and the Jesuits, after several repeated exhortations to be reconciled to the church, part with them, telling them they leave them to the devil who is standing at their elbow to receive their souls, and carry them with him into the flames of hell. On this a great shout is raised, and the cry is, "Let the dogs' beards be made;" which is done by thrusting flaming furze fastened to long poles against their faces, 'till they are burnt to a coal, which is accompanied by the loudest acclamations of joy.-At last, fire is set to the furze at the bottom of the stake, over which the professed are chained so, high, that the top of the flame seldom reaches higher than the board they sit on ; so that they rather seem roasted than burnt. There cannot be a more lamentable spectacle; the sufferers continually cry out, while they are able, Misericordia, per amor de Dios. Pity for the love of God!' yet it is beheld by all sexes and ages with transports of joy and satisfaction.

Che Wit's Nunchion.

IRISH WIT. The inferior class of people in Ireland have a quaintness and humour, truly characteristic; and which is often displayed to the infinite amusement of their hearers. When Lord Townshend, however, arrived there as Lord Lieutenant, he complained that he could not distinguish this particular quality, of which he had previously heard a very enter taining account. The gentlemen around observed, that as his Excellency never had any intercourse with the lower sort, he could not expect to be acquainted with their general manners: but advised him to converse personally with them, if he wished to form a correct opinion. His lordship, as a man of wit and whim, readily assented, and the same evening sallied forth incog. with several others. Passing along Ormond Quay, he went up to a man who was selling some

trifles, and after conversing very affa bly for some time, and remarking on a Highland regiment, then pussing; bought what came to a few shillings. Having no silver, he pulled out his purse, and requested change for a guinea. "For a guinea!" exclaimed Pat, staring hin full in the face. “Arrah, by Jasus, now (pointing to the Highlanders) you might as well ask one of them for a PAIR OF BREECHES!"

The smartness of the answer, and the propriety of the instantaneous comparison, forcibly excited his lordship's risible faculties, and making Paddy a present of the guinea, he walked off to join his company.

MR. PRATT, brother to the late Lord Camden, was a very singular charac ter. He had a remarkably tenacious memory, and was reckoned one of the first whist-players in the kingdom. He remembered all the cards that were played in a hand, from an ace down to a deuce, and could recapitulate their order of playing, which he has done for a considerable wager. He dined every day, alone, at the Queen's Head Tavern, in Holborn, and always drank a bottle of Port to himself. He occupied chambers in Gray's-inn, and lived in the highest floor, to prevent any disturbance over head. His taciturnity seemed even to exceed his me mory; a remarkable instance of which he gave in a voyage to the East Indies, when in the service of the Company.He had not opened his lips to any person on board till they arrived off the Cape of Good Hope. At that time, one of the sailors crying out, from the top-mast-head, that he saw land; Mr. Pratt was induced to say, "Damn the rascal, I perceived it ABOVE HALP

AN HOUR AGO."

TO CORRESPONDENTS. RECEIVED. Albumania and A. F. A Letter lies at the Office for Curiosus.

It then shortened, and appeared to be drawn up towards the stratum of clouds, and presently it assumed this appearance :

It finally drew itself into the cloud; but a small cone, or projecting thread, of varying size and length, continued for ten minutes. At the time, and for half an hour after, a severe storm of rain was visibly falling from the mass of clouds connected with it, the extent being exactly defined by the breadth of Holloway, Highgate, and Hornsey. About two hours after, on walking from Kentish Town towards Holloway, it was found that one of the heaviest torrents of rain remembered by the inhabitants had fallen around the foot of Highgate hill; and some persons having seen the project ing cloud, an absolute belief existed that a water-spout had burst at the erossing of the new and old roads. On proceeding towards London, various accounts, agreeing with the superstition or pre-conceived notions of the bye-standers, were given; but, in the farm-yard at the three-mile stone, it appeared that some haymakers were stacking hay from a waggon which stood between two ricks, and that the same whirlwind which passed over Kentish Town, had passed over the loaded waggon with an impetus sufficient to carry it above twenty yards from its station, and to put the men upon it, and on the rick, in fear of their lives. Passing the road, it carried with it a stream of hay, and, nearly unrooffing a shed on the other side, filled the air to a great height with fragments of hay, leaves, and boughs of trees, which resembled a vast flight of birds. The family of the writer beheld the descending cloud, or water-spout, pass over, and they saw its train, which, at the time, they took to be a flight of birds. They

