upper garment; and as it appears from early writers that the upper dress of a horseman, and, according to others, a coat of mail, was called "a Jack," it admits of the inference that a small flag containing the cross in question was termed a Jack," when used at sea; after the banner, which more properly speaking is confined to the field, fell into comparative disuse. The former of these conjectures appears, however, the more probable.-Sir Harris Nicolas; Naval and Military Mag. 1827.

ISLE-OF-MAN ARMS.

The arms of the Isle of Man are, gules, three legs conjoined in the fess-point, &c., or. The symbol of three legs conjoined no doubt denotes the triangular shapes of the Isle of Man, and Sicily or Trinacria. It is somewhat curious, that the earliest coinage of this island, A.D. 1709 (which, by the way, is cast, and not struck in the usual way: obverse, the crest of the Earls of Derby, the eagle and child, SANS CHANGER; reverse, the three legs), has the motto QvOCUNQUE GESSERIS STABIT. The coinage of 1723 is exactly similar, but struck; whereas that of 1733, and all the succeeding coinages, have QUOCUNQUE JECERIS STABIT, which is clearly the correct reading.-E. S. Taylor, the Numismatist.

NAPOLEON'S "BEES."

Napoleon I., wishing to have some regal emblem more ancient than the fleur-de-lys, is said to have adopted the Bee under the following circumstances. When the tomb of Childeric (the father of Clovis) was opened in 1653, there were found, besides the skeletons of his horse and page, his arms, crystal orb, &c.; there were also found more than 300 models of what the French heralds mistook for bees, "of the purest gold, their wings being inlaid with a red stone, like cornelian." These "bees" were accordingly sprinkled over the imperial robe, as emblematical of enterprise and activity. But these small ornaments, resembling bees, were only what in French are called fleurons supposed to have been attached to the harness of the war-horse. Handfuls of them were found when the tomb was opened at Tournay, and sent to Louis XIV. They were deposited on a green ground at Versailles, which was adopted by Napoleon as the original Merovingian colour. This fact was related to Mr. W. Ewart, M.P., by Augustin Thierry, the celebrated historian.

THE ZOLL-VEREIN,

or Customs' Union, is a union of smaller states with Prussia for the purpose of customs' uniformity, first commenced in 1819, by the union of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, and which now includes Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Baden, HesseCassel, Brunswick, and Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and all interme

diate principalities. For the purposes of trade and customs, these different kingdoms and principalities act as one empire.

SOLDIER AND VOLUNTEER.

The title of Soldier is derived from solidus, a piece of money. The Roman legions were paid. Hence the Volunteer, whose gallantry was gratuitous, was said to be "no soldier." A good solidus, weighing sixty-seven grains, having on the obverse a bust with full face, and on the reverse a cross within a wreath (from the Earl of Pembroke's celebrated collection of rare and unique coins), was sold by Sotheby and Co., in 1848, for 597.

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THE TITLE ADMIRAL."

Admiral (says Mr. J. Craufurd) is derived from the Arabic, amir, a noble, a prince, a commander-in-chief; and bahar, the sea or a fleet, with the article al prefixed. Amir al bahar, therefore, means commander of the sea or of the fleet. The word has evidently come into French from Spanish, and from French into English. In Spanish the Arabic is corrupted into almirante to express the commander, and into almiraute to designate the flag-ship. The d was added in English, probably from some notion of euphony. But originally the word, whether to express the admiral himself or the ship he commanded, was written as both are at present in French. For the flag-ship Milton writes the word amiral, as in describing Satan's spear: "To equal which the tallest pine,

Hewn on Norwegian hills to be the mast
Of some great amiral, were but a wand
He walked with to support uneasy steps."

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THE NABOB

is derived from nawab, the plural of naib, a deputy or lieutenant; but in the popular language of India, from which the word is come to us, the plural is used for the singular. Sir T. Herbert, whose Travels were published in 1634, spells the word nabobb, and defines it, a nobleman in the language of the Mogul's kingdom, which hath mixed up with it much of the Persian." Gilchrist, in his Vocabulary, gives nabob or nabab as a corruption from the Hindustani nuwab, which was the title of the governor of a province under the Mogul empire, such as the Nuwab of Arcot, Oude, etc. Several of these became gradually independent during the decline of the empire, and subsequently either allies or dependents of the Anglo-Indian Government. The word nabob was formerly used in Europe to mean a wealthy man who had made his fortune in India; and Dr. Knox, in his very able work, the Spirit of Despotism, has some clever remarks upon the character and conduct of this class of men.

Science, the Arts, and Manufactures.

APPLICATIONS OF SCIENCE.

DR. ARNOTT has adduced these interesting facts to show that the tasks of purely scientific research, and of the subsequent applications to art, have lain very much with different parties. It was not, for example, the chemist who first showed a jet of coal-gas burning in his laboratory, who also first conceived and accomplished the noble feat of lighting up with gas a whole city, so as almost to make night there appear the day. It was not the person who, ages ago, observed the expansive force of steam, and its sudden collapse again into water when cooled, who thought of turning steam-force to profitable use; for it was left to James Watt, almost in our own day, to devise the present steam-engine, which has quickly spread a newer and higher civilisation over the earth. Then, for many a day was the fact widely known, that a shock of electricity travelled along a wire with the speed of lightning, before Wheatstone and others who still live among us, had constructed the electric telegraph, which, with the speed of lightning, can deliver at any distance, and can even write down or print, the words of any message committed to it.

