whereas if it belonged to coral, it might be ex-bread-fruit tree; but now it is changed. The pected to appear at other places; unless it belongs moss is clean off the trunk, the branches are to some particular kind of coral, only found at all covered with green leaves, and they are those places where the Palolo appears; of the ex- laden with fine fruit. How changed! how istence of which, however, there is no evidence. beautiful! You look underneath, and you Secondly, The animal, when complete, terminates rounded at both ends, having no tentacula with which the coral building Polypifera are possessed to operate round the mouth of their cells.

see an 'aloe. When the bread-fruit tree had been found to be in a state of decay, the owner planted an aloe-plant near its roots, and in a very short time the influence of the aloe-plant checked the decay, and caused it to revive, to flourish, and to bring forth fruit.

The natives calculate with great certainty Now," said the warrior chief to the misthe day the Palolo appears, and are never mistaken in their calculations. They go out sionary, "while you have been speaking, I in their canoes, each person having a basket, have been thinking we very much, just now, and with this he skims up the animal as it resemble the decaying, dying, worthless breadswims on the surface. It is cooked, and es- fruit tree; but God has sent you with his teemed a great dainty. Those natives fortu- Word, and he has planted you near to our nate enough to secure it, carry it to their side. Now, do not be soon discouraged,-do friends round the island, who live where it not fear. Very soon we shall revive,-we does not appear. From the day of its appear-shall flourish and bring forth good fruit.” ance the natives begin the six months which they call Vae Palolo, or winter season. We to your notice the fact that an aloe planted have no instance on any of the other islands near the withering bread-fruit tree causes it to of this animal being found; yet on most of revive. It is a beautiful fact, and, generally the land in the east the winter season is called known, might lead some learned in botany to Palolo er Paroro. inquire into the causes, etc.

THE ALOE, AND THE BREAD FRUIT
TREE.

I have related this anecdote, to introduce

HAND-BELLS AT FUNERALS.-- A few years ago I happened to arrive at the small sea-port of Roscoff, near the ancient cathedral town of St. Communicated by the Rev. Mr. GILL. Pol de Leon in Britanny, on the day appointed A MISSIONARY on one of the Samoa islands, for the funeral of one of the members of a family during a time of war, went to visit a part of of very old standing in that neighborhood. My the enemies' tribe in one of their strongholds. attention was attracted by a number of boys running about the streets with small hand-bells, with The tribe, with their chief, listened very at- which they kept up a perpetual tinkling. On intentively to the address given by the mission- quiring of a friend of mine, a native of the place, ary. At its close the chief arose to reply. what this meant, he informed me that it was an Profound silence prevailed; and with great old custom in Britanny-but one which in politeness the old warrior addressed the mis- the present day had almost fallen into disuse — sionary in the following terms:

"We take it very kindly that you have been at so much trouble to come so far and so difficult a road to exhort us to-day. Many thanks to you for your kindness. We have listened with attention to your address; and all that you have said is true, especially that which you have said respecting our wickedness. We are indeed very bad,-we feel it to be so; and you have not said half that might be said respecting it."

to send boys round from door to door with bells
to announce when a death had occurred, and to
give notice of the day and the hour at which the
funeral was to take place, begging at the same
time the prayers of the faithful for the soul of
the deceased. The boys selected for this office
are taken from the most indigent classes, and, on
the day of the funeral, receive cloaks of coarse
black cloth as an alms: thus attired, they attend
the funeral procession, tinkling their bells as they
Notes and Queries.
go along.

Epitaph on a child in Morwenstow church

Pausing a little and looking round on the valley below, he said,-" You have now been living some time in our country, and in your yard travels, you have often seen a bread-fruit tree withered, dying, all but dead, moss covering its trunk, no leaves on its branches, no fruit. You have thought,-alas! alas! this once fine tree is now only fit to be cut down and cast into the fire.

A few months after you have returned that way, you have looked again on that|

:

Those whom God love die young!
They see no evil days;

No falsehood taints their tongue,
No wickedness their ways!

Baptized, and so made sure
To win their blest abode;
What could we pray for more?
They die, and are with God!

From Chambers's Journal.
A LAUDATION OF TRASH.

impossible to land them on higher ground without using that as a stepping-stone.

