The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 13, No. 354, January 31, 1829

We cannot even hazard a conjecture as to the number of inhabitants around Lake Erie. They are numerous, and daily augmenting; but with incomparably greater rapidity on the south side of the lake, distributed between the States of New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Ohio, which occupies the largest portion, in 1800, had 45,000 inhabitants; in 1810, 250,760, and, in 1820, 581,434. At present, it cannot have less than 750,000 inhabitants, and there is ample room for more. There are few or no Indians on the north borders of the lake. The Mohawks are placed high up the river Ouse, and the Hurons, from four to ten miles up the river Detroit.

The winds are generally either up or down the lake, and in summer they are in the former direction for two-thirds of the time. In the middle of this season they are commonly mild, but occasionally in perfect tornadoes, accompanied with tremendous lightning and heavy rain. The gales begin in October, and are both violent and dangerous. Many lives are lost annually. The winters are mild and short. The inhabitants do not reckon on the ground being covered by snow more than three or four months. They turn their cattle into the woods in March and April, but the lake remains full of floating ice until May. On the 12th of May, 1821, the steam-boat could not proceed on account of the ice. From an adjacent eminence, the lake was seen to be covered with it in one compact mass, as far as the eye could range. As might be expected, remittent and intermittent fevers are very prevalent in the autumn. The febrile action rises high, and there is usually a topical affection conjoined; to this the stimulating diet and frequent use of spirituous liquors, and exposure to heat, mainly conduce.

Brande's Quarterly Journal.

SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY

Hydrophobia in Foxes

Foxes become mad occasionally, and there have been examples of dogs, which having been bitten by mad foxes, have not caught the disease. In these cases it has been proved that the stomachs of the foxes were filled with wood, earth, stones, leaves, hair, and other substances improper for nourishment. On the contrary, when the madness has been communicated, the stomach and intestines have been found completely empty. From this difference, it is concluded that hunger is the cause of madness in foxes; and this agrees with the results which occurred during and after the rigorous winter of 1826-7, when these animals, with many others, suffered from want of nourishment.—From the French.

Ripening Fruit

Slates have recently been employed in France for hastening the ripening of fruits. The effect was first observed on a slate roof; since which the slates have been placed beneath the fruit on walls.

Hatching Eggs by Hot Mineral Waters

This curious process has lately been practised with great success in the south of France. It consists in putting the eggs into a small basket, suspending the latter in a stove heated by the hot mineral water, and turning the eggs every day. The first trial was attended with success, and no failure was experienced in four repetitions of it.

Lake Erie

The height of Lake Erie above the Atlantic Ocean, has been ascertained to be 565 feet. The barrier which contains it is so low, that, were it only to rise six feet, it would inundate, on its northern and western borders, seven millions of acres, now partly occupied by towns, villages, and farms; and it is estimated that a further rise of six or eight feet would precipitate a vast flood of waters over the state of Illinois, from the south end of Michigan; the great Canadian Lakes then discharging also into the Mexican Gulf.—Brande's Journal.

The Cuckoo

Has done more for our music than musicians may be willing to allow; but it is no more than justice to a despised bird to say, that from it we have derived the minor scale, whose origin has puzzled so many; the cuckoo's couplet being the minor third sung downwards.—Mag. Nat. Hist.

Immense Fir-tree

In the Museum of Natural History at Strasburg, is shown the trunk of a silver fir-tree, from the forest of Hochwald, at Barr, in Alsatia. The tree was 150 feet high, with a trunk perfectly straight and free from branches to the height of 50 feet, after which it was forked with the one shoot 100 feet long, and the other somewhat shorter. The diameter of the trunk at the surface of the ground was 8 feet; estimated age 350 years.—Ibid.

