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shillings per acre.* Independently, therefore, of the other advantages which will attend it, there will be an actual money profit from the undertaking.

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ousness; and in a little preface, she urged the importance of endeavouring to appropriate the truths contained in it, with a heart uplifted, that the blessed Spirit might apply the word; and "The quantity of water to be lifted is caleu- concludes, 'The rapid and ceaseless passing away lated at about a thousand millions of tons. This of the days and weeks, as well as the months of would have required a hundred and fourteen the year, as numbered at the head of each day's windmills of the largest size stationed at intervals text, it is hoped may prove a memento of the speed round the lake, and working for four years, at a with which time is hastening on, and remind the total cost of upwards of £300,000; while at the reader of the importance of passing it as a presame time, after the first exhaustion of the waters paration for eternity, in the service of God and was completed, the greater number of these mills for the benefit of mankind.' As soon as her would have been perfectly useless. How wonder- little work was finished, she began its distribu ful appears the progress of mechanical art!tion; thousands and thousands did she give three steam-engines to do the work of one hun-away, besides multitudes that were otherwise dred and fourteen huge mills-in one third of the circulated. Where have not these little text 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!

"The annual drainage of the lake is calculated at fifty-four millions of tons, of which twenty millions will require in some seasons to be lifted in the course of one or two months. Had our railway undertakings not sprung up to rival or excel it, we should have unhesitatingly claimed for this work, the praise of being the boldest effort of civil engineering in modern times."

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books penetrated, from the monarch's gilded hall, to the felon's dungeon.

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Many instances of their usefulness came to light, but one only shall be mentioned here. Two or three years after their publication, a text book, bound in red leather, which she had given to a little grandson, fell out of his pocket at the Lynn Mart, where he had gone to visit the lions. He was a very little boy, and much disconcerted at the loss of his book, for his name was in it, and that it was the gift of his grandmother, written by herself. The transaction was almost forgotten, when nearly a year afterwards, the clergyman of a parish, about eight miles from Lynn, gave the following history of the lost book. He had been sent for to the wife of a man, living on a wild common at the outskirts of his parish, a notorious character, between a poacher and a rat catcher. The wife no better than himself. The message was brought to the clergyman, by the medical man who attended her, and who after describing her as being most strangely altered, added you will find the lion become a lamb,' and so it proved; she, who had been wild and rough, whose language had been violent, and her conduct untamed, lay on a bed of exceeding suffering, humble, patient, and resigned

"Her child had picked up the text book and carried it home as lawful spoil. Curiosity, or some feeling put into her heart by Him without whose leave a sparrow falleth not to the ground, had induced her to read it; the word had been blessed to her, and her understanding opened to receive the gospel of truth. She could not describe the process, but the results were there. Sin had in her sight become hateful; blasphemy was no longer heard from her lips. She drew from under her pillow, 'her precious book,' her dear little book,' which had taken away the fear of death.' She died soon afterwards, filled with joy and hope in believing; having in these detached portions of scripture, been directed to a Saviour, all-sufficient to bear her heavy burden of guilt, and present her, clad in His own spotless righteousness, before the throne of God.

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Upon my return home to Dagenham this day week, in the pony chair, with little Edmund

HISTORY OF GUTTA PERCHA. We find the following in the London News, respecting this curious and useful article, which was first introduced into this country, as an article of manufacture by S. T. Armstrong.

This substance is of recent introduction to England, and was first brought under the notice of the Society of Arts in the autumn of 1843. The history of its discovery is thus given by Dr. Montgomerie :

to me.

