esteem. He was assisted by her convictions of his worth, and a sense of her own destitution and dependent situation; for she was existing on the kindness of friends. In a word, he at length succeeded in gaining her hand, though with the solemn assurance that her heart was unalterably another's. He took her with him to Sicily, hoping a change of scene might wear out a memory of early woe. She was an animated and exemplary wife, and made an effort to be a happy one. But nothing could cure the silent and devouring melancholy that had entered into her very soul. She wasted away in a slow but hopeless decline, and at length sunk into the grave-the victim of a broken heart. It was on her that TOM MOORE composed the following lines:— half so much truth as is generally believed. In She is far from the land where her young hero been supplied." And lovers around her are sighing; She sings the wild songs of her dear native plains, Oh, make her a grave where the sunbeams rest, west, From her own loved island of sorrow! THE DOMESTIC CAT. It has been saide that the cat, although a fond creture, will scratch you, if provoked, or if teazed. Now, a woman will do the same thing; yet cannot we help loving her! Let bothe be used kindly then, and their claws will not be employed againste us. Love begetteth love.-From "An Essaie on the Householde Cat," 1714. "she The plain truth of the matter is, that welltreated and regularly-fed cats have no particular attachment to a place. On the contrary, they attach themselves to the persons kind to them, and who often notice them; so that the cry of want of personal attachment on the part of the feline tribe, is very frequently mere slander of ladies and gentlemen who have neglected, perhaps ill-treated, the creatures-and yet expect them to be as fond as lovers. How true is this picture of a cat's life! Almost all cats are starved. We have said so, over and over again. A single halfpenny-worth of meat (and that bought grudgingly) transfixed by a wooden skewer, is very frequently the entire quantity of food given (cold water excepted!) to supply the wants of two cats. Hence is it that cats go so often " 'visiting" to a neighbor's house, taking away with them all they can find in the way of "grub." We do not blame the cat,-surely not; but her inhuman mistress. Still the poor cat suffers. The barbarities practised on our domestic cats are fearfully great. Most dogs too, are kept equally short-more than half-starved. We speak feelingly on this point. The howling of a neighbor's dog tells us a piteous tale of animal suffering. His agonies must indeed be extreme. But then he is "only a dog!" many THERE ARE REGISTERED in the columns of OUR JOURNAL (more particularly in the first volume), many remarkable anecdotal facts connected with the Cat; and there can be no doubt whatever that, amidst doubtful qualities, she does possess many that may be pronounced amiable. It always gives us pleasure to record any and everything that is interesting in animals; we therefore make way to day for a few remarks (abridged from a charming paper on “Cats," signed A. B. R.) which appeared in a recent number of our excellent contemporary, the "Illustrated London News." Is the writer a lady? The genial tone of the subject-matter would indicate as much :— That cats love localities better than persons, is an axiom in which I feel assured that there is not How the heart sickens at such heathenish brutality! We can readily believe that cats, well fed and kindly used, do form strong attachments Cats are fond of those who are fond of them; and they are as sharp as needles in finding out their real friends, and in shrinking from people "who don't like cats.' One of my pussies knows my knock at the door, especially at night, and her mew follows closely on the sound; while generally, a couple of other creatures of the same species are waiting with her in the lobby, and the whole three accompany me up-stairs in procession. If they happen to be out of doors at night, a single call will generally bring them scampering home; and if their names prove inefficient, one enunciation of "Cat's-meat!" acts like a spell. It is curious to contrast the mild, and, if I may use the expression, the affable faces of cats which are noticed-perhaps playfully talked to-with the fierce and moody countenances of those neglected creatures which, in London and elsewhere, grow half or wholly will, among gardens, yards, and outhouses, picking up their living as they can. The two classes seem to belong to different species. The well-kept and well-treated house-cat seems rather civilised than tamed; the neglected and too often persecuted brute outside the window has relapsed into a skulking savage. You never see the two consort together, and the natural playfulness of the species seems in the outcast to have almost entirely vanished. Now, is all this poor, ragged, beaten, pelted, and