Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

Formerly, whitebait were considered to be the young of the shad; and only of late years has the misnamed fish taken its proper position. It appears that Mr. Yarrell, the able naturalist, was one morning in March struck with the early appearance of whitebait in a fishmonger's shop in St. James's; and knowing that shads, which they were supposed to be, did not make their appearance till much later (May), he took up the matter, and persevered in a course of investigation, which lasted from March to August, 1828. The specific distinction between the two fishes, on which Mr. Yarrell relies as of the greatest value, is the difference of their anatomical character; and especially in the number of vertebræ, or small bones, extending from the back-bone. "The number of vertebræ in the shad," he states, "of whatever size the specimen may be, is invariably fifty-five, while the number in the whitebait is uniformly fifty-six; even in a fish of two inches, with the assistance of a lens, their exact number may be distinctly made out."

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CATCHING ELECTRIC EELS.

Humboldt gives a very interesting narrative of the mode of the capture of the gymnoti employed by the Indians of South America. This is done by rousing the eels by driving horses and mules into the ponds which those fish inhabit, and harpooning them when they have exhausted their electricity upon the unhappy quadrupeds.

"I wished," says Humboldt, "that a clever artist could have depicted the most animated period of the attack; the groups of Indians surrounding the pond, the horses, with their manes erect, and eye-balls wild with pain and fright, striving to escape from the electric storm which they had roused, and driven back by the shouts and long whips of the excited Indians, the livid yellow eels, like great water-snakes, swimming near the surface, and pursuing their enemy: all these objects presented a most picturesque and exciting _ensemble_. In less than five minutes, two horses were killed: the eel, being more than five feet in length, glides beneath the body of the horse, and discharges the whole strength of its electric organ; it attacks at the same time the heart, the digestive viscera, and above all, the gastric plexus of nerves. I thought the scene would have had a tragic termination, and expected to see most of the quadrupeds killed; but the Indians assured me that the fishing would soon be finished, and that only the first attack of the gymnoti was really formidable. In fact, after the conflict had lasted a quarter of an hour, the mules and horses appeared less alarmed; they no longer erected their manes, and their eyes expressed less pain and terror. One no longer saw them struck down in the water; the eels, instead of swimming to the attack, retreated from their assailants, and approached the shore."

The Indians now began to use their missiles; and by means of the long cord attached to the harpoon, jerked the fish out of the water without receiving any shock so long as the cord was dry. All the circumstances narrated by Humboldt establish the close analogy between the gymnotus and torpedo in the vital phenomenon attending the exercise of their extraordinary means of offence. The exercise is voluntary and exhaustive of the nervous energy; and, like voluntary muscular effort, it needs repose and nourishment to produce a fresh accumulation.

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SIR WILLIAM HERSCHEL'S FIRST TELESCOPE.

Sir William Herschel arrived in England from Hanover, his birth-place, about the end of the year 1759, when he was in his 21st year. He was bred a professor of music, and went to live at Halifax, where he acquired, by his own application, a considerable knowledge of mathematics; and, having studied astronomy and optics in the popular writings of Ferguson, he was anxious to witness with his own eyes the wonders of the planetary system. He accordingly borrowed of a friend a telescope, two feet in focal length; and, having directed it to the heavens, he was so delighted with the actual sight of phenomena, which he had previously known only from books, that he commissioned a friend to purchase for him in London a telescope, with a high magnifying power. Fortunately for science, the price of such an instrument greatly exceeded his means, and he immediately resolved to construct a telescope with his own hands. After encountering the difficulties which every amateur at first experiences, in the casting, grinding, and polishing, of metallic specula for reflecting telescopes, he completed, in 1776, a reflecting instrument, _five feet_ in focal length, with which he was able to observe the ring of Saturn, and the satellites and belts of Jupiter. This telescope was completed when he resided at Bath, where he acquired by degrees, and in his leisure hours, that practical knowledge of optics and mechanics which was necessary for such a task.

