too modest to utter themselves in the light, seem to wait for the covering of darkness to express their feelings completely, and breathe them out in soft odours.' ODDS AND ENDS: FROM DR ROBERT CHAMBERS'S SCRAP-BOOK. AN ALARMING THEODOLITE.-In my young days, a Mr Kinghorn visited Peebles to take a survey of the country, with a view to the construction of a railway along the vale of Tweed from Berwick to Glasgow. The appearance of his theodolite caused a considerable sensation among the less instructed members of the community. It was confidently whispered about, that the theodolite turned people upside down. Some women were desperately alarmed at the possibility of being brought within its line of vision. My mother had a servant-girl who was afraid to venture out of doors when the theodolite made its appearances. I remember my father and Mr Kinghorn heartily laughing at the circumstance. I am reminded of this droll affair by a fact related in Mr Hay's work on Western Barbary, where similar apprehensions have been entertained respecting a telescope. The writer says: Such is the ignorance of European art among all classes in Barbary, that, some years ago, a resident of Tangiers having in his possession an astronomical telescope which inverted the objects, and having exhibited it to some Moorish neighbours, it was bruited about that the Nazarene possessed a glass through which he looked at the Moorish women on their terrace, and that this instrument had the power of turning the ladies upside down! Information was sent to the court, shewing the impropriety of Christians being allowed to make use of such magic art; whereupon a mandate was despatched from the Sultan to the governor of Tangiers, directing that the importation of such instruments should be strictly prohibited, and that the Nazarene who possessed the telescope should be summoned to deliver it up to the authorities for their examination, and called to account for his shameless proceeding!' VISIT TO MISS PORTER.-(July 4, 1845.) Accompanied Mrs Hall to a house in Kensington Square, to be introduced to Miss Porter. Tall, thin old lady, reclining on a sofa. Weakly health. Above seventy. Kindly Scottish manners. We talked of her young days spent in Surgeons' Square, Edinburgh. Her mother occupied part of the long house on the south side of the square-the west half; Lady Henderson the other. Knew the Kerrs of Chatto as neighbours. Miss Porter, when a little girl, saw one day a thin elderly gentleman, in a light-coloured coat with a plaid, in the square. Went up to him, and said he was like her grandpapa, and for that reason asked him to come in. He followed her into the house, where she introduced him to her mother, as being so like grandpapa. He fell into conversation about the army, led to it by seeing the sword of Miss Porter's father over the fire-place. He said he had also been a soldier: having fallen in love with his mother's waiting-maid, he had taken to that life in consequence of a quarrel with his friends. He had been at the battle of Culloden, and mention of this seemed greatly to affect him. By-and-by, he went away. It should be mentioned that Miss Porter, on taking his hand at first, had observed it to be small, thin, and blue-veined like a lady's. A few days after, a young medical student, visiting Mrs Porter's, mentioned the curious circumstance, that an old gentleman had been run over by a wagon in the streets, had been carried to the infirmary, and was there found to be a female. It was afterwards learned that this singular person was the sister of a clergyman, a person of good himself to be Jenny Cameron, of whom an untrue connections, who had a slight craze, and believed scandal had been reported. The injured female died in the infirmary. Miss Porter's brother, Robert, when a mere the rest of the family, in a house where they met child, had been taken to drink tea with some of Flora Macdonald. A picture attracted his attenFlora put him upon a chair to see it, told him it tion, and he shewed a curiosity to see it nearer. was the battle of Preston, and gave him some explanations about it. This, he used to acknowledge afterwards, was his first lesson in historical painting. had written Auld Robin Gray, in order to raise a Lady Anne Barnard told Miss Porter that she little money for the succour of an old nurse, music-master, that so much as five pounds was having no other means. She had heard from her sometimes got for a successful song, and she thought she would try. It was successful in the object. Lady Anne wrote much poetry besides, which is preserved by one of her relations. [The Miss Porter above referred to was Jane, authoress of Thaddeus of Warsaw and the Scottish Chiefs. She died 1850.] ON THE CLIFF. The rocks grow steep and sheer; Across the bay green ripples flow In endless falls and swells; The sleeping sea-gulls float: Yet safe as anchored boat. On tides that change and flow; Whate'er may come and go. So safe, 'mid waste of waters wide, So safe my heart and I may bide, Calm floating on time's changeful tide, Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON, and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH. Also sold by all Booksellers. All Rights Reserved. CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL No. 514. POPULAR LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART. CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS. A DRAW! ing, or composedly resting to look about them. Ax old friend of ours happens to possess a country residence amidst grounds more than ordinarily beautiful. There are lawns, trees, walks, gardens, and a sparkling rivulet from the hills pouring in cascades down a picturesque dell environed by shrubbery and wild-flowers. With a southern exposure, the sun shines bounteously on the scene. A kind of earthly paradise, you would say. What more could be wanted? Our friend, a little restless in his plans, was not satisfied. There was one thing he would like. A pond. Without that the place was deficient. If he could manage to make a pretty little pond, for the disporting of minnows and gold-fish, the thing would be complete. No sooner was this resolved on than it was accomplished, though at considerable expense. Circular in form, the pond was twenty feet in diameter and three feet deep, with a bed of fine river-gravel. A rill of water poured through it to keep it fresh. It had a margin of green turf all round, and in the middle there was a lovely What was to be done? The gardener, a canny miniature island for water-plants. As a conve- Scot from the Howe of the Mearns, gave it as his nient means of contemplating the beauty of the opinion, though he was late in giving it, that, small sheet of water and its surroundings, and at wherever there is a pond, there will be frogs. They the same time enjoying the air and sunshine, a come to it from far and near by instinct. It is rustic bower embellished with heliotropes was their nature, sir. I doubt it is no use trying to placed near at hand within view. It took a year keep them out.' Discouraged, our friend did not to bring matters to perfection. Some fifty pounds at once throw up the game. He bethought himhad been expended. The grounds were at length self of surrounding the pond with a close wireunimprovable. trellis, two feet high. The trellis was procured, Our friend was not a naturalist. He was ignorant and put in position. The expedient was unavailor forgetful of the attractive qualities of a settled ing. The frog and toad world kept travelling piece of water, although no more than twenty pondward the same as ever. On arriving in their feet in diameter. When the pond was put in march at the wire barricade, they were certainly working order, there sprung up suddenly an extra- disconcerted. They had not calculated on the ordinary demonstration of a certain department of obstruction. Yet, it did not altogether daunt animal life. A visitation of birds would have them. Seating themselves all round, they looked been enjoyable rather than otherwise, even at the wistfully through the trellis, and considered what sacrifice of the peas and the fruit. The plague was steps should be taken to gain access to the glistenof a totally different kind. It was the plague of ing pool, the object of their longing desires. Some frogs and toads of all sorts and sizes. Yellow, few, weakly and discouraged, after a time turned brown, streaked, mottled, rough-skinned and their backs in despair. Others more adventurous, smooth-skinned, big and little, hopping, crawl-maintained the siege, and like a forlorn-hope, clambered up the trellis-no easy thing to do- provement. The teachings of history and political reached the summit, and with, as we may suppose, economy hooted down as absurd. Houses in a a thrill of triumph, dashed into the pond. Accord-semi-ruined, or at least degraded state, crammed, ing to last accounts, our friend is almost at his not with helpless paupers, broken down by unawits' end. The Batrachia, in their various genera voidable misfortune, who should invite compassion and species, have successfully baffled him. Wher--but with the idle, the dissolute, the habitually ever there is a pond, there will be frogs.' He now knows the force of this piece of information in natural history, and wishes he had known it, or remembered it sooner. The conclusion he is likely to arrive at, is, that the only way of getting rid of the frogs is, to extinguish the pond! We have described these whimsical experiences in creating what proved a Draw for a certain variety of vermin, not without a hope of possibly suggesting reflections on a point in social economy which seems to be generally neglected. We mean the ever-extending practice of making large towns a harbourage and place of charitable succour to masses of people who, lost to a sense of self-dependence, throw themselves on the bounty of others. In point of fact, every city is made a Draw. The refuge is ready to hand, and so are benefactions, of various kinds, but medical charities in particular. At one time, not beyond remembrance, the principle inculcated was the necessity of working to secure the ordinary comforts of life. The young were told to be industrious, to strive to push on in the world, to endeavour to be self-supporting; they were reminded of the old saying, that the hand of the diligent maketh rich.' Franklin, it may be recollected, quotes as the result of his own early struggles: 'Seest thou a man diligent in his calling, he shall stand before kings.' That would now be considered a very oldfashioned doctrine. The modern view of things is, not to make any great effort to advance in the line of life you adopt; not to strive or compete; not for a moment to think of working hard, or getting an inch before the least skilled of your fellows. On the contrary, you are just to labour as little as you decently can; to insist on being at your work not above eight hours a day; to have as many holidays or half-holidays as possible; to take matters easily; to live well, and save nothing. If you are ill, never think of paying for a doctor. Trust to hospitals and dispensaries, to which, of course, you will have more sense than ever subscribe a single halfpenny. Keep in mind there are numbers of silly wealthy people, who will somehow look after you and your family when anything like difficulties arise. If the bulk of the general population are not told thus plainly out in so many words, they can infer that such is meant, through the heedless proceedings of philanthropically disposed societies and individuals, who as much as say: 'Be halfidle, and we will take the consequences.' Are the results of this new gospel not visible in the condition of every populous city? Idleness and misexpenditure under the name of recreation. Self-instruction neglected, notwithstanding the numerous opportunities offered for mental im dependent on all sorts of benevolences! For these, the town, with its obscure and miscellaneous dens, which ought not to be in existence, is a mighty Draw. They have flocked to it, and huddled themselves into it, by as sure an instinct as that which attracted the frogs to the pond. The mightiest of all our civic Draws is the metropolis, with its prodigious population of three millions and a half. How many fall within the succour of the poor-law administration, we do not stop to inquire. The fact that seems most startling is, that 'eight hundred thousand individuals, or about one in four of the population, apply annually to the hospitals and the dispensaries for relief.' One in four, in the wealthiest city in the world, asking and getting medicine and medical advice for nothing! If anything could open the eyes of the public to the folly of countenancing a gigantic system of demoralisation in the name of charity, this should. It would be interesting to see an analysis of the various classes of persons who throw themselves on this species of extravagant benevolence. What are their means of subsistence, in what kind of houses do they dwell, how do they dress, and spend their money? We can contribute a fact towards the inquiry. In the newspaper obituaries, are constantly seen notices of deaths in the public infirmaries, which notices have of course been paid for by relatives of the deceased. That is to say, there are people of good means so shabby as to let their relations die in an hospital supported by voluntary con tribution. It can scarcely be called a wholesome social system, when one part of the community takes in hand to pet, flatter, and coddle the other. Yet, that is pretty much what we have come to. So strongly has the propriety of pampering got hold of the public mind, that the attempt to raise any objection to the process would probably be as unpopular as futile. Benevolent institutions once set on foot, and popularised, do not vanish at a bidding. Some time ago, a chief magistrate in a large town attempted the very moderate reform of consolidating charities and lessening their number. For civility's sake, the design was applauded, but it proved a failure. There were vested interests in the way. Each organisation had its friends, supporters, managers; so, after a due amount of inquiry and talk, the project was dropped. The respective organisations, though often differing only a shade from each other, remain undisturbed, each with its collecting-book as usual. In such matters prescriptive pecuniary See an article on the Medical Charities of London, in the Quarterly Review for April: we commend it to the perusal of our readers. A DRAW! interests are not alone accountable. Short-sighted crotchets are seriously concerned. One man has a craze for distributing bread and soup, another for giving away quantities of coal. These excellent persons do not perceive that, while possibly doing a little good, they are injuriously strengthening the attractions held out to the recklessly dependent classes. The wholesale mischief outdoes the individual benefit. Every fresh centre of gratuitous distribution is an additional Draw. And so, big towns swarm with an increasing shoal of the parasitic and demoralised, till every hole and corner is choked, and they become a general oppression and terror. Police judges-the cleverest among them-are incompetent to deal with beings so unruly, and regardless of either admonition or punishment. The evil is done, and it is not the function, nor in the power of judges to undo it. Sabbath bells are ringing. Magistrates are gravely walking in their official robes to church. Happy land, where all is so proper and decorous! There is not a member of that ceremonious procession who could not pitch a penny-piece into lanes little better than the regions of heathendom, and where, at this instant, all laws and regulations to the contrary, there prevail scenes of foul revelry and disorder. Imprisonment! The very prison, as now constituted, is a Draw. It gives bed, board, washing, and doctoring, free of care or expense. A short retirement now and then is agreeable. Three months not objected to. 