unsheltered pussy's fault? Far from it. It is too often the fault of her accusers. They do not give her sufficient food. She steals it, gets beaten and driven out; and perhaps in a month or two acquires that horribly stealthy crawl, and that misgiving, hungry eye-both of which are quite unnatural, and speak a creature under the influence of constant want, and the fear of tyrant man. Well said, this. It nicely illustrates all we have ever advanced. Starve children, and see if they will not steal to satisfy the appetite. Beat them, and watch the effects of that beating. Should we expect more from a cat than we would from a child? Here follows a nice distinction between the parlor cat and the kitchen cat. It is sketched by a masterly hand: A not uncommon phrase in households is that of a "parlor cat" and a "kitchen cat;" and I believe it to be an undoubted fact that there are differences in the character of the creatures, which somehow prompt the one to seek the cheerful light and talk of a sitting-room, and the other rather to brood and nestle in the gloomier and the warmer regions below. The one is always seen conspicuous on the rug, or stretched upon the footstool; the other makes casual appearances upon the stairs, and flies like a spectre at the approach of anybody but the cook. The one creature seems to have a sort of aristocracy in its nature, and it is all but uniformly the handsomest cat of the twain; the other is, most probably, a vulgar, squat plebeian, with its original shyness still strongly present in it. Of my three cats, two I reckon as parlor cats, par sang; and the third has been, by kind usage and encouragement, coaxed into a degree of the same familiarity. Still, however, the natural timidity seems unconquerable. If you make a rapid motion towards the creature, she bounds away like a wild thing. Her two comrades, on the contrary, are frightened at nothing. The room, the occupants, the whole locale, seem their own special sphere and natural dwelling-place; and the only period of the day when the three appear to be merged into a common character, is as the hour for the visit of the "cat's-meat-man" approaches; when they are sure to be in waiting at the door, and to set up their sweet voices as soon as they hear that of the vendor of the food. It is to be remarked, that they take not the slightest notice of the daily cry of a rival practitioner who perambulates the street at nearly the same time; and that on Sundays, when no prandial visit takes place, they never appear to expect the week-day ceremony, but are perfectly aware of a double quantity of good things being stowed away in a certain cupboard, round which they cluster with arching backs and waving tails. We conclude with a few very sensible remarks about juvenile and adult cats: The The infantine People not unfrequently cry out that kittens are pretty, playful things, but that they lose the gentillesse and piquant prettiness of their youth when they degenerate into stupid cats! complaint is unreasonable enough. Johnny Tomkins, who kicked, and crowed, and lisped funny imperfect words, and made big eyes at his mother, can hardly be expected to repeat the performance some half-century after, when he is Tomkins & Co.-perhaps the mayor of the town, and a churchwarden of the parish to boot. Why then should sedate ten-years-old puss, who is getting rather stiff in the joints, and likes better and better the summer's bask, and the winter's warm, be expected to tumble over a ball of cotton, or to lie on his back kicking at nothing at all, like his own son and heir, whom he gravely observes at these amusements, and sometimes tips over with his paw? Mr.Tomkins is not blamed for his matured dignity, why then should Mr. Puss? But the fact is, that the playfulness of kittendom can be partially, particularly with healthy and good-tempered cats, kept up, by a little encouragement, even when they have grown into "potent, grave, and reverend seigneurs ;" and that grim old grimalkins, who have drunk their morning's milk for a dozen of years, can be induced to skip and roll and tumble in the most absurdly awkward mimicry of the small fry, which are still indebted for the lacteal fluid to their mothers. Just so. And is it not the same with us? Why, WE are as active now, and as playful as ever we were; and as full of fun tooprovided, always, we are in the company of those we love. Treat us well, good people; and we, like the veteran cats, will" 'skip, and roll, and tumble" down any hill that the youngest of you dare to descend! Try us when you will. THE HOLINESS OF NIGHT. Ir is the hour when Earth, our mother, claims KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. INSECT STRENGTH. intestines, two thousand one hundred and eighty- THE MORE WE STUDY THE INSECT world, the more cause do we find for increased admiration. The smaller the thing created the greater