His experience in this scientific art was of the most remarkable kind; and, by 1781, he had constructed so many telescopes, as to be better furnished with the means of surveying the heavens than were possessed by any other astronomer, in either of the fixed observatories in Europe.

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WONDERS OF AUSTRALIA.

Sydney Smith has thus sketched a few of the natural wonders of this new world:--"In this remote part of the earth, Nature (having made horses, oxen, ducks, geese, oaks, elms, and all regular and useful productions, for the rest of the world) seems determined to have a bit of play, and to amuse herself as she pleases. Accordingly, she makes cherries with the stone outside; and a monstrous animal, as tall as a grenadier, with the head of a rabbit, a tail as big as a bedpost, hopping along at the rate of five hops to a mile, with three or four young kangaroos looking out of its false uterus, to see what is passing. Then comes a quadruped, as big as a large cat, with the eyes, colour, and skin of a mole, and the bill and web-feet of a duck, puzzling Dr. Shaw, and rendering the latter half of his life miserable, from his utter inability to determine whether it was a bird or a beast. Add to this, a parrot with the legs of a sea-gull; a skate with the head of a shark; and a bird of such monstrous dimensions, that a side-bone of it will dine three real carnivorous Englishmen;--together with many other productions that, on the discovery of the country, agitated Sir Joseph Banks, and filled him with emotions of distress and delight."

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VICISSITUDES OF MINING.

Humboldt relates of a Frenchman, Joseph Laborde, that he went to Mexico very poor in 1743, and acquired a large fortune in a very short time by the mine of La Canada. After building a church at Tasco, which cost him 84,000_l._, he was reduced to the lowest poverty by the rapid decline of those very mines, from which he had annually drawn from 130,000 to 190,000 pounds' weight of silver. With a sum of 20,000l., raised by selling a _sun_ of solid gold, which, in his prosperity, he had presented to the church, and which he was allowed by the archbishop to withdraw, he undertook to clear out an old mine, in doing which he lost the greatest part of the produce of this golden sun, and then abandoned the work. With the small sum remaining, he once more ventured on another undertaking, which was, for a short time, highly productive; and he left behind him, at his death, a fortune of 120,000_l_.

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TROPICAL DELIGHTS.

What a ludicrous picture has Sydney Smith drawn of the animal annoyance of tropical climates. "Insects," he says, "are their curse. The bete rouge lays the foundation of a tremendous ulcer. In a moment, you are covered with ticks. Chigoes bury themselves in your flesh, and hatch a large colony of young chigoes in a few hours. They will not live together, but every chigoe sets up a separate ulcer, and has his own private portion of pus. Flies get into your mouth, into your eyes, into your nose; you eat flies, drink flies, and breathe flies. Lizards, cockroaches, and snakes get into your bed; ants eat up the books; scorpions sting you on the foot. Everything bites, stings, or bruises. Every second of your existence, you are wounded by some piece of animal life, that nobody has ever seen before, except Swammerdam and Merian. An insect with eleven legs is swimming in your tea-cup; a nondescript, with nine wings, is struggling in the small-beer; or a caterpillar, with several dozen of eyes in his belly, is hastening over the bread and butter. All nature is alive, and seems to be gathering all her entomological hosts to eat you up, as you are standing, out of your coat, waistcoat, and breeches. Such are the tropics. All this reconciles us to our dews, fogs, vapours, and drizzle; to our apothecaries rushing about with gargles and tinctures; to our old British constitutional coughs, sore throats, and swelled faces."

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INVENTION OF THE DIVING-BELL.

