himalayas, 
 among which it takes its source, rise to a much 
 greater altitude than those which form the watershed 
 of the great American river. It has a large delta, 
 composed of the mud brought from off the surface 
 and washed down by its streams. The delta mud is 
 probably nearly as deep as that of the Mississippi. 
 At Ghazepoor, 500 miles from the sea, the Ganges, 
 when flooded during the four months of the wet 
 season, has a stream that carries down every second 
 500,000 cubic feet of water, and during the eight 
 fine months this is reduced to 55,000 cubic feet a 
 second. The solid matter carried down with the 
 water amounts to 577 cubic feet a second, and in 
 122 days of rain the discharge of sediment was no 
 less than 6,082,041,600 cubic feet. Including the 
 smaller quantity passed down in the fine weather, 
 the grand total of the wear and tear of the streams 
 of the Ganges per annum is 6,368,077,440 cubic 
 feet. This calculation was made, it must be re- 
 
 membered, at a distance of 500 miles from the sea. 
 A cubic foot of earth is a piece shaped like the 
 playing dice, measuring 1 2 inches in height, breadth, 
 and length. This quantity of mud would raise a 
 surface of 228^ square miles— or a square space each 
 side of which should measure 15 miles — a height 
 of one foot. Were the mud dried it would weigh 
 piece for piece about half the weight of granite, and 
 thus the annual discharge would equal 3,184,038,720 
 cubic feet of granite. Twelve and a half cubic feet 
 of granite weigh a ton, and it is calculated that the 
 Great Pyramid of Egypt -would weigh about 
 6,000,000 tons if it were made of granite. So that 
 the weight of 60 pyramids made of granite is 
 carried down every year by the Ganges. Lyell 
 calculates that if a fleet of more than 80 Indiamen, 
 each freighted with about 1,400 tons \veight of mud, 
 were to sail down the river every hour of the day 
 and night for four months, they would only transport 
 from the higher country to the sea, a mass of solid 
 matter equal to that borne down by the Ganges 
 in the flood season. 
 
 S^onbtrs of iljc |)umait "^ahi. 
 
 Changes in the Hu.m.\n Frame.— The body 
 (says Lord Brougham) is constantly undergoing 
 change in all its parts ; probably no person at the 
 age of twenty has one single particle in any part of 
 his body which he had at ten, and still less does 
 any portion of the body he was born with, continue 
 to exist in or with him. All that he before had has 
 entered into new combinations, forming parts of 
 other men, or of animals, or of vegetable, or of 
 mineral substances, exactly as the body he now 
 has will be resolved into new combinations after 
 his death. 
 
 Electricity in the Human Body.— Baron 
 Humboldt observes that in all parts of organic 
 bodies dissimilar substances are in contact with 
 each other, and thus, wherever there is organisation 
 and life there is also electric tension. Emil du 
 Bois (he continues) has succeeded in manifesting 
 tlie presence of the electric muscular current in 
 living and uninjured animal bodies. He shows 
 that the human body, through the medium of a 
 copper wire, can cause a magnetic needle at a 
 distance to be deflected at pleasure, first in one 
 and then in the opposite direction. 
 
 Development of the Human Brain.— Hugh 
 Miller, in his " Testimony of the Rocks," remarks 
 that the human brain is built up by a wonderful 
 process, during which it assumes in succession the 
 form of the brain of a fish, of a reptile, of a bird, of 
 a mammiferous quadruped, and, finally, it takes 
 upon it its unique character as a human brain. 
 Hence the remark made by another scientific 
 writer, that "man is the sum total of all the 
 animals." 
 
THE DEAD SEA. 
 
 349 
 
 THE DEAD SEA. 
 
 The Dead Sea is one of the most remarkable 
 bodies of water in the world. It is situated in 
 Palestine. In the Scriptures it is known as the 
 " Salt Sea " and the " Sea of the Plain." Among 
 classical writers it is called " Lacus Asphaltites." 
 Its most common name in modern times, though 
 not of modern origin, is the " Dead Sea." 
 
 This celebrated sea is forty-two miles in length 
 
 the larger 1,300 feet. Usually inland seas are 
 above the level of the ocean, but the Dead Sea is 
 1,313 feet below the Mediterranean, and nearly 
 the same below the Red Sea. 
 
 The earliest appellation of this body of water 
 was the " Salt Sea," a name which is as descriptive 
 of its properties as its more modern one, for its 
 waters are without parallel in respect to their saline 
 properties. The solid constituents of ordinary sea 
 water are said by Lieutenant Maury to amount 
 
 THE DKAD SKA. 
 
 and ten miles at its greatest breadth. It is en- ; 
 closed on the east and west by dark, rugged ranges ! 
 of mountains, on the west rising 1,500 feet above the ' 
 shore, and on the east 2,000 or 2,500 feet. Its 
 northern shore is a flat of mud with sandy plains 
 beyond, strewn in every direction with blackened 
 trunks and branches of shattered trees. Its southern 
 shore is a low sandy beach, entirely unproductive. 
 This extremity of the sea is pictured in our en- 
 graving, which will convey to the reader a striking 
 idea of the desolate appearance of the place. Its 
 waters are sullen, generally without a ripple, having 
 the appearance of fused metal. It is said to be 
 formed of two submerged plains, on which stood 
 Sodom and Gomorrah, the smaller of the two 
 being an average of thirteen feet below the surface, 
 
 to about three and a half per cent, of its weight. 
 According to Marcet's analysis the solid con- 
 stituents of the water of the Dead Sea amount 
 to twenty-four and a half per cent., and according 
 to Klaprath, to not less than forty-two and a half 
 per cent. So that, whilst in 100 lbs. of ordinary 
 sea water there would be only three and a half 
 pounds of various salts, in this water there would 
 be, according to the lowest estimate of these 
 eminent chemists, twenty-four and a half pounds. 
 So perfect is the solution in which this ponderable 
 matter is held, that the water examined in a glass 
 is perfectly transparent. 
 
 To this striking difference this sea owes its un- 
 usual buoyancy. " I could have lain there and 
 read with perfect ease," says Mr. Stephens, a late 
 
350 
 
 THE ^VURLD OF ^^'Ox\DKKS, 
 
 American traveller: "in fact, I could have slept." 
 " It requires an effort," says Mr. Paxton, " to keep 
 the feet and legs under so as to use them with ad- 
 vantage in swimming." " I could sit, stand, lie, or 
 swim in the water without any difficulty," says Pro- 
 fessor Robinson. Joscphus, in his "Jewish Wars," 
 says that \'espasian ordered some men to be bound 
 and thrown into it, and they floated on its surface. 
 The waters arc of extraordinary weight. Between 
 the weight of a pail of ordinary fresh water and a 
 pail of the water of the Dead Sea there is a dif- 
 ference of nearly ten pounds. Dr. Salisbury, of the 
 American Scientific Association, states that whilst 
 a cubic foot of distilled water weighs 6r32lbs., a 
 cubic foot of the water of this sea weighs 7ri75lbs. 
 This uncommon density accounts for its dull, un- 
 ruffled appearance. In calm weather its surface is 
 without a ripple. Ordinary breezes scarcely agitate 
 it, and on the ceasing of a storm it speedily returns 
 to its natural stillness. Captain Lynch, who navi- 
 gated this sea for the American government, ex- 
 perienced a squall while there. The breaking of 
 the waves against his iron boat he describes as like 
 sledge-hammering. In twenty minutes after the 
 wind had abated they were moving over a perfectly 
 level surface. 
 
 It has been supposed that this sea gives forth 
 deadly exhalations. The tribes dwelling in the 
 region of its banks have, since Pliny's days, aban- 
 doned it at certain seasons of the year, because of 
 its imagined pestilential character. To two out of 
 three of those gentlemen who have attempted at 
 various times a navigation survey, it has proved fatal, 
 though this may have arisen from intense heat rather 
 than from its exhalations. It has been said that 
 no fish inhabits its waters, but some travellers have 
 gone so far in contradiction of this idea as to say 
 there is a species of fish peculiar to them. Most, 
 however, speak only of dead fish carried into the 
 sea by the Jordan. MaundrcU mentions ha\';ng 
 observed living shell-fish. Dr. Wilson only dead 
 ones on its shores. Captain Lynch says that some- 
 times at night " the surface of the sea was one wide 
 sheet of phosphorescent foam," and from this it has 
 been inferred that the waters must be tenanted 
 by medusa; and other minute animals. The fol- 
 lowing fact, however, seems to refute this conclu- 
 sion. " Since our return," says Lynch himself, 
 " some of the water of the Dead Sea has been sub- 
 jected to a powerful microscope, and no animalcula 
 or vestige of animal matter could be detected." 
 Speaking generally, the shores of the sea arc abso- 
 lutely barren. The commander of the United 
 States expedition says that some parts are the 
 very type of desolation. From its northern extre- 
 mity a sandy plain extends along the course of 
 the Jordan, and on the hills which encircle it on 
 the other sides the only thing in the shape of 
 vegetation is a n\unbcr of tufts of small shrubs 
 
 from which a kind of balsam is extracted. The 
 idea of the ancients that birds in their fliglit across 
 the sea were killed by its pestilential air, has long 
 sinc« been placed among fables ; and modern 
 travellers speak of birds flying across it with 
 impunity. Stephens e\cn watched a " flock of 
 gulls " launch themselves on its bosom. 
 
 The pebbles on the shores are covered with a 
 shiny crust of fossil salt, and after flood seasons, 
 when the water has dried out of the pools left by 
 the falling of the lake, the shore abounds in salt, 
 said to be as fine and well-bleached as that made 
 in our salt works ; frequently the sea casts up on 
 its shores pieces of petrified wood in a calcined 
 state. The remarkable saltness of the water is 
 derived from a low, long range of mountains, run- 
 ning along the south-western shore, and consisting 
 of beds of rock salt, varying from loo to 150 feet in 
 thickness, and nine miles in length. From this 
 range numerous rills are constantly emptying into 
 the sea. Here is the famous pillar coated with 
 asphaltum, shown by the Arabs to tra\ellers as 
 Lot's wife. It rises from an oval pedestal. The 
 pedestal is forty or fifty feet above the water, .-.nd 
 the pillar forty feet high. 
 
 There is another interesting feature of this sea. 
 The waters of the Jordan, the Arnon, and other 
 tributaries are continually flowing into it, but it 
 has no outlet. Its level being so far below the 
 adjacent seas a subterranean theory is precluded. 
 Yet the sea preserves a sameness of level. This 
 is accomplished by abundant evaporation. Tra- 
 vellers have described this as taking place " in 
 broad transparent columns of vapour, not unlike 
 waterspouts in appearance, but much larger." As 
 evaporation from sea water contains only very 
 minute traces of salt, the Dead Sea must be increas- 
 ing its proportion of saline substance every year. 
 It becomes specifically heavier every time a cloud 
 of vapour ascends from its surface, and its •be- 
 coming a bed of fossil salt appears, therefore, to 
 be simply a question of time. 
 
 Another ingredient in this noted sea is its 
 bitumen, which is found floating about in 
 blocks, some of them being of huge size, and 
 found in abundance after an earthquake. These 
 blocks are stranded by the winds and collected 
 by the Arabs. The bitumen is said by the 
 Arabs to exude from the surrounding rocks, but 
 it is probable there are bituminous springs in 
 the bed of the sea. On the shores are found 
 lumps of sulphur as large as walnuts. Many of 
 its pebbles ignite when applied to the flame of a 
 candle. On the west coast is a thermal spring, 
 and on the east coast a hot sulphur spring. In 
 the centre of the lake there is a constant rising 
 of gaseous bubbles. These and other facts in- 
 dicate a somewhat close proximity of slumbering 
 volcanic fire. 
 
WOiNDERFUL IMPOSTORS. 
 
 351 
 
 WONDERFUL IMPOSTORS. 
 
 Among the curiosities of history there are to be 
 noticed, every here and there, some singular cases 
 of the impersonation by impostors of men about 
 whose death there has chanced to be some uncer- 
 tainty, and to whom they have borne a striking 
 resemblance in face and figure. One of the earliest, 
 if not the earliest case on 1-ecord, is that of Smerdis 
 the Pretender, in the time of Cambyscs, King of 
 Persia. The story is told by Herodotus, and runs 
 as follows : — When the king was in Egypt he or- 
 dered, through jealousy, his brother Smerdis to be 
 put to death. But soon a pretender arose to push 
 him from his stool in the shape of Tanyoxarkes, the 
 brother of a Made, to whom Cambyses had deputed 
 the administration of the kingdom in his absence. 
 He so deceived the people by his great likeness to 
 Smerdis, that, tired of the great atrocities of Cam- 
 byses, they willingly gave him their support; and 
 when the king died shortly after, from an accidental 
 wound, he ascended the throne without opposition. 
 He reigned for eight months, when a conspiracy of 
 seven noble Persian families was formed against 
 him, and he was murdered in his palace. 
 
 According to Herodotus, the way in which the 
 fraud was discovered was this : — The pretended 
 Smerdis, in punishment for some misdeed, had 
 had his ears cut off. One of his wives, Phajdyme 
 by name, undertook to feel his head while asleep ; 
 and the absence of the ears confirmed the conspira- 
 tors in their opinion that a fraud had been practised 
 upon them. 
 
 The most celebrated cases of impersonation in 
 English history, arc those of Lambert Simnel and 
 Perkin Warbeck, in the reign of Henry VII. 
 
 Lambert Simnel was the son of a baker at O.xford, 
 and had for tutor a " subtile priest " called Richard 
 Simon. The reported escape of the Earl of War- 
 wick, son of the Duke of Clarence, from the Tower, 
 induced the priest, in the hope of advancement for 
 himself, to instruct his pupil to impersonate the 
 earl, who was next male heir of the house of 
 York to the crown. Simnel went to Ireland, and 
 was crowned at Dublin as Edward VL The im- 
 posture, however, was soon discovered, as the real 
 earl was still in the Tower. Simnel having landed 
 with an army at Fouldrey, in Lancashire, was de- 
 feated by the king with great loss at Stoke. He 
 was taken prisoner, but his life was spared, and 
 he was made a scullion in the king's kitchen, and 
 was afterwards advanced to the rank of falconer. 
 As Lord Bacon says, by a curious reverse of for- 
 tune, " he turned a broach that had worn a crown." 
 
 The real name of Perkin Warbeck was Osbeck. 
 He was the son of a converted Jew of Tournay. 
 His good looks and winning manners gained him 
 an introduction to Margaret of Burgundy, sister of 
 
 Edward IV., and a confirmed hater of the house 
 of Lancaster. Struck with his gallant bearing and 
 great resemblance to her brother, she resolved to 
 bring him forward .is Richard, Duke of York, one 
 of the princes murdered in the Tower. She in- 
 structed him well in the part he was to play, gave 
 him an equipage suitable to his pretended birth, 
 and on all occasions addressed him as the White, 
 Rose of England. Being a youth of quick parts he 
 answered all her expectations, and so well did he 
 tell his story to James IV. of Scotland, that the 
 king, as a proof of his belief, gave him in marriage 
 the Lady Catherine Gordon, daughter of the Earl 
 of Huntley. After various adventures he landed 
 at Bodmin, in Cornwall; but on the approach of 
 the king he secretly left the army he had collected, 
 and withdrew to Beaulicu, a sanctuary in the New 
 Forest. By stratagem he was taken prisoner and 
 confined for some time in*prison ; but, being con- 
 cerned in a conspiracy with the Earl of Warwick 
 to escape from the Tower, he w-as brought to trial 
 and hanged at Tyburn. 
 
 A more successful impostor was Demetrius of 
 Russia, called the False. The grand duke, or czar, 
 John Basilowitz II., died in 1584, leaving two sons. 
 Through the incapacity of Theodore, the elder, 
 Boris, his brother-in-law, gradually seized the whole 
 power in the state. To further his own ends he 
 murdered Demetrius, the younger brother of Theo- 
 dore, and when the czar died, in 1598, he forcibly 
 took possession of the throne. He governed for 
 some time with great rigour, when a monk named 
 Otrefief, closely resembling the murdered Deme- 
 trius, gave out that he was the prince, and that he 
 had escaped the snares of the usurper by the substi- 
 tution of another youth. The people believed him, 
 and, assisted by the King of Poland, he defeated 
 Boris, who destroyed himself The son of Boris 
 became czar, 'jut was soon driven from the throne 
 by the impostor, who, in 1605, became czar by the 
 general consent of the people. But his preference 
 for Poland and contempt for the Russian religion 
 and manners soon disgusted his subjects, and he 
 lost his life in 1606 at a tumult in Moscow. 
 
 A curious case of successful impersonation was 
 that of the sham Prince of Modena, in 1748. During 
 the war waged at that time with France, a young 
 man of prepossessing looks and manners landed at 
 Martinique with the crew of a French vessel that 
 had been overtaken by an English cruiser. As a 
 stranger in distress, he was hospitably received by 
 the inhabitants of the island ; but to all questions 
 put to him as to his origin and whence he came, he 
 returned replies which, by their vagueness, excited 
 still more the curiosity of the questioners. A letter 
 from him and signed " Est" was put into the hands 
 of the commandant of the place, at whose house he 
 was staying. The commandant communicated the 
 discovery to the Marquis d'Eragny, a French noble- 
 
352 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 man resident on the island. After deliberation they 
 concluded that the stranger must be Renaud d'Est, 
 hereditary Prince of Modena. Two friends of the 
 marquis knew the prince well by sight. They 
 repaired to the commandant's, and immediately 
 declared that the stranger was the prince. The 
 governor of the Windward Islands, much against 
 his will, also confirmed the impression. The 
 government and revenues of the island were imme- 
 diately given up to him, and he lived there in regal 
 splendour for eight months. He then sailed for 
 Europe, and was received at Seville with all the 
 honours of royalty. It was soon, however, discovered 
 that the man was an impostor; he was arrested, found 
 guilty of fraud and treasonable practices, and sen- 
 tenced to hard labour for life. So much, however, 
 did the inhabitants of Seville believe in him, that 
 it was considered necessary that the real prince 
 should show himself to make the imposture beyond 
 all doubt. In the eyes of many, the counterfeit 
 had considerably the advantage of the original in 
 dignity and pleasing manners. 
 
 WONDERS OF INSECT LIFE. 
 
 Some years ago a shower of aphides (the green 
 and black lice which live on rose and other bushes) 
 emigrated with the aid of an east wind from the 
 hop-gardens of Kent and Sussex, and blackened the 
 shrubs and vegetables where they alighted at Sel- 
 borne, spreading at the same time in great clouds 
 all along the vale from Farnham to Alton. 
 
 Almost every plant has its peculiar kind of aphis, 
 or plant-louse, and as the insects suck the sap, they 
 are more or less destructive. Every few years some 
 succulent vegetable crop is destroyed by them, and 
 Nature has endowed them with a power of increas- 
 ing their numbers, which is very wonderful. In 
 one year there may be twenty generations, and 
 each of them produces others. A French naturalist 
 proved that one aphis, in five generations, could 
 have descendants to the number of 5,904,900,000. 
 Fortunately, they have many enemies ; the lady- 
 bird tribe eat them, the small garden-birds devour 
 them, and the rain destroys millions. 
 
 The ants, as we have shown in a previous article, 
 use some kinds of aphides as their cows. On ex- 
 amining a fine plump aphis on a rose-bud, the head 
 of the insect will be seen stuck fast to the delicate 
 bark, by means of a tube which projects right into 
 the rose. The sap and the juices of the plant are 
 sucked up this tube, and pass into and distend the 
 body. On the upper part of the back, and rather 
 near the tail end of the body, two short bristles may 
 be seen ; these are really hollow tubes, out of which 
 flows the superabundance of the sap after diges- 
 tion. Occasionally, drops of colourless fluid are 
 
 seen coming out of these tubes, but the ants, know- 
 ing that touching their ends produces a flow of the 
 digested sap, irritate them with their feelers, and 
 suck up what conies. The aphides are, therefore, 
 distillers from the plant of nourishing drink for the 
 ants. 
 
 Livingstone met with a wonderful distilling insect 
 in Africa on fig trees. Seven or eight of the in- 
 sects cluster round a spot on one of the smaller 
 branches, and these keep up a constant distillation 
 of a clear fluid like water, which, dropping to the 
 ground, forms a little puddle. If a vessel is placed 
 under them in the evening, it contains three or four 
 pints of the fluid in the morning. To the question, 
 whence is this fluid derived .' the natives reply, 
 that the insects suck it out of the tree, and natu- 
 ralists give the same answer. But Livingstone 
 never could find any wound in the bark, or any 
 proof whatever that the insects pierced it. Our 
 common frog-hopper, which before it gets its wings 
 is called " cuckoo-spit," and lives on many plants 
 in a frothy, spittle-like fluid, is like the African 
 insect, but is much smaller. Livingstone considers 
 that they derive much of their fluid by absorbing 
 it from the air. He found some of the insects on 
 a castor-oil plant, and he cut away about twenty 
 inches of the bark between the insects and the 
 tree, and destroyed all the vegetable tissue which 
 carried the sap from the tree to the place where the 
 insects were distilling. The distillation was then 
 going on at the rate of one drop in every 67 seconds, 
 or about 5§ table-spoonfuls every 24 hours. Next 
 morning, although the supplies of sap were stopped, 
 supposing them to come up from the ground, the 
 fluid was increased to one drop every 5 seconds, 
 or one pint in every 24 hours. He then cut the 
 branch so mucli that it broke, but they still went 
 on at the rate of a drop every 5 seconds, while 
 another colony of the insects on a branch on the 
 same tree gave a drop every 17 seconds. As the 
 insects go on for a long time and flourish on the 
 castor-oil plant, it is clear that they do not suffer 
 from the medicinal virtues of the oil. There is an 
 insect which chooses the rind of the red pepper- 
 plant for its home, and it feeds upon what is hardly 
 eatable by us on account of its hot flavour ; and 
 another insect sucks one of the most poisonous 
 plants of Africa with comfort and delight. When 
 the great African explorer ^^•as travelling with his 
 children, they were often hungry, and the natives 
 gave them a large kind of caterpillar, of which they 
 all became very fond. All the insects now men- 
 tioned seek their nourishment from the sap, which 
 is the blood of plants, and they weaken and often 
 destroy the shrub or tree they feed upon. Thus 
 Nature, while she gives the aphis and the cater- 
 pillar as food to animals or to other insects, uses 
 them to destroy the too great abundance of plant- 
 life on the globe. 
 
WONDERFUL WELLS AND HOT SPRINGS. 
 
 353 
 
 % 
 
 WONDERFUL WELLS AND HOT 
 
 SPRINGS. 
 
 After rain has fallen it disappear* in three ways : 
 some runs off the ground into small streams, brooks, 
 and rivers ; some evaporates' and mixes with the 
 air in the form of vapour, and the rest sinks into 
 
 diately above it depends' upon the extent of the 
 stratum, and whether it is quite flat or not. If 
 there is not much of the hard stratum there will 
 not be much water, and if it is flat the water will 
 tend to run off sideways. But very often the 
 stratum is in the form of a basin, and then the 
 water is kept within certain bounds, and if it 
 
 the soil. It is this last method by which rain can be got at, the supply is enormous, because 
 is got rid of that is of the greatest import- the rain of centuries has collected, and any loss 
 
 ance to men, for it 
 has to do with the 
 collection of water 
 in the crust of the 
 earth, which is 
 tapped when wells 
 are sunk. 
 
 Ordinary wells are 
 dug out by hand to 
 the depth of from 
 thirty to seventy 
 feet, and the water 
 out of the soil in 
 which they have 
 been made soaks 
 into them. There 
 is no attraction for 
 Avater on the part of 
 the well ; but in the 
 natural course of 
 things, the water 
 derived from the 
 rain on the surface 
 moves downwards 
 and sideways into 
 the earth, and falls 
 into cracks and 
 cavities, such as 
 wells, when they 
 come in the way. 
 Usually such shal- 
 low wells as these 
 only supply a mo- 
 derate quantity of 
 water, and are apt to 
 become dry if there 
 has been no rain for 
 some time. Other 
 wells have been in- 
 vented to supply a 
 
 AN ARTESIAN WELL, SHOWING THE WATER RISING. 
 
 constant flow of pure water almost to an unlimited 
 
 extent even during long droughts. Water goes on 
 
 sinking through the earth until it comes to a rock 
 
 or bed of earth very much denser and harder than 
 
 those it has got through. The water stops on the 
 
 top of the hard earth, and although much goes 
 
 through it during the lapse of time, still there is 
 
 always a great mass of wet earth on the top. The 
 
 hard stratum, as it is called, may be hundreds of | half a million gallons a day 
 
 feet in the earth, and the quantity of water immc- j warm. 
 
 45 
 
 is made up by the 
 gradual passage 
 downwards of the 
 rain which occurs 
 throughout a w-hole 
 year. London is 
 built upon a thick 
 clay covered with 
 gravel, and the rain 
 sinks down through 
 the gravel on to the 
 clay, which is denser 
 and much less easily 
 passed by water. 
 Thus the usual 
 house wells reach 
 water on the top of 
 the clay. The clay 
 is a huge mass, 
 situated in a basin- 
 shaped cavity, miles 
 in extent, in the 
 chalk ; and between 
 the clay and the 
 chalk there are some 
 sands. Now, the 
 water has gone on 
 collecting through 
 the clay and sands 
 on top of the hard 
 chalk, and by sink- 
 ing wells into the 
 chalk London has 
 been supplied with 
 pure water at the 
 rate of 20,000,000 
 gallons and more a 
 day. The wells are 
 called artesian be- 
 cause they were first 
 attempted to be made at Artois, in France, and 
 some have had to be formed at prodigious depths. 
 At Crenelle, near Paris, a well was sunk to the 
 enormous depth of 1,600 feet, and yet no water 
 came ; but at 1,800 feet a hard stratum was reached, 
 for they pierced quite through the chalk, and got to 
 a hard green sand. Then the water rushed right 
 up to the surface, and overflowed at the rate of 
 
 Moreover, it was 
 
354 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 Of course these wells are not dug out by men ; 
 but a machine is used called a borer. It is a bar 
 of iron with a scoop at the lower end like a gimlet, 
 and a place for another bar to be screwed in at the 
 upper end. The bar is placed in the earth and 
 turned round by steam power, and after having been 
 twisted round a few times, it is brought up to the 
 surface, and the scoop is cleaned out. When any 
 great depth is reached this is a very troublesome 
 affair, for fifty, sixty, or more rods have to be 
 screwed and unscrewed every time a few inches of 
 earth are removed. The bore made for the well is 
 thus very small, and is lined with pipes for a long 
 distance down. When once water is got, the supply 
 never fails. The water generally rushes up when 
 the hard stratum is reached ; and when a well of 
 this kind was sunk at Chiswick to a depth of 620 
 feet, the water rose four feet above the level of the 
 ground. At Tooting so much water rose that a 
 sufficient stream was obtained to turn a wheel. 
 The French government has sunk artesian wells in 
 the desert of North Africa, and many fertile spots 
 now exist in the midst of that waste. In sinking 
 these wells some very curious things were brought 
 up by the rush of water, showing that water circu- 
 lates underground from place to place. A well in 
 the Sahara desert, 156 feet deep, produced some 
 small fish, three or four inches long ; yet the 
 nearest stream was many leagues off. Fine sand 
 with vegetable matter in it, branches of thorn 
 several inches long, and the stems of marsh plants 
 have been thrown up from great depths. It must 
 be noticed that the very deep wells throw forth 
 water warmer than that of the surface. There are 
 some natural springs which are constant, and from 
 the warmth of their water we may believe that it 
 comes from a great depth, up through natural 
 artesian wells in the form of cracks. 
 
 The Bath waters rise to the surface and are very 
 hot — too hot to bathe in comfortably. Their tem- 
 perature is 120° Fahr., and they contain mineral 
 substances dissolved out of the earth. Such 
 is the abundance of the supply that it has been 
 calculated that if the water were evaporated 
 during a whole year, the solids left would form a 
 column nine feet thick and 140 feet high. Some 
 hot springs in Italy near San Filippo contain 
 immense quantities of dissolved solid matter, 
 principally consisting of chalk, Epsom salts, and 
 plaster of Paris. Some of the water flows into a 
 pond, and during twenty years a mass thirty feet 
 thick of these substances was left at the bottom. 
 A- hard stratum of stone about a foot thick is often 
 produced by the overflow of the water in four 
 months. These hot springs are sometimes influenced 
 by earthquakes ; during the great Lisbon earth- 
 quake, a spring in the Pyrenees was suddenly 
 changed from a cold spring to one of 122° Fahr., 
 and it has retained this warmth ever since. 
 
 PICTURES IN STONES. 
 
 Many curious and wonderful things are to be 
 found in stones. Sometimes they contain relics of 
 a life which has long passed away ; at others, the 
 elements of which they may be composed are 
 massed together in very remarkable forms, as if 
 art had had more to. do with them than nature. 
 Pick up a pebble by the sea-shore, its exterior may 
 be rough and unattractive, but in its interior may be 
 embalmed the remains of the most delicate animal 
 or vegetable organisation, which the art of the lapi- 
 dary will very soon reveal ; or, though containing 
 no such remains, the stone may be found to display 
 a distinct resemblance to a landscape or a forti- 
 fication, and prove a fine specimen of what are 
 therefore termed by the lapidaries " landscape " or 
 " fortification " agates. 
 
 The curious markings in stones were observed in 
 ancient times, and many of them were ascribed to 
 a supernatural origin. We read of one which bore 
 a remarkable likeness to the head of a crowned 
 king; of another in which was seen a man in the 
 attitude of running ; but the most remarkable of all 
 was an agate containing a representation of Apollo 
 surrounded by the nine Muses ! We may perhaps 
 be inclined to doubt whether it was not a strained 
 fancy which discerned some of these objects ; but 
 several very remarkable specimens are to be found 
 in the cabinets of jewel-collectors ; some of the 
 finest in this country are in the possession of Mr. 
 Beresford-Hope, and were lent by him for exhibi- 
 tion at the South Kensington Museum, and an in- 
 spection of them serves to show how closely Nature, 
 in her freaks, sometimes imitates the art of man. 
 
 Among these articles is a series of specimens of 
 agates, Mocha-stones, &c., many of which contain 
 natural representations of the human face. So life- 
 like are some of these that they might be taken at 
 a hasty glance for medallion portraits. There is 
 one which closely resembles a lady laughing, and 
 in its general character strongly reminds the 
 beholder of one of those last-century portraits 
 which are often seen in family collections. The 
 only thing to recall the fact that it is not really 
 a miniature, is the strongly marked background, 
 which, being formed of opalescent stone, is too 
 prominent and highly coloured to accord with the 
 idea of artistic workmanship. 
 
 But this objection does not apply to some of the 
 other stones. In one we see the head of an old 
 man which looks like nature itself. The eyes are 
 drooping, and the expression of the face is calm 
 and meditative ; the hair and beard are white as 
 with the frosts of some seventy or eighty years ; and 
 the whole character is extremely venerabla. The 
 background here is dark and of a uniform tint, 
 which is admirably suited to the proper throwing 
 up of the figure in the centre. 
 
SALTNESS OF THE SEA. 
 
 355 
 
 There is also a very curious one which we are 
 strongly impelled to term a " cabinet picture of a 
 lady," in hat and walking costume, the arm thrown 
 back, the attitude very animated, and the face ex- 
 tremely good. There is an indistinctness about the 
 marking of this stone in some portions, which, 
 keeping up the illusion that it is a work of art, gives 
 one the idea that it is a hasty and unfinished 
 sketch, but done by no unskilful hand. 
 
 These three stones we have described, are 
 perhaps the most striking in the collection ; but 
 there are others scarcely less curious. One very 
 closely resembles the head of a young lady in an 
 attitude of devotion ; the eyes are directed to the 
 sky, the hair thrown down the back ; the skin is of 
 transparent whiteness. Another looks like the head 
 of a Romish ecclesiastic. In a third there is a 
 bald-headed man, whom at first sight we seem to 
 recognise as an old acquaintance. On another there 
 is the head of a horse, rather rough, but very distinct 
 in its general outline. 
 
 Mtonb^rs of tijc ^tmospljtrt. 
 
 —   — 
 
 Effects of Frost. — During one of Franklin's 
 voyages, the winter was so severe, near the Copper- 
 mine River, that the fish froze as they were taken 
 out of the nets ; in a short time they became as 
 solid as ice, and were easily split open by a blow 
 from a hatchet. If in the completely frozen state 
 they were thawed before the fire, they revived. 
 This is a very remarkable instance of how com- 
 pletely animation is sometimes found suspended 
 in the case of cold-blooded animals. 
 
 Power of Air Currents. — The following 
 curious phenomenon, showing the existence and 
 power of currents and counter-currents in the air, 
 was observed during the eruption of a volcano in 
 the island of St. Vincent in 1812. Though the 
 trade wind continually blows from Barbadoes to 
 St. Vincent, yet ashes thrown to a great height 
 were carried from St. Vincent to Barbadoes. In 
 1815, during the eruption of Sumbawa, in the 
 island of that name, ashes were borne to the 
 islands of Amboyna and Banda, 800 miles distant 
 from and east of the site of the volcano, and during 
 the height of the south-east monsoon. — Sir Charles 
 Ly ell's " Principles of Geology." 
 
 Severe Cold.— That the great cold often ex- 
 perienced in the month of April in our temperate 
 latitudes is not confined to modern times is shown 
 by the following extract from Stow's " Annals '' : — 
 "And heere is to bee noted that the 14 day of 
 Aprill, and the moiTow after Easter Day (1356), 
 King Edwarde with his hoast lay before the Cittie 
 of Paris, which day was full darke of mist and haile, 
 and so bitter cold, that many men dyed on their 
 horsebackes with the cold, wherefore unto this day 
 it hath been called the Blacke Monday." 
 
 SALTNESS OF THE SEA. 
 
 The saltncss of the sea is one of those wonderful 
 facts which we are apt to take for granted, without 
 inquiring as to the cause of which it is the effect. 
 That the sea is salt everybody knows ; but why 
 salt ? Why are not rivers salt also ? The degree to 
 which saltness pervades sea-water varies. Some 
 parts of the ocean are saturated with saline matter, 
 others are almost brackish. The water of the 
 Caribbean sea is dense compared with that of the 
 Baltic in the proportion of o'i3 to o'ig. The kind 
 of salt, however, to be found in sea-water is uni- 
 versally the same, whatever the densit)- of the water 
 may be. Local causes may affect water to a certain 
 extent, but experience shows that the salts extracted 
 from sea water, in whate\'er part of the world, are 
 substantially the same in kind, the only difference 
 being in the quantity. The salts contained are : — 
 Chloride of sodium (common salt), chloride of 
 potassium, chloride of calcium, chloride of mag- 
 nesium, bromide of magnesium, sulphate of lime, 
 carbonate of lime (common chalk), sulphate of 
 magnesia, carbonate of magnesia. 
 
 The actual contents are set out in full because 
 there is a common belief, founded on a confusion 
 of terms, that common table salt is the only saline 
 ingredient in sea water. As regards the aggregate 
 quantity of salts contained, some idea may be 
 formed of it by stating that if all the salt contained 
 in the water annually evaporated from the north- 
 east trade region of the Atlantic, could be heaped 
 into one place, it would cover an area equal to the 
 size of the British Islands, to the depth of fourteen 
 feet. 
 
 A moment's reflection will serve to show that in 
 latitudes where there is great evaporating power, 
 and but slight diluting influence, the sea water 
 must necessarily be rich in salts ; and that in 
 latitudes where the contrary conditions exist, the 
 water must be poor. That such is the case has 
 been proved, and it is attested among other 
 signs, by the colour of the water, which in rainy 
 sunless districts, is of a light green ; in rainless, 
 sunny places, of a deep blue-vitriol blue. The 
 compensatory balance between briny water and 
 brackish is kept up by a system of currents, 
 which pervades the whole ocean. These currents, 
 running from the north to the south, and from the 
 south to the north, are the means of equalising, to 
 some extent, the charge of saline properties which 
 the waters respectively hold in solution, the water 
 of the cold climates being strengthened by the 
 heavily-laden salt streams from the south, the 
 southern waters being refreshed, as it were, with a 
 drink from the comparatively fresh waters of the 
 north. But after all has been done, the equatorial 
 seas are still so rich in salts that they have a super- 
 abundance, and are glad to be rid of their burden 
 
356 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 to anything that requires it. An abundant demand 
 is kept up by the myriads of coral creatures which 
 live and move and have their being in the tropical 
 seas, and require for the purposes of their work an 
 amount of calcareous and saline matter, propor- 
 tionate to that which the over-burdened waters 
 have to spare. The excess is drawn by them on 
 demand, and appropriated to those manufactures 
 which these small workers undertake to the glory 
 of their Maker. 
 
 The source of sea salts is to be found in the 
 washing of the coast and in the contributions which 
 rivers bring. Rivers, in their way to the sea, 
 gather from brooks, springs, surface drainings, and 
 other such sources, a great quantity of soluble 
 matter ; they wash down, also, a considerable 
 amount of earth which the sea water can, though 
 they cannot, dissolve. Into the great reservoir of 
 the ocean they fling their silty cargo, which is 
 absorbed in the pores of the water, and is then 
 distributed by means of the ocean circulatory 
 system already adverted to. 
 
 The sea is salt by reason of the earth washings 
 poured into it ; it has different densities because of 
 the influence of rainfalls, rivers, and evaporation ; 
 it is prevented from stagnating by a universal 
 system of ocean-currents ; and it yields out of its 
 abundance material for the building up of conti- 
 nents to be. Such are the facts and conclusions in- 
 volved in the consideration of the saltncss of the sea 
 
 THE WASP. 
 
