"This mighty Earl (Morton), for the pleasure of the place, and the salubrity of the air, designed here a noble recess and retirement from worldly business, but was prevented by his unfortunate and inexorable death, three years after, anno 1581, being accused, condemned, and executed by the MAIDEN, at the Cross of Edinbro', as art and part of the murder of King Henry, Earl of Darnley, father of James VI., which fatal instrument, at least the pattern thereof, the cruel Regent had brought from abroad to behead the Laird of Pennecuik of that ilk, who notwithstanding died in his bed, and the Earl was the first that handselled this unfortunate Maiden."-Pennecuik Dusc. Tweedal.

LION'S HEAD FOUNTAINS.

Fountains are not so prevalent now as they were wont to be. Formerly almost every leading street in London, and almost every town in the country, had its conduit or fountain, from whence

"the grateful fluid fell.”

They were generally adorned with the lion's head, which the ancients introduced, because the inundation of the Nile happened during the progress of the sun in Leo.

BASTINADO.

Tarquin the Proud invented, says St. Isidore, the bastinado and other punishments, and, adds he, he deserved exile. Bastinado, or more correctly, Bastonáta, is derived from the Italian bastone, a stick, bastonare, to beat with a stick. It is called bamboo in China, and knout in Russia.

THE TREAD MILL.

A recent invention for giving useful employment to persons imprisoned for crime. Its usual form is that of a cylindrical wheel, of about 5 feet diameter and 16 feet long. The circumference is furnished with 24 equidistant steps, on which the prisoners are made to work on the mill. All mounting the first step together, their weight sets the wheel in motion, bringing down the step trod upon, when they tread up to the next, which descends in the same manner, and so on producing a continuous rotatory motion, which may be applied as the moving force in turning any sort of machinery.

SUN-DIAL.

Why has it, says Elia, almost every where vanished? If its business use be superseded by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have pleaded for its continuance. It spoke

of moderate labours, of pleasures not protracted after sunset, of temperance, and good hours. It was the primitive clock, the horologe of the first world. Adam could scarce have missed it in Paradise. It was the measure appropriate for sweet plants and flowers to spring by; for the birds to apportion their silver warblings by; for flocks to pasture and be led to fold by. The shepherd carved it out quaintly in the sun, and, turning philosopher by the very occupation, provided it with mottoes more touching than tombstones.

The first sun-dial is said to have been set up at Rome by L. Papirius Cursor, A.U. 447 (B.C. 301), and the next near the rostra, by M. Valerius Mesela, the consul, who brought it from Catania in Sicily, in the first Punic war, A.U. 481. Scipio Nasica first measured time at Rome by water, or clepsydræ, which served by night as well as by day, A.U. 595.

CLOCKS, WATCHES, &c.

Clock-making was brought into this country from the Netherlands. About the year 1368, that patriotic and wise prince, Edward the Third, invited over to this country John Uninam, William Uninam, and John Lutuyt, of Delft, and granted them his royal protection to exercise their trade of clock-making in any part of his kingdom, without molestation.-Rymer's Fadera, vol. vi. p. 590.

Pocket watches were first brought to England from Germany in 1577; and the manufacture of them commenced a few years afterwards.

According to Eginhard, secretary to Charlemagne, the first clock seen in Europe was sent to his master by Abdalla, king of Persia. A géographical clock, showing the difference of mean time in all the capitals of Europe, from a design by B. di Bernardis, was contributed to the Great Exhibition; see Official and Descriptive Catalogue, vol. iii. p. 1015.

ELECTRICAL CLOCKS.

A most successful experiment was made at the Great Exhibition in 1851, of working three large dials by electricity, not merely as a means of connection with one large clock driven by a weight in the usual way, but by using electricity as the motive power. The following extract from a letter from Mr. Finlaison, of Loughton Hall, appeared in the Polytechnic Review :-"Mr. Bain has succeeded to admiration in working electric clocks by the currents of the earth. He set up a small clock in my drawingroom, the pendulum of which is in the hall, and both instruments in a voltaic circuit as follows:-On the N.E. side of my house two zinc plates, a foot square, are sunk in a hole, and suspended

:

to a wire this is passed through the house, to the pendulum first, and then to the clock. On the S.E. side of the house, at a distance of about forty yards, a hole was dug four feet deep, and two sacks of common coke buried in it: among the coke another wire was secured, and passed in at the drawing-room window and joined to the former wire at the clock. The ball of the pendulum weighs nine pounds, but it was moved energetically, and has ever since continued to do so with the self-same energy. The time is to perfection, and the cost of the motive power was only 78. 6d. There are but three little wheels in the clock, and neither weights nor springs; so there is nothing to be wound up."

BELLS.

Bells of a small size are undoubtedly very ancient. Small gold bells are mentioned in Exodus as ornaments worn upon the hem of the High Priest's robe. The large bells now used in Churches, are said to have been invented by Paulinus, bishop of Nola in Campania, about the year 400. They were probably introduced into England very soon after their invention, and are first mentioned by Bede about the close of the seventh century. Such bells were consecrated, and often received the names of persons. The great bell cast in 1845 for York Minster, the heaviest in the United Kingdom, weighs upwards of 12 tons, or about 27,000 lbs.

