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94 ARTS AND SCIENCES OF ANIMALS. Bees are Geometricians. Their cells are so constructed as, with the least quantity of materials to have the largest sized spaces and the least possible loss of interstices. So also is the Ant-Lion. His funnel-shaped trap is exactly correct in its conformation as if it had been formed by the most skilful art its of our species, with the aid of the best in struments. The Mole is a Meteorologist, The bird called Nine Killer is an Arithmeti cian; so also are the Crow, the Wild Turkey, and some other birds. The Torpedo, the Ray, the Electric Eel, are Electricians. The Nautilus is a Navigator. He raises and lowers his sails, casts and weighs anchor and performs other nautical evolutions, Whole tribes of birds are Musicians. The Beaver, is an Architect, Builder, and Wood-cutter. He cuts down the trees, and builds houses and dams. The Marmot is a civil engineer. He not only builds houses, but constructs aqueducts and drains to keep them dry. The white Ant maintains a regular army of soldiers. The Marmots are Agriculturists. They cut down grass and make it into hay. The East India Ants are Horticulturists. — They raise mushrooms, upon which they feed their young Wasps are paper Manufacturers. Catterpillars are silk spinners. The bird Ploceos Textor is a Weaver, He weaves a web to make his nest. The Prima is a Tailor. He sews the leaves together to make his nest. The Squirrel is a Ferryman; with a chip or a piece of bark for a boat, and his tail for a sail, he crosses a stream. Dogs, Wolves, Jackals, and many others are Hunters. The Black Bear and the Heron are Fisher men. The Ants have regular day laborers. The Monkey is a Rope-dancer. Os Governments. The association of Bea vers presents us with a model of Republican ism. The Bees live under a Monarchy. The Indian Antelope furnish an example of patriarchial Government. Elephants exhibit an aristocracy of elders. Wild Horses are said to elect their leader. And Sheep in the wild state, are under the control of a military chief ram. JOB DODGE, OR THE STORMY DAY. It was a half drizzling, half stormy day in the middle of November —just such a day as puts nervous people in a bad humor with themselves and every body else. Job Dodge was brooding ovei the tire immediately after breakfast. His wife addressed him as fol lows : “Mr. Dodge, can’t you mend that front door-latch to day ?” “ No,” was the answer. “ Well, can’t you mend the handle of the water pail ?” “No.” “Well, can’t vou fix a handle to the mop'?” “No.” “Well, can’t you put up some pins for the clothes, in your'chamber?” “No.” “Well, can’t you fix that north window, so that the rain and snow won’t drive in ?” “No, no, no,” answered the husband sharp ly. He tten took his hat, and was on the point of leaving the house, when his wife, knowing that he was going to the tavern, where he would meet some of his wet-day companions, asked him kindly to wait a mo ment. She then got her bonnet and cloak, and said to her husband, “ You're going to the tavern; with your leave I will go with you.” The husband stared. “Yes,” said the wife, “I may as well go as you: if you go and waste the day at the tavern, why shall 1 not do the same?” Job felt the reproof. He shut the door; hung up his hat; got the hammer and nails ; did all his wife had requested, and sat down by the fire at night, a better and happier man. FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES. One day the Caliph Hassan, son of Hali be ing at table, a slave unfortunately let fall a dish of meat reeking hot, which scalded him severely. The slave fell on his knees re hearsing those words of the Koran, “ Para dise is for those who restrain their anger.” “ I am not angry with thee.” answered the Caliph. “And for those who forgive offences against them,” continues the slave. § ® unr a&&sa&,ait sisa i& ©a asmns. “I forgive thee thine,” replied the Caliph. “But, especially, for those who return good for evil,” adds the slave. “1 set thee at liberty,” rejoined the Caliph, “ and I give thee ten dinars.” Will not this Mahometan rise up in judge ment, and condemn many who call themselves the followers of the merciful Jesus ? ORIGIN OF GREAT MEN. Columbus was the son of a weaver and a weaver himself. llabelias was the son of an apothecary. Claude Lorraine was bred of a pastry cook. Moliere was the son of a tapestry maker. Cervantes w r as a common soldier. Homer was the son of a small farmer. Demosthenes was the son of a cutler. Terence was a slav e. Oliver Cromwell was the son of a brewer. Howard was an apprentice to a grocer. Franklin was a journeyman printer, son of a tallow chandler and soap boiler. Dr. Thomas Bishop of Worcesler was the son of a linen draper. Daniel Defoe was a hosier, and son of a butcher. Whitefield was the son of an Inn-keeper at Gloucester. Sir Cloudesly Shovel, rear admiral of Eng land, was an apprintice to a shoemaker and afterwards a cabin boy. Bishop Prideau worked in the kitchen at Exeter College, Oxford. Cardinal Wolsey was the son of a butcher. Ferguson was a sheperd. Dean Tucker was the son of a small farm er in Cardiganshire, and performed his jour nies to Oxford on foot. Edmund Halley was the son of a farmer at Ashleh de la Zouch. Lucian was the son of a maker of statua ry- \ irgil was the son of a porter. Horace was the son of a shop-keeper. Shakespeare w r as the son of a wool stap ler. Milton was the son of a money scrivener. Pope was the son of a merchant. Robert Burns was the son of a ploughman in Ayrshire. 