Gurney, there was a severe thunder storm the greater part of the way but I felt quite easy to persevere through it. But when I arrived at the Chequers Inn, I thought another storm was coming, and went in. We had been there but a few minutes, when we saw a bright flash of lightning, followed instantaneously by a tremendous clap of thunder; upon being asked whether I was alarmed, I said that I certainly was, and did not doubt that an accident had happened near to us. My dear husband who was in it, "While at Singapore, in 1842, I, on one ocarrived safely, but in a few minutes a young casion, observed in the hands of a Malayan man was carried in dead, struck with the light- woodsman, the handle of a parang made of a ning, in a field close by. I felt our escape; yet substance which appeared quite new still more the awful situation of the young man, My curiosity was excited, and, on inquiry, I who was a sad character; he had been at found it was made of the Gutta Percha, and that the Meeting at Beacontree Heath. This awful it could be moulded into any form, by simply event produced a very serious effect in the neigh-dipping it into boiling water until it was heated bourhood, so much so, that we believed it right throughout, when it becomes plastic as clay, to invite all the relations of the young man, (a and, when cold, regained unchanged its original bad set) and the other young men of the neigh- hardness and rigidity. I immediately possessed bourhood to meet us in the little Methodist myself of the article, and desired the man to meeting house, which ended in one more rather fetch me as much more of it as he could get. On large public meeting. The event and circum- making some experiments with it, I at once disstances altogether made it very solemn; it ap-covered that, if procurable in large quantities, it peared to set a seal to what had passed before in our other meetings. My belief is, that they have had a stirring effect in this neighbourhood, but they have been very humbling to me; the whole event of this young man's awful death has much confirmed me in the belief, that our concern was a right one, and tended to prepare the minds of the people to profit by such a lesson."

LUTHER ON REGENERATION.

In a sermon on John v. 1-15, Luther pharaphrases our Lord's conversation with Nicodemus, in the following manner, thus giving his own views of that vital doctrine of which Nicodemus was ignorant.

The thing is not to do new works, but first to be new; not otherwise to live, but otherwise to be born. It will not do for any man to put the doing before the being, to set the fruits before or on a level with the root. The tree must be first made new, and the root good and perfect; and then will the fruits be good also. It is not the hand, the foot, or the work of either of them, which is to be altered, but the whole person.

“That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit." Here are two clear sayings by which he casts to the ground the Pharisees' dream of a natural new birth; and in the first part passes a short, bold, weighty, and terrible sentence upon all men as they are by nature; by which it is concluded, that the doctrine and the works of the law, which man can perform by following it, will ne er make a man free from sin, or just before God; because the nature is not altered by them, but remains as before. By them, therefore, can no man come to the kingdom of God or obtain eternal life.

would become extensively useful." The discovery was communicated to the Medical Board of Calcutta, and subsequently to the Society of Arts in London.

Sir W. J. Hooker states the tree from which Gutta Percha is procured, to belong to the natu ral order sapotacea, found in abundance in the Island of Singapore, and in some dense forests at the extremity of the Malayan peninsula. Mr. Brook reports the tree to be called " Niato" by the Sarawak people, but they are not acquainted with the properties of the sap; it attains a considerable size, even as large as six feet in diameter; is plentiful in Sarawak, and most probably all over the island of Borneo. The tree is stated to be one of the largest in the forests in which it is found. The timber is too loose and open for building purposes: but the tree bears a fruit which yields a concrete oil, used for food.

For

Gutta Percha is contained in the sap and milky juice, which quickly coagulates on exposure to the air; from twenty to thirty pounds being the average produce of one tree. collecting the sap, the trees are felled, barked, and left dry and useless, so great is the demand for the Guta, the importation of which already reaches many hundred tons annually. Hence the fores:s will soon be cleared of the Gutta trees; whereas it is believed that a constant and moderate supply might be secured by incisions in the bark, as in the case of caoutchouc.

The Gutta is recei ed in straps, or in rolls of thin layers. It is first freed from impurities by kneading in hot water, when it is left soft and plastic and of a whitish grey colour.

When thus prepared, the Gutta has many curious properties. Below the temperature of 50 degrees, it is as hard as wood, but it will

soon receive an indentation from the finger nail. | When softened in hot water, it may easily be cut and moulded; and it will harden, as it cools, to its former rigidity; and it may be softened and hardened any number of times without injury to the material. Unlike caoutchouc, it has little elasticity; but it has such tenacity that a slip, one-eighth of an inch in substance, sustained 42 lbs. weight, and only broke with a pressure of 56 lbs. When drawn out it remains without contracting.

In solution, Gutta Percha is applied, like caoutchouc, for water-proofing cloth. It is likewise used for numerous purposes for which leather is used; in mastics, cements, &c. In short, it promises to become as important an article of commerce as caoutchouc itself.