It is vain to talk of the higher class of periodi

It is not many years since Chambers's Edin-cals competing with the low; they cannot do so burgh Journal was the only extensive distributer, without changing their character and becoming throughout the country, of wholesome knowledge low themselves. If the demand had been for and as wholesome entertainment. The case is high-class literature at a cheaper rate, it would very different now. Whether that work created a have been met in spite of the paper-duty; but taste, or merely supplied a want, is of little con- the demand was for low-class literature, and that sequence; the great fact is, that the demand did alone; and if the price of all kinds were equalincrease, gradually but steadily, and in that brief | |ized, the very same relative circulation would be interval has been answered by the appearance of maintained that exists to-day. And why? other journals, variously modified, which, without Because readers whose minds are in the earlier diminishing the popularity of the magna parens, have more than doubled the circulation of this kind of literature. The importance of the fact, taken by itself, no one will question; it stands incontrovertibly thus-that there are at present at last double the number of persons who seek, in the cheap periodicals, interesting information and refined amusement than there were a few years ago. This increase is not accounted for by any decline in the sale of expensive books: even if such existed, it would be much more than compensated, so far as the number of readers is concerned, by the popular libraries and reprints, whose name is Legion.

We have heard it said that the progress thus distinctly marked is counterbalanced in another way that the new demand for wholesome literature is not a tithe of the new demand for what is either positively pernicious, or at best vulgar and trashy. Now, as for the positively pernicious, it does not fairly come, we think, into a question of this kind; for its existence is attributable solely to the supineness of Government in not enforcing the laws it has made, or to its stolidity in so constructing the laws as to make the enforcement impossible. But with regard to the immense body of literature distinguished merely by bad taste and low intelligence, we have something more to say; for we hold that the demand it meets is as indubitably a step in advance as the demand for wholsesome literature.

stages of development are, and probably always will be, by far the most numerous class. The hostility of the better journals to Trash is unfair and ungrateful; for the latter is their grand recruiting-field. Without this training seminary, it could be only by slow and painful efforts they would gain over a single man. They might remain as steady as the journal mentoined at the beginning of this article did for many years; but they could not increase and multiply as they have done, and they would not now spring forward individually as some of us are doing.

Trash is not bought because it is cheap. The cheapness merely brings it within the reach of those who will buy it because it is trash, and who would buy nothing of a better kind at any price. Literature, in so far as the demand and supply are concerned. is subject to the ordinary laws of political economy. It finds its own channel, and will not yield to force; but it is unlike material commodities in this, that it has within itself a principle which insensibly elevates the character of the demand. The reader rises above the lower quality unconsciously to himself; he exhausts the nutrition it affords; and, to appease the continuing hunger and thirst of the soul, he at length seeks a new and richer pabulum.

The real competition is among works of the better class; and this competition, when its object is mere circulation, is not of a wholesome kind. All such works are valuable; and all answer a positive demand, and address themselves to a distinctive class. Some are light and gay, some serious and earnest; some impart information, as if they wished it to penetrate to the mind; others give it through the menstruum of a joke. as good-natured doctors exhibit medicine to children, wrapped in sweetmeats; some minister specially to tastes of one kind, some to tastes of another kind; but all supply a demand, and all represent, respectively, the individual status of particular portions of the community. Competition among such works should not neglect circulation, for that would strike at the root of utility as well as profit; but it should take the character of a generous rivalry, as to which competitor, without compromising its popularity, should do the most to inform, enlighten, and refine.

The half-million, or more, readers of such works had no existence a small number of years ago. Their minds had not begun to awaken, and they had not yet entered upon that course of progression which is the natural state of human beings. The first stirrings of their untutored thought, when these at length began, found no sympathy in the higher class of literature. They yearned instinctively for something they could feel and comprehend; and the something came. It came in a form of thought just higher than their own, in a play of fancy their humble taste could appreciate, in romantic fiction that could be delightedly enjoyed by minds which had not opened to a conception of the artistical, and had no higher standards of comparison. The thing that came is pronounced by the supercilious to be Trash. Be it so that name will do as well as another. But we have a profound respect for this Trash; since it has enabled vast masses of But our present business is with Trashthe people to enter upon a course of progress, praiseworthy and respectable Trash. Let it not and has commenced a development of their grudge the recruits it educates and turns over to moral and intellectual powers which nothing can a higher service, for this loss will be more than stop. It is as impossible to prevent its readers compensated by a daily addition to its own from rising beyond Trash, as it would have been numbers rising from the denser and darker

masses of the people. It will never be other- but of the arts-the education considered newise than a great and powerful estate in litera- cessary not being that of the mind, but that of ture, so long as there are children of men born the eye. in ignorance and misery, and impelled by the We end as we began. Trash is one of the instincts of their nature to grope after light and great facts of the age; and we trust that its halfknowledge. It is true, there are powerful influ- million patrons may increase rather than diminences at work against it; for the connection be- ish. They cannot increase from the higher ranks tween taste and virtue has been recognized even of intelligence-that is impossible; for the spirit by government, and, so far as material objects of man ascends as the sparks fly upwards. are concerned, there are now schools of design Teach a little gamin merely to read and write, throughout the country, in which refinement is and he takes to Trash as naturally as a ducktaught as a matter of policy. This, no doubt, ling takes to the ditch; but, unlike the duckwill eventually contribute towards the general ling, he is by and by hungered upon the nutrielevation of the people; but it is comfortable ment he finds in it-his taste expands, his aspifor Trash to think that the process will be so rations soar, he becomes ambitious of the pond slow as to be hardly perceptible, the new move--then of the lake-then of the ocean. Vivant ment not being in the direction of literature, Frivola!

