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102 iieve the true solution of the apparent myste ry to be, that the Share Market has been so extremely flat as to have prevented not only the shares, but even the wheels from getting any purchase at all. A PARLIAMENTARY COLD WATER CURE. Mr. Hume very properly complains of the lengthy talk of Members of the Commons. —• There is no doubt of the alarming fact; the Tongue of Parliament has grown too long and too large. Like the tongue of a certain species of parrot, it is in preposterous dispro portion to the brevity of its body. Mr, Hume proposes that certain Members, under certain conditions, should only be permitted to speak for half-an-hour. We would make this an other Point of the Charter. Few Members are so full of knowledge that they may not pump themselves entirely dry in thirty min utes. The ancients measured time by an in strument that dropt water; a machine called a clepsydra. Now, we would, improving up on this notion, measure Parliamentary time by the power of the lymph; and after this manner: — We would have every Member about to address the House, place himself in a sort of roofed pulpit. He should not be permitted to utter a syllable from any other place. Well, from this pulpit there must be a wire leading to the chair of the Speaker. The Member having had his full thirty minutes’ discourse, should be summoned by the Speaker to re move himself to his seat. Two minutes’—for we would do nothing rashly, uncourteously —two minutes’ grace should be allowed. If after then, the Member persisted to address the House, the Speaker should touch the wire, which, communicating with the roof of the pulpit, should act like the string of a show er-bath, and immediately flood the orator. — No call to “Order” could, in our opinion, be half so efficacious. Again, should a verbose, stammering Member, with sundry bottles of champagne fizzing and effervescing from un der his white waistcoat, still insist upon trans gressing the half-hour, he would be soundly .tucked, as was done in the good old times, for the misdemeanor of scolding. Revolting Indeed. —lt is generally said that language is inadequate to characterize the conduct of the Parisian Insurrectionists. We believe that we precisely - describe the rebels’ proceedings by prououncing them per fectly revolting. }j]|)Uosopl)r> for tljc vSUBSTITUTE FOR GLASS FOR ELEC TRICAL MACHINES. Cut strong mill pasteboard of a circular form and smoothed at the edges upon which successive layers of shellac are laid until it has become of the proper thickness—each layer being allowed to become perfectly dry before the other is applied. The shellac should be dissolved in wood naphtha or py roligneous acid, without heat and applied with a brush. By this means a perfectly smooth surface will be obtained. Shellac be ing the best nonconductor of electricity, is cer tainly the best substance for producing it. The shocks from it are short but follow 7 in quick succession, and give more pain to the knuckles when held to them than a glass ma chint. This is cheaper than glass, and fully as strong. The best plan is to have two plates on the same axle as a far greater in crease of power in the same space, is thus obtained, than by the single plate. CREAM. If cream, well wrapped in a cloth, is put into a hole in damp earth and left there for about twenty four hours, it will become clar ified and turn into a substance neither butter nor cream, but which combines the qualities of both and has a very delicate and agreeable taste, provided the cream used is sweet and good. TO KEEP BIRDS FROM FRUITS. The following plan, which I discovered by accident, is, I think, perfectly efficacious. One of my servants having by chance broken a looking-glass, it occurred to me that the bro ken pieces suspended by a string, so as to turn freely in every direction, would give the ap pearance of something moving about which would alarm the birds, I accordingly tried the plan, and find that no bird, not even the most fool-hardy ol them (a nest of newly fledg ed sparrow's,) dare come near. They had attacked my peas. On suspend tbinfMAißY ®& s s inf ♦ ing a few bits of the looking-glass amongst them the marauders left the place. The tom tits attacked my seckel pears (w'hich they seemed very partial to;) a bit of looking-glass suspended in front of the tree put a stop to the mischief. My grapes were next much damaged before they w r ere ripe, by thrushes and starlings; a piece of looking-glass drove these away, and not a grape was touched af terwards. I have before tried many plans, but never found any so effective as the a bove. — Correspondent of Gardener's Chroni cle. UNIVERSAL ORRERY GLOBE. Mr. J. D. Hales, of Linton, England, has secured a patent for anew kind of Orrery Globe, which is to eclipse all the w r orks ever produced by ancient or modern astronomers. For three years Mr. Hales challenged the as tronomical world to meet him in London un der the forfeiture of one thousand pounds, to discuss and prove the precise period of Joshuas miracle of tne sun standing still: also the true principle of the magnet and what its variations w r ould be for the next thousand years, &c. No one took up his challenge, so he has now T registered his astronomical appa ratus in the London Patent Office, by which he can tell accurately all the past and future eclipses of sun and moon —“every eclipse that will happen to the end of time,” —the increase and decrease of latitude, with change of variation of the magnet, and a great num ber of other important astronomical particu lars, mooted and unmooted. If the instrument which is two curiously constructed and ar ranged globes, be all that the inventor and patentee represents them to be, his invention certainly must be esteemed the most wonder ful invention of the day.