In the United States of America, generally, and to some extent in England, the invention of the diving-bell has been attributed to Sir William Phipps; who was, however, one of the first persons who used the bell advantageously, in recovering nearly 300,000l. treasure from a Spanish wreck, near the Bahamas. The _invention_, or the earliest use of the diving-bell, dates from upwards of a century before the birth of Phipps; the first instance of its use being at Cadiz, in the presence of Charles V., in 1538; whereas Phipps was born at Pemaguid, in America, in 1650. There is, likewise, another popular error, that the Mulgrave family, of which the present head is the Marquess of Normanby, descended from Sir William Phipps; the founder of the Mulgrave family being Phipps, one of the earliest explorers of the Arctic regions.

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EXPERIMENTS WITH AN ELECTRIC EEL.

In 1838 there was brought to London, and exhibited at the Adelaide Gallery, in the Strand, a living specimen of the electric eel, or gymnotus, being the first received in this country alive within the present century. It was fed upon fish, and occasionally with bullock's blood, and was kept warm by water, artificially heated. With this eel several interesting experiments were made, allowing periods of rest from a week to a month between each set. One of these is thus described:--

"I was so fortunate (says Professor Owen) as to witness the experiments performed by Professor Faraday on the large gymnotus which was so long preserved at the Adelaide Gallery, in London. That the most powerful shocks were received when the one hand grasped the head, and the other hand the tail of the gymnotus, I had painful experience, especially at the wrists, the elbow, and across the back. But our distinguished experimenter showed us that the nearer the hands were together, within certain limits, the less powerful was the shock. He demonstrated by the galvanometer that the direction of the electric current was always from the anterior parts of the animal to the posterior parts, and that the person touching the fish with both hands received only the discharge of the parts of the organs included between the points of contact. Needles were converted into magnets; iodine was obtained by polar decomposition of iodide of potassium; and availing himself of this test, Professor Faraday showed that any given part of the organ is negative to other parts before it, and positive to such as are behind it. Finally, heat was evolved, and the electric spark obtained."

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TALENT AND OPPORTUNITY.

Previous to the year 1706, the brass ordnance for the British Government was cast at the foundry in Moorfields; but an accident which occurred there at the above date, led to the removal of the foundry to Woolwich. The circumstances connected with this change are interesting, as well as instructive.

It appears that a great number of persons had assembled to witness the re-casting of the cannon taken by the Duke of Marlborough from the French; and there happened to be among them, a young German artisan in metal, named Schalch. Observing some moisture in the moulds, he pointed out to the spectators around him the danger likely to ensue from an explosion of steam, when the moulds were filled with the heated metal; and at the instigation of his friends, this apprehension was conveyed through Colonel Armstrong, major-general of the Ordnance, to the Duke of Richmond, then in attendance, as the head of the department. This warning was, however, disregarded; but Schalch retired from the spot with as many of the bystanders as he could persuade to accompany him. They had not proceeded far before the furnaces were opened, and, as Schalch had foretold, a dreadful explosion ensued. The water in the moulds was converted into steam, which from its expansive force caused a fiery stream of liquid metal to dart out in every direction. Part of the roof of the building was blown off, and the galleries that had been erected for the company were swept to the ground. Most of the foundrymen were terribly burnt; some were killed; and many of the spectators were severely injured.

A few days afterwards, in answer to an advertisement in the newspapers, Schalch waited upon Colonel Armstrong, and was informed by him that the Board of Ordnance contemplated building a new foundry, and had determined, from the representations made to them of Schalch's ability, to offer him the superintendence of its erection, and the management of the entire establishment, when completed. Schalch readily accepted the appointment: he fixed upon the Warren at Woolwich, as the most eligible site for the new building; and the ordnance which were cast here under his direction were highly approved of. Thus, almost by mere chance, was the young German appointed to a situation of great trust and emolument, which he filled so ably, that during the many years he was superintendent of the Royal Arsenal, not a single accident occurred, amidst all the dangerous operations of gun-casting. He retired, after sixty years service, to Charlton, where he died; and his tomb may be seen in Woolwich church-yard.

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TRAVELLING IN THE HIMALEH MOUNTAINS.