1 ■ i The Practical and the Beautiful.— From a report in the Taunton Whig of a witty lecture before the Lyceum of that town by Peleg W. Chandler, Esq., we extract the following passage : Do not decry scholarship—the fountain of the past is not dry, it will yet be the nurse of a nobler time. Bend your ear to the choral hymns of Sophocles, attune your voice to the Ciceronean strain. Do not disparage the frieze of the Parthenon by pointing to the Thames Tunnel, and hinting of its practical ity—this is the method of ignorance, the trick of a shuffler. It is this spirit that has made your architecture a cross between a Greek lemple and a Yankee barn. > mm A Jolly Life. —lnsects generally must lead a truly jovial life. Think what it must be to lodge in a lily! Imagine a palace of ivory or pearl, with pillars of silver and cap itals of gold, all inhaling such a perfume as never arose from human censer! Fancy, a gain, the fun of tucking yourself up for the night in the folds of the rose, rocked to sleep by the gentle sighs of summer air, nothing to do when you awake but to w T ash yourself in a dew-drop, and fall to and eat your bed clothes ! Proverbs Refined. — A cat may look at a king, is a short homily calculated to check the arrogance of high rank. This derogatory axiom is modernised by—“ Royalty may be contemplated with impunity even by a feline quadruped.” There is a historical apothegm to the ef fect that Rome was not built in a day , which fact is communicated to us by Miss Hill in the sonorous period:—“ The capital of the pa pal states was not constructed in a diurnal revolution of the globe.“ The concise adage that Old birds are not caught with chaff is sententiously paraphrased by the axiom—“ Experienced warblers are rarely made prisoners by the husks of grain.” —.> A good man —Areal Christian —seldomsees a defect in his neighbor. A pure lake reflects the beautiful sky, the clouds, and the over hanging trees, but when it is ruffled it reflects nothing that is pure. A bad man—a real scoundrel seldom sees a good trait in the char acter of his neighbor. An imperfect glass re flects nothing correctly, but shows its own deficiency. A perfect mirror reflects nothing but bright and pure images. (Tracts of £nnn’L THE VALLEY OF MEXICO. Conceive yourself placed on a mountain nearly two thousand feet above the valley, and nine thousand above the level of the sea. A sky above you of the most perfect azure, without a cloud, and an atmosphere so trans parently pure, that the remotest objects at the distance of many leagues are as distinctly visi ble as if at hand. The gigantic scale of ev erything first strikes you —you seem to be looking down upon a world. No other moun tain and valley view has such an assemblage of features, because nowhere else are the mountains at the same time so high, the val ley so wide, or filled with such variety of land and water. The plain beneath is exceed ingly level, and for two hundred miles around it extends a barrier of stupendous mountains, most of which have been active volcanoes, and are now covered some with snow, and some with forests. It is laced with large bodies of water looking more like seas than lakes—it is dotted with innumerable villages, and estates, and plantations; eminences rise from it which, elsewhere, would be called mountains, yet there, at your feet, they seem but ant hills on the plain ; and now, letting your eye follow the rise of the mountain to the west (near fifty miles distant,) you look over the immediate summits that wall the val ley, to another and more distant range—and to range beyond range, with valleys between each, until the whole melts into a vaporry distance, blue as the cloudless sky above you. I could have gazed for hours at this little world while the sun and passing vapor che quered the fields, and sailing oft’ again, left the whole one bright mass of verdure and wa ter —bringing out clearly the domes of the village churches studding the plain or leaning against the first slopes of the mountains, with huge lakes, looming larger in the rarefied at mosphere. Yet one thing was wanting. Over the immense expanse there seemed scarce an evidence of life. There were no figures in the picture. It lay torpid in the sunlight, like some deserted region where nature was again beginning to assert her empire—vast, solitary, and melancholy. There were no sails—no steamers on the lakes, no smoke over the villages, no people at labor in the fields, no horsemen, no coaches, or travelers but ourselves. The silence was almost su pernatural ; one expects to hear the echo of the national strife that filled these plains with discord yet lingering among the hills. It was a picture of “still life,” inanimate in every feature, save where, on the distant mountain sides, the fire of some poor coal-burner mingl ed its blue wreath with the bluer sky, or the tinkle of the bell of a solitary muleteer was heard from among the dark and solemn pines. [ Mayers Mexico as it was and as it is. 1 M i AN EATING MATCH. In one highly important particular, the Yakuti may safely challenge all the rest of the world. They are the best eaters on the face of the earth. Having heard a great deal more on this subject than I could bring my self to believe, I resolved to test the thing by the evidence of my ow r n senses. Having procured a couple of fellows, who had a tol erable reputation in this way, from a village about twenty verts distant, I had a dinner prepared for them of two poods of beef boil ed, and