his volition or his reason, and he falls like a mass of pure water. He then revives, and in a wild delirium surveys a scene which, for a while, he is unable to define by description or imitation.

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How strange is it that the Tuccoa Falls and Table Mountain are not more familiar to Americans! Either of them would distinguish an empire or state in Europe.

FORMATION OF CHARACTER.-A taste for use ful reading is an effectual preservative from vice. Next to the fear of God implanted in the heart, nothing is a better safeguard than the love of good books. They are the hand-maids of virtue and religion. They quicken our sense of duty, unfold our responsibilities, strengthen our principles, confirm our habits, inspire in us the love of what is right and useful, and teach us to look with disgust upon what is low, and grovelling, and vicious. It is with good books as it is with prayer; the use of them will either make us leave off sinning, or leave off reading them. No vicious man has a fondness for read. ing. And no man who has a fondness for this exercise is in much danger of becoming vicious. He is secured from a thousand temptations to which he would otherwise be exposed. He has no inducement to squander away his time in vain amusements, in the haunts of dissipation, or in the corrupting intercourse of bad company. He has a higher and nobler source of enjoyment to which he can have access. He can be happy alone; and is indeed never less alone, than when alone. Then he enjoys the sweetest, the purest, the most improving society, the society of the wise, the great, and the good; and while he holds delightful converse with these, his companions and friends, he grows into a likeness to them, and learns to look down, as from an eminence of purity and light, upon the low-born pleasures of the dissipated and profligate.

The high value of mental cultivation is another weighty motive for giving attendance to reading. What is it that mainly distinguishes a man from a brute? Knowledge. What makes the vast difference there is between savage and civilized nations? Knowledge. What forms the principal difference between men as they ap. pear in the same society? Knowledge. What raised Franklin from the humble station of a

SPEAKING HEADS.-Next to the eye, the ear is the most fertile source of our illusions, and the ancient magicians seem to have been very successful in turning to their purposes the doctrines of sound. The principal pieces of acoustic mechanism used by the ancients were speaking or singing heads, which were constructed for the purpose of representing the gods, or of uttering oracular responses. Among these, the speaking head of Orpheus, which uttered its responses at Lesbos, is one of the most famous. It was celebrated, not only throughout Greece, but even Persia, and it 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. Oden, the mighty magician of the North, who imported into Scandinavia the magical arts of the East, possessed a speaking head, said to be of the sage Minos, which he had encased in gold, and which uttered responses that had all the authority of divine revelation. The cele brated Gerbert, who filled the Papal Chair, A. D. 1000, under the name of Sylvester II, 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 earthen ware, 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, "these, Gods! the labor of thirty years."-Dr. Brewster supposes, that the sound was conveyed to these machines by pipes from a person in another apartment to the mouth of the figure.-[Sir D. Brewster's Letters on Natural Magic.]

No man can set bounds to its utility and the modes of its application. We shall not be surprised to find it, before the year is out, employed to extinguish fires, to blast rocks, or in excavating the earth for canals; some of us may live to see men enabled, by its assistance, to traverse the air, or explore the depths of the ocean; and who knows even but that its energies may in some future age, when man's knowledge and ingenuity shall have reached their highest state of perfection, be successfully directed to the discovery of the philosopher's stone, the north-west passage, and the long-sought for "perpetual motion?"

TO PREPARE STARCH FROM POTATOES.Grind a quantity of potatoes into a pulp by rubbing them on a plate of tin in which a number of holes have been made, then put them into a hair sieve, and pour cold water over them as long as a milky liquid passes through. This liquid is to be received into a basin, and when a whitish powder has settled at the bottom, the liquid is to be poured off it, and the powder repeatedly washed with spring water, until it be comes perfectly white. When the last liquor has been poured off, the basin is to be placed in a warm place till the starch be perfectly dry. Observation.-Twenty pounds of good potatoes, treated in this way, generally yield about four pounds of starch.

