The subject of migration is one of so much interest that we would gladly engage some of our readers, as far as practicable, to notice the time of arrival, the rapidity of flight, and other circumstances connected with our migratory birds, so that from continued observation, in various quarters, we may gain as much knowledge as possible of this beautiful and wonderful part of the economy of nature.

Ye tell us a tale of the beautiful earth,
Birds that o'ersweep it in power and mirth!
Yet, through the wastes of the trackless air,
Ye have a guide, and shall we despair?
Ye over desert and deep have pass'd-
-So shall we reach our bright home at last

THE LABURNUM, (Cytisus laburnum.)

Laburnum, rich

In streaming gold,

it is even to be preferred to that wood. Its natural colour is likewise good, and by the application of limewater it may be rendered almost black.

It does not often attain a large size in this country, and the trunk is slender in proportion to its usual height, but it is nevertheless employed for many useful purposes, being made into wedges, pulleys, pegs, knife-handles, &c. Where it is allowed to attain its full dimensions, its timber is available for cabinet work of different kinds, and besides its durability, it looks very handsome and takes a fine polish. Chairs made of it are much stronger than mahogany. Laburnum is however harder to work than the latter wood, and is of an oily consistency, which makes it doubtful whether glue would adhere to it equally well. The oil which it contains, and which never entirely dries out, makes it less liable to splinter than many other woods. It is consequently valuable for pins of blocks, and for mill-work. For pillars, bed-posts, &c., it is also excellent.

The laburnum is one of those leguminous plants which yield poisonous seeds. Children often amuse themselves with opening the long seed-pods, and stringing the small shining bean like seeds for necklaces. They are sometimes foolish enough to eat these seeds, notwithstanding their nauseous bitter taste, which one would suppose a sufficient preventative to their doing so, and many accidents have happened in consequence.

An active and most deleterious principle has been discovered in these seeds, called Cytism or Cytisine, which is described as being a bitter, brownish-yellow, neutral, uncrystallizable substance, of which small doses killed various animals, amidst vomiting and convulsions, and eight grains taken by a man in four doses brought on giddiness, violent spasms, and frequency of the pulse, lasting for two hours, and followed by exhaustion. It is said that even a garland of the flowers, if worn for some time, will occasion head-ache.

Shall put their graceful foliage on again, And more aspiring, and with ampler spread, Shall boast new charms, and more than they have lost. This graceful tree is not a native of this country, but is found in a wild state in the woods of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, &c.; while Cytisus alpinus, a tree very nearly resembling the laburnum, is found chiefly on the Alps of Europe. There are about thirty species of the genus Cytisus, all hardy papilionaceous shrubs, inhabiting temperate regions, bearing ternate leaves, that is, leaves growing in threes, as above represented, and, with only one exception, (Cytisus purpureus,) yellow flowers.

It

In England the laburnum is principally cultivated as an ornament to landscape and garden scenery. is an early blossoming tree, putting forth its "golden chains" at the latter end of May or the beginning of June, and presenting, with its numerous and long branches of pendant yellow flowers, a very showy appearance. This brilliant livery does not long adorn the tree, for the lawn or parterre soon receives showers of blossoms shed from its branches, and the long seedpods are shortly found in their places.

This tree might probably be cultivated as a timbertree with great advantage, for its wood is exceedingly tough and elastic, and wherever very hard and compact timber is required in small pieces, it is now used as superior to most other sorts of wood. The Romans valued it next to ebony, and in some of its qualities

winter, when other supplies of food fail.

When it is desired to plant laburnum on a large scale, the seed-pods should be collected, and dried thoroughly in an airy loft, then threshed, and the seeds preserved in bags or boxes till spring.

February is the month for sowing the laburnum. A light, deep, and sandy soil should be chosen, and the seeds placed an inch apart, and covered three-quarters of an inch thick. The seeds are nearly sure to grow, and must not be planted thicker than this, or the young plants will lose their leaves, become mildewed, and die,

NOWLEDGE IT IS

SHOT GOOD

Magazine.

20TH, 1840.

