is not the imperative duty of ours, to reduce the mass of custom-house oaths now authorized by law, and substitute a process more consistent with the character of an enlightened and Christian people. The decisive experiment before us, has clearly established the safety and practicability of the measure.

But need we stop where the British government appears to have stopped? After all that has been said in defence of judicial oaths, it may be fairly questioned whether the amount of testimony, designedly false, given in the halls of justice, is not quite as great as it would be, if witnesses were permitted to give their evidence without oath. If oaths were altogether excluded from our judicial proceedings, and adequate penalties annexed to prevarications and falsehood, the tendency of the measure would be to fix the attention of witnesses upon the moral obligation of speaking the truth. No room would be left for any of those wretched expedients, such as kissing the thumb instead of the book, to which perverted ingenuity may be expected occasionally to resort, as long as the sanctity of the oath, instead of the moral obligation, continues to be the prominent stimulus to veracity. The infamy now attached to wilful and corrupt perjury, would naturally fix upon intentional falsehood. The exclusion of oaths from the halls of justice, would, most proably, not sink the simple assertion of witnesses to the level of loose unguarded conversation, but raise it to the level of the most solemn asseveration. The experiment has been partially tried, by allowing the solemn Affirmation to be used, not by the members of one or two religious persuasions only, but by persons of any, or of no religious profession. Does not the success of the experiment, as far as it has been tried, warrant its

further extension?

FRIENDS' REVIEW.

PHILADELPHIA, SECOND MONTH 5, 1848.

We find upon our table the Twelfth Annual Report of the Association for the care of Coloured Orphans.*

Far less pretending in the extent of its aims than the Girard College for white male orphans, and thoroughly unostentatious in all its movements, this Association, composed of something less than forty benevolent females of this city, with Elizabeth Peirson for its Secretary, and Lydia Starr, Treasurer, is quietly labouring to promote the welfare of those who, in the dispensation of Provi. dence, have been left without parents or guardians,

An account of the origin and early progress of this Institution was published in the African Observer, p. 336, &c.

and whose colour greatly increases the difficulties and sufferings incident to their destitute condition.

Far humbler indeed than the magnificent palace which rises so majestically on the hill a couple of miles beyond it, is the simple but comfortable building on Thirteenth street, which has been erected for a SHELTER to the class above mentioned, but certainly not less nobly and purely charitable in its design, nor less indicative of the true spirit of Christian benevolence.

Twenty-four boys and twenty girls, whose general deportment is said to be satisfactory, and whose improvement in their various studies is creditable to their teachers, are not only comfortably lodged and fed, but they daily listen to the reading of the Holy Scriptures; and, while they are instructed in the elementary branches of learning, care is taken to elevate the moral character by training them in the way they should go, and directing them to Him who loves little children, and will not have them forbidden to come unto him.

At proper ages the children are apprenticed in suitable families, and in a majority of instances the subsequent account of their conduct is satisfactory. One very moving case is noticed in this report. A little boy was discovered about midnight asleep in a cellar window, where he had crept in the evening to shield himself from the cold. He had neither parents nor home; but found in the Shelter an asylum where, we trust, he will have cause to implore a blessing on him who hath a bountiful eye and gives his bread to the poor.

The expenses of the Institution were something more than $2000 last year. To meet them, $500 of the principal of the funds of the Association were used, rather than submit to the humiliation of begging assistance from the public. The friends of the Shelter are appealed to, and they are invited to visit it, and judge for themselves if these things be not so. There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth.

The article on Entomology, which we have extracted from Chambers' Journal, may possible suggest to some of our juvenile readers, the reflection that creatures endued with such curious instincts, as the wasp family are shown to possess, must be intended to occupy a useful place in the economy of nature. Hence they may perhaps be induced to moderate the aversion with which these insects are commonly regarded.

