which was but a short distance, Sirrah left his lair; and laying his ear close to the bottom of the door to hear more distinctly, he growled a low note in accompaniment, till the sound expired; and then rose, shook his lugs, and returned to his hay nook.-Sacred music affected him most; but in either that or any slow tune, when the tones dwelt upon the key-note, they put him quite beside himself; his eyes had the gleam of madness in them; and he sometimes quitted singing and literally fell to barking. All his race have the same qualities of voice and ear, in a less or greater degree. The most painful part of Sirrah's history yet remains; but, in memory of himself, it must be set down. He grew old, and unable to do my work by himself. I had a son of his coming up that promised well, and was a greater favourite with me than ever the other was. The times were hard and the keeping of them both was a tax upon my master which I did not like to impose, although he made no remonstrances. I was obliged to part with one of them; so I sold old Sirrah to a neighbouring shepherd for three guineas. He was accustomed while I was smearing, or doing any work about the farm, to go with any of the family when I ordered him, and run at their bidding the same as at my own; but then, when he came home at night a word of approbation from me was recompence sufficient, and he was ready next day to go with whomsoever I commanded him. Of course, when I sold him to this lad, he went away when I ordered him, without any reluctance, and wrought for him all that day and the next, as well as ever he did in his life. But when he found that he was abandoned by me, and doomed to be the slave of a stranger, for whom he did not care, he would never again do another feasible turn for him. The lad said he run in among the sheep like a whelp, and seemed intent on doing him all the mischief he could. The consequence was, that he was obliged to part with him in a short time; but he had more honour than I had, for he took him to his father, and desired him to foster Sirrah, and be kind to him as long as he lived, for the sake of what he had been; and this injunction the old man faithfully performed. I have Sirrah's race to this day; and though none of them have ever equalled him as a sheep dog, yet they have far excelled him in all the estimable qualities of sociality and hu The history of his son, the renowned Hector, shall form the subject of another letter, when I have leisure. JAMES HOGG, mour. REMARKABLE TENUITY OF THE SPIDER'S THREAD, &c. Of all the beautiful discoveries with which we have become acquainted, through the progress of the physical sciences, there are none more striking than those of the microscope, or which may be studied with greater ease. The application of a powerful lens to any of those minute objects which we have it daily in our power to examine, exhibits a scene of wonder, of which those who have never witnessed it cannot form an adequate idea. In the introduction to Entomology by Kirkwood and Spence, there is a description of the process by which the spider weaves its web. After describing the four spinners, as they are termed, from which the visible threads proceed, the writer makes the following curious observations: "These are the machinery through which, by a process more singular than that of rope spinning, the thread is drawn. Each spinner is pierced, like the plate of a wire drawer, with a multitude of holes, so numerous and exquisitely fine, that a space often not bigger than a pin's point, includes above a thousand. Through each of these holes proceeds a thread of an inconceivable tenuity, which, immediately after issuing from the orifice, unites with all the other threads, from the same spinner, into one. Hence from each spinner pro. ceeds a compound thread; and these four threads, at the distance of about one tenth of an inch from the apex of the spinner, again unite, and form the thread we are accustomed to see, which the spider uses in forming its web. Thus, a spider's web, even spun by the smallest species, and when so fine that it is almost imperceptible to our senses, is not, as we suppose, a single line, but a rope, composed of at least four thousand strands. But to feel all the wonders of this fact, we must follow Leeuwenhoeck in one of his calculations on the subject. This renowned microscopic observer, found, by an accurate estimation, that the threads of the minutest spiders, some of which are not larger than a grain of sand, are so fine, that four millions of them would not exceed, in thickness, one of the hairs of his beard. Now we know that each of these threads is composed of above four thousand still finer. It follows, therefore, that above sixteen thousand million of the finest threads which issue from such spiders, are not, altogether, thicker than a human hair." It had long been a question among philosophers, whether it was possible to render the labours of the spider subservient to the benefit of mankind. In the earlier part of last century, Bon of Languedoc fabricated a pair of stockings and a pair of gloves from the threads of spiders. They were nearly as strong as silk, and of a beautiful gray colour. The preda ceous habits of these animals, however, would seem to oppose an effectual barrier to their being bred up in sufficient numbers to render such a manufactory at all productive. The fol. lowing arguments, against the probability of any permanent or real advantage resulting from this attempt, were published by Reaumur, whom the Royal Academy had deputed to inquire into the matter. The natural fierceness of spiders renders them unfit to be bred and kept together. Four or five thousand being distributed in cells, fifty in some, one or two hundred in others, the big ones soon killed and eat the smaller ones, so that in a short time there were scarcely above one or two left in each cell; and to this inclination of devouring their own species is attributed