{ON PRICE

ONE PENNY.

THE Elgin marbles consist chiefly of metopes, parts of the frieze, and statues from the tympana and pediments of the Parthenon, or temple of Minerva at Athens.

There are fifteen metopes, the subject of which is the battles between the Centaurs and the Lapithæ. The Centaurs are poetical beings, of Thessalian origin, composed of a man and a horse. The natives of Thessaly, being fond of hunting the wild bulls with which their country abounded, acquired the name of Centauri, or bull-goaders; but by degrees, the imagination of poets and sculptors transformed the huntsmen of Thessaly into fabulous beings with a human head, arms, and trunk, joined to the body and legs of a horse; and this perhaps because the Thessalians first, in those parts of the world, enlisted the horse into the service of man. The quarrel between the Centaurs and the Lapithæ, in the thirteenth century B.C., is said to have arisen from an insult offered by Eurytus the Centaur, to the bride of Pirithous, king of the Lapithæ, at the marriage-feast of the latter. Theseus, the friend of the king, resented the insult by throwing a large vessel full of wine at the head of the offending Centaur, which killed him. The quarrel then became general an engagement was maintained VOL. XVI.

with equal fury on both sides; but the Lapithæ finally remained victors. This contest is represented in the metopes of the Elgin collection: each metope contains two figures grouped in various attitudes : in some, the Lapithæ are victorious, and in others the Centaurs. The figure of one of the Lapithæ, lying dead and trampled upon by a Centaur, is one of the noblest productions of sculpture: another, equally remarkable, is that which represents the Centaur Eurytion attempting to carry off Hippodamia the bride: the furious galloping of the Centaur, and his shrinking from the spear hurled after him, are expressed with wonderful effect. All these metopes are in high relief; and the groups are finished with the minutest attention in every part, even in those parts which were not intended to meet the eye. They formed originally ninety-two groups, and were continued round the entablature of the Parthenon.

The frieze which was carried along the outer walls of the cella, offered a continued series of sculptures in low relief of the most exquisite beauty. The subject of this frieze is the Panathenæa, an Athenian festival in honour of Minerva, the protectress of Athens. It was first instituted by Erichthonius, and afterwards revived by Theseus, when all the Athenian people

511

ON SKILLED LABOUR.

IV.

We have pointed to procuring good apprenticeships in one or other of the many branches of skilled industry, as one of the greatest benefits that labouring parents can procure for their children; we have given some hints with respect to the means of accomplishing this often difficult object, and we proceed to show how such parents may avail themselves of the principle of co-operation in procuring that command of money, or other means, by which their boys may be apprenticed and maintained until able to maintain themselves.

Here we are met at once by the objection that the inhabitants of a country village must have a certain degree of confidence in themselves, in each other, and in Providence, before they can effectually join in any plan in which the failure of one to do his part, may derange and damage the whole. We are just come in from crossing a common, in company with a letterpress printer, who has had experience both of a London life and of one in the country, who greatly prefers the latter, who has ample facilities for joining with his neighbours in a common plan by which advantage might be taken of a cheap and easy transmission of garden and dairy produce to the London markets, and whose reply, on our suggesting such a plan to him, was at once this-that the parties could not trust each other.

Perhaps they cannot trust themselves. There are men whom an early familiarity with the alehouse, the Sunday newspaper, and the tobacco-pipe, has seduced into habits too strong for them to break, which separate them from their wives during those hours of cessation from toil, when they might be planning and executing, with their partners in weal and woe, schemes for their mutual advantage, and for the benefit of their little ones, and which totally unfit them for any course of steady and strenuous endeavour of which the reward is placed in a distant future. It is quite as natural for the slaves of such habits to laugh at the plans we are about to describe, as it was for those who have actually executed them, (for we describe what we have seen,) first to purpose calmly and firmly, and then steadily to effect what they have thus purposed; never deterred by any obstacles and hindrances, because never doubting that no obstacle or hindrance can reverse God's promises, or that God will ultimately bless a parent's prayerful endeavours, though it may not be at the time or in the manner they may expect.

