LADY Reade, of Shipton in Oxfordshire, when advanced in years, devoted all her time, and a considerable portion of her property, to her aviary, which was the most extensive and the most diversified of any in this country. When she travelled betwen London and Shipton, she attracted almost as much attention as monarchy itself. At the inns where she stopped, the gates were usually shut, to afford her an opportunity of disembarking and landing her cargo of parrots, monkies, and other living attendants, who were stowed in and about her carriages.

Anecdotes of Longevity.

JOHN JACOB.

In one of the foreign journals, published in the month of Oct. 1790, we find the following account of an old man, who had attained to the great age of 118:

"The phenomenon of a life extended beyond the ordinary bounds, interests us for two reasons; because it prolongs our hopes, and excites our reflections.

We imagine that we see nature suspending its general laws, and performing a miracle, which we all flatter ourselves may be ope-. rated in our favour. Beside this, we affix to the fond idea of a

long existence, the striking ideas of strength and antiquity, and we behold a veteran, who has withstood the power of years, with the same respect and veneration, as a column defaced by time, but still raising its head amid surrounding ruins. In a journey, which I lately made, I twice en-. joyed this spectacle, but in a dif-, ferent manner. Being at the castle of St. Julian, situated in the bosom of the mountains of the Franche-Comté, and not far distant from those of Jura and the Alps, I imagined that I was walking in the path of ages, and I thought I perceived marks of their passage in that multitude of rocks, half undermined, which seemed to nod on their summits, and to threaten destruction by their fall. There, formerly, the Roman, the Gallic, and the Teutonic armies passed. While I was admiring the antiquity of this place, and, on this occasion observing the contrast which is always formed between the short duration of man, and the long duration of things, I was told of an old man, aged 118, who lived at the distance of a league from St. Julian, on the estate of Montaigu. Thinking that this wonder was exaggerated, as generally happens, I wished to examine the truth of it, and the clergyman of St. Julian, and that of Montaigu, conducted me to the house in which the old man lodged. When we arrived, we found him seated on a stone-bench at the door where he every day goes to repose, or rather to revive himself in the rays of the sun. When

we first saw him he was asleep. His sleep seemed to be very profound; his respiration was easy; his pulse beat very regularly; the veins of his forehead were of a lively and transparent blue colour, and his whole appearance was remarkably calm and venerable. Hair, white as snow, fell carelessly over his neck, and was scattered over his cheeks, upon which were displayed the vivid tints of youth and healthfulness. I for some time surveyed, with the utmost attention, this old man, while enjoying his sleep; but when those around awakened him, in order that he might speak to me, he appeared to be ess blooming and less beautiful; that is to say, not so fresh when awake as when asleep. He could with difficulty lift his eyelids, and in the open day, he scarcely receives light enough to direct his steps. I found also that he was deaf, and that he did not hear, unless when one spoke in his ears with a loud voice. He had been in this state only for about three years. At the age of 115, he seemed to be no more than eighty, and at 110 he could perform almost any labour. In the meadows he cut grass as the head of the mowers, whom he astonished by his vigour, and animated by his activity; and at table he distinguished himself, no less by his appetite, than by his songs, which he sung with a full and strong voice. At the same age, having conceived a desire of revisiting the place of his nativity, he repaired thither at a

time when the inhabitants carried on a lawsuit against their lord, respecting a cross which he had erected at a great distance from boundaries till then acknowledged by custom and tradition, and which consequently would have

deprived them of a considerable portion of common. When the old man arrived, he heard mention made of this process, and as he had been a witness of the past, he became also a judge of the present. Having conducted a great number of the inhabitants, who accompanied him, to a high pile of stones, situated at the distance of a league, he began to remove them, and discovered the ancient and real cross, which had occasioned the lawsuit, and which also brought it to a conclusion.

"This old man, we are told, whose name is John Jacob, was born at Charme, a bailiwick of Orgelet, on the 10th of November, 1669. Mr. de Caumartin de Sainte-Ange, Intendant of Franche-Comté, having in the year 1785 heard of him, and having satisfied himself respecting his age, and learned that he had need of assistance, proposed to the minister of the finances to grant him a pension of 200 livres, to enable him to terminate his long career in peace, and to add to it a present of 1200 more. This proposal was agreed to in the month of September 1785, and since that period he has enjoyed this mark of beneficence conferred upon old age. On the 20th of October, last year, he was conducted to Paris, and presented to the king, who viewed him with equal attention and surprise, and who treated with much kindness this extraordinary man, who had been a subject to Louis XIV. and Louis XV. as well as to himself. Though reduced almost to a state of vegetation, he still vegetates with pleasure; and he has retained three passions vanity, anger, and avarice, which are those, undoubtedly, that continue longest; but with these he

'By the manner in which he blessed the king, it appeared that he had a heart still young and tender. This old man was to be seen at Paris in November 1789, in the new street called des Bons Enfans, in the passage to the Palais-royal."

MARY O'BRIEN.

THERE was living in 1813, at the house of Mr. J. Mathews, gardener, Armagh, a woman, named Mary O'Brien, aged 103.-Four generations of her lineal descendants reside with her. There is a probability, from her health and strength, that she may live to see her granddaughter's grandchild, when she may be enabled to say, "Rise up daughter, go to your daughter, for your daughter's daughter has got a daughter." Old Jenkins, the Englishman, lived to the vast age of 169. It is a curious speculation, that if thirty-three men were each to attain the same age of Jenkins, one coming into the world at the precise moment his immediate predecessor left it, the first of these venerable personages might have shaken hands with Adam, and the remotest of thirty-five such persons would have been coeval with the world.

