The quantities produced in 1827 in the different | Sir George Staunton ascertained that its diameter was About three-tenths of this quantity is used as cast iron, and the other seven-tenths as wrought iron, being formed into bars, bolts, rods, &c. The exports of the different sorts of iron amount, at present, to about 110,000 tons, which, at £10 a ton, would be worth £1,100,000. In 1767, the iron exported from Great Britain amounted to only 11,000 tons, and in 1806 not more than 25,000. The total value of the pig-iron now produced in Great Britain, at £6 a ton, may be estimated at nearly £4,200,000, and the additional labour expended in forming the pig-iron into bar-iron, &c. may probably add £1,200,000 to its value, making it worth, in all, about £5,400,000. The prices of iron have lately so much declined, that pig-iron, which in 1824 and 1825 sold at from £12 to £14 a ton, fell in 1826 to £8 or £9, and is now only worth from £4. 10s. to £5 a ton. It seems to be feared that, supposing prices not to rise, many of the furnaces now in blast will have to be laid aside. We recommend those who desire full information as to the history and prospects of our iron trade, to consult the treatise on the Manufacture of Iron,' published by the Society of Useful Knowledge." Of that one contemptible mineral," says Mr.Locke, speaking of iron," he who first made use, may be truly styled the father of arts and the author of plenty." [To be continued.] THE DRAGON-TREE OF OROTAVA. NEAR the town of Orotava, in the island of Teneriffe, there is an enormous many-headed palm of the species called the Dragon-Tree (in French, Dragonnier), which has been described by the scientific traveller Humboldt, and more recently by Maria Graham. This tree is situated in the garden of M. Franqui. There are existing documents which show that the trunk of this tree had attained its present vast size in the fifteenth century. Its height is about 60 feet; its circumference near the "oot is 48 feet. At the height of ten feet above the soil, 12 feet. The trunk divides into a great number of branches which rise in the form of a candelabra, each of which is terminated by a bunch of leaves. It still bears flowers and fruit. Humboldt has given, in the Atlas to his large work, a plate from a drawing of this palm, taken in 1776;-the above wood-cut is copied from a sketch in Maria Graham's 'Journal of a Voyage to Brazil,' made after one-half of the crown of the tree had fallen in 1819. This remarkable tree is considered by Humboldt to be one of the oldest inhabitants of this globe. The species is of very slow growth; and it is judged that a thousand years must have elapsed before this specimen had attained maturity. National Prejudices.-In estimating the worth of nations, justice requires that, while their vices are put into one scale, their virtues should as conscientiously be poised in the other. Individuals and nations are equally stung with a sense of wrong, when their crimes are acrimoniously recapitulated, and then great and good actions are all forgotten. This fatal forgetfulness is the origin of that rancour which has so long desolated the earth. It distracts private families, confounds public principles, and turns even patriotism itself into poison. Let those, who have but the smallest love for the happiness of mankind, beware how they indulge this pernicious propensity. He, who in every man wishes to meet a brother, will very rarely encounter an enemy.-Holcroft's preface to his translation of Count Stolberg's Travels through Germany, &c. p. viii. THE SEASONS. THE Seasons are my friends, companions dear! And I will hear him on his mountain seat, When in her humid scarf she leaves the hills, Till vesper rising slowly, widow'd nun, 7 [These verses are extracted from a poem containing passages of considerable beauty, entitled 'The Solitary,' by Charles Whitehead, which was published some months since.] The Office of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge is at 59, Lincoln's-Inn Fields. LONDON:-CHARLES KNIGHT, PALL-MALL EAST. Shopkeepers and Hawkers may be supplied Wholesale by the following Bristol, WESTLEY and Co. Exeter, BALLE. Lincoln, BROOKE and SONS. Manchester, ROBINSON; and WEBB and SIMMS. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, CHARNLEY, Norwich, JARROLD and SON, Nottingham, WRIGHT, Oxford, SLATTER. Plymouth, NETTLETON. Portsea, HORSEY, Jun. Sheffield, RIDGE. Staffordshire, Lane End, C. WATTE Edinburgh, OLIVER and BOYD. Glasgow, ATKINSON and Co. Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES, Stamford Street. In the year 1822, the writer of this paper happened to be travelling in the interior of the colony of the Cape of Good Hope, and had occasion to cross the Great Karroo, a desert region lying between the parallel mountain ridges of the Zwartbergen and Sneeuwbergen. This region consists of an elevated plain or tract of tableland, which, with the exception of a few spots along the skirts of the mountain chains above-mentioned, is entirely uninhabitable from the aridity of the climate and the want of streams or fountains. It is not a sandy desert, like those of Arabia, but consists generally of a hard gravelly or clayey soil, much impregnated in many places with saltpetre, and sprinkled over with a variety of low shrubs resembling heath. It is of considerable extent, being about three hundred miles long by from seventy to eighty miles broad. It is much frequented by ostriches, of which we saw great numbers, sometimes single or in pairs, sometimes in flocks of twenty or thirty. Near a brackish fountain, about the middle of this Karroo, called Rhinoceros Fountain, where we unyoked our waggons for part of a day, our Hottentot attendants discovered two ostrich nests. In the one all the eggs had been broken apparently by the birds themselvessuch being their practice on finding their nests discovered. In the other nest were twenty-four fine fresh eggs, which the Hottentots brought to the waggons by a curious mode of conveyance. Pulling off their leathern trousers, they tied them tight at the lower extremities, VOL. I. and then filling the two legs with the eggs slung them over their shoulders; and in this plight, without any notion of indecorum, presented themselves with goodhumoured smiles at the waggons, claiming as their reward an extra allowance of tobacco- -a claim duly allowed. On this and other occasions we picked up a good deal of information respecting the character and habits of the ostrich, especially from an African farmer named Du Ploit, who lived on the borders of the Karroo, about a day's journey from this spot, and who derived a considerable income by hunting ostriches and sending the feathers to Cape Town. Comparing the information thus acquired with that obtained in a similar way by Dr. Lichtenstein (the German naturalist), the following facts may be considered as pretty well authenticated. The male ostrich of South Africa at the time of breeding usually associates to himself from two to six females. The hens lay all their eggs together in one nest; the nest being merely a shallow cavity scraped in the ground, of such dimensions as to be conveniently covered by one of these gigantic birds in incubation. A most ingenious device is employed to save space, and give at the same time to all the eggs their due share of warmth. The eggs are made to stand each with the narrow end on the bottom of the nest and the broad end upwards; and the earth which has been scraped out to form the cavity is employed to confine the 2Z outer circle, and keep the whole in the proper position. The hens relieve each other in the office of incubation during the day, and the male takes his turn at night, when his superior strength is required to protect the eggs or the new-fledged young from the jackalls, tiger-cats, and other enemies. Some of these animals, it is said, are not unfrequently found lying dead near the nest, destroyed by a stroke from the foot of this powerful bird. As many as sixty eggs are sometimes found in and around an ostrich nest; but a smaller number is more common; and incubation is occasionally performed by a single pair of ostriches. Each female lays from twelve to sixteen eggs. They continue to lay during incubation, and even after the young brood are hatched the supernumerary eggs are not placed in the nest, but around it, being designed to assist in the nourishment of the young birds, which, though as large as a pullet when first hatched, are probably unable at once to digest the hard and acrid food on which the old ones subsist. The period of incubation is from thirty-six to forty days. In the middle of the day the nest is occasionally left by all the birds, the heat of the sun being them sufficient to keep the eggs at the proper temperature. An ostrich egg is considered as equal in its contents to twenty-four of the domestic hen. When taken fresh from the nest, as those were which we found near Rhinoceros Fountain, they are very palatable, and are wholesome though somewhat heavy food. The best mode of cooking them is that practised by the Hottentots, and which we adopted under their tuition, namely, to place one end of the egg in the hot ashes, and making a small orifice in the other, keep stirring the contents with a bit of stick till they are sufficiently roasted; and then with a seasoning of salt and pepper you have a very nice omelade. The ostrich of South Africa is a prudent and wary animal, and displays little of that stupidity ascribed to this bird by some naturalists. On the borders of the Cape Colony, at least, where it is eagerly pursued for the sake of its valuable