churchyard, it is said to be always popular. The character of the water is no doubt owing to the same causes as that of London surface-wells-the remains of humanity in the churchyard supply the nitrates and carbonic acid of the water.

From this kind of impurity the water of deep wells in London, and of wells cut into rocks which bring their water from a distance from towns, are entirely free. They frequently contain inorganic salts in abundance, but they do not contain organic matters; hence, for drinking purposes, they are very preferable to the waters of surface-wells. A great number of these wells exist in London. There is one attached to almost every brewery in London, and other manufacturers, who need pure water for their operations, sink these wells.

If you require ocular demonstration of the impurity of surface-well water, let me draw your attention to a series of these waters in the South Kensington Museum, where you will observe that the effect of time and exposure upon the surfacewell water has been to organise their dissolved organic matters, and the bottles exhibit a variety of forms of plants which have been thus developed.

Then we come to river water. The great distinguishing feature of river water is, that, being exposed to the air, it becomes the medium of life to both plants and animals. We have not only fish, and snails, and reeds and pond-weeds growing in river water, but we have innumerable forms of microscopic animals and plants. Even after this water is filtered, and supplied to towns, as in the case of the Thames to London, these microscopic creations abound.

There is also another source of impurity in river water; our lands and farms are highly manured, and the water passing over them carries the constituents of the manure to the river; and the river waters are to that extent objectionable.

I will now draw your attention generally to the contents of these waters, and endeavour to show you the action of what are called their 'impurities.' I do not know that it is correct to say that all saline matter is an impurity; our own blood contains 420 grains of saline matter in a gallon. Now if a physiologist were to say this was an impurity in the blood, he would be laughed at for his assertion. If water contains saline matters, it is the necessity of the thing, and, in small quantities, these impurities have never been proved to do any harm. By analysis, however, we can come to the conclusion whether these things are in quantities likely to be injurious. We may have more saline matter in the blood than 420 grains to the gallon; then it would be an impurity. We must therefore recollect how this word impurity is used. There are two kinds of substances in water which are generally called impurities-the first consists

of saline substances, as common salt, carbonate of soda, and sulphate of lime; these are called saline impurities. Sometimes these saline substances are found in so large quantities as to render the waters medicinal, as in the waters of Cheltenham, Leamington, Harrowgate, and many other places. Such waters are called 'mineral.' They are remarkable for the permanence of their constituents, and many of them have been known in this country to possess the same constituents for hundreds of years. The most generally useful of these waters are those which contain iron, and are called 'chalybeate,' as the waters of Harrowgate and Tunbridge Wells. Some of these contain larger quantities of sulphuretted hydrogen than our foulest sewer-waters, and yet are drunk medicinally; such are the waters of Askern, Harrowgate, Moffat, and Gillesland. That these waters may be drunk with impunity, should be a hint to those who imagine that sulphuretted hydrogen is in itself a dangerous gas. The fact is, it is not so; and in drains and sewers, and decomposing animal and vegetable compounds, it is not the cause of danger, but a sign of danger. The springs of Epsom are charged with sulphate of magnesia; hence we call this substance Epsom salts. Other substances, more or less injurious in their action upon the human system, are contained in mineral springs, and are prescribed according to the special need of those who seek their aid as medicines.

SIMPLE INTEREST.

(1) What is the interest on £750 for one year at 5 per cent.? (2) What is the interest on £8379 16s. 8d. for 16 years at 4 per

cent. ?

(3) In what time will £100 double itself at 4 per cent. per annum, simple interest?

(4) What is the rate of interest when £150 amounts to £164 12s. 6d. in 3 years?

(5) Find the interest on £6566 18s. 6d. for 8 years at 92 per cent.

per annum.

(6) What is the interest on £587 10s. 6d. for 3 years at £4 17s. 6d. per cent. per annum ?

MANNERS IN NEW YORK IN THE DUTCH

TIMES.

(From the History of New York,' by Washington Irving.)

[Washington Irving, a popular American prose writer, who wrote under the name of Diedrich Knickerbocker, was born at New York in 1783. His chief works are: History of New York,' 'The Sketch Book, 'Bracebridge Hall,' Tales of a Traveller,' &c. Died, 1859.]

de'-si-gna-ted, named, called

-o-lus, son of Jupiter and god of the wind

burn'-ish, to polish metal

in-un-da'-tion, an overflowing of water am-phib'-i-ous, living on land or in

water

sanc-tum sanc-to'-rum (Lat.), holy of holies

rhom'-boid, a four-sided figure whose

opposite sides only are equal and parallel, and whose angles are not right angles

burgh'-er, a townsman

in-con-test'-a-ble, that cannot be contra-
dicted

de-lect'-a-ble, delightful
or'-gies, noisy feasts

jun'-to, a number of persons united in a
plot; a cabal

dul'-cet, sweet to the taste or ear
syl'-la-bub, a mixture of warm new milk
with wine, sugar, &c.

beaux, plural of beau (Fr.), well-dressed
young men

a-droit'-ness, cleverness, nimbleness
pig-my, a dwarf

de-mure'-ly, quietly, bashfully

THE houses of the higher class were generally constructed of wood, excepting the gable end, which was of small black and yellow Dutch bricks, and always faced on the street; as our ancestors, like their descendants, were very much given to outward show, and were noted for putting the best leg foremost. The house was always furnished with abundance of large doors and small windows on every floor; the date of its erection was curiously designated by iron figures on the front; and on the top of the roof was perched a fierce little weathercock, to let the family into the important secret which way the wind blew. These, like the weathercocks on the tops of our steeples, pointed so many different ways, that every man could have a wind to his mind; and you would have thought old olus had set all his bags of wind adrift, pell-mell, to gambol about this windy metropolis: the most staunch and loyal citizens, however, always went according to the weathercock on the top of the governor's house, which was certainly the most correct, as he had a trusty servant employed every morning to climb up and point it whichever way the wind blew.