the scarcity of spiders, when compared with the vast number of eggs they lay. Reaumur also affirms that the web of the spider is inferior in strength and lustre to that of the silk-worm, and produces less of the material fit for use, The thread of the spider's web can only bear a weight of two grains without breaking; and the bag sustains the weight of thirty-six grains; the thread of a silk-worm will bear two drams and a half, so that five threads of the spider are neces sary to form a cord equal to that of a silk-worm; and as it would be impossible to apply these so closely together as to avoid leaving any empty spaces, from which the light would not be reflected, the lustre would consequently be considerably less; this was noticed at the time the stockings were presented to the Society by M. de la Hire. It was farther observed, that spiders afford less silk than silk-worms, the largest bags of the latter weighing four grains, the smaller three grains, so that 2304 worms produced a pound of silk. The bags of a spider, weigh about one grain; when cleared of the dust and filth they lose about two thirds of that weight. The work of twelve spiders, therefore, only equals that of one silk-worm; and a pound of silk will require, at least, 27,648 spiders. But as the bags are solely the work of the females, who spin them to deposit their eggs in, there must be kept 55,296 spiders to yield one pound of silk; and this will apply to the good ones only, the spiders in gardens barely yielding a twelfth part of the silk of the domestic kinds. Two hundred and eighty of them would not produce more than one silk-worm ; and 663,555 such spiders would scarcely yield a pound of silk. It would appear that the spider, though usually held in abhorrence, is by no means an object of disgust to some people. The following trait, in the character of one of the first philosophers of his age, may not be generally known. In speaking of the common spider (aranea domestica,) Latreille observes, "J'ai vu le celebre astronome Lalande avaler de suite quatre gros individus de cette espece." COURTSHIP IN BORNEO. In Borneo, says Dr. Leyden, hobody can be permitted to marry till he can present a human head of some other tribe to his proposed bride, in which case she is not permitted to refuse him. It is not, however, necessary that this should be obtained entirely upon his own personal powers. When a person is determined to go a head hunting, as it is very often a very dangerous service, he consults with his friends. and acquaintances, who frequently accompany him, or send their slaves along with him. The head hunter then proceeds with his party in the most cautious manner, to the vicinity of the villages of another tribe, and lies in ambush till they surprise some heedless unsuspecting wretch, who is instantly decapitated. Sometimes too, they surprise a solitary fisherman in a river, or on the shore, who undergoes the same fate. When the hunter returns, the whole village is filled with joy, and old and young, men and women, hurry out to meet him, and conduct him, with the sound of brazen cymbals, dancing in long lines to the house of the female he admires, whose family likewise come out to meet him with dances, and provide him a seat, and give him meat and drink. He still holds the bloody head in his hand, and puts part of the food into its mouth, after which, the females of the family receive the head from him, which they hang up to the ceiling over the door. Rr GLEANINGS. ANECDOTES OF GRAY THE POET. Gray, as is well known, preserved the dignity of genius to the full he was in mixed companies reserved and fastidious, difficult in the choice of his friends, and though communicative and affectionate to the select few, yet even to them, with the exception perhaps of Dr. Hurd and Mr. Mason, he appears to have maintained a part sufficiently lofty. On some persons and some subjects, his sagacity appears to have been next to oracular. The great object of his detestation was Voltaire he said, almost prophetically, (considering the time when he said it) that no one could even conjecture the extent of the public mischief (that was his term) which Voltaire would occasion. His aversion was constant and unmitigated. He once made it a particular request to a friend of his, who was going to the Continent, that he would not pay a visit to Voltaire; and when his friend replied, "What can a visit from a person like me, to him, signify?" he rejoined, with peculiar earnestness, and with a decision extremely like the tone of Johnson, "Sir, every tribute to such a man signifies.' Mr. Gray had a similar aversion to Mr. Hume. Among the elder and more dignified members of Cambridge University, out of the narrow circle (and very narrow that circle was) of his resident academical friends, he was not, if the truth must be spoken, regarded with great personal respect. The primness and precision of his deportment, the nice adjustment of every part of his dress when he came abroad, excited many a smile and produced many a criticism; and the following lines, in the first edition of the Minstrel, were changed, because they by chance accurately described Gray. Fret not thyself, thou man of modern song, Else, how mayst thou to Caesar's hall repair, Mr. Gray was a systematic as well as a severe student-he drew not from the fountain of literature only, but from the purest, the most copious and the most remote. His habits and his opinions were at the greatest possible distance from those of the being who, in the present general c.iffusion of knowledge, is styled "a well-informed man." Mr. Gray always considered that Encyclopædias and Universal Dictionaries, with which the world now abounds, afforded a very unfavourable symptom of the age in regard to literature. Dictionaries like these, he thought, only served to supply a fund for the vanity or for the affectation of general knowledge, or for the demands of company and conversation. |