The slaves of low habits never certainly can be safely trusted by others, since they cannot trust themselves. And thus we find ourselves thrown back at every step, on the great principles with which we started; namely that "the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom," and that amid all the individual cases in which Providence permits wickedness to thrive in this world, still, as a general fact, the temporal welfare of men, families, communities, and kingdoms, rests on very much the same foundations with the Christian character as described in Holy Writ-on faith, virtue, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherliness, and charity. Indeed, where these qualities abound, they diffuse their happy effects on persons who do not themselves really possess them. Example and habit influence these, and thus sobriety, prudence, and intelligence, become the virtues of a whole neighbourhood. The population of the place I refer to is variously composed. Some are common labourers, some hand-loom weavers, often earning less by the loom, than the labourer with his spade and mattock;

others are country tailors, shoemakers, &c. Yet they almost all take part in the system about to be described, and in so far as we could observe, all were more or less benefited by it, excepting some, who had made what we call their extra-professional an excuse for neglecting their regular employments, and having gradually become speculators in bargains, had acquired a taste for settling those bargains over strong drink. Such persons, I have no doubt, would, under any circumstances, have become busy-bodies and tipplers, but in the instance before us, by gradually losing character, they gradually lost with it the advantage of co-operation with others, by simply ceasing to be trusted.

The spot I allude to was too distant from any considerable market to admit of market-garden stuffs being profitable. But it was not so for butter, eggs, fowls, and bacon; and to the producing of these and a little lint each family seemed to confine itself.

The proprietors of the adjoining estates offered nothing whatever in the shape of bounties-no allotments, either gratis, or at reduced rents, but, on the contrary, the land, from excessive competition, appeared to us to be in many instances let too high. Yet the sober and industrious almost uniformly throve, and the place has sent out not a few youths who have risen from comparative poverty to handsome incomes, in the places of their ultimate destination. One such youth, dying childless, after realising a large fortune in one of our colonies, left a part of it to his native parish for educational purposes, and the results are one flourishing classical academy and three or four district schools, so that there is not perhaps a parish in Britain so well provided for in that respect.

The families who keep cows feed them from three or four distinct sources. Attached to their houses, each generally has a small garden; in addition to that, they have often, on a lease of from five to twelve years, a patch of ground, which they cultivate with the spade, to which they carry, in wheel-barrows, the manure of their pig-sties and cow-houses, and from which they derive a considerable part of the winter and spring food of their cows, and a little corn. They are bound by their landlords to cultivate these spots, however small, in such a manner that the soil shall never be exhausted.

As the parish has no common, and indeed no ordinary common would suffice for all the cows, this difficulty is met by a very simple plan, in which the co-operation we refer to is indispensable. The neighbouring proprietors, from a regard partly for beauty, partly for interest, keep fields and meadows of various sizes in pasture, and let them for the season, in spring, by public auction, with an obligation not to over-pasture them, either by admitting an excessive number of animals, or by allowing them to remain too long after the close of the season. We shall suppose a field of ten acres is put up. The bidders are so many knots of the inhabitants, who design it for their cows. One company, as they are called, authorizes their spokesman to bid so much, another so much more, until at length it is knocked down to the highest bidder. When the auction is over, the parties give bills, or promissory notes, binding themselves, jointly and severally, to pay the rent at which the fields were respectively knocked down to them at the close of the season-say at Christmas; and then they agree among themselves as to the pasturing of their cows.

But it may be said, among poor people, how can there be so much mutual confidence? What should

one of a company lose his cow-who then is to pay his proportion of the rent? This is met either by loans, made up among his friends and neighbours, or by the parties assuring each other against such losses. Thus, ten of a company may each, by contributing a guinea, provide a fund sufficient to replace one out of ten cows dying, with a ten-guinea cow.

Co-operation is required, also, in disposing of produce. At the place I refer to, the carts which bring out the cotton and silk yarns, and take back the webs, form a carrying system, which includes the transport of produce from country to town, and the reverse. Carts, in fact, go from house to house over night, or at a very early hour, collecting butter, eggs, fowls, &c., for market, and return with sugar, tea, and various articles, to be purchased to advantage only in large towns.

