MISCELLANEOUS.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 304, 28 June 1848, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

! An arrangement is in progress between the Directors of the South Eastern Railway and the Directors of the Boulogne and Amiens Railway for the commencement of a thorough traffic between London and Paris and the continent generally. The railway from Boulogne to Paris will be opened on the 15th of February, when passengers will proceed the whole distance from London Bridge to Paris by steam, and the long expected rapid national communication will be established, and from that day be carried into practical effect and be made available to all. An express steamer, in union with a train from Londonbridge, will leave Folkestone to convey passengers to the train to start from Boulogne at 3 o'clock in the afternoon ; this arrangement will enable the public to breakfast in London and be in Paris the same day at 20 minutes past Bin the evening. So, also, between Paris and London there will be a special steamer in union with the trains leaving Paris at S in the morning ; this steamer will start from Boulogne for Folkestone on the arrival of the train, by which means passengers of that morning will arrive in London at half past 6 o'clock the same afternoon. Passengers will be enabled to book through the whole journey by one payment at Londonbridge station ; so also at the Paris, Amiens, and Boulogne stations, and it is most probable that ere long a system will be adopted by which passengers may book in connexion with all the leading continental railways. — Times, Feb. 10.

American Literature. — The number of public libraries at present existing in the United States is 335 — and they contain 2,351,260 volumes. The States of the Union which possess most libraries are, New j York — which has 33, vrith 174,000 volumes ; Pennsylvania 32, with 176,000 volumes ; Ohio 23, with 68,000 volumes ; Maryland 11, with 54,000 volumes; and Columbia 9, with 75,000 volumes.

Ellenborough on Loughborough. — Although hardly any of Lord Loughborough's judgments were reversed, it must be confessed that their authority has not been considered very high among lawyers. When Lord Ellenborough was dining at a puisne Judge's — having been long engaged in a discussion with him in the drawingroom, the lady of the bouse stepped up and said, "Come, my lord; do give us some of your conversation — you have been talking law*long enough." "Madam," said the Lord Chief Justice, "I beg your pardon ; we have not been talking law, or anything like law ; we have been talking of one of the decisions of Lord Loughborough!" — Cam t bell.

Nature's Kitchen. — On the long sandy reach facing Capri we made acquaintance with a natural cuisine well known to the contadini and fishermen, and large enough to dress the victuals of a regiment. Here you need neither fuel nor fire, pots nor pans ; you have only to scoop a hollow in the boiling sand, wrap your viands in clean paper, and bury them. Twenty minutes will cook a fowl, four or five an egg ; " pomi-d'oro," and such like, are done to a turn before you can say Jack Robiuson. — Francis's Italy. A Legend op Tipperary. — The expression "Och Murder!" is a popular ejaculation in Ireland. The Tipperary boys appear to have adopted it for their motto. — Punch. A nice Country for Investment. — Where a landlord calling for his rent has every reason to be pleased if his tenant has not got a rap to give Mm. — Ib.

The Simoom. — It is common in Syria, Arabia, and Nubia, deleterious in its mildest forms, apd occasionally destructive ; many a pilgrim to the shrine of the prophet at Mecca, and merchant to the marts of Bagdad, having perished by its noxious suffocating influence. Bruce suffered from it when ascending the Nile, he and his company becoming so enervated as to be incapable of pitching their tents, oppressed as well by an intolerable headache. " The poisonous simoom," he remarks, when at Chendi, "blew as if it came from an oven; our eyes were dim, our lips cracked, our knees tottering, our throats perfectly dry ; and no