ECONOMY OF CHEMISTRY.

The Chemistry of Art, like a prudent housewife, economises every scrap. The horse-shoe nails dropped in the streets during the daily traffic are carefully collected by her, and re-appear in the form of swords and guns. The clippings of the travelling tinker are mixed with the parings of horse's-hoofs from the smithy, or the cast-off woollen garments of the poorest inhabitants of a sister isle, and soon afterwards, in the form of dyes of brightest blue, grace the dress of courtly dames. The main ingredient of writing-ink was, possibly, once part of the broken hoop of an old beer-barrel. The bones of dead animals yield the chief constituents of lucifer-matches. The dregs of portwine, carefully rejected by the port-wine drinker in decanting his favourite beverage, are taken by him in the morning in the form of Seidlitz powders, to remove the effects of his debauch. The offal of the streets and the washings of

coal-gas re-appear carefully preserved in the lady's smellingbottle, or are used to flavour blancmanges for her friends. This economy of the chemistry of art is only in imitation of what we observe in the chemistry of nature. Animals live

and die; their dead bodies, passing into putridity, escape into the atmosphere, whence plants again mould them into forms of organic life; and these plants, actually consisting of a past generation, form our present food.-Dr. Lyon Playfair.

THE FIXED ALKALIS.

Potash and Soda (to which has been added Lithia) were named fixed alkalis, from having for centuries resisted all the attempts of chemists to decompose them, and they were therefore considered as simple bodies; but, in 1806, Sir Humphry Davy, by a skilful application of galvanism, succeeded in demonstrating that they were compound bodies; potash and soda being respectively made up of a metallic basis and oxygen.

SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION.

This question has been much discussed of late years; but Liebig, in his Familar Letters upon Chemistry, is considered to have proved conclusively :

1. That of the cases adduced, none is well authenticated; while in most it is admitted that the victims were drunkards, and that generally a candle or lamp was in the room, and after the alleged combustion was found turned over. 2. That spontaneous combustion was absolutely impossible, the human frame containing 75 or 80 per cent of water; and since flesh, when saturated with alcohol, is not consumed upon the application of a light, the alcohol burning off first, the causes assigned to account for the spontaneous ignition are à priori extremely improbable. Nevertheless, Dr. Lindley has compiled a table of nineteen instances from the Dictionnaire de Médecine, of something akin to spontaneous combustion: namely, the rapid ignition of the human body (which per se is not combustible) by contact with flame, as a consequence of the saturation of its tissues by alcohol.-See Notes and Queries, No. 184.

CAN FIRE BE PRODUCED FROM THE AGENCY OF TWO STICKS?

A Correspondent of the Lancet, writing from Fort Vancouver, states, that from inquiry among the Hudson's Bay Company's officers, he has no doubt that the Indians produce fire by rubbing two sticks together. Lieutenant Talbot, who was with Colonel Fremont's Expedition, also states, that to the south of the Columbia, and to the east of the Sierra Nevada, are many tribes who have no other means of producing fire, as they have no iron among them. In the snake-country, also, or south branch of the Columbia, an Indian is not considered properly equipped without his fire-stick, which is always attached to his quiver.

SPONTANEOUS HEATING OF CAST-IRON.

Cast-iron, when brought into the air after it had been for many years under salt and water, has become red-hot. Thus, in June 1836, some cannon-balls were raised from the ship Mary Rose, which sunk in a naval engagement off the Isle of Wight in July 1545, nearly 300 years before. These balls all became red-hot on exposure to the air, and fell to pieces. The castiron gratings, after being long immersed in the porter-vats in the large breweries of London, grow hot from a similar cause when the porter is drawn off. —Mr. Wilkinson; Proc. Asiatic Society, 1840.

COMBUSTIBILITY OF METALS.

In a "Lecture for the Young," Prof. Faraday put shreds of zinc, in the form of a tassel, into a jar of oxygen; when they burnt like paper. The combustion of iron was illustrated by the friction of steel. Copper and tin were burnt at a small charcoal-furnace. Antimony and iron, after burning some time at a furnace, were thrown down upon a frame, and continued to burn in globules until consumed.

IMPURE WATER.

It is a mistake to suppose that water, because it contains animalcules or confervæ, is necessarily unwholesome. However repugnant to our feelings it may be to use water containing these foreign bodies, it is only when they are dead and putrid that danger arises from their presence.-Dr. Daubeny.

STEAM FROM THE KETTLE.

The Steam which issues from the spout of a tea-kettle is no hotter, as measured by a thermometer, than the boiling liquid within; yet when condensed in a body of cold water or ice, it gives out as much heat as one thousand times its weight of boiling water would do. This heat of steam, which is insensible to the thermometer, is called latent heat, and it differs in quantity for different kinds of vapour.-Dr. Ure.

POKER ACROSS THE FIRE.

Why does a poker laid across a dull fire revive it? Because the poker receives and concentrates the heat, and causes draught through the fire.

Boswell and Johnson held a conversation upon this domestic pheno. menon, as follows: Boswell. "Why, sir, do people play this trick which I observe now, when I look at your grate, putting the shovel against it to make the fire burn?" Johnson. "They play the trick, but it does not make the fire burn. There is a better (setting the poker perpendi