reason is there for us to love the Creator for his goodness and wisdom. All who have given attention to the subject, must have felt amazed at the comparative strength of insects. Baron Haller tells us that in great muscular power they appear to excel in proportion to their diminutiveness. Of this we have a remarkable example in the common flea, which can draw seventy or eighty times its own weight. The muscular strength of this agile creature, enables it not only to resist the ordinary pressure of the fingers in our endeavors to crush it, but to take leaps two hundred times its own length; which will appear more surprising, when we consider that a man, to equal the agility of a flea, would have to leap between three and four hundred yards. The flea, however, is excelled in leaping by the cuckoo-spit, frog-hopper (Tetigonia spumaria, Oliver), which will sometimes leap two or three yards-that is, more than two hundred and fifty times its own length; as if (to continue the comparison) a man of ordinary height should vault through the air to the distance of a quarter of a mile. Mouffet, in his "Theatre of Insects," mentions that an English mechanic, named Mark, to show his skill, constructed a chain of gold as long as his finger, which, together with a lock and A peculiar toughness of external covering, key, were dragged along by a flea; which could draw a golden chariot, to which it was harnessed. sometimes supplies the place of this muscular Bingley tells us, that Mr. Boverich, a watchmaker power in caterpillars. A singular instance occurs in the Strand, exhibited, some years ago, a little in the history of a common downy two-winged fly, ivory chaise with four wheels, and all its proper with grey shoulders and a brown abdomen apparatus, and the figure of a man sitting on the (Eristalis tenax, Fabr.) The grub, which is ratbox, all of which were drawn by a single flea. tailed, lives in muddy pools, with the water of The same mechanic afterwards constructed a lan- which it has sometimes been taken up by paperdau, which opened and shut by springs, with the makers, and, though subjected to the immense Since this grub is rather figures of six horses harnessed to it, and of a coach-pressure of their machinery, it has survived it in man on the box, a dog between his legs, four per- a miraculous manner. sons inside, two footmen behind it, and a postillion soft, it must be the tough texture of skin which riding one of the fore horses, which were all easily preserves it, as in the similar instance of the caterpillar of the privet hawk-moth (Sphinx dragged along by a single flea. Ligustri), which Bonnet squeezed under water till it was as flat and as empty as the finger of a glove, yet within an hour it became as plump and lively as if nothing had happened. Goldsmith remarks upon these displays of pulician strength, that the feats of Sampson would not, to a community of fleas, appear to be at all miraculous. Latreille tells us a no less marvellous story of another flea, which dragged a silver cannon twenty-four times its own weight, mounted on wheels, and did not manifest any alarm when this was charged with gunpowder and fired off. Professor Bradley, of Cambridge, also mentions a remarkable instance of insect strength in a stagbeetle (Lucanus Cervus), which he saw carrying a wand a foot and a half long, and half an inch thick, and even flying with it to the distance of several yards. We may understand the proximate cause of the strength of insects, when we look at the prodigious number of their muscles-the fleshy belts or ribands by whose means all animal motions are performed. The number of these instruments of motion in the human body, is reckoned to be about five hundred and twenty-nine; but in the caterpillar of the goat moth, Lyonnet counted more than seven times as many; in the head, two hundred and twenty-eight; in the body, one thousand six hundred and forty-seven; and around the A record of these curious facts will go far, let us hope, towards creating a love for the study of entomology. The world is full of wonders if we would but search them out; and how pure is the pleasure afforded by such a search! BASHFULNESS, MODESTY, AND PRUDERY. WOMEN who are the least bashful are, oftentimes, the most modest; and we are never more deceived than when we would infer any laxity of principle from that freedom of demeanor which often arises from a total ignorance of vice. PRUDERY on the contrary, is often assumed rather to keep off the suspicion of criminality, than criminality itself. It is resorted to, to defend Yet is it a cumbersome the fair wearer, not from the whispers of our A prudish woman, sex, but of her own. panoply, and a heavy armour. young or old, must ever live detested. Any thing that is unnatural, becomes abhorrent. SUMMER ENJOYMENTS. DOINGS AT TRENTHAM PARK. was on a visit in the neighborhood. Her observations were therefore