table, and called for cards. If he had been wise X i hi* generation he would have spared his oath and thrown a couple of sovereigns •it the waiter's head instead ; but the Cap tain thou«h liberal (in a Shakespearean sense) of speech, was chary of his sovereigns. Without daring to reply, the waiter shuf fled after one of the retreating company, who happened to ba on the committee, and stated his hard case. "Tell Captain Laugton with my compliments that you have my orders to close the club," said that gentleman, promptly. "Much he will care about that!" ob served one of the committee-man's com panions, as they stepped into the street. "So much the better for the 'Frobisher," answered the other gravely; "for if he breaks a rule we can get rid of him." The same idea probably occurred to the Captain himself, for, after bestowing on the ■waiter a choice string of vituperative epi thets, he proposed to Lovell that they should go and have their game out elsewhere. ■ " But where ?" said Lovell. '•Oh, at your own rooms if you like." Now, Major Lovell, though willing enough to gamble with the Captain at the "Fro bisher," was by no means inclined to be so familiar with him as to ask him to his hotel. " Or you can come to mine," said the Cap tain, perceiving the other's hesitation. But this again did not meet the Major's views. He did not absolutely suspect his companion of dishonesty, but it did flash across him that he had heard queer stories of the Captain; and that with his own cards and in Ids own rooms such a host might have the advantage over him at picquct. "No," said he; "it's too late, my good fellow." , The Captain's coarse red face expressed considerable irritation. "It seems to me, Lovell, you are rather funky of the picquet." "You are quite mistaken," answered the Major, coolly; "I am not funky Of you at any game, and I want a flutter.'" They had put on their hats, and were standing on the doorstep in the tall and narrow street into which the sun had hardly penetrated. "Very good," said the Captain suddenly, " I'll toss you for a monkey—one toss." "Five hundred pounds is a large sum," answered Lovell,,hesitatingly. " There! I told you you were funky. Look here, I'll give you £25 to tosßfor £500," and he pulled out his portmonnaie. It had the former sum in it—for he produced it—but certainly not the. latter. "Very good. If you are so keen .about it as all that I'll take you. Shall I toss, or you 1" Major Lovell took a sovereign from his pocket and spun it into the air. '' Woman !" cried the Captain; with fervour. More than Matthew Helston's annual income and that of his uncle to boot depended upon which aide that coin should come down. It fell in the gutter slantwise. "Woman it is," cried the Captain triumphantly. "It w not Hands oft!" cried the Major. " It is neither the one nor the other."

There really was some doubt about it; but the Captain thought there was no doubt, and his face was a picture—a score ot evil passions were crowded into it, but rage was uppermost, "If you don't mean to pay— —" he began. "Be silent, sir!" cried Lovell. "If I have lost I will pay you to-morrow morning, but I won't take your word for it. Let us ring the bell" (for the clubhouse door had been closed behind them) "and ask the waiter."

"The waiter is an ass ; and, besides, he has a grudge against me," said the Captain. " Let us abide by the decision of the first passer-by." " Very good ; so be it." At four in the morning in Jute-stregt (though it is a short cut from the city to the south-west portion of the town) there are not many passers-by, and the two men, with the coin between them, stood waiting for more than a minute. Then the rattle of a hansom was heard, and as it drew near the Captain stepped into the street and held out his hand to stop the vehicle. It had a passenger inside, to whom he addressed himself with unwonted civility.

"This gentleman and I, sir, have had a little dispute, which perhaps you will have the great kindness to settle for us. it is simply whether a coin which one of us has tossed up lies with his head or tail upper most."

The passenger murmured something about it not being his business, and of the unusual character of such a request; but the cabman put in a word.

" Lawk a mussy! there can be no harm now we're going home, Master Matthew," he naid. "Don't spoil a bit of sport." Thus adjured, the passenger, although with some reluctance, alighted, investigated the coin, and pronounced that " Woman" was uppermost. " Or course it is," cried Langton trium phantly. "You have lost the monkey, Lovell."

