have never seen a tree in such a state of nudity; indeed, I would hazard a conjecture, that, by the time the animal had finished the last of the old leaves, there would be a new crop on the part of the tree he had stripped first, ready for him to begin again, so quick is the process of vegetation in these countries. soon as we got up to him he threw himself upon his back, and defended himself in gallant style with his fore legs.—“ Come, poor fellow," said I to him, "if thou hast got into a hobble to-day, thou shalt not suffer for it; I'll take no advantage of thee in misfortune; the forest is large enough for both thee and me to rove in; There is a saying amongst the Indians, go thy ways up above, and enjoy thyself that when the wind blows the Sloth begins in these endless wilds; it is more than to travel. In calm weather he remains probable thou wilt never have another tranquil, probably not liking to cling to interview with man. So fare thee well." the brittle extremity of the branches, lest On saying this, I took a long stick which they should break with him in passing was lying there, held it for him to hook from one tree to another; but as soon as on, and then conveyed him to a high and the wind rises, the branches of the neigh-stately mora. He ascended with wonderbouring trees become interwoven, and then the sloth seizes hold of them and pursues his journey in safety. There is seldom an entire day of calm in these forests. The trade-wind generally sets in about ten o'clock in the morning, and thus the sloth may set off after breakfast, and get a considerable way before dinner. He travels at a good round pace, and were you to see him pass from tree to tree, as I have done, you would never think of calling him a Sloth. Thus it would appear that the different histories we have of this quadruped are erroneous on two accounts; first, that the writers of them, deterred by difficulties and local annoyances, have not paid sufficient attention to him in his native | kaunts; and, secondly, they have described him in a situation in which he was never intended by Nature to cut a figure, I mean on the ground. The Sloth is as much at loss to proceed on a his journey upon a smooth and level floor, as a man would be who had to walk a mile in stilts upon a line of feather-beds. One day, as we were crossing the Essequibo, I saw a large two-toed Sloth on the ground upon the bank; how he had got there, nobody could tell; the Indian said he had never surprised a Sloth in such a situation before; he would hardly have come there to drink, for both above and below the place the branches of the trees touched the water, and afforded him an easy and safe access to it. Be this as it may, though the trees were not above twenty yards from him, he could not make his way through the sand time enough to escape before we landed. As ful rapidity, and in about a minute he was almost at the top of a tree. He now went off in a side direction, and caught hold of the branch of a neighbouring tree; he then proceeded towards the heart of the forest. I stood looking on, lost in amazement at his singular mode of progress. I followed him with my eye till the intervening branches closed in betwixt us; and then I lost sight for ever of the twotoed sloth. I was going to add, that I never saw a Sloth take to his heels in such earnest; but the expression will not do, for the Sloth has no heels. So much for this harmless, unoffending animal. He holds a conspicuous place in the catalogue of the animals of the New World. Though naturalists have made no mention of what follows, still it is not less true on that account. The Sloth is the only quadruped known which spends its whole life from the branch of a tree, suspended by his feet. I have paid uncommon attention to him in his native haunts. The monkey and squirrel will seize a branch with their fore feet, and pull themselves up, and rest or run upon it; but the sloth, after seizing it, still remains suspended, and suspended moves along under the branch till he can lay hold of another. Whenever I have seen him in his native woods, whether at iest or asleep, or on his travels, I have always observed that he was suspended from the branch of a tree. When his form and anatomy are attentively considered, it will appear evident that the Sloth cannot be at ease in any situation where his body is above his feet. We will now take our leave of him.