 The ancient Egyptians manufactured from the 
 papyrus the first paper that was ever produced by 
 human hands, and the manufacture has been since 
 improving until it has reached its present state of 
 perfection. But long ere the reed which the Nile 
 banks produced had ever been employed for this 
 purpose by the art of man, the wasp had attained 
 perfection as a paper manufacturer. So great is the 
 present consumption of paper, that new substances 
 are being eagerly sought after that may supplement 
 the supply of rags, which is now so far from being 
 adequate. It has been attempted to make paper 
 from the fibre of wood : this is an art in which the 
 wasp has excelled for countless centuries. He 
 manufactures from wood, which is apparently so 
 unpromising a material, a paper of surpassing 
 fineness and delicacy of texture. 
 
 The wasp is not generally looked upon with much 
 favour; indeed, he rarely gets any quarter. It is 
 certainly a severe trial to the temper, when you pull 
 a plum, to find that this insect has already taken 
 possession of the fruit, and to have your attention 
 somewhat forcibly drawn to the circumstance by a 
 fierce sting on your finger. The natural and par- 
 donable impulse is to visit the aggressor, and all 
 his kith and kin, with the niost condign punish- 
 
 ment. Two of a trade never agree— the wasp and 
 the human being are both fruit eaters, and fall 
 out in consequence. 
 
 Yet, notwithstanding our natural hostility to the 
 wasp, there are many circumstances with reference 
 to himself and his history that form most interest- 
 ing subjects for study, and many naturalists have 
 devoted a great deal of attention to the matter. The 
 sting which we fear with such good reason is a very 
 beautiful apparatus. It is a very minute tube, at 
 the end of which, in the body of the wasp, is a small 
 bag, in which a store of the poisonous fluid is kept. 
 When the wasp is irritated, he darts the little tubular 
 sting into the offender, the small bag is compressed, 
 and a drop of poison is inserted. Generally this is 
 only felt as a sharp pain for a little time, but occa- 
 sionally much more serious consequences have 
 ensued from it. 
 
 In our illustration is represented the nest, or 
 vespiary, as it is sometimes called, of the wasp, 
 suspended from the branch of a tree : these nests 
 are much finer and closer in texture than those 
 which are buried under the ground, which are the 
 most frequently met with ; but the method of 
 construction is much the same in both cases. 
 The history of the formation of one of these 
 nests is as follows : — A female wasp which has 
 survived the winter that has proved fatal to the 
 males, seeks in spring for a suitable spot. She 
 selects a hole in a bank, or in a thatch, or 
 sometimes a bush, as the scene of her labours. 
 Here she commences to make her nest. Her 
 materials are paper, and this paper, as already 
 mentioned, is made of wood. The wasp has been 
 seen sitting on a window-sill tearing off shreds of 
 wood, collecting them into a bundle, and flying 
 away with them. She has been further traced in 
 the process of comminuting them, adding to them 
 a glutinous secretion, making a mixture which, 
 spread out in layers, forms the paper. With these 
 layers of paper she commences the globular nest. 
 It is coated all round with many layers of the 
 paper, and contains inside a number of combs, 
 somewhat resembling those of a bee-hive, except 
 that they are ranged vertically, while the combs in 
 a wasp's nest are horizontal. 
 
 After the female has completed a certain portion 
 of the nest and constructed a number of cells, she 
 deposits an egg in each. These eggs are shortly 
 hatched. She then supplies the young with food. 
 This consists of various sweet morsels, portions of 
 fruit, honey stolen from the bees, and particles 
 collected in visits to sugar casks. As soon as the 
 young have reached maturity, on them devolves 
 the entire duty of finishing the home, and of nur- 
 turing the grubs. There is but one queen wasp 
 in each nest, the others being either males or 
 workers, and she alone lays eggs, so that all the 
 population of the vespiary are her offspring. The 
 
THE WASP; 
 
 337 
 
 young wasps which are to form futut-e queens— to 
 be the parents of other nests in the succeeding 
 scnsons— are fed differently when young from the 
 
 queens. Their duty appears to be to discharge 
 certain menial offices connected with the interna' 
 economy of the nest. 
 
 NEST OF THE TREE WASP. 
 
 ordinary workers ; they have an allowance of 
 animal food consisting of insects which have been 
 captured, or of fragments of meat purloined from 
 the butcher's stall or elsewhere. The males are 
 laro-er Uian the workers, but are not so large as the 
 
 Wasps have not the foresight of bees; they lay up 
 no store for winter, consequently the great majority 
 perish ; in fact, it is said that the workers actually 
 put to death all the young grubs at the approach 
 of winter- 
 
358 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 - BRICKS, AND EXTRAORDINARY 
 BRICK BUILDINGS. 
 
 The history of brick-making of necessity includes 
 an account of some of the most remarkable struc- 
 tures of all ages, and hence becomes a subject of 
 universal interest. 
 
 Bricks must be divided into two classes, the 
 burnt and the unburnt ; and though the unburnt 
 would hardly appear worthy of mention in a country 
 like England, so subject to heavy rains, and with 
 so humid an atmosphere, still the enormous struc- 
 tures that have been raised in unburnt bricks in 
 other countries must entitle them to mention. The 
 ancients both baked their bricks and dried them 
 in the sun. Among the oldest specimens of bricks 
 are those in the ruins of Babylon, and it does not 
 seem improbable that the moulding of unburnt 
 bricks was discovered in a few generations after the 
 creation. We find that unburnt bricks, impressed 
 with a pattern, were used at a very early period, 
 some of the oldest remains of building being in 
 this material. 
 
 The Nineveh palaces were built of unburnt bricks 
 formed of loam and straw. The ^valls were in many 
 instances fifteen feet thick, lined with the sculp- 
 tured slabs of alabaster now in the British Museum ; 
 and it is the falling in of these walls, and their 
 being again converted into earth, that has so won- 
 derfully preserxed these sculptures. 
 
 The Assyrians and Babylonians used both sun- 
 dried and kiln-baked bricks for building ; and 
 through the researches of Sir H. Rawlinson, Mr. 
 Layard, and 1\L Botla, the inscriptions on them 
 have been deciphered, recording not only the name 
 of the reigning king, but sometimes his genealogy 
 and the name of the place where the building stood. 
 Thus the inscription on the bricks at the oldest 
 palace at Nimroud reads : — " This is the palace of 
 Asaradenpal, the supreme ruler, king of Assyria; 
 son of Abedbar, king of Assyria; son of Pul, 
 powerful king of Assyria." 
 
 Xenophon speaks of the city of Larissa being 
 walled with potters' bricks, supposed to be unburnt 
 bricks. " This wall," he says, " was twenty-five 
 feet thick, built on a stone plinth ninety feet in 
 height." The latest discoveries at Nineveh have 
 shown us a similar wall upon a stone plinth. In 
 Mexico, the Tcocallis, or gods' houses, are built, 
 or at least faced, with bricks, generally believed 
 to be unburnt. One of these Teocallis, near Cho- 
 lula, is in the form of a square truncated pyramid, 
 and is formed of four terraces ; its whole height 
 is 177 feet. Each side of the base is 1,423 feet, 
 twice the length of the great pyramid of Cheops. 
 Its base covers forty-four acres, and its truncated 
 top contains more than one acre. 
 
 In Egypt there are many small pyramids of un- 
 burnt bricks, at Dashour and Thebes Uie bricks 
 
 being formed of loam and chopped straw. Many 
 of these bricks arc stamped or moulded with figures 
 and hieroglyphs, and it is very probable that it 
 was for the building of these pyramids that the 
 Israelites were employed in making bricks, as de- 
 scribed in Exodus v. 2. 
 
 Among the Greeks, we learn from Pausanias of 
 Agis besieging the town of Mantinea, which was 
 walled with unburnt bricks, and which he over- 
 came by turning the river against it, which dissolved 
 the walls. It is recorded that Nineveh, under Sar- 
 danapalus, was destroyed in a similar manner. 
 Pausanias, too, tells us that walls of unburnt bricks 
 resist the battering-ram better than stone walls ; 
 while Pliny says that walls of this material are less 
 affected by earthquakes than other walls ; and we 
 have found in our attacks' on the Russian fortifi- 
 cations that earthen walls are not less adapted for 
 modern warfare. 
 
 The burning of bricks and the use of mortar 
 seem to imply so great an advance in civilisation 
 that we should hardly expect to find burnt bricks 
 used before some thousand years had elapsed from 
 the creation ; and the first mention that wc find of 
 it is in Genesis, for the building of the Tower of 
 Babel (Genesis xi. 3, 4) — " Let us make bricks, 
 and burn them throughly. And they had brick 
 for stone, and lime had they for mortar. And the)' 
 said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower whose 
 top may reach imto heaven." The description 
 given by Herodotus agrees with this exactly. " Here 
 I think I ought to explain how the earth out of the 
 moat was consumed, and in what manner the wall 
 was built. As they dug the moat they made bricks 
 of the earth that was taken out, and when they had 
 moulded a sufficient number they baked them in 
 kilns ; then making use of hot asphalte for cement, 
 and laying wattled reeds between the thirty bottom 
 courses of bricks, they first built up the sides of the 
 moat and afterwards the wall itself in the same 
 manner." Walls have been found in Babylonia 
 built exactly in this manner, with asphalte and 
 wattled reeds. 
 
 The next record of brick-making is contained in 
 the early chapters of Exodus, or about 750 years 
 later, when, notwithstanding the time which had 
 elapsed, bricks appear to have been no longer 
 burned, but simply baked in the sun, and straw 
 was mixed with the clay of which they were com- 
 posed. This is expressly affirmed by Philo (" Life of 
 Moses"), who was himself a native of Alexandria, in 
 Egypt, and who says, in describing the oppression 
 of the Israelites, that some were obliged to work in 
 clay, and others to gather straw for the formation 
 of bricks, "because straw is the binding of the 
 brick." 
 
 Xenophon, in his " Anabasis," gives an account 
 of the wall of the Medes. " It was built," says he, 
 "of burnt bricks laid in asphalte, twenty feet thick, 
 
THE POWER OF SOUND. 
 
 3S9 
 
 loo feet high, and its length was said to be about 
 ;iixty-seven miles long." 
 
 Diodorus Siculus mentions the walls of a palace 
 at Babylon as being of burnt brick, carved with 
 men and animals, all painted in the natural colours; 
 but it is not very clear whether these were not all 
 in raw tints, as those at Nimroud. Herodotus gives 
 a similar description of the walls of Ecbatana. 
 The use of bricks in colours painted and burnt in, 
 was doubted until the discoveries of Layard and 
 others, when specimens of burnt bricks were found 
 at Nimroud, painted in white, yellow, green, and 
 black enamel. Cones of baked brick, with inscrip- 
 tions and hieroglyphs, are found in Egypt and 
 Babylonia, the inscriptions on much of the Baby- 
 lonian work being so fine as scarcely to be deci- 
 phered without the aid of a magnifying-glass. 
 
 CONNECTION BETWEEN FOOD AND 
 
 ANIMAL ENERGY. 
 Baron Liebig thus explains the principles which 
 govern the relation between the food of man and 
 his warmth and activity in different latitudes of the 
 earth. 
 
 In the animal body the food is the fuel ; with a 
 proper supply of oxygen we obtain the heat given 
 out durmg the combustion of that fuel. In winter, 
 when we take exercise in a cold atmosphere, and 
 when, consequently, the amount of inspired oxygen 
 increases, the necessity for food containing carbon 
 and hydrogen increases in the same ratio ; and by 
 gratifying the appetite thus excited, we obtain the 
 most efficient protection against the most piercing 
 cold. We expire more carbon at a low than at a 
 high temperature, and require more or less carbon 
 in our food in the same proportion. Consequently, 
 more is respired in Sweden than in Sicily, and in 
 our own country an eighth more in winter than in 
 summer. 
 
 Even if an equal weight of food is consumed in 
 hot and cold chmatas. Infinite Wisdom has ordained 
 that very unequal proportions of carbon shall be 
 taken in it. The fruits used by the inhabitants of 
 southern climes do not contain in a fresh state more 
 than twelve per cent, of carbon, while the blubber 
 and train oil, which feed the inhabitants of the 
 polar regions, contain sixty-six to eighty per cent, of 
 that element. From the same cause it is compara- 
 tively easy to be temperate in warm climates, or 
 to bear hunger for a long time under the equator ; 
 but cold and hunger united very soon produce ex- 
 haustion. A starving man is very soon frozen to 
 death. 
 
 Our clothing is merely an equivalent for a certain 
 amount of food. The more warmly we are clothed, 
 the less urgent becomes the appetite for food ; 
 because the loss of heat by cooling, and conse- 
 quently the amount of heat to be supplied by the 
 
 food, are diminished. If we were to go naked, like 
 certain savage tribes, or if in hunting or fishing we 
 were exposed to the same degree of cold as the 
 people in Arctic latitudes, we should be able with 
 ease to consume half of a calf, and perhaps a dozen 
 of tallow candles into the bargain, daily, as warmly- 
 clad travellers have related with astonishment of 
 some of these people. We should then also be able 
 to take the same quantity of brandy or train oil 
 without bad effects, because the carbon and hy- 
 drogen of these substances would only suffice to 
 keep up tlie equilibrium between the external tem- 
 perature and that of our bodies. 
 
 It appears then, from what has been said, that the 
 quantity of food required is regulated by the number 
 of respirations, by the temperature of the air, and 
 by the amount of heat given off to the surrounding 
 medium. The unequal loss of heat in summer and 
 winter in cold and hot climates is not the only 
 cause which renders necessary unequal quantities 
 of food. There are other causes, such as bodily 
 exercise, and all kinds of labour and exertion. The 
 consumption of mechanical force in the body is 
 always equal to a waste of matter in the body, and 
 this must be restored in the food. When a man or 
 an animal works, a certain amount of food must 
 be added ; increased work and effort without 
 a corresponding increase of food, cannot be con- 
 tinued for any length of time. 
 
 THE POWER OF SOUND. 
 
 There is an anecdote related of Rubini, the great 
 tenor singer, which illustrates the peculiar power of 
 the human voice. In an opera by Pacini, called 
 " 11 Talismano," in which Rubini was singing, he 
 had to sing a phrase in which a high B flat occurs, 
 which he was accustomed to attack and hold out 
 with great power, to the delight of his audience. 
 The pubUc flocked to hear this wonderful note, and 
 never missed calling for a repetition of it. Rubini 
 had already sung the note on seven previous occa- 
 sions, each time twice, and on one evening, when an 
 admiring audience waited for the production of the 
 wonderful note, Rubini was dumb. He opened his 
 mouth, extended his arms, and tried to utter the 
 note which would not come. The audience cheered, 
 applauded, and encouraged him in every way, but 
 the obstinate B flat refused to be sounded. One 
 more effort, and the force of his powerful lungs 
 overcame the obstacle, and the B flat rung among 
 the audience with brilliant vigour ; but something 
 in the mechanism of his voice had given way, and, 
 though feeling acute pain, he continued the scene, 
 forgetting his suffering in the triumphant conquest 
 he had obtained. When he left the stage, he saw 
 the surgeon of the theatre, who examined him, and 
 found that in the exertion of producing the obstinate 
 note, he had actually broken his collar-bone, 
 
360 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 Exercising a little caution in his acting, he 
 positively sung through the remainder of the season 
 with a broken clavicle, very few of the audience 
 discovering that he had suffered any injury in his 
 endeavour to please them. The whole story is 
 fully set forth in Sutherland Edwards' " History of 
 the Opera," vol. ii., p. 268. 
 
 Another authentic instance of the power of sound 
 took place during the rehearsal of the music for the 
 Uuke of Wellington's funeral in 1852. The story is 
 related by a personal friend of the writer, who was 
 present on the occasion. The rehearsal took place 
 in one of the parish churches near to 
 .St. Paul's Cathedral, the whole avail- 
 able space being filled with singers, 
 and during a passage in unison in an 
 anthem written by Mr. John Goss for 
 the occasion, called " A Prince is 
 fallen in Israel," at one note sung 
 loudly by all the voices, some six or 
 eight of the gas-glasses echoed the 
 sound, and burst into fragments. 
 
 Cheron, a celebrated French bass 
 singer, could break a tumbler into a 
 thousand pieces, by soimding into a 
 thin glass the fundamental note it 
 naturally gave out. Ivanoff, the 
 Russian bass, could also do the like. 
 
 Sir David Brewster, in his " Letters 
 on Natural Magic," says, " Buildings 
 have often been thrown down by 
 violent concussions of the air, occa- 
 sioned either by the sound of great 
 guns, or by loud thunder, and most 
 serious effects upon human and ani- 
 mal life have been produced by the 
 same cause." Most persons have 
 experienced the stunning pain pro- 
 duced in the ear, when placed near 
 <i cannon that is discharged. Deaf- 
 ness has frequently been the result of 
 such sudden concussions, and if wc 
 may reason from analogy, death it- 
 self must often have been the con- 
 sequence. When peace was pro- 
 claimed in 1697, two troops of horse were dis- 
 mounted and drawn up in line, in order to fire 
 their volleys. Opposite the centre of the line 
 was the door of a butcher's shop, where there 
 was a large mastiff dog of great courage. The 
 dog was sleeping by the fire, but when tlic 
 volley was fired, it immediately started up, 
 into another room, and hid itself under a bed. 
 the firing of the second volley, the dog rose 
 
 first 
 ran 
 On 
 ran 
 
 MUMMIES. 
 The preservation of dead bodies in an uncorrupted 
 state was one of the principal arts of ancient 
 nations, while with some it was also a sacred duty. 
 Prescott says that the Peruvians were in the habit 
 of placing the bodies of their dead upon the high 
 levels of the Andes, where the conlinuousness of 
 the draught of pure air acted as an antiseptic, and 
 prevented natural decay. 1 n deserts, corpses have 
 been found, presumably hundreds of years old, 
 preserved by the action of sand and wind ; and it 
 is known that in the Arctic regions the intense 
 cold of the atmosphere acts as a pre- 
 servative against corruption ; but in 
 both cases equally, the preserved 
 bodies have been the result of acci- 
 dent rather than design. 
 
 The Egyptians were of all people 
 the most particular about insisting on 
 the preservation of their dead bodies, 
 and the most skilful in carrying it 
 out. They used to keep the bodies 
 of their ancestors, embalmed, in little 
 liouses, beautifully adorned, and took 
 great pleasure in beholding them, 
 as it were alive, without change, 
 u ith " no hint of death in all their 
 frame." Testimony to their skill 
 in embalming is borne by the many 
 mummies that remain even to this 
 day, many of them being upwards of 
 2,000 years old. They used several 
 jnocesses for embalming. In one 
 process they scooped out the brains 
 at the nostrils with an iron scoop, 
 and injected medicaments into the 
 head to supply their place. They 
 took out the intestines, and having 
 filled the body with myrrh, cassia, 
 and other spices, pickled it in nitre, 
 in which it soaked for seventy days. 
 The corpse was then wrapped in 
 swathes of fine linen and gums, and 
 these were covered again according to 
 fancy, with robes and tissues, or were 
 simply placed, as it were, in bed in the dead-room. 
 Another process, used for inexpensive embalming, 
 was to inject a liquor extracted from the cedar-tree, 
 into the body of the dead, which caused the cor- 
 rupting elements to come away with the liquor. 
 The body was then wrapped in a winding-sheet 
 containing a quantity 'of s.ilt of nitre, and so was 
 preserved for a time ; but this process, as it was 
 not so costlv, was not so durable as the other. The 
 
 A MfM.MY CASE. 
 
 several times about the room, trembling violently, ! modern process of embalming is dififerent from both 
 and apparently in great agony. When the third ! of these, and though very successful cases of preser- 
 voUey was fired, the dog ran about once or twice vation have been effected by it, it is to Egypt that 
 with gre.-it violence, and suddenly fell down dead, ' must be ascribed the greatest excellence in the 
 throwing up blood froin his mouth and nose. . mummy-making art. 
 
THE SEEDS OF MUSHROOMS AND TOADSTOOLS. 
 
 361 
 
 THE SEEDS OF MUSHROOMS AND 
 TOADSTOOLS. 
 
 would find ample space on the head of a pin ; yet 
 the hfc contained in these objects is so tenacious 
 that neither tlie burning sun of summer nor the 
 Every plant in the vegetable kingdom, as a rule, severest cold of winter causes them to lose their 
 springs from and produces seed. Mushrooms, toad- vital power. When they have freshly fallen from 
 stools, and otlier fungi are no exception, but their the parent plant, they are highly sensitive, and if 
 reproductive bodies arc termed spores, and though they are allowed to fall upon glass and arc watched 
 
 they are truly 
 analogous to 
 seed, they differ 
 from it in struc- 
 ture. Spores, 
 therefore, may 
 be understood 
 as reproduc- 
 tive bodies 
 without an 
 embryo ; the 
 embryo being 
 the minute 
 rudimentary 
 plant invaria- 
 bly found 
 within true 
 seeds. 
 
 Some spores 
 of fungi are so 
 inconceivably 
 minute that it 
 would require 
 more than 
 200,000,000 
 placed side by 
 side to cover 
 a square inch, 
 yet these 
 atoms, insigni- 
 ficant as they 
 appear, keep 
 constant to 
 particular pat- 
 terns, both in 
 shape, size, 
 and colour. 
 More than 
 this, each atom 
 is possessed of 
 a spark of life, 
 which, under 
 favourable circumstances, will cause the minute 
 spore to swell and burst and reproduce the 
 parent plant from which it sprang. It is diffi- 
 cult, if not totally impossible, to conceive the infi- 
 nite minuteness of these living bodies, but for 
 comparison, we may say that one spore bears the 
 same relation to a foot linear as a yard does to more 
 than 100 miles ; a space four inches square is suffi- 
 cient to contain a number of spores, side by side, 
 equal to all the inhabitants of the world; 1,000,000 
 46 
 
 .MINUTE FU.NGl 
 
 under the 
 higher powers 
 of the micro- 
 scope, a breath 
 will show in a 
 remarkable 
 manner how 
 tliey are in- 
 fluenced by 
 warmth and 
 moisture. J"ig. 
 5 shows some 
 of these mi- 
 nute spores 
 (drawn direct 
 \\ith a caiucra- 
 Iticida attach- 
 ed to the micro- 
 scope) from a 
 large species of 
 fungus {Leiili- 
 nus vulpiiius') 
 found attack- 
 ing elms at the 
 north of Lon- 
 don. Sowerby 
 described this 
 fungus more 
 than half a 
 century ago, 
 but it still con- 
 tinues to at- 
 tack elms in 
 the same dis- 
 trict, no vicis- 
 situdes of wea- 
 ther being 
 sufficient to 
 destroy the life 
 of the spores. 
 
 The spores 
 of different 
 species of fungi vary greatly in size, shape, 
 colour, and quality. Some are more than a 
 hundred times larger than others ; they take all 
 sorts of geometrical and ornamental forms, as 
 shown in our engraving, where a collection of 
 spores is enlarged from nature to the same scale ; 
 many are white, some blt'e, green, brown, red, 
 yellow, or black ; many are sculptured and orna- 
 mented in a remarkable manner; and whilst some 
 are perfectly harmless, others arc violent poisons ; of 
 
362 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 the latter, Figs. 6, 7, and 10 are especially dangerous, 
 being spores of Agaricus euosmus, Agaricus mits- 
 carius, and Lactarius acris. A few spores of the 
 latter placed on the tongue are so pungent, bitter, and 
 acrid as to be perfectly unbearable. Fig. 9 shows the 
 purple-brown spores " in situ" of the edible mush- 
 room of our pastures. In the mushroom family the 
 spores are invariably arranged in fours, on slight 
 threads attached to privileged cells. Some spores 
 are always dry, and may be dispersed with a 
 breath ; others are as constantly covered with a 
 viscid coating, which glues them to whatever object 
 they may happen to fall upon ; some are foetid, but 
 the majority are fragrant, and may be and are 
 inhaled by millions without apparent inconvenience. 
 The spores of some species of fungi, as the puff- 
 balls, may often be seen to rise in the air like a 
 column of smoke. When a dry puff-ball is kicked 
 aside the spores are dispersed in millions, and such 
 as do not light upon a suitable jiidiis, of course 
 perish. A representation of a spore from a starry 
 puff-ball is shown in Fig. 8. As many species of 
 fungi are peculiar to certain objects, the difficulty 
 at times of finding a proper place on which to ger- 
 minate must be great, some species being confined 
 to dead caterpillars, others to horses' hoofs, acorns, 
 fir-cones, wine-cellars, old leather, or plaster walls. 
 The black spores of an agaric found only in the 
 latter situation are shown in Fig. 23. Some spores 
 are greedily devoured by minute insects, whilst 
 others are invariably avoided as distasteful to 
 them. 
 
 Some subterranean fungi, as the truffle of our 
 markets, produce their spores beneath the earth, 
 and they never reach the light unless rooted out by 
 iiogs, squirrels, or the dogs of the truffle-hunters. 
 These spores are especially elegant, a representation 
 of one species being given in Fig. 4. A large 
 division of fungi contain their spores in innumerable 
 sacs, called asci, eight in a sac ; and when the fruit 
 is ripe, the spores are discharged through an 
 orifice at the top, as in Fig. 16 ; but what motive 
 power there is to eject the spores with such force 
 is not known, the whole ascus, or sac, some- 
 times being only the four-hundredth part of an 
 inch in length. 
 
 There is a fungus iSpharobolus stellatiis) common 
 on rotten wood in autumn, remarkable for the way 
 in which it disperses its spores. It consists of two 
 coats — an outer and inner — the latter containing a 
 sporangium, or spore-case. When the fruit is ripe, 
 the outer case suddenly cracks in a stellate manner, 
 and the inner lining becomes violently inverted, as in 
 Fig. 20, which is again shown to a larger scale in Fig. 
 21. This sudden movement of the fungus projects 
 the sporangium containing the spores with great 
 force into the air. The sporangium is glutinous, 
 and attaches Itself to whatever it touches, whether 
 the leaves above or the ground bclou-. If the 
 
 fungus is examined, it is probable that several will 
 be projected on to the face of the observer. 
 
 When fungi spores have germinated, and the 
 parent plant has been reproduced, the fungus will 
 sometimes live many years, as is the case with the 
 woody species common on oaks, &c. At other times 
 the perfect plant lives but a few hours, or is no sooner 
 perfected than it dissolves away — such as Coprinus 
 Jimetarius, a slender, fragile little agaric, common 
 on heaps of horse-dung. It lasts a very short 
 time, coming up in the night, and perishing before 
 mid-day, and its comparatively large black spores 
 are shown in Fig. 12. The figures not yet referred 
 to are Fig. i, spores of an agaric {Agaricus mu- 
 ciiius), common on beeches — abundant in Epping 
 Forest. Fig. 2, spores of Gonphidius znsciiiiis, 
 common in fir woods. Fig. 3, Podisoma juniperi- 
 communis, common on juniper trees. Fig. 1 1, 
 spores of Hydnum imbricatuin — edible. Fig. '13, 
 pink spores of Agaricus pascuus — probably poi- 
 sonous. Fig. 14, spores of Boletus parasiticus, a 
 fungus parasitic on another species. Figs. 15, 17, 
 18, and 19, spores of minute black fungi belonging 
 to the genus Sphasria. Fig. 22, a group of the 
 minute red discs found floating in human blood, to 
 which they inipart the red colour ; drawn to the 
 same scale as the spores, for comparison with them. 
 
 We only judge of size by comparing one thing 
 with another ; an object thus becomes small as wc 
 compare it with something larger. If then, after 
 considering these wonderfully minute organisms, 
 where hundreds of millions of perfect objects 
 go to a square inch, we turn for a moment to 
 consider the sublime magnitude of the stellar 
 universe, where our whole solar system is reduced 
 to a mere dot in the universe, we cannot but 
 regard with reverential admiration the consummate 
 perfection of all created things. 
 
 IngettuitiT of Ennijilrsttr |iaas. 
 
 Ingenuity of the Tahitans.— In all my ex- 
 perience (says Mr. Pickering) I have never met 
 with a people so serviceable to the traveller as 
 the Tahitans, for they seemed, in fact, to command 
 at all times the principal conveniences of life. 
 Half an hour of daylight was sufficient for building 
 a house of the stems and leaves of the fehi banana, 
 and fire was produced by rubbing sticks. In one 
 place the running water was deeply sunk among 
 stones, but by working in banana-leaves they 
 brought it to the surface. The chase of e«ls, 
 which in these dripping mountains become almost 
 amphibious, offered another in&tance of their in- 
 genuity. They also tore off with their teeth the 
 fibrous bark of the " puran " {Hibiscus tiliaceus) 
 and a moment after applied it to noosing small 
 fish. If one was sent for fruit; he v.ould usually 
 
FLOATING ISLANDS. 
 
 565 
 
 make a basket on the way, by plaiting the segments 
 of a cocoa-nut leaf. A mat was manufactured with 
 almost equal ease. Clothing was always at hand, 
 and a banana-leaf served for an umbrella, or in fine 
 weather they would wear garlands of flowers. Tum- 
 blers and bottles were supplied by single joints of 
 the bamboo, and casks or buckets by the long 
 stems ; and whether we asked for a hatchet, knife, 
 spoon, tooth-brush, or wash-basin, we never found 
 our guides at fault. 
 
 Bee-hunting by the Natives in New South 
 Wales. — Having seen a bee alight on any twig or 
 leaf, the black takes a little bit of the finest down 
 of a feather, and rolling it up between his fingers at 
 one end, cautiously steals upon the bee, and dex- 
 terously places the down upon its back, to which 
 the honey makes it adhere. Away soars the bee at 
 once, high into the air, and away soars the sa\'age's 
 eye after it, his head being thrown back, and his 
 whole gaze concentrated upon that one speck in 
 the sky. As the bee advances, the black keeps 
 as nearly under him as possible, careering along at 
 full speed, stumbling over boughs and bushes, leap- 
 ing over bogs and holes, and heedless of scratches 
 and bruises, and everything else but the speck of 
 white down which is guiding him to the lofty gum- 
 tree, in the topmost boughs of which lies his dinner 
 for that day. Having traced the bee to his retreat, 
 he procures a quantity of clean string bark, which 
 he tears up into a mass resembling dried moss, or, 
 more nearly still, the fibres of the cocoa-nut husk 
 when torn. This is to place the honey upon. He 
 then, with his tomahawk, cuts his way up the tree, 
 cuts into the hollow branch where the hive is, feasts 
 on it himself, and takes the remainder down in the 
 stringy bark, which, if much adheres to it, he after- 
 wards sucks, so that nothing may be lost. — Hender- 
 son's " Excursions in New South Wales.'' 
 
 FLOATING ISLANDS. 
 
 Of the chief characteristics of the great rivers of 
 Asia and America, not the least striking are their 
 rafts or floating islands. After the spring floods 
 and periodical inundations, the rapid current of 
 the stream makes itself felt with destructive force 
 upon the softened soil of the banks and of the 
 numerous islands with which the river is studded. 
 Many of the latter are often swept wholly away, so 
 that large quantities of vegetable matter — some- 
 times several acres at a time — are precipitated into 
 the stream. Large trees are often to be seen 
 floating with their tops above the water, their 
 branches and their roots interlaced, so as to form 
 floating islets. They are called "camelotes" in 
 Spanish, and to these— especially in the river Parana, 
 where great masses of cane and brushwood are 
 brought away — many animals swim off for refusje 
 
 during the floods ; and curious is the mixture some- 
 times of the refugees, the natural antipathy to each 
 other being overcome by their common danger. 
 
 Sitting by the side of some grave-looking storks 
 or water-fowl, may be seen a group of monkeys or 
 squirrels ; or a tiger-cat, or puma, in close com- 
 panionship with an alligator or a large serpent. 
 They are often carried down the river to the towns 
 and villages. Four tigers were landed in this manner 
 in one night at Monte Video, to the no small con- 
 sternation of the inhabitants, who found them prowl- 
 ing about the town on the next morning. These 
 islands thus laden are sometimes carried far out to 
 sea, and have been seen at fifty and one hundred 
 miles from the mouth of the Ganges. They are also 
 to be met with among the Moluccas and Philippine 
 Islands — especially after hurricanes — and have been 
 mistaken by ships for land. But it is rarely that 
 they are allowed to proceed uninterrupted on their 
 voyage. Either they are stranded by a shoal or an 
 island in the middle of the river, or are anchored 
 in the muddy bed of the stream by the roots of the 
 larger trees of which they are mostly composed. 
 
 When once the islands become fixtures, they 
 quickly increase in size by the numerous additions 
 that are continually made to them, and soon a 
 natural bridge or raft is formed across the river. 
 In climates where Nature is so lavish of her favours, 
 the mud with which the waters are so thickly 
 impregnated, and the soil brought away in the roots 
 of the trees, soon convert the logs of drift-wood into 
 floating islands of shrubs and trees and flowers, 
 where all kinds of birds, snakes, and alligators make 
 their home. The navigation of the river is often 
 entirely impeded in this manner. One of these 
 verdant rafts in the Atchafalaya — an arm of the 
 Mississippi river — went on increasing for a period 
 of forty years, and so large became its dimensions, 
 that its length was ten miles, its width 220 yards, 
 and its depth eight feet. It was covered as usual 
 with a luxuriant vegetation, bushes and many 
 varieties of flowers grew upon it, and some of its 
 trees reached the height of sixty feet. Though 
 stationary, it rose and fell with the tide, and so 
 effectually did it close the navigation of the river 
 that it took four years to clear it away. 
 
 In the same manner the Red River was for some 
 time rendered almost unnavigable, and the Rio de 
 la Plata is gradually filling up from the vast quantity 
 of matter that is annually poured into it. The forma- 
 tion of the delta of the Mississippi is materially 
 assisted by these floating islands. The river does 
 not empty itself into the sea in one continuous 
 channel, but in a variety of arms or mouths, formed 
 by the mud and drift-wood brought down by the 
 river and its tributaries. These become at first 
 great swamps, but as the vegetation increases, they 
 rise gradually higher and higher above the level of 
 the waters. 
 
3^4 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 TORTURE. 
 
 The ingenuity of man is wonderful, so is the per- 
 verseness of his ingenuity. By nothing is this 
 assertion more distinctly illustrated than by the- 
 various modes and instruments of torture which 
 man has devised for his fellow. In "the good 
 old times," as those who know little of history 
 call any and all times save their own, torture was 
 commonly practised in this country, though it was 
 never sanctioned by law, but was, on the contrary, 
 strictly illegal. When Felton, the murderer of 
 the Duke of Buckingham, was brought before the 
 Privy Council, it was proposed to question him 
 upon the rack, to make him disclose his accom- 
 plices ; but the question having 
 been first referred to the judges 
 for their opinion as to the riglu 
 of the council to make such an 
 order, the judges gave answer in 
 November, 1628, that "he ought 
 not by the law to be tortured by 
 the rack, for no such punishment 
 is known or allowed by our law." 
 Nevertheless, there were in the 
 Tower of London, and elsewhere, 
 various instruments of torture, 
 which had been much used under 
 the Tudor princes, and also by 
 James I. The use of them was 
 introduced into England during 
 the times of Henry Vl., when 
 there was no real government 
 — certainly no one able, if willing, 
 to interfere with those who 
 chose to use tortures. In the 
 old cruel time of feudal op- 
 pression, torture was a matter 
 of every day occurrence, but 
 not by authority of law. The 
 Anglo-Saxon chronicle, speaking of what was 
 done in the time of Stephen, says, " They took 
 those whom they suspected to have any goods, 
 by day and by night, seizing both men and 
 women, and they put them in prison for their 
 gold and silver, and tortured them with pains un- 
 speakable, for never were any martyrs tormented 
 as these were. They hung some up by their feet 
 and smoked them with foul smoke ; some by their 
 thumbs, or by the head ; and they hung burning 
 things on their feet. They put a knotted string 
 about their heads and twisted it till it went into 
 the brain. They put them into dungeons, wherein 
 were adders, and snakes, and toads, and thus wore 
 them out. Some they put into a crucet-house — 
 that is, into a chest that was short and narrow, 
 and not deep — and they put sharp stones in it, 
 and crushed the man therein, so that they broke 
 ?ill his limbs. Th^re were hatefijl and grim things 
 
 .NSTRUMENTS OF TORTURH. 
 HENRY Vlir. 
 
 called sachenteges in many of the castles, and 
 which two or three men had enough to do to carry. 
 The sachentege was made thus : it was fastened 
 to a beam, having a sharp iron to go round a man's 
 throat and neck, so that he might noways sit, nor 
 lie, nor sleep, but that he must bear all the iron. 
 [A modification of this instrument is shown in the 
 subjoined w^oodcut.] I cannot, and I may not tell 
 of all the wounds and all the tortures that they 
 inflicted upon the wretched men of this land." 
 
 All this was done by private hands. The only 
 legal cruelties allowed to be exercised on prisoners 
 being the feine forte et dure — a process by which 
 persons who refused to plead when arraigned, were 
 stretched naked on their backs and pressed with 
 huge stones and lumps of iron, 
 being starved the while till they 
 died or consented to plead — and 
 the horrible operations of the 
 hangman upon persons sen- 
 tenced to death. The old sen- 
 tence of death commanded that 
 the prisoner should be taken 
 back to prison, and be thence, 
 on execution day, drawn upon 
 a hurdle to the gallows, where 
 he was to be hanged by the 
 neck, but being alive, cut down, 
 to be barbarously mutilated by 
 the hangman, his head to be 
 stricken off, and his body di- 
 vided into four quarters, "the 
 same to be at the disposal of 
 the king." But although these 
 were the only legalised tortures, 
 the use of rack and screw, and 
 such like abominations, became, 
 as has been said, common in 
 Tudor times. 
 The rack was a large open 
 frame of oak, raised three feet from the ground. The 
 prisoner was laid under it, on his back, on the floor, 
 his wrists and ankles were attached by cords to 
 two rollers at the ends of the frames. These were 
 moved by levers in opposite directions, till the body 
 rose to a level with the frame. Questions were then 
 put, and if the answers did not prove satisfactory, 
 the sufferer was stretched more and more, till the 
 bones started from their sockets. The Inquisi- 
 tion had a rack, which, in addition to the above, 
 had an apparatus for torturing each toe. The 
 suffering caused by this instrument was extreme, 
 the prisoner after torture being often unable to 
 stand up for several days ; and it is said that in 
 the case of Anne Ascue, the only woman known 
 to have been racked in this country, the punish- 
 ment was so severe as almost to tear her body 
 asunder. The accompanying illustration shows a 
 prisoner undergoing the tortur? of the rack. 
 
