fear, make a hero of me, were the account chronicled ever so minutely and faithfully.

In the East Indies, where the scorpion is about the size of a small lobster, you can hardly move a piece of furniture in a house without finding one of these creatures hidden. When they are afraid or angry, they draw their jaw feet in, and throw up the tail over the back, and bend it quite up to the head.

Scorpions like best to live alone. The hole which they make in the ground is something the shape of the inside of a watch-glass; and in this they will live all day. But toward evening, they creep out in search of food. They run very quickly, keeping their jaw feet out before them, and their long tails dragging along the ground. They seize hold of worms, wood-lice, and different insects, with their pincers, and sting them with the sharp point of their tails. As soon as their victims are dead, they grind them to powder and eat them. They are fond of spiders' eggs, and indeed of the eggs of all insects. They are very voracious, and have been known to eat their own little ones. If they are shut up together, they fight desperately, and at the end of the battle the weaker is sure to be devoured by the stronger. Some years ago, Baron Cuvier had four hundred living scorpions sent him from Italy as a present; but they fought so desperately, that in a short time very few were alive.

When the mother scorpion is not angry, she is very kind to her little ones. She carries them on her back; and for the first few days after they are hatched, she never comes out of her snug hole. She watches over them for a month, and after that time, like the spider, she expects they will take care of themselves.

A

GARLIC AND EGGS.

CELEBRATED geologist, member of the Academy of Sciences in France, was recently traveling in the southern part of that country, when he stopped at a miserable inn to dine. He could not get any thing to eat but a meager omelet, overdosed with garlic. "Why in the world," said he to the landlady, "did you put so much garlic into the omelet ?' "Dear me, sir!" was the reply, "the eggs

were so bad!"

LOVE to trace the incidents in the life of the eminent Italian astronomer, Galileo. They are extremely instructive. All the more prominent of them are intimately connected with the progress of science in a comparatively dark age.

It was in the year 1564 that Galileo was born. It was an eventful period. The Reformation was then going bravely forward in Europe. The birthplace of this wonderful philosopher was Pisa, the city rendered famous by its Leaning Tower. He was instructed in a very liberal manner-liberal for that time. Very early in life he began to show signs of being an uncommonly thoughtful youth. He was a mere boy when, one day, the swinging of a lamp suspended from the ceiling of the cathedral in his native city led him to study into the laws regulating the oscillation of the pendulum, which he was the first to apply in the measure of time. From this point in his his

tory, all along during his life, we very often see that he was not one of those who are content to let their thinking be done by others. It mattered very little to him what the professors taught, or what the priests did, or even what the pope said, if it would not stand the test of investigation and reason. He devoted a great deal of time to the study of mathematics and natural science. How successful he became in these branches of learning, may be learned from the fact, that, when he was twenty-five years old, he was made professor of mathematics in the University of Pisa. Here he encountered a vast amount of opposition. The old professors, urged on by the priesthood, wanted him to let the old philosophy alone, and to teach it without testing its truth by facts. Galileo was too honest to teach error, because it was ancient and because it had the stamp of great men upon it. So he went on with his experiments, teaching philosophy by actual demonstration, instead of stuffing it down the throats of his pupils without proof, as the custom was in those times. He it was who showed that weight has no influence on the velocity of falling bodies, and that a little bullet falls with the same rapidity as a cannon-ball, in the same circumstances. His experiments brought a swarm of monkish bees about his ears, and he was obliged to resign his professorship. Those who presided over the interests of the University of Pisa loved darkness better than light.

In 1592, he was appointed professor of mathematics in Padua. Here he became exceedingly popular. Scholars from every part of Europe crowded to hear his lectures. A great many valuable discoveries in science were made by Galileo while he resided in this city. Here he ascertained the great law, that the space through which a body falls, in equal times, increases in the ratio of the numbers, 1, 3, 7, etc.—that is, if a body falls sixteen feet the first second, it will fall forty-eight the next second, and so on. Some say that Galileo was the inventor of the thermometer. Although this fact has been denied, it is certain that Galileo greatly improved the thermometer, if he did not invent it. The telescope had been discovered by another philosopher. But it had remained without being of any practical advantage until Galileo turned it toward the heavens. The discoveries that he made in astronomy startled the world. He found that the moon, like the earth, has an uneven surface; and he taught his pupils to measure the height of its mountains by their shadow. He it was who discovered Jupiter's satellites and Saturn's ring. What a rich field he opened in science! He discovered the spots in the sun. Galileo's