-Waterton. ORIGINS AND INVENTIONS. SNOOKS. This name, so generally associated with vulgarity, is only a corruption, or rather a contraction of the more dignified name of Sevenoaks. This town is generally called Se'noaks in Kent; and the further contraction, coupled with the phonetic spelling of former days easily passed into Snooks. This is no imaginary conclusion, for I am told by a trustworthy friend that Messrs. Sharp and Harrison, solicitors, Southampton, have recently had in their possession a series of deeds in which all the modes of spelling occur from Sevenoaks down to S'nokes, in connection with a family now known as Snooks. Notes and Queries. FOOL OR A PHYSICIAN. The writer who has used this expression is Dr. Cheyne, and he probably altered it from the alliterative form, "a man is a fool or a physician at forty," which I have frequently heard in various parts of England. Dr. Cheyne's words are; "I think every man is a fool or a physician at thirty years of age that is to say, by that time he ought to know his own constitution, and unless he is determined to live an intemperate and irregular life, I think he may by diet and regimen prevent or cure any chronical disease: but as to acute disorders no one who is not well acquainted with medicine should trust to his own skill."-Ibid. PAYING THROUGH THE NOSE, AND ETYMOLOGY OF SHILLING.-Odin, they say, laid a nose-tax on every Swede, a penny a nose. (Grimm, Deutsche Rechts Alterthumer," p. 299.) I think people not able to pay forfeited "the prominence on the face, which is the organ of scent, and the emunctory of the brain," as good Walker says. It was according to the rule, "Qui non habet in ære, luat in pelle." Still we "count" or "tell noses," when computing, for instance, how many persons of the company are to pay the reckoning. The expression is used in England, if I am righly informed, as well as in Holland. Tax money was gathered into a brass shield, and the jingling (schel) noise it produced gave to the pieces of silver exacted the name of schellingen (shillings).-Ibid. The THE ORIGIN OF 6. PAUL PRY." origin of Mr. Poole's comedy of Paul Pry is not perhaps generally known. Its construction was suggested to the author in the following manner. An old lady, living in a narrow street, had passed so much of her time in watching the affairs of her neighbours, that she acquired the power of distinguishing the sound of every knocker within hearing. She fell ill and was confined to her bed. Unable to observe in person what was going on without, she stationed her maid at the window as a substitute for the performance of that duty. - "Betty, what are you thinking about? Don't you hear a double knock at No. 9? who is it?"-"The firstfloor lodger, ma'am."— Betty, Betty, I declare I must give you warning; why, No. 54?" "Why, Lor ma'am, it is don't you tell me what that knock is at only the baker with pies." Pies. Betty, had pies yesterday." what can they want with pies at 54? they 66 EARLIEST MANUFACTURE OF COTTON. India, the interior of Africa, and Mexico, - Though cotton is a native plant of and perhaps some other warm countries, and it has been spun into cloth, and furnished the principal clothing of the Hindoos from time immemorial, and of the natives of Mexico at the time of the discovery of America! yet its manufacture seems to have been unknown to the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, and to have been first brought into Europe by the Moors, who introduced it into Spain in the ninth or tenth century. It was first introduced into Italy in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, and into Flanders and France at a still later period; and was not introduced into England until the sixteenth century. The fibres of cotton being shorter than those of flax, and more difficult to spin and weave by hand, the quantity manufactured in Europe was very small, until after the invention and general use of machinery for some spinning and weaving it; and the Europeans were principally supplied with cotton cloths from India, and from China, during the whole of the last century, and to a considerable extent, down to the close of the wars growing out of the French revolution in 1815. THE MOTHER AND HER CHILD. BY THOMAS CAMPBELL. Lo! at the couch where infant beauty sleeps, Her silent watch the mournful mother keeps: She, while the lovely babe unconscious lies, Smiles on her slumbering child with pensive eyes, And weaves a song of melancholy joy- I lay my head beneath the willow tree, So speaks affection, ere the infant eye Or cons his murmuring task beneath her care, PICTURE OF DOMESTIC LOVE. THY fair hand, enamour'd Fancy! gleans The treasured pictures of a thousand scenes; Thy pencil traces on the lover's thought Some cottage-home, from towns and toil remote, Where love and lore may claim alternate hours, With peace embosom'd in Idalian bowers! Remote from busy Life's bewilder'd way, O'er all his heart shall Taste and Beauty sway! Free on the sunny slope, or winding shore, With hermit-steps to wander and adore! There shall he love, when genial morn appears, Like pensive beauty smiling in her tears, To watch the brightening roses of the sky, And muse on Nature with a poet's eye! And when the sun's last splendour lights the deep, The woods, and waves, and murmuring winds asleep, When fairy harps th' Hesperian planet hail, Their shadowy grandeur o'er the narrow dell, Where mouldering piles and forests intervene, And down the vale his sober step returns ⚫ Though boundless snows the wither'd heath deform, And the dim