powerfully press against the toothed edges of the stout basal piece, by which means the nutritive fluids of the prey are pressed out and taken into the mouth, when the dried and empty skin is rejected.

The cheese-mite, being a cousin to the spider, should next come under examination. You may readily find one, for scarcely any cupboard is without some defunct skeleton of a cheese, in which are to be found many millions of these microscopically interesting creatures, out of which you may select a fat, plump one. He has a polished, oval body, of a pellucid white hue, and eight short, red legs. His body is divided by a transverse furrow into thorax and abdomen, and there is another division between the head and thorax. The structure of the head can not be seen satisfactorily otherwise than by crushing the mite in the compressorium, a thing you need have no compunctions about when you consider how many thousands you crush every time you eat ripe cheese.

Who has not wondered at the rapid locomotion of the common earth-worm? Without any visible traveling machinery it glides along with apparent ease, and presently pokes its sharp nose into the ground and disappears. If the eye could follow it, it would be seen to make its way through the compact earth as easily as it would along the surface. Yet you see no feet, wings, fins, or limbs of any kind, only a long cylinder of soft flesh divided into numerous rings and tapering to each extremity. The very snout which enters so easily the substance of the soil is no hard, bony point, but formed of the same soft, yielding flesh as the other parts. How with such an implement does the worm penetrate whithersoever it will? The fineness of the point to which the muzzle can be drawn is the first essential. This can be so attenuated that the grains of soil can be readily separated by it, when its action is like that of the wedge. The body is then drawn into the crevice thus made, and the particles are separated still farther. Another provision then comes in; the whole surface of the skin secretes and throws off a quantity of tenacious mucus or slime, as you will immediately perceive if you handle the worm; this has the double effect of causing the pressed particles of soil to adhere together, and then to form a cylindrical wall, of which they are the bricks and the slime the mortar.

But all this does not explain the easy movement of the worm. Examined through the microscope the writhing body of our present subject shows a number of tiny points protruded and retracted with rhythmical symmetry through the skin. These points are very numerous.

They are arranged in four longitudinal lines, running along the ventral side of the animaltwo lines on each side—and in each line there is a point protruded from each of the many rings of which the worm's body is made up. And by these implements the worm makes his way through the world.

But space will not allow a further exhibition of the wonders of the microscope. We must close our article by referring to the practical utility of this subject. Years ago the microscope was a mere toy, and it may yet be supposed by many persons that its revelations are more curious than useful. But this is a great mistake. It is now understood that in the study of geology, botany, mineralogy, and chemistry the microscope is a useful, not to say necessary instrument. The physician could never have comprehended the structure of some parts of the human system without its aid; besides, it affords, as we are told by Prof. King, a certainty in the diagnosis or detection of diseases, several of which can not be correctly determined without it.

In these days of shams the microscope serves a most useful purpose in the detection of frauds in food. Few persons perhaps are aware of the extent to which adulterations in food and drugs is carried. One writer says that the very articles used to adulterate are adulterated, and while one tradesman is picking the pockets of his customers, a still more cunning rogue is, unknown to himself, deep in his own.

You purchase what purports to be genuine ground coffee. In such a case, "if ignorance is bliss," it might be "folly to be wise;" but ignorance is not bliss. The decoction sent up to breakfast is insufferable, and cook is scolded. If Bridget knew that she had been boiling ground peas, beans, oats, dry bones, oak, or mahogany, chicory, and sawdust she might make a good defense; but a microscope is not yet considered-as it ought to be an essential part of kitchen furniture, and nothing else will expose the villainy of the coffee vender.

The beautifully-smoked ham served up at breakfast might, by the aid of the microscope, have been classed with "measly pork," and the milk poured into your adulterated coffee might have been itself adulterated with water, chalk, flour, oxyd of iron, and calves' brains. The amount and quality of the trash in our te, sugar, pepper, spices, vinegar, and other articles of food may readily be ascertained by the use of this instrument. But not in the kitchen and laboratory alone are its beneficent uses seen. It has even secured the ends of justice by saving the innocent and convicting the guilty!

CHRIST AND HIS BRETHREN." Go to my brethren and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father; and to my God and your God." John xx, 17.