Vassalboro, Maine, on the 22d ult., says:
A letter from a highly valued friend, dated at

"We had a fall of snow on the 5th inst., that made good sleighing till last 7th day, when we had a rain that carried it off, and the ground is now

The general aspect of the Vespide, or wasps, is sufficiently familiar to obviate the necessity of description. Their black and gold-painted bodies, their powerful mandibles, formidable stings, He was granted perfect clearness and the full and their surface destitute of hairs, are present use of his faculties to the close, his last words to the eye at the very mention of the word. being an unfinished prayer, that the Almighty The society consists of males, females, and neuwould be with him in the last awful moment of the ters, each having their appropriate functions;

but the males, on the whole, leading the quietest | or plastered over, and not with one coat alone; and least arduous lives. The females are the generally the insect lays down fifteen or sixteen, hardworking foundresses of the colony, and the leaving spaces between each layer for the advanneuters are wasps of all-work-robbing, fighting, tages of inward lightness and strength to her ceildefending, nursing, and building indifferently, ing. Her labours do not end here. She has and by turns. Their history commences most built the walls of the city, it remains for her to conveniently for our purpose in the spring. At commence the edifices, and supply the populathe conclusion of the preceding summer, the tion. She builds a terrace of hexagonal cells, males, after pairing, all died, and there remained of marvellous exactness, and suspends it by pabut a few females behind of all the busy ranks per pillars from the roof of her texture. These which crowded the vespiary. These are awa- terraces emulate in elegance and artistic skill, kened by the return of spring. The solitary and far surpass in utility, the famous hanging wasp finds herself immediately summoned to gardens and terraces of the renowned city of active duties. She has to construct the carcase, old. A few hundred cells are thus constructed, and to excavate the earthwork, for her future and at length an interval of comparative repose people and city. Serious as is the task, she has awaits the labourer, while she proceeds to fulfil to effect it all alone; not a single companion to her more proper duties as a parent. Singlecheer her hours of incessant toil, or to lighten handed, she has laid the foundation of the vespher labour by a single load! Her energies are polis, and has marked out the general design of equal to the undertaking: she is to be seen its future buildings; but she must have further buzzing about in the sunny mornings, looking assistance before the city will be complete. out for a site. It is soon found: it is some dry, The walls, at present bare and desolate, the pawarm bank; and here she sets to her work, lace empty and still, are soon to resound with She perforates it, and forms a long circuitous the hum of life, and with the busy labours of a tunnel, at the extremity of which she digs out a new generation. In the cells the insect deposits vault of considerable dimensions. This task is her ova, gluing them to the walls by an adhesive performed in no careless or slovenly manner; substance. These are soon hatched, they bealthough every particle of rubbish which the come larvæ, and are for some time entirely delittle excavator tears from the walls of her cavern pendent upon their parent's exertions for their must be carried in her jaws, she does not leave supply of food. She has to forage for this nuit at the entrance, but voluntarily entails upon merous and voracious progeny, and runs about herself the vast additional labour of casting it from cell to cell with the utmost solicitude, while away to some distance. Her design in so doing the grubs put forth their mouths, and are fed by appears to be principally to avoid the risk of her her just as the "callow brood" of a bird is fed. cell being discovered by a heap of rubbish at the Most pleasing is it to observe the anxious mofoot of the bank. After the labour of excavation ther keeping watch over her offspring, and ap is ended, the walls are to be plastered, and to parently many a needless time popping her head this fresh duty she at once addresses herself. into their snug cots, as if to see how they do, Surely every person has seen the nest of the and to give a mouthful of food now and then to wasp, and wondered at its exquisite and delicate some tender young larva not yet big enough to architecture of celled paper? Behold the archi- put its head out to be fed! A few weeks slip tect! The nest is really made of paper: it was by-a great change has come over the vespiary; for some time a puzzle to our philosophers. it is replete with life; hundreds of workers have Reaumur appears first to have detected the wasp been born in the interim, and are now labouring in the very act of this manufacture. He beheld might and main, with the empress at their head, her alight on a deal window-frame; and watch-to extend the buildings, and enlarge the city; ing, saw her tear a bundle of delicate hair-like fibres, about an inch in length, from it, bruising the woody fibre with her mandibles until it became like a fine lint. This is the material from which the papyraceous plaster is to be prepared. Flying away with it to her abode, it is there made into a proper consistence by the addition of her tenacious saliva; and when this part of the process is complete, it forms a fine, smooth, adhesive paste, precisely analogous to the proauct of our cumbrous and costly mechanism papier maché. Rolling it into a sort of pellet, she conveys it to the summit of the dome, plasters it on the wall, and spreads it out, by means of her legs and jaws, into a very thin lamina, which is veritable paper. Leaf after leaf must be added, until the whole cavity is thus papered

When complete, a vespiary has been calculated to contain about fifteen or sixteen thousand cells, each of which is thrice a cradle; and therefore, in a single season, each nest will probably be the birthplace of full thirty thousand wasps.

(To be continued.)

PINS.