sun scarce wanders through the storm Yet shall the smile of social love repay, YOUNG AGAIN. AN old man sits in a high-back'd chair While the sun of a summer afternoon And the drowsy click of an ancient clock A breeze blows in and a breeze blows out, And it flutters now on his wrinkled brow, And the leaden lid of his eye drops down, His hands relax their feeble hold, The old man sleeps, and in sleep he dreams, The years unroll their fearful scroll, He is a child again, A mother's tones are in his ear, Far down the rolling plain. As he hears the bell for school- A summer breeze blows in at the door SACRED QUOTATIONS. HEAVEN. THERE is a world above, Where sorrow is unknown; A long eternity of love, JAMES MONTGOMERY. THERE smiles the mother we have wept! there bloom Again the buds asleep within the tomb; There o'er bright gates, inscribed "No more to part," Soul springs to soul, and heart unites to heart! DREAMS cannot picture a world so fair- MRS. HEMANS. There light or shade no more succeed by turns, There reigns the eternal sun with an unclouded ray, There all is calm as night, yet all immortal day, IN having all things, and not Thee, what have I? Thee. OH! when a mother meets on high An over-payment of delight? SOUTHEY. HERE, in our souls, we treasure up the wealth Fraud cannot filch, nor waste destroy; the more Tis spent, the more we have; -the sweet affections The heart's religion,-the diviner instincts IF God hath made the world so fair, JAMES MONTGOMERY. INTERESTING VARIETIES. THERE is a house in Paris which sells annually half a million pairs of wooden shoes. THERE is railroad enough now in operation to reach round the world, and four thousand miles over. WE have reason to believe that the population of Europe did not much, if any, exceed a hundred millious, at the time of the discovery of America, near the close of the fifteenth century. ROME contains a population of 175,000, and amongst them are 29 bishops, 1,280 priests, 2,092 monks and members of religious orders, 1,698 nuns, and 537 ecclesiastical pupils. IN the Danish theatres, the gas-lights in the audience part of the house are turned down during the acts, and the stage alone is illuminated. This adds greatly to the effect of the scenes and costumes. It has an effect, also, upon the treasury. Ir is estimated, in Brande's "Encyclopædia of Science and Art," that from the time of the establishment of the Inquisition in Spain, until it was abolished by Napoleon, in 1808, no less than 340,000 persons had been punished by those tribunals in that country, of whom nearly 32,000 were burnt. THE number of European sovereigns, including the Emperor of Brazil, who belong to a European dynasty, and the Prince of Monaco, amounts to forty-eight; amongst whom, there are five emperors (counting the sultan), twelve kings, three queens, seven grand dukes, nine dukes, nine princes, a pope, an elector, and a landgrave. "THE annual loss of human life from tigers, among the Chinese settlers, is perfectly fearful, at Singapore," says Captain Keppel, "chiefly averaging no fewer than three hundred and sixty, or one per diem. Great exertions are still making for the destruction of these animals, which is effected by pitfalls, cages baited with a dog, goat, monkey, or other restless animal, and by sundry cunning contrivances." THE quantity of cotton manufactured in Great Britain, in 1840, was a little over 400,000,000 pounds: and from 1810 to 1815, during the last struggle with Napoleon, about 100,000,000 pounds, annually. If we estimate the saving by means of machinery, at three-fourths as much for each labourer, from 1810 to 1815, as from 1840 to 1845,-it would, from 1810 to 1815, be equal to the labour of three-fourths of onefourth of 57,000,000 of inhabitants, or more than 10,000,000. WHILE in Scotland, and many of the American States, about one in four, of the whole population, attend school a portion of the year, in England only about one in eleven attend,-and among the Episcopal population of England, only about one in twenty attend; in the Roman Catholic countries of southern Europe, perhaps one in a hundred of the population attend school,-in Russia only one in two hundred and fifty, and in Mohammedan countries, a still smaller proportion. If lobsters have not been long taken, the claws will have a strong motion when you put your finger on the eyes and press them. The heaviest, if of good size, are the best, but the largest are not the best. When you buy them ready boiled, try whether their tails are stiff, and pull up with a spring; if otherwise. they are either watery or not fresh. The male is kuown by the narrow back part of his tail, and the two uppermost fius within it are stiff and hard; but those of the female are soft, and the tail broader. The male, though generally smaller, has the highest flavour; the flesh is firmer and the colour, when boiled, is a deeper red; but the female has that fine coral so highly prized by cooks for the improvement of their