TORTURE. 
 
 365 
 
 Nicholas Owen, accused of participation in the 
 Gunpowder Plot, was suspended by his thumbs 
 from a beam, and questioned in that position. 
 Threats of the rack in addition caused the poor 
 wretch to commit suicide with his dinner-knife. 
 
 Skevington, lieutenant of the Tower under Henry 
 VIII., invented a torture called Skevington's — cor- 
 rupted into the Scavenger's — Daughter. The instru- 
 ment consisted of a broad hoop of iron in two parts. 
 
 "Gauntlets" were used in England, having been 
 imported from Spain. These were of iron, and so 
 constructed that by aid of a screw the whole hand 
 was compressed, and the wrists could be wrenched. 
 There was also an arrangement by which a prisoner 
 could be hung up by them to a beam. The prisoner 
 was made to stand on three blocks of wood which, 
 when his hands had been secured, were withdrawn 
 and the miserable man was left swinging in extreme 
 
 THE TORTURE OF THE RACK. 
 
 but fastened together by a hinge. The prisoner 
 was made to kneel, and the executioner putting his 
 knees on the man's shoulders, passed the hoop 
 under his legs, compressing the victim till he was 
 able to make the extremities of the hoop fasten 
 over the back. An hour and a half was the time 
 prescribed for this torture. During that time blood 
 often started from the nose and ears, and even, it is 
 said, from the hands and feet. The small illustra- 
 tion on the preceding page shows some instruments 
 of torture which are said to have been used in the 
 time of Henry VIII., and are still preserved in the 
 Tower. 
 
 Thumb-screws, causing exquisite torture to the 
 hands, were also used ; and in Scotland there 
 was an iron boot into which the prisoner's leg was 
 thrust, and wedges were driven in with hammers 
 between the leg and the boot, causing frightful pain. 
 
 pain. One man was thus tortured for five hours, 
 during which time he fainted eight times, the exe- 
 cutioners putting him again to the torture each 
 time he recovered from his swoon. He says he 
 felt as if all the blood in his body had run into 
 his arms, and was bursting his fingers. His arms 
 swelled so that the gauntlets were buried in his 
 flesh. 
 
 Such were the means used to get confessions 
 out of prisoners in England. Continental people, 
 notably the Germans, Swiss, and Spaniards, had 
 tortures, to which those used here were as nothing, 
 and the Inquisition is credited with having owned 
 instruments which nothing short of diabolical inge- 
 nuity could have invented. A large collection of 
 instruments of torture of different kinds was foun(r 
 on board of many of the vessels of the Spanish 
 Armada, which fell into the hands of the English. , 
 
366 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 BURNING LENSES AND MIRRORS. 
 
 There are few things in nature \vc enjoy more 
 than sunshine, and yet just because we may possess 
 it every day, and it costs us nothing, there are 
 probably few things we appreciate less. But some- 
 ti-mes his beams fall rather too hotly upon us, and 
 then we think of them, and yet how small an idea 
 do the generality of persons form of the vast heat 
 there is stored up in the sun's rays. If a person 
 moves about in the sunshine, he is conscious of an 
 equal amount of heat wherever he goes. He does 
 not, however, carry the heat he feels about with 
 him ; neither does the heat follow him. It is fresh 
 heat which he feels emanating from fresh rays. 
 Two people of equal size receive between them 
 twice the heat that one does ; and if we could throw 
 upon either person the heat received by the other, 
 he would feel double as hot, of course. 
 
 If the direct rays of the sun fall upon the bulb of 
 a thermometer, they will readily raise its tempera- 
 ture 40°. Suppose a thermometer to stand at 50° 
 Fahr. in the shade, and the heat of the sun to raise 
 it to 90 J" ; then twice the heat will rais« it to 131', 
 and four times to 213°, which is just the heat of 
 boiling water. But there is scarcely a limit to the 
 extent to which it is possible to concentrate the 
 sun's rays and heat. There are two ways of doing 
 this : by reflection from a polished concave mirror, 
 and by refraction through a convex lens. 
 
 The difficulty of constructing a concave mirror of 
 large size, has been to some extent met by employing 
 a great number of small pieces of flat looking-glass, 
 and arranging them upon a frame in such a manner 
 as that the rays of light reflected from the surface 
 of each should fall upon the same spot. The 
 amount of heat centred upon that spot is equal to 
 the amount reflected by each multiplied by the 
 number of pieces. 
 
 There are, however, reasons why less heat is con- 
 centrated by this means than by a uniform convex 
 parabolic surface. In the latter case the point of 
 concentration, or the " focus," is more minute, and 
 the effect proportionately more intense. A French- 
 man, named Villette, made some large burning- 
 mirrors some years since. A metallic one M-hich 
 he constructed, nearly four feet in diameter, melted 
 cast iron in sixteen seconds. But the reflection 
 from silvered glass is better, and the heat more 
 intense than from a metallic surface. A small one 
 only twenty-two inches in diameter fused powdered 
 flint into glass in less than half a minute. 
 
 Convex lenses of glass are capable of concen- 
 trating the sun's rays, and the effect of these when 
 large is truly astonishing. Many years ago an 
 English optician, named Parker, constructed a lens 
 three feet in diameter, and its powers were such 
 that'a small cube of cast iron was melted in three 
 ceconds ; even granite was fused in one niinute, 
 
 We may, from these facts, be able to form soma 
 idea of the heat of the sun as a whole. Taking, 
 for instance, Parker's lens as a foundation for the 
 calculation, we arrive, by a simple rule of three 
 sum, at the following : — If cast iron melts in three 
 seconds under a concentration of seven square feet 
 of sunshine, it will melt in less than the millionth 
 of a second under the focus of a single square mile. 
 Now the earth is constantly receiving as much 
 sunshine as would illuminate 50,000,000 square 
 miles of a flat surface, and even this vast quantity 
 is as nothing, for, of course, our earth only receives 
 that which happens to fall upon it, and if there were 
 2,380,000,000 worlds placed side by side, they would 
 form the shell of a sphere round the sun, and each 
 one would receive the same sunshine as we enjo)'. 
 
 (Kurbsiths oi Winitr. 
 
 Colour of Rivers.— The Rhine, in its course 
 from the Alps to the Lake of Constance, is bluish; 
 after its passing through the green waters of that 
 lake it is grass-^reeii, and, after repeated mixture 
 with the rivers and streams of Alsace and the Black 
 Forest, yellowish-gixen. The Maine, flowing from 
 the ferruginous rocks and plains of Franconia, ac- 
 quires a reddish-yellow colour ; during great de- 
 grees of cold it becomes greoiish-blue, owing to the 
 deposition of iron ochre ; and, if it is not coloured 
 yellow by long-continued rains, it flows onward with 
 an amber-grey colour. All the rivers of Old Bavaria, 
 which are formed of waters from lakes and Alpine 
 streams on the lUcr, Iser, and the Inn, are bluish 
 green in winter, in spring grass-green, and in 
 autumn pale herb-green. 
 
 Diversity of Colour in the Sea. — The waters 
 of the sea, in different places and at different times, 
 present almost every hue of the rainbow. Apart 
 from the influence of the condition of the atmo- 
 sphere on the light reflected by the ocean, there are 
 seas which always present one shade of unusual 
 colour. Thus there are the Yellow Sea of China, 
 the Vermilion Sea of California, the Red Sea, tlie 
 Black Sea, &:c. The hue of the last-named is at- 
 tributed to the frequent storms which agitate its 
 surface, and the quantity of earthy matter brought 
 into its bosom by the Danube and other rivers. 
 But the tinge of the Red and other coloured seas is 
 due to the presence of myriads of animalcules, while 
 to the same cause is ascribed the " white water " of 
 the Pacific Ocean, which extends between twenty 
 and thirty miles, about lat. 8 deg. 46 min. S., and 
 long. 105 deg. 30 min. E. The brilliant phos- 
 phorescence of the sea has also its source in minute 
 organic life. Admiral 5Jmyth remarks, as an in- 
 stance of the variation of colour in adjacent waters, 
 that the usual tint of the Mediterranean, when 
 undisturbed by accidental or local causes, is a 
 
Parasites. 
 
 367 
 
 bright and deep blue ; but in the Adriatic a green 
 
 tinge is prevalent, and in the Levant basin it borders 
 on purple. Seamen generally admit one conclusion 
 with regard to colour — that a green hue is a general 
 indication of soundings, and indigo-blue a token of 
 profound depth. 
 
 COLOSSAL STATUE OF BAVARL-V. 
 
 This great work of Bavarian art at Munich, "awful 
 in its Titanic proportions and calm majestic beauty," 
 aims at embodying a grand idea of nationality, sug- 
 gested by King Ludwig, wlio will long be remem- 
 bered for the grandeur which characterises all his 
 ideas of commemorating his kingdom's honour. 
 
 The " Bavaria " was, at the king's suggestion, 
 designed by Schwanthaler, the sculptor, and his 
 friend Lazarini, who modelled the colossal figure 
 under his direction. For the casting it was neces- 
 sary to melt twenty tons of bronze, five tons more 
 than had ever been melted in the furnace, -a most 
 perilous labour. To give some tangible idea of the 
 size of the figure, in the head and the upper part 
 of the bust five-and-twenty men have found room ; 
 in the central part of the figure thirty-five or forty 
 persons could dine, and the space of ground covered 
 by the lower section is enormous in proportion. 
 
 The figure of this colossal maiden, with her ma- 
 jestic lion by her side, is fifty-four feet high, and is 
 placed on a granite pedestal thirty feet in height, so 
 that the beautiful marble temple o{\\\c Ruhmeshalle, 
 or Hall of Fame, erected behind, seems dwarfed 
 into insignificance. The hill, on the summit of 
 which the statue is placed, is thirty feet high, hence, 
 from the level of the plain on which it rises, the 
 whole elevation attained by the statue is 1 14 feet. 
 
 The figure itself is nearly twice the height of 
 the equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington, 
 opposite Hyde Park Corner. 
 
 Through the interior of this bronze tower-like 
 figure of the Bavaria ascends a winding staircase, 
 leading to a chamber in the head, large enough to 
 contain twenty-eight persons ; whence, through the 
 openings among the curls, the spectator can look 
 across the plain and city of .Munich towards the 
 glorious Alps. It required ten years of stupendous 
 toil, mental and bodily, difficulties overcome by 
 patient industry, and dangers endured with un- 
 flinching courage, to complete this gigantic work. 
 
 The statue was uncovered and inaugurated on 
 the 3rd of October, 1850, with festivities and artistic 
 processions, in the presence of King Ludwig, ac- 
 companied by his queen and King Otho, and vast 
 multitudes of people, and amidst vocal and instru- 
 mental music. The unveiling was an impressive 
 scene. A rope was loosened by a small human 
 figure, far up aloft ; the screen fell with a loud 
 sound, which the roar of cannon repeated, and the 
 
 shout of the multitude prolonged, and the mighty 
 Bavaria stood revealed, awful and beautiful, of a 
 pale, tawny, gold colour— the sunlight catching on 
 her sublime brow, on her rounded shoulder, on her 
 strong, large arm, which pressed to her side a 
 laurel- wreathed sword. It caught on the sword- 
 hilt, and burned and glittered like a star. Then 
 fell the lower screens, and bands of singers, with 
 banners displayed, swarmed on either side of the 
 pedestal, and broke forth into one mighty song of 
 triumph. In the presence of that marvellous colos- 
 sal virgin, their voices sounded strangely small and 
 human. 
 
 In the singular softness and benignity which 
 characterises the expression of the gigantic face, 
 Schwanthaler has admirably carried out the idea of 
 his royal patron. The wliole character of the 
 figure is exquisitely feminine, yet there is, at 
 the same time, a majesty, especially in the coun- 
 tenance, never equalled in any work of modern 
 sculpture. The attitude is that of encouragement. 
 Tlie wreath is formed of oak-leaves and fruits, the 
 oak being the national tree of Bavaria, as it is of 
 England. The crown, composed of loosened fetters, 
 is emblematic of the worthily-earned independence 
 of Bavarian citizens, and has reference to the love 
 of freedom which characterised the Bavarians in 
 the middle ages. The right hand rests on a sword, 
 sheathed and placed in the girdle of the figure, 
 which is intended to be emblematic of peace ; and 
 the wild, almost savage, costume recalls the con- 
 dition of the German people in the earliest ages of 
 which we have record. The back of the figure is 
 at least as beautiful as the front, and the magnifi- 
 cent tresses, which are so exquisitely modelled that 
 the metal of which they are composed seems almost 
 to wave in natural curls, represents the long hair so 
 characteristic of the Germans in all ages. 
 
 PARASITES. 
 
 One of the most wonderful results of the study of 
 natural history, is the proof that nearly every living 
 thing is preyed upon by others smaller than itself. 
 There are minute creatures, and some of considerable 
 size, that either hve within the bodies of others, or 
 attach themselves to the outside. I n either instance, 
 the parasites, as they are termed, nourish them- 
 selves at the expense of the creature to which they 
 are attached, by devouring in some way or other the 
 circulating and other fluids like the blood. Even 
 the parasites are themselves often preyed upon by 
 others ; and there are usually different parasites in 
 different kinds of animals. Some parasites exist 
 in the midst of the bodies of the larger animals, and 
 their method of getting there and of producing 
 young, which some time or other have to enter 
 other creatures, is very curious. So greatly arc 
 
3CS 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 fish infested by the parasites, that it is probably 
 true that there are more kinds of them than of 
 the fishes. Even the reptiles are troubled, like 
 birds, with the minute beings that live at their ex- 
 pense ; and the domestic animals are especially 
 liable to serious diseases from parasites. Man, 
 although the noblest thing created, has a terrible 
 number of disagreeable creatures parasitic upon 
 or within him, and it is a matter of common ob- 
 servation that weak health is produced by parasitic 
 worms, and even death by some that get into the 
 liver, kidneys, and muscles. The parasite of one 
 animal or insect when swallowed by another animal, 
 changes its form and method of life in such an 
 extraordinary manner, that it looks like a different 
 creature altogether, and when many parasites 
 which affect fish are floating about in the water, 
 they are not in the least like what they turn to 
 when they once get within their prey. The com- 
 mon mouse and house-rat often die from the effects 
 of a parasite which gets into the liver. It is very 
 much like a small bladder with a long head, on 
 which are some hooks, and it swells out and grows 
 by absorbing the juices of the liver. After awhile 
 it increases so much in size, that the mice and rats 
 fall away and die. If one of them is eaten by a 
 cat, it is revenged by introducing its parasite into 
 the stomach of its great enemy. 
 
 The cat does not, however, suffer from the 
 parasite's getting into its liver, for it undergoes a 
 change of form, and turns into a long flat tape- 
 worm. The tape-worm thus descended from the 
 liver-parasite, lives in the intestines of the cat, 
 and nourishes itself at the expense of the milk 
 and meat of that household pet. There is a small 
 red snail in Germany which lives in damp places, 
 and a tiny animalcule that floats about in standing 
 water often sticks to it. The animalcule has a 
 round body and a flat top, on which is a circlet of 
 hook-like arms. Sooner or later, the animalcule 
 gets into the breathing organ of the snail, at- 
 taches itself to the tissues by means of its hooks, 
 and lives a lazy do-nothing life, drinking in the 
 juices of the snail's body. Many birds and some 
 small animals prey upon these snails, and especially 
 a magpie and a shrew. Now, when swallowed by 
 one of these, the animalcule passes into the intes- 
 tines, and sticks on to the side by its hooks ; more- 
 over, it grows, and finally has a long tail made up of 
 square flat joints, and it thus becomes a tape-worm. 
 Each flat joint produces myriads of eggs, which 
 when dropped into water, turn to the little animal- 
 cules infecting the snails. Pigs are such careless 
 feeders that they enjoy almost everything, and the 
 consequence is, they often eat substances which 
 contain the eggs of parasites. The Israelites were 
 commanded not to eat pork, and this law is obeyed 
 by most Asiatic nations, and the wisdom of the 
 command is manifest. Most probably one of the 
 
 parasites which lives in the pig, turns to the tape-worm 
 when it is eaten by man ; and the small worm called 
 trichinia, which exists in the hog tribe, when intro- 
 duced into the human body, generally produces 
 death. In order to destroy the parasites and their 
 eggs, a heat very little short of the boiling-point is 
 required, and consequently, if pork which contains 
 them is badly cooked, the living pests are intro- 
 duced into the stomach. The (iermans frequently 
 eat ham whioJi is smoked and dried, but which has 
 never been exposed to a high temperature, and oc- 
 casionally we read of the death of half-a-dozen 
 people in one village, from the gradual decay of the 
 muscular strength, and of simple weakness. On 
 examining the muscles of these unfortunate people 
 with a microscope, millions of very small trans- 
 parent sacs are found in them, and each sac con- 
 tains a trichinia curled up in it. The parasites 
 destroy the muscles, and increase at the expense of 
 the fluids of the body ; hence the falling away and 
 subsequent exhaustion. Many parasites are intro- 
 duced into the blood-vessels in the form of eggs, 
 and they wander about the veins and arteries for 
 some time : when the young creature attains a 
 certain size, the egg bursts, and it settles down in 
 a small blood-vessel, and cither eats its way into 
 the surrounding structures, or swells up and stops 
 where it was. One rare human parasite introduced 
 in this manner, has been found in the form of a 
 small worm, which lives in the eye ; and it is very 
 remarkable that the horse should be troubled with 
 a parasite of a similar shape, which blinds it very 
 frequently. 
 
 The famous Guinea-worm is an inhabitant of the 
 tropical regions of Asia and Africa: it exists in ponds, 
 rivers, and swamps, and penetrates the skin of the 
 feet and legs, and even the eye-lids, without being 
 felt. It soon grows and becomes a small round 
 worm as thick as a small fiddle-string, and it is 
 situated just under the skin. Its length varies from 
 six inches to twelve feet, and it lives by absorbing the 
 nutritive part of the blood which ought to go to the 
 skin. Should the Guinea-worm grow to a great 
 size, there is danger of mortification, for it is sure 
 to burst eventually, and then great inflammation of 
 the parts of the body all around commences. There 
 is, therefore, great care required in extracting the 
 Guinea-worm, for it is very fragile and delicate. 
 A small opening is made in the skin, and the end 
 of the creature is pulled out and curled round a 
 small piece of wood ; on the next day the wood is 
 twisted so as to draw out some more of the worm, 
 and if this operation is carefully performed, day 
 after day, the parasite may be extracted without 
 danger. It is very wonderful that the kinds of 
 parasites should be so numerous, and that certain 
 of them should select certain creatures for their 
 habitation, and that the same pest should always 
 choose the same structure to live in 
 
feORlNG INSECTS. 
 
 369 
 
 BORING INSECTS. 
 
 Many of the lower forms of animal life possess 
 powers of boring which, considering the soft 
 materials of which they are made, seem very 
 surprising. It is hard for us to understand how 
 such animals are naturally provided with tools 
 adequate in some cases for penetrating into the 
 
 name; its Latin one is Pholas. It is to be met with 
 in limestone rocks on the sea coast, into which it 
 bores holes to a depth of several inches. 
 
 It is still a disputed point among naturalists as 
 to how this boring is effected. Some think that the 
 animal is enabled to secrete some acid which 
 softens or dissolves the limestone, while others think 
 that it is by the mechanical process of grinding 
 
 THE RAVAGES OF THE WOOD-BORING BEETLE. 
 
 densest timber, or in others even into the solid 
 rock. 
 
 We find no difficulty in understanding how shell- 
 fish can bury themselves in the sand — the common 
 cockle is an excellent burrowcr in this yielding 
 material. The razor-shell dwells in a long tube 
 in the sand which he has formed by his own 
 labours, from which he can only be extracted by 
 darting down it a long barbed rod. This pene- 
 trates his shell and he is withdrawn ; but if this 
 be not done with great rapidity he is enabled to 
 escape, as he can move very quickly in his hole. 
 There is another shell belonging to the same tribe 
 as the razor-shell, which excavates for itself a hole 
 in the solid rock. This animal has no English 
 47 
 
 that it is accomplished. The preponderance of 
 opinion seems to lie now with the latter view. 
 Another boring shell is the well-known ship-worm 
 or teredo. This burrows into wood to a great 
 depth, and many an otherwise good ship has been 
 rendered unseaworthy by the attacks of this inde- 
 fatigable borer. Of course a metallic coating to 
 the vessel is a complete preservative against their 
 attacks. 
 
 Our illustration represents a borer of a very 
 different kind. The animal that accomplishes 
 these excavations in the trunk of a tree is not a 
 shell-fish, but an insect. The parent, when about 
 to deposit her eggs, selects a tree of suitable size, 
 and commences her operations on the bark. At 
 
370 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 fhe bottom of the illustration will be observed a 
 small inclined hole, and at the end of this a beetle 
 is to be seen ; this is the little architect who, by 
 the joint exertions of herself and her progeny, has 
 so wonderfully penetrated the tree in every direc- 
 tion. Another hole, running horizontally across, 
 will likewise be seen at the right of the figure, and 
 in the end of this another beetle may be seen 
 similarly engaged. When the exertions of the 
 insect have prepared a sufficiently large hole she 
 then commences to lay her eggs : but before 
 proceeding to this subject, let us just dwell for a 
 moment upon the magnitude of the work she has 
 accomplished. 
 
 The hole bored into the heart of solid wood is 
 about fourteen or fifteen times longer than the body 
 of the beetle, and the animal must, by the help of 
 its jaws, tear away and remove a bulk of timber 
 more than twenty times its own bulk. We shall 
 gain some idea of the amount of labour necessary 
 for this, by considering what would be the corre- 
 sponding work that should be executed by a man, 
 were he to be equally adapted with the beetle for 
 this kind of work. He would have in a few days 
 to bore into a mass of solid timber a cylindrical 
 hole, about eighty or ninety feet long, and about 
 three feet in diameter. 
 
 The central part of the illustration shows another 
 stage in the history of these tunnelling operations. 
 We will suppose that a beetle has finished the 
 hole of which the two already described are the 
 commencements. All along each of these will be 
 seen little white spots ; these represent the eggs 
 which she lays as she proceeds. The long line 
 in the centre of the figure represents a part of the 
 completed hole, along the sides of whic'n the eggs 
 are laid. 
 
 When the eggs of the beetle are hatched, the 
 little animal that comes from them is at that stage 
 of its existence utterly unlike its parents. It is at 
 first a little grub without legs, and quite as unlike 
 a beetle as an earth-worm is unlike a house-fly ; 
 this is called the larva condition of the beetle ; 
 and it is equally true of every other insect, that in 
 the early stages of its existence it is utterly unlike 
 in appearance, in food, and habits, to the parents 
 from whom it has sprung. Thus the dragon-fly, 
 with which we are all so familiar, and which is 
 such an ornament to our streams, was, when young, 
 an unattractive and somewhat ferocious-looking 
 grub, wholly resident in the water, over which, 
 when mature, it skims, but which it never touches. 
 The food, too, of the larva of the dragon-fly is quite 
 different from that of the mature insect. 
 
 This being understood, we shall not be surprised 
 to find that when the eggs of the beetle we are 
 describing are hatched, the young that come from 
 them are quite unlike their parents. They are 
 small white grubs, rather uninteresting in appear- 
 
 ance, but endowed with a most tremendous appetite 
 and vast powers of digestion. The food which 
 supports the little grub is the solid wood of the 
 tree itself. It will be remembered that each egg 
 was deposited on the side of the hole, and there it 
 remains attached until it is hatched ; thus the little 
 creature finds, the moment it becomes conscious 
 of its existence, the food which nature intended for 
 it surrounding it in boundless profusion. At once 
 it commences to eat the wood that is under it, and 
 thus it speedily excavates for itself a little hole, the 
 bottom of which gradually deepens as the insect 
 proceeds. Its brothers and sisters, likewise hatched 
 about the same time, commence each to eat their 
 small hole, and thus from the main tunnel a 
 number of small holes gradually extend through 
 the trunk, all commencing, of course, from the hole 
 originally made by the parent insect. 
 
 Now, as the little grubs progress onwards they, at 
 the same time, grow in size, and their appetite con- 
 sequently increasing, the hole gets gradually larger, 
 and this is, of course, also necessary to allow for 
 their increased dimensions. Gradually they proceed 
 farther and farther from the centre, and approach 
 nearer and nearer to the outside of the tree ; but 
 just before they finally emerge, when they are just 
 beneath the bark, a curious change comes over 
 them. They have now grown to be as large as 
 their parent, but still they are grubs ; they have 
 not donned the legs and wings which are neces- 
 sary for the perfect beetle, but the tree which has 
 housed and fed them in their infancy still affords 
 them shelter till their final development. As they 
 get near the bark they cease to eat, and fall into 
 an inert condition ; but all this time a wonderful 
 change is taking place within their bodies — they 
 cast off their skin and are transformed into perfect 
 beetles. Speedily they emerge from the tree to 
 find themselves in a new and wondrous world, and 
 to use and enjoy those powers of flight which they 
 have so recently and so curiously acquired. Truly 
 this is a very astonishing history ; we have seen 
 one beetle boring into a tree, we see a hundred 
 emerge from it : the solid substance of the trunk 
 has afforded nourishment to the numerous off- 
 spring. There is no more interesting department 
 of natural history than that which treats of the 
 habitations of insects ; and there is, perhaps, 
 hardly any insect more interesting in this respect 
 than this wood-boring beetle. 
 
 THE GULF STREAAL 
 
 Among the wonders of physical geography, few are 
 more interesting in their relation to this country 
 than what is known as the Gulf Stream. This is 
 an oceanic current of great extent, which takes its 
 rise in the Gulf of Mexico, whence it derives its 
 name. The peculiar formation and position of this 
 
WONDERS OF THE ATMOSPHERE. 
 
 371 
 
 gulf render it a receptacle for the waters of the 
 Atlantic, which sweep across the north-eastern 
 coast of South America ; and, on arriving in the 
 Gulf, they become warmed to a much higher tem- 
 perature than is anywhere found in the surrounding 
 ocean. The summer temperature of the waters in 
 the Gulf is about eighty-eight degrees, while in the 
 open Atlantic, in the same latitude, it is only 
 seventy-eight degrees. 
 
 Thus warmed, the waters pass out of the Gulf 
 northward, in a deep and strong current, through 
 the coast of Florida on the one side, and the islands 
 of Cuba and the Bahamas on the other. The 
 stream progresses here with a velocity of five miles 
 an hour. It rolls like a mighty river along the 
 shore of North America, widening as it flows, until 
 it nears the banks of Newfoundland, where it is 
 turned aside, partly by the formation of the coast, 
 which here projects boldly out, and partly by the 
 encounter with strong and adverse currents from 
 the North Atlantic. At the point where it is turned 
 aside, it stretches almost across the Atlantic ; the 
 current itself, according to some, being about two 
 hundred miles in width, and the warm waters of 
 the stream extending in all more than twice that 
 distance. In the latter part of its course it leaves 
 behind it that remarkable drift of sea-weed known 
 as the Mer de Sargasso, which has been described 
 in a former paper. 
 
 Crossing the Atlantic eastward, towards the 
 islands of the Azores, the main stream gradually 
 becomes lost and its current spent ; but a portion of 
 it continues northward towards the British Islands. 
 Long after the current itself is lost, the neighbour- 
 ing seas continue very sensibly affected by the warm 
 waters which it has brought down. It was stated 
 by Commander Chimmo, at a recent meeting of the 
 Royal Geographical Society, that in one hour's 
 sailing into or out of the current of the Gulf Stream, 
 the temperature changes no less than from twenty 
 to twenty-five degrees ; and that a ship may be so 
 placed that her bow and her stern are floating in 
 water the heat of which differs greatly. 
 
 It is important to bear in mind the distinction 
 between the actual current of the Gulf Stream, and 
 the heated waters which are brought down by its 
 agency. The range of the latter extends some 
 hundreds of miles after what is properly termed the 
 Gulf current has ceased. The waters of the stream 
 often bring cocoa-nuts and other tropical fruits to 
 the shores of Europe, and some have at times been 
 left in this manner upon our own coasts. 
 
 These warm waters, bathing our western coasts, 
 mitigate the severity of our climate to a consider- 
 able degree. While places situated in the same lati- 
 tudes, both to the east and to the west, are frozen 
 and comparatively uninhabitable during a large 
 portion of the year, our islands, as a rule, enjoy a 
 temperate climate; and this fact is attributed in a 
 
 great measure to the beneficent influence of the 
 warm waters brought down by the Gulf Stream. 
 The peculiar verdure of the " Emerald Isle," and 
 the mildness of our own seasons when Labrador 
 and the regions round the Baltic are locked in ice, 
 are thus believed to be the effects of an oceanic 
 current which sets out more than four thousand 
 miles away. 
 
 The waters of the Gulf Stream are distinctly 
 traced by their colour, which is of a deep blue, con- 
 trasting strongly with tlie green of the seas with 
 which it eventually mingles. The difference of 
 temperature between the waters of the stream and 
 those of the Northern Ocean, leads to the melting 
 away of icebergs brought down from the Arctic 
 Regions on the breaking up of the winter season. 
 
 The temperature of this stream, being so much 
 higher than that of the surrounding seas, exercises 
 an important influence on the atmosphere above. 
 It carries with it a warm, moist air, which, coming 
 into collision with that of colder regions, produces 
 strong winds and fi'equently violent tempests. The 
 neighbourhood of the Gulf Stream is well known 
 to sailors as peculiarly the region of storms ; and 
 in their passage across the ocean they avoid it as 
 much as possible for this reason. Whenever, from 
 any cause, the current is of greater volume and 
 force than usual, these storms are proportionately 
 increased. 
 
 This leads us to notice a plausible theory which 
 was started to account for the particularly mild 
 winter experienced in 1868-9, in combination with 
 a series of violent gales. The frequent occurrence 
 of earthquakes in the southern seas, recorded a few 
 months before, gave rise, it was asserted, to a more 
 than ordinary influx of waters from those seas 
 towards the Mexican Gulf The volume of the Gulf 
 Stream was consequently largely increased, and its 
 effects were therefore felt more powerfully than usual 
 upon our shores, both in the mildness of the season 
 and the frequency of storms. We record this as a 
 remarkable theory, put forward with confidence in 
 some quarters ; but it is only fair to say that it has 
 been questioned by many of our scientific men. 
 
 — * — - 
 
 SPECTRES OF THE AIR. 
 The two plates which illustrate our paper represent 
 the three ways in which strange spectral appear- 
 ances may be represented in the air. No organ of 
 sense is so liable to deception as the eye : it is 
 only capable of being affected by light ; and any- 
 thing which can divert the path of the light, or in 
 any way alter the ray in its passage from the object 
 to the eye, is the means of causing that organ to 
 receive a false perception of the object it fancies it 
 sees. 
 
37 = 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 TJIE FATA MORGANA. 
 
 How admirably this deception was practised in 
 the instance of Pepper's ghost ! The mode in 
 which that spectral personage is produced we have 
 already described ; and if we had an unlimited 
 supply of plate-glass, and an luilimited power of 
 fixing it in any position in the air, we could pro- 
 duce most wonderful spectral illusions — spectral 
 landscapes on a gigantic scale. 
 
 Occasionally Nature, in those freaks by which 
 she pleasingly diversifies the ordinary course of 
 affairs, furnishes us with these very spectral appear- 
 ances ; and the mode by which this is accomphshcd 
 is not difficult to understand. 
 
 On page 52 an account is given of the Spectre of 
 the Brocken, and the admirable illustration of that 
 phenomenon at once shows that the rays of the 
 setting sun — slanting up, as it were, from a point 
 lower than the summit of the mountain — cast the 
 shadows of the figures upon the banks of clouds, 
 the shadows increasing in size with the distance of 
 the clouds. This is very simple, and the appear- 
 ance might be presented in any part of the world, 
 providing a figure be placed between the sun and a 
 screen of clouds — just as a candle will throw the 
 shadow of an object on the wall. 
 
 The other spectral illusions are, perhaps, not so 
 evident, yet they may be readily understood. 
 Eastern travellers often tell scarcely credible tales 
 of the mirage of the desert. Suddenly in the 
 distance, where all is known to be arid sand, 
 appears a sheet of water. Here and there upon its 
 bosom lie enchanted islands, above the top of 
 whose woody groves rise the turrets of castles, or 
 
 minarets of mosques. So real is the sight, that 
 men and camels push forward, longing to bathe in 
 the refreshing waters of this fairy lake ; but as 
 they advance, the mirage retreats, and all fades as 
 the sun sinks beneath the lurid horizon. The 
 explanation of the phenomenon is this : that the 
 sand, being intensely hot, causes the layer of air 
 which rests upon it to become greatly rarefied ; 
 and under certain circumstances this layer is quite 
 distinct from the denser stratum a few inches or 
 feet above it — just as if it were a sheet of water 
 upon which oil rested, the surface at which the 
 two layers meet being quite sharply defined. 
 
 In Egypt, where the mirage is chiefly witnessed, 
 the villages are built upon eminences which rise 
 from the plain. The houses are reflected from the 
 surface of the two layers of air, just as if that 
 surface were a sheet of plate-glass stretched over 
 the plain ; and thus the reflection of the trees and 
 houses, multiplied by the slight unevcnnesses and 
 undulations of the atmospheric reflector, give 
 them a grander and more fantastic appearance than 
 a true reflection. The light from the sky is reflected 
 on other parts of the plain, producing the effect ot 
 a sheet of water. In many parts of the world the 
 mirage is produced ; indeed, wherever there is a 
 wide surface of hot sand, by which the air, resting 
 upon it, can be divided into layers of different 
 densities, the conditions for the appearance of the 
 mirage are fulfilled. 
 
 This explanation will, in some measure, account 
 for that illusion which is occasionally seen on the 
 Straits of Messina. The Italians called it the 
 
WONDERS OF THE ATMOSPHERE. 
 
 373 
 
 SrECTKAL Slurs. 
 
 Fata Morgana. It is thus described by Angellicci, 
 who was fortunate enough to witness it : — " As I 
 stood at my window, I was surprised with a most 
 wonderful delectable vision. The sea that washes 
 the Sicilian shore swelled up for the distance of ten 
 miles, like a chain of dark mountains ; while the 
 waters near the Calabrian shore grew quite smooth, 
 and, in an instant, appeared as one clear polished 
 mirror, reclining against the aforesaid ridge. On 
 this glass was depicted, in chiaroscuro, a string of 
 several thousands of pilasters, all equal in alti- 
 tude, distance, and degree of light and shade. In a 
 moment they lost half their height, and bent into 
 arcades like Roman aqueducts. A long cornice 
 was next formed on the top, and above it rose 
 castles innumerable, all perfectly alike. These 
 soon split into towers, which were shortly after lost 
 in colonnades, and, at last, ended in pines, cypresses, 
 and other trees, even and similar. This was the 
 Fata Morgana, which for twenty-six years I had 
 thought a mere fable." 
 
 Our illustration gives an idea of the general 
 effect. The reflection of the houses on the opposite 
 coast is not from the water, but from the surface of 
 a layer of air of a different density from the one 
 resting upon it. The fantastic appearances of rows 
 of colonnades, and the lines of pilasters, is caused 
 somewhat after the fashion of the images in a 
 kaleidoscope — by numerous reflections of the same 
 object. 
 
 To produce the Fata Morgana, the observer 
 must be above the level of the reflecting surface ; 
 but when a stratum of dqnsqr air is situated above 
 
 the eye, as is sometimes the case at sea, then a 
 phenomenon such as the reflection of the steamer 
 in our second illustration is caused. The reader 
 will readily conceive the philosophy of this, if a 
 plate of glass be imagined to exist parallel to the 
 surface of the sea at the height of the reflected 
 ship. Thus we should see the vessel upside down, 
 and the stratum of denser air has precisely the 
 same effect. 
 
 The double reflection of the three-masted ship is 
 somewhat more complicated. The vessel itself is 
 almost below the horizon, and, indeed, the reflec- 
 tion in the sky of a ship thirty or forty miles distant 
 has been seen. 
 
 The inverted reflection is due to the same cause 
 as that of the steamer. In each of these cases, as 
 in all cases of reflection, only some of the rays of 
 light were reflected or thrown back from the 
 surface — the rest passing into the upper stratum ; 
 and if we could have risen in a balloon, in all 
 probability we should have been able to reach these 
 rays, and thus have seen the other image of the 
 steamer upright, and keel to keel «ith the inverted 
 image. In the case of this ship, the reflecting 
 surface happens to be in the right position for the 
 observer not only to catch the first reflection, but 
 the rays which entered the upper layer are refracted, 
 or bent down to the eye, and thus the second 
 image becomes visible. Two simple and interesting 
 experiments, illustrative of the refractive powers of 
 water and air, are given under the article on the 
 " Spectre of the Brocken," to which the reader is 
 referred. 
 
374 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
   THE PNEUMATIC DESPATCH. 
 
 The possibility of utilising compressed air for the 
 production of motion is not a novelty ; indeed it is 
 evident that whenever anything elastic is forcibly 
 retained in a condition or position different to its 
 natural state, it will exert an amount of force in 
 its endeavours to return to its natural condition, 
 exactly proportionate to that applied to restrain it. 
 Air is no exception to the rule. If it be compressed, 
 it will endeavour to expand ; and the more it is com- 
 pressed, the more forcibly it seeks to expand. The 
 air-gun is a familiar instance of power exerted by 
 compressed air. 
 