The major did not speak, though doubt less, like the Parrot, he thought the more ; but, strange to say, the involuntary umpire did. "Do I understand yon to say, sir," he inquired gravely, ."that you have won £600 of Major Frederick Lovell ?' "Yes, sir-less £25,1 have." "Thenpermit mo to congratulate you. lam very glad to hear it." With which observation, which was delivered in very distinct tones, he stepped into the hansom and was whirled away. " Well, that's the rummest start I ever knew," exclaimed the Captain. " Did you heal what that fellow said, Lovell ?" "Yes, I.heard," answered the Major, with an unpleasant laugh. "He's a man who owes me a grudge, or thinks he does, poor devil." '

" Ai^injured husband, eh t" "Well, yes; something of the kind," answered the other carelessly, " He's not a gentleman, of course., or he could have had his rempdy. He's a jeweller's clerk; I saw him at Lady Pargiter's just now-; he came to take away her diamonds; he does it every night after she has worn them." "What, Me diamonds—the Twenty-five Thousand Pounders !" M

" Yes, the same. Good night. I will send you my cheque to-morrow morning." And the Major strolled away with a care lesa air that was by no means the exponent of his genuine feelings. "This will recoup me for that infernal run of bad luck to-night," mused the Cap tain ; "but it leaves me hardly better than I was before—and that was in Queer-street. So the Pargiter diamonds are carried away every night after her ladyship wears them ! I have seen the face of that cabman on v racecourse somewhere; he's a pal of my tout's, Dick Dartmoor. I'll make a note of that "—and he entered something in his pocket-book. * If anyone had closely followed Captain Langton, as he walked slowly to his lodg ings in Golden Square, he would have beard him murmur to Jiimself at intervals —rolling the sentence like a sweet morsel under the tongue—" Twenty-five Thousand PobsJs ! Twenty-five Thousand! " (To ha continued.)

A sicighi-of-hand performance—When Arabella declined to accept proposals from Theodore,

CAVED.

" It's caved!" exclaimed Bill Beaver, bursting into the cabin where I was leisurely eating breakfast and reading the news from last year's papers that were pasted on the wall. " The ground has caved ! it came down mighty sudden; and little Jimmy wa.9 at the breast. I was further out in the drift, and had the start of it; but it made such a close call for me that I knew hfe must o' got ketched." This technical jargon revealed to me the fact that our mine had caved, and buried one of our companions, for ' Little Jimmy' was pot an infant, but a man—a miner and a friend. He had been working at the "breast," or farthest end of the "drift," but was now perhaps sleeping his last sleep in the bottom of the mother of us all,

Three years before we had come to the creek, we had prospected the '' side gulches" and the bars, and found "colors" every where. Indications were favorable, so we ''staked" a body of ground along the main creek, built cabins, organized a coin puny, of which the writer was elected President, and went to work to open our claim.

Those three years had been years of toil and privation. We were in the heart of the .Rocky Mountains. Our camp was pitched in a little basin of a valley, warm and sunshiny, and just at the entrance of a deep and gloomy canon, which we named "The Devil's Gate," through which our sparkling little stream foamed and tumbled down to the great river, the Missouri. Our ground was deep and very wet. Drainage was necessary, and we had driven a tunnel for this purpose through the earth and boulders that filled the primeval bed of the creek until we had attained a horizontal distance of a thousand yards ; but the slope of the gulch was so gradual that, we had not reached the "bed rock," where we hoped to find the gold laid in heaps. "Bed rock" being the objective point must be reached ; so we sank a shaft at the head of our tunnel and betook ourselves to a pump. As it was a couple of thousand miles to the nearest foundry, and we could not afford to await the completion of the North Pacific Railroad, a pump under the circum-, stances was a problem ; so I will tell you \ how we got one. We had blacksmith's and carpenters' tools, which most of us could use; there was plenty of timber growing on the mountains, and a pair of dilapidated freight wagons supplied our stock of iron. Great slabs or segments were cut from the fir trees and hewn and dressed on one side to a smooth plane. The other side was rounded to an arc or convex surface, so that when four such segments were placed together lengthwise, secured with pins at the edges, which were first squared and then made parallel, they formed a long, hollow trunk or barrel, four square within, but outside cylindrical, and tapering slightly from one end to the other. Upon this were driven hoops or bands or irou which forced the joints close like those of a cask, and thus we had pumps or pipes of considerable length and solidity. It was easy to fit to them their valves and pistons, and to work them with a wooden walking beam, moved by the crank of a water wheel. This crank was a master-piece. It had an arm or leverage of two feet, and was forged from the iron axles of our wagons, and its dungeons or bearings were turned in a lathe of our own contriving. This was a heavy job for our own resources, but it was finished after an age (it seemed to us) of toil, puzzling and perspiration, and we had produced machinery that was capable of raising to a height of nearly thirty feet many tons of water per day, and which answered all our requirements for drainage, so that we were able to reach that long sought "bed rock" at a depth of ninety feet below the present bed of the creek. I will mention hero that our pump was twelve inches square inside, and' had a stroke of four feet, raising the water twenty-nine feet into our drain-tunnel, whence it flowed out to the surface a thousand yf.rds down the canon.

We had reached "bed rock," but had not "struck it very rich, 11 and were run ning a drift or tunnel on bed rock across and up the gulch in search of the "pay str ak " which we were hoping every day to find, when the announcement of a.start ling accident was made. Here wan the ruin of our hopes and the death of our friend; for their ■was little room to hope for any other result.

It must not be supposed that much time was wasted in such rellections; for telling Bill to rouse the entire camp, I rushed on to the mine. Such of the men as had heard of the occurrence hurried from their work, bringing with them their picks and shovels as likely to be needed, and the miners from wet diggings came clad in coats, high boots and helmet-shaped caps of India-rubber, and looking like knights in armour. Knights they were, too, for that matter, for though armed only with shovels and picks, they were as daring and as generous as ever belted prince who rode with lance at rest to right imaginary wrongs —and they were ready now to risk every danger to save the poor fellow buried in the mine beneath.

On reaching the scene I found our ma chinery apparently uninjured, but looking mo{e closely I discovered that the pump was raising not a drop of water, and it would not be long before the entire mine would be flooded. The pump must be re lieved at onee x or we could not hope to save the mine, much less to rescue our friend. Calling Bob. Piper, a tall black-bearded miner, who had worked at his trade in every mining country from the .English Channel to the Pacific Ocean, and who, in skill, courage and experience, was the mining oracle of our camp—l pointed him to the pump, which was wearing itself out in vain, for it lifted no water.

"Bob," said I, "we must fix that pump ! it is our only hope to save Little Jimmy. "We'll fix it," replied Bob, quietly. " The pump is starved—choked up at the bottom. "We'll fix it; and as for the poor lad, we'll git nn out." Bob was a West of England man, and his dialect stuck to him.

"We'llgit un out, Benny; I think he bean't dead. I've helped dig men out in the old country and this too; an' God will help us we'll git un out now; wont us, Benny ?" Benny tints appealed to, ans\yered with an emphatic " You bet," anil the next moment heand Bob, followed by two others, were clambering down the' steep and slip pery flights of ladders that led into the mine until their candles, glimmering like stars, were one by one swallowed up in the black shaft. Axes had been sent down in the bucket, and in a few moments were heard blows ringing on the mass of wood and iron that composed the barrel of the pump. They were cutting holes to let the water into the pump below. It had already riUen above their waists, and the mouth of the lowest drift was nearly submerged. The machinery was creaking and groan ing, and the wheel dashing round, and it was idle show, and the mine was filling up, and soon the men would be driven out; but meantime we could hear the blows of the axes. Presently the clumsy walking beam quit) groaning, stood still and began to tremble. The wheel had stopped for a moment, then began to move slowly, and went round with a surge. There was a

great rush of water through the pump and ft was all right. Our old wooden pump was equal to the occasion. The flood-gates were open to the great overshot wheel, and it was required to do its best. It rushed round steadify, and in an hour the mine was freed from water, so that men could press into the drift. It was arranged thr.t if Little Jimmy was found alive the fact should be tele graphed aloft by two strokes of the signal bell; but if deatl one tap should announce it. Men were working under-ground as only such men could work. They had been told oft" into gangs of four each, which spelled or rclievod each other every fifteen minutes; and as they advanced into the avalanche of rocks and earth that filled the drift, every inch had to be propped with heavy timbers, for the vast mass above them had been shaken mid had lost its cohesion, and at any moment might crash down like a mountain.