The perils of the heights and passes of the Himâleh are truly frightful. At Boorendo, 15,171 feet in height, one of the safest and most frequented of the passes, the guides point out a spot where upwards of twenty persons, returning from Koonacour with salt, a few years since, perished at once: they were overtaken by a fall of snow when on the other side, but they preferred trying the pass to making a circuit of six or seven days' journey; the wind got up, and they were so benumbed with cold by the time they reached the trees, that they were unable to strike a light, and slept to wake no more.

The road to Ludak is passable in the middle of winter, and is never shut by snow; but there are frightful accounts of frosts on this route. As protection against these perils, travellers clothe themselves in their journeys with a winter-dress, which is so heavy that it scarcely seems possible for them to walk. Putee Ram, a traveller, is described as wearing a garment of lambskin, called Lapka, with sleeves; the fleecy side was inward, and the exterior covered with sooklat, a kind of warm blanket, dyed blue. There were trousers of the same, long woollen stockings, and over them the usual kind of boots, the foot part stuffed with two inches of wool; and gloves of thick flannel reaching above the elbows; in addition to this, he had a blanket round his waist, another thrown on his shoulders, and a shawl wrapt over his cap and part of his face; such, he said, was the usual garb of a traveller in the winter season; adding, that he was always accompanied by a mule-load of blankets and another Lapka, all of which were required at night, when he was obliged to sleep under the snow.

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GOLD IN SIBERIA.

The reign of the Emperor Nicholas has been distinguished by the important discovery, that portions of the great _eastern_ regions of Siberia are highly auriferous; viz., the government of Tomsk and Teniseik, where low ridges, similarly constructed to those on the eastern flank of the Ural, and like them, trending from north to south, appear as offsets from the great east and west chain of the Altai, which separates Siberia from China. And here, it is curious to remark, that a very few years ago, this distant region did not afford a third part of the gold which the Ural produced; but by recent researches, an augmentation so rapid and extraordinary has taken place, that in 1843 the eastern Siberian tract yielded considerably upwards of two-and-a-quarter millions sterling, raising the total gold produce of the Russian empire to nearly _three millions sterling_!--_Sir R. I. Murchison_.

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COMBINATIONS OF THE KALEIDOSCOPE.

The system of endless changes is one of the most astonishing properties of the Kaleidoscope. With a number of loose objects--pieces of glass, for example,--it is possible to reproduce any figure we have admired, when it is once lost. Centuries may elapse before the same combination returns; if the objects, however, are placed in the cell so as to have very little motion, the same figure may be recalled, and if actually fixed, the same pattern will return in every evolution of the object-plate. A calculation of the number of forms is given upon the ordinary principles of combination; namely, that twenty-four pieces of glass may be combined 13,917,242,888,872,552,999,425,128,493,402,200 times--an operation the performance of which would take hundreds of thousands of millions of years, even upon the supposition that twenty combinations were effected every minute!

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"THE MEANS TO THE END."

From the abundance of clay upon its site, London is, as might be expected, a brick-built city; although the ingenuity of our age has cased miles of streets with cement, to imitate stone. This prevalence of clay is, in great measure, explanatory of the vastness of the metropolis. It is nowhere better illustrated than in the fact of "the Five Fields," (between Pimlico and Chelsea,) formerly a clayey swamp, being now the site of some of the finest mansions in London. A few years ago, the clay retained so much water that no one would build there, and "the Fields" were the terror of foot-passengers proceeding from Westminster to Chelsea after nightfall. At length, Mr. Cubitt, on examining the strata, found them to consist of clay and gravel, of inconsiderable depth. _The clay he removed, and burned into bricks; and by building upon the substratum of gravel, he converted this spot from the most unhealthy to one of the most healthy_, to the immense advantage of the ground landlord and the whole metropolis. This is one of the most perfect adaptations of the means to the end, to be found in the records of the building art.

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INDIA RUBBER, A CENTURY AND A HALF
SINCE.