leisurely made in a carriage drive. Her description of the THERE IS NO MISTAKE NOW, about out-of-holiday dresses, the motley costumes, and the door amusements. All who have a shilling to spend have run away to spend it. And why not? Health is alone thus obtainable in the summer months. There has just been a grand gathering of visitors at Trentham Park* where, by the kind permission of his Grace the Duke of Sutherland, all comers may freely enjoy themselves on the greensward. We have received from our amiable Correspondent, "A Clergyman's Wife," before introduced to our readers (see p. 265. vol III.), some very interesting particulars of the doings on the grand occasion; and we quite enter with her into the harmless pleasures of the happy visitors. It must indeed have been a gratifying sight, to witness so many thousand joyous faces assembled together, making holiday. The presence of her Grace, the Duchess of Sutherland, too (who was present in the af ernoon), must have added greatly to the effect of the tableau. We learn that, from eight in the morning until five in the afternoon, visitors poured in in a continuous stream; and at that hour the crowd in the park could not have numbered many less than forty thousand. Some of the young men engaged in cricket, prison bars, and other athletic games; but the majority preferred amusements in which the fair sex could participate; and many were the parties engaged heart and soul in the stirring polka, and other favorite dances. Pic-nic parties luxuriated beneath the shade of the noble trees skirting the park. Those who preferred" pairing off"-not exactly as do members of the legislature, wandered along the numerous glades opening out in different directions; whilst the more youthful engaged in various innocent recreations. It is often remarked that "it always rains on the Trentham day," but this year was a delightful exception to the watery rule. Warm genial sunshine, and a balmy air, largely promoted the enjoyment of the day. When evening approached, the company began to move off. At nine o'clock the park was deserted, and every road leading therefrom thronged with joyous parties returning homewards. Our fair Correspondent, we should observe, *It was the grand week for the Stoke Wakes and the North Staffordshire Races, when it is usual for every class to congregate from all parts of the country for many miles around. High and low, rich and poor, people of all ages and of both sexes-the gentler largely predominating-meet in armies, on one common ground, in pursuit of one common object-enjoyment. happy faces of their wearers; their dances, and their various rustic sports,-has delighted us exceedingly. Her graphic delineation, too, of the natural beauties of the spot where these festivities were celebrated, is quite charming. How refreshing it is for us poor editors, during the season of drought, to meet with a heart like this,-so alive to the beauties of Nature's pencil; so able to enter into and enjoy the harmless frolics and pleasures of the rustic peasantry! We regret that our limited space forbids us to print our Correspondent's letter in full, but we have endeavored to give the spirit of it. May these little festivities be regularly kept up! say we. They are wholesome both for mind and body. ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE. creatures have been, and are just now, committing Summer Gnats.-These very troublesome little sad havoc on the human countenance. We both hear them buzz, and feel them bite, whilst slumbering on "the bed of wakefulness." In such a case, my dear Mr. Editor, that which you so much hate will be found very useful,-I mean the smoke of tobacco, in its least objectionable form of a cigar. Indeed, if coarse brown paper be lighted and the smoke allowed to enter the room for a minute or two, the end will be answered. The gnats will become stupid, and will remain on the walls, "in will then be open, and they can take their departure. amazement lost," until the morning. The window -Puss. [Thanks. Smoke, we know is a good remedy for this seasonable, or, rather, un-seasonable annoyance. We have, more than once, been sadly put out of late by these back-biting little rascals, who are so fond of cheek, and who feast so unmercifully on our tenderest points. They will face you, do what you may to prevent it. Indeed we regard them as a perfect eye-sore. Try the smoke, good people, but use cedar chips instead of pigtail. You will soon find your apartment "all serene."] The Poisonous Fish.