In those good days of simplicity and sunshine, a passion for cleanliness was the leading principle in domestic economy, and the universal test of an able housewife; a character which formed the utmost ambition of our unenlightened grandmothers. The front door was never opened except on marriages, funerals, new year's days, the Festival of St. Nicholas, or some such great occasion. It was ornamented with a gorgeous brass knocker, curiously wrought, sometimes into the device of a dog,

and sometimes of a lion's head, and was daily burnished with such religious zeal that it was ofttimes worn out by the very precautions taken for its preservation. The whole house was constantly in a state of inundation, under the discipline of mops, and brooms, and scrubbing-brushes; and the good housewives of those days were a kind of amphibious animal, delighting exceedingly to be dabbling in water, insomuch that a historian of the day gravely tells us, that many of his townswomen grew to have webbed fingers like unto a duck, and some of them, he had little doubt, could the matter be examined into, would be found to have the tails of mermaids; but this I look upon to be a mere sport of fancy, or, what is worse, a wilful misrepresentation.

The grand parlour was the sanctum sanctorum, where the passion for cleaning was indulged without control. In this sacred apartment no one was permitted to enter excepting the mistress and her confidential maid, who visited it once a week for the purpose of giving it a thorough cleaning, and putting things to rights, always taking the precaution of leaving their shoes at the door, and entering devoutly in their stocking feet. After scrubbing the floor, sprinkling it with fine white sand, which was curiously stroked into angles, and curves, and rhomboids, with a broom, after washing the windows, rubbing and polishing the furniture, and putting a new bunch of evergreens in the fireplace, the window shutters were again closed to keep out the flies, and the room carefully locked up until the revolution of time brought round the weekly cleaning day.

As to the family, they always entered in at the gate, and most generally lived in the kitchen. To have seen a numerous household assembled around the fire, one would have imagined that he was transported back to those happy days of primeval simplicity which float before our imaginations like golden visions. The fireplaces were of a truly patriarchal magnitude, where the whole family, old and young, master and servant, black and white, nay, even the very cat and dog, enjoyed a community of privilege, and had each a prescriptive right to a corner. Here the old burgher would sit in perfect silence, puffing his pipe, looking in the fire with half-shut eyes, and thinking of nothing for hours together; the goede vrouw on the opposite side would employ herself diligently in spinning her yarn or knitting stockings. The young folks would crowd around the hearth, listening with breathless attention to some old crone of a negro who was the oracle of the family, and who, perched like a raven in a corner of the chimney, would croak forth for a long winter afternoon a string of incredible stories about New England witches, grisly ghosts, horses without

heads, and hairbreadth escapes and bloody encounters among the Indians.

In those happy days a well-regulated family rose with the dawn, dined at eleven, and went to bed at sundown. Dinner was invariably a private meal, and the fat old burghers showed incontestable symptoms of disapprobation and uneasiness at being surprised by a visit from a neighbour on such occasions. But though our worthy ancestors were thus singularly averse to giving dinners, yet they kept up the social bonds of intimacy by occasional banquetings, called tea-parties.

As this is the first introduction of those delectable orgies, which have since become so fashionable in this city, I am conscious my fair readers will be very curious to receive information on the subject. Sorry am I that there will be but little in my description calculated to excite their admiration. I can neither delight them with accounts of suffocating crowds, nor brilliant drawing-rooms, nor towering feathers, nor sparkling diamonds, nor immeasurable trains. I can detail no choice anecdotes of scandal, for in those primitive times the simple folk were either too stupid or too good-natured to pull each other's character to pieces; nor can I furnish any whimsical anecdotes of brag; how one lady cheated, or another bounced into a passion; for as yet there was no junto of dulcet old dowagers who met to win each other's money and lose their own tempers at a card-table. These fashionable parties were generally confined to the higher classes, or noblesse-that is to say, such as kept their own cows and drove their own wagons. The company commonly assembled at three o'clock, and went away about six, unless it was in winter-time, when the fashionable hours were a little earlier, that the ladies might get home before dark. I do not find that they ever treated their company to iced creams, jellies, or syllabubs, or regaled them with musty almonds, mouldy raisins, or sour oranges, as is often done in the present age of refinement. Our ancestors were fond of more sturdy and substantial fare. The tea-table was crowned with a huge earthen dish well stored with slices of fat pork, fried brown, cut up into morsels, and swimming in gravy. The company being seated around the genial board, and each furnished with a fork, evinced their dexterity in launching at the fattest pieces of this mighty dish, in much the same manner as sailors harpoon porpoises at sea, or our Indians spear salmon in the lakes. Sometimes the table was graced with immense apple-pies, or saucers full of preserved peaches and pears; but it was always sure to boast of an enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough fried in hog's fat, and called dough-nuts, or oly-kocks, a delicious kind of cake, at present scarce known in this city, excepting in genuine Dutch families.