Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

There is an unaccountable antipathy to clever women. Almost all men profess to be afraid of blue stockings that is, of women who have cultivated their minds ; and hold up as a maxim, that there is no safety in matrimony, or even in the ordinary intercourse of society, except with females of plain understandings. […]

Dutrone calls sugar the most perfect alimentary substance in nature, and the testimony of many physicians establishes the fact. Dr. Rush, of Philadelphia, says, in common with all who have analyzed it, that sugar affords the greatest quantity of mat-ter of any subject in nature.” Used alone, it has fattened horses and cattle in St. […]

Travellers in Europe, even those who may have, passed over the Pyrenees or Alps, can have but a faint idea of the labor and danger of crossing the Andes, that immense mountain-chain by which the continent of South America is intersected, from its southern to its most northern extremity, dividing Peru and Chile, on the […]

The heart must indeed be cold that would not glow among scenes like these. Rightly did the French call this stream La Belle Rivière, (the beautiful river). The sprightly Canadian, plying his oar in cadence with the wild notes of the boat-song, could not fail to find his heart enlivened by the beautiful symmetry of […]

The island of St. Helena stands entirely detached from any group, and is about 1200 miles from the nearest land, on the eastern coast of Southern Africa. An imperceptible point in the Atlantic Ocean, this rock is nine leagues in its greatest circumference. Steep shores form for it a natural and nearly impregnable rampart. It […]

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 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 […]

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 […]

Lieutenant John Shipp, in the account of his amusing military adventures, describes several rencounters he had with baboons near the Cape of Good Hope. On these hills (says he,) whole regiments of baboons assemble, for which this station is particularly famous. They stand six feet high, and in features and manners approach nearer to the […]

It is stated in the Warsaw Gazette, that a shepherd named Demetrius Grabowsky, died a short time since at Potorski, on the frontiers of Lithuania, at the great age of 169 years. Jenkins, the oldest man on record in England, lived exactly as long as the Polish shepherd. Old Parr reached 152 years. It is […]