plumage, the ostrich displays no want of sagacity in providing for its own safety or the security of its offspring. It adopts every possible precaution to conceal the place of its nest; and uniformly abandons it, after destroying the eggs, if it perceives that the eggs have been disturbed or the footsteps of man are discovered near it. In relieving each other in hatching, the birds are said to be careful not to be seen together at the nest, and are never observed to approach it in a direct line. Some of the Cape colonists, on the skirts of the Great Karroo and other remote districts, make the pursuit of the ostrich one of their principal and most profitable amusements. Du Ploit showed us five or six skins, of ostriches that he had lately killed. The beautiful white feathers so much prized in Europe are found on the tail only of the male bird. Du Ploit said that it was extremely difficult to get within shot of them, owing to their constant vigilance, and the great distance to which they can see. The fleetest horse, too, will not overtake them unless stratagem be adopted to tire them out; but by several horsemen taking different sides of a large plain, and pursuing them backwards and forwards till their strength is exhausted, they may be at length run down. If followed up too eagerly this chace is not destitute of danger, for the huntsman has sometimes had his thigh-bone broken by a single stroke from the wing or the foot of a wounded ostrich. While jealous and vigilant against the hunter, these birds will often allow travellers in waggons to approach very close to them before they become alarmed. A Hottentot waggondriver once carried the writer of this article almost within pistol-shot of a covey of ostriches, by driving round and round them in a circle and gradually narrowing the distance till they took flight. The food of the ostrich consists of the tops of the various shrubby plants which even the most arid parts of South Africa produce in abundance. This bird is so easily satisfied in regard to water that he is constantly to be found in the most parched and desolate tracts which even the antelopes and the beasts of prey have deserted. His cry at a distance so much resembles that of the lion, that even the Hottentots are said to be sometimes deceived by it. When not hatching they are frequently seen in troops of thirty or forty together, or amicably associated with herds of zebras or quaggas, their fellow-tenants of the wilderness. If caught young the ostrich is easily tamed; but it does not appear that any attempt has been made to apply his great strength and swiftness to any purpose of practical utility. S ON ANCIENT INDIA. ARRIAN s book on India, to which we have already referred, is curious for the short notices which it gives about the animal and vegetable productions of a country which is now virtually included within the empire of a people who, when Arrian wrote, were considered little better than savages by the Greeks and Romans. The Indians, says Arrian, consider the tiger a much fiercer animal than the elephant. Nearchus, Alexander's admiral, says that he saw a tiger's skin, but never the animal itself; the Indians, however, assured him that the tiger is as large as the largest horse, and that as to speed and courage no animal can be compared with him. The tiger will fight even with the elephant, and will leap on his antagonist's head and easily strangle him.-In this description of the tiger we see that love of exaggeration and of the marvellous which has led so many visitors of newly-discovered countries to magnify what they have seen and heard. Though there is often truth at the bottom even of the wildest tales, as in this tiger story, it is not easy to separate it from the falsehood. 3 Of the parrot (Psittacus) Nearchus talks as prodigy, describing the bird and affirming that it can speak like a man. As to this matter, says Arrian, I have seen many of them, and they are now no rarity. The first mention of the parrot is by Ctesias, a Greek physician, resident with Artaxerxes, King of Persia, B. c. 401. His account, as usual with this doctor, savours a little of the extravagant. "The bird called bittacus has the tongue and voice of a man: its size is about that of a hawk, its head is red, and it has a black beard." Ctesias, who had perhaps never seen the bird, is evidently speaking of his beak, which he has transformed into a beard. He goes on to say, "Its neck is of the colour of cinnabar; and it speaks the Indian language just like a man. When it has learned Greek, it speaks that language also just as well as its native tongue." If we had never seen the parrot, it would be rather difficult to extract the truth out of this strange account. We may remark that about five hundred years elapsed between the time of Ctesias and Arrian, who lived under