Category: Evening Book

The following description is from a work entitled, ” Adventures on the Columbia River, &c. By Ross Cox.” It furnishes a forcible example of the effects of intoxication. The author states that there are three descriptions of men in the service of the Fur Company. First come the white Canadians ; and, secondly, the half-breeds, […]

In no country is there a creature so destructive of property as the rat is in Jamaica; their ravages are inconceivable. One year with another, it is supposed that they destroy at least about a twentieth part of the sugar-canes throughout the island, amounting to little short of L.200,000 currency per annum. The sugar-cane is […]

The character and habits of that singular annual, the Sloth, according to Charles Waterton, the enthusiastic traveller in the wilds of’ South America, have been strangely misrepresented by naturalists. ” This singular animal (says he) is destined by nature to be produced, to live, and to die, in the trees. Ile is a scarce and […]

The Arabs who inhabit the neighborhood of the great cemeteries of Upper Egypt have a strange way of cooking their victuals. Whenever fuel is wanting, they descend into their tombs, and, dis-lodging a mummy, and throwing it on their shoulders, return to their tent. Then taking a hatchet, and seizing the mummy by one leg, […]

The hen has scarcely sat on the egg twelve hours, when we begin already to discover in it some lineaments of the head and body of the chicken that is to be born. The heart appears to beat at the end of the day; at the end of forty-eight hours, two vesicles of blood can […]

THE Cork Oak is not so large a tree as the common oak. There are several varieties: a broad leaved and a narrow leaved, which are evergreens; besides other varieties which shed their leaves. The broad leaved evergreen is, however, the most common, and it is the one from which the cork of commerce is […]

It has been very well said by a celebrated author, that ” great cities are the graves of the human species.” Another author has observed that if the havoc committed upon the human race by the un-wholesome atmosphere and pernicious habits of great and populous places were equally made in the country, the human kind […]

THOUGH the Teak Tree is a tree of quite at different family from the oak, and a native of India, it is used in ship-building like the oak, and has some resemblance to it in its timber. It is a tree of uncommon size, with leaves twenty inches long, and sixteen broad, and bears a […]

A cannon ball, when heated, cannot be made to enter an opening, through which, when cold, it passes readily. A glass stopper sticking fast in the neck of a bottle, may be released by surrounding the neck with a cloth taken out of warm water, or by immersing the bottle in the water up to […]

Most of our readers will recollect the celebrated Indian Jugglers, who a few years ago visited this country, and performed some very extraordinary feats at public exhibitions. One of them had acquired the astonishing and dangerous power of passing a naked metal blade into his stomach, or, as he himself termed it, of ” swallowing […]