instructions of the Spanish fleet, that every ship should be supplied with a chest or cask full of stones, to hurl down upon the boarders.-Barrow's Life of Drake, p. 271.

Ants use a species of aphides as cows, and regularly milk them of the juices they gather on the leaves of the ash-tree, which are their pasture.

Sharks are almost always attended by a couple of "pilot-fish," eight or nine inches long, of which very interesting accounts are given; there are also "suckingfish" generally fastened on their bodies (like the ichneumons in insects), which live by suction.

Marmontel says, it may be doubted whether they are most to blame who cease to please or who cease to be pleased.

Occupation was one of the pleasures of Paradise, and we cannot be happy without it.

A man who is always forgetting his best intentions may be said to be a thoroughfare of good resolutions.

It is said that every man ought to think there is but one good wife in the world, and that he is the happy possessor of that treasure.

St. Patrick scooped out Loch Neagh, and having thrown the mud into the Irish Channel, created the Isle of Man, which would, it is said, still fit exactly into the basin of Loch Neagh, if replaced.

In working the quarries at Oreston to procure stones for the Plymouth Breakwater, an extraordinary discovery was made in the midst of the substrata. At the depth of sixty-five feet from the surface, and twenty-five feet from the margin of the sea, a nodule of clay, twenty-five feet in length by about twelve feet thick, was imbedded in the limestone. Enveloped in this clay were found the bones of a rhinoceros, in a more perfect state than they have yet been met with in any other place.-Devonshire Illustrated.

Sir G. Head mentions an effect of a very low temperature which he says is by no means unusual, viz., that the clothes become charged with electric fluid, and emit sparks. Even the comb which he passed through his hair did the same.-Forest Scenes, p. 166.

The cloud of condensed vapour proceeding from the Falls of Niagara is visible forty miles off.-Ibid, p. 175.

The great utility of the bark of the birch-tree is very remarkable. Not only are the canoes, in which the American Indians trust themselves on a lake sufficiently

boisterous some miles from the shore, made of it, but also all sorts of small cups and dishes. Besides it burns like pitch; splits into threads which serve for twine; and the flimsy part, near the outside, may be written upon in pencil, making no bad substitute for paper.-Ibid, p. 283.

When Lord and Lady Aylmer were returning from Canada in the 'Pique' (Captain Rous), there arose a terrific storm, in which they were nearly lost; but they were unconscious till after they had landed that the great danger arose from a leak in the vessel, into which the suction of the water drew an immense bag of biscuits, which effectually and providentially stopped up the hole.

It is but to be able to say that they have been to such a place, or have seen such a thing, that, more than any real taste for it, induces the majority of the world to incur the trouble and fatigue of travelling.-Marryatt's America, vol. ii, p. 179.

Colonel Davidson says, after a bad day's sport: "Candour compels me to acknowledge, that brought nothing but disappointment home with us. Davidson's Travels in India, vol. ii, p. 243.

Washington Irving says:

we

"Power attracts power, and fortune creates fortune.” -Conq. of Granada, vol. ii., p. 171.

The same author says:

"An unfortunate death atones with the world for a multitude of errors."-Ibid, p. 170.

The same author describes the people of Granada as being at their wits' end to devise some new combination or arrangement, by which an efficient government might be wrought out of two bad kings.—Ibid, p. 280.

There is much danger in allowing talent to atone for dangerous opinions. Mrs. Grant's Letters, vol. ii, p. 37.

Mrs. Grant

says to a friend:

"You have relations to lose, whose value would be trebled in your estimation, were you deprived of them.” -Ibid, vol. ii, p. 72.

Brummell said:

"Were I to see a man and dog drowning together in the same pond, and no one looking on, I would prefer saving the dog."-Brummell's Memoirs, vol. ii., p. 161.

Sir Robert Godschall hearing of a gentleman who twice had the small-pox, and died of it, inquired with anxiety :

"Did he die the first time or the second ?"

A gentleman who had been puzzling over a black letter

copy of Chaucer at last threw it down in despair, saying to Charles Lamb:

"In these old books, there is sometimes a great deal of indifferent spelling."

It might be curious to know whether the pronunciation of our ancestors was as different as their spelling from modern times, and whether a man of the present day could have understood the spoken more than the written speech of his own ancestors. Probably not, but this is a point that there is no means of proving either way.

A very arbitrary member of the Club was asked one day what had become of the committee which had been appointed to assist him in managing it. He avoided as long as possible making any reply, but on the question being pressed, he answered:

"I found they were all unanimous against me, so I abolished the committee."

During the horrors of the French Revolution, a man who kept a ménagerie at Paris had a tiger from Bengal, of the largest species, commonly called the Royal Tiger. But when everything royal became abolished, he was afraid of a charge of incivism, and instead of "Tigre Royal,” put on his sign-board, "Tigre National." (An excellent symbol of the spirit of the mob).-Scott's Napoleon.

Sterne, speaking of giving charity to a beggar, wrote: