Premium No. 12. To the inventor of the best constructed Furnace and Boiler, superior to any now in use, for consuming anthracite in generating steam. This premium has been claimed, but the award is still under advisement.

Premium No. 13. To the maker of the best FireBricks. The award of this premium is left open, in accordance with the terms of the proposal, until the samples shall be sufficiently tested.

awarded to Anthony Querville, for specimen No. 55, being the most complete and best finished of any exhi bited.

In addition to the premiums awarded to those competitors who claimed under the proposal issued by the Institute, your committee in pursuance of authority to grant premiums and special notices to such specimens exhibited, as may be most worthy of compliment, either for excellence of workmanship or ingenuity, or other peculiar circumstances, have awarded

Premium No. 37. To the maker of the best Chairs one dozen to be exhibited, is awarded to Wm. Hancock,, of Boston, for No. 35, being one dozen mahogany chairs, well framed and finished; remarkable for the excellence of the carving, which was clean, bold, and in good taste. Premium No. 45. To the pupil of the High School Premium No. 14. To the maker of the best Curry-who shall execute and exhibit the best specimen of pering Knives, equal to the best now in use. This pre-spective drawing from machinery, is awarded to Robert mium wss claimed by two competitors-both furnished P. Warner, for specimen No. 282, being a drawing of with the strongest certificates as to the quality of their an air pump, the best exhibited. knives. John Shugart & Co. of Chambersburg, and Jacob Banick of the same place. As curriers' knives are implements which require a peculiar temper, very difficult to attain, and which can only be judged of by experiment, your committee accept the suggestion of the judges, and suspend the award of the premium until the knives can be fairly tested and compared by a special committee appointed for that purpose. As soon as their report is received, it shall be made known. Premium No. 16. For the best specimen of Japanned Waiters or Trays, made and japanned in Pennsylvania, is awarded to John P. Blackmore, of Philadelphia, for specimens Nos. 71 and 72, being two dozen waiters made by him of a quality not inferior to the imported. The committee regret that the specimens presented by William Nash, of Philadelphia, were deposited too late to be referred to the judges, and could not therefore enter into competition with the above.

Premium No. 17. To the maker of the best Surveyor's Instruments, is awarded to Stancliff and Draper, of Philadelphia, for specimen No. 315, being an engineer's level, provided with Mr. Wm. Strickland's divided horizontal circle. This instrument is remarkable for the beauty of workmanship, and accuracy with which it is finished, and fully entitles the ingenious makers to the silver medal.

Premium No. 20. "For the best Porcelain made in the United States, gilt, painted, and plain”—“ One hundred pieces must be exhibited;" is awarded to William E. Tucker, of Philadelphia, for specimen No. 253, being an assortment of porcelain of first and second choice.

In awarding this premium, the committee feel much pleasure in noticing the great improvement which has taken place in the manufacture of this beautiful and in-, teresting product. The judges report that they have compared the sample called technically "First choice," with the best specimens of French China, and found it superior in whiteness, and the gilding well done. The same remark applies to the painting, with some excep. tions-this part of the process being still susceptible of some improvement. The committee recommend this "First choice" to the public as of a quality not easily to be surpassed; and awarded to the maker the silver me

dal.

Premium No. 27. For the best specimen of Stair Carpeting, in imitation of Venitian, is awarded to James B. McFee, of Philadelphia, for specimens Nos. 96 and 97-two pieces stair and entry carpet, which reflect great credit on the maker.

To James Devee, of Kensington, a silver medal, for two models of steam engines made by him. The maker of these models is a lad, apprentice to John Walcham, of Globe Mill Factory, and they were made at his leisure hours. The committee have not awarded this premium with any view to the intrinsic merit of the work; but they deem it within the province of the Franklin Institute, to encourage and reward examples of industry, perseverance or ingenuity, among our rising mechanics. These models evinced a talent uncommon in so young a lad.

