On the 29th of February, 1744, died at his lodging at the Bedford Coffee-house, Covent Garden, Dr. John Theophilus Desaguliers, an eminent natural philosopher. He was the son of a French Protestant clergyman, and educated at Christ's College, Cambridge. He took orders, and settled in London, though he held the donative of Whitchurch, in Middlesex, which he was presented with by the duke of Chandos. He was the first person who lectured on experimental philosophy in the metropolis, and his lectures were published in two volumes, quarto, besides other philosophical works, and a thanksgiving sermon, preached before his sovereign. The Royal Society appointed him a salary, to enable him to exhibit before them a variety of new experiments, and several of his papers are preserved in their transactions. He was a man of real ability, and, when a housekeeper, usually had pupils at home with him. His income was considerable, and he kept an equipage. His coachman, Erasmus King, from the force of example, became a kind of rival to the Doctor; for he, also, undertook to read lectures, and exhibit experi ments in natural philosophy. His "Lyceum ". was at Lambeth Marsh; and his terms of admission were proportioned to the humble situation he had filled.

SUPERSTITIONS, 1831.

[For the Year Book.] From personal observations I have collected a few of the popular superstitions

of the present day, at which the rising generation may smile when the credulous are dead and only remembered fo their fond belief.

Fortune-telling has become rather unfashionable since the invention of the tread-mill, but still many a "cunning man," and many a "cunning woman," pretends to unfold future events to visitors of every degree, from the servant girl, who desires to know if John will be faithful, to the rich heiress, and the wealthy matron.

There are still a few respectable tradesmen and merchants who will not transact business, or be bled, or take physic, on a Friday, because it is an unlucky day. There are other people who, for the same reason, will not be married on a Friday; others, again, who consider every child born on that day doomed to misfortune. It is a common saying, and popular belief, that,

"Fridaynights' dreams on the Saturday told Are sure to come true be it never so old."

Many believe that the howlings of a dog foretel death, and that dogs can see death enter the houses of people who are about to die.

Among common sayings at present are these that pigs can see the wind-hairy people are born to be rich-and people born at night never see spirits.

Again, if a cat sneezes or coughs, every person in the house will have colds. In the morning, if, without knowing or intending it, you put on your stockings the wrong side outwards, you will have good luck all day.

To give to, or receive from, a friend a knife or a pair of scissars cuts friendship.

While talking thoughtlessly with a good woman, I carelessly turned a chair round two or three times; she was offended, and said it was a sign we should quarrel: and so it proved, for she never spoke friendly to me afterwards.

When your cheek burns, it is a sign some one is talking about you. When your ears tingle lies are being told about you. When your nose itches, you will be vexed. When your right eye itches, it is a sign of good luck; or your left eye, of bad luck; but

"Left or right

Brings good at night."

These are every day sayings, and things of every day belief.

It is further believed that children will not thrive if they are not christened ; and, if they do not cry during the ceremony, that they will not live long.

It is unlucky to pare your finger nails on a Sunday.

To prevent ill luck from meeting a squint-eyed person, you must spit three times; and when you pass under a ladder you must spit through it, or three times afterwards.

If a married woman loses her wedding ring, it is a token that she will lose her husband's affections; her breaking of it, forebodes death.

A spark in the candle, is a sign of a letter coming.

Bubbles upon tea, denote kisses. Birds' eggs hung up in a house, are unlucky.

Upon new year's day if you have not something new on, you will not get much all the year.

To cure your corns, you must steal a very small bit of beef, bury it in the ground, and as that rots the corns will go away, even though you are put upon the tread mill for the theft.

There are dames in the country who, to cure the hooping cough, pass the afflicted child three time before breakfast under a blackberry bush, both ends of which grow into the ground. Other country women travel the road to meet a man on a piebald horse, and ask him what will cure the hooping cough, and whatever he recommends is adopted as an infallible remedy. There was one remarkable cure of this kind. A young mother made an enquiry of a mounted as directed; he told her to put her finger, to the knuckle joint, down the child's throat, and hold it there twenty minutes by the church clock. She went home, and did so, and it never coughed again.

man

Some persons carry in their pockets a piece of coffin, to keep away the cramp. Stockings are hung crosswise at the foot of the bed, with a pin stuck in them, to keep off the nightmare.

To prevent dreaming about a dead body, you must touch it.