The name is a pure Malayan one; gutta, meaning the gum, or concrete juice of the plant, and percha, the particular tree from which this is procured. The ch is not pronounced hard like a k, but like the ch in the English name of the fish perch. It has been suggested to Dr. Montgomerie, that the Gutta Percha would be useful in stopping decayed teeth.

In February last, the London company, in connection with the East India company, took measures to stop the felling of the trees, and at an expense of some ten or twenty thousand pounds sterling, introduced the mode of tapping the trees, and drawing the sap, the same as caoutchouc is drawn, and in this way it is all gathered, and all Gutta Percha, or Gutta Tuban, collected in that country, must pass through the hands of the Rajahs to the merchant.

WAR AND PEACE-A CONTRAST.

EFFECT OF WAR.

The bill now under consideration by Congress, proposing to add ten regiments to the army, will, should it pass, make our force in Mexico amouut to 70,000 men, which, at an expense of $1000 a man, will make the cost $70,000,000 per annum. To this it may be added, that of the 70,000 men, at least 10,000 will probably be cut off by vomito and other diseases, or killed in the open conflict of arms, and by private assassinations; and for those who thus die, there is not even the consolation that they have fallen in a good cause, as the enemies against whom they are contending, are not only weak and feeble, but are fighting in defence of their own soil. Meanwhile the country at home is involved in all sorts of trouble its business becomes deranged: its citizens suffer vicissitudes and loss: its morals and religion are exposed to serious shocks; and even the safety of its political institutions are jeoparded. So much for war.

Estimating that it would cost $10,000 a foot lift for making slackwater navigation on the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri rivers, for steamboats of 800 tons burthen, then 3000 miles of these three rivers-say 600 feet fall in each, at $10,000 a foot-would make $18,000,000 outlay; and this would give employment to 60,000 persons for a whole year.

Railroads in a level country cost about $20,000 a mile, with a consumption of iron of 100 tons per mile. Thus 2600 miles of railroad might be constructed for $52,000,000; giving employment to about 175,000 hands for a whole year, and consuming 260,000 tons of iron. And all this without vomito or other fatal diseases; without the horrid butcheries that accompany war, but on the contrary, the labour performed in a healthy climate, among friends and neighbours.

But suppose these 3000 miles of slackwater and 2600 miles of railroad, costing together only the $70,000,000, which our army will cost in a single year, should require for their construction seven years, surely the sum of $10,000,000 per annum will be less seriously felt as a burden, while it is all expended at home, than the other will be which will principally be carried abroad. And when it is remembered that in the latter case the country will prosper: that morals and religion will be promoted, and our institutions be strengthened, Congress cannot hesitate as to the choice it should make between the issues of War and Peace.-North American & U. S. Gazette.

From the Journal of Commerce. MUSIC OF THE SPHERES.

On Friday, Dec. 25th, 1846, at about 2 P. M. a noise was heard in the environs of Mindethal, (Germany,) in a circumference of at least 18 leagues in diameter, resembling in the first instance a distant cannonade. After twenty almost uniform discharges, this noise changed to a rumbling, the sound of which strikingly re sembled that of a kettle drum, and ended with sounds like those of distant trumpets. The whole phenomenon lasted about three minutes, and was heard in the same manner throughout the entire district. Every auditor imagined that he heard a noise over his own head, but nothing was seen explanatory of the phenomenon. In the village of Schoenenberg, however, west of Mindethal, several persons discovered above the houses a black ball rapidly descending, and a man saw this fall into a garden. The news of the event soon spread abroad, and all the inhabitants, abandoning their firesides and family festivities, ran to the spot pointed out. They found an opening in the earth which emitted a sulphurous vapor. On digging with great zeal, a stone was discovered two feet below the surSuppose the $70,000,000 which this army face, in the form of an irregular truncated pyrawill cost in a single year, were applied to inter-mid, with four narrow lateral surfaces, and a fifth nal improvements, what would be the result? somewhat wider. The base is smooth enough.

EFFECT OF PEACE.