'Do not be lenient with me, sir,' said a middle-aged woman, lately addressing a police-judge when he was about to pass sentence on her for being disorderly. Give me a good long imprisonment. I like the prison. It does me good!' There is such a thing as being below a sense of shame or degradation : Let them prate about decorum Who have characters to lose! Does society, in this nineteenth century of ours, imagine it is without blame in complacently seeing all this growing up and flourishing under a multiplicity of attractions and encouragements? Some few years ago, in an extra paroxysm of philanthropy, there was a rage for getting up what were called Nightly Shelters-places where some food, warmth, and a night's lodging could be had for nothing. It was a benevolent but mistaken idea, for it did not take into account the dependent quality in human nature. Towns within twenty miles or so of each other were provided with Shelters. As if by magic, every Shelter was a Draw. The whole of trampdom was on the move. Groups of men, wives, and children took a sudden fancy for travelling. Their pedestrian excursions were delightful. All they had to do, to enjoy air, exercise, and a pleasant variety, was to circulate from town to town, get free quarters with food every evening-Saturday to Monday two evenings, with some intermediate indulgence-and thus contentedly make their rounds at the public expense. The thing was obviously too bad to last. Subscribers took the alarm. They saw, that in humanely trying to succour a few homeless beings, they were actually creating vagrants by the hundred-turning crowds of men, women, and children into a kind of gipsies. Without saying much about the failure of the project, the Shelters were shut up. The Draw was stopped. 339 Walker, a man of shrewd observation, with a knowledge of London character, says in his work, The Original, that if you were to lay down on their sides a row of empty sugar-hogsheads in Whitechapel, the chances are that each hogshead within four-and-twenty hours would be the dwelling of a family. Perhaps that was taking an extreme view of the proneness to nestle in quarters open for intrusion. But it is true in the main. If you wish to have frogs, make a pond. If you wish to have about you a dissolute helpless class of beings, give them house-room. They will not be nice as to accommodation. The absence of comfort is compensated by drams or beer-it is all one. Begging, or a trifling job now and then, with a wild scramble for any public charities that may be going, will suffice. At the worst, by keeping for a few years within a determinate parish, the rates and the Workhouse are an inheritance legally secured. It seems to matter little whether cities are built to endure for hundreds of years, or only for a century. The tall black buildings of Edinburgh, and the slender brick edifices in the meaner parts of London, alike drift into rookeries of disease, crime, and disorder. Everywhere there are people to buy or lease half-ruinous tenements with a view to let them out in small portions. Some one has graphically styled them ruins' lords.' They are the perpetuators of old houses which from public policy it would be merciful to sweep away. Only those who have visited the interiors of these dismal abodes, can form an opinion of their degradation. We have known a family inhabiting a dungeon without a window, and as dark as midnight; and have seen a single apartment divided into two for separate families by a partition of brown paper. It will perhaps be counselled, erect proper dwellings for this abject order of inhabitants. No one in his senses would do so. Nothing but the constant vigilance of a ruins' lord can extort a farthing of rent, or prevent doors, window-shutters, and even flooring, from being torn up for firewood. We speak not here of the thrifty and well-disposed among the manuallabouring classes. Where not spoiled by petting or tutelage, and left to their own ingenuity, they are able to build or buy houses for themselves; and this they are doing on a comprehensive scale when land is available. Interference with movements of this nature would only do harm. That which clearly calls for reprobation, is the accumulation of downright wretchedness, by encouraging idleness and misexpenditure, and mistakingly holding out the inducement of numerous charities, or the more palpable attraction of a degraded and unwholesome species of dwellings. Substantially, these dismal habitations, which we faintly picture, constitute an altogether irresistible Draw. The needy and able-bodied improvident flock to them from all quarters; while for those on the spot, whose fancy, according to modern maxims, is to work as little and drink as much as possible, they present a convenient receptacle in which they may hide themselves from public scrutiny. The Improvement Acts of Glasgow and Edinburgh, recently referred to by Mr Kay-Shuttleworth in the House of Commons, proceeded on a full understanding of the necessity of destroying such odious haunts; and are acknowledged to be successful so far as they But for clamorous opposition, the success would have been considerably greater. Better go. COLOUR IN ANIMALS. THE variety of colouring in animal life is one of the marvels of nature, only now beginning to be studied scientifically. It is vain to say that an animal is beautiful, either in symmetry or diversity of colour, in order to please the human eye. Fishes in the depths of the Indian seas, where no human eye can see them, possess the most gorgeous tints. One thing is remarkable: birds, found on the shores as well as in depths requiring the drag-net, have a bright red purple in