current of air is drawn out from one, an equal current will force its way into the other, and the lamp will burn until the oil is exhausted.

We have received a copy of "Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey Bec,-a Beekeepers' Manual, by the Rev. L. L. Langstroth,-publishIt is precisely on this principle, of maintaining ed by Hopkins, Bridgman & Company, North- a double current by artificial means, that the bees ampton." ventilate their crowded habitations. A body of

This work is not only practical and interest-active ventilators stands inside of the hive, as ing for its special purpose-b contains matters relating to the well being of other people besides Bees. Read the following chapter on the

VENTILATION OF THE BEE HIVE.

well as outside, all with their heads turned towards the entrance, and by the rapid fanning of their wings, a current of air is blown briskly out of the hive, and an equal current drawn in. This important office is one which requires great physical exertion on the part of those to whom it is entrusted; and if their proceedings are carefully Ir a populous hive is examined on a warm watched, it will be found that the exhausted venSummer day, a considerable number of bees will tilators, are, from time to time, relieved by fresh be found standing on the alighting board, with detachments. If the interior of the hive will adtheir heads turned towards the entrance, the ex-mit of inspection, in very hot weather, large numtremity of their bodies slightly elevated and their bers of these ventilators will be found in regular wings in such rapid motion that they are almost files, in various parts of the hive, all busily engaas indistinct as the spokes of a wheel, in swift ged in their laborious employment. If the enrotation on its axis. A brisk current of air may trance at any time is contracted, a speedy accesbe felt proceeding from the hive, and if a small sion will be made to the numbers, both inside piece of down be suspended by a thread, it will and outside; and if it is closed entirely, the heat be blown out from one part of the entrance, and of the hive will quickly increase, the whole colodrawn in at another. What are these bees ex-ny will commence a rapid vibration of their pecting to accomplish, that they appear so deep-wings, and in a few moments will drop lifeless ly absorbed in their fanning occupation, while from the combs, for want of air. busy numbers are constantly crowding in and out It has been proved by careful experiments that of the hive? and what is the meaning of this pure air is necessary not only for the respiration double current of air? To Huber we owe the of the mature bees, but that without it, neither first satisfactory explanation of these curious the eggs can be hatched, nor the larva developed. phenomena. These bees plying their rapid wings A fine netting of air-vessels covers the eggs; and in such a singular attitude, are performing the the cells of the larvæ are sealed over with a covimportant business of ventilating the hive; and ering which is full of air holes. In Winter, as this double current is composed of pure air rush- has been stated in the Chapter on Protection, ing in at one part, to supply the place of the foul bees, if kept in the dark, and neither too warm air forced out at another. By a series of the nor too cold, are almost dormant, and seem to most careful and beautiful experiments, Huber require but a small allowance of air; but even ascertained that the air of a crowded hive is al- under such circumstances, they cannot live enmost, if not quite, as pure as the atmosphere by entirely without air; and if they are excited by which it is surrounded. Now, as the entrance to being exposed to atmospheric changes, or by besuch a hive is often, (more especially in a state ing disturbed, a very loud humming may be of nature), very small, the interior air cannot be heard in the interior of their hives, and they need renewed without resort to some artificial means. quite as much air as in warm weather. If a lamp is put into a close vessel with only one small orifice, it will soon exhaust all the oxygen, and go out. If another small orifice is made, the same result will follow; but if by some device a

If at any time, by moving their hives, or in any other way, bees are greatly disturbed, it will be unsafe to confine them, especially in warm weather, unless a very free admission of air is

given to them, and even then, the air ought to | stituents of atmosphere, and to decide how large be admitted above, as well as below the mass of a proportion of oxygen is essential to the support bees, or the ventilators may become clogged with of life, and how rapidly the process of breathing dead bees, and the swarm may perish. Under converts this important element into a deadly close confinement, the bees become excessively poison. It has not, like Leibig, been able to heated, and the combs are often melted down. demonstrate that God has set the animal and When bees are confined to a close atmosphere, vegetable world, the one over against the other; especially if dampness is added to its injurious so that the carbonic acid produced by the breathinfluences, they are sure to become diseased; anding of the one, furnishes the aliment of the other; large numbers, if not the whole colony, perish from dysentery. Is it not under circumstances precisely similar, that cholera and dysentery prove most fatal to human beings? How often do the filthy, damp and unventilated abodes of the abject poor, become perfect lazar-houses to their wretched inmates?

