VESUVIUS, POMPEII, AND HERCULANEUM. sizes and shape roll and slip beneath your feet, and sometimes you feel in danger of going topsy-turvy to the bottom. You spend an hour and a half in climbing, slipping back, and occasionally sitting upon a block of lava, looking up at the mountain top, smoking, and every few minutes discharging the red hot lava in the air with a tremendous explosion: or contrasting the desolation immediately around with the verdure and beauty of the hills and vales below. When you reach what you imagined the top of the mountain, you find the crater rises still higher, one hundred or one hundred and fifty feet, the sides composed of ashes into which you sink half way to your knees. We were now in such close proximity that the sight was grand and terrific beyond description. The explosions came with greater frequency and with terrible violence, sending large quantities of red hot lava some two hundred feet into the air. It turned black before commencing its descent, and was borne by the wind in our direction, falling not far from where we stood. Sometimes a piece as large as one's head would fall directly where we were standing. But it was easy to see where it would strike, and step aside. Still the ladies were terrified, the children cried, and one started to run down the mountain. It required a little tact to re-marshal our forces and direct their faces to the goal,—the top of the crater. It was evident the lava all came from the side of the crater nearest us, and that the wind was from the east, bringing it towards us,-that, if we went half way round the foot of the crater, we might, without exposure, ascend from the opposite side and stand upon the topmost edge. The guides pronounced it impossible, and other travellers said it was too hazardous. But we had come to Naples expressly to see Vesuvius, and from Naples to the top of the mountain to accomplish our purpose, and were not to be diverted when so near the attainment of an object so dear to us. The ascent was made without much difficulty, and we found the old crater resembled an immense bowl perhaps two or three hundred yards across its top. We stood upon the topmost edge. From our feet outward it was composed of ashes descending at an angle of about forty degrees. On the inside it was nearly perpendicular, covered with a sulphurous powder and smoking slightly and burning in places around the edges; on the north-east this rim had been torn away, and, walking round to that part, we descended to the centre of the old crater, which was now extinct. Looking THE OYSTER. down still farther than it was possible for us to descend, the mouth seemed choked up and emitted no smoke. But upon the western edge of this rim there were five new craters, one of which was very active. We watched its boiling, seething surface. Sometimes it overflowed, and large pieces would roll down into the old orater, gathering up the cinders as it went. Then, after a few minutes' intermission, there were explosions, and the whole surface of the melted matter disturbed and much of it sent into the air, a considerable part falling back into the mouth of the crater to be melted and boiled and shot out again. "The descent is easy." You have but to get a good start, and down you go, over another path from that which you ascended with so much difficulty. You sink into the ashes up to your knees, and sliding, stepping, hopping and jumping, in five or ten minutes you reach the foot of the cone. On looking back we were surprised to see there had been an eruption, and the melted lava was flowing down the mountain over the path we went up a few hours before. As we rode back to Naples we watched it creeping down the mountain side. The eruption had been discovered at Naples, and the road was full of parties on foot and in carriages going to see it. In the evening the sight was very grand. The melted lava was pouring from the mountain through four craters and running down the mountain like four streams of fire. During the next day a new crater broke out perhaps a hundred feet lower down than the four or five described. The melted matter thus finding vent came rushing down the mountain with great violence, surrounding_and enveloping many of the spectators. Over how many these red hot floods flowed it is impossible to say. Some say at least one hundred lost their lives, while thousands in the villages below were forced to fly from their homes with scarcely a moment's warning. THE OYSTER. ALL over England, oysters are not generally eaten till September. With people living in the country, as well as everywhere in the United States, the old couplet settles the gastronomic law: "In months which have no R From oysters keep afar." But, for some unexplained reason, the Londoner, disregarding THE OYSTER. orthographical authority, chooses to commence oyster-eating in August. He is in error, however. Oysters spawn in May and June on both sides of the Atlantic, and during that important period their organization is changed for the good of their progeny, and their flesh becomes unwholesome. For two months after spawning time the flesh is unpalatable, so that the old notion is founded on correct observation. The oyster reproduces when it is three years old. The number of its young is supposed to vary from 500,000 to 3,000,000 each oyster. These, at first mere mist, when two weeks old attain the size of mustard seed, and when three months old, have grown as large as peas. They continue growing for more than two years. In oyster culture, to arrest the drifting spat is the chief object, hence walls of stone and hurdles of brush, lines of posts, and bundles of faggots, are resorted to. Of the comparative