Spain and Saxony. Mohair is produced by a species of goat in Angora. Besides the different species of leather that are made from the skins of animals, there are, parchment, which is prepared from the skins of sheep, and vellum, which is made from those of young calves. The parings of leather, when boiled, form glue; fish-glue, or isinglass, is obtained by boiling certain parts of various fishes. The tusks of the elephant furnish us with ivory ; and whalebone is a substance found in the jaw of the whale, where it is a substitute for teeth. Silk is the production of a caterpillar called the silk-worm, which, when about to change its form, wraps itself up in a ball of fine thread, which, like the spider, it spins from its own bowels. The ball, when unrolled, is frequently six miles in length. The silk-worm was originally a native of the interior of Asia, but it is now abundantly produced in the south of Europe. TAYLOR'S Historical Miscellany.

SAVAGE LIFE AND CIVILIZED LIFE.

PERSONS in general attribute to statesmen and warriors a much greater share in the work of improving and civilizing the world than really belongs to them. What they have done is in reality little. The beginning of civilization is the discovery of some useful arts by which men acquire property, comforts, or luxuries. The necessity or desire of preserving them leads to laws and social institutions. The discovery of peculiar arts gives superiority to particular nations; and the love of power induces them to employ this superiority to conquer other nations, who learn their arts, and ultimately adopt their manners; so that, in reality, the origin, as well as the progress and improvement of civil society, is founded in mechanical and chemical inventions. No people have ever arrived at any degree of perfection in their institutions, who have not possessed in a high degree the useful and refined arts.

Look at the condition of man in the lowest state in which we are acquainted with him. Take the native of New Holland, advanced only a few steps above the brute creation, and that principally by the use of fire,-naked, defending himself against wild beasts, or killing them for food, by weapons made of wood hardened in the fire,living only in holes dug out of the earth, or in huts rudely constructed of a few branches of trees covered with grass, having no approach to the enjoyment of luxuries, or even comforts,—having a language scarcely articulate, relating only to the great objects of nature, or to his most pressing wants, and, living solitary or in single families,

The name of this man was Desclieux, and the story is to be found in Raynal's History of the East and West Indies.

unacquainted with religion, government, or laws. How different is man in his highest state of cultivation !—every part of his body covered with the products of different chemical and mechanical arts;-he creates out of the dust of the earth instruments of use and ornament,-he extracts metals from the rude ore, and gives to them a hundred different shapes for a thousand different purposes, he selects and improves the vegetable productions with which he covers the earth,—he tames and domesticates the wildest, the fleetest, and the strongest inhabitants of the wood, the mountain, and the air,--he makes the winds carry him on every part of the immense ocean, and compels the elements of air, water, and even fire, as it were to labour for him,-he concentrates in small space materials which act as the thunderbolt, and directs their energies so as to act at immense distances,-he blasts the rock, removes the mountain, carries water from the valley to the hill,—and he perpetuates thought in imperishable words, rendering immortal the exertions of genius, and presenting them as common property to the world. SIR HUMPHRY Davy.

THE PHILOSOPHER'S SCALES.

WHAT were they?—you ask: you shall presently see ;
These scales were not made to weigh sugar and tea ;
O no;-for such properties wondrous had they,
That qualities, feelings, and thoughts they could weigh,
Together with articles, small or immense,

From mountains or planets to atoms of sense;
Nought was there so bulky but there it could lay,
And nought so ethereal but there it would stay;
And nought so reluctant but in it must go :-
All which some examples more clearly will show.

The first thing he tried was the head of Foltaire,
Which retained all the wit that had ever been there;
As a weight he threw in a torn scrap of a leaf,
Containing the prayer of the penitent thief;
When the skull rose aloft with so sudden a spell,
As to bound like a ball on the roof of his cell.

Next time he put in Alexander the Great,

With a garment that Dorcas had made for a weight;

And though clad in armour from sandals to crown,
The hero rose up, and the garment went down.

A long row of alms-houses, amply endowed
By a well-esteemed Pharisee, busy and proud,
Now loaded one scale, while the other was prest
By those mites the poor widow dropped into the chest ;
Up flew the endowment, not weighing an ounce,

And down, down, the farthing's worth came with a bounce.

By further experiments (no matter how)

He found that ten chariots weighed less than one plough.
A sword, with gilt trappings, rose up in the scale,
Though balanced by only a tenpenny nail.

A lord and a lady went up at full sail,

When a bee chanced to light on the opposite scale.
Ten doctors, ten lawyers, two courtiers, one earl,—
Ten counsellors' wigs full of powder and curl,—
All heaped in one balance, and swinging from thence,
Weighed less than some atoms of candour and sense ;-
A first-water diamond, with brilliants begirt,
Than one good potato just washed from the dirt ;—
Yet not mountains of silver and gold would suffice,
One pearl to outweigh-'twas "the pearl of great price!"
At last the whole world was bowled in at the grate,
With the soul of a beggar to serve for a weight ;—
When the former sprung up with so strong a rebuff,
That it made a vast rent, and escaped at the roof-
While the scale with the soul in't so mightily fell,
That it jerked the philosopher out of his cell.

JANE TAYLOR.

MOUNTAINS, LAKES, AND RIVERS.

MOUNTAINS, lakes, and rivers, are closely connected in the purposes they serve in the economy of nature; and are each, but especially the last, of great importance to man. The mountain is the father of streams, and the lake is the regulator of their discharge. The lofty summit of the mountain attracts and breaks the clouds, which would otherwise pass over without falling to fertilize the earth. These are collected in snow, and laid up in a store against the bleak drought of spring; and as the water, into which the melting snow is gradually converted during the thaw,

penetrates deep into the fissures of the rock, or into the porous strata of loose materials, the fountains continue to pour out their cooling stores during the summer. The lake, as has been mentioned, prevents the waste of water which would otherwise take place in mountain-rivers, as well as the ravage and ruin by which that waste would be attended.

But though mountains and lakes have thus their beauty and their value, they cannot, in either respect, be compared to the river. They are fixed in their places, but the river is continually in motion-the emblem of lifethe active servant of man-and one of the greatest means of intercourse, and, consequently, of civilization. The spots where man first put forth his powers as a rational being were on the banks of rivers; and if no Euphrates had rolled its waters to the Indian Ocean, and no Nile its flood to the Mediterranean, the learning of the Chaldeans and the wisdom of the Egyptians would never have shone forth; and the western world, which is indebted to them for the rudiments of science and the spirit which leads to the cultivation of science, might have still been in a state of ignorance and barbarity no way superior to that of the nations of Australia, where the want of rivers separates the people into little hordes, and prevents that general intercourse which is essential to even a very moderate degree of civilization.

Nor ought we to omit to mention that the river is a minister of health and purity. It carries off the superabundant moisture, which, if left to stagnate on the surface of the ground, would be injurious both to plants and animals. It carries off to the sea those saline products which result from animal and vegetable decomposition, and which soon convert into deserts those places where there are no streams. British Naturalist.

THE UNIVERSE.

To us, who dwell on its surface, the earth is by far the most extensive orb that our eyes can any where behold; but, to a spectator placed on one of the planets, it looks no larger than a spot. To beings who still dwell at