This is a grand and unspeakable consolation unto believers, with supportment in every condition. No unworthiness in them, no misery upon them, shall ever hinder the Lord Christ from owning them, and openly avowing them to be his brethren. He is a brother born for the day of trouble, a Redeemer for the friendless and fatherless. Let their miseries be what they will, he will be ashamed of none but of them who are ashamed of him and his ways, when persecuted and reproached. A little while will clear up great mistakes. All the world shall see at the last day whom Christ will own; and it will be a great surprisal when men shall hear him call them brethren whom they hated, and esteemed as the offscouring of all things. He doth it, indeed, already by his word; but they will not attend thereunto. But at the last day they shall both see and hear whether they will or no. And herein, I say, lies the great consolation of believers. The world rejects them, it may be their own relations despise them-they are persecuted, hated, reproached; but the Lord Christ is not ashamed of them. He will not pass by them because they are poor and in rags-it may be reckoned as he himself was for them-among malefactors. They may see also the wisdom, grace, and love of God in this matter. His great design in the incarnation of his Son was to bring him into that condition wherein he might naturally care for them as their brother; that he might not be ashamed of them, but be sensible of their wants, their state and condition in all things, and so be always ready and meet to relieve them. Let the world now take its course, and the men thereof do their worst; let Satan rage and the powers of hell be stirred up against them; let them load them with reproach and scorn, and cover them all over with the filth and dirt of their false imputations; let them bring them into rags, into dungeons, unto death-Christ comes in the midst of all this confusion and says, "Surely these are my brethren, the children of my Father," and he becomes their Savior. And this is a stable foundation of comfort and supportment in every condition. And are we not taught our duty also herein, namely, not to be ashamed of him or of his Gospel, or of any one that bears his image? The Lord Christ is now himself in that condition that even the worst of men esteem it an honor to own him; but, indeed, they are no less ashamed of him than they would have been when he was carrying his cross upon his shoulders,

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or hanging upon the tree; for of every thing that he hath in this world they are ashamed-his Gospel, his ways, his worship, his Spirit, his saints, they are all of them the objects of their scorn; and in these things it is the Lord Christ may be truly honored or be despised.

THE MONEY SCALES.-" There is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing: there is that maketh himself poor, yet hath great riches." Prov. xiii, 7.

An opulent merchant having received a sum of money, was putting the ducats one by one into a pair of scales, in order to ascertain that they were not too light. "For my part," said Gotthold, who was present, "I should be more afraid of their being too heavy." "How so?" inquired the merchant. "Do you not think," rejoined Gotthold, "that money is too heavy when bedewed with the blood of the poor, the sweat of the laborious, and the tears of the widow and the orphan, or when loaded with the curses of those who, by fraud or violence, have been robbed of it? I will hope, however, that there are no pieces of this description in that heap of yours, or rather, I will not fear that there are any. Suffer me, however, without offense, to express the wish that you will always make your conscience your scales, and weigh in it your dollars and ducats to ascertain that they are of proper weight, and have been honestly acquired. Many a man never learns, till he is struggling with death, how difficult, or rather impossible, it is to force a soul, burdened with unrighteous gain, through the strait gate which leadeth unto life. Take heed, then, that no such gain ever burdens yours. The more he carries, the more the pilgrim sweats and pants as he climbs the steep; and the more the conscience is oppressed with dishonesty and fraud, the harder will the struggle of a death-bed be."

The character of the busybody is well described by Bishop Hall: "His estate is too narrow for his mind, and, therefore, he is fain to make himself room in others' affairs; yet ever in pretense of love. No news can stir but by his door; neither can he know that which he must not tell. What every man ventures in Guiana voyage, and what they gained, he knows to a hair. Whether Holland will have peace he knows; and on what conditions, and with what success, is familiar to him ere it be concluded. No post can pass him without question, and rather than he will lose the news, he rides back with him to

