Pound sterling (avoir-du-poids) Land Measure.-Line........

Mille..... League.

.......

10,000 centifoot.

100 centifoot.

100 shillings-or 10,000 grains. 100 feet. Square 10,000 feet. 1,000 feet.

....

10,000 feet.

Scale of weights and measures.-1, 24, 5, 10, 25, 50 - 100.

Ton.

PIGMY TRIBES.

The smallest mammiferous animal yet known is the minute shrew, (sorex exilis) which weighs but half a drachm; the smallest animal of the stag kind is the pigmy musk, the legs of which are but two or three inches long, and no thicker than a tobacco-pipe; and the smallest of birds is the trochilus minimus, a species of humming-bird, which weighs when dried no more than thirty grains!

LARGE MOTH.

A friend at Arracan informs us, that he has caught a moth, which measures from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other, ten inches. Both wings are beautifully variegated with the brightest colours. Unless we are mistaken, this is the largest moth upon record, exceeding in dimensions the largest in the British Museum, which, we believe, measures about 9 inches from tip to tip. -Madras Paper.

43

ROUGH NOTES ON TOWN,

By a Traveller.

(Communicated for the Mechanics' Magazine,)

All the entrances to London are with one exception architecturally insignificant and mean. Whether you enter it from the north or south, east or west, by land or water, (we must wait yet awhile it seems before we can say by air also) 'tis all the same. There is nothing grand in the way of building; nothing to fix the gaze of the passenger, or to excite his expectation; nothing to denote to the eye that you are on the threshold of the Queen of Cities

Tis a spacious river, to be sure, the Thames; but what is any river, however spacious, without banks of corresponding magnificence? All the way up from Greenwich to Westminster Bridge, a distance of about six miles, there are not half a dozen buildings of magnitude; neither is there any road-way on either side for carriages, horsemen, or pedestrians; only one or two bits of terrace, fronting the stream, such as the Adelphi. It seems as if the people of London, proud as they affect to be of their noble river, only liked to look at it askance down their dingy streets and alleys.

I am told this would not have been the case, could Sir Christopher Wren have had his own way at the rebuilding of London, after the great fire. Pity, that Sir Christopher should have lived in an age so little able to appreciate his enlarged views. Pity (almost) that so admirable an opportunity for a great improvement was not reserved for other times! (I cannot in sincerity say our own).

There was a great talk after the Peace, of making Hyde Park Corner the grand entrance to London; there was to be a triumphal arch, triumphal statues, and I don't know what, all triumphal. The spot too the summit of a long and broad ascent-was admirably adapted for all these things. But what have fourteen years, and an expenditure little short of £100,000,

actually produced? No triumphal arch at all-across the road at least, which was the thing meant; only on one side a gate-house or lodge to an unseen palace, situated somewhere behind in the purlieus of Pimlico and on the other, a gateway to Hyde Park, within which an illshapen piece of nudity called a statue of Achilles, is seen holding up a shield for daws to peck at. Talk of " triumphal" erections! Two sidegates and a naked Greek to watch them!! One is almost tempted to say, that if such be the triumphs of peace, the sooner war comes again the better.

To be sure, there is no odious tollgate to obstruct your progress at this point as heretofore; and herein doubtless there is consolation. The authorities have discreetly taken care that there shall be nothing to prevent people of taste and delicacy, hurrying as quickly as possible, past the oddities and nudities of the place.

Yet, to speak truth, there are two or three things in the details of Hyde Park Corner, worth lingering a few minutes to examine. The Royal Lodge, considered by itself, and not as part of a grand entrance to a great city, is altogether a beautiful structure; and both on this building and on the opposite gateway there are some masterly sculptures by Henning.*

Turn we now to the other entrances to this mighty Babel. Which shall we pronounce the most interesting to the lover of the picturesque? Whitechapel and its shambles or Shoreditch and its rags? The sombre and crowded Borough, or that paradise of Costermongers, St. George's Fields? Tyburn Corner is only a little better than Hyde Park Corner, and the City Road not nearly so good. The 66

one exception"-the only

Since these notes were penned, the house of the Duke of Wellington, which adjoins Hyde Park Gate, has been rebuilt in a very noble style; and on the opposite side of the road, a little lower down, a new St. George's Hospital is in the course of erection. Both unquestionably redeeming features; for which however we are indebted not to national committees of taste, but to individual spirit.