The summit is prismatic, and the corners are rounded. It weighs almost eight kilograms. Its dimensions are eight inches in height, seven in breadth, and three in thickness. The fracture is greenish-white, spotted with white, and several crystallized metallic fragments were noticed upon its surface, especially some octahedral crystals of iron, which attracted the magnet. The above is the account given of the phenomena to the editor of the Augsburgh Gazette. A body of similar composition is described by M. Arago, in a communication to the Academy of Sciences, that fell in a district in France in 1841, and was heard a great distance; and the sound which followed the last of the several explosions was quite musical. That learned astronomer denominated this extraordinary sound, the music of the spheres. A large stone was seen to fall, and was exhumed from the field while yet warm. Fragments of this body were scattered in a path fifteen miles wide and sixty miles long. I have detailed and particular accounts of three other aerolites which have fallen to the earth the present year.

GOOD FOR A GOOSE.

E. M.

At the flour mills of Tuberakeena, near Clonmel, while in possession of the late Mr. Newbold, there was a goose, which, by some accident was left solitary, without mate or offspring, gander or goslings. Now it happened, as is common, that the miller's wife had set a number of duckeggs under a hen, which in due time were incubated; and of course the ducklings, as soon as they came forth, ran with natural instinct to the water, and the hen was in a sad pucker-her maternity urged her to follow the brood, and her selfishness disposing her to keep on dry land. In the meanwhile up sailed the goose, and with a noisy gabble, which probably, being interpreted, meant, Leave them to my care, she swam up and down with the ducklings; and when they were tired with their aquatic excursion, she consigned them to the care of the hen. The next morning, down came again the ducklings to the pond, and there was the goose waiting for them, and there stood the hen in her great flustration. On this occasion we are not at all sure that the goose invited the hen-observing her maternal trouble-but it is a fact that she being near the shore, the hen jumped on her back, and there sat, the ducklings swimming, and the goose and hen after them, up and down the pond. And this was not a solitary event: day after day the hen was seen on board the goose, attending the ducklings up and down, in perfect contentedness and good humour; numbers of people coming to witness the circumstance, which continued until the ducklings, coming to days of discretion, required no longer the joint guardianship of the goose and hen.-Otway on the Intel. of Domestic Animals.

A KISS FOR A BLOW.

A visitor once went to a Sabbath school at Boston, where he saw a boy and a girl on one of thoughtless passion the little boy struck his

seat, who were brother and sister. In a moment

sister.

The little girl was provoked, and raised her hand to return the blow. Her face showed that fist was aimed at her brother, when her teacher rage was working within, and her clenched caught her eye. "Stop, my dear," said she, "you had much better kiss your brother than to her heart. Her hand dropped. She threw her arms round his neck and kissed him. The boy was moved. He could have stood against a blow, but he could not withstand a sister's kiss.

strike him." The look and the word reached

He compared the provocation he had given her with the return she had made, and the tears

rolled down his cheeks. This affected the sis

ter, and with her little handkerchief she wiped away his tears. But the sight of her kindness only made him cry the faster; he was completely subdued. Her teacher then told the children always to return a kiss for a blow, and they would never get any more blows. If men and women, families and communities, and nations, would act on this principle, this world would almost cease to be a vale of tears; "nation would not lift up the sword against nation, neither would they learn war any more."-Youth's Cabinet.

For Friends' Review.

THE WINTER STARS.
Sweet is the light

Of a summer's night,

When the modest stars so mildly beam; 'Tis fair to view

On the waters blue
Their silvery lustre gleam.
Soft from the sky
As an angel's eye

Each tranquil orb looks meekly down:
But the Winter Stars
Are strong like Mars,
And tell of the victor's crown!

The groups that come
With the Harvest Home,
And rise with the yellow harvest-moon,
Pensive they look

On the murmuring brook Where the withered leaves are strewn : Dim through tears

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SUMMARY OF NEWS.