MODE OF THRASHING IN GERMANY.-A laborer's hire is his meat and two goschens, about two pence half-penny a day, unless he happens to be employed in thrashing, in which case he usually makes a contract for a sixteenth measure of the whole quantity of grain he thrashes out. As the entire village resounds from end to end with this operation, I shall state a few particulars respecting it which are likely to es cape a more fugitive traveller, or one less curious in "re-rustica." Thrashing here is executed with a skill unknown to a less musical people. To be an expert thrasher it appears to me as requisite to have had a thrashing master, as a master for any other given art or accomplishment. They thrash with a perfect regard to time, in all the alternations of triple and common measure, making the transition from one to the other with the greatest exactness.

eight flails in concert; when it is a simple quarter, and one of the performers happens to drop out, which is frequently the case, the transition is immediately, and without the least interruption, into triplets. Occasionally the effect is graced by some very delicate gradations of forte and piano, raliemando, crescendo, morcendo, accellerando-and the whole executed with as much precision as if a note book lay before each performer. When the piano is to be particularly delicate, the tips of the flails are used, which affords an opportunity of combining grace with dexterity; it is then the merest scarcely audible tap, and costs the least possible effort. Then comes the crescendo, swell. ing into a tremendous barn-echoing staccatodownright thrashing in fact; and what I particularly wish to enforce upon the farmer, the flail during the whole movement is never raised higher than the head, which I could not help especially taking a note of for the good of our practical agriculturists, when I recollect how much unnecessary brawn is expended on our thrashing floor to no purpose. Thus we see his genius for music never forsakes the German in any situation or occupation of life; it follows him into his commonest employments; and no doubt is their advantage, on the principle of "studio fallente laborem," in making it in all similar exertions an arithmetical operation. What is the story of Amphion building his Thebes, but an allegorical illustration of the same benefit of lightening labor by music? The German thrasher has the advantage of the Theban architect, for he turns the labor itself into a kind of music, though somewhat monotonous to be sure.-[Sir A. B. Falkner's Visit to Germany.]

EARLY FRUGALITY.-In early childhood you lay the foundation of poverty or riches, in the habits you give your children. Teach them to save every thing-not for their own use, for that would make them selfish-but for some use. Teach them to share every thing with their playmates; but never allow them to destroy anything. I once visited a family where the most exact economy was observed; yet nothing was mean or uncomfortable. It is the character of true economy to be as comfortable with a little, as others can be with much. In this family, when the father brought home a pack

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SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION.-That animal bodies are liable to internal combustion is a fact which was well known to the ancients. Many cases which have been adduced as examples of spontaneous combustion are merely cases of individuals who were highly susceptible of strong electrical excitation. In one of these cases, however, Peter Bovisteau asserts that the sparks of fire thus produced reduced to ashes the hair of a young man; and John de Viana informs us, that the wife of Doctor Frielas, physician to the Cardinal de Royas, Archbishop of Toledo, emitted by perspiration an inflammable matter of such a nature that, when the ribbon she wore over her shift was taken from her, and exposed to the cold air, it instantly took fire and shot forth like grains of gunpowder. Peter Borelli has recorded a fact of the very same kind respecting a peasant whose linen took fire, whether it was laid up in a box when wet or hanging in the open air. The same author speaks of a woman who, when at the point of death, vomited flames, and Thomas Bartholia mentions this phenomenon, as having often happened to persons who were great drinkers of wine and brandy. Ezekiel de Castro mentions the singular case of Alexan. drinus Megeteus, a physician, from one of whose vertebrals there issued a fire which scorched the eyes of the beholders, and Kantius relates, that during the wars of Godfrey of Bologne, certain people of the territory of Ni. vers were burning with invisible fire, and that some of them cut off a foot or a hand where the burning began in order to arrest the calamity. -[D. Brewster's Letters on Natural Magic.]

ROWLAND'S FORCING PUMP.-According to public notice, a trial was made on Wednesday of the power of this machine to supply the engines in case of fire, and the extent to which it would propel the water through the hose. The hose was laid in Chapel street, a thousand feet in length, extending from the mill in Union st.

to Forbes' buildings, corner of Church and Chapel streets. At the signal given, the pump was set in motion-in two minutes the water reached the extent of the hose, and in four minutes the engine began to play on the buildings, throwing the water upon the roof of Forbes' four stories-the pump furnishing much more than the engine could deliver, probably enough for two or three. The immense importance of this machine, in case of fire, is now so decidedly established, that we think our city authorities can no longer delay in securing its benefits. For supplying water, it is worth all the other means in the city combined; and we trust that the niggardly policy of saving two or three hundred dollars and leaving hundreds of thousands in jeopardy will no longer be pursued, by the guardians of the public weal. The advantages of the pump can be extended with equal facility in every direction, and we believe similar improvements may be made in other parts of the city, by which all may derive equal benefit and protection.-[New-Haven Herald.]