I examined, last Summer, the bees of a new swarm which had been suffocated for want of air, and found their bodies distended with a yellow and noisome substance, just as though they had perishel from dysentery. A few were still alive, and instead of honey, their bodies were filled with this same disgusting fluid; though the bees had not been shut up, more than two hours.

In a medical point of view, I consider these facts as highly inter sting; showing as they do, under what circumstances, and how speedily, disease may be pr luced. In very

which, in turn, gives out its oxygen for the support of animal life; and that, in this wonderful manner, God has provided that the atmosphere shall, through all ages, be as pure as when it first came from His creating hand. But shame upon us! that with all our intelligence, the most of us live as though pure air was of little or no importance: while the bee ventilates with a scientific precision and thoroughness, that puts to the blush our criminal neglect.

To this it may be replied that ventilation in our case, cannot be had, without considerable expense. Can it be had for nothing, by the industrious bees? Those busy insects, which are so indefatigably plying their wings, are not engaged in idle amusement; nor might they, as some would-be utilitarian may imagine, be better employed in gathering honey, or in superintend ing some other department in the economy of the hive. They are at great expense of time hot weather, if thin hives are exposed and labor, supplying the rest of the colony with to the sun's rays, the bees are excessively an-pure air, so conducive in every way, to their noyed by the intense heat, and have recourse to health and prosperity. the most powerful ventilation, not merely to I trust that I shall be permitted to digress, for keep the air of the hive pure, but to carry off, as a short time, from bees to men, and that the much as possible, its internal warmth. They remarks which I shall offer on the subject of venoften leave the interior of the hive, almost in a tilation in human dwellings, may make a deeper body, and in thick masses, cluster on the outside, impression, in connection with the wise arangenot simply to escape the close heat within, but ments of the bee, than they would, if presented to guard their combs against the danger of boing in the shape of a mere scientific discussion; and dissolved. At such times they are particularly that some who have been in the habit of considcareful not tluster on the combs containing ering all air, except in the particular of temperascaled hy; for as most of these combs have ture, as about alike, may be thoroughly convinced not been lined with the c coons of the larvæ, they of their mistake. are, for this reas, as well as on account of the extra amount of wax used for their covers, much more liable to be melted, than the breeding cells.

Apiarians have often noticed the fact, that as a general thing, the bees leave the honey cells almost entirely bare, as soon as they have sealed them ver; but it seems to have escaped their observation, that in hot weather, there is often an absolute necessity for such a course. In cool weather, on the contrary, the bees may often be found clustered among the sealed honey-combs, because there is then no danger of their melting down.

Recent statistics prove that consumption and its kindred diseases are most fearfully on the in- ' crease, in the Northern, and more especially in the New-England States; and that the general mortality of Massachusetts exceeds that of almost every other State in the Union. In these States, the tendency of increasing attention to manufacturing and mechanical pursuits, is to compel a larger and larger proportion of the population to lead an in-door life, and to breathe an atmosphere more or less vitiated, and thus unfit for the full development of vigorous health. The importance of pure air can hardly be over-estimated; indeed, the quality of the air we breathe, seems to exert Few things in the range of their wonderful an influence much more powerful, and hardly less instincts, are so well fitted to impress the mind direct, than the mere quality of our food. Those with their admirable sagacity, as the truly scien-who, by active exercise in the open air, keep their tific device, by which these wise little insects lungs saturated as it were with the pure element, ventilate their dwellings. I was on the point of saying that is was almost like human reason, when the painful and mortifying reflection presented itself to my mind that in respect to ventilation, the bee is immensely in advance of the great mass of those who consider themselves as rational beings. It has, to be sure, no ability to make an elaborate analysis of the chemical con

can cat almost anything with impunity; while those who breathe the sorry apology for air which is to be found in so many habitations although they may live upon the most nutritious diet, and avoid the least excess, are incessantly troubled with head-ache, dyspepsia, and various mental as well as physical sufferings. Well may such persons, as they witness the healthy forms

and happy faces of so many of the hardy sons of necessary to the support of life, he could not toil, exclaim with the old Latin poet

Oh dura messorum illia!