flavour of European and American oysters there will always probably be a difference of opinion. Americans charge the former with being insipid, coppery, and so small that it takes six to a mouthful; while Englishmen retort, that, to make away with a large American oyster is like swallowing a baby. That the English "native," bred in the quiet waters and rich feeding grounds of the Thames estuary, where the shells become thin, translucent, and within of pearly irridescence, is, despite what is termed a coppery taste, the very prince of bivalves, no one who has once got rid of his provincial palate will deny. To be convinced of what oyster culture is capable of accomplishing, one needs but to visit the grand old town of Rochelle and see the oyster-farms which are the pride of its harbour. A small boat, deftly paddled by skilled hands, takes the visitor out to large masses of rock. Leaning over the taffrail and scanning the depths lighted up by a southern sun, a sight, not easily described and never forgotten, meets the eye. There are hundreds of acres, along rocksteps and crooked masonry, on hurdles and tiles, over fascines and faggots, around huge beams and knot-covered piles, divided into parks and claires, covered with myriads of oysters of every shape and size, and furnishing employment to more than 6,000 people. Quaint Rob. Burns,-not the poet,-once said he envied two beings only in the world, a wild horse roaming over the pampas, and an oyster on a rock in the ocean; "the one having no wish it could not gratify, the other no fear it could not dispel." VENTRILOQUISM. VENTRILOQUISM. THE uncertainty with regard to the direction of sound is the foundation of the art of ventriloquism. If we place ten men in a row at such a distance from us that they are included in the angle within which we cannot judge of the direction of sound, and if on a calm day each one of them speak in succession, we shall not be able, with closed eyes, to determine from which of the ten men any of the sounds proceed, and we shall be incapable of perceiving that that there is any difference in the direction of the sounds emitted by the two outermost. If a man and child are placed in the same angle, and if the man speaks with the accent of the child, without any corresponding motion in his mouth and face, we shall necessarily believe that his voice comes from the child,-nay, if the child is so distant from the man that the voice actually appears to us to come from the man, we continue to believe that the child is the speaker; and this conviction would acquire additional strength if the child favoured the deception by accommodating its features and gestures to the words spoken by the man.. The ventriloquist utters the sound with the effect it would have upon the hearer's ear if it had really traversed the distance he designs it to represent, reducing its loudness, softening somewhat its quality or tone, and if it is in words, obscuring a little the consonant sounds while retaining unaltered the pitch and duration. In doing this he modifies the tones of his voice by varying the position of the tongue and soft palate, dilating or contracting the mouth or pharynx, and either dividing the buccal and pharyngeal cavities into several compartments or throwing them into one. Mr. Dugald Stewart, in some remarks upon the subject of ventriloquism, has stated several cases in which deceptions were very perfect. He mentions having seen a person who, by counterfeiting the gesticulations of a performer on a violin, while he imitated the music with his voice, riveted the eyes of his audience upon the instrument, though every sound they heard proceeded from his own mouth. He tells also of another person who imitated the whistling of the wind through a narrow chink, and who often practiced the deception in the corner of the coffee-house. He declared he seldom failed to see someone rise to examine the tightness of the windows, while others, more intent on their newspapers, contented themselves with putting on their hats and buttoning their coats. Mr. Stewart likewise mentions an exhibition formerly com POETRY.-ANECDOTES AND SELECTIONS. mon in Europe, where a performer on the stage displayed the dumb show of singing with his lips and eyes and gestures, while another person, unseen, supplied the music with his voice. The deception in this case is found to be so complete, as to impose upon the nicest ear and quickest eye; but in the progress of the entertainment he became distinctly sensible of the imposition, and sometimes wondered that he should have misled him for a moment. Poetry. MY MOTHER KNELT IN PRAYER. ONCE, in my boyhood's gladsome day, I wandered to a lonely room, Where mother knelt in prayer. Her hands were clasped in fervency, Yet awe-struck, solemnly I felt I stood on holy ground. My mother, all entranced in prayer, And reverently I turned away In silence from the spot. An orphaned wanderer, far from home, But God has kept me, and I feel He heard her when she prayed. -Thomas MacKellar. Anecdotes and Selections. SONGS IN THE NIGHT. GOD our Maker "giveth songs in the night." So said Elihu to Job. The apostle Paul and his companion Silas had scarcely begun their ministry in Europe, when they were seized by order of the magistrate of Philippi, and cast into prison. Racked with pain, as they must have been, sleepless and weary, they were heard at midnight, from the depth of their prison-house, praying and singing praises unto God. In all this Paul and Silas were not singular. God gives songs in the night to His faithful people. When Samuel Rutherford was sentenced to imprisonment in the city of Aberdeen, "For righteousness' sake," he wrote to a friend, "the Lord |