A dozen years since, all the pins used in this country were imported. Now, none are imported, except a few German pins for the supply of the German population of Pennsylvania. This wonderful change has been produced by a concurrence of circumstances, the most prominent of which was the invention, by Mr. Samuel Slocum, now of Providence, of a

pin-making machine far superior to any then in use in England. This led to the establishment of a pin-manufactory at Poughkeepsie by Messrs. Slocum, Jillson & Co., which, contrary to general expectation, was entirely successful, and soon distanced foreign competition. Thus things went on, until the passage of the Tariff of 1842, which, by increasing the duty on foreign pins, encouraged other parties in this country to engage in the business. Foreseeing this, the above mentioned Company,-which was succeeded by the Am. Pin Company,-at once reduced their prices 20 per cent., and have Of all since reduced them 10 per cent. more. the Pin Companies which have been established or attempted in the United States, only three are known to exist at present, viz. the Am. Pin Company, (which has works both at Poughkeepsie and at Waterbury, Conn.) the Howe Company at Derby, Conn., and Messrs. Pelton, Fairchild & Co., of Poughkeepsie.

The quantity of pins turned out by these establishments, especially the two first, is enormous. The statistics of one of them, we have ascertained, are about as follows: Per week, 70 cases, averaging 170 packs each, each pack containing 12 papers, and each paper 280 pins: making an aggregate of 39,984,000 pins per week, or 2,079,168,000 per annum. If the products of the other two establishments, and the small amount imported, are together equal to the above, we should have a grand total of 4,158,336,000 pins for consumption in the United States, equal to 200 on an average, for every man, woman and child in the country. A pretty liberal allowance, we are thinking. The number of pin-making machines employed by said Company is about 30, and of workpeople about 60. It would be difficult to describe these machines so as to make their operation intelligible to those who have not seen them in motion. We will only say that the wire which is to be wrought into pins, runs from a reel like yarn, into one end of the machine, and comes out at the other, not wire, but pins, cut, pointed and headed, in the most perfect manner, at the rate of 150 a minute. This is about the usual speed, but the machinery is capable of being so adjusted as to produce 300 a minute. Being now of a yellowish colour, they are thrown, by the bushel, into kettles containing a certain liquid, by which they are whitened, and prepared for sticking; i. e. for being stuck into papers, in rows, as they are bought at the stores. This process of sticking is also performed by a machine invented by Mr. Slocum. The narrow paper in which the pins are stuck, is wound from a reel, of any imaginable length, and then cut off at uniform intervals. One sticking-machine will stick as many pins as three pin-machines can make; and three of the former can be attended by one

girl.

A part of the pins of the Am. Pin Company are made of American copper, obtained on the borders of Lake Superior.

The triumphant success of American pinmaking without the aid of protection, or rather in spite of it, shows that when skill and industry are combined, "some things can be done as well as others."-Mercury.

Some Remarks of James Backhouse relative to his aged friend, Mary Capper, when writing to one of his Connexions.

I do not recollect that, in my last, I mentioned your aged relative, Mary Capper, who appeared to me much enfeebled. She spoke of the approach of her end, as feeling an earnest desire to depart and be with her Saviour, but said that she could nevertheless say, "Not my will, but Thine be done," and that she had many comforts to be thankful for, of the least of which she was unworthy. She feelingly expressed her sense of helplessness, and of dependance on Divine support; and her heart seemed overflowing with love to her friends. couraging example of the power of religion in old age; and while her heart expands in Christian love towards all, she retains a clear and strong attachment to those views, or rather, I might more properly say, to those experiences of Christianity to which true Friends, through faith, have attained. I thought this little notice of your honourable relative was due to you, and to her memory.

She is an en

On a subsequent occasion J. B., in writing of a call made on her soon after his return from his labours abroad, makes the following observation-"In the course of conversation, she informed me, that she had adopted the principles of total abstinence as regards intoxicating liquors; that, though on the first mention of the subject, she had doubted its propriety, yet on reflecting upon it, and considering the numbers led away into inebriety-that all these began their course of drunkenness by taking intoxicating liquors, in what had been thought to be moderation, she came to the resolution, that no one should be able to plead her example for taking them at all. At the time she left them off, she was upwards of eighty years of age, and in the practice of taking a single glass of wine daily with her dinner: and having been for many years unable to take animal food, this glass of wine had been thought almost essential to her existence, especially as she had been accustomed to it from an early period of her life. She told me that she expected to have something to suffer, in making this change, and that she might probably have to endure a greater sense of feebleness during the remainder of her days; but the welfare of those by whom she was surrounded, and on whom her example might have some influence, she considered to be of much greater importance.