 Air in a high state of compression is necessary 
 in order to produce much effect, when the surface 
 acted upon is small, as in the air-gun ; but if the 
 surface is large, a very decided action is produced 
 by the mere force of air moving against it at a 
 high velocity. This is evident from the well-known 
 effects of high winds, which are sufficient to blow 
 down houses and uproot trees. 
 
 It is then with air at a high velocity, rather than 
 at a high pressure, that we have to deal in con- 
 nection with the Pneumatic Despatch ; but when 
 air impinges at a high velocity upon an unyielding 
 surface, it does undoubtedly exercise a certain 
 amount of pressure upon it. For instance, wind 
 travelling at the rate of one hundred miles an hour, 
 which would be called a destructive hurricane, 
 exerts a pressure of forty pounds upon every square 
 foot of surface, but as there are one hundred and 
 forty-four square inches in this extent, wind of even 
 this violence presses upon each square inch with 
 a force of barely four and a half ounces. 
 
 The idea of utilising air under any degree of pres- 
 sure in long tubes, occurred first in connection with 
 telegraphy, messages being enclosed in a thimble 
 of leather, and projected through a tube placed 
 under the streets. The Pneumatic Telegraph 
 paved the way for higher results. It was evident 
 that no great pressure would be needed to propel 
 a larger body than the " thimble" through a larger 
 tube, and that the friction against the sides might 
 be reduced by inserting wheels upon the outside. 
 A tube of cast-iron was accordingly made, not 
 cylmdrical, but shaped very much like the Thames 
 Tunnel, the height and breadth being about thirty 
 inches. This was laid down experimentally, 
 neither level nor straight, so that the capabilities 
 of the system in going round curves, and in as- 
 cending inclines, inight be demonstrated. The 
 carriages were constructed of thin sheet-iron, and 
 rested upon four wheels, the ends of the carriages 
 very nearly fitting the tube ; whilst a thick band of 
 vulcanised rubber, outside the frame, served the j 
 double purpose of making them more nearly fit 
 flie tube, and of preventing a jar if they, chanced 
 f o jerk against the side. 
 
 The current of air was obtained in the following 
 way : — Two very large circular plates of iron were 
 built up, not perfectly flat, but bulging outwards 
 towards the middle. They were fixed at a few 
 inches apart, by flat pieces of iron extending from 
 near the centre to the circumference, placed at equal 
 distances, and which thus divided the space be- 
 tween them into sectors. The whole fabric formed 
 a kind ol hollow wheel with solid sides, it was fixed 
 to a hollow shaft, and rested on hollow bearings, 
 upon which it rotated. When caused to revolve, 
 the air confined in the hollow sectors was driven 
 round with the wheel, and by centrifugal force 
 thrown outwards ; fresh air then passed up through 
 the bearings into the axle and thence into the wheel 
 to supply the place of that ejected, and so long as 
 the wheel revolved a continued stream of air passed 
 from the bearings outwards from the wheel — the 
 greater the speed of rotation, the greater being the 
 rush of air. If now a communication was effected 
 between the bearings and the tube, the supply 
 of air being drawn from it, a carriage in any part 
 of it would be pulled along by the great draught. 
 
 To return to the wheel : a large case of sheet-iron 
 plates, riveted together, entirely enclosed it ; there 
 was but one outlet, and this, by the action of a 
 valve, could be made to communicate with the 
 tube. When the wheel rotated, the air ejected 
 from it was thrown into the case, and the case- 
 N'alve being opened, this air was blown into the 
 tube, and any carriage placed inside it would be 
 propelled. This, then, is the principle of the 
 Pneumatic Despatch, propulsion or traction being 
 obtained at will, by opening either the case-valve 
 or the bearing-valve. 
 
 The mechanical details and contrivances con- 
 nected with the system were highly ingenious. 
 Speaking of them generally, there was a close- 
 fitting door at each end of the tube, kept shut by 
 a stud, but which, when the stud was withdrawn 
 opened quickly by either a spring or a weight. 
 The stud was connected by means of an iron rod 
 with a treadle resting over the rail, and placed a 
 few yards inside the tube ; the pressure upon it, 
 caused by the passage of the carriage, released the 
 stud and allowed the doors to fly open. 
 
 The reason the doors were kept closed until just 
 before the arrival of the carriage, was that the air 
 enclosed between it and the doors might act as 
 a buffer to check the speed of the carriage. A 
 few yards further from the end than the treadle, 
 was a large orifice in the tube, through which the 
 air in front of the moving carriage freely escaped ; 
 but directly this was passed, no means of egress 
 for the air existed whilst the door was shut, except 
 through a valve, by the adjustment of which the 
 arrival speed of the carriage could be so accurately 
 regulated, that it would stop within a yard of the 
 same spot outside the tube. 
 
A WONDROUS DISORDER. 
 
 375 
 
 — * — 
 
 Snow-houses of the Esquimaux. — In the 
 winter season the Esquimaux hve in huts built of 
 snow, and we may imagine what must have been 
 the necessity and distress that could first have sug- 
 gested to a human being the idea of using such an 
 unpromising material as a means of protecting him- 
 self from cold. Be that as it may, the snow " igloe," 
 or hut, affords not only security from the inclemency 
 of the weather, but more comfort than either stone or 
 wooden buildings without fire. The construction of 
 them requires considerable tact, and is always per- 
 formed by the men, tv/o being required for it, one 
 outside and the other inside. Blocks of snow arc first 
 cut out with some sharp instrument from the spot 
 that is intended to form the floor of the dwelling, and 
 raised on edge, inclining a little inward around the 
 cavity. These blocks are generally about two feet in 
 length, two in breadth, and eight inches thick, and 
 are joined close together. In this manner the edifice 
 is erected, contracting at each successive tier, until 
 there only remains a small aperture at the top, 
 which is filled by a slab of clear ice, that serves 
 both as a keystone to the arch and a window to 
 light the dwelling. An embankment of snow is 
 raised around the wall, and covered with skins, 
 which answer the double purpose of beds and seats. 
 The inside of the hut presents the figure of an arch 
 or dome ; the usual dimensions are ten or twelve 
 feet in diameter, and about eight feet in height at 
 the centre. Sometimes two or three families con- 
 gregate under the same roof, having separate apart- 
 ments communicating with the main building, that 
 are used as bedrooms. The entrance to the " igloe" 
 is effected through a winding covered passage, 
 which stands open by day, but is closed up at 
 night by placing slabs of ice at the angle of each 
 bend, and thus the inmates are perfectly secured 
 against the severest cold. — M'Lean's " Hudson's 
 Bay Territory." 
 
 Eating Powers of the Esquimaux. — Dr. 
 Letheby, in a paper on the " Economy of Food," 
 states that Sir W. E. Parry once tried how much 
 food an Esquimaux lad, scarcely full-grown, could 
 consume in twenty-four hours. It was as follows : 
 — 4 lb. 4 oz. frozen sea-horse flesh, raw ; 4 lb. 4 oz. 
 frozen sea-horse flesh, boiled ; i lb. 1 2 oz. bread and 
 bread-dust ; l^pint rich gravy soup ; i tumbler of 
 strong grog ; 3 wine-glasses of raw spirits ; 9 pints 
 of water. 
 
 WATCH FOUND IN A SHARK. 
 
 On December i, 1787, some fishermen fishing in 
 the river Thames, near Poplar, with much difficulty 
 drew into their boat a shark yet alive, but ap- 
 parently very sickly. It was taken on shore, and, 
 being opened, in its belly were found a silver watch, 
 
 a metal chain, and a cornelian seal, together with 
 several pieces of gold lace, supposed to have be- 
 longed to some young gentleman who was unfor- 
 tunate enough to have fallen overboard, and to 
 have been caught and swallowed by the shark. 
 The body and other parts had either been digested 
 or voided ; but the watch and gold lace not being 
 able to pass through it, the fish had become sickly, 
 and would very soon have died. 
 
 The watch had the name of " Henry Watson, 
 London. No. 1,369," and the works were very 
 much impaired. On these circumstances being 
 made public, Mr. Henry Watson, watchmaker, in 
 Shoreditch, recollected that, about two years pre- 
 viously, he sold the watch to Mr. Ephraim Thomp- 
 son, of Whitechapel, as a present to his son on his 
 going out on his first voyage, on board the ship 
 Polly, Captain Vane. When about three leagues 
 off" Falmouth, by a sudden heel of the vessel during 
 a squall, young Thompson fell overboard, and was 
 no more seen. The news of his being drowned 
 soon after came to the knowledge of his friends, 
 who little thought of hearing anything more con- 
 cerning him. 
 
 This was the largest shark ever remembered to 
 have been taken in the Thames, being from the 
 tip of the nose to the extremity of the tail nine feet 
 three inches ; from the shoulder to the extremity 
 of the body, six feet one inch ; round the body, in 
 the thickest part, six feet nine inches. The width 
 of the jaws, when extended, was seventeen inches. 
 It had five rows of teeth, and was consequently 
 five years old, having an additional row every year 
 till it arrives at full growth. These details have 
 been, in the main, derived from the Annual Register 
 of the time. 
 
 A WONDROUS DISORDER. 
 
 With all its extremely doubtful wonders related of 
 possession and demonology, history has never 
 recorded anything more strange than the visitation, 
 hallucination, or mental disorder that, during the 
 years 1857-64, prevailed amongst the inhabitants 
 of Morzine, a village of the Haute Savoie, not 
 many miles from that popular resort of tourists, 
 the Lake of Geneva. So strange is the story in all 
 its details, that at first one can hardly believe that 
 it is a piece of contemporary history that we are 
 reading. The visitation commenced with the 
 strange seizure of a child of ten years, a Httle girl 
 of an exceedingly enthusiastic religious tempera- 
 ment, and whose mind was said to be occupied 
 by thoughts of religion continually, till one day 
 when she sank down suddenly, and remained as 
 one dead for some hours. A companion was soon 
 after attacked in the same manner, and in a short 
 time it became a common thing for these children 
 to fall into a trance, on recovering from which they 
 
376 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 would relate their experience — sometimes of happi- 
 ness, at others of torment to which they had been 
 subjected. Soon, however, the attacks grew more 
 fierce : the children began to gesticulate, to talk 
 incoherently, and even blaspheme and utter the 
 most abominable oaths, their writhings and con- 
 tortions at such times being so violent, that it took 
 three strong men to restrain one child. 
 
 The disorder spread fast ; a young girl gave out 
 that she was possessed of seven devils ; a boy in 
 the convulsed state performed the most extra- 
 ordinary acts — running up a large pine tree, about 
 eighty feet high ; and when there, apparently 
 rcUeved from the influence, prayed in agonised 
 tones to be helped down. The father of the first 
 child attacked, as if fulfilling a prediction uttered 
 by his daughter, withered away to a skeleton, 
 declaring himself unable to cat, and at the end of 
 three months died. At the end of eight months 
 about thirty people were affected by this so-called 
 demoniacal malady, one which resisted for a time 
 the efforts of doctors and those who turned their 
 attention to the complaint. People affected became 
 convulsed, throwing themselves about in the most 
 frightful way, being apparently quite insensible to 
 pain ; pins or needles thrust even beneath the 
 finger-nails producing no effect ; but, evidently 
 under the impression that they were possessed of 
 the devil, they raved and uttered maledictions on 
 all who approached. 
 
 So wide-spread grew the evil, that at last the 
 attention of the French government was drawn to 
 the place ; for the superstitious inhabitants, upon 
 finding the aid of doctor and priest unavailing, 
 resorted to exorcism ; accused inimical people of 
 having bewitched them ; and even went so far as 
 to attack the suspected, as well as those who tried 
 to laugh them out of their fears. Naturally a quiet, 
 religious, and enthusiastic people, those who were 
 affected seemed to be turned into the vilest of the 
 earth, uttering blasphemies that drove their religious 
 teachers away in despair. 
 
 At length, in 1861, Dr. Constans, inspector- 
 general of lunatics, arrived at Morzine, to find one 
 hundred and twenty people of all ages suffering 
 from this strange mania. The doctor, in his 
 report, described the acts of the people as little 
 short of marvellous ; their feats in bounding, throw- 
 ing themselves about, and writhing, was as if their 
 bodies had been changed into a steel spring, while, 
 in spite of falls and blows, their flesh appeared 
 invulnerable, suffering neither bruise nor other in- 
 jury. Some seemed to have the organs of sight 
 and hearing quickened, so that to one is attri- 
 buted the power of hearing the bells of a church 
 ringing at the distance of thirty-five miles ; the 
 same woman, without any previous knowledge of 
 the fact, declaring truthfully the purpose for which 
 they rang. 
 
 During the stay of Dr. Constans, the complaint 
 seemed to smoulder ; but on his quitting Morzine, 
 it burst forth with renewed fury. The ecclesiastics 
 attributing it to demoniacal possession, tried again 
 and] again the effect of religious rites ; the bishop 
 of Annecy, a much-loved and venerated man, 
 determining to try the effect of his presence, and 
 the administration of the sacrament of confirmation 
 in the valley. There was a very full attendance 
 at the high mass he celebrated, but the moral effect 
 was nil. The ceremony commenced at seven in 
 the morning, but in five minutes a young girl fell 
 down in horrible convulsions, striking head, hands, 
 and feet upon the floor with the rapid beat of the 
 roll of a drum. Then, one after the other, people 
 were seized with similar fits, till the church rang 
 with the most fearful oaths and blasphemies. The 
 very entrance of the bishop seemed the signal for 
 " blows, kicks, spitting, horrible convulsions, hand- 
 fuls of hair and caps flung about ;" while the most 
 frightful moments were at the elevation of the host 
 and the benediction. Quite a hundred people in 
 the church were in horrible convulsions ; and in 
 spite of all this, the bishop kept on laying hands 
 upon those who swore at, struck, and spat upon 
 him. Evidently believing themselves the abode 
 of some unclean spirit, young women spoke as did 
 the possessed of old, in scriptural words, such 
 as from long religious teaching were familiar to 
 them, but becoming tranquil when some solemn 
 adjuration was pronounced. 
 
 Completely dispirited, the good bishop left ; and 
 seeing the result, government once more sent their 
 commissioner of lunacy, backed by the power of 
 a dictator. He had a detachment of soldiery, and 
 a brigade of gendarmes, and at once set to work 
 to try and root out the evil. Those who accused 
 others of witchcraft or magic were heavily fined ; 
 decrees and edicts were issued, and it soon became 
 known that those who suffered were to be sent 
 away from the valley, many even to lunatic 
 asylums. The subject was even forbidden to be 
 talked of; and whatever the disorder, mental or 
 spiritual, bodily weakness, or imposition in the first 
 case working upon the fears of the susceptible, the 
 stringent acts of the commissioner had their effect, 
 so that soon after his last coming the cases of 
 convulsion died out, one fear counteracting another ; 
 the soldiery were withdrawn, and peace once more 
 reigned in the valley. 
 
 Similar attacks are not unknown to the student 
 of history : we may instance the dcmonopathy of 
 the sixteenth century, and the Jansenist and 
 Ccvennes convulsionaries ; but in these latter days 
 of advance, such scenes as were presented during 
 eight years, setting science at defiance for so long 
 a period, and presenting such a combination of 
 hallucinations, cannot well be recorded by any 
 other term than that of wonderful. 
 
TRAVELLING FISH. 
 
 377 
 
 TRAVELLING FISH. 
 
 Some fishes are endued with the faculty of living 
 out of water — of being literally fishes out of water 
 — with apparently the greatest ease. Some species 
 bury themselves in the 
 mud of the ponds in which 
 they have their local habi- 
 tation, but which are apt, 
 in the dry season, to be- 
 come waterless. Others 
 have been met going in 
 troops from the dry bed 
 of their late pond to some 
 other pond in the neigh- 
 bourhood. The most re- 
 markable specimen of the 
 kind, however, is the 
 climbing perch, of which 
 a portrait is annexed. 
 This curious creature 
 {Anabas scandcns) has a 
 peculiar formation of the 
 upper part of its head, by 
 which, in a number of 
 cells, a supply of water 
 is retained to moisten the 
 gills of the fish when ab- 
 sent on its travels. Fre- 
 quently it quits its wonted 
 pond for a considerable 
 ramble inland ; and it has 
 been found so remote from 
 water as to induce the 
 belief that it must have 
 fallen from the skies in a 
 shower. It has been said, 
 but also denied, that the 
 fish is in the habit of 
 climbing trees, and that 
 its name is traceable to 
 that fact. One naturalist 
 avers that he once cap- 
 tured a perch at a height 
 of five feet from the 
 ground, on the stem of a 
 palm tree ; and it is cer- 
 tain that the formation 
 both of the mouth and 
 the fins is such as to war- 
 rant the idea that the 
 creature might so climb. 
 
 How long he can live out of his element it is diffi- 
 cult to know, but the probability is for a short time 
 only. The conjurers of India and China exhibit 
 these and some other members of this family of 
 Anabassido', of course attributing to their own 
 magical influence the natural powers of the fish. 
 The flesh is good to eat, and is not unlike turbot. 
 4S 
 
 Tin: CLIMBING PERCH. 
 
 The fish is so tenacious of hfe that fishermen are 
 reported to bring it alive to market, and even to 
 cut it up gradually, in order to suit the wants of 
 small purchasers. 
 The travelling propensities of fish are exempli- 
 fied to the fullest extent 
 by the climbing perch ; 
 but that creature is by no 
 means the only member 
 of the finny tribe who is 
 wont to take his walks 
 abroad. Salmon are ac- 
 customed to make an 
 entire change twice a year 
 in their local habitation. 
 In the spawning season, 
 when they are in prime 
 condition, they quit the 
 sea, and, ascending the 
 course of rivers, seek a 
 place where they may in 
 safety deposit their eggs. 
 In arriving at this place, 
 which they fix, for reasons 
 well known to themselves, 
 at the very sources of 
 rivers, they allow no bar- 
 rier, no obstacle, to stand 
 in their way unconquered. 
 Weirs, cataracts, and falls, 
 over fifteen feet high, these 
 wonderful travellers scale, 
 leaping — by means of the 
 muscular power and the 
 peculiar formation of the 
 after part of their bodies 
 — from the lower to the 
 higher part of the stream. 
 The " leap of the salmon " 
 must be familiar to all 
 who have wandered by 
 the course of any large 
 streams. Arrived at a 
 suitable spot, and where 
 fresh pure water flows, the 
 salmon picks out a place 
 where it can make a fur- 
 row, worthy of being en- 
 trusted with the ova which 
 are to continue the race. 
 The furrow is made, the 
 ova are deposited, and the 
 trench is covered by the salmon with gravel from 
 the river bed. For awhile the parent remains in 
 fresh water, but when long fasting and the enervat- 
 ing influence of fresh water have had their work 
 upon the fish, he returns about the spring time by 
 the way that he came, and seeks in the briny waters 
 of the sea freedom from accumulated parasites, and 
 
378 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 the source of new life. Other fish, indeed, it may 
 be said all fish, travel also, though less demonstra- 
 tively. The flying-fish, already described in the 
 World of Wonders, travels far and wide within 
 the tropics to escape from the jaws of his enemies, 
 and his enemies follow as far and farther than he 
 can go, in order to feast upon his delicate flesh. 
 Porpoises — sea-pigs as they are called — travel far 
 and rapidly, going in " schools " at a rate that 
 mocks the quickest steamer, and, according to the 
 sailors, in the direction from which the wind is 
 going to blow — these sagacious animals, so Jack 
 says, having a wholesome dread of a lec-shore. 
 
 Most fish are given to travel, but not all. The 
 tribe might be divided into fish of passage, and 
 fishes residentiary, the former being, as might be 
 expected, by far the more interesting, both naturally 
 and gastronomically ; while the others, like many 
 other stay-at-homes, are flat, stale, and unprofitable. 
 
 '     
 
 Curious Ancient Superstition. — In a 
 volume containing miscellaneous collections by 
 Dr. Richard Pocock, in the British Museum, is the 
 copy of a letter written by Philip Herbert, third 
 Earl of Pembroke, Lord Chamberlain in the reign 
 of King Charles I., to the Sheriff of Staffordshire, 
 which illustrates a curious popular beHef of the 
 period, from which even the king was not free. 
 It runs as follows: — "Sir, His Majesty taking 
 notice of an opinion entertained in Staffordshire, 
 that the burning of feme doth draw downe rain, 
 and being desirous that the country and himself 
 may enjoy fair weather as long as he remains in 
 those parts, his Majesty hath commanded me to 
 write unto you, to cause all burning of feme to bee 
 forborne, until his Majesty be passed the country. 
 Wherein, not doubting but the consideration of 
 their own interest, as well as of his Majesties, will 
 invite the country to a ready observance of this his 
 Majesties command, I rest your very loving friend, 
 — Pembroke & Montgomery. Belvoir, ist 
 August, 1636." 
 
 The Introduction of Tobacco into Eng- 
 land. — Old John Aubrey thus writes of the " Indian 
 weed : " " Sir Walter Raleigh was the first who 
 brought tobacco into England, and in our part of 
 North Wilts it came first into fashion by Sir 
 Waher Long. They had first silver pipes. The 
 ordinary sort made use of a walnut -shell and a 
 straw. I have heard my grandfather say that one 
 pipe was handed from man to man round the table. 
 Sir Walter Raleigh, standing in a stand at Sir R. 
 Poyntz's park at Acton, took a pipe of tobacco, 
 which made the ladies quit it till he had done. 
 Within these thirty-five years 'twas scandalous for 
 
 a divine to take tobacco. It was sold then for its 
 weight in silver. I have heard some of our old 
 yeomen neighbours say that when they went to 
 Malmesbury or Chippenham market, they culled 
 out their biggest shillings to lay in the scales 
 against the tobacco ; now the customs of it are the 
 greatest his Majesty hath." 
 
 Young People Sold in England.— In the 
 life of Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, who died 
 in the year 1095, it is stated that in a town 
 called Brickston (now known as Bristol) there was 
 a mart for slaves, who were collected from all parts 
 of England — and particularly young women ; that 
 it was a most moving sight to. see in the public 
 markets rows of young people of both sexes, of 
 great beauty, and in the flower of their youth, 
 tied together with ropes, and sold — men, unmind- 
 ful of their obligations, delivering into slavery 
 their relations, and even their own children. Wulf- 
 stan, by his exertions, put an end to this barbarous 
 custom. 
 
 PANICS. 
 
 The credulity of people where money, or money- 
 making, is in question, seems to be boundless. 
 Ever since facilities were given to monetary specu- 
 lation by the development of the banking system, 
 and by the establishment of associated credits, 
 there have been recurring periods of wonderful 
 credulity wonderfully deceived. With William III. 
 the banking system may be said to have begun in 
 England, and in his successor's reign — even in his 
 own — we find the beginning of that wonderful series 
 of speculative manias of which we find too many 
 instances in our own times. 
 
 The Darien scheme, as it was called, was a 
 speculation of a kind reasonable in itself, and one 
 which might, under circumstances that did not 
 present themselves, have proved very successful. 
 It was conceived by William Paterson, a Scotch- 
 man, in the year 1695, and had for its object the 
 establishment of a great commercial city on the 
 Isthmus of Darien, which should be a depot and 
 medium of intercommunication for the commerce 
 of the eastern and western hemispheres. The com- 
 pany who were to found the city were to make their 
 fortunes as traders, a monopoly having been given 
 to them by the Scotch Parliament. The ferment 
 in Scotland was prodigious ; " almost in an instant 
 ;^40o,ooo were subscribed in Scotland, although it 
 is known that at that time there was not above 
 ^800,000 of cash in the kingdom." It was antici 
 pated that the whole Indian trade would pass by 
 the Darien route. A settlement was made on the 
 isthmus, and arrangements were made for carrying 
 out the scheme ; but difficulties of all sorts arose. 
 Persons interested in the old channels of trade 
 intrigued against the new company ; speculators 
 
CURIOSITIES OF COFFEE. 
 
 379 
 
 shut out of the speculation murmured against it, 
 and the Spaniards, apprehensive of danger to their 
 central American colonies, took steps to overthrow 
 the company's factories. The prejudices of the 
 king — William III. — were excited against the com- 
 pany, so that he not only withdrew all support, but 
 expressly disowned the Darien colony and forbade 
 assistance to be sent to it. The scheme naturally 
 failed under these adverse influences, the colonists 
 succumbed to Spanish force, and the luckless in- 
 vestors in the company's stock — who were thousands 
 in number — were utterly ruined. 
 
 Born of the excitement consequent upon the 
 Darien scheme was the Mississippi scheme, devised 
 by John Law, the son of an Edinburgh banker. 
 Law, by the introduction of a paper currency, had 
 so far relieved the dire distress of the French 
 national finances, as to ingratiate himself with the 
 government of the regent, under whose auspices 
 he started the Royal Bank of France. Plausible, 
 clever, and enthusiastic, he devised all sorts of 
 schemes for the purpose of relieving the general 
 pecuniary distress — the most celebrated being that 
 known as the Mississippi scheme. A company 
 formed by him obtained a grant of all the territory, 
 then belonging to France, through which the Missis- 
 sippi river flowed. From this land tobacco, corn, 
 and all sorts of produce were to be obtained ; the 
 shareholders were to make fortunes rapidly ; and 
 the money acquired by them was to flow out again 
 in a fertilising stream over the country. Engrafted 
 upon this company were other companies, including 
 the old French East India Company ; and trading 
 monopolies were granted to it which made it the 
 most considerable and powerful private association 
 in the world. All France, from the minister to the 
 peasant, took shares in it ; the stock went up to a 
 premium of an absurd height ; all the available 
 money and all the credit of the country were wrapped 
 up in it. It was incorporated with the Royal Bank. 
 The wealth amassed by Law, and by those specu- 
 lators who knew the market, was enormous ; and 
 the envy excited was proportionately great. Com- 
 petition in the race for riches sent up the stock to 
 fabulous prices, and in January, 1720, the 500 livres 
 shares were selling for 10,000 livres each. Suddenly 
 there was a suspicion that all was not well, a drain on 
 the bank ensued, and then came a panic. Those who 
 could realise did so immediately, and sent their 
 money out of the country ; the run on the bank 
 continued, aad on the 27th of May, 1720, specie pay- 
 ments were stopped. The ruin was universal ; all 
 France was concerned in it, nor did it recover from 
 its effects until the restoration of credit by Napo- 
 leon, eighty y ;ars afterwards. Law himself fled to 
 Brussels, his scle wealth a diamond, worth ;^5,ooo. 
 All his estates, all his heaped-up riches were con- 
 fiscated, but made a poor compensation for the ruin 
 their owner had occasioned. 
 
 The same year that saw the Mississippi scheme 
 fail saw the rise of the South Sea scheme. In 171 1 
 a company had been formed in London, of which the 
 object was to undertake the payment of ^10,000,000 
 of the national debt in return for a monopoly of 
 trade in the Pacific Ocean. Little or no trade was 
 done, but as a moneyed association the company 
 took to " financing" on a stupendous scale, under- 
 taking among other things to pay off the national 
 debt of _£3 1,000,000 on terms sanctioned by Parlia- 
 ment and very advantageous to the shareholders. 
 The speculative frenzy of the Mississippi scheme was 
 extended to this country. South Sea stock rose in 
 one day from 1 30 to 300, and subsequently went up 
 to 1,000. The rush for shares was wonderful, con- 
 sidering recent experiences ; " It seemed at that 
 time as if the whole nation had turned stock- 
 jobbers. Exchange Alley was every day blocked up 
 by crowds, and Cornhill was impassable from the 
 number of carriages. Everybody came to pur- 
 chase stock — ' Every knave aspired to be a fool.' " 
 
 After a few months came the crash, with its 
 concomitants of despairful ruin, and cries for re- 
 venge. Expulsions took place from Parliament, 
 peers were impeached, the criminal law was set 
 in motion, fines were inflicted, but ruin stayed 
 behind. 
 
 The wars which occupied Europe for the next 
 ninety years elbowed out speculations, but with the 
 return of peace came money mania again. In 
 1824-5 ^nd 1845-6 joint-stock bubble mania was the 
 epidemic, and thousands of people were ruined. 
 And yet, in spite of experience, it would seem that 
 people will continue to " plunge " whenever and as 
 soon as they are beginning to recover from the 
 effects of the last cold immersion in the waters of 
 want. We are not yet recovered from the dire 
 distress occasioned by the last money fever, though 
 there are signs that some among us have not been 
 sufficiently punished to make us proof against 
 future temptation. 
 
 CURIOSITIES OF COFFEE. 
 
 All the coffee consumed in the European and 
 American world was originally derived from Arabia. 
 The plant, however, is not a native of Arabia, but 
 of Abyssinia, and was not introduced into the former 
 country until A.D. 1454, and, consequently, not until 
 eight centuries after the time of Mahomet. The 
 Arabians found coffee to be stimulating and agree- 
 able, and, substituting it for forbidden wine, called 
 it kawah, of which the European name coffee is a 
 corruption through the Turkish ; the word in Arabic 
 meaning wine. Thereupon the Mahometan doc- 
 tors fell to dispute about the legality of the pota- 
 tion. Coffee is not narcotic, but the contrary ; the 
 Arabian theologians, however, occupied themselves 
 
3 So 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 with the name, not the thing. In the end, the 
 wholesome and agreeable beverage beat the doc- 
 tors, and for nearly four centuries the use of coffee 
 has been orthodox and extensive in Arabia. About 
 the middle of the fifteenth century coffee was intro- 
 duced from Arabia into Egypt, and from thence it 
 spread over the rest of the Turkish empire. A 
 Turkish merchant, one Edwards, brought the first 
 bag of coffee to England in 1650, or 1652, and in 
 the same year his Greek servant made the first cup 
 of English coffee. About the same period it was 
 introduced into France. In sixty years' time it was 
 familiarly known in England, at least in fashionable 
 society, as we find from Pope's well-known lines in 
 the " Rape of the Lock." 
 
 " Coffee, which m.ik(?s the politici.in wise. 
 And see through all things with his half-shut eyes." 
 
 For at least half a century Arabia, which now fur- 
 nishes less than one two-hundredth part of what is 
 consumed, yielded the whole supply. In the year 
 1690 a certain Dutch governor-general of India, 
 one Jan Camphuis, sent as a curiosity to Holland 
 a single coffee-plant, which he had raised by seed 
 at Jeddah, in Arabia. The plant in question was 
 carefully reared in a hot-house at the Hague, and 
 bore fruit. Some berries from it were sent to 
 Surinam, and these berries are the progenitors of 
 the whole coffee plantations of America and its 
 islands, the produce of which amounted, in 1850, to 
 295,000,000 of pounds weight. The coffee-plant, or 
 plants, which the Dutch governor kept to himself, 
 have been also tolerably prolific, for they furnished, 
 in 1850, in Java, Ceylon, Sumatra, Celebes, and 
 the Philippines, 18 1,000,000 of pounds. 
 
 There is, however, another version of the West 
 Indian supply. It is said to have been owing, in 
 some measure, to a distinguished French botanist 
 that we are so abundantly furnished with the coffee- 
 berry. Two plants were, under his care, taken to 
 the West Indies from the Botanic Gardens at Paris, 
 but on the voyage the supply of water became 
 nearly exhausted, when this person was so anxious 
 to preserve the plants that he deprived himself of 
 his own allowance in order to water the coffee- 
 plants. From these two, it is added, all the coffee 
 grown in the West Indies has sprung. 
 
 The first coffee-plant known in Brazil was cul- 
 tivated by a Franciscan monk of the name of 
 Vellosa, in the garden of the convent of St. 
 Antonio. The monk presented its fruit to the 
 viceroy, the Marquis of Lavrado, who judiciously 
 distributed it to the planters. This was in 1774. 
 
 From Africa to Arabia, to Java, to Holland, to 
 America and its islands, chance alone seems to 
 have guided the culture of coffee, now of such vast 
 magnitude. There seems nothing mightier about 
 the history of its introduction than the curiosity 
 of a Dutch functionary, and the horticultural taste 
 cjf a Creole Portuguese monk. 
 
 WONDERFUL RIVERS. 
 
 The Mississippi, by constantly overflowing its 
 banks in some parts of its course, accumulates 
 large masses of silt and mud, which soon become 
 covered with grass and trees, so as to form islands 
 of different shapes and sizes. Some years since, 
 these islands were numbered ; but it was soon 
 found that every now and then the river under- 
 mined and overwhelmed many of them, while 
 others were constantly being formed. Some of the 
 islands are very old, and have very large trees upon 
 them, which do not float when they fall into the 
 river on the destruction of their supporting land, 
 but remain with their heavy roots sticking in the 
 mud at the bottom. The trunks are very dangerous 
 to boats going up the stream, and many steamers 
 have been lost by rushing full speed on to " snags," 
 as the sunken trees are called. When there are 
 many snags in the river between small islands, the 
 trees and bushes which are constantly being swept 
 down by the current from the banks of the streams 
 higher up, collect, from being stopped. After a 
 time, the amount of timber thus brought together is 
 so great, that large stationary rafts are formed. 
 One raft grew to an immense size in one of the 
 branches of the Mississippi, and increased steadily 
 for thirty-eight years. It was ten miles long, 220 
 yards wide, and eight feet deep. The whole rose 
 and fell with the water, and was covered with green 
 bushes and trees, while its surface was enlivened 
 in the autumn by a variety of beautiful flowers. It 
 went on increasing till about 1835, when some of 
 the trees upon it had grown to the height of about 
 sixty feet. Steps were then taken by the State of 
 Louisiana to clear away the whole raft and open 
 the navigation, which was effected with great trouble 
 and cost, in the space of four years. 
 
 Much mischief is often done by the snags collect- 
 ing in the smaller rivers, and from the sand forming 
 banks around them. In the Red River, large cedar 
 and pine trees collect round the snags with their 
 roots downwards, and they stop the current, which 
 then begins to deposit mud and sand. A mud-bank 
 soon rises, and young willows and cotton-wood trees 
 spring up, their boughs keeping back the stream 
 when it is unusually high. The bank continuing to 
 enlarge, the channel at length becomes so narrow 
 that a single long tree may reach from side to side. 
 The remaining space is then soon choked up by a 
 quantity of timber which has become water-logged 
 and sunk. In i860, a raft or dam of this kind kept 
 back the stream of the river for twenty or thirty 
 miles, and obliged the greater part of the water to 
 pass into a side lake. The plains of the Red River 
 and the Arkansas are so low and flat, that when 
 the main river into which they fall— the Mississippi 
 — is much flooded, an immense space of country 
 is inundated. The sediment of the streams is red, 
 
WONDERFUL RIVERS. 
 
 381 
 
 because it comes from the wear and tear of rocks 
 which have a red tint like some granites. In 1833, 
 a swamp was formed near the Mammelle Moun- 
 tain, of 30,000 acres in extent. Innumerable trees, 
 for the most part dead, are now to be seen there, of 
 cypress, cotton-wood, or poplar, the triple-thorned 
 acacia, and others which are of great size. Their 
 trunks appear as if painted red for about fifteen 
 Feet from the ground, at which height a perfectly 
 
 or cliffs, are very high, and are composed of the 
 silt of the river mixed with snail and other shells, 
 and fish-bones. In spite of all these floods and 
 changes in the level, the sides of the river are full 
 of life. Herds of wild deer graze on the pastures, 
 or browse on the trees. The bear, the wolf, the 
 fox, the panther, and the wild cat, still maintain 
 themselves in the dense forests of cypress and gum 
 trees. The racoon and the opossum are everywhere 
 
 ."S 
 
 FLOATING RAFT ON THE MISSISSIPPI. 
 
 level line extends through the whole forest, marking 
 the rise of the waters during the last flood. 
 
 Many earthquakes occur on the sides of the Mis- 
 sissippi, and the result has been that great plains 
 have sunk year after year a little, and the river has 
 overflowed them and deposited its fine sediment. 
 As the plains descended, the silt increased, and 
 finally great depths of it formed. Moreover, in 
 some places, the plains which have thus been 
 covered have been gradually lifted up again, and 
 have become hills, through which the river has had 
 to cut its way. Thus at Vicksburg, where there 
 was so much fighting during the war, the bluffs, 
 
 abundant, while the musk-rat, otter, and mink still 
 frequent the rivers and lakes, and there are a few 
 beavers and buffaloes which have not yet been 
 driven away. The waters teem with alligators, tor- 
 toises, and fish, and their surface is covered with mil- 
 lions of waterfowl, which perform an annual voyage 
 from Canada down the river into the Gulf of Mexico. 
 
 No one can form an idea of the effects of the 
 everlasting rush of the waters of this mighty rivet 
 upon the surrounding country, or what torrents of 
 stones and acres of mud it carries down to the sea 
 year by year. 
 
 The river Amazon wears away in banks like the 
 
382 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 Mississippi, and carries a long train of wreck into 
 the sea. How this is done was described by Mr. 
 Bates. When up the river, he was awoke before 
 sunrise by an unusual sound resembling artillery, 
 and supposed it to be an earthquake ; for although 
 the night was calm, the river was much agitated. 
 At daybreak, large masses of forest, including 
 trees of immense size, probably 200 feet in height, 
 were rocking to and fro, and falling headlong, one 
 after another, into the water. After each fall, the 
 wave which it caused returned to the crumbling 
 bank with tremendous force, and caused the fall of 
 other masses by undermining. The line of shore 
 over which the landslip extended was a mile or two 
 in length. It was a grand sight ; each downfall 
 created a cloud of spray ; the concussion in one 
 place causing other masses to give way a long 
 distance from it ; and thus the crashes continued, 
 swaying to and fro, with but little prospect of their 
 ending. Two hours after, when he left, the destruc- 
 tion was still going on. The Amazon sends such a 
 large body of fresh water and sediment into the 
 Atlantic Ocean that it is coloured for a vast distance 
 by it. In 1822 it was found that at a distance of 
 300 miles from the mouth of the river, and there- 
 fore far out at sea, the original direction of the 
 fresh water current was hardly altered. The 
 current moved out at the rate of nearly three miles 
 an hour, and was not much mixed with the salt 
 water. The river Plate, another vast stream, falls 
 into the ocean with such velocity that its waters 
 can be distinguished from those of the sea at a 
 distance of 600 miles, and for a breadth of 800 
 miles. — 
 
 PRINCE RUPERT'S DROPS. 
 