relief was found from drinking an immoderate quantity of water." The most complete account of the simoom and its effects has been given by Volney, whose accuracy here has been repeatedly confirmed. " Travellers," he states, " have mentioned these winds under the name of poisonous winds ; or more correctly, hot winds of the desert. Such in fact is their quality; and their heat is sometimes so excessive that it is difficult to form an idea of their violence without having experienced it ; but it may be compared to the heat of a large oven at the moment of drawing out the bread. When these Winds begin to blow, the atmosphere assumes an alarming aspect. The sky, at other times so clear in this climate, becomes dark and heavy ; the sun loses its splendour, and appears of a violet colour. The air is not cloudy, but grey and thick ; and it is in fact filled with an extremely subtle dust, that penetrates everywhere. This wind, always light and rapid, is not at first remarkably hot, but it increases in heat in proportion as it continues. All animated bodies soon discover it by the change it produces in them. The lungs, which a too rarified air no longer expands, are contracted, and become painful. Respiration is short and difficult, the skin parched and dry, and the body consumed by internal heat. In vain is recourse had to large draughts of water ; nothing can restore perspiration. In vain is coolness sought for ; all bodies in which it is usual to find it deceive the hand that touches them : marble, iron, water, notwithstanding the sun no longer appears, are hot. The streets are deserted, and the dead silence of night reigns everywhere. The inhabitants of towns and villages shut themselves up in their houses — and those of the desert in their tents, or in pits they dig in the carth — where they wait the termination of this destructive heat. It usually lasts three days, but if it exceeds that time it becomes insupportable. Woe to the traveller whom this wind surprises remote from shelter ; he must suffer all its consequences, which sometimes are mortal. The danger is most imminent when it blows in squalls, for then the rapidity of the wind increases the beat to such a degree as to cause sudden death. This death is a real suffocation ; the lungs being empty are convulsed, the circulation disordered, and the whole mass of blood driven by the heat towards the head and breast ; whence the hemorrhage at the nose and mouth which happens after death. This wind is especially fatal to plethoric habit, and those in whom fatigue has destroyed the tone of the muscles and vessels. I The corpse remains a long time warm, swells, turns blue, and is easily separated ; all of which are signs of that putrid fermentation which take place when the humours become stagnant. These accidents are to be avoided by stopping the nose and mouth with handkerchiefs ; an efficacious method is also that practised by camels, who bury their noses in the sand, and keep them there till the squall is over. Another quality of this wind is its extreme aridity, which is such, that water sprinkled upon the floor evaporates in a few minutes. By this extreme dryness it withers and strips all the plants, and by exhaling too suddenly the emanations from animal bodies, crisps the skin, closes the pores, and causes that feverish heat which is the invariable effect of suppressed perspiration." The current of the simoom is seldom of any considerable breadth, but different examples of it have been traversing a tract of country of but scanty area at the same time, and several cases of disaster from it upon an extensive scale are upon record. The opinion is now commonly held that the destruction of the Assyrian army, when The angel of death spread his wings on the blast, And breath'd in the face of the foe as he pass'd, And the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and chill, And their hearts but once heav'd, and for ever grew still, was accomplished by the agency of the simoom, directed by the Almighty will over the host of Sennacherib, — an interpretation which the terms of the prophetic announcement of the avenging stroke remarkably support : " Behold, I will send a blast upon him." — Milner's Gallery of Nature.

Emigration to the United States. — "The direction of the great current of emigration, both of new-comers from. Europe, and wanderers from the Eastern states, appears to undergo gradual changes, like every thing else in that land of mutability. The desertion of the Eastern sea-board, wherever the population has not acquired some degree of cohesion by the growth of trade and towns, is said to go on as rapidly as ever ; and although attempts have been made of late to re-people some abandoned lands, more years than the period of their brief cultivation must probably elapse, before they recover their fertility, and become once more attractive to emigrants. The great valley of the Ohio, to the north of that river whose left bank is blighted by slavery, is still the main recipient of emigration, as .it has been for about thirty years. But already there are symptoms of a change of direction ; it seems that of late years the car-.

rent has set more decidedly towards the Southern shore of the Canadian lakes ; a region less magnificent in its vegetation, but farther removed from slavery, possessing a healthier climate, and enjoying means of transit and commerce, to the production of which nature has contrihuted a larger share. Cleveland,* or M'aumeie, or Sandusky, or some other spot on the banks of Lake Erie, say the speculators, will be the great growing American city of the latter end of this century. Next in order comes a similar, but less favourably situated region, the States of the far NorthAVest, lowa and Wisconsin, already receiving a considerable proportion of the annual immigration. Within these limits, assuredly magnificent enough, the principal future expansion of the white population of America is probably to take place : For the ' Far West,' however attractive to the imagination of Americans, is not the destined seat of a community resembling that which they have at present constructed. Nature, so lavish in her bounties to them, has nevertheless set them her own definite limits, which they will not profitably overstep. From a line drawn parallel with, and one or two hundred miles west of, the Mississippi, the prairie region extends uninterruptedly to the Rocky Mountains; and this region, though embracing many fertile tracts, is not in general adapted for the settlement of a great agricultural people. As the dense population of China is hemmed in to the north and west by the almost unpeopled territory of the Tartar nomades, or as that of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt was closely girt by the Desert, so that a mere line separated the land cultivated like a garden from the solitude of the Arab ; so likewise, though with somewhat less marked contrast, the populous Mississippi valley will border westward on the land of pasturage. It is true that nature has been bountiful to the AngloAmericans, even in the character of their deserts. These are only reached gradually. Nature dies by slow successive changes, as the traveller passes from the banks of the great liver to the Rocky Mountains. First comes the tract of scattered wood ; then the uniform and level prairie ; then the sandy waste ;' and even this is interspersed with remarkable spots of fertility, the ' parks' and ' pens 1 of the Western trappers and hunters. But, speaking generally, the character of extreme aridity prevails throughout the central belt of North America, from the region of snow to that of eternal sunshine. New Mexico, for example — just now the object of the fierce rapacity of a people possessing more fertile unoccupied* land than any other upon carth — is but a narrow valley, in which rain rarely falls, kept in a productive state only by the greatest economy of water, under the Spanish system of irrigation. Its great Rio del Norte, which looks so imposing on the maps, is said to be seldom above knee-deep, in a course of fifteen hundred miles to the tidewater. After the Rocky Mountains have been passed, the country to the westward, making due allowance for fertile intervals, appearing far more luxuriant to the eyes of tired travellers than sober reality warrants, seems to preserve the general aspect of barrenness. The great Columbia rolls a volume of sand and gravel through shattered mountains of volcanic rock ; its waters are said to ' have no fertilising qualities, but to deteriorate and exhaust the land which they overflow.' South of this river, and far beyond what is, or was recently, the Mexican frontier, the face of the continent appears to exhibit a labyrinth of sierras and sandy or snowy deserts ; including vast basins without an outlet for their waters ; a configuration like that of the surface ©f the moon seen through a telescope. Captain Fremont's narrative of bis desperate wintermarch from the Columbia to the Bay of San Francisco, reads like that of a nightmare journey in a dream. But a very great part of this region is still unexplored. There are few things in recent travel more spirit-stirring than the same traveller's account of his arrival on the banks of the Great Salt Lake of the Eutaws, the Caspian of America, the subject of endless superstitious fables, both Spanish and English, but on which boat had never been launched before ; — * He was the first thatever burst into that silent sea.' "—Edinburah Review.