Every generation is wisest in its own conceit, and the present is continually overrated at the expense of the past. Who would have thought that India rubber cloaks were worn in South America upwards of a century since? yet such, forsooth, is the plain fact of history; and disinclined as we are to rob Mr. Macintosh of the merit of his adaptation, the invention must be awarded to another age; indeed, it is almost one of the antiquities of the New World. In a work entitled _La Monarchia Indiana_, printed at Madrid in 1723, we find a chapter devoted to "Very profitable trees in New Spain, from which there distil various liquors and resins." Among them is described a tree called _ulquahuill_, which the natives cut with a hatchet, to obtain the white, thick, and adhesive milk. This when coagulated, they made into balls, called _ulli_, which rebounded very high, when struck to the ground, and were used in various games. It was also made into shoes and sandals. The author continues:--"Our people (the Spaniards) make use of their _ulli_ to varnish their _cloaks_, made of hempen cloth, _for wet weather_, which are good to resist water, but not against the sun, by whose heat and rays the _ulli_ is dissolved."

India rubber is not known in Mexico at the present day by any other name than that of _ulli_. And the oiled silk covering of hats very generally worn throughout the country by travellers is always called _ulli_.

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BALLOON VOYAGE FROM LONDON TO NASSAU.

On Monday, November 7, 1836, Mr. Monck Mason and Mr. Robert Holland accompanied Mr. Green in his large balloon from London to Weilburg, in the grand duchy of Nassau, in Germany, an extent of 500 British miles, achieved in the short space of eighteen hours. The route lay through a considerable portion of the five kingdoms of England, France, Belgium, Prussia, Germany, and the Archduchy of Nassau; whilst a long succession of cities, including London, Rochester, Canterbury, Dover, Calais, Cassel, Ypres, Courtray, Lille, Oudenarde, Ath, and Brussels, (with the renowned fields of Waterloo and Genappe,) Namur, Liege, Spa, Malmedy, Coblentz, and a whole host of intermediate villages, were all brought within the compass of the aeronauts' horizon; their superior elevation and various aberrations enabling them to extend far beyond what might be expected from a hasty consideration of the line connecting the two extremities of the route. The voyagers returned to London by steam, and Mr. Monck Mason afterwards published an interesting narrative of the æronautical voyage.

The appearance which the balloon exhibited previous to the ascent was very strange. Provisions calculated for a fortnight's consumption, in case of emergency; ballast to the amount of upwards of a ton in weight, disposed in bags of different sizes, duly registered and marked; together with an unusual supply of cordage, implements, and other accessories to an aërial excursion, occupied the bottom of the car: while, all around the hoop, and elsewhere appended, hung cloaks, carpet-bags, barrels of wood and copper, a coffee-warmer by means of slaked lime, barometers, telescopes, lamps, wine and spirit flasks, with many other articles designed to serve the purposes of a voyage to regions where, once forgotten, nothing could be supplied.

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ANTIQUITY OF REFINED SUGAR.

It appears from the accounts of the Chamberlain of Scotland, published from the originals in the Exchequer, that in the year 1329, _loaves of sugar_ were sold in Scotland at the price of 1s. 9-1/2d. (more than an ounce of standard silver) per lb. Stow's _Survey of London_ states sugar refining to have been commenced in England about 1544; and upwards of four centuries since we find Margaret Paston writing to her husband from Norwich thus:--"I pray, that ye will vouchsafe to send me another sugar-loaf, for my old one is done."

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CLEARNESS OF THE SKY AT THE CAPE OF
GOOD HOPE.

An observer states that in forty-two successive days at the Cape, there were only three in which he could not see Venus in broad daylight. Sir John Herschel assures us that he has written a letter by the light of an eclipse of the moon. Under these circumstances, the starry heavens presented a brilliance, of which the inhabitants of the northern hemisphere can have no conception; the line from Orion to Antinous being remarkably rich and brilliant, and appearing as a continuous blaze of light; with, however, a few patches of the sky destitute of stars.

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