To S. P. Wetherill & Co. of Philadelphia, for two pigs of Lead, being a part of 1000 pigs, the product of their Perkiomen mines, smelted by them. The quality of this lead has been fairly tested by being manufactured into white lead. After a series of years of expensive and fruitless attempts to smelt this ore, these gentlemen have at last succeeded in rendering available, another product from the inexhaustible mineral resources of Pennsylvania. A silver medal is awarded.

The committee also award the silver medal to H. & W. Day, of Philadelphia, for specimens 14, being an assortment of door locks. These locks of which the makers are also the inventors, were good and well finished, displaying much ingenuity in their construction; all of them were safety locks, presenting almost insur mountable obstacles to the pick-locks: a particular description will be given in the detailed report of the exhibition.

Ten pieces of flannel were presented from the Yaulic factory, Connecticut. The Judges reported them to be of a very superior quality, and the committee adopt their suggestion, and award to the makers a silver medal.

To Lloyd Mifflin, for No. 201, hearth rugs wove by him. These rugs were the first produce of machinery, invented by him, entirely upon new principles. The rugs were well made and substantial, and bid fair to rival the best imported article. The silver medal is awarded.

To Messrs. Tuboeven, a siver medal is awarded, for a sample of pins made and presented by them. The pins were in most part of excellent quality, and reflect much credit on the makers. For the introduction of this useful branch of manufacture the committee award the silver medal.

Premium No. 29. To the maker of the best specimens of Calicoes or Prints for ladies' dresses, made in the United States, is awarded to the Merrimac Manufacturing Company, for specimen No. 149. Prints were Marble Mantels from the manufactories of Tennant & deposited by the Taunton Manufacturing Compa- Highlands, P. Fritz, J. Strothers, S. & J. Jardon, fully ny, and from the Warren factory near Baltimore; the sustaining the high reputation of Philadelphia workmanlatter low priced goods. It is but justice to all parties ship, were produced. Those from Tennant and Highto state, that the judges remarked the great improve-lands, were much admired for the taste of the design, ment that had taken place in printed goods since the last exhibition. They had great difficulty in deciding between the Merrimac and Taunton goods, which have the preference, both being well executed, and of brilliant colours. After some hesitation they awarded to the Merrimack Company the silver medal. Premium No. 35. To the maker of the best Sofa, is

and pleasing appearance. Those of American, and Foreign and American marble, made by P. Fritz, were adjudged to be the best in point of workmanship, The next best a pair of American and Foreign, by J. Stroe thers. Honorary mention was awarded..

The Franklin Institute has never been favoured with a more splendid display of Pianos, than at this exhibi

TOPOGRAPHY AND DISEASES OF WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA.

tion. Thirteen were presented from C. Pommer, C. design of No. 152, from Lloyd's, was particularly pleasT. Albright, J. S. Michley, Louds, S. Sweitzer & My-ing. ers, of Philadelphia; Cunra & Gilbert, and A. Babcock, Brass Hinges, &c. from William Garrett, well adjudg of Boston. As no premium was offered for pianos, pre-ed and well finished, and creditable articles. sented at this exhibition, the committee forbear at present making any distinction, but in their detailed report to be presented in a few days; a description of each, with their merits, may be expected.

The committee would further particularly notice-dies of water. Grates, from Mr. Lloyd & Son, Jackson & Mifflin, all of

which were well made, and of good workmanship. The for the tropical heat of summer, nor for the intensity of

the cold in winter, experienced in western Pennsylvania; nor much less could we account for the magnitude and suddeness of the changes, situated as we are under similar parallels of latitude with the city of Madrid in Spain, the islands of Minorca and Sardinia in the Mediterranean, the cities of Rome and Naples in Italy, and that of Constantinople in Turkey. Hence we must look, in the investigation of our climate, to our elevated situation; our exposure to the north, north-west, and westerly winds, to our being protected by mountains more than two thousand feet high, from the east; and south-east to our being remote from the warm air of the gulf stream, or the general equalizing effects of the waters of the ocean on the atmosphere; to which may be added the large portion of our land which is yet under forest. From this combination of causes, the climate may be accounted for in the most satisfactory man

ner.