sauces, which appears with the rudiments of the spawn. To boil Lobsters-Put them alive, with their claws tied together, into the water when boiling hot, and keep it so until the fish is done, which, if of a pound weight, will take about fifteen minutes, and if larger will require not quite the same proportion of time, for, if boiled too long the meat will be stringy. Many people are shocked at the apparent cruelty of thus killing them, but death takes place immediately, and life cannot be taken away without pain. When sent to table to be eaten cold, the tail and body should be split from end to end, the claws cracked, but not unshelled, and the meat may be made into salad, or mixed in such manner as each person pleases, and many persons add a teaspoonful of white powdered sugar, thinking that it gives a mellowness to the whole. It is scarcely necessary to mention, that the head of a lobster, and what are called the "lady-fingers," are not to be eaten. To stew Lobsters.-Take the meat out of the shells of one or two boiled lobsters. Put the shells into a pint of water with some whole pepper, salt, and a little mace. Let it boil till all the goodness is extracted from the shells; then strain it. Mix with a little cream, or thin melted butter, the rich portion of the lobster, and the coral: add a small quantity of lemon-juice and two tablespoonfuls of wine, mix it with the gravy, and warm the lobster in it; a few minutes will suffice. Or-Cut the meat of a boiled lobster into pieces, and put them into a covered metal dish with a bit of butter, two large spoonfuls of any sort of gravy, one of soy or walnut-catsup, a little salt and cayenne, with a glass of port wine, and warm it. If there be a lamp under the dish, you may do it at your own table within a few minutes. Another mode of stewing lobsters is :-Take the meat of two lobsters, mince it small, and put it into a pint of beef-soup. Let it stew a little; thicken it with a piece of butter, rolled in flour; add a glass of white wine, with a little pepper; add salt and nutmeg, a spoonful of catsup, one of anchovy, and one of lemonjuice. Let the whole stew together, and serve up, garnishing the dish with the small claws. To fricassee Lobster.-Parboil it, extract the meat from the shell, and cut it into small pieces; season it with white pepper, salt, and nutmeg, and put it into the stewpan, with as much cream or richly-made white sauce as will cover it. Keep the lid close, set the pan on hot coals, and stew it slowly for about as long a time as it was previously boiled. To roast Lobsters.-When half boiled, take them out of the kettle, butter the shells, lay the fish before the fire, and baste them with butter, till it froths. Serve with high-seasoned melted butter. Potted Lobsters, Crabs, Shrimps, or Prawns.— Choose fine female lobsters, full of spawn; boil them, pick out the tail and claws, season with salt, pepper (black or cayenne), and mace, and cover them with melted butter; bake them one hour, and strain off the butter; then pound the lobster with the spawn into a paste, put it into pots, clarify the butter and pour upon it, and tie over. Lobsters may also be potted in pieces, without beating. Crabs, shrimps, and prawns, may also be potted as above; and all, when cut out, make fine sandwiches. Curried Lobsters.-Lay the meat in a pan, with two or three blades of mace, and equal quantities of veal gravy and cream; then rub with butter, two teaspoonfuls of currie-powder, and half the quantity of flour; which put into the pan, and simmer the whole an hour, adding salt, and the juice of half a lemon. Croquettes of Lobster.-Take the meat from the shell, chop it finely, mix it with a little salt, pepper, and pounded mace; take one quarter part of fine bread-crumbs, make it up into balls with melted butter, brush the balls with yolk of egg, and dredge them with breadcrumbs, and fry them, serving with or without gravy: if dry, they must be sent up with crisped parsley. Lobster Salad.-Take one or two heads of white heart lettuce,-they should be as fresh as possible; if they are not "morning gathered," lay them in spring water for an hour or two; then carefully wash them, and trim off all the withered or cankered leaves; let them drain awhile, and dry them lightly in a clean napkin. To make the dressing: boil two eggs for twelve minutes, and put them in a basin of cold water for a few minutes, till the yolks become thoroughly cold and hard. Rub the yolks through a sieve with a wooden spoon, and mix them with a tablespoonful of water; then add two tablespoonfuls of oil or melted butter: when these are well mixed, add by degrees a teaspoonful of salt, and the same of made mustard; when these are smoothly united, add very gradually three tablespoonfuls of vinegar. Take out the finest parts of a lobster and mince them small. Just before it is to be served, mince the lettuce; mix it with the lobster and the dressing. Cut up the white of the egg, and garnish the salad with it. |