Bone as a Manure. — In our own island, "no district iv this respect so closely resembles the dairy pastures of Holland, as the county of Chester. From time immemorial, cheese has been made and sent out from it in large quantities. Its celebrated pastures in conse- * In 1542, ' of the articles of flour, pork, bacon, lard, beef, whisky, corn, and wheat, New Orleans exported to the value of 4,446,989 dollars ; Cleveland, 4,431,799.' 'If we suppose/ adds Mr. Scott, ' what cannot but be true, that all the other ports of fhe upper lakes sent eastward as much as Cleveland, we have the startling fact, that this Jake country, but yesterday brought under our notice, already sends abroad more than twice the amount of human food that is shipped from the great exporting city of New Orleans, the once vaunted sole outlet of the Mississippi valley.'

quence almost imperceptibly deteriorated. ; When bones were introduced as a manure in England, and their use upon arable lands had been found so profitable, it was natural to try them also upon grass. The experiment failed in many places : but, in Cheshire, the return was most remarkable. The value of the grass-laud, to which bones were applied, was, in many instances increased five times : and the good effects have continued visible for twenty or thirty years. At present, the tenantry "willingly pay eight per cent, upon the cost to the landlord, on his undertaking to bone for them their weaker pastures. The reason of this vast improvement was speedily pointed out, by a chemical examination of milk and cheese on the one hand, and of bones on the other. Among other results of this examination, it appeared, that the milk of the cow actually contains a considerable proportion of the substance of true bone ; and that every cow which has a calf robs the soil in its food every year of the materials of eighty-two pounds of bone-dust. A ton of bones every twenty-seven years would be necessary to restore this.* A full-grown ox or horse, on the other hand, returns to the land in its droppings as much as it crops in the form of herbage. Only that which is carried to market is lost to the soiL Long devotion to dairy-husbandry must, therefore, have withdrawn from the fields of Cheshire a vast quantity of the material of bones. But this substance is as necessary to the growth of the herbage, as it is to the secretions of the animal : and therefore the grass languished, and became impoverished on the so exhausted land. But, when bones had been artificially added, this deficiency was supplied — the herbage recovered its luxuriance — the materials for making milk were once more afforded to the cattle — and the produce in cheese, and the rentage value of the land, were proportionally augmented. — Ib.

