crets, l'auteur à disparu, et on ne le Votre très humble et très obéissant (Signé) MENURET, Med. TRANSLATION. Sir, I eagerly embrace the opportu nity of communicating any thing which nay afford you pleasure. I have made, but without success, every possible inquiry to discover the author and the depot of the Eau medicinale d'Huson, which you desire for your gouty friend.-Whether from the well founded disrepute of the medicine, or from the intentions of government against unknown medicines, the author has disappeared, and neither he nor his medicine is to be found in the various houses from which he has suctessively announced them. I ought to add that, (after the inquiries which, from the interest you take in them, I have been induced to make,) this pretended gout medicine is a sharp and violent pur gative, which has been of use to some few phlegmatic persons, but has produced the most pernicious effects to the greater part of those who have used it. I have thought it right not to delay communieating this information, in order to prove By readiness to serve you, and nothing stall hinder me from continuing my inquiries, to give you (if possible) more ampie satisfaction. Your very humble and obedient (Signed) MENURET, Physician. To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. upon it. It seems to me a very forced application of the term. Agriculture is employed in raising living natural produce, vegetable and animal, for the use of man; while Manufacture is employed in converting dead natural produce to bis use. The distinction is sufficiently obvious: one seconds nature; the other gives forms and combinations, and powers and effects, which arise from the new arrangement which is given to the mate rials. It might as well be said, that manufacture is a branch of agriculture; as being a method of employing the soil, or its produce. Both theoretically and practically, agriculture and manufactures form the two great clear and perfectly distinct divisions, in the exercise of human industry, for human comfort and improvement. There is room and occupation abundantly in this island for both. And it is not the business of politics to favour either in prejudice of the other. There is still another and important Manufacture contributes distinction. nothing directly to the food of man, any more than agriculture does directly to his clothing. Manufacture gives a value to commodities, which, or the money which they obtain, may be exchanged for food. Agriculture encourages and improves the materials which may be converted into clothing, or the produce which will purchase clothing. But, directly, agriculture feeds,-manufacture clothes and lodges, us. As to the question of profit, the comparison, in a national view, cannot be duly made without considering the prin ciples and nature of public national profit. It is not that which brings the greatest sum to an individual, which is therefore necessarily the most profitable to a community: it may even be abso., lutely the reverse. AS ROUSSEAU, who excels in every thing, has stated, the price of absolute necessaries can never be permanently very high: for it has its natural limit in the general ability to purchase them. But the profit of a na tion, in true politics, consists in food for the body, together with its other neces sry provision of fire and clothing; food for the mind in the arts and sciences; and those pleasures which contribute to the personal happiness of the individual, and to social well-being. Nothing is national wealth farther than it promotes some of these objects. The mines of Mexico and Peru might pour into a nation, and yet it might be in a state of the It is certainly a great commendation peculiar to agriculture, that it directly supplies food: but, in a prosperous state of society, population will outrun, and ought soon to outrun, any possible agricultural improvement on a given space. Industry, therefore, must send forth its produce to supply the deficiency. And it is idle, and worse than idle, to attempt either to check population, positively or -negatively; or to speak, in the state of society at which we have long arrived, either of agriculture or manufactures as independent on each other. A nation which is neither agricultural nor commercial, can live only, as a barbarous state, by plunder. A nation that is, would perpetually improve its means of subsistence, were it not that its own happiness lets in those evils which progressively undermine and destroy it. That the objects of agriculture are rapidly consumed, makes nothing against it while they are as rapidly reproduced. The wealth is not in the dead possession of an identical produce; but in the active use and enjoyment of that or similar produce. The national wealth from land under cultivation, consists wholly in the aggre gate of national health, energy, and subsistence, which it supplies. The ques tion, what centage it raises in the shape of interest to the owners upon a given capital, is quite immaterial; or rather, if the profit in this view is very high to the owners, it proves a deficiency of national subsistence. The comparison appears to me to be very ill applied, which endeavours to exalt the manufacturer above the agriculturist, by considering the latter is employed on the raw materials; the other on the refined. And it is inconsistent with the very argument itself, which treats agriculture as a species of manu facture. If so, then the agriculturist is attendant on a much higher, more com. plex, and refined specification than the miller; when he attends to the growth of his corn, from the seed to the