Amusing and Instructive.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 7, Issue 343, 22 January 1866, Page 1

Amusing and Instructive.

Jaiies Watt's Workshop. —An Edinburgh gentleman attending the British Association at Birmingham thus describes a visit to the bouse of the famous discoverer of the steam-engine:— “ A friend of Mr lives in James Watt’s house. We were admitted into his workroom —a garret at the top of the house. It appears he had a scolding wife who didn’t like the messes and the noises he made so he was sent to the attic. The room is exactly as Watt left it. The very ashes are still in the grate ; and his little lathe has a bit of unfinished work in it; tools lie about; books and drawings are in old drawers and strewed here and there. It is a miserable little place. Only four of us could get in at one time. In fact, the daughter of the house who went with us had to tuck herself up in all manner of shapes to prevent her crinoline sweeping all the letters into the corners. The house is a very good one, and Watt was rich when he died there ; but it is clear his wife kept him in his little workroom in the background. The room has only been recently opened. By the will of Watt’s son it was ordered to be left for ever as the old man left it when he last went out at its door. It was not looked into for more thirty years. E cna in Eruption. —During the few minutes which the dawn required to sink down from the upper heavens to the earth about us, we clambered over the beds cf black snow parted from each other by ridges of ash, till suddenly on cresting one of the latter a view broke upon us which, among the few not unusual views presented to me at various times by my good fortune, remains certainly one of the most marvellous. On one side the Mediterranean in perfect calm stretched out into infinity, except where the long silhouette of the Calabrian hills, by their sweeping outlines rather adding to than taking from the repose of the sea and air, rose in misty grey against the pale citron of the cloudless sky. On the other the snowy bead of Etna, just visible over its massive shoulders, was touched already by the to us yet nnrisen sun, and shone with transparent rose-co-lor, which was repeated more faintly on the steam floating gently upwards from its top. On cither side the most exquisite repose j but in the centre, right before us, and not more than a quarter of a mile away, a hideous mis-shapen lump shut out halt the sky, which was darkened far above and around by rushing volumes of red smoke and by darting curls of steam. From the side of this cone, broken down at the part nearest to us, shot upwards volleys of stones and flame, which, from the speed with which it was projected, was simply a straight-edged sheet of flare. Between us and and the crater lay a waste of'fresh lava, still sending forth jets of steam and quivering gas from every pore, leaden in color, and fantastic in its shapes, as is molten lead when thrown into water. Partly this had flown from the crater over against us, partly from two others, one then quiescent, the second more active than that which was nearest to us, and both some distance further towards the upper slopes of the mountain. Far away to the left the united streams could be traced down a channel more than a mile in breadth, which they had cut through Iha forest, till turning a corner thev precipitated themselves to a lower level in the'ugly travesty of an ice-fall. The immediate foreground was occupied by the abrupt edge of the lava, bordered with burnt and half-burnt trees, some standing erect with every shred of foliage singed off them, some felled, cut round the bottom by the lava precisely as if by bearers. —Cornhid Magazine.