appose him of tidings; and then to the next man he meets he supplies the wants of his hasty intelligence, and makes up a perfect tale, wherewith he so haunteth the patient auditor that, after many excuses, he is fain to endure rather the censure of his manners in running away, than the tediousness of an impertinent discourse. His speech is often broken off with a succession of parentheses, which he ever vows to fill up ere the conclusion, and perhaps would effect it if the other's ears were as unweariable as his tongue. If he see but two men talk and read a letter in the street, he runs to them and asks if he may not be partner of that secret relation: and if they deny it, he offers to tell, since he may not hear, wonders; and then falls upon the report of the Scottish Mine, or of the great fish taken up at Lynn, or of the freezing of the Thames; and after many thanks and dismissions, is hardly entreated silence. He undertakes as much as he performs little. This man will thrust himself forward to be the guide of the way he knows not; and calls at his neighbor's window and asks why his servants are not at work. The market hath no commodity which he priceth not, and which the next table shall not hear recited. His tongue, like the tail of Samson's foxes, carries firebrands, and is enough to set the whole field of the world on a flame. Himself begins talk of his neighbor at another's board: to whom he bears the first news, and adjures him to conceal the reporter; whose choleric answer he returns to his first host, enlarged with a second edition; so, as it uses to be done in the fight of unwilling mastiffs, he claps each on the side apart, and provokes them to an eager conflict. There can be no act pass without his comment, which is ever far-fetched, rash, suspicious, dilatory. His ears are long, and his eyes quick, but most of all to imperfections; which, as he easily sees, so he increases with intermeddling. He harbors another man's servant, and amid his entertainment asks what fare is usual at home, what hours are kept, what talk passeth their meals, what his master's disposition is, what his government, what his guests; and when he hath by curious inquiries extracted all the juice and spirit of hoped intelligence, turns him off whence he came, and works on anew. He hates constancy as an earthen dullness, unfit for men of spirit, and loves to change his work and his place; neither yet can he be so soon weary of any place, as every place is weary of him; for as he sets himself on work, so others pay him with hatred; and look how many masters he hath, so many enemies; neither is it possible that any should not hate him, but who knows him not. So then he labors without thanks, talks without credit, lives without love, dies without tears, without pity, save that some say it was pity he died

no sooner."

CASTING AWAY THE OLD LEAVEN.-" Let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." 1 Cor. v, 8.

General Burn, in recording his experience, says, "One Lord's day, when I was to receive the sacrament, before I approached the sacred ordinance, my conscience so keenly accused me on account of this beloved idol-playing at cards-that I hardly knew

what to do with myself. I tried to pacify it by a renewal of all my resolutions, with many additions and amendments. I parleyed and reasoned the matter over for hours, trying, if possible, to come to some terms of accommodation, but still the obstinate monitor within cried out, 'There 's an Achan in the camp; approach the table of the Lord if you dare!' Scared at the threat, and yet unwilling to part with my darling lust, I became like one possessed. Restless and uneasy, I flew out of the house to vent my misery with more freedom in the fields under the wide canopy of heaven. Here I was led to meditate on the happiness of the righteous, and the misery of the wicked in a future state. The importance of eternity falling with a ponderous weight upon my soul, raised such vehement indignation against the accursed thing within, that crying to God for help, I kneeled down under a hedge, and taking heaven and earth to witness, wrote on a piece of paper with my pencil a solemn vow, that I never would play at cards, on any pretense whatsoever, so long as I lived. No sooner had I put my name to the solemn vow than I felt myself another creature. Sorrow took wing and flew away and a delightful peace succeeded. The intolerable burden being removed from my mind, I approached the sacred table of the Lord with an unusual degree of pleasure and delight. This was not my only idol. I had many others to contend with. But while I was endeavoring to heal my wounded soul in one place, ere I was aware sin broke out in another."

WISDOM.-"Wisdom is a defense, and money is a defense: but the excellency of knowledge is, that wisdom giveth life to them that have it." Eccl. vii, 12.

There is a beautiful marginal reading to this passage. The Hebrew word rendered defense signifies a shadow; that is, a protecting shade. Here are two sheltering shades; both are grateful; but one is superior to the other as the soul is superior to the body. The one protects us from such evils as are incident to poverty; the other protects us from miseries of the mind; it refreshes and restores the soul.

AN EASTERN CUSTOM OF EXPRESSING COMPLAINTS.— "They cried out and cast off their clothes, and threw dust into the air." Acts xxii, 23.

A great similarity appears between the conduct of the Jews, when the chief captain of the Roman garrison at Jerusalem presented himself in the temple, and the behavior of the Persian peasants, when they go to court to complain of the governors under whom they live, upon their oppressions becoming intolerable. Sir John Chardin tells us respecting them, that they carry their complaints against their governors by companies, consisting of several hundreds, and sometimes of a thousand; they repair to that gate of the palace near to which their prince is most likely to be, where they begin to make the most horrid cries, tearing their garments, and throwing dust into the air, at the same time demanding justice. The king, upon hearing these cries, sends to know the occasion of them. The people deliver their complaint in writing, upon which he lets them know that he will commit the cognizance of the affair to some one, by whom justice is usually done them.