leaf, the stalk and the ear, till it finally re-appears multiplied as seed again. benefit which it produces. National wealth is that aggregate of means, rightly employed, which subserves to the wellbeing of a nation. It is neither gold nor Bank-notes; it is neither wares nor soil; it is industry beneficially applied. Hence, the most prosperous war cannot be the proper permanent state of any nation. It is a great advantage of manufacture that it ministers to the arts and sciences; to the elegancies and exalted enjoyments of human nature; but it is a minister very liable to become corrupt and vitious, and to desert these ends for narrow, and sordid, and destructive ends. The guard against this mischief must be in the general diffusion of useful knowledge; which promises the esta blishment of a new and permanently blessed era in human society. great advantage of agriculture is, that it favours in its nature, health, strength, man, energy, the corporeal and moral good, of CAPEL LOFFT. Troston, Sept. 6, 1812. The For the Monthly Magazine. CONTINUATION of the ACCOUNT of the BRITISH MINERAL STRATA; By JOHN MIDDLETON, of LAMBETH. 8th. THE Fullers'-earth Sand, or Rei gate Sand. This formation lies and it generally rises to the surface withnext below the blue marl last described, in a mile of the precipice of chalk hills it is seen to do so on the south side of such hills in Surrey and Kent: and the north border of the downs in Sussex is in every respect similar; for there this sand crowned with chalk. These strata are lies under the same marl, and that is in the same relative situation in the Isle of Wight, and in Dorsetshire, in Hertfordshire, and other places. This sandy de position may be thus specified, 1. Sand, of a chesnut colour, containing ironstone in layers 2. Sand, of different tints, as if imperectly mixed with peat and some earth of a yellow 3. Sand, more yellow than the last colour 4. Sand, of a ruddy hue, and containing iron-stone 5. 35 feet, 15 feet. 15 feet. 15 feet. 6. Sand, the colour of pretty good moist sugar 15 feet. Sand, in four more beds of different tints, each of about 15 feet, is 60 feet. SE2 8 feet. 8. Same As to the comparative honour of the two employments, the honour of any occupation consists either in the powers of mind which it worthily employs, or in its direct immediate utility, or in the ag gregate of both: the national utility or profit of it consists in the national 7. A bed of black shiver By the addition of these figures we find that this formation, which is principally sand, is nearly 413 feet thick.* This stratum contains fullers'-earth of two or more colours, whereof one is brown, and another is a full blue, which are dug for the use of our manufactures and household purposes at Nutfield, in Surrey, in some parts of Kent, in Bedfordshire, and other places. I found it on the south side of the Isle of Wight, as well as in Alum bay, and at Swanage. *Strata below chalk in the Isle of Wight, seen in the cliffs in Blackgang Chine and Compton Chine. 1. Blue marl or clay well defined, 15 feet, whereof the lower part 2. Another 15-feet stratum of a 3. Sandstone, in compact rock, and of a chesnut colour 4. Blue clay, much like Number one, but containing alum, which appears on the surface of the section (cliff), of a fine yellow colour 5. Sand or sandstone, the colour of good moist sugar, 20 feet; incumbent on sand perfectly white, 20 feet Sand and sandstone in many beds, containing layers of ironstone, and varying in colour from white to brown and blue, All the upwards of 120 feet. low, level, and productive land along the coast near Brixton is formed of this stratum 7. Clay and sand in many layers Together 30 feet. 15 feet. 7. Sand, coloured like the very Memorandum of strata in a brick-field, a few hundred yards on the north-east side of Lymington, Hants: 1. Gravel, of considerable thick ness. 10 feet. 5 feet. 5 feet. S feet. 6. Clay, of a pale lead colour, said to contain the bones of animals 10 or 12 fect. 7. Sand, very white, dug to the depth of 8 or 10 feet, but not through it. A section of all the foregoing strata may be seen and measured in Swanage bav. The foregoing several thicknesses of blue mari, 30 feet; Reigate sand, 413 feet; and weald measures, 457 feet, being added together, exhibit strata to the depth of 900 feet below chalk. They are similar to the vertical and other strata in Alum bay, and to those near Blackgang Chine, St. Catherine's, Isle of Wight, as well as to the mineral earths in Lulworth Cove. The several beds of aluminous shiver contain sulphureous coal an inch or two thick, in many layers and patches. Such of these strata as contain alum probably have it in sutficient quantity for the profitable establishment of its manufactory. The alum appears on the face of such cliffs as contain the proper earth in the form of a bright yellow efflores cence. Immediately under the aluminous or weald measures lie a succession of strata which rise to the surface in Purbeck, and in a state of decomposition form the soil of that part of the county of Dorset. 