RUSSIA.

THE tables of longevity published for the year 1817, in the Russian empire, give the following results:

Amongst 826,561 persons who have died, all belonging to the Greek church, there appear to have been as follows:

83 do. 784 do.

100 do.

The banks of Lake Chainplain, in the United States of America, afford an instance of longevity which has seldom been equalled since the period of holy writ; the individual alluded to is a German by birth, aged 135 years This venerable character belonged to Queen Anne's guards, at her coronation in the year 1702, at which time he was eighteen years old; and having served to the end of the war, he then went to America. He is still robust, and very strong-he sees and hears perfectly, and still preserves his hair; he has a soldierlike air, and is proud of his temperance, in having always abstained from spirituous liquors. His youngest son is twenty-seven years of age.

Varieties.

THE OAK.

THIS useful tree grows to such a surprising magnitude, that were there not many well authenticated instances of this in our own country, they would cer tainly appear difficult of belief. In the 18th volume of the Gentleman's Magazine, we have the dimensions of a leaf twelve inches in length, and seven in breadth, and all the leaves of the same tree were equally large. On the estate of Woodhall, purchased in 1775 by Sir Thomas Rumbold, Bart. an oak was felled which measured twenty-four feet round, and sold for 431.: and we are also told of one in Millwood forest, near Chaddesley, which

was in full verdure in winter, getting its leaves again after the autumn ones had fallen off.

Gough, in his edition of Camden, thus describes the Greendale oak which had been noticed in Evelyn's Sylva. "The Greendale oak with a road cut through it still bears one great branch. Such branches as have been cut or broken off are guarded from wet by lead. The diameter of this tree at the top whence the branches issue is fourteen feet two inches; at the surface of the ground eleven and a half feet; circumference there thirty-five feet; height of the trunk fiftythree feet; height of the arch 107, width six feet."

HENRIETTA OF ENGLAND.

HENRIETTA, the daughter of Charles the First, and the first wife of Monsieur, brother to the King of France, was poisoned. On the morning of her death d'Effeat, a creature of the Chevalier Lorraine, who had been driven from the Duke's service by Madame, was seen rubbing the inside of a cup with paper, out of which Madame was accustomed to drink. About twelve o'clock she called for some endive water; after drinking it out of the cup, she cried out that she was poisoned. She was put to bed and expired in the greatest torments an hour or two after midnight. The poison must have been of the most violent and subtile nature, for the cup was obliged to be passed through the fire before it could be again used with safety. The ghost of Madame was said to wander for a considerable time after about a fountain in the park of St. Cloud; and a laquais of Mareschal Clerambault, who saw a white figure

near the spot one night, which rose up at his approach, fled in the utmost affright towards the house, protested most solemnly that he had seen the shade of Madame, took to his bed and died.

REMARKABLE WELL.

ON the 19th of February, 1815, a paper by Dr. Storer was read to the Royal Society, giving an account of a well dug in Bridlington harbour, Yorkshire, within high water-mark. The bottom of the harbour is a bed of clay, through which they bored to the bed below; a tinned copper pipe was then put into the circular cavity, and the whole properly secured. The cavity was soon filled with pure water. When the tide rises to within about

fifty inches of the mouth of this well, the fresh water begins to flow over, and the quantity flowand the flow continues till the ing increases as the tide rises, tide sinks more than fifty inches below the mouth of the well. in waves similar to the waves of During storms, the water flows the sea.

Mr. Milne accounts for the flowing of this singular well in this way the whole bay, he conceives, has a clay bottom. The water between the clay and the rock can flow out nowhere

As

except at the termination of the clay, which is under the sea. the tide rises, the obstruction to this mode of escape of the water will increase. Hence less will make its way below the clay, and of course it will rise and flow out of the mouth of the well.

PRESENTIMENT OF DEATH.

IN 1813, Mrs. Eagen, wife of a dealer in marine stores, of Little Drury-lane, went to an opposite neighbour's and expressed an

earnest desire to see his eldest daughter. On being informed she was from home, she appeared highly disappointed, and said, although she was then in perfect health, she had a strong presentiment that she should not long survive; this was, of course, treated with levity. She then took the hand of another daughter, and a niece of her neighbour, saying, "God bless you girls, I shall never see you again." She next called on a Mrs. Chaplain, who works for Morgan and Saunders, in Catherine-street, and informed her she was shortly to die, and requested her to perform the accustomed offices on such occasions. She likewise took leave

of a woman who keeps a chandler's shop near Clare-market. The same evening she spent cheerfully, in company with her husband and a female friend, and

retired to rest at her usual hour. She slept well in the night, nor did she complain of indisposition

when her husband rose at seven in the morning; but, about eight, on attempting to rise, she was seized with a violent vomiting; this was succeeded by an acute pain in the head, which speedily became so alarming, that two medical practitioners were called to her aid, but without effect, as she continued in a state of insensibility, and lingered until seven in the evening, when she expired.

The Scrap Book.

HUGH WILLIAMS.

In the year 1664, on the 5th of December, a boat on the Menai, crossing that strait, with eighty-one passengers, was upset, and only one passenger, named