To always have money in your pocket, put into it small spiders, called money spinners: or keep in your purse a bent coin, or a coin with a hole in it; at every new moon take it out and spit upon it, return it to your pocket, and wish yourself good luck.

In Berkshire, at the first appearance of a new moon, maidens go into the fields, and, while they look at it, say,

New moon, new moon, I hail thee!
By all the virtue in thy body,
Grant this night that I may see
He who my true love is to be.

They then return home, firmly believing that before morning their future husbands will appear to them in their dreams.

The left seat at the gateway of the entrance to the church-yard at Yarmouth is called the Devil's seat, and is supposed to render any one who sits upon it particularly liable to misfortunes ever afterwards.

Divination is not altogether obsolete. A few evenings ago a neighbour's daughter came to request of me the loan of a Bible. As I knew they had one of their own, I enquired why mine was wanted. She said that one of their lodgers, a disagreeable woman, had lost one of her husband's shirts, and, suspecting the thief to be in the house, was going to find it out by the Bible and key; and, for this purpose, neither a Bible nor a key belonging to any person living in the house would do. Find a thief by the Bible and key, thought I; I'll even go and be spectator of this ceremony. So I gave the child a Bible and went with her. I found the people of the house assembled together, and a young boy and girl to hold the apparatus; for it seems it can only be done properly by a bachelor and a maid. The key was bound into the Bible against the first chapter of Ruth and part of the seventeenth verse, "the Lord do so to me and more also," and strict silence and gravity were then enjoined, and the ceremony began. First, the boy and girl placed their left hands behind their backs, and the key balanced on the middle fingers of their right hands: then, the woman who had lost the above-mentioned article named a person, and said, "the Lord do so to me and more also, has he [or she] got my husband's shirt." Nearly all the names of the people in the house had been repeated, when, upon the name of an old crony of the loser being mentioned, the urchin who held the Bible suspended from the key gave his hand a slight motion -down went the Bible, and the scene of pro-ing and con-ing which ensued would beggar description. During the disturbance I thought it better to look on and

laugh, and retired to a corner of the room, expecting every instant to see them do battle. At the height of the disturbance the loser's husband came home, and, upon learning the cause of the disturbance, said he had removed the shirt himself, and put it into his chest. Indignation was now turned against the person who had advised the mode of divinng its discovery by the borrowed Bible and key; but she boldly defended it, and said it never failed before, nor would it have failed then, had not the man in the corner, meaning me, laughed; and, she added, with malicious solemnity, that the Bible would not be laughed at. I retreated from a gathering storm, and returned home, to note down the proceedings, and forward them to the Year Book. J- -s S-LLM-N.

January, 1831.

VARIA.

AN IRISH INVENTORY.

This 29th of February

I'll take let's see-to keep me merry,
An Invent'ry of what I'm worth,
In goods, and chattels, and so forth.

A bed, the best you ever saw,
With belly-full of hay and straw;
On which an Irish prince might sleep,
With blankets warm from off the sheep.
A table next, around whose coast

The full-charged glass has often sail'd, And sparkled to the sparkling toast,

Whilst love with ease the heart assail'd: A platter thin, a large round 0,

A pot as black as any crow,

In which we bake, as well as boil,

And melt the butter into oil,

And, if occasion, make a posset;
A spigot, but we've lost the fosset;

A spoon to dash through thick and thin;
And, best of all, a rolling-pin.
A good fat hog, a cow in calf;
In cash a guinea and a half;
A cellar stor'd with foaming beer,
And bacon all the livelong year;
A hearty welcome for a friend :
And thus my Invent'ry shall end.

CONCLUSIVE ANSWERS. Campistron, the French poet, the favorite and secretary of the duke de Vendome, was gay and volatile, and little fitted for all a secretary's duties. One day, the duke quaintly pointed him out to another nobleman, and observed "There sits my secretary, busy with his answers." Campistron was engaged in burning a quantity of letters, addressed to the duke,

Or I'm positive I should lose 'em!

My one sole comrade is now no more!

And I needs must mumble and mutter,
That he, who had lived in a kennel before,
At last should die in a gutter!

He could fight any beast from a cow to a cat,
And catch any bird for his feast :
But, ah! he was killed by a big brick-bat-
And a bat's nor a bird nor a beast!