The Weather by Frogs

The editor of the Magazine of Natural History, in his Notes during a recent tour on the continent, says, "at Schwetzingen, in the post-house, we witnessed, for the first time, what we have since seen frequently, an amusing application of zoological knowledge, for the purpose of prognosticating the weather. Two frogs, of the species Ràna arbòrea, are kept in a crystal jar, about 18 inches high, and 6 inches in diameter, with a depth of three or four inches of water at the bottom, and a small ladder reaching to the top of the jar. On the approach of dry weather, the frogs mount the ladder; but, when moisture is expected, they descend into the water. These animals are of a bright green, and in their wild state here, climb the trees in search of insects, and make a peculiar singing noise before rain. In the jar they get no other food than now and then a fly; one of which, we were assured, would serve a frog for a week, though it will eat from six to twelve in a day if it can get them. In catching the flies put alive into the jar the frogs display great adroitness."

Human Remains

The remarkable fact, that no vestiges of human remains have been discovered with those of the more ancient inhabitants of the globe, is at present fully confirmed; nor have any fossil bones of monkeys hitherto been found. Mr. Bakewell, however, observes, that the vast diluvial beds of gravel and clay, and the upper strata in Asia, have not yet been scientifically explored; and both sacred and profane writers agree in regarding the temperate regions of that continent as the cradle of the human race.—Bakewell's Geology.

Food of Bees

The American black willow and the red maple, are the first trees that are visited by bees. They are fond of the crocus, which is the earliest of our bulbous roots. The stercorary and piggery are next resorted to by these insects, and the extract absorbed from them must be used as a tonic. Blossoms of all kinds, excepting those of the red clover and of the honeysuckle, are excellent food; and the bees especially profit by the increased attention bestowed at present on the cultivation of the peach-tree in some parts of America. They not only drink the nectar and abstract the pollen of the flower, but they appropriate the peach itself. We have seen twenty or thirty bees devour a peach in half an hour; that is, they carried the juices of it to their cells. The humming-bird alone can reach the bottom of the nectary of the honeysuckle; but even here the instinct of the bee is seen. The small birds, such as the wren, make an incision on the outside, near the bottom of the flower, and extract a part of the juices. The bee takes advantage of this opening, and avails itself of what is left. The scent of bees is so acute, that every flower which has a powerful odour can be discovered by them at a great distance. Strawberry blossoms, mignonette, wild and garden thyme, herbs of all kinds, apple, plum, cherry, and above all, raspberry blossoms and white clover, are delicious food for them, and a thriving orchard and apiary fitly go together.

North American Review.

Singing Birds

Those who have paid attention to the singing of birds, know well that their voice, energy, and expression differ as widely as in man; and agreeably to this remark, Mr. Wilson (the celebrated ornithologist) says he was so familiar with the notes of an individual wood thrush, that he could recognise him from all his fellows the moment he entered the woods.

Mag. Nat. Hist.

Gigantic Fossils

Some gigantic bones have been exhibited at New Orleans, but the place where they were found is not mentioned in the communication. They consist of one of the bones of the cranium, fifteen or twenty vertebras, two entire ribs, and part of a third, one thigh bone, two bones of the leg, &c. The cranial bone was upwards of twenty feet in its greatest length, about four in extreme width, and it weighed 1,200 lbs. The ribs measured nine feet along the curve, and about three inches in thickness. It had been conjectured that the animal to which these bones belonged was amphibious, and perhaps of the crocodile family. It was also supposed that the animal when alive, must have measured twenty-five feet round the body, and about 130 feet in length.

Trans. Geoloy. Soc.

The Cochineal Insect

Our readers are doubtless aware that cochineal, so extensively used in this country for dying,1 is a beautiful insect abundantly found in various parts of Mexico and Peru. Some of these insects have lately been sent over to Old Spain, and are doing remarkably well on the prickly pear of that country; indeed, they are said to rival even those of Mexico in the quality and brilliancy of their dye.

Their naturalization may doubtless be extended along the shores of the Mediterranean, Sicily, and the different states of Greece. The prickly pear is indigenous in those places, and by little cultivation will afford sufficient nourishment for the cochineal insects. We are also assured, (says an intelligent correspondent of The Times,) that these precious insects were introduced last year on the island of Malta, by Dr. Gorman, on account of the government, and that they are likely to do well on that island.