Presently, to those who waited above, there came a sharp peal of the'bell—then another. He was alive ! What a shout went up from the men assembled there. Out of the depths of that canon, above its cliffs and crags, and over the trees that waved on their Riimmits, and above the mountains that towered beyond—far above them all it rose like incense. It ascended into Heaven, for it was a prayer— a prayer of thanksgiving and of praise. Not formed in speech, not framed in language, but the overflowing of the heart that cannot be uttered in words.

My story is done, Little Jimmy had been overwhelmed with an avalanche, his candles extinguished, and he dashed down with his face to the earth; but the rocks and timbers had formed an arch over him, and, resting his elbows on the ground, he was just able to support his head above it. In a little while lie would have been drowned where ho lay; but ho was safe now. Strong hands had dragged him out of this grave. They had harnessed them selves to the " horse whip," and had hoisted him into the glorious sunshine. They bore him to his cabin, and placed him in the tender care of " Doc." Here \*e will leave him.

The three drinking saloons in our little camp proclaimed open doors and free whisky for the rest of that day ; and as the boys were about to take a drink, Bob Piper asked leave to offer a sentiment. " Gentlemen,"said he, " I told you we'd git urn out, if ho be as God would help us." "You bet!"was the applauding and em phatic response.

Bookes Worth Heading.

NUMBER One.—The Bible, that "book of books, the book of God." Within that awful volume lies The mystery of mysteries, Happiest they of human race. To whom (Jod lias givon grace, To read, to leuni, to hope, to pray, To lift the latali and force the way, And better had they ne'er been born, Than rend to doubt or read to scorn. - Sir Walter Scott. The Bible is now, happily, the book of the whole world, being translated into nearly all languages and dialects, its effects everywhere have been to improve human speech, knowledge, manner*, and morale, to free the slave, to enfranchise woman, to inspire with the love of truth, goodness, and charity the most degraded and most civilised of mankind. It has abolished the fear of .an angry Deity, so common among men, who for lnilleniums have sat in "gross darkness." It is the foundation of "home" in the Christian sense, it argues for loyalty, freedom, love and friendship. It con- > demns, with burning severity, all human wrongs, and denounces the oppressor in threats of the Divine vengeance. Above all, it sets before men the Lord Jcsua Christ as the only saviour of sinners, and the model man, the Son of Man, but the Son of God, who is over all blessed for ever.

Why and When Kerosene Lamps Explode.

The following hints, from the "Scientific American," will lie useful to residents in neighbourhoods where oil lamps are used, All explosions of coal-oil or kerosene lamps are caused by the vapour or gas that collects in the space above the oil. When full of oil, of course, a lamp contains no gas; but, immediately on lighting the lamp, consumption of oil begins, soon leaving a space for gas, which commences to form as the lamp warms up, and after burning a short time, sufficient gas will accumulate to form an explosion. The gas in a lamp will explode only when ignited. In this respect it is like gunpowder. Cheap or inferior oils arc always the most danger ous. The flame is communicated to the gas in the following manner: —The wick tube in all lamps is made larger than the wick which is to pass through it. It would not do to have the wick tight in the burner; on the contrary, it is essential that it move up and down with perfect ease. In this way it is unavoidable thatspacc in the tube ia left along the sides of the wick sufficient for the flame from the burner to pass down into the lamp and explode the gas. Many things may occur to pass down the wick and explode the lamp :—l. A lamp may be standing on a table or mantel, .and a slight puff of air from the open window, or the sudden opening of a door may cause an explosion. 2. A lamp may be taken up quickly from a table or mantel and instantly explode. 3. A lamp is taken into an entry, where there is a draught, or out of doors, when an explosion ensues. 4. A lighted lamp is taken up a flight of stairs, or is raised quickly to place on the mantel, when there is an explosion. In all these cases the mischief is done by the air movement, either by suddenly checking the draught, or forcing air down the chimney against the flame. 3. Blowing down the chimney to extinguish the light is a frequent cause of explosion. G. Lamp explosions have been caused by using a chimney broken oil' at the top, or one that has a piece broken out, whereby the draught is variable and the flame unsteady. 7. Sometimes a thought less person puts a small-sized wick in a large burner, thus leaving a considerable space along the edges of the wick. 8. An old burner, with its air-draughts clogged up, which rightfully should be thrown away, is sometimes kept in use, and the finai result is an explosion.

Colour-Blindness.