one pood of butter melted, being thir ty-six pounds averdupoise of the former, and eighteen of the latter, for each of the two. Os the solids the performers had their respec tive shares placed before them, while the li quor was in common, with a ladle for drink ing it. Os the operatives, the one was old, and the other young. The former, as if he had been training himself into nothing but a ! stomach from head to heel, had his skin hanging in loose folds over his gaunt bones; while the latter, who showed no external symptoms of extraordinary capacity, must have relied chiefly on the vigor of youth and j a willingness of disposition. At starting the young fellow shot ahead, j as if he meant to distance his friend, while the old man, waggishly making his wrinkles flap again upon him, said, “ His teeth are j sharp; but,” continued he, crossing himself, i “ with the help of my saint, I shall be up i with him yet.” After a good dose of the | beef they greased their throats for the second j beat of the race by swallowing much about 1 a pint or so of their heavy wet'. At the end of an hour they had got through half of their welcome toil, my senior guest having, by this time, shaken out nearly his last reef. Their i eyes were starting from their heads, and their stomachs projecting into a brace of kettle ! drums. What were the gentlemen to do with the remaining half of their allowance ? One moiety of the question might have been easily answered; for ihe butter, apparently in its purity, was making an outlet of every pore; but, as the solids could not escape so glibly from the premises, the problem of stowing away eighteen pounds of beef, when already full to overflowing, puzzled mv knowledge, such as it was, of practical math ematics. Feeling that, whatever might be the case with my guests, I had myself had quite e nough of the feast, I left our Cossack and Mr. M’lntyre to see that there should be no foul play in getting rid of the meat and drink * and, on returning about two hours afterward T I was assured by my deputies and others that all was right, while the gluttons them selves tacitly confirmed the testimony b\ wallowing prostrate on the earth, relieving me, at the same time, from all sense of wrong in the matter by thanking me for my liberali ty and kissing the ground reverently for my sake. After such surfeits the victors remain, for three or four days, in a state of stupor, neither eating nor drinking ; and, meanwhile, they are rolled about, somewhat after the manner of the tumee hmiee of the Sandwich Islands, with a view to the promoting of di gestion, an operation which the slipperiness of their surface renders peculiarly difficult. Two of these gormandizers, one for the bride and another for the bridegroom, form part of the entertainments at every native wed ding.—Simpson's Overland Journey Round the World. af Sun. OBEYING ORDERS. While lying in a Southern part some years since, the master of the vessel belonging to New England smoked her out for the purpose of destroying rats. Th . next morning about a dozen of these long-tailed gentry were found and brought on deck. Their fat and sleek ap pearance evinced that they had been well cared for by themselves, if not by others. The steward came aft, and pointing to the heap, inquired of the captan what should be done with them. “ Done with them?” responded the captan„ who was something of a wag, “why, make them into a stew.” Nothing more was said by either party on the subject at the time. Several gentleman had been invited on board to dine upon squirrels, which the captain and a friend, who was a good marksman, had “barked” the day before. Dinner was served up in good style and the appetites of all did justice to the fare;: but most of the party preferred them made into a stew to any other way. “ Steward,” exclaimed the captain, as he was changing the dishes preparatory to setting on the pastry, “ can‘t you give us just such a stew to-morrow? you know there are some of the squirrels left.“ “Didn‘t make dat out ob squirrels, sir,“re plied the African, with a hesitating attempt to smile, but which was kept back by a slight tremor. “What then?” inquired the captain quickly. “ Why sir, ob de rats, as you ordered me to." 1 Revenge Extraordinary. —“A wag hav ing had a dispute with a man who kept a sau sage shop, and owing him a grudge, ran into his shop one day as he was serving several good customers, with an immense dead cat, which he quickly deposited on the counter, saying, “This makes nineteen; as you are busy now, we’ll settle another time :” and he was offin a twinkling. The customers, aghast, soon followed him, leaving their sausages be hind A Sharp Youth at a Bargain.— “ Sally, said a green youth in a venerable white hat and grey pants through which his legs pro jected half a feet, perhaps more, —“Sally-’ afore we go into this ere Museum to see the Enchanted Horse, I want to ask you some thing. “ “Well Ichabod, what is it.” “ Why, you see this ere buisness is agvvine to cost a quarter a-peice, and I can’t aftord to spend so much money for nuth’n. Now, A you say you'll have me darn’d es I don’t pay the hull on't myself. 1 will, pos-sitiv-vily-” Sally made a non-committal reply, which Ichabod interpreted to suit himself, and he strode up two steps at a time, and paid down the “hull on’t.” The following is a Frenchman’s defi nition of a Broker: Ah! me make von discoverie. Vat is raison vat fore de peepelle call de agent bro kair ■ It is bekose ven de persone have biz’ ziness wid him he become broke ?