It is to be regretted that we are not as yet in possession of any regular series of thermometrical observations from which the alternations of temperature might be ex- | actly known. This is a subject well worthy the attention of the practitioner of medicine, and comes immediately within his province, as without an accurate investigation of the effects of climate on the human body, it is impossible to arrive at any thing like scientific conclusions with regard to disease. However, we may appeal to the experience of every person of observation, resident in western Pennsylvania, for the high temperature of our summer heat and the piercing cold of winter, with the suddenness and magnitude of the changes throughout the year. The past winter indeed, forms an exception in point of mildness scarcely to be equalled within the remembrance of the oldest inhabitants. We have had, comparatively speaking, but little frost, and scarcely any snow, but we have had the most complete succession of continued rains from October to March.

the chest and lungs; the latter is increasing among the sedentary population of our towns with fearful strides. As we are happily free from marsh miasmata, we are strangers to those forms of intermittents which are endemial east, west, north, and south of us. Our fevers are generally of the continued type, accompanied with the inflammatory diathesis, the synochus and synocha of Cullen, and characterized by deranged action of the brain and bowels.

We seldom meet with any of the low forms of typhus mitior, and are strangers for the most part to typhus gravior. Hence we have no contagious fevers.

In summer and autumn our agricultural population are not unfrequently visited with dysentery. This is not so common among the inhabitants of the towns; which may be accounted for from the exposure of the agriculturists to the increased heat of summer and autumn. It is in most cases either during harvest, or immediately after it, that this disease breaks forth.

During harvest the farmer is exposed to the most violent and laborious exercise under a burning sun, which cannot fail to induce a high degree of excitement in the system. The body is bathed with perspiration, the clothes saturated with it. The thin linen pantaloons, the shirt, &c., the usual summer dress of the farmer, becomes as wet in the case of many persons as if they had been drawn through water. If he stops to rest for a little, that part of his dress not in immediate contact with his body, becomes cooled down so rapidly, that if it is alowed to touch the skin, it induces a sensation which can only be compared to the application of ice to the body under other circumstances. Here is a fertile source of disease. His thirst is intolerable; he must drink large quantities of fluid; nature calls for a reduction of the febrile excitement of the system; the increased perspiration must be supplied; the usual drink is ardent spirits with water. To enable him to undergo his increased During the months of July and August, it is not un- labour, his food is rendered more luxurious, and for the common for the thermometer of Fahrenheit to rise to up-most part more indigestible. He swallows large and wards of 96° in the shade. This high temperature how-frequently repeated quantities of solid animal food. His ever is not durable for any number of days or even hours night of rest is short, and his day of labour long. He of the same day, and can only exist during a southerly is frequently found out in his light dress, with the syswind. The wind veering about to the north or particu- tem yet hot with the excitement of the day, under the larly the north-west, will lower the thermometer 10, 20, dews of the evening. He is out in the morning with the 30, or 40° in the course of a few hours. During the rising of the sun, while the fields are still wet with the 27th, 28th, and 29th of January, 1821, the thermome- dews of the previous night. Here are other fertile sourter stood at from 13 to 14° below zero of Fahrenheit's ces of disease. The fever which is attendant on this thermometer; this may be taken as a specimen of our disease, is of a highly inflammatory type, the bowels most intense cold, but in almost every winter, the mer- and peritoneum partake most severely of the diseased cury sinks to or below zero; this can only last during the action. It is not usually fatal under any well regulated continuance of a northerly or north-westerly wind, par- mode of treatment. It is not contagious, although its ticularly the latter; on a change of wind to the south- spreading over entire sections of adjoining country, inward, the temperature will rise 10, 20, or 30° in the duces a belief among the people that it is so. But this course of twenty-four hours. In the latter end of March, arises from all having been exposed less or more, to the 1828, the thermometer rose for a few days above 60° of original exciting causes of the affection, and not from Fahrenheit; in the beginning of April it was down be- the powers of contagion. low the freezing point. Such is our vicissitude of climate that it is impossible to calculate on any invariable range of temperature for any given time during any season of the year. In winter the north-westerly winds bring us the most intense degrees of cold; this may be accounted for, from the immense regions covered for the greater part of the year with ice or snow lying northwest of us; those immense inland seas, Erie, Huron, Michigan and Superior, which are frozen up for several months in the year, and to our being exposed to the full and unmitigated sweep of this wind, blowing over those regions, without the intervention of mountain or the equalizing effect of the waters of the ocean. On the contrary, the south wind coming to us from the Gulf of Mexico and the valley of the Mississippi, blowing over land for nearly two thousand miles, brings us a very increased degree of heat, and accounts satisfactorily for the high temperature of our summers.