The Lake of Haerlem. — The meer of Haerlem, in the course of the sixteenth century, began to assume a very formidable aspect. At first comparatively inconsiderable in size, the wind caught its waters, lifted them over its natural bounds, and at once united five adjoining lakes in one broad expanse. Every new storm added to its conquests from the adjoining land ; and it threatened at no distant period to convert North Holland into a separate island. This catastrophe has been averted, only perhaps by the lofty downs which, separate its northern extremity from the sea. At present the racer covers an area of about 70 square miles, and the works of defence erected from time to time to arrest its ravages, require an annual outlay of four to five thousand pounds to maintain them. It was in the beginning of the seventeenth century, when so much was daily occurring to animate and inspire the Hollanders, that the greatest of their existing drainages were performed. Without a rival on the seas — possessed of twelve hundred large merchant vessels, and seventy thousand seamen — building two thousand vessels of all sizes in a year, and enriched by the prodigious success of their Indian trade, there was no attempt to which their spirit was unequal — nothing which wealth could accomplish that they were unable to achieve. Among the remarkable men of this active period was Jan Adrainszoon Leeghwater, born in 1575, in De Ryp, a village of North Holland, he early distinguished himself as an engineer and mill maker ; and in this capacity was employed from 1608 to 1612 in draining the Beemster — a large polder in North Holland, which alona contains 18,000 acres. He worked also at various times as a mill-wright, and as a carver in stone, wood, and ivory, he was a skilful mechanician, and built clocks and carrioles ; he was a professed drainer, a land measurer, and was cunning in the construction of dykes and sluices. He possessed the art (which he exhibited at different times before persons of rank, but never revealed) of descending and remaining for a length of time below the surface of the water — eating, writing, and playing on musical instruments the while. He visited aud was employed in various countries — Denmark, Germany, France, and England — and lived to be nearly eighty years of age, though the year of his death is not recorded. ' The success which had attended the drainage of the North Holland polders, suggested to Leegbwater the bolder idea of applying a similar remedy to the larger sea or lake of Haerlem ; — wall in the limits of the lake, pump out its waters, and the danger of future encroachment will be removed. Accordingly, in 1 640, when his experience was fully matured, he published his 'Het Haerlemtner Bock;' in which, he suggests that the lake might be economically and profitably drained, and details the methods he would recommend for successfully accomplishing this gigantic work. Occupied as the country then was with Spanish wars, the pamplet of Leeghwater attracted considerable attention. It went

* Johnston's Lectures on Agricultural Chemistry and Geology. 2d Edit., p. 791.

through three editions. But the project was one which required time to be digested ; and before it had been adequately discussed, there came the peace of 1648. New adjustments, commercial and political, took place. Many previous calculations were now ialsified — many projects deferred. Later still, the disastrous wars with Louis XIV. and with England, intervened ; and the project of Leeghwater was lost sight of or forgotten. But the success of the steam trials on the Zuid plas, and the discussion to which the works of Simons and Greve gave rise, lately recalled the idea of draining the Haerlem sea, proposed and recommended two centuries before. If wealth no longer poured into the country so fast as when the scheme was first promulgated, the work itself, by the progress of art, had now become infinitely easier. They were offered the agency of a new instrument, before which the powers of their windmills quailed ; and the most slow and sceptical began to confess, that what Leeghwater had so sanguinely pronounced to be possible, might now be comprehended among the reasonable expectations of cautious and calculating men. The arguments at present advanced in favour of the work, comprised one element, which Leeghwater himself had been unable to urge with equal force. The annual expense of caging and confining the waters of the lake, was now known by long experience. The practical minds of the Hollanders, therefore were naturally much influenced by the statement, that both to keep dry and to maintain the dykes around this large area, when brought into the state of a polder, would not exceed in yearly expense the cost of maintaining the existing barrier dykes. The drainage of the lake was, accordingly, resolved upon by the States General. A navigable ring canal was begun, we believe in 1840, and this, we understand, is. now completed. At three distant points on the borders of the lake, as many monster engines are to be erected. These, it is calculated, will exhaust the waters, and lay the bed of the lake dry, by fourteen months of incessant pumping ; at a total cost, for machines and labour of £140,000. The expense of maintaining the dykes and engines afterwards, will be nearly five thousand pounds a year. The cost of maintaining the old barrier dykes, amounted, as we have already stated, to about the same sum. The land to be laid dry is variously estimated at from 50 to 70 thousand acres. Taking the lowest of these estimates, the cost of reclaiming amounts to £3 sterling per acre, and that of subsequently maintaining to two shillings per acre. Independently, therefore^ of the other advantages which will attend it, there will be an actual money profit from the undertaking. The quantity of water to be lifted is calculated at about a thousand millions of tons. This would have required a hundred and fourteen windmills of the largest size stationed at intervals round the lake, and working for four years, at a total cost of upwards of £300,000; while at the same time, after the first exhaustion of the waters was completed, the greater number of these mills would have been perfectly useless. How -tfonderful appears the progress of mechanical art ! — three steam engines to do the work of one hundred and fourteen huge mills — in one third of the time, and at less than one half the cost ! One of these monster engines — of English manufacture — working, polypus-like, eleven huge suckers at the extremity of as many formidable arms, has been already erected, and tried at the southern extremity of the lake in the neighbourhood of Leyden. To this first machine the not ungrateful name of the Leeghwater has been given. Vain honours we pay at last to the memory of men whose minds were too forward and too capacious for their time — who were denied by their contemporaries the few kind words of sympathy which would have done so much to comfort, sustain and strengthen them !—lb.! — Ib.