Category: Evening Book

A curious catalogue might be made of the shifts to which ingenious students in different departments of art have resorted, when, like Davy, they have wanted the proper instruments for carrying on their inquiries or experiments. His is not the first case in which the stores of an apothecary’s shop are recorded to have fed […]

There is a very general opinion, which has been adopted even by some eminent naturalists, that several species of serpents possess the, power of fascinating birds and small quadrupeds, by fixing their eyes upon the animal, so that the poor victim is unable to escape from his formidable enemy. Dr. Barton, of Philadelphia, published, in […]

Duelling in England was carried to its greatest possible excess in the reigns of James I. and of the two Charleses. In the reign of the latter Charles, the seconds always fought as well as their principals; and as they were chosen for their courage and adroitness, their combats were generally the most fatal. Lord […]

You may recollect the mention, in one of out-. conversations, of a young man who wasted in two or three years a large patrimony, in profligate revels with a number of worthless associates calling them-selves his friends, till his means were exhausted, when they of course treated him with neglect or contempt. Reduced to absolute […]

It is told of a religious recluse, who, in the early ages of Christianity, betook himself to a cave in Upper Egypt, which, in the times of the Pharaohs, had been a depository for mummies, that he prayed there, morning, noon, and night, eating only of the dates which some neighboring trees afforded, and drinking […]

The horseshoe was, of old, held to be of especial service as a security against the attacks of evil spirits. This virtue may have been assigned, perhaps, by the rule of contraries, from its being a thing incompatible with the cloven foot of the Evil One; or from the rude resemblance which the horseshoe bears […]

The strength and ferocity of the Grisly Bear are so great that the Indian hunters use much precaution in hunting them. They are reported to attain a weight exceeding eight hundred pounds, and Lewis and Clark mention one that measured nine feet from the nose to the tail and say that they had seen a […]

A late number of the Foreign Quarterly Review contains a notice of some scientific inquiries, made by a French gentleman, M. Arago, into the influence of the moon. The first question, which M. Arago undertakes to examine, is, whether the moon exercises any influence on the rain; and the result of his investigations is, that, […]

The following event, which occurred during the remarkably hard winter of 1708-9, is recorded on the most unquestionable authority. A poor woman in Somersetshire, England, having been to a neigh-boring village to sell her yarn, in her return home fell so very ill that she was forced to take refuge in a small house by […]

The Bushmen appear to be the remains of Hottentot hordes, originally subsisting, like all the aboriginal tribes of Southern Africa, chiefly by rearing cattle; but who have been driven, chiefly by the gradual encroachments of the European colonists, to seek for refuge among the inaccessible rocks and sterile deserts of the interior. Most of the […]