GUTTA PERCHA.

Gutta percha is a substance possessing many useful and valuable properties. It was unknown in Europe until a very recent date, though it is said to have been in common use for a long period previous to our discovery of its utility amongst the natives of the Indian Archipelago. It is the concrete juice of a large tree, and is brought to Europe in irregular masses of a brown colour, containing various impurities, which are easily got rid of by working it in hot water. It possesses the desirable properties of being solid, slightly elastic, and very tough. It is used for very many industrial purposes.

CAOUTCHOUC.

Caoutchouc, or India rubber, which, till recently, was used only for rubbing out pencil-marks, is now made serviceable for almost innumerable purposes. It is the solidified juice of several trees, such as the Siphonia, the Jatropha elastica, and the Ficus elastica. It is got by making incisions in the trunk of these trees during winter, and collecting the juice, which is a compound of caoutchouc and water. The water evaporates, and the caoutchouc remains.

PERFECTION OF GOD'S WORKS.

Apply the microscope to any of the most minute of God's works, nothing is to be found but beauty and perfection. If we examine the numberless species of insects that swim, creep, or fly around us, what proportion, exactness, uniformity, and symmetry shall we perceive in all their organs! what a profusion of colouring— azure, green, and vermilion ! On their wings, head, and every other part we discern delicate fringe and rich embroidery. How

high the finishing! how inimitable the polish we everywhere behold! The most perfect works of man betray a meanness, a poverty, an inability in the workman; but the works of nature plainly prove that the hand which formed them was Divine.

PLATT.

GOD'S GOODNESS AND CARE.

In everything which respects this awful, but, as we trust, glorious change of death, we have a wise and powerful Being (the author in nature of infinitely various expedients for infinitely various ends) upon whom to rely for the choice and appointment of means adequate to the execution of any plan which His goodness or His justice may have formed for the moral and accountable part of His terrestrial creation. That great office rests with Him; be it ours to hope and to prepare, under a firm and settled persuasion, that, living and dying, we are His; that life is passed in His constant presence, that death resigns us to His merciful disposal. PALEY.

AN ANECDOTE OF THE CRIMEAN WAR.

At that moment affairs were going ill with the French. The appearance of our head-quarters on the knoll had been marked by our allies as well as by the enemy; for now a French aid-de-camp, in great haste, came climbing up the knoll to seek Lord Raglan. He seemed to be in a state of grievous excitement; but perhaps it was the violence of his bodily exertion which gave him this appearance, for he had quitted his horse in order the better to mount the steep, and he rushed up bareheaded to Lord Raglan, to ask that he would give some support to the French, and as a ground for the demand, he urged that the French were hardly pressed by the enemy. 'My lord,' he said, my lord, my lord, we have before us eight battalions!'. . . . Bending in his saddle, Lord Raglan

turned kindly round towards his right-towards the side of his maimed arm-and his expression was that of one intent to assuage another's pain, but the sunshine of the last two days had tanned him so crimson, that it masked the generous flush which used to come to his face in such moments. He did not look at all like an anxious and vexed commander who had to listen to a desponding message in the midst of a battle. . . . . In his comforting, cheerful way, he said: 'I can spare you a battalion.' But it was something of more worth than the promise of a battalion that the aid-de-camp carried back with him. He carried back tidings of the spirit in which Lord Raglan was conducting the battle. At a time when the French were cast down, it was of some moment to them to learn that the English head-quarters, strangely placed as they were in the midst of the Russian position, wore a scene of robust animation, and that Lord Raglan looked and spoke like a man who had the foe in his power.

KINGLAKE'S Crimea.

STORM AT SEA.

'God have mercy upon the poor fellows at sea!' Household words these in English homes, however far inland they may be, and although near them the blue sea may have no better representative than a sedge-choked river or canal along which slow barges urge a lazy way. When the storm-wrack darkens the sky, and gales are abroad, seaward fly the sympathies of English hearts, and the prayer is uttered with perhaps a special reference to some loved and absent sailor. It is those, however, who live on the sea-coast, and watch the struggle going on in all its terrible reality-now welcoming ashore, as wrested from death, some rescued sailor, now mourning over those who have found a sudden grave almost within call of land, that learn truly to realise the fearfulness of the strife, and to find an answer to the moanings of the gale in the prayer: 'God have mercy upon the poor fellows at

sea !'

REV. J. GILMORE.

GOOD SENSE.

There is nothing more desirable than good sense and justness of mind. All other qualities of mind are of limited use, but exactness of judgment is of general utility in every part and in all employments of life. We are too apt to employ reason merely as an instrument for acquiring the sciences, whereas we ought to avail ourselves of the sciences as an instrument for perfecting our reason; justness of mind being infinitely more important than all the speculative knowledge which we can obtain by means of sciences the most solid.

ARNAULD.

NATURE AND REVELATION.

The existence and character of the Deity is, in every view, the most interesting of all human speculations. In none, however, is it more so than as it facilitates the belief of the fundamental articles of revelation. It is a step to have it proved that there must be something in the world more than what we see. It is a further step to know that amongst the invisible things of nature there must be an intelligent mind concerned in its production, order, and support. These points being assured to us by natural theology, we may well leave to revelation the disclosure of many particulars which our researches cannot reach respecting either the nature of this Being, as the original cause of all things, or his character and designs as a Moral Governor and not only so, but the mere confirmation of other particulars of which, though they do not lie altogether beyond our reasonings and our probabilities, the certainty is by no means equal to the importance. PALEY.

DESIGN IN NATURE.

Were there no example in the world of contrivance except that of the eye, it would be alone sufficient to support the conclusion which we draw from it as to the necessity of an intelligent Creator. It could never be got rid of; because it could not be accounted for by any other supposition which did not contradict all the principles of knowledge we possess; the principles according to which things do, according as they can be brought to the test of experience, turn out to be true or false.

PALEY.

BENEVOLENCE OF THE CREATOR.

Assuming the necessity of food for the support of animal life; it is requisite that the animal be provided with organs fitted for the procuring, receiving, and digesting of food. It may also be necessary that the animal be impelled by its sensations to exert its organs. But the pain of hunger would do all this. Why add pleasure to the act of eating, sweetness and relish to the food? Why a new and appropriate sense for the perception of the pleasure? Why should the juice of a peach, applied to the palate, affect the part so differently from what it does when rubbed on the palm of the hand? This is a constitution which, so far as appears to me, can be resolved into nothing but the pure benevolence of the Creator.

PALEY.

SILK.

Silk is by far the strongest of the textile fabrics, being nearly three times as strong as flax. It consists of the filaments spun by a silk-worm. The worm, moving its head backwards and forwards, spins fine threads of silk, and so covers itself in with a ball of silk. This covering is called a cocoon, and being