Thus we have a system that has stood the test of many long years, and which produces more positive good than all the fine theories of your philosophers. I need not say that the men and women who form it are old-fashioned Christians and good subjects-not either Owenites or chartists.

As it may be surmised that labourers and artisans, who thus involve themselves in keeping cows and so forth, cannot possibly do justice to their employers, we may add that no such objections exist on the spot. Nay, to judge by one, and that the most numerous class, the hand-loom weavers, we must infer the very reverse, as the following fact will show. In the winter of 1825-6, that branch of industry was particularly depressed, so much so that hardly a single loom was employed in the place; but such was the high repute of its cotton weavers for careful execution of their orders and honesty, that silk yarns were sent out to them in the spring of 1826, first cautiously, and by way of experiment, but soon after regularly, and to a large amount, in consequence of the success of the experiment.

We dare not say that the inhabitants are exempt from many defects. We believe that they would not themselves have originated the system of frugal industry, which they inherit from forefathers who were, according to their own confessions, much their superiors, both in religious knowledge and in practical christianity. During the high prices that were paid for weaving, from the end of the last century down to the close of the war, many of the inhabitants grew giddy from sudden wealth. Some became speculators, and were made reckless by the failure of their schemes; others fell into drinking habits, retaining the form of godliness without its power. We hope that, as a body, they are improving; but our present purpose in introducing them into these pages is to produce a practical illustration, the permanent result of long experience, not the forced and solitary fruit of some philanthropic project of yesterday-to which we can point in proof of the extent of resources which Divine Providence has placed within the reach of poor labouring families, in our rural districts, who desire to give their sons a skilled education, but are deterred, and thrown back in despair, because they think the means utterly beyond their attainment.

SORROWS like showers descend, and as the heart
For them prepares, they good or ill impart;
Some on the mind, as on the ocean rain,
Fall and disturb, but soon are lost again;
Some, as to fertile lands, a boon bestow,

H.

And seeds, that else had perished, live and grow;
Some fall on barren soil, and thence proceed
The idle blossom, and the useless weed.-CRABBE.

WERE we not to pay close attention to the principles by which the phenomena are produced, few things would appear more strange than the apparent production of fire, by means of what are called burning glasses, or burning instruments. If we remove the object glass from a telescope, or an opera glass, and hold it up between the sun and the hand, a little adjustment will enable the sun's rays to pass through the glass in such a manner as to produce an insupportable degree of heat: this property, as well as a somewhat similar one, arising from solar rays reflected from a concave surface, have given rise to the production of many remarkable burning instruments, which are well worthy of our notice.

In order to produce such an effect by means of a transparent lens, through which the solar rays may pass, it is necessary that one or both surfaces of the lens be convex. The effect of a convex lens is, that those rays of light which were parallel before they fall upon the lens, are made to converge on leaving the lens, that is, they are all gradually collected into one point. The effect of this is, that all the light forming the millions of rays which enter the glass is congregated in one little space, and produces an intense illumination. But this is not all. We do not know the real nature of solar light, but we know that heat is always combined with it; and whenever the luminous effect of rays of light is congregated or focalized in one spot, the heating effects are so likewise. We therefore find that whatever arrangement will concentrate solar rays into one spot, will at the same time concentrate the solar heat. We need not here speak of the refined experiments by which the heating rays are separable from the luminous rays, for in all common experiments they are combined.

Now there are two ways in which solar rays can be converged to a focus; first, by reflexion from a concave surface; second, by transmission through a convex surface: in the first case, the reflecting body is opaque, with one of its surfaces concave, and highly polished: in the other case, the transmitting body is transparent, like glass, for instance, with one or both of its surfaces If the reflecting body be convex, or the transmitting body concave, the rays of light would diverge instead of converge. The effect of focalization of light, under the circumstances which we have detailed, depends on two optical laws, viz., that when rays of light are reflected from a polished surface, the

convex.