On making the trial, she was however agree- | proceeded. We rushed into the broad day, ably disappointed; for though she felt some lan- having traversed a space of 14,988 feet in the guor for a few days, she soon became sensible interior of the mountain, and having been an of an increase of strength, and was more vigo-hour and a half buried in its intricate windings. rous without the wine than she had been with it; so that she had cause to commemorate the Goodness by which she had been enabled to make the little sacrifice. And I believe that her example in this respect, as well as her Christian practice exhibited in a great variety of other points, had a beneficial influence on many.

GERMAN SALT MINES.

A correspondent of the Providence Journal, in a letter dated Constance, June 3d, thus describes a visit which he made to the celebrated salt mines near Salzburg:

"From Salzburg, where I arrived the next day, I made a visit to the celebrated salt mines of Hallein. They are situated upon a mountain half an hour's walk from the town. Beneath a handsome brick house on the summit of the mountain is the entrance to the mine. Another gentleman and myself made the descent together. We were obliged to clothe ourselves in large linen jackets and trousers, with a black leather apron tied on behind, and thus picturesquely accoutred, with a light in hand, we commenced the subterranean excursion. We first traversed a long, narrow, and gently descending passage, cut in the solid rock, until we came to a steep and novel railway, going down into a darkness which our light could not penetrate. The railway consisted of two smooth and round beams, about half a foot apart, and a rope upon the right side, which served as a balustrade. We sat across the beams, our right legs under the rope, which we grasped in our hands, the guide being ahead, and as every thing was slippery, away we went, at the rate of twenty knots an hour, down into the abyss. Arrived at the bottom, we traversed another long passage, cut, not in the rock, but in the salt ore itself, the crystallized saline earth, from which, by the operation of fresh water, the clear salt, in the form of brine, is precipitated. These salt galleries are bordered on the sides, floor, and roof. Soon we came to another railroad, which we shot down in the same extraordinary manner, reaching a second level, of which levels there are eight. Thus proceeding, we reached at last a salt lake, illuminated for the occasion, and over which we

This mine is supposed to have been worked even before the Romans were in Germany. It belongs to Austria, but runs under earth into the kingdom of Bavaria. It is said that fourteen days would be required to explore it thoroughly. It is always supplied with fresh air and water, the latter being necessary for the extraction of the salt from the ore. This brine is conveyed by pipes to Hallein, and there converted, by means of evaporation, into pure salt. The fresh water springs found in this mountain run so curiously and providentially, that, though traversing entire salt strata, they do not even mingle or become tinged by the contact. The miners are healthy, and live to an old age. They work individually, but six hours a day. Salzburg is an ancient ecclesiastical city, built upon the site of a Roman colony. No city in Europe can boast a prouder situation. Its acropolis, crowned by the haughty palace of the Archbishop, towers above it, so that one from the battlements of the castle looks directly down upon the roofs and steeples of the town. The rapid Salza pours through its centre. Grandly shaped mountains rise on all sides of it, excepting in that quarter which looks towards the great plain of Bavaria, and the snowy peaks of the Tyrolean Alps bound its horizon."

While on a religious visit to the South, a short time before his decease, he was informed of a man living near where he then was, whose antipathy against Friends was so highly excited, in consequence of their efforts for the extinction of slavery, that he threatened to shoot any Quaker who should come to his house. But this Friend felt a concern to pay the man a visit; and reposing on Divine protection, he proceeded alone to the place. Upon meeting the man who was the object of his visit, the latter inquired what business had brought him there, when Joshua We then passed through chambers con- replied, that he was going about on a visit to his taining portraits of Austrian Emperors, of Salz- friends, and among the rest had called to see burg Archbishops, and collections of minerals, him. "Are you a preacher?" said the man. until we arrived at a wooden car, upon which He answered that he did sometimes speak to the one rides out of the mountain. Seated upon people. "Will you preach to my family!" this we were swiftly drawn by miners along the was the return. Joshua told him if he would narrow rock gallery, a work in itself of some call his family together, he would sit down with half a century, until at last we discerned the day- them, and perhaps he might have something to light at the end of the passage, resembling at say to them. They were accordingly convened, first an intense star, but becoming paler as we and he preached so affectingly to them, that,