Dr. Gorman discovered a few weeks since, in the botanic garden at Cambridge, the grona sylvestris, or wild species of cochineal, living among the leaves of the coffee-plants, the acacia, &c. This is the kermes, or gronilla of Spain, about which so much has been said in endeavouring to identify it with the grona fina. At all events, this is the same species as the gronilla found on the hairs of the green oaks in Andalusia; and in some years large and valuable crops of the gronilla are gathered in that part of Spain by the peasantry, and sold to the Moors to dye their scarlet.

The gardener at Cambridge could not inform Dr. Gorman how long the insects had been there, or from whence they came, but they went there by the appellation of "amelca bug." The gardener found these insects very destructive to plants upon which they fostered, and although he tried every means short of injuring the plants to remove them, he found it impossible, as they adhere to the leaves and parts of the stem with such tenacity, and are so prolific, that the young ones are often found spreading themselves over the neighbouring plants. On this account, it would be worth while to attempt the cultivation of the prickly pear in the open air in this country, and place the insects upon them, for in all probability the insects would, by good management, do well.

Fossil Turtle

The remains of a sea turtle have lately been discovered, and are now in the possession of Mr. Deck, of Cambridge. It is imbedded in a mass of septaria, weighing upwards of 150 pounds, with two fine specimens of fossil wood; and was obtained in digging for cement stone, about five miles from Harwich, in three fathoms water, where, as a mass of stone, it had been used for some time as a stepping block.—Bakewell's Geology.

Geological Changes

The following are the writers whose opinions have obtained the greatest celebrity, as advocates for particular systems accounting for the formation and subsequent alteration of the earth:—

Mr. Whitehurst taught that the concentric arrangement of the crust of the globe was destroyed by the expansive force of subterranean fire.

Burnet's theory supposes this crust to have been broken for the production of the deluge.

Leibnitz and Buffon believed the earth to have been liquefied by fire; in fact, that it is an extinguished sun or vitrified globe, whose surface has been operated upon by a deluge. The latter assumes that the earth was 75,000 years in cooling to its present temperature, and that, in 98,000 years more, productive nature must be finally extinguished.

Woodward considered there was a temporary dissolution of the elements of the globe, during which period the extraneous fossils became incorporated with the general mass.

De Luc, Dolomieu, and, finally Baron Cuvier, unite in the opinion, that the phenomena exhibited by the earth, particularly the alternate deposits of terrestrial and marine productions, can only be satisfactorily accounted for by a series of revolutions similar to the deluge.

Among the singular views entertained by men of genius, in the infancy of the science, are those of Whiston, "who fancied that the earth was created from the atmosphere of one comet, and deluged by the tail of another;" and that, for their sins, the antediluvian population were drowned; "except the fishes, whose passions were less violent."

A French geologist conceived that the sea covered the earth for a vast period; that all animals were originally inhabitants of the water; that their habits gradually changed on the retiring of the waves, and "that man himself began his career as a fish!"—Mag. Nat. Hist.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