Colour-blindness is more general than is commonly suspected. It is now roughly but pretty accurately estimated that one man out of every twenty-live has tliis defect. Women are not nearly so subject to it, the prqbable reason for which freedom we will state further on. Colour-blindness varies greatly in intensity. Some people are alto gether unable to distiuguish tiie difference between colours : a scarlet shawl and the grass on which it is spread appear to them to be of one and the same hue. Such per sons, it may be supposed, cannot possibly derive much pleasure from the tints of flowers; though, of course, the form and the scent are as capable of pleasing them as others. But these are extreme cases, pre sumably somewhat rare. Fur more nume rous are those who, while quite able to .sec the difference between colours, yet cannot give the proper names. They perceive easily enough the various shades which emblazon the sky during a gorgeous sunset, but for the life of them they cannot give to each its distinguishing name. They cannot experience all or nearly all the de lights of a flower garden in bloom, or of a landscape, or of a picture, though in point ing out the various hues they would make ludicrous confusion. Then again the vision of colour-blind people does not always err over the same colour. Some fail to distin guish or to name greens ; some reds; some blues.

It is quite evident fliat those who are afflicted with colour-blindness are ,uulittcd for certain trades and professions. Such an one in a draper's shop would annoy his employer, the customers, and himself. He could never excel as a painter, although he might be a perfect draughtsman and possess the most sensitive perception of form. lint there are some callings which it would be posiiivefy unsafe for a colour-blind person to enter. Such an one at sea might destroy a ship and many valuable lives owing to his inability to tell the red or port light from the green or starboard. And the same may be said of railway otlicial.s. An en gine driver, mistaking red for green on a dark night, has before now wrought un speakable mischief. The managers of the Pennsylvania Railway have become so im pressed with the danger that they have resolved to put their 35,000 employes under examination. By means of a very ingeni ous contrivance the work of testing so large a number of men has heen greatly simpli fied. A Dr. Thomson is the inventor of the instrument which is thus described. The doctor "has two Jlat narrow sticks, each about two feet long, hinged together at one end. To one of these sticks he hangs forty worsted skeins attached to little but tons hung upon hooks, so arranged that the buttons can be readily unhooked. The buttons are numbered from one to forty, and the other stick is shut down over the buttons so as to conceal the numbers and keep them in their places. When pre sented to the person examined, it appears simply as forty skeins of different coloured worsted yarn hanging from a stick, lie arranges the forty skeins upon a theory which experience hsus taught him, that it is only necessary to use the genuine tints of the three test colours—green, rose, and red—and the 'confusioncolours,'i.e. tans, greys, and browns. Beginning at the left hand, he devotes the first twenty numbers, or one-half the skeins, to the green test. The ten odd numbers are shades of green ; the ten even numbers are 'confusion co lours,'such as greys, tans, light browns, &c, and this half of the stick is for the diagnosis of colour-blindness. The skeins from twenty-one to thirty have rose or pur ple tints on the odd numbers, and blue t'nts on the even numbers. The remaining skeins, from thirty-one to forty, have red tints on the odd numbers, and the ' confu sion colours' for red on the even numbers, such as browns, sa«cs, and dark olives. A man placed before the instrument is first told to select ten skeins to match the green test skein which is shown him. If his eyes are normal he quickly throws the ten green skeins over the stick, and a clerk recording the result will examine the buttons and put down the scries of odd numbers from one to nineteen, as the entry upon the blank report. The normal eye will select only the odd-numbered green tinti from the first half of the stick, while the colour blind will hesitatingly select at random odd and even numbers all along the stick. Thus the clerk can readily separate the twenty four men whose eyes are normal from the one who is colour-hlind, and the interven tion of the ophthalmic surgeon is ouly ne cessary to finally decide upon the falter. The blanks, properly filled up and sent to head quarters, tell the result m the case of each employ^ by the odd or even numbers, and the supervising authority thus can confide to subordinates ou any part of the railway the labour of selecting the colour blind for further tests, if necessary. No great skill or professional knowledge, it will thus be seen, is necessary to make the original examination and record." It is found that men with normal vision select the required ekeins with quickness and de cision ; while the colour-blind, even when conscious of their defect, as is sometimes the case, betray great hesitancy and un certainty. Female?, it was stated above, are more tree from colour-blindness than males : it is reckoned that only one out of every 4000 suffer from the defect, This would appear to be the result of superior educa tion, since women, us a general rule, have far more to do with colours, with matching, selecting, and arranging them, than the sterner sex. Hence mother transmits to daughter the faculty in question, which would appear to be an essential to female happiness. What a frightful affliction it must he for a woman to be unable to name the tint of her rival's bonnet; or to be told, with disgusting candour, thut her copious locks are of the hue vulgarly known as " carroty" when she had been thinking they were auburn —"sweet auburn," as Goldsmith has it. But, seriously, if ab sence .of colour-blindness be due to educa tion of the eye continued through many generations, it is not hopeless to expect an improvement—not in any single individual, but as a result of the long training of de fective eyes. We would not, however, even seem to suggest another subject for teaching in schools, for the overwrought children are taught too much as it is. Bather than add to their labours, let them that cannot tell red from green be colour blind still. It may not be generally known that colour-blindness is hereditary. It " runs in families " as the saying is. An instance may be cited. Of a family of five sons, known to the writer, all were more or less colour-blind : the mother had normal vision ; though the motlier's sister was no ticeably defective in respect of •distinguish ing colours. The grandfather was still more defective; while his father was one of the worst instances on record, for he was unable to name brilliant yellow when he saw it.