the Emperor Trajan, when it appears that the parrot had become a common bird in the west. Indeed we know from various passages, that the Romans had these. birds domesticated just as we have, and taught them to utter a great variety of words. Nearchus says snakes are caught in India, which are spotted and very swift. One which Python, the son of Antigenes, caught, was four and twenty feet long, and the Indians say there are some much above these dimensions. The Greek doctors, says Nearchus, could never cure any of the soldiers who had been bitten by an Indian snake, and therefore Alexander, during his campaign in that country, always kept a number of the best Indian physicians about him, and notice was given that if any man was bitten he must repair to the king's tent. There are trees in India, says Nearchus, of such a size, that they cover a space not less than five hundred feet in circuit, and ten thousand men might easily find shelter under one of them. Here we have an account, and hardly an exaggerated one, of the banian-tree of India, one of the most wonderful products of the vegetable world. "On the banks of the Nerbudda is a celebrated banian-tree; and though much of it has been swept away by high floods, what still remains is near two thousand feet in circumference, measured round the principal stems. This has been known, in the march of an army, to shelter seven thousand men beneath its shade*." Megasthenes says that the shell which contains the pearl is fished for with nets, and these shells are found in great quantities in one place, clustered together like so many bees, for they have either a king or a queen among them just as bees have. If a man should happen to catch the king, he easily manages to get all the rest. But if the king escapes, it is impossible to take the other shells. Whether Megasthenes, who bears rather a bad name as a notorious liar, is telling the truth here or not, we beg the zoologists to determine for us. MOUNT VESUVIUS. By far the most tremendous eruption of Mount Vesuvius since that of 1779, described by Sir William Hamilton, and in some of its features grander even than that, was the eruption of 1822. The volcano had been unusually quiet for several months, with not so much as a wreath of smoke proceeding from the great crater, or from any other part of it; when suddenly, on a Sunday evening late in the month of October, two columns of fire were seen to ascend from the summit of the great cone. The quantity of fire, however, was inconsiderable. The burning stones, and other ignited matter, seemed all to fall back into the broad crater from which they were ejected; and there was no appearance that this would be anything more than one of the frequent minor eruptions that cause neither mischief nor alarm. During that night the eruption continued as it had begun. On Monday the mountain offered merely a small column of smoke. When the sun set and darkness came on, the fire again was visible on the top of the cone, but during the whole of Monday night there was no increase; and on Tuesday morning the volume of smoke was as insignificant as on the preceding day. But about two hours after noon on the Tuesday all at once a rumbling noise of terrific loudness was heard; and the next instant an immense coluinn of fleecy smoke burst from the great crater, and towered slowly and majestically upward until it attained an extreme elevation in the atmosphere, when it spread itself laterally, and for some time continued to present a consistent and defined form, like that of the Italian pine-tree. In this state it was an exceedingly beautiful object; its form being graceful, and its flaky white colour relieved by the deep, pure blue of an Italian sky. But soon other throbs and groans of the volcano were heard; smoke of a dark brown colour burst from the crater; the head of the gigantic column swelled in size; and spreading it all directions, and becoming darker and darker, soon covered every part of the sky, and lost all shape. By this time alarin had struck not only the population in the immediate neighbourhood of the mountain, but the inhabitants of Naples itself. All thronged to the shores of the bay, or to the hills, or to the outside of the town, to gaze with terrified looks at Vesuvius. But it was not until the fall of night that the scene displayed all its terrors. Then an immense pillar of fire was seen to rise from the cone; and red-hot stones and disrupted rocks to ascend with it, and in their * Edin. Cab. Lib. from Forbes' Oriental Memoirs. descent, either to fall back into the crater, or to roll down the outside of the cone with fearful violence and rapidity. To this there was no pause. The pillar of fire never grew paler or less, and the burning stones and rocks succeeded each other without intermission or decrease. If