which can only be produced by the association of great numbers of men. Husbandmen are necessary to cultivate the earth; but they must have tools, and apparel, and furniture, and houses, and these can only be produced by the residents in towns. Happily, the dispositions and tastes of men are as various as the circumstances in which they are placed by their Creator. The dwellers in the free air and beautiful scenery of the country would shrink from being compelled to pass their lives amid the smoke and bustle of a populous town. The inhabitants of the town, contrariwise, would tremble at the darkness and stillness which mark the night-time in the country, and would be rendered uneasy by that very calm, which, to a lover of nature, is so exceedingly delightful and inspiring. All this is ordained for the wisest purposes, and for our happiness and welfare. All are thus rendered contented with their condition, and efficient in their employment. But the pure air of the country, and its exceedingly beautiful scenery, have so excellent an effect upon the human health, and upon the human heart, that we recommend our readers never to neglect a proper opportunity of inhaling the one and beholding the other. The busiest and most important avocations afford some few snatches of leisure; and these can never be better or more wisely employed than in seeking the beauties of nature in their native haunts. During three-fourths of the year the country presents a perfect succession of beauties to the eye of taste, and of enjoyments to the wellattuned soul; and there are few indeed who cannot contrive to quit the busy hum and bustle of the town for a brief space, during one or the other of those periods. To those who are but inattentive observers of nature, the country cannot fail to present innumerable objects of interest and contem plation. EFFECTS OF EXPANSION. A cannon ball, when heated, cannot be made to enter an opening, through which, when cold, it passes readily. A glass stopper sticking fast in the neck of a bottle, may be released by surrounding the neck with a cloth taken out of warm water, or by immersing the bottle in the water up to the neck: the binding ring is thus heated and expanded sooner than the stopper, and so becomes slack or loose upon it. Pipes for conveying hot water, steam, hot air, &c., if of considerable length, must have joinings that allow a degree of shortening and lengthening, otherwise a change of temperature may destroy them. An incompetent person undertook to warm a large manufactory, by steam, from one boiler. He laid a rigid main pipe along a passage, and opened lateral branches through holes into the several apartments, but on his first admitting the steam, the expansion of the main pipe tore it away from all its branches. In an iron railing, a gate which, during a cold day may be loose and easily shut or opened, in a warm day may stick, owing to there being greater expansion of it, and of the neighboring railing, than of the earth on which they are placed. Thus also the centre of the arch of an iron bridge is higher in warm than in cold weather: while, on the contrary, in a suspension or chain bridge the centre is lowered. The iron pillars now so much used to support the front walls of houses, of which the ground stories serve as shops with spacious windows, in warm weather really lift up the wall which rests upon them, and in cold weather allow it again to sink, or subside, in a degree considerably greater than if the wall were brick from top to bottom. The pitch of a piano-forte is lowered in a warm day, or in a warm room, owing to the expansion of the strings being greater than the wooden frame-work; and in cold the reverse will happen. A harp, or piano, which is well tuned in a morning drawing-room, cannot be perfectly in tune when the crowded evening party has heated the room. Bell-wires too, slack in summer, may be of the proper length in winter. There exists a most extraordinary exception, already mentioned, to the law of expansion by heat and contraction by cold, producing unspeakable benefits in nature, namely, in the case of water. Water contracts according to the law only down to the temperature of forty degrees, while, from that to thirty-two degrees, which is its freezing point, it again dilates. A very curious consequence of this peculiarity is exhibited in the wells of the glaciers of Switzerland and elsewhere, namely, that when once a pool, or shallow well, on the ice commences, it goes on quickly deepening itself until it penetrates to the earth beneath. Supposing the surface of the water originally to have nearly the temperature of the melting ice, or thirty-two degrees, but to be afterwards heated by the air and sun, instead of the water being thereby dilated or specifically higher, and detained at the surface, it becomes heavier the more nearly it is heated to forty degrees, and therefore sinks down to the bottom of the pit or well; but there, by dissolving some of the ice, and being consequently cooled, it is again rendered lighter, and rises to be heated as before, again to descend; and this circulation and digging cannot cease until the water has bored its way quite through —Arnott. DEXTERITY OF A GOAT. A correspondent informs us, that when in India, he was often amused by a juggler who came under the windows with a goat and a basket of blocks, one inch square, but very accurately levelled. Placing the four feet of the goat closely together on one block, he added others under, in succession, till the goat was mounted in the air to the second story! The animal was small and well tutored-but even then it always seemed a most remarkable feat. Dr. Clarke in his Travels describes a similar exhibition. "Upon our road from Jerusalem to Bethlehem," says this writer, we met an Arab with a goat, which he led about the country for exhibition, in order to gain a livelihood for itself and owner. He had taught this animal, while he accompanied its movements with a song, to mount upon little cylindrical blocks of wood, placed suc cessively one above the other, and in shape resembling the dice-boxes belonging to a backgammon table. In this manner the goat stood, first upon the top of one cylinder, then upon the top of two, and afterwards of three, four, five and six, until it remained balanced upon the top of them all, elevated several feet from the ground, and with its four feet collected upon a single point without throwing down the disjointed fabric upon which it stood. The practice is very ancient. Nothing can show more strikingly the tenacious footing possessed by this quadruped upon the jutty points and crags of rocks; and the circumstance of its ability to remain thus poised may render its appearance less surprising, as it is sometimes seen in the Alps, and in all mountainous countries, with hardly any place for its feet, upon the sides and by the brink of most tremendous precipices. The diameter of the upper cylinder, on which its feet ultimately remained until the Arab had ended his ditty, was only two inches, and the length of each cylinder was six inches." SONNET. There is no remedy for time mispent, |