 These philosophical toys take their English name 
 from having been first made known in England by 
 Prince Rupert, and not from his having invented 
 them, as commonly supposed. Beckmann con- 
 siders it more than probable that these drops and 
 their singular properties may have been known 
 from time immemorial. All glass, when suddenly 
 cooled, becomes brittle, and breaks on the least 
 scratch. A drop of fused glass falling into water 
 might easily have given rise to the invention of 
 these drops. 
 
 They were first brought to England in 1660, and 
 shown to the Royal Society. They were well- 
 known when " Hudibras " was written, thus :-— 
 
 '* Honour is like the glassy bubble 
 That finds philosophers such trouble ; 
 Whose least part crack'd. the whole does fly, 
 And wits are crack'd to find out why." 
 
 Edward Clarke, who brought the drop from Hol- 
 land, says : — "The drop, when taken hot from the 
 fire, is suddenly immersed in some appropriate 
 liquor (cold water, he thinks, will break it), by 
 which means the pores on the outside are closed, 
 
 and the substance of the glass condensed ; while 
 the inside, not cooling so fast, the pores are left 
 wider and wider from the surface to the middle, so 
 that the air being let in, and finding no passage, 
 bursts it to pieces." To prove the truth of this 
 explanation, he observes, " That if you break off 
 the very point of it, the drop will not burst, because 
 that part being very slender, it was cooled all at 
 once, the pores were equally closed, and there is no 
 passage for the air into the wide pores below. If 
 you heat the drop again in the fire, and let it cool 
 gradually, the outer pores will be opened and made 
 as large as the inner ; and then, in whatever part 
 you break it, there will be no bursting." 
 
 Rupert's drop is thus described in \h<i Philosophical 
 Transactions : — " The bubble is in form somewhat 
 pear-shaped, or like a leech ; it is formed by drop- 
 ping highly-refined green glass, when melted, into 
 cold water. Its end is so hard that it can scarcely 
 be broken on an anvil ; but if the smallest particle 
 of its taper end is broken off, the whole flies at 
 once into atoms, and disappears. The theory of 
 this phenomenon is, that its particles, when in 
 fusion, arc in a state of repulsion ; but, on being 
 dropped into the water, its superficies is annealed, 
 and the particles return into the power of each 
 other's attraction ; the inner particles, still in a 
 state of repulsion, being confined within their out- 
 ward covering." Faraday was in the habit of 
 illustrating the incompressibility of water by Prince 
 Rupert's drop. When one was placed in a vial 
 of water, and the end broken off, the force of the 
 concussion from the disruption of the drop shat- 
 tered the glass vial. 
 
 Glass is broken by sand in this manner. In 
 some glass-houses the workmen show glass which 
 has been cooled in the open air ; on this they let 
 fall leaden bullets, without breaking the glass. 
 They afterwards desire you to let a few grains of 
 sand fall upon the glass, by which it is broken into 
 a thousand pieces. The reason of this is, that the 
 lead does not scratch the surface of the glass ; 
 whereas the sand being sharp and angular, scratches 
 it sufficiently to produce this surprising effect. 
 
 ANCIENT BRICK BUILDINGS. 
 
 At Rome the common houses were generally 
 built of unburnt bricks, while the body of nearly all 
 the public buildings was of burnt brick faced with 
 marble or stone. Very few specimens of brick, as a 
 means of decoration, have come down to us, although 
 we find that the temple of the god Redicolus, in 
 the valley of Egina, is all of brick, beautifully exe- 
 cuted. Augustus, we are told by Suetonius, boasted 
 of having left Rome of marble, which he had found 
 of brick. The castle of St. Angelo, the campanili 
 of St. Mark's, and the interior of the Colosseum are 
 celebrated specimens of brick-work. 
 
WONDERS OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
 
 383 
 
 Among other ancient nations the Chinese have 
 been celebrated for their great wall, built of burnt 
 brick, which most resembles the wall of Media. 
 The extent is computed at 1,500 miles over a rugged 
 and mountainous country. One elevation is upwards 
 of 5,000 feet, or a mile high. The usual height of the 
 wall is thirty feet, and at the top it is about fifteen 
 feet thick, paved so that carriages can drive along 
 it. Square towers, sometimes forty feet high, are 
 erected at very short distances. The stone employed 
 in the foundations, angles, &c., is a strong grey 
 granite ; but the greatest part of the wall consists 
 of bluish bricks, and the mortar is remarkably 
 white and pure. Its date is about 200 B.C., though 
 the Chinese authorities assert that it has existed 
 2,000 years. They do not mention the time em- 
 ployed in its construction. A large party from an 
 English steamer inspected the great wall in the 
 summer of 1850, and reported it to be in various 
 states of preservation, while it was found in some 
 places to be an earthcrn wall faced with bricks. 
 They mention an arched granite doorway, the 
 construction of which is most remarkable, for the 
 Chinese have long ceased to use the keystone in 
 their arches. 
 
 In all probability the art of moulding and burn- 
 ing bricks was never lost. We find brick buildings 
 in all parts .of Europe, dating from the first century 
 of our era. In the fifth century the palace of 
 Theodoric, at Ravenna, was built of brick, and 
 nearly the whole of the campanili of that city are 
 circular and of brick. At Rome all the campanili 
 previous to the Renaissance period are built of 
 brick, and in Pisa, Bologna, Siena, Venice, Verona, 
 and many other towns, ornamental brick buildings 
 may be found. The first modern brick house in 
 England is said to be at Little Wenham, in Suffolk, 
 date about 1260. 
 
 The Roman bricks used in the buildings on the 
 Palatine Hills, in the baths of Caracalla, and in 
 various remains of Roman buildings in England, 
 are more like tiles than bricks, being very thin 
 compared with their length and breadth. In situa- 
 tions where the soil gave peculiar advantages, 
 brick-makinghas been carried on for many centuries. 
 Thus, the making of bricks and tiles at York was 
 very considerable, and there are large brick-yards 
 and potteries at York to the present day. Masses 
 of Roman brick-work still remain in England. A 
 Roman city, already described in these pages, has 
 been traced in Shropshire ; and Silchester, in Hamp- 
 shire, presents us with specimens of the brick-work 
 of our Roman conquerors. 
 
 Near the Memnonium are several masses of sun- 
 dried bricks ; these are the same alluded to in the 
 Bible, at the making of which the captive Israelites 
 toiled in Lower Egypt, and, as some have imagined, 
 at Thebes, from representations of the process of 
 making them which are painted in the tombs. 
 
 They are made of clay and chopped straw, as 
 mentioned in the Scripture account, and they re- 
 tain their original form after a lapse of three thou- 
 sand years. Several of these bricks are preserved 
 in the British Museum. 
 
 • —   — 
 
 A Wonderful Cockatoo. — There is a great 
 cockatoo in one of the islands of the Indian 
 Ocean, near New Guinea ; it is as large as a 
 full - grown pheasant, and it is of a jet - black 
 colour. The bird is remarkable for its immensely 
 strong bill, and the clever manner in which it is 
 used. The bill is as hard as steel, and the upper 
 part has a deep notch in it. Now the favourite food 
 of this cockatoo is the kernel of the Canary nut ; 
 but there is wonderful ingenuity required to get 
 at it ; for the nut is something like a Brazil nut, 
 but it is ten times as hard. In fact, it requires 
 the blow of a heavy hammer to crack it ; it is 
 quite smooth, and somewhat triangular in shape. 
 The cockatoo might throw the nut down, but 
 it would not break, or it might hold it in its 
 claws like parrots usually do with their food, and 
 attempt to crush it ; but the smoothness of the 
 nut would cause it to fly out of the beak. Nature 
 appears to have given the possessor of the wonder- 
 ful bill some intelligence to direct its powers ; for 
 the cockatoo takes one of the nuts edgewise in its 
 bill, and by a sawing motion of its sharp lower 
 beak makes a small notch on it. This done, the 
 bird takes hold of the nut with its claws, and biting 
 off a piece of leaf, retains it in the deep notch of 
 the upper part of the bill. Then the nut is seized 
 between the upper and lower parts of the bill and 
 is prevented slipping by the peculiar texture of the 
 leaf. A sharp nip or two in the notch breaks off 
 a tiny piece of the shell of the nut. The bird then 
 seizes the nut in its claws and pokes the long sharp 
 point of its bill into the hole, and picks out the 
 kernel bit by bit. The cockatoo has a very long 
 tongue, which collects each morsel as it is broken 
 off by the bill. This is a wonderful process, for it 
 is quite clear that without the leaf nothiiig could 
 be done, and it proves how certain structures in 
 birds are made to destroy certain parts of plants. 
 
 Variety of Birds in Western Africa.— The 
 parrot is by far the most e.xtensive of the feathered 
 tribe — from the grey parrot to the beautiful green 
 love-bird. In plumage the variety is most extra- 
 ordinary ; and, as they flit in the noonday, their 
 gaudy, beautiful colours add to the grandeur of the 
 scene. By the margins of the lakes and swamps 
 are seen the stately storks, the cranes, the curlew, 
 the pelican, and the prince of African birds — the 
 crown-bird. On the broad, calm waters are wild 
 ducks, teal, and widgeons ; soaring aloft in the 
 neighbourhood of towns, the turkey buzzard and 
 
3^4 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 members of the cagie tribe, to both of which a 
 superstition is attached by the natives — a certain 
 dread of consequences if destroyed, enforced by the 
 government in order to retain these useful scaven- 
 gers. — Forbes's " Afission to Dahomey." 
 
 Voracity of Moles.— Moles (says Cuvicr) arc 
 so voracious as not even to spare their own species. 
 If two are shut up together without food, there will 
 shortly be nothing left of the weakest but its skin 
 slit along the belly. 
 
 A GLOBE OF GAS IN THE HEAVENS. 
 
 It is only on a clear, fine, moonless night, when 
 the stars glitter like diamond points upon a black 
 background, when there is no thin mist in the air, 
 and when the Milky Way shines in its delicate 
 beauty like a stain of light in the sky, that the 
 objects described in this paper 
 can be seen. 
 
 But an observer, gifted with the 
 keenest sight, would be utterly 
 unable to discover, without the 
 aid of a telescope, the slightest 
 trace of the wonderful pheno- 
 menon we have figured in the 
 illustration. He might weary 
 himself with staring even at the 
 exact spot in the heavens where 
 one of these objects is situated, 
 but not the faintest glimmer would 
 reward his efforts. He must call 
 in the aid of that indispensable re- globes 
 
 quisite to the astronomer — the tele- 
 scope — to assist him. And even a telescope of such 
 dimensions as is usually seen would be of no use ; 
 it requires a telescope of very considerable power 
 to show these objects at all. To show them well, 
 tasks the utmost powers of a very first-rate instru- 
 ment, such as is seldom met with. To reveal, 
 however, the full beauty of their marvellous bodies, 
 to exhibit them with brilliancy and clearness suffi- 
 cient to show the_ amount of detail with which they 
 are figured in the engravings required the whole 
 power of the great instrument of the Herschels, or 
 the colossal telescope of Lord Rosse. 
 
 Let us suppose that an observer who enjoys the 
 privilege of looking at the heavens through an in- 
 strument such as that last mentioned, directs the 
 telescope on one of these bodies. At first, perhaps, 
 he has a little difficulty in distinguishing it from a 
 star, but when a higher magnifier is applied at the 
 eye end of the telescope the difference is wonderful. 
 He sees a very minute round ball, very bright, and 
 glowing with light of a blue colour. If he turn 
 to another of these curious objects he will see a 
 ball, slightly different perhaps in size, or brilliancy, 
 or colour, perhaps with very faint markings upon 
 it, but he will find the general features in all these 
 
 bodies to be the same. The observer can clearly 
 see that this ball he is looking at is not made up of 
 stars, and then the idea gradually bursts upon him 
 that the object must be a globe of gas. 
 
 That this is the real nature of these objects 
 recent discoveries have placed beyond all doubt. 
 As we recover our astonishment at this wonder, a 
 crowd of questions occur to us. How far off is 
 this globe we are gazing at ? All we know is, that 
 its distance from the earth must be incalculably 
 great. This question science cannot answer with 
 accuracy. It is probably far more remote than 
 most of the stars which we can see without a 
 telescope, but even of this we cannot be quite sure. 
 How large is it ? To this also we must plead our 
 ignorance. Knowing, however, that its distance is 
 enormously great, we very naturally infer that it 
 must be proportionately huge, since we are able to 
 see it at all. Ikit supposing that 
 we take the vast circle which the 
 earth describes around the sun, 
 a circle, the diameter of which 
 is nearly two hundred millions 
 of miles, and supposing that a 
 globe were conceived so large 
 that it would only just pass 
 through this circle, then we know 
 for certain that the globe of gas 
 must far exceed this imaginary 
 globe in bulk. 
 
 How is it that the gas is seen, 
 and what renders it luminous ? 
 5F GAS. Gases, as we know them on 
 
 this earth, are transparent or 
 invisible ; how is it, then, that this globe, if it 
 be of gas, emits this lovely, blue light ? To this 
 we answer that the gas is heated so hot that 
 it becomes luminous, just as iron when heated 
 sufficiently gives out light. Difficult, indeed, it 
 is to form a notion of these wonderful bodies. 
 They are utterly different from the sun, from the 
 moon, from the planets which, relatively speaking, 
 are quite near to us. There is no terrestrial object 
 to which we could refer as an illustration. They 
 are peculiar and unique bodies in the universe. 
 
 There are in the heavens about twelve of these 
 curious objects, varying somewhat in size and also 
 in shape and colour, but the general features in all 
 are pretty much what we have thus briefly described. 
 Theyaredenominated,alongwithmany other curious 
 celestial bodies, by the word nebulae ; but, to distin- 
 guish them from the great majority of the ncbute, 
 we call them planetary nebula. It must not, 
 however, be inferred that they arc connected with 
 the planets ; the only reason why this name is given 
 is that, seen through a telescope, both the planets 
 and the globes of gas present a sharp, round out- 
 line. Our illustration will give the reader some 
 idea of their shape and appearance, 
 
sarnacles. 
 
 385 
 
 BARNACLES. I the crabs, shrimps, and lobsters. If a piece of 
 
 " — I rock is put into a large glass full of sea-water, 
 
 It requires a good deal of faith to believe that 1 many things may be seen on it which are of a 
 barnacles are related to crabs, for they are not the white colour, and whose shape is something like 
 
 least alike, and the first is fixed like a shell-fish on 
 to pieces of timber floating about in the sea, or to 
 the rocks washed by the tide ; whilst the last has 
 legs, claws, eyes, and the power of moving and 
 swimming. Yet it is quite true that the barnacle 
 belongs to the same class of animals that includes 
 
 40 
 
 that of a thimble with the top battered in. If they 
 are examined, it becomes evident that the conical 
 outside is formed of several little bits of hard shell 
 joined together very carefully, and that the top has 
 a valve in it. When the water is quite clear and 
 quiet, a small flapper is poked out through the 
 
386 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 valve, and is moved to and fro with a motion like 
 that of opening and shutting the fingers. The 
 flapper has some long bristles attached to it, and 
 they are beautiful, feathery-looking things when 
 examined imder a microscope. The movement 
 goes on for hours, and ceases upon the least alarm. 
 Then the flappers are withdrawn, the valve closes, 
 and the barnacle — for such is the creature — looks 
 again like a conical piece of stone. The flappers 
 are the lungs as well as the hands of the barnacle, 
 and minute living creatures are entangled by them 
 and passed by a current of water into the mouth, 
 which is within the shell. When the barnacle 
 produces its eggs, it ejects them with a stream of 
 water, and they float about in the sea, being very 
 minute things. They soon become hatched, and 
 then it is that the reason becomes clear why barna- 
 cles and crabs are placed by zoologists in the same 
 class. The y( ung barnacle is just like a shrimp, 
 with a long bouy, many long legs close to its head, 
 and a large tail ; it has eyes, and swims about 
 most vigorously. It appears to be constantly in 
 movement, and although actively employed in 
 swimming and in crawling, it does not care to seek 
 for food. After awhile, the young free-swimming 
 creature rests upon a piece of rock, or wood, or 
 even on the back of a fish, and then a wonderful 
 alteration takes place. The long legs and feelers 
 near the head grasp the substance on which the 
 creature is to live for the future, and a gummy 
 substance comes from a gland which has been 
 growing for some time close to the head. The 
 gum sticks the legs and the feelers to the substance, 
 the eyes diminish in size and are no longer seen, 
 the tail and the hind legs grow Into the feathery 
 flappers already noticed, and the shell of many 
 pieces encloses all. The barnacle is then fixed for 
 life, head downwards, and it loses its organs of 
 sight and receives a mouth and stomach, which it 
 had not before, when in the free-swimming state. 
 All barnacles do not undergo this change, for the 
 males of some kinds live inside the conical house 
 which holds the female, and never have houses of 
 their own, for they remain in the free-swimming 
 form. All the animals of the crab class have to 
 imdergo a change of form before arriving at ma- 
 turity, and the common shore crab, when it is first 
 hatched, is a long thing with a great head, and legs 
 fitted for swimming, and not for crawling. As it 
 grows, the body shortens by curling the tail end 
 underneath, and the legs and claws grow out of the 
 swimming apparatus. Some of the barnacles that 
 live on coral reefs are very beautiful, and their 
 shells are ornamented in imitation of the flower-like 
 polypes of the stony madrepores. 
 
 The illustration on the preceding page will give 
 the reader a good idea of the appearance which a 
 family of barnacles presents, clinging to the under 
 surface of a floating log. 
 
 Citriosttics of Ssfaage ^iff. 
 
 Esquimaux DARlNG.^The roving and cou- 
 rageous habits of the Esquimaux are strikingly 
 illustrated in the following passage from M 'Lean's 
 narrative of " Service in the Hudson's Bay Ter- 
 ritories :" — " A greater number of Esquimaux were 
 assembled about the post (on the south side of 
 Hudson's Straits) than I had j-et seen ; and among 
 them I was surprised to find a family from the 
 north side of the Strait, and still more astonished 
 when I learned the way they had crossed. A raft, 
 formed of pieces of drift-wood picked up along the 
 shore, affording the means of effecting the hazard- 
 ous enterprise. On questioning them what was 
 their object in risking their lives in so extraordi- 
 nary an adventure, they replied that they wanted 
 wood to make canoes, and visit the Esquimanx on 
 the south side of the Strait. 'And what if you 
 had been overtaken by a storm?' said I. 'We 
 should have gone to the bottom,' was the cool 
 reply. In fact, they had had a very narrow escape, 
 a storm having come on just as they landed on 
 the first island. The fact of these people having 
 crossed Hudson's Straits on so rude and frail a 
 conveyance, strongly corroborates, I think, the idea 
 that America was originally peopled from Asia. 
 The Asiatic side of Behring's Straits, affording 
 timber sufficiently large for the purpose of building 
 boats or canoes, there seems nothing improbable 
 in supposing that, when once in possession of that 
 wonderful and useful invention, a boat, they might 
 be induced, even by curiosity, to visit the nearest 
 island, and thence proceed to the continent of 
 America." 
 
 The Amazons of Dahomey.— The Amazons, 
 or women-soldiers of the King of Dahomey, are 
 not supposed to marry, and what the males do the 
 Amazons will endeavour to surpass. They all take 
 great care of their arms, polish the barrels, and, 
 except when on duty, keep them in covers. There 
 is no duty at the palace, except when the king is in 
 public, and then a guard of Amazons protects the 
 royal person. On review he is guarded by the 
 males, and outside the palace there is always a 
 strong detachment of males ready for service. In 
 every action there is some reference to cutting off 
 heads. In their dances— and it is the duty of the 
 soldier and the Amazon to be a proficient dancer — 
 the right hand is working in a saw-like manner for 
 some time, as if in the act of cutting round the 
 neck, when both hands are used, and a twist is 
 supposed to finish the bloody deed. In a review 
 of the Amazons, one regiment was distinguished 
 by a white cap with two devices (blue alligators), 
 another by a blue cross, while the third had a blue 
 crown. The officers were recognised by their coral 
 necklaces and superior dresses, while each earned 
 a small whip, which they plied very freeJy when 
 
DWARFS. 
 
 387 
 
 required. After being inspected, they commenced 
 an independent firing, whilst at intervals, rushing 
 from their ranks, many of them would advance to 
 the foot of the throne, address the king, hold aloft 
 their muskets, and then return and fire them. — 
 Forbes,' s " Dahomey and the Dahomans." 
 
 DWARFS. 
 
 While Jie Bible makes mention of several giants, 
 and gives the most minute particulars as to their 
 huge proportions and marvellous strength of body, 
 we only once find mention of a dwarf in the sacred 
 pages, and then the reference is only general ; no 
 mention is made of any particular man or men of 
 such unnaturally small size. The passage referred 
 to is in Leviticus, where the service of the altar is 
 defended from all blemished persons, amongst 
 whom " a dwarf" is included. Still, we find men- 
 tion made of dwarfs in very early times. 
 
 The custom of having them at court is very- 
 ancient. The Egyptians had these diminutive 
 persons in their suite ; and the Romans were great 
 admirers of them, although they attributed to them 
 an intellectual capacity little higher than that of 
 monkeys. The Emperor Augustus had a dwarf 
 named Lucius, who weighed seventeen pounds, had 
 a tremendous voice, and was only two feet high. 
 
 Julia, the niece — or, as some say, the daughter — 
 of Augustus, had a male dwarf, named Conopas, 
 two feet and a hand's breadth high. One of Julia's 
 freed maids, Andromeda, was of the same height. 
 
 Platerus says of John Decker or Ducker, an 
 English dwarf (1610), "I have his portrait by me, 
 drawn at full length ; he was about forty-five years of 
 age, as far as might be discerned by his face, which 
 now began to be wrinkled ; he had a long beard, 
 and was only two feet and a half in height, other- 
 wise of straight and thick limbs, and well-propor- 
 tioned ; less than he I have never seen." 
 
 Richard Gibson is one of the most celebrated 
 dwarfs of modern times. He was born about the 
 year 161 5, and was not only remarkable for his 
 smallness of stature, but for an exceedingly good 
 artistic faculty. He was a pupil of De Cleyn, and 
 imitated Sir Peter Lely. He was appointed draw- 
 ing-master to the Princesses — afterwards Queens — 
 Mary and Anne. His painting representing the 
 parable of the Lost Sheep was highly prized by 
 Charles L, who gave it to Vandervort to take 
 charge of ; Vandervort put it away so carefully 
 that when the king asked for it he could not find 
 it, and fearing his royal master's displeasure, he 
 hanged himself. Richard Gibson married Anne 
 Shepherd, court dwarf to Queen Henrietta Maria. 
 The king gave away the bride, and the queen pre- 
 sented her with a diamond ring. Waller, the court 
 poet; wrote one of his pretty sets of verses on the 
 
 occasion. It is only right to state that the marriage 
 turned out very happily, and that the little couple 
 had nine children, five of whom were of full ordinary 
 stature. 
 
 Jeffrey Hudson, perhaps the most renowned of 
 all dwarfs, was born in 1619, at Oakham, in Rut- 
 landshire. His father and mother were of full 
 height, and Jeffrey was the only one of their family 
 who was in any way extraordinary. Jeffrey's father 
 kept the Duke of Buckingham's baiting-bulls, 
 and the little fellow was presented to the Duchess 
 of Buckingham between the seventh and ninth 
 years of his age, and when he was scarcely a foot 
 and a half in height. It was Jeffrey Hudson who, 
 soon after the marriage of Charles I., when that 
 king and his bride were entertained at Burleigh, 
 was served up to table in a cold pie, whence he 
 jumped on to the fable-cloth fully armed, and 
 made passes at the ladies with his little sword ; 
 there is a rare old picture of this amusing incident 
 in the dwarf's career. The Duchess presented 
 him on that occasion to Henrietta Maria, who 
 was highly pleased with him and kept him as 
 her dwarf for many years afterwards. Poor 
 Jeffrey was continually squabbling with the people 
 about court, more especially with the giant porter 
 of the palace. Many little anecdotes are told 
 of him, and he appears to have had a largely 
 eventful life for so small a person. On one 
 occasion he was nearly drowned in the basin 
 he was washing his face and hands in ; another 
 time a large shrub was the only obstacle between 
 his little person and death by drowning in the 
 Thames. In 1630 he was dispatched on a domestic 
 mission for Henrietta Maria, and returning richly 
 laden with presents from Mary of Medicis to her 
 daughter, he was made prisoner by Dunkirk 
 privateers. 
 
 Jeffrey fought a duel with a Mr. Crofts, who 
 came to the rendezvous armed with nothing more 
 formidable than a squirt — considering so small a 
 personage beneath his notice. Jeffrey, who was 
 not inclined to submit tamely to such an insult, 
 insisted upon fighting a real duel, and shot his 
 antagonist dead immediately. Jeffrey's portrait 
 was painted several times by Mytensand Vandyke ; 
 and his smart little waistcoat, breeches, and stock- 
 ings, are preserved in the Ashmolean Museum, at 
 Oxford. 
 
 Matthew Buchinger was another celebrated 
 dwarf, with neither hands, feet, legs, nor thighs ; he 
 had, however, two excrescences like fins growing 
 from his shoulders, with which he wrote and per- 
 formed many curious tricks, amongst which may 
 be mentioned drawing pictures with a pen, playing 
 at dice, playing on the hautboy, threading needles, 
 playing at cards, blowing a trumpet, &c. 
 
 Joseph Boruwlaski, commonly called Count 
 Boruwlaski, was remarkable for his wit and smart 
 
388 
 
 THK WORLD OF WONDERS, 
 
 little repartees. He went to see the great Empress 
 
 Maria Theresa when about fourteen years of age and 
 twenty-eight inches high. The empress took him 
 on her lap, and asked what was the most wonderful 
 sight he had seen at Vienna. He answered, " To 
 see such a little man on so great a lady's lap." 
 The empress had a splendid diamond ring on the 
 hand in which she held one of Boruwlaski's 
 Seeing him apparently absorbed in admiration of 
 the jewel, she asked him how he liked it, when he 
 courteously replied that it was not the ring, but the 
 beautiful hand he was looking at, which he wanted 
 to kiss. The empress allowed him the honour, and 
 taking a little ring from Marie Antoinette's finger, 
 she pkiced it on Boruwlaski's. 
 
 The celebrated Bdbe, whose real name was 
 Nicholas Fenyor Ferry, dwarf of Stanislaus Lcsck- 
 zinski, the aged dethroned King of Poland, was 
 born at Plaisnes, in the Vosges. He was taken in 
 a plate to be christened, he was so remarkably 
 tiny. At two years old his shoes were only an inch 
 and a half long. Poor Bdbe was not long lived ; 
 at a very early age he showed signs of decrepitude ; 
 at twenty-three he was attacked with a fever, which 
 soon terminated his life, and he died on June 9th, 
 1764. 
 
 A dwarf named Calvin Philips was born at 
 Bridgewater, in the State of Massachusetts, in 
 1 791, who did not weigh quite two pounds, and 
 whose thigh was not thicker than a man's thumb. 
 
 David Ritchie, of Tweeddale, was the real cha- 
 racter upon whom Sir Walter Scott founded his 
 novel of "The Black Dwarf." David could just 
 stand upright in the door of his house, which was 
 three feet and a half high. 
 
 The most celebrated of the recent dwarfs, Charles 
 S. Stratton, known as General Tom Thumb, was 
 born at Bridgeport, Connecticut, on the nth of 
 January, 1832. He was first exhibited by Barnum, 
 at his old American Museum in New York, and 
 subsequently brought to England, where he was 
 presented to Her Majesty several times. Her 
 Majesty graciously presented him with a souvenir 
 of mother-of-pearl set with rubies, bearing the 
 crown and initials V.R. ; and on another occasion 
 the general received a gold pencil-case from the 
 same royal hand. Mr. Barnum, in his Autobiogra- 
 phy, gives an extremely amusing and thoroughly 
 American account of his own and Tom Thumb's 
 proceedings in England. The little general acted 
 in a play written for him by Albert Smith, called 
 " Hop o' my Thumb," at the Lyceum and several 
 of the provincial theatres. In France, Barnum 
 states Louis Philippe, the Queen, and the Princess 
 Adelaide to have been very friendly and partial 
 to himself and his ward, and were "as void of 
 ceremony as any well-bred family." 
 
 The last public dwarf was Chung, who was exhi- 
 Ijited with his giant and amiable companion, Chang, 
 
 and Chang's pleasant wife. But the giant eclipsed 
 the dwarf in more senses than one ; while the 
 former appears to have been an object of admira- 
 tion for his good temper and great sine, the latter, 
 owing to his remarkably ill-favoured appearance, 
 seems to have created feelings nearly akin to dis- 
 gust in the minds of most spectators. 
 
 —   — 
 
 THE ITCH-WOOD TREE. 
 Dr. Seemann, in his recently published " Flora 
 Vitiensis," describes a tree possessed of singularly 
 noxious qualities, found growing in the Fiji Islands 
 and in New Caledonia. The natives of Fiji know 
 it as " kau karo," literally, " itch-wood," and bota- 
 nists as Oncocarpus vitiensis. It attains a height 
 of sixty feet, with a girth of two or three feet, has 
 white wood, useful for making canoes, &c., a green 
 bark, and a curious corky fruit, somewhat resem- 
 bling the seed of a walnut. Its milky sap is cor- 
 rosive and dangerous, but notwithstanding its 
 poisonous properties, it appears that the tree is 
 much sought after by the natives, for building 
 purposes. In handling fresh specimens, should 
 a drop fall upon the hands, it is said to produce 
 a pain equal to that caused by " contact with a 
 red-hot poker." The natives manufacture a poison 
 from the juice. 
 
 Mr. E. A. Egerstrom, in a letter directed to the 
 British consul, describes the effect of this poisonous 
 sap. Wanting a spar suitable for a flag-staff, Mr. 
 Egerstrom himself stripped off the bark from an 
 oncocarpus trunk, without at the time being aware 
 of the qualities of the sap ; he writes : " In the 
 evening I was troubled with considerable itching 
 about my legs, and every part of my body which 
 had come in contact with the spar, especially about 
 the abdomen and lower parts, having sat across the 
 tree when barking it. All the parts affected became 
 red and inflamed, breaking out in innumerable 
 pustlcs, which emitted a yellowish matter and 
 nauseous smell. The itching was exceedingly 
 painful and irritating, and my arms having been 
 bare when operating upon the tree, also became 
 inflamed, and broke out as already described. The 
 neighbouring natives, who came to watch my pro- 
 ceedings, now warned me, too late, not to touch 
 the tree, as it was a poisonous one, and advised 
 my keeping quiet, and not to touch or scratch the 
 parts inflamed. This advice, however, I could 
 not follow, the irritation for several days being 
 excessive. I employed no remedy, but bathed 
 daily, as usual, in fresh water, although advised 
 to the contrary ; and did not get rid of the 
 injurious effects of the itch-wood, for nearly two 
 months." 
 
THE PENGUIN. 
 
 389 
 
 THE PENGUIN. 
 The cold and desolate regions in the neighbour- 
 
 One of the most curious of these birds, called 
 the king penguin, is the subject of our illustration. 
 He is a most extraordinary creature, not only in 
 
 s 
 
 hoodof the poles are inhabited by numerous animals ' appearance, but also in his mode of life. He 
 who rejoice in the climates of those frozen seas, ! upw.irds of three feet high, and his plumage is 
 
 and flourish under circumstances that would prove 
 fatal to animals less well protected than they are. 
 These animals are nearly all aquatic. The polar 
 bear loves the ice and the icy cold water. His 
 favourite prey, the seal, lives almost exclusively 
 therein. The waters abound with different kinds 
 of fish which make food for the seals, and for 
 thousands of birds whosq solij rtourishment they 
 are. 
 
 short and waterproof. He has no wings, but 
 instead of them small flappers that appear some- 
 thing like arms. His feet are webbed, and placed 
 so far back that when standing he is upright like 
 a man ; whereas in ordinary birds the body is more 
 or less horizontal. His flesh is rank and oily, 
 and underneath the skin is a layer of fat, which 
 serves to protect him from the cold. 
 This bird is found in great numbers in Mac- 
 
39° 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 quarrie Island in the South Pacific Ocean, and 
 a most interesting account of its habits has been 
 given by Mr. Bennett, a naturalist, who visited the 
 locality. The number which inhabited the spot 
 was enormous, but as thirty or forty thousand were 
 continually landing, and the same number going 
 to sea, it was impossible to arrive at an exact 
 estimate. On shore they were arranged as regularly 
 as a regiment of soldiers, and in as compact a 
 manner ; the young birds in one place, the moult- 
 ing birds in another, the sitting hens in a third, the 
 clean birds in a fourth ; and so strictly is the order 
 kept, that if a bird of one class intrude itself into 
 the ranks of another it is instantly ejected. Mr. 
 Bennett tells us : — " The females hatch the eggs 
 by keeping them close between their thighs, and if 
 approached during the time of incubation, move 
 away carrying the eggs with them. At this time 
 the male bird goes to sea and collects food for the 
 female, which becomes very fat. After the young 
 is hatched, both parents go to sea and bring home 
 food for it. It soon becomes so fat as scarcely to 
 be able to walk, the old birds getting very thin. 
 They sit quite upright in their roosting places, and 
 walk in the erect position until they arrive at the 
 beach, when they throw themselves on their breasts 
 in order to encounter the very heavy sea met with at 
 their landing place." They lay but one egg, of a 
 whitish colour, and twice the size of that of the 
 goose. 
 
 As the penguin has no wings, he is, of course, 
 unable to fly ; and as his movements on land are 
 \ery awkward, the sea is the scene of the display 
 of his powers. In swimming and diving he is un- 
 rivalled. Here his abortive wings are of great 
 value to him, they act as fins or paddles which 
 assist his hind feet in propelling him through the 
 water. He sometimes, when coming to the surface 
 after a dive, leaps from the water into the air, and 
 down again like a fish, for which, indeed, in this 
 manoeuvre he might easily be mistaken. Fish 
 form his sole food and the food of his young, and 
 his wonderful powers of diving are used in catching 
 them. 
 
 Living on islands and in localities uninhabited 
 by man, the penguins have not learned the dread 
 of man which other animals exhibit. Illustrative 
 of this point, Mr. Darwin gives us, in his " Visit to 
 the Falkland Islands," the following interesting 
 account : — " One day, having placed myself between 
 a penguin and the water, I was much amused 
 by watching its habits ; it was a brave bird, and 
 till reaching the sea, regularly fought and drove me 
 backwards. Nothing less than heavy blows would 
 have stopped him ; every inch he gained he firmly 
 kept, standing close before me erect and deter- 
 mined. While thus opposed he continually rolled 
 his head from side to side in a very odd manner. 
 This bird is commonly called the jackass penguin, 
 
 from its habit, while on shore, of throwing its head 
 backwards and making a loud strange noise, very 
 like the braying of that animal ; but while at sea 
 and undisturbed, its note is very deep and solemn, 
 and is often heard in the night-time. In diving, 
 its little plumeless wings are used as fins, but on 
 the land as front legs ; when crawling (it may be 
 said on four legs) through the tussocks or on the 
 side of a grassy cliff, it moved so very quickly^ 
 that it might easily have been mistaken for a 
 quadruped." 
 
 The manner in which the young are fed is very 
 curious. The old bird makes a great noise, between 
 quacking and braying ; after having thus chattered 
 for a minute, it puts its head down and opens its 
 mouth widely, into which the young one thrusts its 
 beak and takes the food provided for it. 
 
 MEDICINE IN ITALY TWO HUNDRED 
 
 YEARS AGO. 
 An old document that has just been discovered in 
 the archives of Ferrara gives a curious illustration 
 of the progress and profession of medicine in the 
 sixteenth century, as well as of the amount of 
 credulity that professors of the healing art were 
 able to count upon among the witnesses of their 
 performances. 
 
 It appears that Ferrara was rather famous for 
 its school of medicine, and that accordingly the 
 diplomas it granted were held in very high repute. 
 An Italian named Generoso Marini, apparently a 
 stranger, applied to the college for a degree, but 
 the professors very properly decided that they could 
 not grant his request without testing his knowledge 
 and ability in the science of medicine. Marini 
 upon this offered himself for examination, and the 
 examiners were so satisfied with the result, that they 
 not only granted him the diploma he had applied 
 for, but they made it a record of the wonderful 
 skill which he possessed. 
 
 The document itself runs thus; — " Having publicly 
 examined and approved the science and knowledge 
 of medicine of Signor Generoso Marini, and his pos- 
 session of the wonderful secret called orvietano, 
 which he exhibited on the stage built in the centre 
 of the piazza of this our city of Ferrara, in presence 
 of its entire population — so remarkable for their civi- 
 lisation and learning — and in presence of many fo- 
 reigners and other classes of people, we hereby certify 
 that also in our presence, as well as that of the city 
 authorities, he took several living toads — not those 
 of his own providing, which might have given sus- 
 picion of deception on his part. One of the officials 
 then mounted the platform and selected the five 
 largest of the toads, which the said Generoso Marini 
 placed beside him upon a bench. He then, in the 
 presence of all the spectators, cut each of the toads 
 in two, and, taking a goblet in one hand and half of 
 
THE ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH. 
 
