The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 20, No. 566, September 15, 1832

In the end, I advanced so far as to give some lectures in geometry, and this too produced a happy moral developement.

Lessons in music formed part of our evening employment, and those being, like geography, a sort of amusement, they were regularly succeeded by grave and edifying reading, and by such reflections as I took care to suggest for their improvement.

Most of the young adults of the village were present at such lessons, as were within the reach of their comprehension, and as the children had a separate instructor, the young women and girls of Dormilleuse, who were growing up to womanhood, were now the only persons for whom a system of instruction was unprovided. But these stood in as great need of it as the others, and more particularly as most of them were now manifesting Christian dispositions. I therefore proposed that they should assemble of an evening in the room, which the children occupied during the day, and I engaged some of my students to give them lessons in reading and writing. We soon had twenty young women from fifteen to twenty-five years of age in attendance, of whom two or three only had any notion of writing, and not half of them could read a book of any difficulty. While Ferdinand Martin was practising the rest of my students in music, I myself and two of the most advanced, by turns, were employed in teaching these young women, so that the whole routine of instruction went on regularly, and I was thus able to exercise the future schoolmasters in their destined profession, and both to observe their method of teaching, and to improve it. I thus superintended teachers and scholars at the same time.

It is quite impossible for those who have not seen the country, to appreciate the devotedness to the Christian cause, which could induce Neff to entertain even the thought of making the dreary and savage Dormilleuse his own head quarters from November to April, and of persuading others to be the companions of his dismal sojournment there. I learn from a memorandum in his Journal, that the severity of that, winter commenced early. "We have been in snow and ice since the first of November, on this steep and rugged spot, whose aspect is more terrible and severe than any thing can be supposed to be in France." He himself was the native of a delightful soil and climate, and even some of the mountaineers, whom he drew to that stern spot, were inhabitants of a far less repulsive district, but had yet made it their custom to seek a milder region than their own, during the inclemency of an Alpine winter. To secure attendance and application, when once his students were embarked in their undertaking, he selected this rock, where neither amusement, nor other occupations, nor the possibility of frequent egress or regress, could tempt them to interrupt their studies:—and he had influence enough to induce them to commit themselves to a five months' rigid confinement within a prison-house, as it were, walled up with ice and snow.

It was a long probation of hardship. Their fare was in strict accordance with the rest of their situation. It consisted of a store of salted meat, and rye bread, which had been baked in autumn, and when they came to use it, was so hard, that it required to be chopped up with hatchets, and to be moistened with hot water. Meal and flour will not keep in this mountain atmosphere, but would become mouldy,—they are, therefore, obliged to bake it soon after the corn is threshed out. Our youthful anchorites were lodged gratuitously by the people of Dormilleuse, who also liberally supplied them with food for fuel, scarce as it was, but if the pastor had not laid in a stock of provisions, the scanty resources of the village could not have met the demands of so many mouths, in addition to its native population.

A note of the expenditure upon this occasion will excite some wonder in the minds of many readers, who are not aware how much good may be done at a small cost, when the stream of bounty is made to pass through proper channels.

"Our disbursements for the adult school, including candles, ink, and paper, the salary of an assistant master, and food for the sixteen or seventeen students who came from a distance, did not exceed 560 francs (about 22l. 10s.) for four months. Of this sum I can replace a little more than two-thirds, because some of the students have repaid their share of the expense, and even the poorest furnished their quota of bread. We did not provide commons for those who belonged to Dormilleuse, because they boarded at home."

THE NATURALIST.

NOTES

Abridged from the Magazine of Natural History

Habits of the Fern Owl, by Rusticus.—Beyond Godalming, on the Liphook road, is a great tract of barren heathy land: it stretches wide in every direction, and includes immense peat-bogs, and several large ponds. One particular district, called the Pudmores, is the favourite resort of the fern owl. In the daytime, while walking across the moor, you will every now and then put up one of these singular birds; their flight is perfectly without noise, and seldom far at a time: but of an evening it is far different; about twenty minutes after sunset, the whole moor is ringing with their cry, and you see them wheeling round you in all directions. They look like spectres; and, often coming close over you, assume an unnatural appearance of size against a clear evening sky. I believe its very peculiar note is uttered sitting, and never on the wing. I have seen it on a stack of turf with its throat nearly touching the turf, and its tail elevated, and have heard it in this situation utter its call, which resembles the birr of the mole-cricket, an insect very abundant in this neighbourhood. I have almost been induced to think this noise serves as a decoy to the male mole-cricket, this being occasionally found in the craw of these birds when shot. Those who may not be acquainted with the cry of the bird or the insect, may imagine the noise of an auger boring oak, or any hard wood, continued, and not broken off, as is the noise of the auger, from the constant changing of the hands. The eggs of the fern owl have frequently been brought me by boys: they are only two in number, greyish white, clouded and blotched with deeper shades of the same colour; the hen lays them on the soil, which is either peat, or a fine soft blue sand, in which she merely makes a slight concavity, but no nest whatever. The first cry of the fern owl is the signal for the night-flying moths to appear on the wing, or rather the signal for the entomologist expecting them.