-Much curious and useful information is often lost to the world, from the want of knowledge of what to observe in men who have the opportunity of correctly ascertaining the facts and conditions of many, as yet, unexplained phenomena which fall under their notice. alleged and generally received facts of the poisonous nature of various fishes, in given localities at certain seasons, whilst they are perfectly innocuous and suitable for food when caught in other places-is one of those mysterious things which can only be explained or disproved by one who possesses both the opportunity and the ability to observe correctly. On this subject Mr. Schomburgh remarks, in some observations on Anegada, one of the Virgin Islands, that whilst it is well-known that the yellow-billed sprat, the bottle-nosed cavalla, rock-fish, and at times the king-fish, are sometimes poisonous, and cause immediate death-yet that the sea surrounding Anegada abounds in perfectly wholesome fish of these kinds; and that whilst frequent cases of poisoning by fish occur in the neighboring islands, not a single instance has ever been known in Anegada, where the, in other places, poisonous kinds are eaten with impunity. Mr. W. Hamilton confirms this account of the poisonous nature of some of these fishes when taken off various of the West-India Islands; stating that the yellow-billed sprat at St. Kitt's and Nevis, for eleven months in the year, is a most deadly poison; whilst in the twelfth, he thinks in April, it is perfectly wholesome. So fatal is it, that a negro girl has been known to expire whilst eating it! This quality must render it a questionable luxury, even in the wholesome season. Again, all the fish taken on the northwest of St. Kitt's, and between it and St. Eustatia, is said to be poisonous; although fish of the very same kind, found on the other coasts of the island, is harmless. Mr. W. Hamilton properly directs attention to the noxious effects of fish in a certain stage of decomposition; but fairly remarks that the facts respecting the periodicity of the poisonous nature of some fishes are left untouched by this. Again, what is the truth respecting the alleged poisonous properties acquired by fish, &c., when exposed to the moon's rays in tropical seas, yet which will remain perfectly wholesome if sheltered from these rays? Facts, not notions, on these points, would be very welcome to the scientific world, if the residents in those islands, or frequenters of those seas, would direct their attention to them, and communicate the results of their investigations.-E. J. Engravings Copied by means of Iodine.-M. Niepce de St. Victor investigated some few years since, the action of various vapors on the surfaces of drawings and engravings; and then noticed that the vapor of iodine adhered to the black parts of an engraving, in preference to the clear white spaces, in such a manner, that the impression might be transferred to paper imbued, or to glass covered with a solution of starch; but that these copies were fugitive. From recent experiments, he finds that these copies may be rendered permanent by dipping the design, thus transferred to the starched glass or paper, into a solution of nitrate of silver; when it disappears. It is then to be exposed to the light for a few seconds, whereby the iodide of silver, formed by the action of the silver solution on the iodine-starch compound, is rapidly colored, owing to its superior sensitiveness to the action of light, in comparison to the nitrate; and when the glass or paper, after this exposure, is plunged into a solution of gallic acid the design is developed, after which it must be washed with hyposulphite of soda like other photographs, to render it unalterable. Another process is described by M. Bayard, who exposes the engraving to the iodine vapor, then places it in contact with a plate of glass covered with sensitive albumen, which yields a negative, and from this plate he procures positive impressions by the ordinary methods adopted by photographers; he by having, those Plants in Bed Rooms-A silly paragraph has been going the rounds of the daily papers, to the effect that plants, or flowers in bed-rooms, are not injurious! It is well to correct this silly statement. Let any one try the experiment for one single night. Flowers not only part with carbonic acid at night, but they give forth a very powerful odor, which has a violent effect on the nervous system of very many persons. The air of a bed chamber is sufficiently vitiated by its human occupants. There needs not the presence of other vitiating objects!-AMICUS. [Your observations are perfectly just. It is to be regretted, that the public papers should fill up their columns with such nonsense as they do.] Reproduction of the Toad and Frog, without the intermediate stage of Tadpole.-The following brief remarks on the Toad (Bufo vulgaris) and the Frog (Rana temporaria), may perhaps be received with some degree of interest, as they are, I believe, contrary to the generally-received notion of the procreation of these reptiles. Ray, and most naturalists, consider toads and frogs as oviparous animals; yet it is apparent that they are viviparous as well. Or if they do not bring forth their young alive, they have the power of reproduction |