our readers could imagine ten thousand pieces of ordnance discharging red-hot shot in the air, in conjunction with ten thousand of the greatest rockets, still they would have an inadequate idea of this mighty eruption, and of the noise that accompanied it. The column of fire threw a horrid blood-red glare over part of the bay and a small portion of the sky, while, from the dense clouds of smoke that continually increased, the most vivid forked lightning flashed at every second. The ghastly blue of these long zig-zag flashes contrasted strangely with the red colour of the volcanic fire; and as they darted on either side and high above the head of the pillar rising from the crater, they produced an effect which baffles the description of the pen and the ingenuity of the pencil. To all this must be added that a continuous issue of lava now came from the cone and rolled down towards the sea-as a vast river of fire; whilst another stream of lava scarcely less in magnitude, but not visible from Naples, flowed in the direction of the now partly disinterred city of Pompeii. The writer of this notice, who can but feebly describe the scenes of which he was an eye-witness, though he can never forget them, left his apartments in Naples about midnight to take a nearer view of the eruption. As he went through that crowded city, terror seemed to keep all eyes open; and he met numerous processions, with figures of Madonnas and Saints at their head, hurrying to particular churches and the suburbs facing Vesuvius to implore the protection of Heaven. On the road to Portici the scene was still more melancholy :— thousands and thousands of affrighted peasants from villages on the mountain's sides, and townspeople from Portici, Resina, the Torre del Greco, and other villages, were flying towards Naples with such of their property as they could remove, or were lying out in the fields or on the road near to the walls of the capital. The aged and the infirm, weeping women and helpless children, were huddled together with the conviction that their homes, their gardens, and their vineyards must inevitably be consumed and buried by the descending lava. The English traveller reached Resina, and thence walked up the mountain to the hermitage of San Salvatore, mentioned in our former notice of Vesuvius as being situated on a flat at the foot of the terminating cone in which is the great crater. Here he found several of his country-people, and among them some ladies, whose anxiety to view this sublime spectacle near at hand had overcome their fears. From the hermitage he advanced nearer to the cone, and then descended into a hollow through which the great river of lava was flowing. As he approached it, he saw it come in contact with a fine large vineyard. The low, dried vines were immediately set on fire, and blazing all over in an instant, the destructive element spread to another and another vineyard, until considerable mischief was done. The lava, as in every eruption he has seen, so far from being rapid, was exceedingly slow in its course, flowing only a few feet in a minute. At this time it seemed tending directly to the unfortunate town of the Torre del Greco, which it threatened to overwhelm; but it afterwards turned aside, and, following another hollow, rolled into a wide and deep chasm of the mountain. He then attempted to ascend by the side of this burning river towards the cone; but its heat, which set fire to brush wood and little trees at several feet distance, became in supportable. At every throe of the volcano the mountain shook beneath his feet, and he was already so near that the lapilla from the crater fell upon him like hail. This sort of ash, which is called lapilla, is an exceedingly light and porous substance, resembling pumice-stone; | invasion the castle was greatly enlarged by William Fitzand though it fell so thickly and in pieces as large as walnuts, it caused little annoyance. But the heat, as it has been said, was insupportable; and as the fumes of the sulphur became still more so, causing a most disagreeable sensation of suffocation, he returned to the hermitage. In a short time the quantity of smoke was so great and so black that it obscured the lava that produced it. Nothing could now be seen distinctly except the lightning flashing through a pitchy sky, and a part of the column of fire from the crater looking a lurid red. The noise, tremendous even as far off as Naples, was, at a spot so near as the hermitage, utterly astounding. It should be noticed that this noise was produced by the passage through the air of the matter which the volcano ejected, and then the fall of that matter; for the forked lightning was unaccompanied by thunder-it only played close round and above the crater, and seemed produced by electric fluid issuing thence, and to depend