 391 
 
 one of the dead toads in the other, he squeezed 
 from it all the fluids and juices which it contained 
 into the cup, and he did the same with all the others. 
 He then mixed the contents well together and swal- 
 lowed them all, and laying the empty cup upon the 
 bench, he came to the front of the stage, where for 
 a short time he remained perfectly motionless, his 
 limbs began to tremble, his body became as pale 
 as death, and grew frightfully swollen and distorted, 
 so that all the audience thought he would never 
 recover from the poison he had drank, and that his 
 death was certainly approaching. 
 
 " All at once he took from a jar at his side some 
 of his famous orvietano, and putting a little of it in 
 his mouth swallowed it down. The effect of this 
 medicine was instantaneous ; he began to vomit up 
 the poison he had taken, and he stood before the 
 spectators perfectly restored in his health. The 
 people applauded him tumultuously for this proof 
 of his great talent. He thereupon invited many of 
 ths most learned there present to accompany him 
 to his own house ; there he brought them through 
 his dispensary and showed them his collection of 
 many antidotes, and, amongst others, a powder 
 made from little vipers, a most efficacious remedy 
 for the cure of every sort of fever, as he had satis- 
 fied himself by different experiments made on 
 people of rank and virtue, whom he had cured from 
 the fevers with which they were afflicted. He also 
 showed a wonderful balsam — his own invention — 
 with which he could cure almost immediately 
 bruises, wounds, burns, and scalds of all kinds." . 
 
 A STOPPAGE OF THE FALLS OF 
 NL\GARA. 
 The following remarkable account of the stoppage 
 of Niagara Falls appeared in the Niagara Mail 
 at the time of the occurrence : — " That mysterious 
 personage, the oldest inhabitant, has no recollec- 
 tion of so singular an occurrence as took place at 
 the Falls on the 30th of March, 1847. The 'si.x 
 hundred and twenty thousand tons of water each 
 minute' nearly ceased to flow, and dwindled away 
 into the appearance of a mere mill-dam. The 
 rapids above the falls disappeared, leaving scarcely 
 enough on the American side to turn a grindstone. 
 Ladies and gentlemen rode in carriages one-third 
 of the way across the river towards the Canada 
 shore, over solid rock as smooth as a kitchen floor. 
 The Iris says : ' Table Rock, with some two 
 hundred yards more, was left dry ; islands and 
 places where the foot of man never dared to tread 
 have been visited, flags placed upon some, and 
 mementoes brought away. This unexpected event 
 is attempted to be accounted for by an accumula- 
 tion of ice at the lower extremity of Fort Erie, 
 which formed a sort of dam between Fort Erie 
 and Buffalo,' " 
 
 THE ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH. 
 
 The first cable laid between the Old World and 
 the New, short-lived as it had proved, sufficed to 
 show the necessity for a communication of this 
 sort across the Atlantic ; and after the most 
 persevering efforts to raise fresh capital, it was 
 determined to make another attempt. The Great 
 Eastern steam-vessel, after proving a commercial 
 failure, was now laid up at moorings with every 
 probability of remaining there. Still, she had 
 proved herself a splendid sea-going ship, and her 
 immense carrying capacity pointed to her, and her 
 alone, as the ship to lay the future Atlantic cable. 
 
 The cable of 1865 consisted of the following 
 elements : — A copper conductor, composed of seven 
 No. 18 wires twisted together into a strand, the 
 weight per nautical mile being 300 lb., or 308 tons to 
 complete the whole length, which was 2,300 miles 
 as coiled on board ; an insulating wrapper of gutta- 
 percha, laid on in four thin layers, with a compound 
 between each, called Chatterton's Compound, the 
 weight per mile being 400 lb. ; a padding of jute 
 yarn, saturated with a preservative compound, 
 wrapped round the gutta-percha ; and outside this, 
 ten solid wires. No. 13 gauge, of homogeneous 
 iron, each wire being separately surrounded with 
 Manilla yarn steeped in a preservative compound. 
 The weight of the finished cable was 35 cwt. 
 3 qrs. per nautical mile in air, and only 14 cwt. in 
 water, showing a very low specific gravity. The 
 cable was calculated to bear a strain of nearly 
 eight tons before breaking, and hence would sup- 
 port eleven miles of itself hanging vertically over a 
 ship's stern. The total weight of deep-sea cable 
 coiled on board the Great Eastern in 1865 amounted 
 to 4,1 1 1 tons. The diagrams on the next page show 
 the comparative size of the cables. Fig. i is a 
 section of the cable of 1858, Fig. 2 is the 1865 cable. 
 
 One serious cause of error in carrying out the 
 enterprise of 1857-58 lay in not keeping the cable 
 under water from the moment of its manufacture 
 until its final submergence. It was now, accordingly, 
 determined very rigidly to adhere to this plan. 
 
 The enormous tanks which had been excavated 
 at the works, and which were found so faulty as to 
 be useless on the first occasion, had been repaired 
 and were kept filled with water, and into this the 
 new cable was coiled directly it left the covering 
 machine. Similar tanks, three in number, were 
 prepared on board the Great Eastern, and the cable 
 coiled into them, the weight of water they con- 
 tained after the cable had displaced its own bulk of 
 the liquid being 1,198 tons. The great space occu- 
 pied by this cable may better be realised by giving 
 the sizes of the tanks which were filled by it. One 
 was fifty-eight feet in diameter ; another fifty-eight 
 feet six inches ; and the third, fifty-one feet six 
 inches ; all three being twenty-six feet high. 
 
392 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 On the 22nd of July, 1865, the laying of the 
 " shore end " commenced, Ireland being the 
 starting-point. This piece of cable was twenty- 
 seven miles long, and of immense strength, to 
 contend against the violence of the great billows 
 which surge against the rocks that dot this coast, 
 and also to oppose a stout resistance to any 
 chance anchor which some storm -driven ship 
 might let go. 
 
 In little more than twelve hours from the landing 
 of the end, the laying of this portion was success- 
 fully accomplished. The splice with the smaller 
 or "deep-sea" portion of the cable was speedily 
 effected, and on Sunday evening the 23rd of 
 July, the Great Eastern commenced moving 
 westward, laying the cable as she went. 
 
 It is not necessary to chronicle all the 
 minor mishaps which occurred between 
 this time and the final catastrophe which 
 took place on the 2nd of August. Serious defects 
 were suddenly discovered at various times in 
 the cable, defects which interfered with the trans- 
 mission of the signals through the wire. Upon 
 one occasion a fault showed itself after it had 
 left the ship and was eleven miles astern ; but 
 the ship was stopped, and by slow degrees the 
 eleven miles were hauled in and the fault cut 
 out. With these exceptions everything went on 
 well, the Great Eastern proving herself in all 
 respects worthy the confidence which had been 
 placed in her capabilities. The cable 
 went smoothly overboard at an ave- 
 rage rate of a little over six knots an 
 hour ; the difference between the dis- 
 tance run and the length of cable paid 
 out being about 12 '3 per cent. 
 
 Upon the 2nd of August, a slight 
 defect showed itself, and, as upon 
 former occasions, arrangements were 
 made to haul in the cable until the 
 fault was found. Unfortunately, however, 
 wind had changed, and rendered the handling of 
 the ship more difficult ; and, in spite of the most 
 consummate seamanship on the part of her com- 
 mander, it was impossible to prevent the cable 
 chafing against the vessel's sides. Thus weakened, 
 the cable was unable to bear the strain put upon 
 it, and soon after twelve o'clock, under an indicated 
 strain of about three tons, it parted and dashed 
 into the ocean, carrying with it the bright hopes 
 of many on board. The depth of water at this 
 point was 1,950 fathoms, but it was nevertheless 
 resolved to send down a grapnel with two miles of 
 rope attached to it, and try to Jish for the lost 
 cable. Three successive attempts were made, and 
 upon each occasion with very little doubt the cable 
 was hooked and brought up a great distance from 
 the bottom ; but the tackle, being unable to bear 
 the immense strain, broke. Not until all the tackle 
 
 had been expended was the attempt to raise the 
 cable abandoned, and then the Great Eastern 
 returned to England. 
 
 It was now resolved not only to grapple again 
 for the broken cable, and to complete that line to 
 Newfoundland, but actually to lay a second cable. 
 The cable which had been two-thirds laid had 
 alone cost ^700,000, and another sum equal to this 
 was now required. The form of the second cable 
 — that of 1866 — was in all important points the 
 same as that of the previous year. It weighed 
 slightly less in air and slightly more in water ; 
 hence its specific gravity was greater, but this was 
 compensated for by the greater breaking 
 strain — 8 tons 2 cwt. 
 
 The most successful of all the layings 
 — that of 1866— was, after all, the least 
 eventful. The cable was laid with abso- 
 '• lute success, and on the 27th of July a 
 
 message transmitted through it, from " The Queen, 
 Osborne, to the President of the United States, 
 Washington," inaugurated its success. This mes- 
 sage of forty words occupied only twenty-one 
 minutes in transmission — a vast improvement over 
 the speed attained in the cable of 1858. 
 
 It now only remained to recover the cable lost in 
 1865. A year had passed away since the accident, 
 and the buoys which had then been placed over 
 the spot had drifted, perhaps to the North Pole, 
 perhaps to the South. Nothing was left to guide 
 the voyagers to the spot but the obser- 
 vations taken at the time. 
 
 These, however, were ample. The 
 science of navigation could direct them 
 to any particular spot upon the track- 
 less deep. Without delay the Great 
 Eastern left the shores of Newfound- 
 land for the calculated spot ; and upon 
 the 2nd of September that great and 
 crowning triumph of ocean telegraphy 
 was accomplished, the hooking and fishing up 
 the cable from a depth of two miles of water. 
 It was at once tested and found to be as perfect 
 as when it broke, and within an hour after 
 its recovery, seventeen messages were transmitted 
 through it. 
 
 There are now, therefore, two cables in excellent 
 working order crossing the Atlantic, laid at a 
 sufficient distance apart to prevent the same cause 
 interrupting both simultaneously ; the wisdom of 
 having so arranged it having been seen upon more 
 than one occasion. An iceberg has twice de- 
 ranged one of the cables, but there still remained 
 one link of communication unimpaired ; and, owing 
 to its excellent condition, one cable is at all times 
 able to convey the work between the two conti- 
 nents. And so accurately is the work performed, 
 that the average quantity of errors is less than 
 2 per 1,000. 
 
THE FOOD OF PLANTS. 
 
 39i 
 
 THE FOOD OF PLANTS. 
 
 The food of animals is largely produced by plants. 
 Animals can assimilate only organised substances. 
 Plants live on inorganic substances. They are 
 ever changing inorganic matter into organic for 
 the use of ani- 
 mals. 
 
 Plants live 
 upon air and 
 water. The soil 
 into which it 
 buries its roots 
 is not essen- 
 tially necessary 
 to the plant. 
 Its chief use is 
 in supplying a 
 store of water, 
 and a means of 
 making the 
 plant stable. 
 Many plants 
 never send their 
 roots into the 
 soil, but live on 
 branches of 
 trees, without, 
 however, ob- 
 taining their 
 nourishment 
 from the branch 
 like the para- 
 sitic mistletoe, 
 but entirely 
 drawing the two 
 elements of their 
 food — the air 
 and water^ 
 from the atmo- 
 sphere. In our 
 own woods such 
 plants arc com- 
 mon, but from 
 their small size 
 and insignifi- 
 cant aspect, 
 they do not at- 
 tract attention. 
 
 The gay orchids and the feathery ferns of the 
 tropics take the place of our humble lichens 
 and mosses, and, like them, obtain all their food 
 from the moist atmosphere in which they live. 
 Other plants, again, grow in water, without any 
 attachment to the earth, and, also, without pushing 
 their foliage up into the atmosphere. These obtain 
 their necessary supply of air from the small quan- 
 tity that is dissolved in all waters. 
 
 The three elements that make up the plant-fabric 
 
 5° 
 
 DIAGRAMS ILLUSTRATING THE FOOD OF PLANTS. 
 
 are carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. The last two, 
 when chemically combined, form water, and they 
 enter into combination with carbon to form the 
 organised tissue of the plants in the same propor- 
 tion as they are found in water. It is obvious, then, 
 that the water furnishes these two elements. Every 
 
 one knows how 
 necessary water 
 is to vegetable 
 life, from ob- 
 serving how 
 speedily a plant 
 dies when its 
 supply of water 
 is exhausted. 
 It drinks in 
 water chiefly by 
 its roots from 
 the soil. It is 
 also absorbed, 
 to some extent, 
 from the atmo- 
 sphere by the 
 leaves. 
 
 The other 
 element in the 
 essential struc- 
 ture of plants is 
 carbon. This is 
 the same sub- 
 stance with 
 charcoal. Wood 
 charcoal, in- 
 deed, is the pure 
 carbon after the 
 hydrogen and 
 oxygenhasbeen 
 driven off by 
 fire. Carbon 
 cannot be dis- 
 solved in water, 
 but it combines 
 with oxygen and 
 forms a gas 
 called carbonic 
 acid, which is 
 one of the con- 
 stituents of the 
 atmosphere, 
 making up about a two thousand five-hundredth 
 part of its bulk. This small quantity is sufficient to 
 supply the carbon needed for plant life, but not 
 enough to injure animals, to whom, when breathed 
 in any quantity, it is a deadly poison. 
 
 The carbonic acid is taken in by the leaves. 
 They arc provided with thousands of minute mouths 
 called stomates, which penetrate the skin of the 
 leaf, and permit the entrance of the atoms of car- 
 bonic acid. These stomates are oval openings, 
 
394 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 guarded by a pair of thin-wallcd cells or lips, which 
 have the power of opening or closing according to 
 the requirements of the plant. They are most 
 abundant on the under surface of leaves, being 
 almost confined to them in leaves which are spread 
 out horizontally, and which present their upper 
 surface to the sun, but occurring on both surfaces 
 of erect leaves like those of grasses and sedges. 
 They arc very small, but make up for their minute- 
 ness by their great numbers. They vary from less 
 than I, GOO to more than 200,000 to the square inch 
 of the surface of the leaf. In the apple tree there 
 are about 24,000 to the square inch, so that each 
 leaf has nearly 100,000 of them. Every inch of the 
 leaf of the hydrangea has no fewer than 160,000 of 
 stomates, so that a single leaf has no less than 
 1,250,000 of them. The plant we have chosen for 
 illustrating this subject is the common lilac — a 
 moderate-sized leaf of which is represented in Fig. i. 
 A small portion, -rgnt'^s of an inch in length, and 
 ygyths in breadth (A, Fig. i), has been taken from 
 the under surface, and magnified at Fig. 2. This 
 exhibits I2I stomates — being equal to 200,000 on 
 every scjuare inch, or nearly 700,000 to each leaf. 
 A small portion of Fig. 2 (B) has been still more 
 highly magnified at Fig. 3, where the structure of 
 the stomate can be distinctly seen. 
 
 The stomates form openings into cavities in the 
 green, cellular substance of the leaf, and it is in it 
 that the remarkable chemical operation is carried 
 on which converts the air and \rater into wood and 
 starch. A section of a portion of the lilac leaf 
 magnified to the same extent as Fig. 2 is shown in 
 Fig. 4, in which the relation of the stomates to the 
 cellular cavities is exhibited. The upper surface of 
 the leaf has a dense layer of one or more series of 
 long cells below the skin. These are exposed to the 
 sun, and under the influence of its light the leaves 
 actively carry on theiroperationof changing the dead 
 matter into their own organised substance. They 
 break up the carbonic acid gas into its two elements 
 of carbon and oxygen, and give off the oxygen 
 needed for the life of the animal kingdom, while they 
 retain the carbon and combine it with the elements 
 of the water to form the fabric of the plant itself 
 
 Leaves are really a beautiful contrivance for in- 
 creasing the surface of the plant, so as to obtain 
 the largest space exposed to the influence of the 
 sun and the air. In a large tree tier after tier of 
 leaves are thus spread out, so as to produce in the 
 aggregate a very extensive area. The leaves on 
 a good-sized elm tree have been estimated at 
 7,000,000. They form a surface of no less than 
 200,000 square feet, or about five acres of foliage ! 
 We have, with some care, estimated the number of 
 leaves on a lilac bush, standing about five feet high, 
 and they amount to about 10,000. These would give 
 to such a bush an area of no less than 230 square feet 
 of foliage, and no less than 7,000,000,000 stomates ! 
 
 THE MASSACRE OF ST. BAR- 
 THOLOMEW. 
 History seems to record no more dreadful example 
 of religious hatred and intolerance than the fearful 
 slaughter that took place in Paris during the month 
 of August, 1572, and which has been known to all 
 succeeding ages as the Massacre of the Hugue- 
 nots or the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. The 
 French Protestants were assembled in the capital in 
 honour of the marriage of Henry of Navarre with the 
 Princess Margaret, when the fierce queen-mother, 
 Catherine de Medici, aided by the Dukes of Guise, 
 Anjou, and others, prevailed upon the weak young 
 king, Charles IX., to consent to their assassination. 
 The plot was ripened, distinguishing badges issued 
 to the Catholics, and on the eve of St. Bartho- 
 lomew, at midnight, the bell of the quaint little 
 church of St. Germain de lAuxerrois tolled forth 
 the knell of 30,000 departing souls. Mercy there 
 \\'as none to Ijc shown, every Huguenot Avas to be 
 slain ; and encouraging each other in their fearful 
 task, the murderers proceeded from house to house, 
 slaying old and young, sparing neither sex. Admiral 
 Coligny, one of the great Protestant leaders, was 
 the first victim ; and then taken by surprise, family 
 after family was slaughtered. Here and there a 
 feeble resistance was kept up ; but in too many 
 instances the wretched martyrs to their religion 
 were shot or cut down like sheep, in house or 
 street — fleeing from one inimical party to be en- 
 countered by another. " Death to the Huguenot ! 
 kill ! kill !" was the fearful cry that rung through 
 the streets of Paris that night, and through the 
 long day which followed ; but towards evening the 
 king sent forth a herald to command a cessation of 
 the carnage. In vain, though ; the furious fanatical 
 passion let loose was not so easily controlled, and 
 for the two following days the slaughter was kept 
 up, the opportunity being seized upon by many a 
 wretch to destroy and plunder some enemy. And 
 not only in Paris were these barbarities practised, 
 but in some of the greater cities of the provinces 
 many Huguenots were slain ; no steps being taken 
 by the king, or rather by the queen-mother, to 
 arrest the dread scenes. The blame was at first 
 attempted to be laid on the enmity existing between 
 the houses of Guise and Coligny ; but afterwards 
 the young king openly averred that the massacre 
 took place at his command, and took to himself the 
 credit of having given peace to France by the 
 sweeping destruction of her Protestant enemies. 
 But the slaughter, even in a political sense, was a 
 grievous error, rousing the indignation of Europe, 
 and remaining a fearful reproach against the French 
 Catholics ; while the king's short span of life termi- 
 nated two years after — a life of misery and suffering, 
 mental and bodily, remorse being his portion for 
 the part he had allowed himself to be forced into 
 in connection with this fearful massacre. 
 
TALKING BIRDS. 
 
 395 
 
 THE INVISIBLE GIRL. 
 
 The invention of this curious piece of mechanism 
 may be considered an improvement on the oracular 
 responses of the dark ages. This very ingenious 
 apparatus was pubhcly exhibited both at Bristol 
 and in London for a considerable period, during 
 which time no discovery ^^■as made of its internal 
 mechanism ; and it is probable that its construction 
 would have remained a secret to all but the exhi- 
 bitors, but for the ingenuity of Mr. Millington, who 
 in the course of lectures delivered in the winter of 
 1806, explained the manner in which it was per- 
 formed. 
 
 The visible part of the apparatus connected with 
 the Invisible Girl was thus constructed. First, a 
 mahogany frame, resembling a bedstead, ha\ing at 
 the corners four upright posts about five feet high, 
 was united by a cross-rail near the top, and two or 
 more cross-rails near the bottom, to strengthen the 
 frame, which was about four feet square. The 
 frame thus constructed was placed upon the floor, 
 and to the top of each of the four pillars were 
 attached so many strong, bent wires, converging 
 towards the top, where they were secured by a 
 crown and other ornaments. From these wires a 
 hollow copper ball was suspended by slight ribbons, 
 so as to cut off all possible communication with the 
 frame. The globe thus supported was supposed to 
 contain the invisible being, as the voice apparently 
 proceeded from the centre of it ; and for the purpose 
 it was equipped with four trumpets, placed round 
 it in a horizontal direction, and at right angles to 
 each other — the trumpet mouths coming to within 
 about half an inch of the respective cross-rails of 
 the frame surrounding them. 
 
 When a question was proposed, it was asked 
 from one side of the frame, and spoken into one of 
 the trumpets, and an answer immediately proceeded 
 from the whole of them, so loud as to be distinctly 
 heard by the inquirer, and yet so distant and feeble 
 that it appeared as if coming from a very diminutive 
 being. Hence the sound was supposed to come 
 from an invisible girl, though the real speaker was 
 a full-grown woman. In this the whole of the 
 artifice consisted ; and the variations were so con- 
 trived that the answer might be returned in several 
 languages ; a kiss might be veturned ; the breath 
 producing the voice was felt ; and songs were sung, 
 accompanied by the pianoforte. She also conversed 
 in different languages, and made lively and appro- 
 priate remarks on persons in the room. To produce 
 this illusion, the sound was conveyed by a tube, in 
 a manner similar to the old and well-known con- 
 trivance of the Speaking Bust ; the Invisible Girl 
 only differing in one circumstance— that an artificial 
 echo was produced by means of the trumpets and 
 hollow globe, in consequence of which the sound 
 was completely reversed. 
 
 In the construction of the Invisible Girl, the 
 orifice of the tube was in one of the hand-rails, 
 opposite the mouth of one of the trumpets, the 
 opening being concealed by reeds and other mould- 
 ings. The tube itself, which was about half an inch 
 in diameter, ran through half the hand-rail, then 
 down one of the corner posts, and from thence under 
 the floor till it reached a large deal case — almost 
 similar to an inverted funnel — along the side of 
 which it rose till it came nearly into contact with 
 the car of the confidante, who, with a pianoforte, &c., 
 was concealed in the case. Any question asked by 
 a voice directed into one of the trumpets was neces- 
 sarily reflected back from the concave interior 
 surface of the globe to the orifice of the tube, along 
 which it was conveyed so as to be distinctly heard 
 by the person in the deal case, who returned the 
 requisite answer, which appeared to come precisely 
 from the interior of the globe. A small hole closed 
 with glass was likewise left through the deal case 
 and wall of the apartment, by means of which the 
 concealed person had an opportunity of observing 
 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. 
 
 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 con- 
 viction that nobody but a person in the middle of 
 the audience could observe the circumstances to 
 which tlic invisible figure frequently adverted. 
 
 The Invisible Girl was reproduced as an exhibi- 
 tion in 1839, at the Gallery of Practical Science, 
 in Adelaide Street, Strand. 
 
 TALKING BIRDS. 
 
 The variety of strange sounds uttered by various 
 birds has been duly noted by ornithologists and 
 bird-fanciers. Some are more teachable than 
 others, and it is to these specimens that the 
 epithet of " talking" is strictly applicable. We 
 
 "Argue not with Jacques Rousseau, 
 If birds confabulate or no." 
 
 The bullfinch, according to Blumenbach, learns 
 to whistle tunes, to sing in parts, and even pro- 
 nounce words. In the year 1858, Mr. Leigh 
 Sotherby, in a letter to Dr. Gray, of the British 
 Museum, describes a talking canary. Its parents 
 had formerly successfully reared many young 
 ones, but three years previously they had hatched 
 only one out of four eggs, which they imme- 
 diately neglected by commencing the rebuilding of 
 a nest upon the top of it. On this being discovered 
 the unfledged and forsaken bird, all but dead, was 
 taken away and placed in flannel by the fire, when, 
 after much attention, it was restored and then 
 brought up by hand. Thus treated, and away 
 from all other birds, it became familiarised with 
 
39^ 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 those persons only who fed it; consequently its first 
 singing notes were of a character totally different 
 to those usual with the canary. Constantly being 
 talked to, the bird, when about three months old, 
 astonished its mistress by repeating the endearing 
 terms used in talking to it, such as " Kissie, kissie," 
 with its significant sounds. This went on, and from 
 time to time, the bird repeated other words, and 
 for hours together, except during the moulting sea- 
 son, it astonished all who heard it by ringing the 
 changes according to its own fancy, and as plainly 
 as any human voice could articulate them, on 
 several words. The usual singing notes of the 
 bird were more of the character of the nightingale, 
 mingled occasionally with the sound of the dog- 
 whistle used about the house. It whistled also very 
 clearly the first bar of " God save the Queen." 
 
 Several birds approach the faculty of talking, 
 mimicry, and imitation of peculiar sounds. The 
 Chinese starling, in captivity, is very teachable, 
 imitating words and even whistling tunes. The 
 piping crow is named from its ready mimicry of 
 other birds ; and its imitation of the chuckling 
 and cackling of a hen, and the crowing of a cock, 
 is very perfect. Mr. Wallace saw, on the Amazon 
 river, a bird with a loud, hoarse cry, whence it 
 is called the trumpet-bird ; and the crowned crane 
 has a similar note. The greater-billed butcher- 
 bird of Australi.a imitates the notes of some 
 other birds, and thus decoys them to their de- 
 struction. The laughing goose is named from its 
 note having some resemblance to the laugh of 
 man. The snowy-owl utters hideous cries, which 
 resemble those of a man in deep distress. The 
 natural cry of the Virginian eagle-owl resembles 
 tlic half-suppressed screams of a person being 
 suffocated or throttled. 
 
 Parrots have presented remarkable instances of 
 talking. Among the many that have been im- 
 ported into this country, the one whose imitative 
 talent was reckoned most cxtr.aordinary belonged 
 to Dennis O'Kelly, commonly called Count O'Kclly, 
 which he purchased in 1772, some say for fifty, 
 others 100 guineas, out of a West India ship at 
 Bristol. This bird not only repeated a great num- 
 ber of sentences, and answered questions, but was 
 able to whistle, with the greatest clearness and 
 precision, the 104th psalm, "The banks of Dee," 
 " God save the King," and some other favourite 
 songs, and if by chance it mistook a note, it would 
 revert to the bar where the mistake occurred, and 
 finish the air with great accuracy. This bird had 
 received a refined education, and its breeding and 
 bearing were clearly that of a polished bird of 
 rank. O'Kclly died in 1787 ; his wonderful parrot, 
 left in the custody of his widow, survived its master 
 for fifteen years, and died at a good old age at the 
 colonel's late residence, in Half Moon Street, Picca- 
 dilly, in 1802, having been in the family for thirty 
 
 years. It is stated that the colonel was repeatedly 
 offered 500 guineas per annum by persons who 
 wished to make a public exhibition of the bird ; 
 but this, out of tenderness to the favourite, he con- 
 tinually refused. The body was dissected, when 
 the muscles of the larynx, which form the voice, 
 were found, from the effects of practice, to be 
 uncommonly strong ; but there was no apparent 
 cause for the sudden death of the bird. 
 
 THE COLD OF CANADA. 
 
 Sir Francis Head gives the following description 
 of the intense cold which in winter characterises 
 the climate of Canada : — 
 
 " The cold of the Canada winter must be felt to 
 be imagined, and when felt can no more be de- 
 scribed by words, than colours to a blind man or 
 music to a deaf one. Even under bright sunshine, 
 and in a most exhilarating air, the biting effect of 
 the cold upon the portion of our face that is exposed 
 to it resembles the application of a strong acid ; 
 and thehealthygrin which the countenance assumes 
 requires — as I often observed on those who for many 
 minutes had been in a warm room waiting to see 
 me — a considerable time to relax. In a calm almost 
 any degree of cold is bearable, but the application 
 of successive doses of it to the face by wind becomes 
 occasionally almost unbearable. Indeed, I remem- 
 ber seeing the left cheek of nearly twenty of our 
 soldiers simultaneously frost-bitten in marching 
 about a hundred yards across a bleak, open 
 space, completely exposed to a strong and bitterly 
 cold north-west wind that was blowing upon us all. 
 
 " The remedy for this intense cold, to which many 
 Canadians and others have occasionally recourse, 
 is — at least to my feelings it always appeared — 
 infinitely worse than the disease. On entering, 
 for instance, the small parlour of a little inn, a 
 number of strong, able-bodied fellows are dis- 
 covered holding their hands a few inches before 
 their faces, and sitting in silence immediately in 
 front of a stove of such excruciating power that it 
 really feels as if it would roast the very eyes in 
 their sockets ; and yet, as one endures this agony, 
 the back part is as cold as if it belonged to what is 
 called at home ' Old Father Christmas.' 
 
 " As a further instance of the climate, I may add 
 that several times, while my mind was very warmly 
 occupied in writing my despatches, I found my 
 pen full of a lump of stuff that appeared to be 
 honey, but which proved to be frozen ink. Again, 
 after washing in the morning, when I took up some 
 money that had Iain all night on my table, I at first 
 fancied it had become sticky, until I discovered 
 that the sensation was caused by its freezing to my 
 fingers, which, in consequence of my ablutions, 
 were not perfectly dry." 
 
SEA PORCUPINES. 
 
 397 
 
 SEA PORCUPINES. 
 
 Below is a drawing of one of the family of Balistes, 
 a race of fishes chiefly inhabiting tropical waters. 
 They are eminently noticeable objects, if for nothing 
 else, for the horns they carry, and for the numerous 
 horny spines with which their bodies are studded. 
 There is one family of them which has teeth ar- 
 ranged in the jaw like those of human beings, but 
 
 with air direct from the (esophagus. This power of 
 distension, forcing the fish into a large globular 
 form, furnishes a formidable means of repelling 
 attack. The body being so blown out, the spines 
 stand forth stiff and bayonet-like, and present a 
 sort of chevaitx de /rise, before which many an 
 enemy quails. When distended, the fish floats 
 belly upwards, and looks one of the most helpless 
 things ima'rinablc. Mr. Darwin met one on the 
 
 SEA PORCUPINE. 
 
 the special class now under notice has, in lieu of 
 fangs, a horny covering to its lips and palate ena- 
 bling it with special facihty to grind the sea-weeds, 
 crustaceans, and small molluscs, upon which it is 
 thought to feed. The colour varies in different 
 sub-genera. The commonest is black on the back 
 and on the greater part of the body, with yellowish 
 belly, the horny spines, both distinct and associated 
 as fins, being of the latter hue. Some of the fish 
 have a large air-bladder in the belly, which they 
 can inflate at will. The bladder extends over the 
 whole belly underneath the skin, and is supplied 
 
 coast of Brazil which was able to bite very severely, 
 and to throw water from its mouth to a considerable 
 distance. Darwin adds " that it emitted from the 
 skin of its belly, when handled, a most beautiful 
 carmine-red secretion, which stained ivory and 
 paper in so curious a manner that the tint is re- 
 tained with all its brightness to the present day." 
 Some of these fishes are known as sea porcupines, 
 and a few are taken occasionally on the. south- 
 western coasts of England. Their flesh, how- 
 ever, is worthless. They are valuable only as 
 curiosities. 
 
393 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 Sf^itntific Curiosities. 
 
 Dangers of Chemical Experiments.— M. 
 Rouelle, an eminent French chemist, was not the 
 most cautious of operators. One day, while per- 
 forming some experiments, he observed to his 
 auditors, " Gentlemen, you see this cauldron upon 
 this brazier ; well, if I were to cease stirring a single 
 moment, an explosion would ensue which would 
 blow us all in the air !" The company had scarcely 
 time to reflect upon this comfortable piece of in- 
 telligence before the operator did forget to stir his 
 mixture, and his prediction was accomplished. 
 The explosion took place with a terrible crash ; all 
 the windows of the laboratory were smashed to 
 pieces, and two hundred auditors thrown about the 
 building and out of it in confusion. Fortunately 
 none received any very serious injury, the great- 
 est violence of the explosion having been in the 
 direction of the chimney, and the demonstrator 
 escaped without further harm than the loss of his 
 wig. 
 
 The Dew-fall of a Year. — The annual aver- 
 age quantity of dew deposited in this country is 
 estimated at a depth of about five inches, being about 
 one-seventh of the mean quantity of moisture sup- 
 posed to be received from the atmosphere all over 
 Great Britain in the year ; or about 22,161,337,355 
 tons, taking the ton at 252 imperial gallons. — IVell.t 
 on Dew. 
 
 Life-preserving Apparatus for enabling an 
 exploring party to carry with them an adequate 
 supply of oxygen gas, or vital air, has been invented 
 by M. Rouquayrol. It consists of a vessel of 
 sheet-iron, capable of resisting the pressure of from 
 twenty-five to forty atmospheres. Air is forced 
 into it by pumps, of which the pistons arc fixed, 
 and the cylinders movable. The apparatus is 
 fastened on the back like a soldier's knapsack. A 
 bellows-like contrivance is placed above the vessel 
 or reservoir, which allows the air, though so greatly 
 compressed, to enter the lungs at the ordinary 
 pressure of the atmosphere. A small external 
 valve, formed of two leaves of India-rubber, which 
 are kept in contact with each other by the pressure 
 of the atmosphere, opens to allow the expired air 
 to escape. It is asserted that a man thus provided 
 can breathe with ease under water, as proved by 
 experiments on rivers, and at the bottom of 
 the sea. 
 
 Human Electricity. — Sir John Richardson, 
 in his " Boat Voyage through Rupert's Land," 
 vol. ii., p. loi, states that in the cold latitudes the 
 body becomes visibly electric from the dryness of 
 the skin. One cold night, on going out to observe 
 the thennometer, having only a flannel night-dress 
 on, a distinct spark was elicited when his hand 
 approached the iron latch of the door. 
 
 THE WONDERS OF POISON. 
 
 The mysterious power by which life is sustained is 
 only to be equalled, in point of interest, by the 
 numerous materials which exist in every depart- 
 ment of nature capable of destroying it. The 
 atmosphere has its gases and floating germs, which 
 oftentimes produce disease and cause death. The 
 same poison which drove the first settlers from the 
 Palatine Mounts, has given its fevers and agues to 
 inhabitants of various parts of the globe — from the 
 ditches of Holland to the dense jungles and low 
 swamps of the tropics. And the land of Tusculum, 
 in bygone ages, witnessed death from pestilential 
 effluvia, as the banks of the Ganges do now. 
 
 That subtle agent of death, carbonic acid, issues 
 from the lungs of the healthy human being at the 
 rate of 1,393 cubic inches per hour, as if contending 
 for the palm with the stream, which Johnston tells 
 us " rushes as if from subterranean bellows, on the 
 table-land of Padeborn ; astonishes travellers in the 
 Grotto del Cane ; interests the chemical geologists 
 in the caves of Pyrmont, and among the old lavas 
 of the Eifcl ; and is terrible to man and beast in 
 the fatal Valley of Death, the most wonderful of the 
 wonders of Java." 
 
 The vegetable world has, pervading some of its 
 beautiful members, insidious juices which, when 
 taken into the system, speedily cause death. The 
 eartli has embedded in its strata substances equally 
 as destructive to life ; while Nature has armed 
 several species of the animal kingdom — creeping, 
 walking, and flying — with poison-darts of a formid- 
 able nature as instruments of defence, which can 
 seriously affect the natural progress of life, and in 
 many instances prove fatal to its continuance. 
 Poison exists everywhere, and lack of knowledge of 
 the insidious enemy often proves a source of death. 
 Poisonous fungi have been mistaken for edible ones ; 
 aconite root for horse-radish ; fools' parsley for 
 common parsley ; while many of those agents 
 which man has artificially prepared to alleviate 
 suffering, and ward off the attacks of disease — in the 
 hands of the careless, the ignorant, and the vicious 
 — have oftentimes proved a terrible source of 
 death. 
 
 Poisons may bo introduced into the system, by 
 swallowing, by the breath, through the medium of 
 the lungs, and from the surface of the body. 
 
 Claude Bernard has shown that the more acti\'0 
 poisons destroy life, by attacking particular organs 
 or tissues, essential to it. Thus the wourali poison 
 paralyses the motor nerves ; strychnia attacks the 
 sensitive portion of the nervous system, and excites 
 fatal reflex action ; while digitalis, veratria, and 
 several other poisons, act on the muscular tissue 
 throughout the body. 
 
 Different effects are oftentimes produced by the 
 s.ame substances, on man and animals. Thus 
 
WONDERS OF VEGETATION. 
 
 399 
 
 Beck asserts, that sweet almonds kill dogs, foxes, 
 and fowls, while aloes arc destructive to dogs 
 and foxes, pepper to hogs, and parsley to the 
 parrot. The influence of the same poison on dif- 
 ferent individuals, is indeed wonderful. Some 
 are as peculiarly susceptible to their action as 
 others arc callous to them. Many people cannot 
 take opium, others are severely affected by the 
 smallest doses of mercury, and Epsom salts even 
 has been known to produce alarming symptoms 
 of irritant poisoning. 
 
 Of animal poisons — in this country — during the 
 winter months, we have few or none ; and summer's 
 heat brings with it nothing worse than the sting 
 of a wasp or bee, or the bite of a viper. But the 
 inhabitants of warmer climates arc troubled with 
 a legion of mischievous and death-dealing creatures. 
 
 The hornet is one of the most venomous insects 
 found in this country, though, as a rule, the sting of 
 either the hornet, bee, or wasp do not cause much in- 
 convenience. Instances have, however, been known 
 where great fever and constitutional disturbance 
 have been set up by them. Bees have proved more 
 formidable in an indirect than direct way; viz., from 
 gathering honey from the flowers of poisonous 
 plants. Xenophon tells us, that during the retreat 
 of the ten thousand, a number of Greek soldiers, 
 were violently affected by honey which they had 
 eaten near Trebizond. In 1834 a specimen of this 
 honey, which still retains its poisonous qualities, 
 was sent to the Zoological Society. In 1790 an 
 extensive mortality was produced amongst those 
 who had partaken of honey collected in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Philadelphia. It was afterwards as- 
 certained that the honey had been chiefly collected 
 from the flowers of Kalinia latifolia. 
 