He died of the blow!-'twas a sad hard blow
Both to me and the poor receiver;

I wish that instead 'twere a fever, I know ;-
For his bark might have cured a fever!

His spirit, escaped from its carnal rags,
Is a poodle all wan and pale ;

It howls an inaudible howl,-and it wags
The ghost of a shadowy tail!

Old Charon will tout for his penny in vain,
If my Bob but remembers his tricks;
For he, who so often sprang over my cane,
Will easily leap o'er the Styx!

If Cerberus snarls at the gentle dead,
He'll act but a dogged part;
The fellow may, p'rhaps, have a treble head,
But he'll have but a base bad heart!
Farewell my dear Bob, I will keep your skin,
And your tail with its noble tuft;

I have kept it through life, rather skinny ana thin,

Now I will have it properly stuff'd.

PROMETHEUS PERCIVAL PIPPS.

March is a rude and boisterous month, possessing many of the characteristics of winter, yet awakening sensations perhaps more delicious than the two following spring months; for it gives us the first announcement and taste of spring. What can equal the delight of our hearts at the very first glimpse of spring-the first springing of buds and green herbs. It is like a new life infused into our bosoms. A spirit of tenderness, a burst of freshness and luxury of feeling possesses us: and, let fifty springs have broken upon us, this joy, unlike many joys of time, is not an atom impaired. Are we not young? Are we not boys? Do we not break, by the power of awakened thoughts, into all the rapturous scenes of all our happier years? There is something in the freshness of the soil-in the mossy bank-the balmy air -the voices of birds-the early and delicious flowers, that we have seen and felt only in childhood and spring.

There are frequently mornings in March when a lover of nature may enjoy, in a stroll, sensations not to be exceeded, or perhaps equalled, by any thing which the full glory of summer can awaken: mornings which tempt us to cast the memory of winter, or the fear of its return, out of our thoughts. The air is mild and balmy, with now and then a cool gush, by no means unpleasant, but, on the contrary, contributing towards that cheering and peculiar feeling which we experience only in spring. The sky is clear; the sun flings abroad not only a gladdening splendor, but an almost summer glow. The world seems suddenly aroused to hope and enjoyment. The fields are assuming a vernal greenness-the buds are swelling in the hedges-the banks are displaying, amidst the brown remains of last year's vegetation, the luxuriant weeds of this. There are arums, ground ivy, chervil, the glaucus leaves, and burnished flowers of the pilewort,

The first gilt thing
That wears the trembling pearls of spring;

and many other fresh and early bursts of greenery. All unexpectedly, too, in some embowered lane, you are arrested by the delicious odor of violets, those sweetest of Flora's children, which have furnished so many pretty allusions to the poets, and which are not yet exhausted: they are like true friends, we do not know half their sweetness till they have felt the sunshine of our kindness: and again, they are like the pleasures of our childhood, the earliest and the most beautiful. Now, however, they are to be seen in all their glory, blue and white, modestly peering through their thick, clustering leaves. The lark is carolling in the blue fields of air; the blackbird and thrush are again shouting and replying to each other, from the tops of the highest trees. As you pass cottages, they have caught the happy infection: there are windows thrown open, and doors standing ajar. The inhabitants are in their gardens, some clearing away rubbish, some turning up the light and fresh-smelling soil amongst the tufts of snow-drops and rows of bright yellow crocuses, which every where abound; and the children, ten to one, are peeping into the first bird's-nest of the season-the

hedge-sparrow's, with its four sea-green eggs, snugly, but unwisely, built in the pile of old pea rods.

In the fields, laborers are plashing and trimming the hedges, and in all directions are teams at plough. You smell the wholesome, and, I may truly say, aromatic soil, as it is turned up to the sun, brown and rich, the whole country over. It is delightful, as you pass along hollow lanes, ling gears of the horses, and the clear or are hidden in copses, to hear the tinkvoices of the lads calling to them. It is not less pleasant to catch the busy caw of of the rookery, and the first meek cry of the young lambs. The hares are hopping about the fields, the excitement of the The bees are revelling in the yellow catseason overcoming their habitual timidity.

kins of the sallows.*

BEES.-The Rev. Mark Noble says, "Few persons have seen more of bees than the inhabitants of my rural residence; but, after great expense, incurred in endeavouring to forward their operations, perhaps the cottager's humble method is the best for profit."

Howitt's Book of the Seasons.