THE CLIFFORDS OF CRAVEN

There is no district in England which abounds in more beautiful and romantic scenery than the remote and rarely visited district of Craven, in Yorkshire. Its long ridge of low and irregular hills, terminating at last in the enormous masses of Pennygent and Ingleborough,—its deep and secluded valleys, containing within their hoary ramparts of gray limestone fertile fields and pleasant pasturages,—its wide-spreading moors, covered with the different species of moss and ling, and fern and bent-grass, which variegate the brown livery of the heath, and break its sombre uniformity,—its crystal streams of unwearied rapidity, now winding a silent course "in infant pride" through the willows and sedges which fringe their banks, and now bounding with impetuous rage over the broken ledges of rock, which seek in vain to impede their progress from the mountains,—its indigenous woods of yew, and beech, and ash, and alder, which have waved in the winds of centuries, and which still flourish in green old age on the sides and summits of the smaller declivities,—its projecting crags, which fling additional gloom over the melancholy tarns that repose in dismal grandeur at their feet,—its hamlets, and towns, and ivy-mantled churches, which remind the visiter of their antiquity by the rudeness, and convince him of their durability by the massiveness of their construction,—these are all features in the landscape which require to be seen only once, to be impressed upon the recollection for ever. But it is not merely for the lovers of the wild, and beautiful, and picturesque, that the localities of Craven possess a powerful charm. The antiquarian, the novelist, and the poet, may all find rich store of employment in the traditions which are handed down from father to son respecting the ancient lords and inhabitants of the district. It is indeed the region of romance, and I have often felt surprise, that the interesting materials with which it abounds have so seldom been incorporated into the works of fiction which are now issuing with such thoughtless haste from the press of the metropolis. In Dr. Whitaker's History of Craven—which in spite of his extravagant prejudices in favour of gentle blood, and in derogation of commercial opulence, is still an excellent model for all future writers of local history—there is a ground-work laid for at least a dozen ordinary novels. To say nothing of the legendary tales, which the peasantry relate of the minor families of the district, of the Bracewells, the Tempests, the Lysters, the Romilies, and the Nortons,—whose White Doe, however, has been immortalized by the poetry of Wordsworth,—can any thing be more pregnant with romantic adventure than the fortunes of the successive chieftains of the lordly line of Clifford? Their first introduction to the North, owing to a love-match made by a poor knight of Herefordshire with the wealthy heiress of the Viponts and the Vesys! Their rising greatness, to the merited disgrace and death of Piers de Gavestone and his profligate minions! and their final exaltation to the highest honours of the British peerage, which they have now enjoyed for five hundred years, to the strong hand and unblenching heart with which they have always welcomed the assaults of their most powerful enemies! Of the first ten lords of Skipton castle, four died in the field and one upon the scaffold! The "black-faced Clifford," who sullied the glory which he acquired by his gallantry at the battle of Sandal, by murdering his youthful prisoner the Earl of Rutland, in cold blood, at the termination of it, has gained a passport to an odious immortality from the soaring genius of the bard of Avon. But his real fate is far more striking, both in a moral and in a poetical point of view, than that assigned to him by our great dramatist. On the evening before the battle of Towton Field, and after the termination of the skirmish which preceded it, an unknown archer shot him in the throat, as he was putting off his gorget, and so avenged the wretched victims, whose blood he had shed like water upon Wakefield Bridge. The vengeance of the Yorkists was not, however, satiated by the death of the Butcher, as Leland informs us that they called him:—for they attainted him, in the first year of the reign of Edward the Fourth, and granted his estates, a few years afterwards, to the Duke of Gloucester, who retained them in his iron grasp till he lost them with his crown and life at the battle of Bosworth. The history of his son is a romance ready made. His relations, fearing lest the partisans of the house of York should avenge the death of the young Earl of Rutland on the young Lord Clifford, then a mere infant, concealed him for the next twenty-five years of his life in the Fells of Cumberland, where he grew up as hardy as the heath on which he vegetated, and as ignorant as the rude herds which bounded over it. One of the first acts of Henry the Seventh, after his accession to the throne, was to reverse the attainder which had been passed against his father; and immediately afterwards the young lord emerged from the hiding place, where he had been brought up in ignorance of his rank, and with the manners and education of a mere shepherd. Finding himself more illiterate than was usual even in an illiterate age, he retired to a tower, which he built in the beautiful forest of Barden, and there, under the direction of the monks of Bolton Abbey, gave himself up to the forbidden studies of alchemy and astrology. His son, who was the first Earl of Cumberland, embittered the conclusion of his life, by embarking in a series of adventures, which, in spite of their profligacy, or rather in consequence of it, possess a very strong romantic interest. Finding that his