So far as the writer is aware, it remain* to be determined whether in colour-blind subjects there is any perceptible defect in the, structure of the eye. Here, it would seem, is afforded a highly interesting field for surgical investigation.

To he thoroughly imbued with the liberal 1 arts refines mankind, and makes men to be ■ mild and gentle in their conduct.

Boole Buyers.

Commenting upon an article in tho Spectator on cheap books, a lady writes :-— " I am a very ' average' Englishwoman, and yet almost the keenest pleasure of my life has been to buy books. When 1 have made acquaintance with a noble, good, and. beautiful book, I could notrcst until it was mine—my very own. The years roll back as I write, and I see myself, Jive-and-twenty of them ago, young and just married. We hud very foolishly married without and against the consent of our parents, and they —God bless them ! they arc here no more— thought, I fancy, to unmurry us by a pro cess of starvation. Many a time (my ' husband dining at an eating-house) did I. cat only dry bread for dinner, all the while guarding and treasuring up—chioily tied in a corner of my handkerchief for safety, fear ing, if discovered, it would no in beef and mutton- a sovereign given mo by my cousin and which I destined to the purchase of a Hoswcll's Life of Johnson.' 1 had to wait five months ere opportunity favoured me, and not until I had been some time at the Cape of Good Hope did I triumphantly carry home my volumes. But when at lost 1 hold them as my own in my eager hands, what were exile and poverty .and vexation in comparison ? Sir, every book on my shelves IS dear to me, for every book means ii sacrifice, But for what an end ! In my many sorrows they (my book's) have been unfailing in kindness and comfort. In foolishness they have given wisdom and guidance; they have been strength to my weakness, have helped me to help others; and in their possession has been deep joy j and what is more, they have removed far from my home and from my hear! that sore soriow and trial of woman's life, loneliness. It is to me a small matter that I. have mostly fed poorly and dressed plainly, since by so doing I have been enabled to gather under my roof the great and noble of the earth, who look down at me from my walls with the faces of friends. Had I (would to God 1 could have !) (he lioou of life once more, f should, so far as the blessed acquisition of books goes, live it all over again." ________________

The Great Bell of St. Paul's.