MANUFACTURE OF TIN-PLATE.

Formerly, says Parkes in his Chemical Essays, none of the English workers in iron or tin had any knowledge whatever of the methods by which this useful article could be produced; our ancestors, from time immemorial, having supplied themselves with it from Bohemia and Saxony. The establishment of this manufacture in those districts, was doubtless owing to their vicinity to the tin mines in the circle of Ersgebirge, which, next to those of Cornwall, are the largest in Europe. The ore which is found there is not the tin pyrites, but the mineral called tin stone.

From the time of the invention of tin-plate to the end of the seventeenth century, not only England, but also the whole of Europe, depended upon the manufactures of Bohemia and Saxony for their supply. However, about the year 1665, Mr. Andrew Yarranton, encouraged by some persons of property, undertook to go over to Saxony to acquire a knowledge of the art and on his return, several parcels of tin-plate were made of a superior quality to those which we had been accustomed to import from Saxony; but owing to some unfortunate and unforeseen circumstances, which are all detailed by Mr. Yarranton in his very valuable publication, the manufactory was not at that time

(although some few years after), established in any part of Great Britain. Such was the origin of the tin-plate manufactory in England, where, at this day, it is in greater perfection than in any other country in Europe.

BLEACHING.

Flax and hemp were employed in the fabrication of cloth many years ago, and in those early times such cloth was highly esteemed; it must therefore, long before that period, have been discovered that these fabrics were improved in colour by exposure to the action of the atmosphere. The effect of hot water in whitening brown linen, would also soon arrest the attention of mankind; and when it became a practice with the early inhabitants of Asia to employ certain earths and alkaline plants in the operations of washing and scouring their garments, the whitening, as well as the detersive properties of these vegetables, could not fail to be observed, and, by degrees, would naturally occasion the introduction of regular processes for bleaching; and that this art was practised very early, is, I think, says Parkes, evident from the great progress which it had made in the beginning of the Christian era.

That the ancients had learnt some method of rendering their linen extremely white, may be supposed from many remarks which are interspersed among their writings. Homer speaks of the garments of his countrywomen, in a way that leaves no doubt of their being clothed, occasionally at least, in white vestments.

"Each gushing fount a marble cistern fills,
Whose polish'd bed receives the falling rills,
Where Trojan dames, ere yet alarm'd by Greece,
Wash'd their fair garments in the days of peace."

Modern bleaching, however, originated with the Dutch, whose linens were the most esteemed of any in Europe.

CALICO PRINTING.

The coat above alluded to was probably of cotton or linen; at any rate, we are informed, that more than 3000 years ago, a shrewd matron tied a scarlet thread round the hand of one of Tamar's children ;* and Homer, who flourished 900 years B.C., speaks of the variegated cloths of Sidon as very magnificent productions. +

An historian who wrote more than 400 years before the Christian era, when describing the nations which inhabited Caucasus, a mountain extending throughout the regions of Georgia and Armenia, affirms, that by means of vegetables ground and diluted with water, these people adorned their cloth with the figures of + Iliad, lib. vi. line 289.

* Genesis xxxviii. 28.

various animals, and that the dyes were permanent which were thus obtained.

Strabo, the Greek philosopher, who was contemporary with our Saviour, relates that the Indians wore flowered linens, and that India abounded with drugs, roots, and colouring substances, from which some very beautiful dyes were produced; and we know that the inhabitants of India used a purple and scarlet dye, resembling cochineal in colour, and in the manner of its production.

Tyre, and other parts of Syria, have long been famed also for using purple and scarlet dye. The Tyrian dye has been noticed in song, poetry, and prose; and the late Lord Erskine wittily alludes to it in his epigram on the Sergeants of the Common Pleas:

"Their purple garments come from Tyre,
Their arguments go to it!"

Thus it will appear, that the origin of calico-printing may be traced to the earlier ages, but to whom the invention belongs is lost in the mazes of obscurity.

It does not appear that calico-printing was introduced into this country earlier than the reign of Elizabeth, when an act was passed to restrain the use of logwood in dyeing, on account of the fugitive nature of its colour.*

SOAP.

The first notice we have of soap is by one of the Hebrew prophets " Though thou wash thee with nitre and take much soap, yet thine iniquity is marked before me."-Jeremiah ii. 22. The term soap occurs repeatedly in the Old Testament, but Beckmann has proved, in his Treatise on Soap, that the Hebrew word Borith, which has been rendered soap, rather means alkali. Ætius, who flourished about the end of the fifth century, and was the first Christian medical writer, speaks of a black soap; and Paulus Ægineta, a Greek physician, who lived in the early part of the seventh century, says he made an extemporaneous soap from oil and the burned dregs of wine. It would be difficult to trace the onward progress of soap-making, step by step; but it is certain that the boiling of soap flourished in the seventeenth century, from the directions of that date for its preparation.

ALUM.

The first alum manufactured in England was in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, at Gisborough in Yorkshire, by one Thomas Chaloner, an ancestor of Robert Chaloner, Esq.

* In the time of Elizabeth, the nature of logwood was not understood; but now it has many important uses, and, when properly employed, is one of the most valuable articles used in dyeing.