CONGRESS. In the Senate, the discussion of the Ten Regiment Bill continues to be the principal business. Downs, of Louisiana, Douglass, of Illinois, and Sevier, of Arkansas, have spoken in favour of the bill, and Bell, of Tennessee, against it. In the House, on the 31st ult., J. R. Giddings moved the following resolution: Resolved, That a select committee of five members be appointed to inquire into and report to this House, whether the slave trade is carried on within the District of Columbia; if so, by what legal authority it is sustained, and whether any modification of the existing acts of Congress on that subject is expedient at this time." A motion to lay this on the table was defeated by a vote of ayes 81, nays 91. A. H. Stephens, of Georgia, expressing a wish to deject of the reference of the President's message, bate the resolution; it was laid over. The subwhich as been before the House for several weeks, was finally disposed of on the 3d inst.

the Mexican commissioners had submitted a plan MEXICO. The last report from Mexico is that of a treaty of peace, which had been transmitted to Washington for the consideration of our Govern

Few of us, I apprehend, who have been only partially introduced to the wild scenery of some of our mountainous districts, would hesitate to acknowledge that our conceptions of nature's great Author have been elevated and expanded by the contemplation of Him in these manifestations of his power; in these evidences of the vastness of that machinery; of the uncontrollable character of the elements brought into action, and employed in the production of our beautiful world. We can, therefore, readily sympathise in some measure with the outburst of poetic feeling, indicated in the following lines, written originally in German, KENTUCKY LEGISLATURE.-Mr. Craven-judiciand entitled "Chamouny at Sunrise." I know notary-reported a bill for the benefit of William who rendered them into English, but their true spirit Bowens, a man of colour; read. would appear to have been infused into the translator, as he thus bowed to "nature in her loftiest mood," and should they please the editor of Friends' Review as they have gratified me, he will send them up to his printer.

P.

Out of the deep shade of the silent fir-grove,
Trembling I survey thee, mountain-head of eternity,
Dazzling, blinding summit, from whose vast height
My dimly-perceiving spirit, floats into the Everlasting.

Who sank the pillar deep in the lap of earth
Which, for past centuries, fast props thy mass up?
Who uptowered, high in the vault of ether,
Mighty and bold, thy beaming countenance?

Who poured you from on high, out of eternal winter's
realm,

O jagged streams, downward with thunder noise?
And who bade aloud with the Almighty voice,
"Here shall rest the stiffening billows?"

Who marks out there the path for the morning star?
Who wreaths with blossoms the skirt of eternal frost
To whom, wild Arveiron, in terrible harmonies,
Rolls up the sound of thy tumult of billows?
Jehovah! Jehovah! crashes in the bursting ice!
Avalanche-thunders roll it in the cleft downward;
Jehovah! it rustles in the bright tree-tops;
It whispers murmuring in the purling silver brook.

?

The number of persons in Indiana unable to read and write bears as large a proportion to the entire population as is found in any other free State. There is however one county in that State eminently free from the reproach of ignorance. Wayne county, with an adult population of 9,349, contains but 42 who are unable to read and write. This county is settled principally by members of the Society of Friends, a society which does not tolerate the sup position that ignorance is bliss, and takes especial care to educate its childreu.-Louisville Journal.

A river having its source at the foot of Mont Blanc.

ment. It is said that a fresh outbreak had occurred in California.

Mr. Craven stated that this was a yellow man, now living in Virginia, who owns some land in Morgan County. The committee had the evidence of men in whom they placed implicit considence, that the petitioner is a man of good character, is a mechanic by trade, and is industrious; the whole neighbourhood, within five miles of his land; desire his removal and settlement there, and they have petitioned this House in his behalf. Where his land is situated there is not, for six miles around, a single slave; the country is sparsely populated, and they desire the petitioner to move among them for his mechanical skill.

Mr. Towles looked upon the class of free negroes as only fit for felons; he, too, thought the United States Constitution was such that this negro could not be kept out of the State if he should appeal to the judicial tribunals of the land. He was a strong pro-slavery man, and that so long as there was a black skin among us, a state of subjection is his only proper state; but the community in which he is to settle is in favour of the passage of this law, and therefore he hoped that it would pass.

Mr. Granger was opposed to allowing him to come into the State on all grounds, and especially because he is a mechanic. The great curse of our State is the want of mechanics, and it is because white mechanics will not work or associate, and we have black mechanics among us, with which by admitting the black we place a barrier to the increase of the white. Is there no mechanic in this neighbourhood? If there is not, and they have employment for one, let them get one that is white. He was opposed to bringing or admitting into the State free blacks, and especially was he opposed to admitting black mechanics to compete with our free white citizens.

Mr Gaines moved to lay the bill upon the table, and as he should consider it a test question, he called for the yeas and nays-carried, 70 to 11.

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