Tiik new great Ijell has just been cast. " l!ig Bon" sinks into comparative insigni ficance by the side ot "Great Paul," now lying mouth upwards, in the foundry of Mr Taylor, of Loughborough. She has not yet passed the scales ; hut her weight will pro bably lie between the great bell of Oliuiitz, weighing 17 tons 18 nvt., and that of Vienna (cast in 1711), weighing 17 tons 11 ewt. Three furnaces, one of which was specially built for the purpose, poured out more than 20 tons of molten metal into the gigantic mould of "(Ircat Paul," and after writing off 43 ewt. as "overplus" and Spvt. as "waste," this will leave 350 ewt. actually in the mould, or a weight of 17?. 'ons. This mass of metal, consisting of pure tin and copper in due proportions, was about. Si hours in course of melting. Pour minutes after the rush of molten metal the mould was full, and "Great Paul" came into existence in one of those deep "pits" so mysterious to lookers-on. It was not for several days that Die heat had mllicicntly abated to allow the men to hoist out of the pit the mould and bell in their "case." This east-iron " ease" had to resist the enormous strain of such a weight of metal when forcing itself impetuously into the mould ; and so, in order to prevent a burst ing asunder of the mould, it was made strong enough to bear a pressure of 200 tons. •The upper portion of the case weighed 14 tons ; the lower plate on which it rested, seven tons. Including clamps and bolts, it is probable that the whole weight of this huge box was not'far short of 25 tons. It may be easily imagined how great was the anxiety of all when the case was being taken to pieces, the clay mould broken up, and the mighty bell bit by bit exposed to view. When the tone was produced by swinging a heavy ball of iron against the sound-bow a musical note boomed out which was impressive beyond description. The dimensions of the bell are as follows :— Height perpend eular (from lip to top of canon), Bft. lOin. ; diameter (from edge to edge ot lip), Oft, G^in. ; thickness (of middle or sound-bow) Bj'iik, or about l-13ih of the diameter. The note is E flat, the upper partials 15 flat, E flat and G being just audible with the sonorous ground-tone. The cost of the bell and hoisting it into its place in the upper part of the north-west tower will be about f 3.C00, a portion of. which lias already been contributed. It has been decided to use the bell for the first time on Easter Sunday next.

Baby's First Steps.

A young child's Ixmes are soft and cartila ginous, and keeping a poor little thing tied up against a chair, when it ought to l>e lying on its back kicking the air and strengthening its limbs, or crawling on the nursery floor, is positively injurious and sinful. It is done with the view of teaching it all the sooner to maintain the erect attitude ; but bent legs may be the result, and however stroDg a bent-legged mau may bo, lie certainly does not look elegant. Let the child creep, then, and as soon as he finds that lie can pull himself cautiously up, and stand by the side of a box, he will a» so; this is the only safe and natural process. Soon after this he will, if encouraged, ven ture upon what parents call the iirst step. Let him creep, and when he walks and falls, ,t laugh at him ; unless you want to make the child an idiot, do uot rush to pull him up. Children are not at all brittle, and they ought to learn at a very early age to depend upon the strength naturo has endowed them with. Some nurses! tie a band around a poor child's waist, and then shove him kick ing and sprawling on before them, during which time the child looks as graceful as the golden lamb which hosiers hang out as a sign. The practice is most injurious.— CasselVx Family Magazine.

Glycerine.

It is from the caudle factories that the enormous supply of glycerine comes, which is now a very important article of trade. A few years ago it was wasted ; now it is sent to the manufacturing chemist, who purifies it by distillation and Jiltration through hone charcoal, and puts it upon the market. It is put to a great variety of uses, many cf which depend upon its peculiar properties o£ nonvolatility and absorption by atmo spheric moisture. Harness makers and leather workers use it in making leather pliable ; it is put into gas-meters because it does not freeze except at a very low temperature ; modellers keep their clay studies moist with it; tobacconists sweeten1 chewing tobacco with it; and ladies apply it to their hands and faces to soften the skin. Much of it goes into the manufac ture of the terrible explosive, nitro-glyce rine, which is made bytreating it with a mixture of sulphuric and nitric acid, or concentrated nitric acid. Not less than 3,200,000 pounds of glycerine are produced by the candle factories and utilised every year in America, and yet so late as the year 1854 it was counted as worthless and run off into the ecwers.

STAR SATURDAY SUPPLEMENT, FEBRUARY IS, 1882.

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When the schoolmaster threatened to tan Johnny, the urchin reminded him th!it "a soft tan, sir, turneth away wrath." A six-year-old was enveloped in a shirt much too big for him. After strutting about for some time, he hurst out, "Oh, ma ! I feel awful lonely in this big shirt." A long haired poet has a poem on " The Lost Kiss." He doesn't make it very plain as to how lie lost it; but it is presumed her mother came into the room just in time to catch her at it. Special Medicines for Children, Infants' Food, Feeding Bottles, Nursing Shields, Enemas, Waterproof Sheeting, Bandages, Belts, and all kinds of domestic appliances may be obtained at Gardner's English Pharmacy, 184, Queen-street, Auckland.— [Advt,]