The migratory periods of this bird are not well ascertained; but I have known one shot Nov. 27th, 1821, and they had arrived April 28th, 1830. As there is scarcely a British bird of which so little is known, the following notes may be interesting:—It has been seen perched on the bar of a gate, not across, but according to its length, with the tail elevated; uttering its peculiar sounds; but when perching, as it often does, on the summit of a twig of oaken copse, it fixes upright, with the feet grasping the twig, and not sitting; just as the swift perches against a wall. One was killed in broad daylight, perched on the upper side of a sloping branch of considerable size; the head was uppermost, and it rested on the feet and tarsi, the latter being bare on the under surface for that purpose. Its attitude in this situation much resembled that of a woodpecker. One that was kept alive with its wing broken sat across the finger, like another bird. When about to take flight it makes a cracking noise, as if the wings smote together, after the manner of a pigeon.

Harbingers of Spring.—One of the earliest intimations of approaching spring is the appearance of the Phalaena primaria, and of one or two other moths, floating with expanded wings on the surface of ponds and still water. A butterfly, Caltha palustris, is commonly drawn forth from its winter quarters by one of the first warm and sunny days that happen to occur in the month of March: hence it has been termed fallax veris indicium, (the deceitful token of spring.) In the Isle of Wight it has been seen on the wing the 8th of January, 1805.—Rev. W.T. Bree.

Ravages of the Beetle.—Mr. Bree describes the Scarabaeus horticola as "exceedingly destructive in gardens. Being on a visit in Staffordshire, in the month of June, I observed whole beds of strawberries (not hautboys) likely to prove nearly barren, though they had flowered copiously, and the season, was favourable for a crop. I was informed that the failure was owing to the fernshaws (the provincial name for the beetle), which are accused of eating the anthers and interior parts of the blossom. In the same garden my attention was also called to the ravages committed by this depredator on the apples, by gnawing holes in the young fruit; which consequently dies and falls of, or at least becomes much blemished. I was assured that the fernshaws had been detected in the fact; and I am rather disposed to think that the charge in both instances is well founded. I had long been aware of the insect's partiality for rosebuds and blossoms, which it greedily devours. In the north of England, where it is much used as a killing bait for trout, the insect is commonly known by the name of 'bracken-clock,' a name of the same import with the Staffordshire term 'fernshaw,' each signifying 'fern-beetle.'" Another correspondent says—Scarabaeus horticola, called "the chovy" in Norfolk, is there deemed very injurious to apple-trees, and other trees and plants, as it feeds both on leaves and all the parts of the flower. Chovies were abundant at Thetford, Norfolk, about ten years ago; but, as far as my experience has reached, always rare about Bury St. Edmunds. On the 9th of June, 1829, I saw one in the botanic garden of the last-named town, flitting about a flowering bush of the Provence rose.

Ink of the Cuttle-fish.—[By way of addenda if not corrigenda to our description of the Cuttle-fish, at page 104 of the present volume, we quote the following observations.]

"When in danger, cuttle-fish are said to eject a copious black liquor through their funnel or excrementary canal, as a means of obscuring the circumfluent water, and concealing themselves from all foes:—

"Long as the craftie cuttle lieth sureIn the blacke cloud of his thicke vomiture."15

This inky fluid is a very remarkable secretion, produced in a bag that lies near the liver, and sometimes even embosomed in it, and communicating with the funnel by means of its own excretory duct. The interior of the bag is not a simple cavity; it is filled with a soft cellular or spongy substance in which the ink is diffused. This has no relation or analogy with bile, as Munro believed; but it is a peculiar secretion, somewhat glutinous, readily miscible with water, and variable in point of shade, according to the species of cephalopode from which it comes; so that, as Dr. Grant remarks, a more intimate acquaintance with this character might be useful in tracing relations among the different species. The colour of the ink in Loligo sagittata16 is a deep brown, approaching to yellowish brown when much diluted, and corresponds remarkably with the coloured spots on the skin of that species; but in Octopus ventricosus the colour of the ink is pure black, and it is blackish grey when diluted on paper. "The ink (Edin. Phil. Journ. vol. xvi. p. 316.) brought in a solid state from China has the same pure black colour as in the Octopus ventricosus, and differs entirely in its shade, when diluted, from that of the Loligo sagittata, as may be seen from specimens of these three colours on drawing paper. Swammerdam suspected the China ink to be made from that of the Sepia; Cuvier found it more like that of the Octopus and Loligo; but different kinds of that substance are brought from China, probably made from different genera of these animals, where they abound of gigantic size." At the present day, according to Cuvier, an ink is prepared from the liquor of these animals in Italy, which differs from the genuine China ink only in being a little less black. (Mem., vol. i. p. 4.) Davy found it to be "a carbonaceous substance mixed with gelatine;" but on a more careful analysis, Signor Bizio procured from it a substance sui generis [peculiar in kind], which he calls melania. "The melania is a tasteless, black powder, insoluble in alcohol, ether, and water, while cold, but soluble in hot water: the solution is black. Caustic alkalies form with it a solution even in the cold, from which the mineral acids precipitate it unchanged. It contains much azote: it dissolves in, and decomposes, sulphuric acid: it easily kindles at the flame of a candle: it has been found to succeed, as a pigment, in some respects better than China ink." (Edin. Phil. Journ., vol. xiv. p. 376.)