name became so famous, that the Grand Duke conferred upon him a very high honor, appointing him to the highest post in the University of Pisa. He did not reside permanently in this place, however, but spent a good deal of his time in Florence. Here, on one of the hills overlooking the city, he had an observatory, at that time the most extensive on the globe. While in Florence, I was shown an edifice said to be the identical observatory used by Galileo. I climbed its antique stairs, and looked out from its top upon that classic city, and the beautiful vale of the Arno, with the reverence due to an edifice where such a great astronomer had made such astounding discoveries. I hope they did n't cheat me. I should be sorry to hear that I had expended so much sentiment for nothing.

Poor Galileo! while he was busy, day and night, in developing new and valuable truths in science, a terrible storm was gathering over his head. He had declared his belief in the Copernican system. That system, you may be aware, was first started by Copernicus. It is essentially the same which we hold about the revolution of the earth and the other planets round the sun. The doctrine was not in accordance with the teachings of popery. So the priests determined to put it down; and as the only way to get it down seemed to be to put down its great teacher, they beset him, like so many wolves. His enemies persuaded him to go to Rome, where he allayed the storm to some extent, by promising not to teach or write about these obnoxious doctrines in future. It would seem that he was a conscientious man, and really thought he must obey the pope and his clergy. Possibly, too, he feared the Inquisition, for he would certainly have been put to the torture if he had not taken this course.

Some time after this, he got into a controversy with an eminent Jesuit, which made him very unpopular among this society. Not long after he wrote a work defending, though in the form of a dialogue between three persons, the system of Copernicus. He went to Rome with his manuscript, and got permission to publish it. Scarcely had it appeared, however, before it was severely handled by the disciples of the old theory. The priests all went against it. So did all the monks. So did the pope, though he had previously given his approval of the book. A grand convention, composed of cardinals, monks, bishops, and other timber of the same sort, was held, who condemned the book as highly pernicious in its influence, as having come from the brain of the devil, and so on. Galileo had to go again to Rome, in the winter of 1633, whe.e he languished some

months in the prison of the Inquisition. At length he was compelled to renounce, kneeling in the presence of an assembly of ignorant and stupid monks, while his hand was laid upon the Gospel, the great truths he had maintained in his book. This act looks cowardly. But we are willing to pardon it, when we learn what he said immediately after he rose to his feet. You recollect those words, don't you? "And yet it does move," said he, still maintaining his belief in the Copernican theory. Of course he was sent back to the prison of the Inquisition, where he was obliged to remain for a long time, though he finally got his sentence commuted to banishment to the episcopal palace at Sienna, and afterward to Anceti, near Florence. At this last place he spent his declining years, still pursuing his investigations, and here he died. His death occurred in 1642, the very year in which Isaac Newton was born.

IN

WHY THERE IS NO RAIN IN PERU.

Peru, South America, rain is unknown. The coast of Peru is within the region of perpetual south-east trade-winds. Though the Peruvian shores are on the verge of the great South Sea boiler, yet it never rains there. The reason is plain. The south-east tradewinds in the Atlantic ocean first strike the water on the coast of Africa. Traveling to the north-west, they blow obliquely across the ocean until they reach the coast of Brazil. By this time they are heavily laden with vapor, which they continue to bear along across the continent, depositing it as they go, and supplying with it the sources of the Rio de la Plata and the southern tributaries of the Amazon. Finally they reach the snow-capped Andes, and here is wrung from them the last particle of moisture that that very low temperature can extract. Reaching the summit of that, they now tumble down as cool and dry winds on the Pacific slopes beyond. Meeting with no evaporating surface, and with no temperature colder than that to which they were subjected to on the mountain tops, they reach the ocean before they become charged with vapor, and before, therefore, they have any which the Peruvian climate can extract. Thus we see how the top of the Andes becomes the reservoir from which are supplied the rivers of Chili and Peru.-Lieut. Maury's Geography of the Sea.