the latter regions, and an insignificant yellow brown in the former. Those who bring up gold-fish know well that to have them finely coloured, they must place them in a shaded vase, where aquatic plants hide them from the extreme solar heat. Under a hot July sun they lose their beauty. The causes to which animal colouring is due are very various. Some living substances have it in themselves, owing to molecular arrangement, but usually this is not the case; the liveliest colours they arise from a phenomenon like that by which are not bound up with the tissues. Sometimes the soap-bubble shews its prismatic hues; somewhich is united with the organic substance. Such times there is a special matter called pigment is the brilliant paint, carmine, which is the pigment of the cochineal insect, and the red colour of blood, which may be collected in crystals, separate from the other particles to which it is united. fishes, and insects alone possess the metallic colouring; whilst plants and zoophytes are without reflecting shades. The mollusca take a middle path with their hue of mother-of-pearl. What is the reason of these arrangements in the animal Even the powder not unknown to ladies of kingdom? It is a question which cannot be satisfashion is one of Nature's beautifying means. factorily answered; but some observations have been made which throw light on the subject. That which is left on the hands of the ruthless One is, that among animals, the part of the body instance; but there are birds, such as the large boy when he has caught a butterfly, is a common turned towards the earth is always paler than that white cockatoo, which leave a white powder on which is uppermost. The action of light is here the hands. An African traveller speaks of his apparent. Fishes which live on the side, as the astonishment on a rainy day to see his hands sole and turbot, have the left side, which answers reddened by the moist plumage of a bird he had to the back, of a dark tint; whilst the other side is just killed. The most ordinary way, however, in white. It may be noticed that birds which fly, as which the pigment is found is when it exists in it were, bathed in light do not offer the strong the depths of the tissues, reduced to very fine contrast of tone between the upper and lower side. particles, best seen under the microscope. When Beetles, wasps, and flies have the metallic colour-when close together, they are very perceptible. scattered, they scarcely influence the shade; but ing of blue and green, possess rings equally dark This explains the colour of the negro: under the all round the body; and the wings of many butter- very delicate layer of skin which is raised by a flies are as beautifully feathered below as above. slight burn there may be seen abundance of brown pigment in the black man. It is quite superficial, for the skin differs only from that of the European in tone; it wants the exquisite transparency of fair Among these, the colours which impress the different depths of layers in the flesh. Hence the eye do not come from a flat surface, but from the variety of rose and lily tints according as the blood circulates more or less freely; hence the blue veins, which give a false appearance, because the blood is red; but the skin thus dyes the deep tones which lie beneath it; tattooing with Indian ink is blue, blue eyes owe their shade to the brown pigment which lines the other side of the iris, and the muscles seen under the skin produce the bluish tone well known to painters. On the other hand, mollusca which live in an almost closed shell, like the oyster, are nearly colourless; the larvae of insects found in the ground or in wood have the same whiteness, as well as all intestinal worms shut up in obscurity. Some insects whose life is spent in darkness keep this appearance all their lives; such as the curious little beetles inhabiting the inaccessible crevasses of snowy mountains, in whose depths they are hidden. They seem to fly from light as from death, and are only found at certain seasons, when they crawl on the flooring of the caves like larvæ, without eyes, which would be useless in the retreats where they usually dwell. This relation between colouring and light is very evident in the beings which inhabit the earth and the air; those are the most brilliant which are exposed to the sun; those of the tropics are brighter than in the regions around the North Pole, and the diurnal species than the nocturnal; but the same law does not apparently belong to the inhabitants of the sea, which are of a richer shade where the light is more tempered. The most dazzling corals are those which hang under the natural cornices of the rocks and on the sides of submarine grottos; while some kinds of fish which are races. The chemical nature of pigment is little known; the sun evidently favours its development in red patches. Age takes it away from the hair when it turns white, the colouring-matter giving place to very small air-bubbles. The brilliant white of feathers is due to the air which fills them. Age, and domestic habits exchanged for a wild state, alter the appearance of many birds and animals in some species the feathers and fur grow white every year before falling off and being renewed ; as in the ermine, in spring the fur which is so valued assumes a yellow hue, and after a few months, becomes white before winter. It would, however, be an error to suppose that |