afterwards beheld the descending cloud draw itself upward, and they, and other witnesses, describe it as a vast mass of smoke working about in agitation: to them it was nearly vertical in a northern direction; and to persons a quarter of a mile north, it was nearly vertical in a southern direction; and all agree that it drew itself up withont raiu, and was followed near the earth by the train of light bodies. It appeared also, on various testimony, to let itself down in a gradual and hesitating mammer, beginning with a sort of knob in the cloud, and then descending lower, and curling and twisting about, till it shortened, and gradually drew itself into the cloud."

The inferences which Sir Richard draws from what he saw and heard, are as follow :—“That the phenomenon called a water-spout is a mere collection of clouds, of the same rarity as the mass whence they are drawn. That the descent is a mechanical effect of a whirlwind, which creating a vacuum, or high degree of rarefaction, extending between the clouds and the earth, the clouds descend in it by their gravity, or by the pressure of the surrounding clouds or air. That the convolutions of the descending mass, and the sensible whirlwind felt at the earth, as well as the appearance of the commencement, increase and decrease of the mass, all demonstrate the whirl of the air to be the mechanical cause. That the same vortex, whirl, or eddy, of the air, which occasions the clouds to descend, occasions the loose bodies on the earth to ascend. That, if in this case the lower surface had been water, the same mechanical power would have raised a body of foam, vapour, and water, towards the clouds. That, as soon as the vortex or whirl exhausts or dissipates itself, the phenomina terminate by the fall to the lower surface of the light bodies or water, and by the ascent of the cloud. That when water constitutes the light body of the lower surface, it is probable that the aqueous vapour of the cloud, by coalescing with it, may occasion the clouds to condense, and fall at that point, as through a syphon. That if the descending

cloud be highly electrified, and the vortex pass over a conducting body, as a church steeple, it is probable it may be condensed by an electrical concussion, and fall at that spot-discharging whatever has been taken up from the lower surface, and producing the strange phenomina of showers of frogs, fish, &c. And, lastly, it appears certain, that the action of the air on the mass of clouds, pressing towards the mouth of the vortex as to a funnel (which, in this case, it "exactly represented), occasioned such a condensation as to augment the simultaneous fall of rain to a prodigy.". In November, 1801, about twenty miles from Trieste, in the Adriatic sea, a water-spout was seen eight miles to the southward: round its lower extremity was a mist, twelve feet high, nearly the form of an Ionian capital, with very large volutes, the spout resting obliquely on its crown. At some distance from this spout, the sea began to be agitated, and a mist rose to the height of about four feet: a projection then descended from the black cloud which was impending, and met the ascending inist about twenty feet above the sea, the last ten yards of the distance being described with great rapidity. A cloud of a light colour appeared to ascend in this cloud like quicksilver in a glass tube. The first spout then snapped at about one third of its height, the inferior part subsiding gradually, and the superior curling upward.

Several other projections from the cloud, appeared with corresponding agitations of the water below, but not always in spouts vertically under them seven spouts in all were formed; and two other projections re-absorbed. Some of the spouts were not only oblique, but curved, the ascending cloud moving most rapidly in those which were vertical They lasted from three to five minutes, and their dissipation was not attended by any fall of rain. For some days before the weather had been very rainy, with a S. E. wind; but not any rain had fallen on the day of observation.

The corresponding phenomena of whirlwinds have been occasionally pro

ductive of inuch mischief, as the following brief narratives will show:-On the 30th of October, 1669, about six in the evening, the wind being then westwardly, a formidable whirlwind, scarcely of the breadth of sixty yards, and which spent itself in about seven minutes, arose at Ashly, in Northamptonshire. Its first assault was on a-milk-maid, whose pail and hat were taken from off her head, and the former carried many score of yards from her, where it lay undiscovered for some days. It next stormed a farmyard, where it blew a waggon body off the axle-trees, breaking in pieces the latter, and the wheels, three of which, thus shattered, were blown over a wall. Another waggon, which did not, like the former, lie across the passage of the wind, was driven with great speed against the side of the farm house. A branch of an ash-tree, so large that two stout men could scarcely lift it, was blown over a house without damaging it, although torn from a tree 100 yards distant. A slate was carried nearly 200 yards, and forced against a window, the iron bar of which it bent. Several houses were stripped; and, in one instance, this powerful gust, or stream of air, forced open a door, breaking the latch; whence it passed through the entry, and, forcing open the dairy door, overturned the milk pans, and blew out three panes of glass. It next ascended to the chambers, and blew out nine other panes. Lastly, it blew a gate-post, fixed two feet and a half in the ground, out of the earth, and carried it many yards into the fields.