44

one to this general insignificance and meanness, is the entrance by Blackfriars Bridge. A straight and spacious road of a mile in length, flanked by houses generally of a firstrate description, leads by a gradual and easy ascent to the summit of the bridge, and when you reach that summit but not till then-London bursts on your view in all its plenitude of domes, spires, towers, turrets, bridges, shipping, &c. Were the road onwards only cleared from the buildings of Fleet Market (which it will now soon be) and extended over Saffron Hill to Spa Fields, (as has been often proposed) there would be nothing in any city I have ever seen, to vie with the view from the summit of Blackfriars Bridge, in extent, variety, and grandeur.

The road which leads to Waterloo Bridge is as long, as straight, and as broad as that by which you reach Blackfriars; but the houses which have been hitherto erected on this line, are mostly of mean elevation. The view of the city too from Waterloo Bridge, is by no means so good, being less central, and by far less comprehensive. But enough perhaps of approaches; let us now walk into the city itself, and take note of what the spirit of improvement is effecting within it.

And, first, as we have spoken of the removal of the Old Fleet Market, let us see what is to come in its place.

The New Fleet Market, or as it is proposed to call it, Farringdon Market, in honour of the ward in which it is situated, has been constructed after the plans and under the direction of a gentleman who holds the appointment of City Architect, and who is said to have previously travelled all over Europe, at the expense of the Corporation, in search of models for his guidance. It is unreasonable perhaps, to look for much at any time from persons who are men of talent ex officio; still it might have been expected that an individual who has been at so much pains to make him self master of the task assigned to him, and who has experienced the encouragement of such generous and confiding patrons, would have succeeded a little better than the City

Architect has done in the present instance. The market is of a quadrangular form; three sides are occupied by shops, with open double roofs in the Italian style; the fourth is left open; and so far there is no fault to be found with the general plan. But it so happens, that the ground is an inclined plane, with a rise greater than that of Ludgate Hill; and in the management of this locality, the City's travelled Architect has blundered egregiously. Instead of making the chief entrance to the market at the bottom of the plane, as it ought naturally to have been, he has been pleased to make it at one of the sides! Hitherto it has been a received rule in architecture, that the two wings of every building should be on the same level: but here we have one wing some twenty feet higher than the other. This new style of the City Architect, not only looks ill, but will be found productive of serious inconvenience. The market-carts and waggons, which might have entered at once and with ease from the broad street that will be formed by the removal of the old market, will have to go up a narrow street called Stonecutter Street, (narrow for such a purpose) and then turn at a sharp angle into the market-as aukward a mode of entry for heavily-loaded conveyances as it is possible to conceive.

Again-although, as before stated, three sides of the square are occupied by shops, only one range of these shops, that on the lower side, have open fronts towards the square of the market. The shops on the two other sides have not even windows looking into the square; only small gratings near the roof of each, for the sake of ventilation. The dull, prison-like effect which this blocking up of two sides of the quadrangle has on the general aspect of the market, may readily be conceived.

It may be said in defence of this arrangement, that it became necessary in consequence of these ranges of shops being double ranges. But could not. the shops have been placed back to back, as well as face to face? Would it not have been better, on every ac count, that they should have been so? Both air and light-two matters of the

first consequence in a market for fresh provisions would have been gained by such a reversal of the arrangement.

Over the centre of the range of shops fronting the entrance to the market, there is a turret with a clock in it. I am tempted here to give a little sketch of this turret, to shew for the sake of what prettinesses Corporations Architects will journey into foreign lands.

45

picked up so nice a design. I hope to be excused, however, for pointing out to the gentleman a fact of which he seems not to be aware that keystones are like arches, intended to give strength, and not even when of a Roman nose shape, to protrude from the buildings to which they belong. To make this grave matter a little clearer, I must beg leave to have again recourse to my pencil.

100

Continental, this decidedly is, but very paltry notwithstanding; a genuine production of that very classical school of which every German toy-shop furnishes an abundance of specimens.

Apropos of this turret; although the general plan adopted in these buildings has been to raise the roofs on arches, it seems that in the case of the turret, the Architect was tempted to try whether a straight course of bricks would not be as strong as a curved one. Luckily, the work broke down in the course of the experiment. Corporation Architects should read as well as travel.

In addition to the large side-entrance to the market, there are a number of smaller ones at different parts for, customers-one of which fronting the old market is surmounted (for the show's-sake it would seem) by rather an elegant gateway. One wonders where the City's Wren could have

The fault here must, I presume, be evident. When such a scroll shape is given to a key-stone, it is usually in order to impart to it a greater appear ance of stability; but the stability is wasted in supporting nothing in this instance. (To be continued.)