on the dense black clouds that flanked the ascending column of fire. The violence of this eruption was little abated for two days and nights. Fortunately, however, the lava, in the courses it took, did not find any town or village to destroy; and the lapilla and ashes or dust that fell in almost inconceivable quantities in every place in the neighbourhood were not difficult to remove, and indeed (that being the rainy season) were mainly washed away by the heavy rains shortly after. In No. 2 of the Penny Magazine, some other accounts of this same eruption, and particularly of the curious state of the roads at the foot of the mountain, of the appearance presented by Pompeii a few days after, and of the prodigious distance to which the ashes of Vesuvius were carried, have been given in a short article on the city of Pompeii. When the smoke cleared away from the mountain, which it did not for many days, it was perceived that the eruption had carried away the edges or lips of the crater, and materially altered the shape, and lowered the cone, of Vesuvius. The lava by this time, though its outer coating had cooled to such a degree that you could walk over it, still burned beneath; and it was many days more before what had been rivers of liquid fire became cold. Solid ridges were then seen, of what looked like hard, black, brittle stone, or rather like what smiths and iron-founders call clinkers. The main stream of lava was about fifty feet wide on an average. It ran for more than a mile; and had not the eruption ceased and stopped at its fountain head, even in the direction it had taken it would have soon destroyed a beautiful district between Vesuvius and the sea. CARISBROOK CASTLE. THERE are few edifices now remaining in England that lay claim to so venerable an antiquity as the celebrated pile of which we are about to give an account. Carisbrook Castle stands about a mile to the south-west of Newport, the principal town of the Isle of Wight, and consequently almost in the centre of the island. It is erected upon an eminence, from which it overlooks the town of Carisbrook, now an insignificant village, but which, before Newport rose into importance, enjoyed the dignity of metropolis of the Isle of Wight under the feudal lords who possessed the island until 1291, when the last descendant of these petty sovereigns, Isabella de Fortibus, Countess of Devon, and Lady of the Isle of Wight, (widow of William de Fortibus, Earl of Albemarle,) surrendered this portion of her vast inheritance to King Edward I. whilst lying on her death-bed at her manor of Lamb-Heth (Lambeth), of which, as well as of the adjoining manor of Sale-Faux (Vauxhall), she was the proprietor. It is thought by some antiquaries that a portion of the present building was of Saxon construction, as early as the sixth century. After the Norman osborne, Earl of Hereford, to whom it was given by the Conqueror, and additions have since been repeatedly made to it. In the reign of Elizabeth, the buildings were for the first time enclosed by a wall faced with stone, and defended by a deep moat, as they now remain. The space contained within this enclosure amounts to about twenty acres, and the entire circuit of the fortifications is threefourths of a mile. The principal and most ancient part of the castle, however, is that which stands on the west side, next to the entrance, and forms an almost regular parallelogram, with the corners rounded off. Much of this belongs undoubtedly to the Norman age, and a small portion of it is probably Saxon. The keep is built on the north side of the fortress upon the summit of an artificial mount, of nearly sixty feet in height, the ascent to which is by a flight of seventy-two steps. Only the lower apartment now remains, which is an irregular polygon, of about sixty feet broad in the widest part. Over this there appears to have been originally, at least one other story, of which however nothing now remains. The prospect from the top is of great beauty and extent, comprehending not only the whole of the island, but a considerable part of Southampton water, and of some of the adjoining counties. In the centre of the keep is a well of three hundred feet in depth, but which has been for some time covered over as useless and dangerous. In ancient times such an accommodation must have been indispensable in this the heart of the fortress, and the last retreat of the garrison when pressed by a besieging enemy. In the earlier ages of our history Carisbrook Castle was frequently attacked, especially by the French. In 1377 it is related, that a band of invaders of that nation having made an assault upon it, fell into an ambuscade in a narrow lane in the neighbourhood, and were nearly all massacred. The scene of slaughter still retains the name of Deadman's-lane. [The Keep.] |