father was either unwilling or unable to furnish him with funds to maintain his inordinate riot and luxury, he became the leader of a band of outlaws, and, by their agency, levied aids and benevolences upon the different travellers on the king's highway. A letter of the old lord, his father, which, by the by, is not the letter of an illiterate man, is still extant, in which he complains in very moving terms of his son's degeneracy and misconduct. The young scapegrace, wishing to make his father know from experience the inconvenience of being scantily supplied with money, enjoined his tenantry in Craven not to pay their rents, and beat one of them, Henry Popely, who ventured to disobey him, so severely with his own hand, that he lay for a long time in peril of death. He spoiled his father's houses, &c. "feloniously took away his proper goods," as the old lord quaintly observes, "apparelling himself and his horse, all the time, in cloth of gold and goldsmith's work, more like a duke than a poor baron's son." He likewise took a particular aversion to the religious orders, "shamefully beating their tenants and servants, in such wise as some whole towns were fain to keep the churches both night and day, and durst not come at their own houses."—Whilst engaged in these ignoble practices, less dissonant, however, to the manners of his age than to those of our's, he wooed, and won, and married, a daughter of the Percy of Northumberland; and it is conjectured, upon very plausible grounds, that his courtship and marriage with a lady of the highest rank under such disadvantages on his part, gave rise to the beautiful old ballad of the Nutbrown Maid. The lady, becoming very unexpectedly the heiress of her family, added to the inheritance of the Cliffords the extensive fee which the Percies held in Yorkshire; and by that transfer of property, and by the grant of Bolton Abbey, which he obtained from Henry the Eighth, on the dissolution of the monasteries, her husband became possessor of nearly all the district which stretches between the castles of Skipton on the south, and of Brougham, or as the Cliffords, to whom it belonged, always wrote it, Bromeham, on the north. The second Earl of Cumberland, who was as fond of alchemy and astrology as his grandfather, was succeeded by his son George, who distinguished himself abroad by the daring intrepidity with which he conducted several buccaneering expeditions in the West Indies against the Spaniards, and at home, by the very extensive scale on which he propagated his own and his Maker's image in the dales of Craven. Among the numerous children of whom he was the father, the most celebrated was the Countess of Pembroke and Montgomery, whose long life of virtuous exertion renders her well qualified to figure as the heroine of a tale of chivalry. The anecdotes which are told of this high-spirited lady in the three counties of York, Westmoreland, and Cumberland, are almost innumerable, and relate to circumstances in her life, which, though some are impossible, and others improbable, are still all full of heroic interest and adventure. Her defence of Bromeham Castle against the intrusion of her uncle of Cumberland,—her riding cross-legged to meet the judges of assize, when she acted in person at Appleby as High Sheriff by inheritance of the county of Westmoreland,—her hairbreadth escapes and dangers during the great rebellion, are characteristics of the woman, so striking in themselves, that they would require little adventitious ornament from the writer, who should take them as incidents for poem or romance. Her courage and liberality in public life were only to be equalled by her order, economy, and devotion in private. "She was," says Dr. Whitaker, "the oldest and most independent courtier in the kingdom," at the time of her death.—"She had known and admired queen Elizabeth;– she had refused what she deemed an iniquitous award of king James," though urged to submit to it by her first husband, the Earl of Dorset;– "She rebuilt her dismantled castles in defiance of Cromwell, and repelled with disdain the interposition of a profligate minister under Charles the Second." A woman of such dauntless spirit and conduct would be a fitting subject, even for the pencil of the mighty magician of Abbotsford. A journal of her life in her own hand-writing is still in existence at Appleby Castle. I have heard, that it descends to the minutest details about her habits and feelings, and that it is that cause alone, which prevents its publication.

Blackwood's Magazine.

A VILLAGE FUNERAL IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

The sun was careering brightly in the heavens, and all nature was rejoicing in its unclouded glory, as the funeral procession of Helen Hartlington, and Antony Clifford, wound its toilsome and melancholy way to Bolton Abbey. The sportive Deer were bounding lightly over the hills, and the glad birds were warbling melodiously in the thickets, as if none but the living were moving amongst them; and but for the wild dirge, which mingled with the whispers of the wind, and but for the deep-toned knell which ever and anon rose slowly and mournfully above it, the lone traveller would never have conjectured that Death was conveying its victims through those smiling scenes. As the procession approached the portals of the Abbey, it was met, as was then customary, by the young men and maidens of the surrounding villages, in their best array, who hung upon the hearse chaplets of fragrant flowers, and strewed its path with rosemary, pansies, and rue. At the same moment the solemn chant of the Miserere thrilled upon the soul, and was succeeded, as it gradually melted into silence, by the still more affecting strains of the parting requiem for the dead—Ibid.