10th. The Purbeck strata are, 1. Various beds of stone brash, black shiver, and compact rock, in alternate layers. These are supposed to rise and form the surface near Handcross, and in a line east and west of that place in Sussex, and also from Swanage to Durlstone bay, in Dorechire. At the latter place This seems to be the stratum which near Petworth has obtained the name of Sussex marble. Their exterior appcarance is the same, and the shells are of similar size in each. In Sussex this stone is quarried three or four miles north of Petworth, between North Chapel and Kirdford, about two miles east of the road. It is a mass of small shells, cemented together by clay of a dirty grey colour. It has not been dug for many years in any. greater quantity than a block or two at a time. The rock lies eight or ten feet below the surface, and it has been much dug formerly to be burnt to lime; in which manner it is supposed a block of superior stone was occasionally met with, and that was set apart for the mason. The present Mr. Burgess, a mason at Petworth, has made several chimney pieces of this stone, but he did it by cutting up large old mantles and jambs, not from stone recently raised from the quarry. Lord Egremont had a small cart-load of it dug in the summer of 1812, and it now lies among other building materials near his lordship's house at Petworth. This stone is known to be so much in layers, and so liable to break, that it is difficult to make, it into any thing that is not rather bulky;' even in sawing it frequently breaks off and falls to pieces. The quarry is eight or ten miles north of the South Downs, and if the stone was of any value it may probably be met with not much under the surface near Handcross, and in a line east and west of that place. 3. Stone, not esteemed of any va 7. Various layers of stone, in low estimation and black shiver 8. New Vien, a bed of good and free-working stone, raised and shipped at Durlstone bay for London 60 feet. 5 feet. 11 feet. 3 feet. 20 feet. 5 feet. In Durlstone bay the quarries are only worked worked to this depth, owing to the following beds of stone lying under the sea at that place. But a little more westward is Hawcomb, alias Tilley Whim Quarry; and, as the strata ascend in that direction, we there meet with the following additional layers: 9. Many beds of stone, in low estimation, and black shiver, lie under the New Vien. These the quarry-men call ragstone, and they are in thickness about 100 feet. Purbeck strata continued, but the following five numbers are equally applica ble to the Isle of Portland: 10. Cinder at Purbeck is the same tleman much satisfaction to learn, that thirteen out of the eighteen errors he enumerates (for I do not conceive wagons for waggons of any material consequence, even if it can be termed incorrect,) were detected after a few copies only had been distributed, and that they were immediately corrected. If therefore Mr. Copsley refers to any subsequent edition of the Oxford stereotype, he will find the volume contains only one error of conse quence, this is at Proverbs, c. vi. v. 11, travelleth for travaileth, and I have no doubt but this also will be rendered correct in every future impression. Few volumes are more carefully printed than those which issue from the Oxford press; nor can one error be considered as a proof of any very great negligence in a volume containing eleven hundred and 10 or 12 feet. sixty closely printed pages. rock as Roach at Portland. This is a stratum of marine shells, mostly fragments of oyster shells, in a state of hard and heavy 41. Purbeck Portland, or Portland stone, in two or three beds, whereof the lowest is generally the best; of this stone great numbers of rick-stands and troughs to hold water were being prepared at Purbeck in the summer of 1812, from 30 to 40 feet. 12. Many layers of similar stone, 25 feet. 22 feet. 20 feet. This stone in 1812 was set thickly with nipple shells, and great numbers of them, recently emptied of their fish, were seen in the pastures above the cliffs, by which it is made manifest that the sea-gulls are partial to such food. Together, the Purbeck strata are 410 feet; or from the top of Leaning Vien (Sussex marble) to the bottom of these formations of stone is 330 feet. Several of the lower strata of those beds of stone contain numerous impressions of the Cornu Ammonis. This No. 14 is the lowest bed of stone above the sea in the two islands of Purbeck and Portland, therefore at this place I shall make a few cursory observations on Portland and its quarries. To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. A. W. To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. SIR, Na late number of your variously instructive work, are some new, and certainly well meant, remarks on some of the London charities. I shall make no apology for troubling you with a few thoughts which have occurred to me on the perusal of them; for such speculations, beside instruction in the practice of rational philanthropy, afford also more easy and impressive lessons in the science of morals and political economy, than the laboured effusions of pure didactic philosophy. In the first place, I join my most earnest wishes with those of several of your correspondents, that some method were devised to save the lives of seamen wrecked in the neighbourhood of land. To give my own opinion, the proposal of the cork belt, though a simple contriv ance, by Conimon Sense, and the recommendation of the life-boat to be kept in every ship, by W. N., seems really more likely to attain this desirable end, than the complicated and difficult machinery for which Captain Manby was so liberally rewarded by Parliament, which has never yet been of any real use, in prac and will not likely ever be put tice. It is indeed surprising, that every great ship, at least, should not be pos sessed of a life-boat, and not absurdly *Mr. Cleghorn, inventor of the ice lifeboat, in a late pamphlet, advises the use of air-tight casks, which are always to be found in every ship; these, though rather un wieldy and unmanageable, may, no doubt, often answer this important purpose. trust |