MASON AND DIXON'S LINE.-On the 4th of August, 1763, Thomas and Richard Penn and Lord Baltimore, being together in London, agreed with Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, two mathematicians or surveyors, to mark, run out, settle, and fix the boundary line between Maryland on the one hand and Delaware and Pennsylvania on the other. Mason and Dixon landed in Philadelphia on the 15th of November following, and began their work at once. They adopted the peninsular lines, and the radius and tangent point of the circular of their predecessors. They next ascertained the north-eastern coast of Maryland, and proceeded to run the dividing parallel of latitude. They pursued this parallel a distance of 23 miles, 18 chains, and 21 links from the place of the beginning at the north-east corner of Maryland to the bottom of a valley on Dunkard creek, where an Indian war-path crossed their route, and here, on the 19th of November, 1767-ninetytwo years ago-their Indian escort told them it was the will of the Sioux nation that the surveys should cease, and they terminated accordingly, leaving 36 miles, 6 chains, and 50 links as the exact distance remaining to be run west to the south-west angle of Pennsylvania, not far from the Broad Tree tunnel on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad. Dixon died at Durham, England, 1777; Mason died in Pennsylvania, 1787.

REASONING OF A NEWFOUNDLAND DOG.-Extraordinary as the following anecdote may appear to some persons, it is strictly true, and shows the sense, and I am strongly inclined to add reason, of the Newfoundland dog:

A friend of mine, while shooting wild fowl with his brother, was attended by a sagacious dog of this breed. In getting near some reeds by the side of a river they threw down their hats and crept to the edge of the water, where they fired at some birds. They soon after sent the dog to bring their hats, one of which was smaller than the other. After several attempts to bring them both together in his mouth, the dog at last placed the smaller hat in the larger one, pressed it down with his foot, and thus was able to bring them both at the same time.-Jesse's Anecdotes of Dogs.

RADICALS IN EUROPEAN LANGUAGES.-Vans Kennedy states that there are 900 Sanskrit words in the Greek, Latin, and Teutonic languages, 265 in Persian, 83 in Zend, and 251 in English. Of these 900 roots he allots 339 to Greek, 319 to Latin, and 162 to the German-leaving 80 for the remaining Teutonic languages. He says there are 208 Sanskrit roots in Greek not found in Latin, and 188 in Latin not to be met with in Greek, and many roots in Latin not in the Teutonic languages, and that 43 are found in German and not in English, and 138 in English and not in German. Perhaps, however, the Sanskrit roots in the English would amount to between 300

and 400, which, moreover, may be discovered in composition of several thousand words-4 Sanskrit root-verbs alone being found in composition of 500 or 600 English words. Indeed, to such an extent is this the case that we can hardly utter a sentence which does not contain two or three Sanskrit roots; so that most of us might be likened to the Bourgeois gentilhomme who had been speaking prose all his life without knowing it. These Sanskrit roots have come into our language in various ways. We have some directly, some indirectly through both the Latin and Greek, some through only one of those languages, others again through the Persian, the Teutonic languages, and the various Celtic dialects. The Slavonic languages contain a large number of Sanskrit roots, the Hebrew and Arabic very few. The Latin may be reduced to about 800 or 900 words, from which the whole body of the language has been built up. More than half of these words may be traced to the Greek, and the remainder-after deducting those formed by onomatopoeia, and a few from the Arabic, Persian, Coptic, and the Celtic and Teutonic languages-chiefly to the Sanskrit, Phoenician, and Hebrew.-English Notes and Queries.

THE TERMINATION "TH."-Derived nouns often end in th, as, for example, warmth, depth, birth, and month, from warm, deep, bear, and moon. In some cases, as broth, froth, worth, the source is not obvious. Of course th may sometimes be radical, but like t, as in frost, lost-freeze, lose-it is, in a multitude of cases, a mere servile or grammatical suffix. The same letters, th or t, are constantly used in the Hebrew and other Shemitic languages as well as elsewhere, with or without a vowel termination, as the case may be. I wish to know what account is given of this curious law, as I may term it, or to be favored with any references to works which will furnish me with the information.-English Notes and Queries.

DIFFER. In a late Repository the question is asked, "What is the proper preposition to be used after the word differ; should it be from or with?" I should say it depends on the intention of the one who "differs." If he means that he will quarrel with the one with whom he does not agree, of course with is the word; but if a simple dissent is intended, then certainly from should be used. This is the "rule by which we can determine the word to be used in given cases." A. F. B.

BEGINNING OF THE DAY.-A correspondent recently asks, "In what longitude on the earth does any day first commence?" We generally act, think, and speak on the hypothesis that the day first shines upon the Celestial Empire, and no doubt the "celestials" imagine it goes out not far from their western border, while we are apt to think Phoebus cools his glowing wheels in our own western waters. Indeed, the Pacific seems quite a happy arrangement for