The prevailing diseases in summer and autumn are af fections of the brain, stomach, and bowels, particularly the latter. In winter and spring we have diseases of

Cholera infantum is a disease frequent in the towns during the summer months, and more especially in confined and badly ventilated apartments. În these places its fatality is considerable.

It is usual in professional intercourse, to hear a great deal about bilious diseases; we have bilious fevers, bilious cholics, bilious head-aches, and even bilious pleurisies, without end. Does a patient present himself with a furred tongue, he is bilious; has he constipation of the bowels, he is bilious: has he impaired digestion, he is bilious; and so on, until at length biliary derangement has become, in the vocabulary of these gentlemen, the primum mobile in most cases of disease. Were this simply confined to an error in nosological discrimination, it would be comparatively harmless, but it leads to the most mischievous errors in practice. That we have in reality no such biliary derangement, it is only necessary to appeal to our climate. It is physically impossible that it should exist under our variable atmosphere and in our elevated situation. It is only in marshy countries and under a more southern sun, that general hepatic de

rangement entwines itself to any extent with the prevailing diseases, as in the more southern and low-lying sections of the United States or the peninsula of India. Here we should have post mortem examinations to appeal to, but our medical industry presents us only with meagre data in this respect. Had this method of investigation been resorted to, it is matter of impossibility that we could long have laboured under this biliary delusion. The prepossessions of the people may be pleaded in extenuation, but this affords only a slender cover; the minds of the people here, as well as in the sea-board cities, might and would be entirely under the guidance of their medical attendants in this respect, were they to set the importance of it in every case plain-paid for it; and seem never to design to pay for it.-The ly before them.

PROGRESS OF LITERATURE IN PENNSYL

VANIA.

(From the November number of the Philadelphia Monthly Magazine.)

world." Franklin tells us that Keimer was something of a poet, and when he first saw him, he was engaged, both mentally and manually, in composing an elegy on the death of Aquilla Rose, secretary to the general assembly, and principal workman in Bradford's employment.* His verses flowed, without interruption, from his muse to his composing stick, the process, of writ-. ing being dispensed with. In Thomas's History of Printing in America, we meet with a specimen of this writer's poetry, extracted from the Barbadoes Gazette of May 4th, 1734, of which paper Keimer was, at that time, the editor. It is an address "To those who'd be thought gentlemen, who have long taken this paper and never sorrowful lamentations of Samuel Keimer, printer of the Barbadoes Gazette.

"What a pity it is that some modern bravadoes, Who dub themselves gentlemen here in Barbadoes, Should, time after time, run in debt to their printer, And care not to pay him in summer or winter!" And so on, to the end of thirty-four lines, from which we learn that "Tho' working like slave, with zeal and true courage, He scarcely could get even salt to his porridge." From this paper a collection of essays, &c. was pub

The love of fame is the ruling passion, and to this, society is more indebted, than to any other impulse to which the mind is subject. The scholar wastes not his life over the midnight lamp, merely that he may enlighten the world, nor the statesman his breath in speeches, as blustering as Boreas, from the pure dic-lished in two quarto volumes, in London, in 1741, entitates of patriotism. The soldier gathers not laurels tled Caribbeana. Franklin, in his memoirs of himself, at the cannon's mouth, for the love of fighting; nor does gives a graphic and an amusing sketch of this ill-starred the philanthropist do good by stealth, from the unalloy- wight. ed impulse of philanthropy. An innate love of distinction is the main-spring of human action; and though that distinction. in most cases, amounts to little more than a paragraph in a biographical dictionary, seldom opened, still it proves sufficient to stimulate to worthy actions. The trifling meed should not, therefore, be withheld, when the task has been accomplished. With these views, we propose to give some account of the pioneers of literature in Pennsylvania, confining our researches to such writers as death has rendered alike insensible to censure or to praise; but we do not pretend to be so minute as to preclude the necessity of others treating on the same subject.