It is with the human family very much as it is with the vegetable kingdom: take a plant or tree, and shut it out from the pure air and the invigorating light, and though you may supply it with an abundance of water, and the very soil which, by the strictest chemical analysis, is found to contain all the elements that are essential to its vigorous growth, it will still be a puny thing, ready to droop if exposed to a summer's sun, or to be prostrated by the first visitation of a winter's blast. Compare, now, this wretched abortion with an oak or maple which has grown upon the comparatively sterile mountain-pasture, and whose branches, in summer, are the pleasant resort of the happy songsters, while, under its mighty shade, the panting herds drink in a refreshing coolness. In winter it laughs at the mighty storms which wildly toss its giant branches in the air, and which serve only to exercise the limbs of the sturdy tree, whose roots, deep intertwined among its native rocks, enable it to bid defiance to anything short of a whirlwind or tornado.

have lived there an hour without suffocation; I have frequently thought that if the occupants of the rooms I have been describing, could only know as much, they would be in almost similar danger.

Bad air, one would think, is bad enough: but when it is heated and dried to an excessive degree, all its original vileness is stimulated to greater activity, and thus made doubly injurious by this new element of evil. Not only our private houses, but our churches and school-rooms, our railroad cars, and all our places of public assemblage are, to a most lamentable degree, either unprovided with any means of ventilation, or, to a great extent, supplied with those which are so wretchedly deficient that they

That ultimate degeneracy must surely follow such entire disregard of the laws of health cannot be doubted; and those who imagine that the physical stamina of a peoole can be undermined, and yet that their intellectual, moral and religigious health will suffer no eclipse or decay, know very little of the intimate connection between body and mind, which the Creator has seen fit to establish.

of doors: but alas, alas! for the poor women! In the very land where women are treated with more universal deference and respect than in any other, and where they so well deserve it, there often, no provision is made to furnish them with that great element of health, cheerfulness and beauty, heaven's pure, fresh air.

To a population who. for more than two-thirds of the year, are compelled to breathe an atmosphere heated by artificial means, the question how can this air be made, at a moderate expense, to The men may, to a certain extent, resist the resemble as far as possible the purest ether of the injurious influences of foul air; as their employskies, is (or, as I should rather say, ought to be)ments usually compel them to live much more out a question of the utmost interest. When open fires were used, there was no lack of pure air, whatever else might have been deficient. A capacious chimney carried up, through its insatiable throat, immense volumes of air, to be replaced by the pure element, whistling in glee, through every crack, crevice, and key-hole. Now, the house-builder and stove-maker, with In Southern climes, where doors and windows but few exceptions,* seem to have joined hands may be safely kept open for a large part of the in waging a most effectual warfare against the year, pure air is cheap enough, and can be obunwelcome intruder. By labor-saving machinery, tained without any special effort: but in Norththey contrive to make the one, the joints of his ern latitudes, where heated air must be used for wood-work, and the other, those of his iron-work, nearly three quarters of the year, the neglect of tighter and tighter, and if it were possible for ventilation is fast causing the health and beauty them to accomplish fully their manifest design, of our women to disappear. The pallid cheek, they would be able to furnish rooms almost as fa- or the hectic flush, the angular form and distorttal to life as "the Black Hole of Calcutta." But ed spine, the debilitated appearance of a large in spite of all that they can do, the materials will portion of our females, which to a stranger, shrink, and no fuel has yet been found, which would seem to indicate that they were just rewill burn without any air, so that sufficient venti- covering from a long illness, all these indications lation is kept up, to prevent such deadly occur- of the lamentable absence of physical health, to rences. Still they are tolerably successful in keep-say nothing of the anxious care-worn faces and ing out the unfriendly element; and by the use premature wrinkles, proclaim in sorrowful voices, of huge cooking-stoves with towering ovens and our violation of God's physical laws, and the other salamander-contrivances, the little air that dreadful penalty with which He visits our transcan find its way in, is almost as thoroughlygressions. cooked as are the various delicacies destined for Our people must, and I have no doubt that

the table.

On reading an account of a runaway slave, who was for a considerable time, closely boxed up, a gentleman remarked that if the poor fellow had only known that a renewal of the air was

The beautiful open or Franklin-stoves, manufactured by Messrs. Jagger, Treadwell, & Perry, of Albany, deserve the highest commendation: they

economize fuel as well as life and health.

eventually they will be most thoroughly aroused to the necessity of a vital reform on this important subject. Open stoves, and cheerful grates and fire-places will again be in vogue with the mass of the people, unless some better mode of warming shall be devised, which, at less expense, shall make still more ample provision for the constant introduction of fresh air. Houses will be constructed, which, although more expensive