 The scorpion is one of the most venomous insects 
 in southern countries. Its sting causes great local in- 
 flammation, with more or less fever, trembling, and 
 pain. Orfila states that animals sometimes die 
 from the effects of the scorpion's sting. 
 
 The bite of the common viper rarely proves 
 fatal to human life, though its venom is sufficiently 
 powerful to kill the lower animals. The Abbti 
 Fontana, who investigated this poison in every 
 possible point of view, found it harmless when 
 swallowed. It is a yellowish, viscous liquid, neither 
 acid nor alkaline, and without definite taste. The 
 bite of the viper is not hurtful to another viper, or 
 to cold-blooded animals, as leeches and frogs. 
 
 The bite of the cobra di capello is exceedingly 
 dangerous, and rapidly proves fatal. In 1852 a 
 keeper at the Zoological Gardens was bitten on the 
 nose by a cobra, and died in ninety-five minutes. 
 There was no swelling, though there was a 
 slightly pinkish hue of the eye-lids, difficulty of 
 breathing, stupor, paralysis of the limbs, and speedy 
 coma. The chief post mortem appearances were 
 a dark, fluid state of the blood, which emitted a 
 
 sour and sickly smell, and intense congestion of the 
 internal organs. 
 
 The bite of the rattlesnake is also rapidly fatal. 
 Sir Everard Home mentions a case of a man acci- 
 dently bitten twice in the hand by a rattlesnake, 
 kept for the purpose of exhibition in London. He 
 died eighteen days after being bitten. 
 
 Besides the fore-mentioned, there are other animal 
 poisons. The rabid dog, excited either to intense 
 ferocity, or unusual docility, by the virulence of the 
 poison circulating through his system, can com- 
 municate this disease, known as hydrophobia, to 
 man and other animals ; and, dumb with madness 
 and thirst, longs in vain for one drop of water to 
 cool his parched throat. 
 
 The horse also, under certain conditions, becomes 
 affected with two diseases, known as glanders and 
 farcy, both of which are communicable to man. 
 In 1840, in St. Bartholomew's Hospital, a man 
 died of glanders. The nurse who attended him 
 inoculated her hand, and died also in a few days. 
 Two kittens inoculated from the nurse, became 
 likewise affected. Bites received in personal com- 
 bats between human individuals have been known 
 to exhibit every symptom of poison. The saliva 
 and tartar of the teeth are mentioned as the dele- 
 terious substances in these cases. 
 
 Many cases are on record proving the poisonous 
 nature of various species of fishes. Some are con- 
 stantly poisonous ; others only occasionally so. The 
 conger eel, yellow-billed sprat, land crab, mackerel, 
 oysters, mussels, &c., are amongst those enumerated. 
 The latter (mussels) not unfrequently produce severe 
 symptoms, such as violent oppression and agony ; 
 swelling of the face ; a scarlet efflorescence over 
 the body ; insatiable thirst and vomiting. In 
 fatal cases there is coldness of the extremities, 
 delirium, hiccup, and, occasionally, coma. The 
 treatment of poisoning in such cases mainly consists 
 in the free use of emetics and purgatives. 
 
 Diseased meat and dissecting wounds are also 
 productive of fatal results. The most speedily fatal 
 case on record, from a dissecting wound, is that of 
 a gentleman who died forty hours after the receipt 
 of the injury. Not unfrequently severe symptoms 
 arise from inhaling the effluvia which results from 
 the decomposition of the body, and in certain in- 
 stances will give origin in others to the same disease 
 which proved fatal to the subject. 
 
 THK BANYAN. 
 
 Fig trees abound in tropical and sub-tropical re- 
 gions, often forming large forests, and frequently 
 planted in the neighbourhood of towns and by way- 
 sides because of their prodigious crown of foliage. 
 Travellers say that the colossal wild fig trees are 
 
400 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 among the most grateful presents of Nature to hot 
 countries ; the shade of their magnificent head 
 * refreshing the traveller when he reposes under 
 their wonderfully wide-spreading branches and dark, 
 green, shining foliage. 
 
 The most remarkable species is the banyan — 
 the Ficus Indica of botanists, which is shown in the 
 accompanying illustration. In its early state the 
 banyan resembles other trees in having a single 
 
 A trunk of variable size, and a dense head of foliage. 
 
 JU( The branches spread out horizontally to so great 
 an extent that they would be unable to supjjort 
 themselves simply by their attachment to the parent 
 stem. To supply the nccessar)' suj^port the branches 
 
 congregate in great numbers beneath their branches. 
 The public meetings and merry-makings of the vil- 
 lagers are held under their grateful shade. 
 
 The leaves of the banyan are of an elliptical cor- 
 date shape, about six inches long. They are used 
 by the Brahmins as plates for their meat. The 
 wood is light, white, and porous. The fruit, which 
 grows on the smaller twigs, has no stem ; when 
 ripe it has the size and colour of a middle-sized red 
 cherry. It is e.aten by monkeys, paroquets and 
 other birds, but is insipid, and therefore seldom 
 made use of by nati\-es, and never by Europeans, 
 as an article of food. The seeds are said to 
 grow the better after liaving been picked by birds. 
 
 THE li.\.NYAN TREE. 
 
 throw out here and there small fibrous shoots to- 
 wards the ground. On reaching the ground they 
 take root, gradually increase in size, and become 
 stable supports for the parent bough, and even rival 
 the original trunk itself. A fresh start is taken 
 from these secondary stems, and the lateral 
 branches continue to throw out new shoots until 
 the plant attains an extent which is almost incre- 
 dible, and alone forms in time a considerable forest. 
 The height of the tree is at the same time slowly 
 increasing. Dr. Roxburgh has seen single trees 
 which were fully 500 yards in circumference round 
 the extremities of the branches, and about 100 feet 
 high. The principal trunks were twenty-five feet 
 to the first branches, and had a diameter of eight 
 or nine feet. They are largest about the villages 
 in India which are situated in fertile valleys among 
 the mountains. They daily afford shelter to man 
 and cattle, to pilgrims and travellers, who at times 
 
 Birds scatter them in the most curious places, 
 sometimes in the angles between the leaves and 
 stem of the Palmyra palm, where they grow, send- 
 ing down their stem, so as embrace entirely the 
 palm, except its crown of featliery leaves, and giving 
 the palm the appearance of growing out of the 
 trunk of the banyan. Sucli a combination forms 
 an object of religious veneration to the Hindoos, 
 who call it a holy marriage instituted by Providence. 
 The banyan is generally supposed to be the only 
 fig whose branches send down supporting stems 
 into the earth. Recently another species has been 
 found in one of the islands of the New Hebrides 
 Group which has the same habit. Its leaves are 
 very small, scarcely an inch long. One tree, de- 
 scribed by its discoverer, was 100 feet high, forty- 
 five feet around the trunk, and its branches covered 
 a space 260 feet in diameter. The natives had 
 built their houses under its shade. 
 
THE DRAGON TREE OF OROTAVA, 
 
 40t 
 
 THE DRAGON TREE OF OROTAVA. 
 
 Cm the way from Porto Santo to the summit of 
 the Peak of Teneriffe, is situated the considerable 
 town of Orotava. It is now of little importance 
 compared with the towns on the coast, and indeed 
 it is best known as the summer retreat for the 
 wealthier inhabitants of Porto Santo, being about 
 6,000 feet above the level of the sea. It was 
 formerly the capital and court of the principal 
 kingdom of the Guanches. It is everywhere known 
 
 this patriarch of the vegetable world. A terrible 
 hurricane which swept over this part of the island 
 in the autumn of 1867, threw it down and com- 
 pletely destroyed it. 
 
 In our plate the artist has given a portrait of 
 this famous tree from a photograph taken by 
 Professor Smyth in 1856, as well as specimens of 
 many other trees in various stages of growth. 
 These have been grouped together so as to convey 
 through the eye a large amount of information 
 regarding the dragon tree, and without respect to 
 
 IN DIFFERENT STAGES OF GROWTH. 
 
 as the place where, until 1867, grew the famous 
 dragon tree celebrated for its great antiquity. 
 Humboldt considered it to have been 5,000 or 
 6,000 years old. Sir John Herschel supposed it 
 to be the oldest tree in the world. Other writers 
 make it so old as to have witnessed some of the 
 last revolutions which the surface of the planet 
 underwent previous to the advent of man. 
 
 Its immense hollow trunk was used centuries 
 ago as a temple by the Guanches. The victorious 
 Portuguese, finding it suited for this purpose, 
 dedicated it in the beginning of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury to Christian worship. It subsequently suf- 
 fered greatly from natural causes, as well as from 
 the ruthless vandalism of travellers and curiosity 
 hunters. In the beginning of the present century 
 it lost an immense arm, and decay was rapidly 
 telling upon it when it fell into the hands of its 
 iast proprietor, who did all he could to preserve 
 51 
 
 what were the position and surroundings of the 
 great tree itself, which grew in a garden in the town 
 associated with plants and trees of different aspects 
 and affinities. 
 
 The youngest trees in the plate consist of simple 
 stems, of equal diameter throughout, marked with 
 transverse scars produced by the bases of the 
 former leaves, and terminating in a round head of 
 radiating, sedge-shaped, stiff leaves. For twenty 
 years or so from its springing from the seed, the 
 dragon tree retains this appearance, growing only 
 in height. It then flowers, and after flowering, a 
 whorl of three or more branches is produced, each 
 repeating the appearance and passing through the 
 history of the original stem. This now increases 
 in size, the external transverse markings disappear, 
 and a rough, irregular outer surface is formed with 
 numerous perpendicular fissures and scars. Another 
 period of flowering arrives — for another twenty 
 
402 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 years the tree has been simply vegetating and 
 preparing nourishment for the vigorous production 
 of flowers and fruit — and now every branch bears 
 its clusters of flowers, which are in time changed 
 into glistening vermilion berries. Then each branch 
 produces a whorl of branches, and by the numerous 
 vascular bundles which it sends down tosvards the 
 ground, and on the outside of the old stem, greatly 
 increases it in size. The history of the historical 
 tree of Orotava was similar, only repeated an 
 infinity of times. Each new whorl of branches 
 sends down a living woody envelope, which 
 surrounds the older trunk, and this inner trunk by- 
 and-by decays, forming a large chamber in old 
 trees. ____________ 
 
 A WONDERFUL LAWSUIT. 
 
 In the year 1545, a vast number of caterpillars 
 appeared in the vineyards of St. Julien, in Savoy, 
 close to the city of Mauricnne, where the bishop 
 of the locality resided. The caterpillars were called 
 verpillons, and they did frightful damage to the 
 owners of the vineyards, but not to the lawyers 
 and great dignitaries. It seems hardly credible, 
 but an action for damages was brought against 
 the caterpillars. At first the case was referred 
 to arbitration. But as this came to nothing, 
 the matter was in due course brought before the 
 ofHctal or ecclesiastical judge of St. Jean de 
 Maurienne. The heads of the villages, wlio were 
 the plaintiffs, had to appear by counsel, and two 
 brothers, learned in the law, acted for the defen- 
 dants — the caterpillars. First letters admonish- 
 ing the caterpillars and their lawyers were sent 
 out, and then a commission was appointed to go 
 and find out the exact amount of damage done, 
 and calculate the amount in coin. When this was 
 done, a discussion arose whether the inspection 
 of the vineyards was proper and legal. Neverthe- 
 less, the judge gave his opinion, that not too much 
 haste should be used in proceeding against the 
 caterpillars, as they may have been sent as a 
 scourge. However, the farmers had to pay the 
 bill, and to submit to the caterpillars, for the trial 
 began in 1545, and ended in May, 1546. 
 
 In 1587, the caterpillars appeared again, and the 
 plaintiffs— the farmers — promised if the caterpillars 
 should be excommunicated, or put under interdict, 
 that they would find them a place where they would 
 have sufficient food for the future. The judge 
 ordered the plaintiffs to repent of their sins, to pay 
 their tithes, and to walk three days in succession 
 around the vineyards. 
 
 This was done, and the fees were paid. But the 
 matter did not end here, for the lawyers for the 
 defendants — the caterpillars — protested, and one 
 named Peter Rembaud, expressed his astonishment 
 at the proceedings against his clients, the most 
 
 innocent creatures in the world. He said that 
 common sense tells us that brute beasts like the 
 verpillons, cannot be regularly summoned before 
 a magistrate ; and he proved from Scripture, that 
 vegetables— and, therefore, vines— are the food of 
 beasts as well as men. Consequently, these poor 
 insects had only used a legal right when they de- 
 voured the plaintiffs' vines. He prayed that the 
 case should be dismissed, and the farmers charged 
 with costs. Plaintiffs asked for time to answer, and 
 proved within a month, that insects were created 
 for the use of man. The affair was compromised 
 by the farmers finding a piece of waste land where 
 the caterpillars might go if they liked. 
 
 On December the 20th, 1587, the farmers had to 
 pay the costs of the action, as the caterpillars had 
 no goods. The law was cheap in those days, which 
 is wonderful, and the farmers had plenty of it for 
 their money, which amounted to nineteen florins. 
 These extraordinary lawsuits against insects, seem 
 to have commenced about the eleventh century, 
 and as late as 1731, there was a council called in 
 the town of Thouon, to consider the propriety of 
 joining the surrounding parishes in petitioning the 
 pope to excommunicate some insects, and to agree 
 to pay something towards the rate 
 
 HUMAN SPIDERS. 
 
 nURKE AND HARE. 
 
 To enumerate the horrors perpetrated by these two 
 wretches, would be a task verging upon the impos- 
 sible. Let it suffice that when brought to trial in 
 1828, Burke confessed to having, with the aid of his 
 accomplice. Hare, and their wives, committed during 
 six months of that year no less than sixteen murders. 
 The scene of their operations was the Old Town, 
 Edinburgh, though they were both Irish. Their 
 trade was to supply the medical men of the .Scot- 
 tish capital with bodies for anatomisation ; and 
 finding that there was often a difficulty in the way 
 of procuring the dead, they made no scruple of 
 killing people, whom they decoyed to their lodgings ; 
 the prices obtained from the doctors being ten 
 pounds in winter, eight in summer. Their mode 
 of operation was to watch for some one little known 
 or cared for — a beggar, a woman of loose character, 
 or a person whose relatives were at a distance — 
 to make friends, invite the victim to their lodgings 
 in one of the flats of the large houses in the throng- 
 ing town, and there, plying the poor wretch with 
 strong whiskey, till the scene assumed the character 
 of a drunken revel, to throw him or ner upon the 
 bed, and suffocation did the rest. Their first 
 murder was that of a woman enticed into lodging 
 with them : she was suffocated, the body placed 
 in a box, and carried by a porter to a surgeon. 
 Another lodger followed, at a time when the house 
 
WONDERS OF ENGINEERING. 
 
 403 
 
 was empty, the man lying ill of a supposed in- 
 fectious complaint. He shared the same fate. 
 Upon another occasion, Burke met a constable 
 leading a drunken woman to the station-house, 
 when, by a little persuasion, he induced the man 
 to let him see the poor creature home, and then 
 taking her to his confederates, they disposed of 
 the woman in the same manner. Success seems 
 to have emboldened them, for even with lodgers 
 in the same house, the fearful traffic was carried 
 on ; at first removing the bodies by night only, the 
 wretches soon got daring enough to call in porters 
 to carry them away in open daylight, crammed 
 with straw in trunk, tea-chest, or herring-barrel. 
 
 The murders were sometimes of the most revolt- 
 ing character, and nothing can be more surprising 
 than the wretches' long immunity from detection, 
 carrying on their trade as they did in the most 
 reckless manner. Upon one occasion, a fearful 
 struggle took place in Hare's room, where a half- 
 witted lad had been decoyed by Mrs. Hare. As 
 was their custom, strong whiskey was forced upon 
 the victim, and then, as he lay on the bed, the 
 murder was attempted ; but not accomplished upon 
 this occasion without a desperate encounter. This 
 took place about nine in the morning. At noon 
 the body was being borne to the surgeon's. Among 
 others who followed, were a poor Irishwoman 
 and her deaf and dumb grandchild. The woman, 
 delighted with the hospitality accorded to her, 
 soon became torpid from intoxication, and soon 
 after dead. The next morning the child was 
 murdered, the bodies placed in a barrel, and a fish- 
 cart used for the purpose of conveying the barrel to 
 Surgeons' Square ; but, as if knowing the horrible 
 load he bore, the horse refused to draw it, and the 
 barrel had to be conveyed by a porter to its destina- 
 tion. Upon another occasion, they were very near 
 detection, some boys following a load they were 
 bearing in open daylight, and declaring it to be a 
 corpse. 
 
 But at last the immunity was at an end ; the 
 wretches had reached the extreme end of their 
 crimes. According to their custom, a poor woman 
 was decoyed to the house, and a drunken frolic with 
 singing and dancing commenced, which was kept 
 up hour after hour, the little beggar woman to whom 
 all were so kind, being amongst the merriest. But 
 about midnight, some lodgers in the house were 
 awakened by a noise of struggling, and an outcry 
 as of one being strangled. One lodger roused 
 another, and the more curious applying their eyes 
 to the key-hole of the room whence the noise pro- 
 ceeded, Mrs. Burke was seen holding a whiskey- 
 bottle to the poor woman's mouth. Cries of murder 
 then arose, and one went for the police, but without 
 finding them. There was peace, however, soon ; the 
 lodgers retired to rest, considering it to have been 
 but a drunken quarrel. But the next morning 
 
 suspicions were aroused, the police called in, the 
 room searched, and nothing found. But a lodger 
 declared that he had seen a body there, and it was 
 traced to a dissecting-room, identified, and the 
 result was, that the murderers were arrested. 
 
 Burke expiated his crimes in the presence of an 
 infuriated mob. Hare escaping the penalties of the 
 law, was on more than one occasion nearly torn 
 to pieces by angry crowds ; but making his escape 
 to London, he worked for some time at a tannePs, 
 till being found out, he was thrown by his enraged 
 fellow-workmen amongst some lime, and lost his 
 sight, dying afterwards, it is said, in Canada. 
 
 Not one tithe of the horrors perpetrated by these 
 wretches have here been enumerated, but sufficient 
 to excite the wonder of the reader, that at so late 
 a period, and in the heart of a great town, such 
 murders could have gone on so long undiscovered. 
 Upon the subject of the reckless manner in which 
 the bodies were received, it is, perhaps, as well to 
 say nothing, since a bill was introduced into Parlia- 
 ment the following year, for the purpose of sweeping 
 away so great an abuse. 
 
 Monbfrs of ^ngtm^rmg. 
 
 Steam-building.— An ingenious foreigner who 
 visited England about 1825, published an estimate 
 of the mechanical force set in action by the steam- 
 engines of this countr>'. He supposed that the 
 Great Pyramid of Egypt required for its erection 
 the labour of more than 10,000 men for twenty 
 years ; but if it were required again to raise the 
 same stones from the quarries, and place them 
 again at their present height, the action of the 
 steam-engines of England — which were then 
 managed at most by 36,000 men, would be suffi- 
 cient to produce the same effect in eighteen hours. — 
 Partington's Notes to the " Century of Inventions^ 
 
 Progress op Railways. — In 1630, Master Beau- 
 mont laid down wooden rails from his coal-pits, 
 near Newcastle, to the river-side. In 1738, iron 
 rails were first laid down at Whitehaven. In 1789, 
 Jessop introduced at Loughborough the cast-iron 
 edge-rails, and flanches cast upon the tires of the 
 wheels, so as to keep them in the track. In 1800, at 
 Little Eton, Derbyshire, Outram used stone sleepers. 
 From his name is derived the term " tramways." 
 In 1802, Trevethick invented and patented his rail- 
 way locomotive. In 1812, Blenkinsop's engine 
 worked at Leeds, drawing thirty-three coal-wagons 
 at the rate of three and three-quarter miles per houri 
 In 1815, George Stephenson constructed his loco- 
 motive ; and, in 1816, he invented a new rail and 
 chair. On the 27th of .September, 1825, the rail- 
 way from Stockton to^ Darlington was opened for 
 traffic. — Noted from Smiles' " Life of George 
 Stefihenson." 
 
404 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 THE SAHARA. 
 
 There is a vast extent of land in Northern Africa 
 where the surface is composed of fine sand, or of 
 solid and bare rock. In a few favoured localities 
 there are fertile spots where the date-palm grows, 
 surrounded by a stunted underwood and grass ; 
 and scattered here and there are places where 
 a scanty vegetation exists after a season of unusual 
 rainfall. Most of this great desert never receives 
 the dew by night, nor rain by day, and the western 
 part of it is almost uninhabited, even by beasts. 
 There are no rivers or brooks, and the intense 
 heat produced by a glaring sun acting upon an arid 
 surface is succeeded at night by great cold. 
 Towards the east, where the desert becomes moun- 
 tainous, there are sheltered spots where vegetation 
 flourishes during the rains, which are never abun- 
 dant. The Atlantic Ocean bounds the desert on 
 the west ; and the expanse of sand and rock, 
 with its rare patches of grass and date trees, 
 extends eastwards to the river Nile, and measures 
 2,650 miles in length. The Nile is the eastern 
 boundary, and the northern is formed by the 
 Mediterranean Sea, in some places by Egypt, and 
 by the mountains which form the highlands of 
 Algeria, and which, as they pass westwards, con- 
 stitute the chain of the Atlas. The south of the 
 desert is very little known. To the west the river 
 Senegal, and some fertile places and hills close to 
 it, form the southern boundary ; and further to the 
 east is the town of Timbuctoo, and then a large 
 lake, called Lake Tchad. The traveller who 
 proposes to cross the desert from the high hills of 
 Algeria to Timbuctoo, has to make up his mind to' 
 face nearly 1,000 miles of hot, dry, waterless country, 
 where there is hardly a trace of vegetation — where 
 life appears to struggle against nature at a fearful 
 disadvantage, and where some of the most wonder- 
 ful and stupendous natural phenomena are to be 
 witnessed. This desert is called the Sahara, or 
 Sahra, and the Sahel is the worst and western part. 
 The Libyan desert is the eastern part of the Sahara, 
 and has long been celebrated for the oases, or small 
 scattered spots, where a natural spring of water has 
 permitted scanty herbage and the date-palm tree 
 to grow in the midst of the waste of hot sand, where 
 all nature is as silent as the grave. 
 
 The size of the desert is very great. It occupies 
 2,500,000 square miles. It is therefore nearly two- 
 thirds of the size of the whole of Europe. Its 
 breadth is as great as the distance from the south- 
 west of Ireland to the Ural Mountains, that divide 
 Europe from Asia ; and crossing the desert from 
 the Atlantic to the Nile would be the same thing 
 as travelling across Ireland, England, Belgium, 
 Prussia, and Russia, were those countries witf'but a 
 cultivated field, a river, a branching tree, and a 
 road. The North Cape may readily be found on 
 
 the map, and a line may be drawn from it to the 
 
 river Danube. This is a distance of 1,000 miles, or 
 thereabouts, and is the same as that which has to 
 be traversed when caravans cross the desert. 
 Imagine a series of plains and low hills extending 
 the distance of from the north of Scotland to the 
 south of Spain, all without a track upon them, 
 having wells sometimes 200 miles apart, anl 
 without a blade of grass, and there is not much 
 difficulty in believing the Sahara to be deserted, or, 
 as it is termed, a desert. Many small streams flow 
 from the Algerian mountains southwards towards 
 the desert, but they arc soon lost in the sand. On 
 the other side of the desert, the Senegal, and the 
 river at Timbuctoo, run parallel with the Sahara, 
 but do not send any waters into it ; and far away to 
 the east the same thing is observed as regards the 
 Nile. It is a well-established fact that 2,600 miles 
 of desert may be traversed without crossing a 
 stream. There is dry sand, rock, and stone in 
 abundance ; but they are not covered with mould, 
 and without this nothing can grow. The sand is 
 often very dust-like, and the slightest breeze keeps 
 the top of it on the move. It puffs upwards in the 
 traveller's face as he walks, and irritates the eyes 
 and skin. A gentle gale moves the sand in low 
 clouds, and waves of it are formed to be destroyed 
 and scattered about hour after hour. No road can 
 be distinguished, on account of this constant move- 
 ment of the sand ; and the dead and dying, which 
 the caravans leave behind, are soon covered up. 
 They may remain under the sand until, during some 
 terrific wind-storm, succeeding travellers hurrying 
 on amongst the deluge of sand see them white and 
 fleshless, and are warned of their own danger. 
 
 The wind is the thing to be feared on the desert, 
 and the heated soil, the absence of moisture, and 
 the vast extent of the surface, where there is nothing 
 to break the force of a moderate gale, combine to 
 make its effects very terrible. Whirlwinds rush 
 over the sand and twist it up into gigantic columns, 
 as seen in the accompanying engraving, and they 
 are surrounded with clouds of dust hurrying on in 
 the direction of the storm. The columns of sand 
 are often many yards in height, and they move 
 like waterspouts at sea. Woe to the caravan or the 
 camp they overtake ! for those that are not killed 
 by the weight of the sand poured over them, are 
 liable to be suffocated by the dust and the hot wind. 
 
 The hot wind is not always accompanied by < 
 sand-storms, but a steady breeze blows over the 
 desert, whose surface is at noonday at a tempera- 
 ture of no to 120 deg. Men become hot, their 
 breathing increases in rapidity, and the pulse beats 
 with violence ; thirst of the most terrible kind ensues, 
 and great exhaustion. As the traveller lies panting, 
 his tongue swollen, his skin clammy, and his cou- 
 rage sinking, there appear on the horizon,' far 
 away over the sand, a few tall trees, whose shade 
 
THE SAHARA. 
 
 405 
 
4o6 
 
 THE WORLD OF WOiSfbERS. 
 
 he knows must cover a well. He rises, and then a 
 wide, calm lake meets his eye, and, as he moves 
 onwards, long ranges of forest and plain greet him. 
 It is not his imagination, for his fellow-travellers 
 see the grand scene ; they see the same ob- 
 jects. Yet there is no water there, and the date- 
 palms are waving hundreds of miles away. This 
 spectacle is called the mirage. It is something to 
 think about, for it is not a delusion of the eye, but 
 of the mind reflecting upon what it sees. It is 
 the wonder of the desert, and it is seen by the sea- 
 side as well. The Sahara looks like a great dried- 
 up sea with a sandy bottom, and that is what it 
 really is. For in the midst of the desert sea-shells 
 of kinds now living in the Atlantic Ocean and 
 Mediterranean Sea are found, and in considerable 
 quantities. Their inhabitants died when the Sahara 
 rose up and became dry land ; when the deep sea, 
 with its moist gales, became a rainless, hot desert. 
 This elevation of the Sahara is supposed to have 
 occurred since the creation of man, and geologists 
 consider that it altered the climate of Southern 
 Europe. At one time the glaciers of the Alps 
 came down to near the Mediterranean. Owing 
 to some cause they retreated to their present po- 
 sition, but they left their mud and waste to prove 
 their former magnitude. It has been proved that 
 when there is a hot wind blowing over the desert 
 from south to north, a wai-m current of air passes 
 over the sea and reaches the Alps. The effect of 
 this is to dissolve the ice and snow on their tops at 
 a great rate, and it is supposed that the hot blasts 
 which occurred when the sandy Sahara succeeded 
 the cool sea produced enormous alterations in the 
 glaciers, by dissolving their ice and lay preventing 
 its extension. 
 
 Although the surface of the Sahara is so arid and 
 ■waterless, because of there being no rainfall, ,ind of 
 the sandy nature of the soil and the rocks beneath, 
 there is plenty of water deep down. The French 
 have sunk artesian wells here and there, and plenty 
 of pure fresh water pours up through them, irrigating 
 the surrounding districts and producing fertile spots. 
 
 The tribes inhabiting the desert are not numerous. 
 Those on the south are agricultural, and send gums 
 and salt to market down the Senegal. Those in 
 the Libyan desert are wanderers, and depend upon 
 t-^e water and pasture of the oases. On the north 
 there are plundering Arabs, and those who form the 
 guards of caravans. The camel is their " ship of 
 the desert," and its wonderful capacity for travelling 
 a long time without drinking appears to qualify it 
 in a most singular manner for the use of men living 
 in such a miserable country. There are other 
 deserts in the world, but none equal the Sahara. 
 There is a great desert in the far we^it of North 
 America ; the desert of Arabia is a vast country ; 
 that to the cast of the Indus is as large as a 
 province, an4 Australia has large sandy tracts 
 
 BURIAL ALIVE. 
 
 The Augustinian monastery of Thornton-upon- 
 Humber, in Lincolnshire, was founded in that 
 church-building age, the twelfth century, by WilHam 
 Ic Gros, earl of Albemarle, and lord of Holderness, 
 grandson of Odo, earl of Champagne, one of the 
 followers of the Conqueror, and distinguished among 
 the Anglo-Norman barons for his liberality to- 
 wards the religious orders. He is recorded as " an 
 eminent founder of monasteries," and Thornton 
 Abbey was the first in point of date of his establish- 
 ments in England. It was founded in 1139, the 
 fourth year of King Stephen, and for many years the 
 buildings were of a temporary nature. It was after- 
 wards rebuilt with great care, the church alone being 
 in progress nearly two centuries. The only part which 
 remains at all in a perfect state is the entrance gate- 
 house, one of the finest in existence in any part of 
 England. This is in the perpendicular style, and 
 was built soon after the sixth year of Richard II. 
 (a.d. 1382). Many of its details are extremely 
 beautiful. The abbey was yet flourishing in the 
 early part of the sixteenth century. 
 
 A curious discovery was made more than a cen- 
 tury ago, during some excavations near the chapter- 
 house. It was first mentioned by Stukeley, who 
 visited the ruins in 1722: he says that "upon 
 taking down an old wall there they found a man, 
 with a candlestick, table and book, who ^^•as sup- 
 posed to have been immured" that is, walled in. 
 Tradition has always asserted it was an abbot who 
 suffered this punishment, and it may be worth while 
 to inquire how far popular belief is in this case 
 correct. Two of the abbots of Thornton were 
 persons of doubtful reputation. Thomas Grctham, 
 the fourteenth abbot, was deposed in 1393. The 
 author of a MS. History of Thornton gave him so 
 bad a character, that a possessor of the work, in 
 the last century, tore out a leaf containing an ac- 
 count of his abbacy, " to prevent," says Farmer 
 in a note to the volume, " scandal to the Church." 
 Thus, in the absence of this leaf, we are compelled 
 to rely upon the next suspicious entry in the book. 
 Speaking of Walter Multon, eighteenth abbot, the 
 writer says, under the year 1443, "he died, but 
 in v;hat manner or by what death I know not. He 
 hath no obit, as the other abbots have, and the place 
 of his burial hath not been found." It is .almost 
 impossible to doubt that this significant passage has 
 allusion to the fate of Walter Multon. who expiated 
 his unrecorded offences by suffering that dire punish- 
 ment which, we have reason to believe, the secret 
 and irresponsible monastic tribunals of the middle 
 ages occasionally inflicted upon their erring brethren. 
 
 We may here add that the skeleton thus immured 
 was found several years .ago, at Coklingliam Abbey. 
 Another instance was discovered about 1845, at 
 Temple Bruer. in Lincolnshire 
 
PARASITES. 
 
 PHOSPHORUS FIRST MADE IN 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 Until the year 1863 there flourished in .South- 
 ampton Street, Covent Garden, the cstabUshment 
 of Messrs. Godfrey and Cooke, noted as the oldest 
 chemists and druggists' shop in London, and re- 
 puted for the excellence of the drugs and chemicals 
 there sold. Here phosphorus was first manufac- 
 tured in England, the premises having been the 
 house, shop, and laboratory of Ambrose Godfrey 
 Hanckwitz, who, immediately after the discovery of 
 phosphorus by Brandt, the Hamburg alchemist, 
 under instruction from the celebrated Robert Boyle, 
 succeeded in producing an ounce of the substance, 
 and presented it to his master. Boyle's account of 
 it and his experiments caused a demand for phos- 
 phorus, and Hanckwitz, working under Boyle's 
 direction, commenced to manufacture it, and pro- 
 duced it in larger quantities than any other person. 
 In his advertisement he says, " For the information 
 of the curious, he is the only one in London who 
 makes inflammable phosphorus, which can be pre- 
 served in water. Phosphorus of Bolognian stone, 
 flowers of phosphorus, black phosphorus, and that 
 made with acid oil, and other varieties. All un- 
 adulterated. Every description of good drugs he 
 sells wholesale and retail. N.B. — He sells solid 
 phosphorus wholesale, fifty shillings an ounce, and 
 retail, three pounds sterling the ounce." 
 
 Bedford House was taken down in 1704, and 
 .Southampton Street was then commenced building. 
 Here, in 1706, Hanckwitz built his premises, the 
 business of a chemist having been carried on by 
 him in the neighbourhood since 1680. Jacob Bell, 
 in his " Historical Sketch of the Progress of Phar- 
 macy in Great Britain," tells us that Hanckwitz 
 " was a maker of phosphorus and other chemicals 
 which were rare at that period, and which he sold 
 in different parts of the country during his travels. 
 His laboratory was a fashionable resort in the 
 afternoon on certain occasions, when he performed 
 popular experiments for the amusement of his 
 friends. It opened with glass doors into a garden, 
 which extended as far as the Strand, but which is 
 now built upon. Four curious old prints of the 
 laboratory in its original state are in the possession 
 of Messrs. Godfrey and Cooke (removed to Knights- 
 bridge), also a portrait of Hanckwitz, engraved by 
 Vertue (17 18), which he had distributed among his 
 friends as a keepsake." 
 
 Hanckwitz died in 1741. His successors, God- 
 frey and Cooke, maintained the date 1680 on their 
 premises in Southampton Street, and inscribed over 
 the laboratory in Maiden Lane, where the seat of the 
 important chemical manufacture next became a po- 
 tato store! Weconfess that we look upon this change 
 with a feeling of regret. Perchance some reader 
 may say, "What care I about phosphorus?" Many 
 
 407 
 
 a better-informed reader will remember that to the 
 utilisation of this elementary body we owe that do- 
 mestic wonder, the lucifer match, accidentally dis- 
 covered by a chemist and druggist of Stockton-upon- 
 Tees, some five-and-forty years ago, and brought 
 into general use by the recommendation of Faraday. 
 The common phosphorus is derived from cal- 
 cined bones, by treating them with sulphuric acid 
 and water. Hanckwitz procured it from urine. It 
 continued long to be an expensive chemical, for in 
 1 73 1 the phosphorus used in some experiments 
 exhibited before the Prince of Wales, and amount- 
 ing to six ounces, cost ten guineas. 
 
 PARASITES. 
 
 If a boat is anchored in any one of the channels 
 which separate the quicksands of the mouth of the 
 Thames, when the tide is running fast during calm 
 summer weather, multitudes of jelly-fish may be 
 seen floating along just below the surface. Some 
 are no bigger than tea-cups, and others are the 
 size of a large basin, and they all have some curious 
 markings on the top, and move by contracting and 
 expanding the lower parts of their bodies. Hour 
 after hour these beautiful things float by, and their 
 numbers are incalculable. If one is caught with the 
 hand, the fingers usually perforate its jelly-like 
 structure, and if it is placed on a board the creature 
 seems to run away in the form of water. Now a 
 great many of the larger kinds, when carefully 
 examined, are found to have within their large 
 stomach a small white shrimp with most beautiful 
 emerald-coloured eyes. It was supposed that these 
 shrimps formed the food of the jelly-fish or medusa?, 
 as they are properly called, but careful investigations 
 prove that these lively little creatures with tlie 
 beautiful eyes only exist in the larger medusa?, and 
 that they make the stomach of these wandering 
 masses of animal jelly their home and lardet. 
 The shrimp soon dies if it is taken from its shelter, 
 and specimens of it are never found swimming 
 with the common shrimps which live in the sea 
 around our coasts. The shrimp lives at the ex- 
 pense of the jelly-fish, and feeds upon some of the 
 small creatures which are entangled by the peculiar 
 structures of its mouth. The jelly-fish floats along 
 collecting food, and killing every small living thing 
 that touches its stinging body, whilst the shrimp 
 enjoys itself and lives inside, out of danger and in 
 great comfort. The shrimp swiros in and out, and 
 is never harmed by the deadly poison of the won- 
 derful sharp stings of the medusa, Now the most 
 wonderful part of this singular history is how the 
 jelly-fish and the shrimp come together. There 
 are no jelly-fish in the winter and early spring, and 
 the whole of them die in the autumn, shrimps and 
 all. Before dying the shrimp leaves the stomach 
 
4o8 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 of the jelly-fish, and lays its eggs at the bottom of 
 the Shallow sea. 
 
 The jelly-fish lays thousands of tiny eggs, which, 
 being covered with small movable hairs, row them- 
 selves into quiet rocky nooks on the coast and 
 settle, down. These eggs become adherent to 
 pieces of shell or stone, and do not turn to jelly- 
 fishes any more than a butterfly's egg turns to a 
 butterfly. A stem springs from them, and branches 
 arise from it all covered with tiny cups, whose rims 
 are crowded with small arms called tentacles. This 
 is the first stage of the jelly-fish's life. Now the 
 shrimp's egg hatches about the same time as the 
 stem just mentioned begins to grow, and the young 
 shrimp is not at all like the old one ; it has a big 
 head, a small body, and very long legs. In the 
 first part of their existence the jelly-fish and the 
 shrimp are separate, and unlike what they subse- 
 quently turn to. As the warm weather comes on, 
 the stem with its branches and cup-like ends begins 
 to bud, and after awhile out of the buds spring 
 tiny jelly-fish, which soon swim off. About this 
 time the young shrimp casts its skin and grows into 
 the form of the old one, and it invariably seeks shelter 
 in the stomach of the first young jelly-fish it comes 
 across in its swimming to and fro. This extraordi- 
 nary circle of events goes on year after year, and the 
 reason why the young shrimp should seek an animal 
 totally unlike itself and very fatal to other shrimps, 
 is one of those things in nature that no one can un- 
 derstand. Certainly no other kind of shrimp could 
 live in the medusa's stomach. 
 