ON THE THEORY OF THE UNIVERSAL VITALITY OF MATTER.

[We published in our 273rd Number, a letter from Mr. W. H. Far'quhar, in which, after stating certain objections that occurred to him a priori to the theory of the universal vitality of matter broached in France by Dr. Edwards and others, and since advocated in this country by Mr. Brown, he intimated that he had "in conjunction with one or two scientific friends, a mode of scrutiny in contemplation which would completely put the reality of Mr. Brown's discoveries to the test." We have been in anxious expectation of receiving the result of this scrutiny, and hope we may still be favoured with it. Observing, in the mean while, that a contemporary journal (the Literary Gazette) has just contributed the aid of its ex

46.

tensive circulation to give wider currency to the speculations of Mr. Brown, without the addition of a single qualifying or cautionary remark; we are induced to republish, by way of counteraction, a very able article which has appeared on the opposite side of the subject, in a recent Number of the American Journal of Science. We give as much as we can spare room for this week; the rest shall appear in our next.-ED. M. M.]

The mystery of life, or the cause of sensation and voluntary motion, has been a subject of the deepest interest in all ages of the world. The curious and the learned have instituted the most diligent inquiries to discover whether the hidden principle is an emanation from the divinity, that is, a supernatural gift; or whether it resides in the organized structure, by some particular disposition and consent of parts; or whether cach particle possesses inherent powers of life in its separate state, and thus spontaneously arises from decaying forms to engage in new scenes of activity.

Within a few years, from some investigations with the microscope, a theory has arisen, which maintains that this mysterious principle is inherent in the elementary forms of matter, and that they assume new shapes, and revive in their primitive activity, whenever death changes their aspects.

These doctrines, adopted in their full extent, restore the dogmas of the metempsychosis, and the chances of Democritus, and, by vulgar induction, end in atheism. Without the dignity of that system of which Epicurus, Lucretius, Pliny and Lucian were disciples, they fall into the materialism of Leibnitz, who considers each monad or atom possessed of perception and appetite. This appetency produces an internal principle of alteration-hence the sympathies and affinities, the combinations and the forms of bodies."

The Epicurean theory, although it deemed matter eternal and insensate, and that its particles, by jostling for ever, had at length adhered in masses, ultimately forming the world itself, inhabited by animals, and clothed with vegetation; yet, it taught that it was operated upon by an immaterial divinity, and that life was imparted by a divine invisible power, who ruled over all.

In later times, Sir Isaac Newton built a noble superstructure upon the principle asserted in the Mosaic account of

the creation-that all things were made by an omnipotent, immaterial, intelligent being; that he established those immutable laws by which the universe is regulated and governed; and that he imparted animation to creatures by bestowing upon them the breath of life.

But Dr. H. M. Edwards, an English physician in Paris, and Dumas, Dutro chet, Prevost, and others, have ascer tained to their own satisfaction, by some elaborate discoveries with the microscope, that the elementary, organic, con stituent parts of animal and vegetable bodies, inherently and independently possess the vital principle; that spirit of life, which has hitherto been veiled in mystery. Edwards describes the animal body as "built of animalcules, as a pyramid is built of bricks," being a congeries of countless millions of organized units, “each capable of living in a separate state, and perhaps exercising the functions of individual life, while incorporated in one being." He teaches that these monads or globules, being of the o' part of an inch in diameter, by one arrangement form the various tissues and fibres of the animal structure; and by another arrangement, spring up in the glowing colours and varieties of vegetable life, and that when death passes upon them, and decomposition separates the parts, elements which were before parts of some animal, become vegetables, or if it so may chance, vegetable atoms awake to life as animals.

These inferences rest on the following experiments:

Dr. Edwards examined a piece of animal substance macerated in water, and immediately perceived a number of white vesicles moving about with great rapidity. These he considered to be animalcules of the tribe monades. He observed that these monads lost all power of motion when the water evaporated. "If water were added immediately after the cessation of motion, they again began to move, but if allowed to remain dry for a short time, they never recovered the faculty of locomotion." He also observed, that "whenever they adhered to the sides of the glass, they exhibited every appearance of vegetable life.”*

The same experimenter macerated a leaf of the horse-chesnut, and " as soon as the particles became detached from the margin of the leaf, they were seen

* Westminster Review, No. 13; Jan. 1827.