On the 20th of October, 1731, at one in the morning, a very sudden and terrific whirlwind, having a breadth of two hundred yards, was experienced at Cerne-Abbas, in Dorsetshire. From the south-west side of the town, it passed the north-east, crossing the centre, and unroofing the houses in its progress. It rooted up trees, broke others in the middle, of at least a foot square, and carried the tops a considerable distance. A sign-post, five feet by four, was broken off six feet in the pole, and carried across a street forty feet in breadth, over a

house opposite. The pinnacles and battlements of one side of the churchtower were thrown down, and the leads and timber of the north aisle broken by their fall. A short time before the air was remarkably calm. It was estimated that this sudden and terrible gust did not last more than two minutes,

VEGETABLE PRODUCTIONS. Ir is remarkable that this country has not one useful vegetable which it can call its own: we have imported every thing of the kind-from the luxurious pine to the humble pota toe. The following list of the earth's productions, with the countries from which they originally came, may, perhaps, be new and interesting to such of our readers as have not considered the subject:

Rye and wheat were first imported from Tartary and Siberia; barley and oats unknown, but certainly not indigenous in Britain, because we are obliged to cultivate them. Aspara gus was first imported from Asia; cresses and lettuce from Holland; fennel from the Canary Islands; garlick from the East; gourds from Astrachan; horse-radish from China; kidney-beans from the East Indies; lentil from France; potatoes from Brazil;* rice from Ethiopia; shallots from Siberia; tobacco from America. Sugar was originally brought from India, by the introduction of the plant Saccarum Officiarum. "Arabia," says Pliny, produces Saccarum, but the best is in India; it is a honey collected from reeds; a sort of white gum, brittle between the teeth; the largest pieces do not exceed the size of a hazel-nut, and are only used in medicine." Sugar was first made from the reeds in Egypt, from

This root grows wild in the environs of Lima, and has also been found wild in Chili. It is cultivated by the Indians of both countries,who call it Papas. It grows spontaneously among the rocks at Monte Viedo, and in the forests near

Sania Fi de Bogata; the wild plants, however, produce very small roots, of bitter taste.

thence the plant was carried into Sicily, which, in the 12th century supplied many parts of Europe with that commodity; and thence, at a period unknown, it was brought into Spain by the Moors. From Spain it was planted in the Canary Islands and in the Madeiras, by the Portuguese. This happened about the year 1500; afterwards the reed was carried to St. Domingo and the Brazils. Sugar was then a most expensive luxury, and used only in feasts, or for medicinal

purposes.

Nor are we less indebted to other distant countries for our finest flowers:-The jessamine tame from the East Indies; the tulip from Cappadocia; the daffodil from Italy; the lily from Syria; the tube-rose from Java and Ceylon; the carnation and pink from Italy; to which may be added the elder-tree, imported from Persia, and many others might be mentioned. The learned Linaire first introduced from Italy the damask-rose. Thomas Lord Cromwell, in the reign of Henry VIII. enriched our gardens with three different plums. In the reign of Elizabeth, Edmund Grindall, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, transplanted hither the tamarisk.— Oranges were brought hither by one of the Carew family. To Sir Walter Raleigh we are indebted for that useful root the potatoe. Sir Anthony Ashley first cultivated cabbages in this country. The fig trees, planted by Cardinal Pole, in the reign of Henry VIII. are still standing at Lambeth. Sir Richard Weston brought clovermulberry is a native of Persia, and is grass into England, in 1645. The said to have been introduced in 1570, The chesnut is a native of the south of Europe; the walnut of Persia, but the time of its introduction is unknown. The apricot came from America, about 1652. The plum is a native of Asia, and was imported into Europe by the Crusaders; and the damascene takes its name from the city of Damascus. The Alpine strawberry was first cultivated in the king's garden, in 1760. The peach is a native of Persia. The nectarine was introduced about 1562. Cherries are