— Scientific American. NATURE OF SPOTS ON THE SUN. On the solar envelope of whose fluid na ture there can be no doubt, is clearly perceiv ed by telescopes, an intermixture, (without blending or mutual dilution) of two distinct substances, or states of matter; the one lumi nous, the other not so, and the phenomena of the spots and pores tend directly to the con clusion that the non-luminous portions are gaseous, however they may leave the nature of the luminous doubtful; they suggest, the idea of radiant matter floating in a nonradiant medium, showing a tendency to separate it self by subsidence, after the manner of snow in air, or precipitates in a liquid of slightly inferior density. STATISTICS OF MUSCULAR POWER. Man has the powder of imitating almost ev ery motion but that of flight. To effect these he has, in maturity and health, 60 bones in his head, 60 in his thighs and legs, 62 in his arms and hands, and 67 in his trunk. He has also, 434 muscles. His heart makes 64 pulsations in a minute, and therefore 3,840 in an hour —92,160 in a day. There are also three complete circulations of his blood in the space of an hour. In respect to the compar ative speed of animated beings and of impell ed bodies, it may be remarked that size and construction seem to have little influence— nor has comparative strength; though one bo dy giving any quantity of motion to another is said to lose so much of its own. The sloth is by no means a small animal, and yet it can travel only fifty paces a day, a worm crawls only five inches in fifty seconds : but a lady-bird can fly twenty million times its ow r n length in less than an hour. An elk can run a mile and a half in 7 minutes; an antelope a mile in a minute : the wild mule of Tartary has a speeed even greater than that; an eagle can fly 18 leagues an hour; and a Canary falcon can even reach 250 leagues in the short space of 18 hours. A violent wind travels 60 miles in an hour ; sound, 1,142 Eng lish feet in a second. | THE LAW OF PATENTS. AH patents must be issued in the name of the United States; bear the seal oT the patent office; be signed by the Secretary of the Treasury, and countersigned by the Commis sioner of Patents, and be recorded in the pa tent office with ail accompanying specifica tions and drawings. Patents grant to ap plicants, for fourteen years, the sole right to make and sell the invention or discovery.— Applications for patents must be made to the Commissioner in writing, and must give a full clear, and exact description of, the invention or discovery, specifying particularly what is claimed as the peculiar invention or discov ary: the whole to be accompanied with draw ings, models, and specimens of ingredients, and of the composition of matter. The des criptions and drawings must be signed by the inventor, attested by tw 7 o witnesses, and filed in the patent office. The applicant must make oath of what country he is a citizen, that he believes that he is the original and first inventor or discoverer of that for whieh he solicits a patent, and that he does not know or oelieve that the same was ever be fore known or used. Before the applications are considered by the Commissioner, S3O must be paid to the Treasurer, by the applicant, if a citizen, or an alien w r ho has resided one year in the United States, and made oath of his intention to become a citizen ; SSOO by a subject of the Queen of Great Britain, and by all other persons. .fragments of Jim. THE “ JOHN BULL” EDITOR. It is well known that this paper was edited by the talented and facetious Theodore Hook, who once very narrowly escaped exceedingly awkward difficulties originating in this prac tice of scandal. He had published a vile calumny on a Colonel connected with a noble family, who made no secret that he intended to curb Hook’s wit by a smart application of the horse-whip. The editor heard that he was coming, and made his arrangements ac cordingly, being quite ready for what he re garded as a suitable reception. Full of mar tial fury, the Colonel walked off to the John Bull office, in Fleet Street, burning with re venge, having borrowed the whip of the rid ing master of the regiment, with which he appeared, only partially concealed under his cloak, and intimated his wish at the counter to see “the editor.” He was politely shown into a room, and informed that “ the editor” would wait upon him immediately. Like a chafed lion he walked up and down the room during the interval, flourishing his weapon of vengence. In a short time the door opened, and in walked a man of the Brobdignag spe cies, some six feet two in height, and stout in proportion, clad in a thick while fuzzy over coat, with a large cotton shawl around his neck, in which his chin was buried, a broad oilskin hat upon his head, and a most suspi cious-looking and tremendous oak stick un der his arm. “•What moight you want with me, sir?” “I want,” said the Colonel, “to seethe editor.” “ Your humble sarvant , sir, I is the yeditor , at your sarwiss ,” said the Brobdignag, taking from under his arm the cudgel about the thickness of a clothes prop. “ Indeed,” said the Colonel, edging towards the door, evidently feeling himself in circum stances different to what he had expected.