Pennsylvania was the second English colony in America, into which the art of printing was introduced. This important event took place as early as the year 1686, and we are indebted for it to William Bradford, who came over among the first emigrants from England, with William Penn. His press is supposed to have been established in Kensington, in the vicinity of the Treaty Elm. The first work published by him, which was a sheet almanac, is dated 1687, and is still extant in the Franklin Library. In consequence of religious controversies, Bradford's residence in Philadelphia was of short duration. He incurred the displeasure of the dominant party, and removed to New York in 1693, where he died in 1752.

Andrew Bradford, his son, who was born in Philadelphia, learnt the art of printing with his father, in New York, and returned to his native city about the year 1712, and from that time, until 1723, was the only printer in the colony. On December 22d, 1719, he issued the first newspaper published in Pennsylvania, entitled the American Weekly Mercury.

A neatly turned line of sarcasm, from a reputed wit, will descend from father to son, for centuries, until it is received as a truth, as incontrovertible as holy writ. The ill-timed parody on a line in Thomson's Sophonisba, is remembered, while the beauties, profusely scattered through that drama, are forgotten; and Pope's distich upon James Ralph, has consigned the name of the latter to contempt, though he possessed considerable talent and industry, and his writings surpass, in positive merit, the works of many, who have been rewarded with ho nourable and permanent distinction. Ralph was an early friend of Franklin, and accompanied him to England in 1724, with the avowed purpose of becoming an author by profession, and commenced his career as an matic writing, and between the years 1730 and 1744, unsuccessful political writer. He then attempted draproduced four plays: "The Fashionable Lady," "Fall of the Earl of Essex," "Lawyer's Feast," and "The Astrologer," neither of which received much approbation. As a historian, he has been more unfortunate. He published, in two folio volumes, "The History of EngI." Charles Fox, pronounced him "a historian of great land, during the reigns of William, Anne, and George acutenesss, as well as diligence, but who falls sometimes into the common error of judging too much by the which it emanates. He wrote many political pamphlets, event." No slight praise, considering the source from some of which, we are told, were looked upon as master pieces. The Dutchess of Marlborough having pub lished, in 1742, the memoirs of her own life, Ralph wrote an answer to it, entitled "The other side of the Question," which attracted much public notice, and he became so formidable to the ministry, towards the end of Sir Robert Walpole's time, that it was deemed expe dient to silence him with a pension. To this circumstance Churchill alludes in his Conference'

·

Samuel Keimer, who had learnt the trade in London, became a competitor of Bradford in 1723, but, accord- "See men transform'd to brutes, and brutes to men, ing to Franklin, he was but ill prepared to embark in See Whitehead take a place, Ralph change his pen." the business, as his printing materials consisted "of an This pension is stated to have been 600 pounds per old damaged press, and a small cast of worn out English annum, Franklin says 300, and that he enjoyed it until types, contained in one pair of cases." His press was the time of his death, in 1762, which gives the lie direct defective; it had not been put together, and Keimer, to the remark of the annotator on the Dunciad, when he having been a compositor, knew nothing of the press says: "He ended at last in the common sink of all such man's department. Franklin, who visited Philadelphia writers, a political newspaper, to which he was recomat this time in search of employment, in noticing Brad-mended by his friend Arnall, and received a small pit ford and the other, says: "they were both destitute of tance for pay." In the same note, he is said to have every qualification necessary to their profession. The been "wholly illiterate, and knew no language, not even first was very illiterate, and the other ignorant of the See page 262, of this number of Register.

VOL. II.

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