LUXURIANCE OF NATURE

Upper Louisiana (we are told) has all the trees known in Europe, besides others that are here unknown. The cedars are remarkably fine; the cotton trees grow to such a size, that the Indians make canoes out of their trunks; hemp grows naturally; tar is made from the pines on the sea coast; and the country affords every material for ship-building. Beans grow to a large size without culture; peach trees are heavily laden with fruit; and the forests are full of mulberry and plum trees. Pomegranates and chestnut trees are covered with vines, whose grapes are very large and sweet. There are three or four crops of Indian corn in the year; as there is no other winter besides some rains. The grass grows to a great height, and towards the end of September is set on fire, and in eight or ten days after, the young grass shoots up half a foot high.

P.T.W

THE GATHERER

Annual Cost of a Private Soldier.—The daily pay of a foot soldier is one shilling, with a penny for beer; the daily pay of a life-guardsman is 1s. 11-1/2d. and the annual cost is 74l. 4s. 11d. per man, besides horse and allowances, or 1l. 8s. 6d. per week; dragoons, 56l. 11s. 5d. per annum, or 1l. 1s. 9d. per week; footguards 34l. 6s. or 13s. 2d. per week; infantry, 31l. per annum, or 11s. 10d. per week. A regiment of horse soldiers, of about 360, officers and men, cost about 25,000l. per annum. The wages of seamen in the Royal Navy are 2l. 12s. per month, or 13s. per week; and 1l. 12s. or 8s. per week more, are allowed for their provisions.—Examiner.

The Morning Chronicle report of the examination of Mr. Horsley, the Governor of the Bank of England, has the following odd question:—"Is there any large proportion of London noses circulated by the Branch Banks?"—"There are none."

Convenient Deafness.—A few days since at the Court of Assizes, in Paris, a M. Lecluse, who was summoned on the jury, produced a certificate that he was deaf, and consequently unable to serve. The Advocate General was observing to the court, in no very elevated tone of voice, that the certificate was inadmissible, since it bore date so far back as June 24, 1813, when M. Lecluse immediately set him right by stating that the date was July 13, instead of June 24, 1813. This at once decided the question, as it proved the acuteness of his hearing, and the Court ordered him to be sworn.

Walnut Water.—Dr. Sully, of Wiveliscombe, a very eminent medical practitioner, in a letter to the editor of the Taunton Courier, has communicated the mode of preparing this article, which has been found so effectual a remedy in subduing nausea and vomiting:—"Take a quarter of a peck of walnuts at the time they are fit for pickling; bruise them, and, with four ounces of fresh angelica seeds, put them into an alembic, with a bottle of French brandy, and enough water to prevent empyreuma, or burning; distil from this mixture a quart, which is called walnut water, and administer a wineglass-full to the patient, to be repeated every half-hour till the vomiting ceases." Dr. Sully says that he communicated this recipe to Sir Astley Cooper and Mr. Abernethy, both of whom frequently used it in their practice, and that it has been prepared by a house in London for him for the last 40 years.—Morning Herald.

The first Review.—Reviews of books originated in the Journal des Scavans, projected by Dennis de Sallo, in 1664.

Hint to Tea Makers.—Put a small quantity of carbonate of soda into the pot along with the tea, and this, by softening the water, will accelerate the infusion amazingly. Should the water be hard, it will increase the strength of your tea at least one half.—Mechanics' Magazine.

It is a curious fact, that the Chinese make no use of milk, either in its liquid state, or in the shape of curds, butter, or cheese.

Chairing Members of Parliament.—This custom was taken from the practice in the northern nations, of elevating the king after his election, upon the shoulders of the senators. The Anglo-Saxons carried their king upon a shield when crowned. The Danes set him upon a high stone, placed in the middle of twelve smaller. Bishops were chaired upon elections, as were abbots and others.