— “Well, I will call again some other day.” “Do so,” said the imperturbable Brobdig nag,—l'se your humble sarvant at anytime.” And so the parties separated. JOHN SMITH. We mention this gentleman's cognomen with some reluctance, for the reason that there are two persons of the same name in Gotham, John Smith was returning to town on one occasion -about mid-night, in a dark snowstorm. He was “full of new wine,” and was quite unable, after riding for an hour, to find his own dwelling: but he drove up to a house which he thought must be at least in his neighborhood, and almost wrenched the bell-pull off with his hurried and repeated ringings. At length a neighbor’s head peered from an upper winnow: “What do you want down there ?” said not the best-natured voice in the world; “what do you want ? ringing the bell as if the house was on fire! What do you want ?” “ Can you tell me where John Smith lives?” “J-o-h-n S-m-i-t-h?” answer ed the recognizing neighbor, with a kind of exclamatory interrogation; “why, you are John Smith yourself!” “ 1 know that as well as you do.” hiccupped John, “ but I don't know where 1 live! want to know w-h-e-r-e / l-i-v-e ?” Somebody showed him.—Knicker bocker. Fat and the Steam Engine. —An Irish man, a day or two since, who had been often and profitably employed as a stevedore, was intently gazing at a Steam Engine that was whizzing away at a swift rate, doing his work for him, and lifting the cotton out of a hold of a ship quicker than you can say “Jack Rob inson.” Pat looked till his anger was pretty well up, and then, shaking his fist at the “tar nal critter,” he exclaimed: “ Choog, Choog, spet, stame it and be bothered, ye ould child o’Satan, that ve are ! Ye may do the work oltwenty-five fellies—ye may take the bread out iv an honest Irish man's mouth—but by the powers, now, “ ye can't vote, ould blazer, mind that will ye!” Scriptural Graiiamism. —A man who had given himself up to the doctrines of the great dietist,. Graham, was once discovered vora ciously putting, out of sight a large beef-steak, “Why!” said nis friend in surprise, “ I thought you lived on vegetable diet!” “ Soj I do, choked out the carnivorous animal; “So ] and not all flesh grass ?” A Large Onion.—“ Do you call them large turnips?” “Why yes, they are considerably large.” “They may be so for turnips, but they are nothing to an onion I saw the other day.” “And how large was the onion ?” “Oh! a monster: it weighed forty pounds.” “ Forty pounds!” “Yes, and we took off the layers, and the sixteenth layer went completely round a dem ijohn that held four gallons!” “ What a whopper!” “You don’t mean to say that I lie ?” “Oh! no; what a whopper of an onion, T mean.” Manners. —While George 111. was walk ing the quarter deck, a sailor asked one of his messmates “Who that lubberly fellow was that did not douse his peak to the Ad miral ?” “Why its the king,” said Jack.— “Well, king or no king,” retorts the other. “ he T s an unmannerly dog!” “ Where should he learn manners,” rejoined Jack, “he never was out of sight of land in his life.” A Latin Pun.—The archbishop of York was very fond of a pun. His clergy dining with him, for the first time after he had lost his lady, he told them he feared they did not find things in so good order as they used to be, in the time of poor Mary; and looking extremely sorrowful, added with a deep sigh, “She was indeed Marepacficum .” A curate, who well knew what she had been, called out, “ Aye, my lord, but she was Mare mor tuum first.” mwm 9 s ATHENS, SATURDAY, AUGUST 5, 1848 Commencement Week in Athens. It koines directly within our province to chronicle the events of the annual commencement of the Uni versity of Georgia, the great literary festival which never fads to congregate in our pleasant town a host of visitors from all parts of the State, and frequently from contiguous States. An account of the various exercises will probably be acceptable to all our readers, and we shall there fore devote our leader to this record, in a style with out any other pretension than to succinctness and brevity. Ihe initial exercises took place on Sunday morn ing in the College Chapel, when a sermon was preached by the Rev. C. H. HaU, of the New-York Diocess. 1 his duty had been assigned to the Rev. Dr. Ihornwell, of the South Carolina College, who was prevented, however, by severe illness in his fam ily, from being present. Mr. Hall, therefore, after much solicitation, consented to discharge the duty, which lie did to the complete gratification of his large auditory. Ihe sermon was characterized by vigor of thought, purity of style, and elegance of dic t;on ; and was followed by an address to the Gradu ating Class so felicitous both in sentiment and style, that we have prevailed with, the author to allow us the pleasure ot laying it before our readers in this number. * hi Monday a number of young gentlemen of tlie Sophomore Class contended in generous rivalry for prizes in Declamation. These prizes are two beau tiful medals of gold, engraved with appropriate mot toes and devices—and assigned by the voice of im partial judges to those two of the candidates who ex hibit the greatest excellence in the art of speak ing. 1 hese prizes are annual, and w ere instituted in 1844 at the request of the late Professor of Khet oric and Belles-lettres. It strikes us as an admira ble measure, and we cannot doubt that it has result ed beneficially to the young speakers. On this occasion there was really much excellence, and the diligence and fidelity of the instructor were quite apparent iu the graceful carriage and ad-