SELF-ACTING FIRE ALARM.-An invention, christened with this name, was brought to this office last week for short exhibition. The purpose of the machine is to give timely alarm when fire occurs in any part of the house in which it is placed. Only one is necessary to a house of the largest size, and if rightly put up, cannot fail to give seasonable warning of the approaching danger. It is intended to be located in the sleeping-room of the "man of the house," and if desired, will also answer the purpose of a fashionable and convenient looking-glass. Its communication with the other apartments is accomplished by means of small cords, which pass entirely round each room in the upper corners of the walls, and are supported by small pullies. Whenever a room takes fire the string burns off, and this puts the "Alarm" in operation, and unless the tenant is an uncommon sleepy fellow, his house may be saved with very little trouble. A further de scription at this time, is perhaps unnecessary, as the advertisements and handbills already be. fore the public may be referred to. As far as our opinion goes, we believe the invention above mentioned to be a simple and safe agent for the security of our fellow citizens against the continual losses of life and property to which they are liable.-[Brooklyn Advertiser, L. I.]

OF THE RAINBOw.-The phenomena of the rainbow consists, as every person knows, of two bows, or arches, stretching across the sky, and tinged with all the colors of the prismatic spectrum. The internal or principal rainbow, which is often seen without the other, has the violet rays innermost, and the red rays outer. most. The external, or secondary rainbow, which is much fainter than the other, has the violet color outermost, and the red color innermost. Sometimes supernumery bows are seen accompanying the principal bows.

As the rainbow is never seen unless when the sun shines, and when rain is falling, it has been universally ascribed to the decomposition of white light by the refraction of the drops of rain, and their reflection within the drops. The production of rainbows by the spray of waterfalls, or by drops of water scattered by a brush or syringe, is an experimental proof of their origin.

Let an observer be placed with his back to the sun, and his eye directed through a shower of rain to the part of the sky opposite to the sun. As the drops of rain are spherical particles of water, they will reflect and refract the sun's rays, according to the usual laws of refraction and reflection. Thus in the preceding figure, where s s s s represent the sun's rays, and A the place of a spectator, in the centre of the two bows (the planes of which are supposed to be perpendicular to his view), the drops a and b produce part of the inner bow by two refractions and one reflection; and the drops c and d part of the exterior bow, by two refractions and one reflection.

This holds good at whatever height the sun may chance to be in a shower of rain; if high, the rainbow must be low; if the sun be low, the rainbow is high: and if a shower happen in a vale when a spectator is on a mountain, he often sees the bow completed to a circle below him. So in the spray of the sea, or a cascade, a circular rainbow is often seen; and it is but the interposition of the earth that prevents a circular spectrum from being seen at all times, the eye being the vertex of a cone, whose base (the bow) is in part cut off by the earth.

It is only necessary, for the formation of a rainbow, that the sun should shine on a dense cloud, or a shower of rain, in a proper situation, or even on a number of minute drops of water, scattered by a brush or by a syringe, so that the light may reach the eye after having undergone a certain angular deviation, by means of various refractions and reflections, as already stated. The light which is reflected by the external surface of a sphere, is scattered almost equally in all directions, setting aside the difference arising from the greater efficacy of oblique reflection: but when it first enters the drop, and is there reflected by its posterior surface, its deviation never exceeds a certain angle, which depends on the degree of refrangibility, and is, therefore, different from light of different colors: and the density of the light being the greatest at the angle of greatest deviation, the appearance of a luminous arch is produced by the rays of each color at its appropriate distance. The rays which never enter the drops produce no other effect than to cause a brightness, or haziness, round the sun where the reflection is the most