Illumination was formerly common not only upon occasions of joy, but even the return home of the master of the house. Some writers have contended, but evidently by mistake, that it was only a part of religious ceremonies. It is even mentioned in Ossian's Carthon, and obtained in the middle ages. The classical illuminations were made not only with lamps, but links, and wax flambeaux.

Lord Mayor.—The first Lord Mayor who went by water to Westminster, was John Norman, in 1453. Sir John Shaw, according to Lambard, was the first who rode on horseback, in 1501; but Grafton says, correctly, that they rode before. Sir Gilbert Heathcote was the last, in Queen Anne's time. Before building the Mansion-House, the first stone of which was laid Oct. 25, 1739, the Lord Mayor resided in the hall of some Company, hired for the term of the mayoralty.

Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given away–you may do practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.

1

The duke was an important personage in the hostilities between his soverign and the parliament. In 1642, he was appointed general of all his majesty's forces, raised north of Trent, with very full powers. He levied a considerable army at his own expense, with which he for some time maintained the king's cause in the north. He, however, possessed little of the skill of a general, though he was a splendid soldier of fortune. He gained a signal victory over Lord Fairfax, near Bradford, and some others of less importance; but he was utterly defeated at Marston Moor, after which he left the country in despair of the royal cause. He resided for some time at Antwerp with his lady, where they were frequently in much distress. On his return to England, at the Restoration, he was received with the respect due to his unshaken fidelity, and in 1664, was created Earl of Ogle and Duke of Newcastle. He passed the remainder of his life in retirement, devoting himself to literature, to which he was much attached, and attending to the repair of his fortune. He died in 1676, aged 84, and was buried with his duchess in Westminster Abbey. His literary labours are now almost forgotten, if we except his principal production, "A new method and extraordinary invention to dress Horses," &c., which has obtained much praise from judges in the art. Grainger quaintly remarks, that "the Duke of Newcastle was so attached to the Muses, that he could not leave them behind him, but carried them to the camp, and made Davenant the poet-laureate, his lieutenant-general of the ordnance." His second wife was Margaret, the imaginative Duchess of Newcastle, who never revised what she had written, lest it "should disturb her following conceptions," by which means she composed plays, poems, letters, philosophical discourses, orations, &c.; of these she left enough to fill thirteen folio volumes, ten of which have actually been printed. Lord Orford has drawn a curious picture of the literary characters both of this lady and her husband. They were panegyrised and flattered by learned contemporaries; for, in those days flattery was well paid. It is, however, gratifying to learn that the duchess derives infinitely more honour from her fine character as a wife and mistress of a family, than from either her literary productions or these panegyrics.

2

Rhode's Excursions, Part iv.

3

Crébillon, author of Catalina.

4

Groseilles, literally; gooseberries or currents; but we have taken the liberty here, and elsewhere, slightly to deviate from the original text, in compliment to English customs, tastes, idioms, &c.

5

Russia: whose Empress, Catherine II, is intended by the succeeding sentence.

6

The well-known poetic vanity of Voltaire must be taken into full account, when he thus talks of the easiness of producing a (modern) Sophocles, or an Euripides; perhaps he thought his own tragedies equal, or superior to theirs; and for what follows, the French national prejudice in favour of their own dramatic writers, and which is far more laudable than the English indifference to the interests of the drama, should be recollected.

7

To "astonished" the author might almost have added alarmed, or disgusted. The conversant in music, know that song in parts, i.e. harmonized, is peculiarly distasteful to the ear unaccustomed to it; song, in unison, is the natural music of savage man; harmony is art; to be pleased with it therefore, implies a mind and ear cultivated and refined. The same remark hold good with instrumental music.

8

We apologize to our zealous correspondent for omitting the ingenious defence of War, contained in the Note to this passage. Its insertion would involve ourselves in a war—we mean of words, words, words." As a private opinion, we admit the argument of the defence; though it militates so strongly with passion and prejudice that its insertion would be the war-hoop for a whole community of peace-makers to break in upon our literary otium. We wish to be the last in the world to feed a popular fallacy on any subject; but in some respects the argument employed in the journal quoted by M.L.B. is of too general a description to controvert the error in the present case. We must be courteous—though not of the court: ours is a system of non-intervention in politics; ever, in matters of literary dispute we do little more than "bite our thumb." It is hoped our correspondent will rightly understand us; and so now, like Mr. Peake's bashful man in the farce, we offer our apology for having apologized. By the way, in the, newspapers is advertised a pamphlet, containing an apology for its publication.—ED, M.

9

It is a pity that when Voltaire wrote this clever paper, Gas and Steam were not in vogue to add to the "astonishments" of Tullia. This would also most miraculously have assisted Madame de Genlis, in that no less clever exposition of the wonders of nature and art, the story of Alphonso and Thelismon.

10

Childe Harold, canto 4, st. lvi.

11

Duppa—Observations on the Continent.

12

Childe Harold, canto 4, st. xxxi, xxxii.