 Some insects which are naturally very fierce and 
 dangerous to others, submit to be despoiled of their 
 food by very harmless creatures without resenting 
 the injury in the least. The hive-bee is exceedingly 
 excited if any other bee, not belonging to its com- 
 pany or swarm, comes near its hive ; and if a wasp 
 or a hornet should alight near the door the whole 
 of the inhabitants come out to repel the intruder's 
 attack. This is what every one would expect. But 
 there is a large moth, commonly known as the 
 death's-head moth, from its having a curious mark 
 on its back like a skull and cross-bones sculptured 
 on an old tombstone, which makes very free with 
 the bee's honey. It flies in the dusk of the evening 
 when the bees are at rest, and enters the hole in 
 the hive, pokes its long sucker through the wax 
 walls which surround the comb, and draws much 
 honey into its stomach. Very often in the long 
 evenings there are many bees lingering round 
 .-ibout the hive, but if the death's-head alights 
 md moves towards the door they do not take much 
 notice ; yet one sting would kill it, and it has no 
 means of hurting the bee in return. So much 
 troubled are some hives by these curious visitors, 
 that the bees erect a flat wall of wax just within 
 the hive-door, allowing a small opening to exist on 
 either hand. This, as a rule, puzzles the moth, and 
 
 it cannot enter. On the other hand, if a moth gets 
 right into the hive the bees do not kill it, but either 
 let it alone or use all their ingenuity to stop its 
 honey-stealing propensities. Whilst the moth is 
 enjoying its meal, the bees occasionally pull down 
 some of the honeycomb behind it, and mould the 
 wax quickly so as to form a dense wall. When 
 the moth has finished its meal and turns to get 
 out of the hive, it finds itself walled-up and im- 
 prisoned for life. It is very wonderful that this 
 honey-stealing instinct should influence generation 
 after generation of death's-head moths, for of course 
 when it is a chrysalis and a caterpillar it knows 
 nothing of honey. A punishment something like 
 this occurs in the instance of a curious crab that 
 lives in one of the kinds of coral found in the 
 Mediterranean Sea. This crab, when the coral is 
 young and fleshy, nibbles its way into the middle 
 of the growing stem and feeds away in quiet. But 
 soon the polypes on the outside of the coral begin 
 to grow very rapidly, and they make the opening by 
 which the crab hoped to escape so small that it 
 cannot get but. The crab dies, and the horny part 
 of its body positi\'ely strengthens the lower part of 
 the coral, and it is often found completely sur- 
 rounded by the beautiful little polypes. Even the 
 human face is not spared by some really very ugly 
 parasites, and the prettiest of noses are pestered by 
 a remarkably disgusting-looking insect. Some- 
 times a very small speck comes on the skin, which 
 is white in colour, and about the size of the point 
 of a pin. If the little projection is squeezed a white 
 mass comes out, and should this be placed on a 
 slip of glass and moistened with glycerine and 
 water, an ugly thing like a crab stirs itself about 
 and separates from the white fatty-looking matter. 
 It has a long body, eight legs, and a small head, 
 and it feeds upon the white substance ; and it re- 
 quires a slight magnifying-glass to distinguish it. 
 The small hairs on the face and nose have a small 
 gland close to them where they enter the skin, 
 whose duty is to produce the greasy matter that 
 renders the skin soft and sometimes oily. The 
 parasites get into this gland, and after awhile 
 excite its powers so much that it swells out and 
 produces too much sebaceous matter, as it is called. 
 Then the creatures are destroyed, for even if the 
 mass is not squeezed out of the skin, it comes out 
 in a few days by itself. 
 
 Even the trees around us are not free from 
 parasites. The mistletoe is a plant which grows 
 and flourishes at the expense of the trees upon 
 which it is found. It is always planted on the 
 bark of particular trees when it is a small seed, 
 and nothing else but a bird can do this. When it 
 flowers, certain insects must carry the fertihsing 
 dust from one plant to another in order that a seed 
 can be formed. The life of a tree pjirasite is thus 
 dependent upon many other lives. 
 
THE PORCELAIN TOWER OF NANKIN. 
 
 409 
 
 THE PORCELAIN TOWER OF 
 
 NANKIN. 
 
 The city of Nankin, once the capital of China, 
 has for centuries been famous to the " barbarians " 
 
 since given over to decay, and the wars of recent 
 years have greatly increased the general dilapi- 
 dation. The city proper has shrunk to one- 
 fourth of its former dimensions, the present 
 population inhabiting its inner portion, while the 
 
 THE PORCELAIN TOWER. 
 
 of the outer world for its Porcelain Tower— a relic 
 of the splendour of its ancient days, before Pekin 
 usurped its dignity as the seat of empire. The 
 place is now to a great extent a city of ruins ; 
 its palaces, tombs, and monuments were long 
 52 
 
 memorials of past magnificence are distributed 
 around them. 
 
 The Porcelain Tower was built early in the 
 fifteenth century by the order of the Emperor 
 Yung-loh, and as a work of filial piety. It was ^ 
 
4IO 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 monument to the memory of his mother ; and he 
 determined that its beauty should as far outshine 
 that of any similar memorial, as the transcendent 
 virtues of the parent, in her son's eyes, surpassed 
 those of the rest of her sex. No expense was 
 spared in its erection, and its total cost is estimated 
 at more than three-quarters of a million of our 
 own money. The work was commenced at noon 
 on a certain day in 1413, and occupied nearly 
 twenty years in its completion. 
 
 An idea of the appearance of the Porcelain Tower 
 is given by our illustration, but this is peculiarly 
 one of the instances in which pictorial representa- 
 tion fails to convey an adequate notion of the magni- 
 ficence and beauty of an object. The total height of 
 the tower was more than 200 feet, or about equal to 
 that of the Monument of London, and it was faced 
 from top to bottom with the finest porcelain, glazed 
 and coloured. It consisted of nine storeys, sur- 
 mounted by a spire, on the summit of which was 
 a ball of brass, richly gilt. From this ball, eight 
 iron chains extended to as many projecting points 
 of the roof, and from each chain was suspended a 
 bell, which hung over the face of the tower. The 
 same arrangement was carried out in every storey. 
 These bells added much to the graceful appearance 
 of the tower, breaking its otherwise formal and 
 monotonous outline. 
 
 Round the outer face of each storey were several 
 apertures for lanterns, and when these were all illumi- 
 nated, we are told, in the magniloquent language of 
 the Chinese historian, that " their light illuminated 
 the entire heavens, shining into the hearts of men, 
 and eternally removing human misery !" It is not 
 difficult to imagine, however, that the appearance 
 of the tower on such an occasion must have been 
 beautiful in the extreme. 
 
 On the top of the tower were placed two large 
 brazen vessels and a bowl, which together con- 
 tained various costly articles, in the nature of an 
 offering, and a charm to avert evil influences. 
 Among these were several pearls of various colours, 
 each supposed to possess miraculous properties, 
 together with other precious stones, and a quantity 
 of gold and silver. In this collection, designed to 
 represent the best treasures of the state, were also 
 placed a box of tea, some pieces of silk, and copies 
 of some ancient Chinese writings. 
 
 The Chinese historian to whom we have before 
 alluded, announced to the world, in the simplicity 
 of his heart, that this splendid monument of filial 
 gratitude would continue to endure and teach its 
 lesson for hundreds of generations. But alas ! for 
 human foresight, and the stability of all things on 
 earth. In the month of March, 1853, the Tae- 
 ping rebels took Nankin, and sacked the place. 
 For a long time they appear to have kept their 
 destroying hands off the Porcelain Tower ; but at 
 last— probably to wreak full vengeance on the 
 
 Imperialists — they demolished it. This occurred 
 in 1856. Since that time, NanWn has been taken 
 and retaken, both by Imperialists and /ebels, and 
 the former now hold possession of the city ; but a 
 city no longer adorned with that famous structure 
 which was truly one of the wonders of the world. 
 
 CURIOUS FISHES. 
 
 Certain fish have been termed " sporting," from 
 their shooting prey with great precision. " We 
 have," says Sir Charles Bell, " a curious instance 
 of the precision of the eye, and of the adaptation 
 of the muscular action in the beaked chastodon, a 
 fish which inhabits the Indian rivers, and lives on 
 the smaller aquatic flies. When it observes a fly 
 alighted on a twig, or flying over it (for it can shoot 
 them on the wing), it darts a drop of water with so 
 steady an aim as to bring the fly down into the 
 water, when it falls an easy prey. It will hit a fly 
 at the distance of from three to six feet. Another 
 fish, of the same order, the seus, has the power of 
 forming its mouth into a tube, and squirting at 
 flics, so as to encumber their wings and bring them 
 to the surface of the water. In these instances a 
 difficulty will readily occur to the reader : How 
 does the fish judge of position, since the rays of 
 light are refracted at the surface of the water? 
 Does instinct enable it to do this, or is it by 
 experience ?" 
 
 The jaculator fish of Java is of this sporting 
 tribe. In 1828 Mr. Mitchell saw several of these 
 fishes in the possession of a Javanese chief. They 
 were placed in a small circular pond, from the 
 centre of which rose a pole upwards of two feet in 
 height. On the top of the pole, on sharp-pointed 
 pieces of wood, were placed insects of the beetle 
 tribe. When the slaves had placed the beetles, the 
 fish came out of their holes and swam round the 
 pond. One of them came to the surface of the 
 water, resting there ; and after steadily fixing its 
 eyes for some time on a beetle, it discharged from 
 its mouth a small quantity of water, with such force 
 and precision of aim as to strike it ofi" the twig into 
 the water, and in an instant swallowed it. After this 
 another fish came, and performed a similar feat, and 
 so the sport continued until they had secured all 
 the beetles. If a fish failed in bringing down its 
 prey at the first shot, it swani round the pond till it 
 came opposite the same object, and fired again. 
 In one instance a fish returned three times to the 
 attack before it secured its prey ; but in general 
 the fish seemed very expert gunners, bringing down 
 the beetle at the first shot. The fish, in a state of 
 nature, frequents the shores and sides of the rivers 
 in search of food. When it spies a fly on the plants 
 that grow in shallow water, it swims to the distance 
 of five or six feet from them, and then, with sur- 
 
PRIZE VASES FROM THE GAMES AT ATHENS. 
 
 411 
 
 prising dexterity, it ejects out of its tubular mouth 
 a single drop of water. 
 
 A few years ago, there was exhibited in Piccadilly 
 a " talking fish," as it was called, but it was, in 
 reality, a seal. It measured twelve feet in length, 
 and weighed eight hundredweight. It could stand 
 on its tail, and overtopped its keeper. It was am- 
 phibious, and was a female seal. It was stated to 
 have been captured on the coast of Africa, on May 
 5, 1854, by Signor Cavana. It had a fine dog-like 
 head, and beautiful eyes, sparkling with intelligence, 
 showing that what you said to it was understood, 
 and seeking to communicate its reply. It was very 
 docile, and would dance when bidden, rolling itself 
 with great vehemence in its bath. It could say 
 " Mamma " and " Papa," and could call its keeper 
 by his name — " John." It could use its fins as hands 
 and arms, and clasp them together in the attitude 
 of supplication. At command, it presented either 
 the right or left hand to the keeper. Its brain 
 cavity was large, and the brain highly convoluted, 
 being ranked by Professor Owen in the highest of 
 the animal brain types. It was an Antarctic species, 
 and rare in museums. It had two rows of teeth, 
 and was covered with fine hair. It ate nearly five- 
 and-forty pounds of fish per day. At night it 
 reposed on damp boards, and the species can exist 
 for days out of water ; yet this specimen did not 
 live long. 
 
 About the same time was exhibited in Paris a 
 seal, advertised all over France as the Neyt Soak, 
 or Poisson vivant. It was about seven feet in 
 length, and very plump and glossy. It was about 
 five years old, and had evidently been some time 
 in captivity, as one of its sides was rubbed bald 
 against the tub in which it swam. It answered to 
 the name of " Cocot," turned round in the water, 
 raised itself to the edge of the tub, and kissed its 
 master's cheek. 
 
 M. Dufosse asserts that facts prove Nature to 
 have not refused all fishes the power of expressing 
 their instinctive sensations by sounds, but has not 
 conferred on them the unity of mechanism in the 
 formation of sonorous vibrations, as in other classes 
 of vertebrated animals. " Some fishes (he says) 
 are able to emit musical tones, engendered by a 
 mechanism in which the muscular vibration is the 
 principal motive power ; others possess the faculty 
 of making blowing sounds, like those of certain 
 reptiles, and others can produce the creaking noise 
 resembling that of many insects." 
 
 The pike is reputed to be our oldest fresh-water 
 fish : Bacon describes two, one 1 50 years old, 
 and another 100. A pike, between four and five 
 feet long, and believed to be a century old, was 
 taken in 1865, on the Loire : in it? stomach were 
 found a double-bladed knife, a small key, and the 
 steel snap of a purse. The fish is preserved in 
 the museum of St. Etienne. 
 
 PRIZE VASES FROM THE GAMES AT 
 
 ATHENS. 
 
 The usual prize of a Greek athlete was a simple 
 wreath of laurel. It was so in the great national 
 games at Olympia, to which competitors came at great 
 expense, often from all quarters of the Greek world. 
 It was only in small local games that prizes of value 
 were given. But then the laurel wreath of Olympia 
 was a badge which secured a national reputation. 
 When gained once by Hiero, the king of Syracuse, 
 he reckoned it the grand honour of his life. It was 
 the happiest moment in the life of Philip of Mace- 
 donia, when two simultaneous events were reported 
 to him, the prize won by his race-horse at Olympia, 
 and the birth of his son Alexander. Successful 
 athletes returning to their native towns, were hailed 
 by acclamation, and hospitality and aid freely offered 
 them. Often when an athlete had won three of 
 the games, his township would seek the best artist 
 they could obtain, to make a statue for him, and 
 set it up in the market-place. But here a law inter- 
 fered. He could only have an idealised statue, for 
 the law said that the youth of the town must not 
 look daily upon the figure of a man so imperfectly 
 trained, as only to have won three games. The 
 winner of all the five, the pentathlon, as it was 
 called, was the only man who could have a true 
 portrait statue of himself set up in public. 
 
 The games at Athens, however, were to an extent 
 local, with far less competition. All Athenians 
 were eligible, as the name Panathenaic shows, in 
 whatever quarter of the world they may have gone 
 to live ; and in the case of the prize vases of which 
 we are to speak, the winners were resident in 
 Cyrene, a Greek colony on the north coast of Africa. 
 Sometimes a wreath of olive was the prize, for the 
 olive was sacred at Athens, as the laurel at Olympia ; 
 sometimes a vase of terra-cotta, or earthenware, 
 filled with oil from the sacred olives. Very many 
 of those vases must have been distributed in the 
 long course of years through which the games lasted. 
 Yet perhaps not more than a dozen of them are 
 now known ; and of these there are certainly none 
 to rival the six specimens in the second vase room 
 of the British Museum. They have been all found 
 within the last three years, by Mr. Vice-consul 
 Dennis, in excavating the tombs at Cyrene. The 
 successful athlete had his prize vase buried with 
 him, as the great pride of his life. His name is 
 not engraved upon it, and we have no clue to the 
 tenant of the grave in which it was found. That 
 was not the form which Greek vanity took. On 
 each of these vases are the words, " I come from 
 the games at Athens," and on the other side, the 
 name of the presiding magistrate at Athens for 
 the year, or sometimes, the name of the potter wWo 
 made it. Artists generally could write their names 
 upon their works, without any charge of vanity, 
 
412 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 and the magistrate's name was the only means they 
 had of expressing the year in which any event took 
 place. They had no era at Athens, such as we 
 have in the birth of Christ, to reckon by. 
 
 Before describing tliese vases more particularly, 
 it may be well to say a word about the games at 
 which they were won. At what precise period they 
 were instituted, is not known; they were ascribed 
 to the mythical hero Theseus, but they had lapsed 
 some time before the year 560 B.C. About that 
 year, Peisistratos, the head of a powerful family, 
 whose lands lay north of Athens, had raised him- 
 self to the position of tyrant at Athens for the third 
 time. Tyrant meant then simply a ruler without 
 hereditary or elective right. That was the age of 
 tyrants in almost all the Greek states, and it was 
 always part of their clear-sighted policy to unite 
 the people by festivals and games, the mirth of 
 which would drown the grudge they bore. With 
 this intent, Peisistratos established or renewed the 
 games at Athens. All Athenians were eligible 
 competitors ; but no dovibt there were conditions 
 to be fulfilled, similar to those at Olympia. A 
 competitor would have to send in his name some 
 nine months before, accompanied by sureties as to 
 his having passed through the usual practice, and 
 as to his character ; for it sometimes happened, 
 amid all the fine displays of endurance and bravery, 
 that acts of brutality were done. As the time ap- 
 proached, candidates assembled in Athens and 
 practised together ; as it came nearer, crowds of 
 strangers arrived, and the whole town gave itself 
 over to mirth. The five contests consisted in 
 running, leaping, throwing the disc, boxing and 
 wrestling, which were called collectively the pankra- 
 tion — and chariot-races. The prize in each case 
 was, as far as we know, the same, an olive wreath, 
 or a vase full of olive oil ; and to the six specimens 
 of the latter in the British Museum we now turn. 
 
 The shape in all cases is the same, that called 
 amphora. On the face or obverse of each, is the 
 same stiff conventional figure of the goddess Athena, 
 in whose honour the games were held : she strides 
 forward armed with helmet, shield, and spear, wear- 
 ing a long embroidered dress called a pcplos. It 
 may here be mentioned, that in the spring of every 
 year seven young girls were chosen to weave and 
 embroider a new robe for the gold and ivory 
 statue of the goddess. It was ready by autumn, 
 and then the ceremony took place of putting on 
 the new robe. In the border of it they used to 
 embroider some story of her deeds, as that of slay- 
 ing the giants. As an imitation of this, the rude 
 figures on one of the vases may be taken. On the 
 back or reverse of each, is painted the contest in 
 which each was won. The bold and masterly 
 drawing of those figures may be contrasted with 
 the stiff figure of the goddess on the obverse. A 
 curious fact connected with one of the vases is. 
 
 that on the shield of the goddess are seen two 
 figures in the act of rushing forward. It happens 
 that those very two figures are found also on cer- 
 tain silver coins of Athens, and no doubt now re- 
 mains that they are copied from a famous group 
 in Athens, of the two brothers Harmodios and 
 Aristogeiton, who died in an attempt to kill the 
 son of the tyrant Peisistratos, and thus liberate 
 their native town. This vase was won not before 
 the year 372 B.C ; so long survived the feeling 
 of gratitude to the two brothers. The columns 
 which run up each side of the obverse represent 
 the columns which marked the starting-place and 
 the goal of the race-course. The cock which sur- 
 mounts them in two cases, was chosen from its 
 fighting propensities as a symbol of the qualities 
 displayed on the course. The seated figure holding 
 out a branch is Victory keeping the prize till it is 
 won. 
 
 It is not so much in excellence of form and draw- 
 ing that they surpass all other vases, as in the 
 interest awakened by the fact, that each one of 
 them was striven for after a long, laborious training, 
 won, prized, buried with the winner, and now after 
 more than two thousand years, disentombed, stands 
 as a monument of a well-fought contest. 
 
 Sltunbirs 0f ^nhnal fife. 
 
 Forms of ANurAi, Life.— Humboldt estimates 
 that the number of animals of the mammalia kind 
 (those who suckle their young) is about 500 ; of 
 birds, 4,000 ; of insects, 44,000 ; of reptiles, 700 ; 
 in all about 50,000. To Europe belong 80 of the 
 mammalia, 400 birds, and 30 reptiles. In the 
 southern hemisphere, around the Cape of Good 
 Hope, birds are five times more numerous than 
 mammalia. Towards the equator, both birds and 
 reptiles considerably increase in variety and num- 
 ber. It is thought by Cuvier, and other eminent 
 authorities, that, from the many fossil animals 
 which have been discovered, this globe formerly 
 must have contained more mammalia than it now 
 does birds. 
 
 The Mantis.— The leaf-insects are found in 
 most very warm countries, but those from China 
 and the East Indies are the best known. These 
 insects are large, grotesque-looking things, uncom- 
 monly like a set of short, yellow twigs joined to- 
 gether by faded leaves. The limbs of the insects 
 are long and slender, but flattened out in some 
 places, and their bodies are either excessively 
 slender and twig-like or are flattened and large. 
 The colour of the insect when it is alive blends so 
 perfectly with the tints of the surrounding leaves 
 and boughs, that a careless observer would pass it 
 by as a part of a plant. Hence the name of the 
 leaf-insect. The female insect here represented 
 
WONbERS OF ANIMAL LIFE. 
 
 413 
 
 has a large, flat body with fine, projecting edges, 
 and when the wings, with their delicate lace-work 
 markings, are folded over it, the whole looks like 
 a crumpled and faded leaf. This appearance is 
 increased by the flat, leaf-like expansions on the 
 limbs, and by the curious markings on the fore- 
 part of the body, which joins the hind part just as 
 some leaves are attached to twigs having round 
 swellings on them. The males usually have a long 
 and slender body, and the arms start from it just 
 as small branches do from larger ones. They are 
 remarkably quiet insects, and will remain perfectly 
 still for a long time, and in very peculiar positions. 
 One of the favourite positions is to let the hinder 
 
 plants, and others those which are more or less 
 autumnal in their tint. The female mantis lays its 
 eggs upon plants, and covers them with a glutinous 
 case, in which they are arranged in rows very 
 elegantly. Some of the large kinds of mantis are 
 from four to six inches in length. The males are very 
 pugnacious, and can be made to fight most des- 
 perately by placing them opposite each other. 
 They lift up their bodies, and use their long arms 
 like sabres, and squeeze and bite until one is worsted. 
 The leaf-insect is, perhaps, the best example of 
 natural mimicry, and this gift of nature has, of 
 course, nothing to do with the will of the creature. 
 The accompanying illustration will convey to the 
 
 THE WALKING LEAF-INSECT. 
 
 part of the body rest flat on a branch, and to elevate 
 the long body and arms in the attitude of prayer. 
 One kind is called the praying mantis, from its 
 constantly putting on this curious attitude. But 
 really it is a natural hypocrite, and if it could speak 
 it would say, " Let us prey," instead of " Let us pray." 
 The posture of supplication is put on to take in the 
 little flies which are so unreflecting as to believe 
 that the bloodthirsty creature is a cool and inoffen- 
 sive leaf. The flies alight close to the mantis, or 
 even upon it, the clasped hands relax, and, in an 
 instant, the unfortunate little insect is seized and 
 crushed in the grip from which there is no escape. 
 The resemblance of some of the kinds of mantis to the 
 surrounding foliage is so great that it not only serves 
 to entrap prey, but it also acts as a defence for and 
 preservative of the insect ; for birds on the look- 
 out for flies and beetles pass the faded-looking mass 
 of leaves and twigs as unworthy of their attention. 
 Some of the leaf-insects resemble green-Ieavcd 
 
 reader a general idea of this singular insect, though 
 it is difficult without seeing an actual specimen, to 
 appreciate its extraordinary resemblance to a vege- 
 table production. 
 
 The Flying Fox.— The flying fox is a very 
 curious inhabitant of the forests near Morcton Bay, 
 in East Australia. It lives in flocks, and moves 
 generally towards the dusk of the evening, and the 
 noise produced by the heavy flapping of the so- 
 called wings is very singular. The flocks like quiet 
 places, where there are large Araucarian pine-trees, 
 with an underwood of scrub and creepers. The 
 foxes hang in vast numbers from the horizontal 
 branches of the pine-trees. When there is a clear 
 space amongst the trees, an enormous number of 
 the animals may be seen, and their noise can be 
 heard ; for directly they see anything unusual, they 
 utter a short bark, something like the sound made 
 by young rooks. Often every branch is crowded, 
 and the flying foxes are seen cither flapping their 
 
414 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 wings, and holding on with their hind feet, and 
 with their head downwards, or snarling and fighting 
 for places. Suddenly the whole take to flight, and 
 flap their furry, wing-like sides, and wheel around 
 like heavy birds. Many fly with their young hold- 
 ing on to them. The creature is not a true fox, and 
 there is a fold of skin which reaches from the fore 
 to the hind legs. This is called the wing, and it 
 enables the Ptcropus, as the animal is called, to 
 float and turn in the air. 
 
 Currosxtws of Soxmtr. 
 
 WONDERFUL ECHOES. 
 The difficulty of transmitting sounds to a great 
 distance arises from the sound spreading and 
 losing itself in the surrounding air ; so that if we 
 could confine it on one side, as along a wall, on 
 two sides, as in a narrow street, or on all sides, as 
 in a tube or pipe, we should be able to convey it 
 to great distances. In the cast-iron water-pipe of 
 Paris, which formed a continuous tube with only 
 two bendings near its middle, the lowest whisper 
 at one end was distinctly heard at the other through 
 a distance of 3,120 feet. A pistol fired at one end 
 actually blew out a candle at the other end, and 
 drove out light substances with great violence. 
 
 The intensity of confined sound is finely exhi- 
 bited at Carisbrook Castle, in the Isle of Wight, 
 where is a well 200 feet deep, twelve feet in 
 diameter, and lined with smooth masonry ; yet 
 when a pin is dropped into it the sound of it 
 striking the surface of the water is distinctly 
 heard. 
 
 Very remarkable echoes, and some not easily 
 credible, have been described by different authors. 
 Several of these have been described in a previous 
 article, but we may mention here some others 
 equally remarkable. Dr. Plott mentions an echo 
 in Woodstock Park, which repeats seventeen syl- 
 lables by day and twenty by night. 
 
 At Roseneath in Argyllshire, when a person at 
 a proper distance played eight or ten notes on a 
 trumpet, they were correctly repeated, but a third 
 lower ; after a short silence another repetition was 
 heard in a yet lower tone, and after another short 
 interval, they were repeated a third time in a tone 
 lower still. 
 
 In the cathedral of Girgenti, in Sicily, the slightest 
 whisper is borne with perfect distinctness from the 
 great western door to the cornice behind the high 
 altar, a distance of 250 feet. By a most unlucky 
 coincidence, the precise focus of divergence at the 
 former station was chosen for the confessional. 
 Secrets never intended for the public ear thus 
 became known, to the dismay of the confessor, and 
 scandal of the people, by the resort of the curious 
 to the opposite point (which seems to have been 
 
 discovered accidentally), till at length one listener 
 had his curiosity somewhat over-gratified by hear- 
 ing his wife's avowal of her own infidelity, when 
 the tcU-talc peculiarity became generally known, 
 and the confessional was removed. 
 
 In the whispering gallery of St. Paul's Cathedral, 
 a low whisper uttered on one side may be distinctly 
 heard at the opposite side of the gallery. This 
 phenomenon has been thus explained by Dr. 
 Paris : " M shows the situation of the mouth of 
 the speaker, and E, that of the car of the hearer. 
 Now, since sound radiates in all directions, a part 
 of it will proceed directly from M to E, while other 
 rays of it will proceed from M to n, and from M 
 to z, &c. ; but the ray that impinges upon u will 
 be reflected to E, while that which touches z will 
 be reflected to j, and from thence to E ; and so 
 of all intermediate rays, which are omitted in the 
 figure to avoid confusion. It is evident, therefore, 
 that the sound at E will be much stronger than if 
 it had proceeded immediately from M without the 
 assistance of the dome, for in that case the rays at 
 z and u would have proceeded in straight lines, 
 and, consequently, could never have arrived at the 
 point." 
 
 Another remarkable whispering gallery is in 
 Gloucester Cathedral, though in this case the sound 
 travels through a vaulted passage between the 
 choir and the lady chapel. 
 
 The proportions of the stone alcoves of West- 
 minster Bridge (removed in August, 1846), are 
 stated to have been so accurate, that if a person 
 spoke against the wall of cither of the niches on 
 one side of the \vay, he might be distinctly heard 
 in the corresponding niche on the opposite side ; 
 even a whisper was audible in the stillness of the 
 night. 
 
 Beneath the suspension bridge across the Menai 
 Strait, in Wales, close to one of the main piers, is 
 a remarkably fine echo. The sound of a blow on 
 the pier with a hammer is returned in succession 
 from each of the cross beams which support the 
 roadway. The effect is a series of sounds. 
 
 The general explanation of an echo is, that it is 
 produced by sound being interrupted by obstacles 
 of sufficient extent and regularity. If the reflected 
 sound meet with a second obstacle, it will be again 
 reflected ; and thus the echo may be repeated many 
 
LORD ROSSE'S TELESCOPE. 
 
 415 
 
 times in succession, becoming fainter at each repe- 
 tition till it dies away altogether. 
 
 Pepys, in his " Diary," i666, notes, " Discoursed 
 with Mr. Hooke about the nature of sounds, who 
 told me, that having come to a certain number of 
 vibrations proper to make any tone, he is able to 
 tell how many strokes a fly makes with her wings 
 (those flies that hum in their flying) by the note 
 that it answers to in music during their flying. 
 That, I suppose, is a little too much refined ; but 
 his discourse, in general, of sound was mighty 
 fine." 
 
 PERUVIAN MUMMIES. 
 
 Large numbers of mummies arc discovered in 
 many places in Peru, and there is a tradition, con- 
 firmed by the state in which they are found, that 
 they are often the remains of persons who were 
 self-immolated, to escape from the inhuman cruelty 
 of the conquering Spaniards. In an old book of 
 Voyages, by Surgeon Lionel Wafer, who accom- 
 panied an expedition to South America in 1680, 
 this tradition is thus corroborated : — " We put 
 ashore at Vermejo, in 10 deg. S. lat. I was one of 
 those who landed to see for water. We marched 
 about four miles up a sandy bay, which we found 
 covered with the bodies of men, women, and 
 children. These bodies, to appearance, seemed as 
 if they had not been a week dead ; but if touched, 
 they seemed dry and light as a sponge or piece of 
 a cork. We were told by an old Spanish- Indian 
 whom we met, that in his father's time 
 the soil there which now yielded no- 
 thing was well cultivated and fruitful— 
 that the city had been so numerously 
 inhabited with Indians that they could 
 have handed a fish from hand to hand 
 till it reached the Inca ; but that when 
 the Spaniards came and laid siege to their city, the 
 Indians, rather than yield to their mercy, dug holes 
 in the sand and buried themselves alive. The men, 
 as they now lie, have by them their broken bows, and 
 the women their spinning-wheels and distaffs, with 
 cotton yarn upon them." 
 
 readers along the steps which have led to the 
 construction of an instrument capable of defining 
 those luminous clouds which even Herschel's grand 
 telescope utterly failed to accomplish, although that 
 could descry a cluster of 5,000 stars deeper in the 
 abyss of space by 300,000 times than Sirius. 
 Indeed it was Herschel's inability to resolve a 
 certain nebula in the sword of Orion, which led 
 that great astronomer to the conclusion, that a 
 nebulous fluid existed in space which formed the 
 material for future worlds. 
 
 The two kinds of telescope known as "reflecting" 
 and " refracting," occupy distinct pages in history. 
 Our paper has reference to a gigantic 7'eflcctor, 
 and we will therefore confine our remarks to that 
 form of instrument. 
 
 It is not until 1652, that we find any mention 
 of the use of a lens with which to magnify the 
 reflected image, for it must not be supposed that 
 the image of a distant object formed in the focus 
 of the reflecting mirror is a viagnijied image ; it is 
 only rendered brighter and clearer. The eye-lens 
 was first employed by an Italian called Zucche, in 
 the above-named year, and was merely held in the 
 hand and directed upon the focus of the reflector ; 
 but we may be sure the observer's head must have 
 greatly interfered with the rays from the distant 
 object. 
 
 In 1663, Gregory invented his now well-known 
 telescope in which the rays are twice reflected 
 before entering the eye-glass. The small second 
 reflector is placed facing the large in the centre, 
 or axis of the tube, and re-reflects the image 
 
 LORD ROSSE'S TELESCOPE. 
 
 The desire to aid the natural powers of the eye to 
 penetrate into distance, is by no means of recent 
 date. History says that an instrument was placed 
 upon the lighthouse of Alexandria by which vessels 
 at a great distance were rendered visible ; and from 
 the probability that Archimedes employed concave 
 mirrors for the concentration of light, it is more 
 than likely that the Ptolemaic telescope was a 
 reflector. 
 
 Without attempting a scientific description of 
 telescopes generally, we will very briefly carry our 
 
 Fig. I. 
 
 through a hole in the centre of the large mirror, as 
 shown in Fig. i 
 
 The advantage of Gregory's arrangement is, 
 that the observer can point his instrument directly 
 towards the object he examines, but the dis- 
 advantages are the double reflection, by which 
 much light is lost ; a further loss of light through 
 the interference of the mirror A, and the hole B 
 cut in the large mirror, and also a further loss of 
 light through the interference of rays at the point x. 
 
 In 1672, the great Newton, upon the day of his 
 election as a Fellow of the Royal Society, presented 
 the society with a reflecting telescope upon his own 
 arrangement, and executed with his own hands. 
 The Newtonian arrangement is shown in Fig. 2. 
 
 The large reflector, n, is entire, the concentrated 
 rays from it being received upon the mirror a, 
 placed at an angle of forty-five degrees to the axis 
 of the tube, and reflected by it through an opening 
 C, in the side of the tube. 
 
4i6 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERS. 
 
 Herschel arranged his mirror in another way. 
 Instead of setting it so that its focus lay in the 
 axis of the tube, as shown by the dotted Hne 
 passing through A and B, in Figs, i and 2, ho 
 
 planted it slightly obliquely, as shown in Fig. 3. 
 By this means, the focus was brought directly to 
 the side of the tube at a without the intervention of 
 a second reflector. The great telescope at Slough 
 
 Fig- 3- 
 
 is thirty-nine feet four inches long, and the reflector 
 is four feet diameter in the clear ; but its interesting 
 history cannot now be entered into, we must pass 
 on to a notice of the great Parsonstown six feet 
 reflector. 
 
 To Lord Rosse belongs the credit of the whole 
 of the ingenious arrangements, both mechanical 
 and optical, which have characterised his wonderful 
 instrument. The tube is constructed of wood, 
 hooped with iron bands, and is rather over fifty- 
 three feet long. Its lower end rests upon a massive, 
 universal joint of cast-iron, bedded in stone-work, 
 which is sunk deep in the ground. The tube is 
 counterpoised to facilitate its motion, and is moved 
 vertically, or in polar distance, by a windlass below. 
 The horizontal motion of the telescope is limited to 
 one hour upon the equatorial circle, which is equal 
 to an angle of fifteen degrees, but this represents a 
 much wider range when the tube is more vertical. 
 This movement is produced by a wheel and pinion. 
 The slow or delicate adjustment of the instrument, 
 both vertical a.;id horizontal, is under the entire 
 control of the observer. The tube is slung by 
 chains, which' pass over the windlass under- 
 neath, and is perfectly steady even when a gale 
 of wind is blowing. The vertical motion of the 
 telescope is guided by a great cast-iron arc, care- 
 
 fully planed, forming a portion of a circle eighty- 
 five feet in diameter, composed of pieces five feet 
 long, each being secured to massive stone-work. 
 
 Attached to the universal joint arc long indexes 
 moving over graduated arcs, by which the direction 
 of the tube to any desired spot is facilitated. The 
 " micrometer," which is the system of lines inter- 
 secting the field of view, and placed there in order 
 to measure the apparent distances between star and 
 star, consists in this instrument of thick lines. 
 They arc not so accurate for celestial measurements 
 as fine lines ; but as the latter necessitate illumina- 
 tion to render them visible upon a dark field, the 
 light introduced for this purpose extinguishes the 
 faint details of the nebuhx. 
 
 Two specula; were cast ; one three and a half 
 tons, and one rather more than four tons weight. 
 The metal is not quite as rigid as wrought iron in 
 the proportion of 5 to 6/5. The thickness of the 
 material is nearly six inches. It might well be 
 supposed that such a mass of such a material, it 
 would be difficult, if not impossible, to bend ; yet so 
 high is the magnifying power of the mirror, that 
 even the strong pressure of the hand at the back of 
 it is sufficient to produce distortion in the image of 
 a star. To secure as far as possible an even bed 
 for it, the mirror rests upon eighty-one brass balls, 
 carefully dispersed over the entire surface ; but in 
 spite of this precaution, the movement of the 
 reflector, though only j'^th of an inch, produces 
 temporary distortion. In the spring of 1848, the 
 telescope remained unused for some time, and the 
 result of the speculum remaining in the same posi- 
 tion during that period was a permanent " set," 
 producing permanent distortion. The mirror had, 
 therefore, to be re-ground. A faint idea may be 
 formed from these facts of the marvellous accuracy 
 with which the surface of the speculum is ground. 
 
 It was at Christmas, 1845, that the great six feet 
 reflector was first directed to that wonderful nebula 
 in Orion we have already alluded to ; and who 
 shall tell the anxiety with which the result of that 
 gaze was watched ! Did nebulous fluid exist in 
 space or not ? That was the question to be solved. 
 And solved it was. That fleecy cloud was not a 
 vapour ; it consisted of stars ! Worlds, millions 
 upon millions— who shall say not peopled with 
 intelligent existences? But we cannot speculate. 
 This gigantic telescope is, as compared with the 
 human eye, as 130,000 to i ; it has a penetrating 
 power of 500 ; and can render visible, stars whose 
 light would require 60,000 years to reach our earth ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
 eASSELL. I'ETTER, AND GALPIN, BELLE SAUVAGE WORKS, LONDON, E.C, 
 
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