that they had hung garlands of jasmine-buds upon her fair neck and softly rounded arms. She soon recovered, however,-recovered to smile on all around her; and as she raised her hand to her fair forehead in answer to the low salaams of the admiring crowd, she in her young heart thanked her patron goddess, the beautiful Bhowani, for all the love, and reverence, and honour, thus showered on the adopted daughter of the Goomsoor prince. * * The Meriah sacrifice! She had then learned the truth? For this had she been, in the smiling innocence of her childhood, purchased by Kurti Vas, the agent for the rite,—for this had she been gently nurtured through her girlhood, her beauties cherished, her graces cultivated,-for this had she been decked with gems, and paraded in her spotless purity before the eyes of all the people of that land: the truth had reached her; from the hour that Kurti Vas took her in his arms, in the court of the Soucar's house, in far Bombay, from that hour she had been training to become a sacrifice worthy the acceptance of the gods of Khond! A stranger she must have been, the laws required it; beautiful, or she would not be accepted; pure, or curses would follow the oblation;-and now the time was come, a lingering, cruel death awaited her: that night the sentence had been passed. The Meriah sacrifice! The young girl's heart beat high, as she admired the various beautiful items of her new toilette, pleasure and gratitude banishing for the time all other thoughts; and, when attired, glancing at her own lovely figure, rendered yet lovelier by the elegant folds of the delicate saree, so pure in tint, so fresh, so delicate, so soft in texture, marking, rather than concealing the charming outline of her graceful form, one desire only rested on the heart of the young beauty-that Dora, her own beloved, could see her now, beaming in the rich gifts of her indulgent patron. "Ah!" thought she, 66 he does him wrong; else how could he so love, so care for me, a stranger-a mere retainer on his bounty?" The cortège set forth. Toolsee Bhye was seated alone in a native carriage, open on every side, and drawn by milk-white bullocks, gaily wreathed with flowers; above their broad foreheads waved plumes of peacocks' feathers, chains of silver fell around their necks, and bells sounded from every part of their rich housings as they slowly advanced towards the city. In front of this carriage, in full dress, and preceded by his elephants, rode the Chokra Bissbye, while on either side were bands of mounted men, some with the Neckaras, or royal drums, others blowing shrill trumpets, or playing upon cymbals; beyond these crowded religious mendicants, smeared with woodashes, and clad with little but a tiger's skin, cast about their stalwart forms. The crowd was very dense, and, surrounded as she was with guards, yet, from time to time, persons would burst forward, and strive to touch The girl had sat, in the dull stillness of the silent the edge of the young girl's saree, as it fell beyond room, with her fair head resting on her knees, stupethe carriage; one could scarcely wonder at that, how-fied with a horror too great, too mighty, too overever, she was so very beautiful, and even the most powering, to resolve itself to forms, or words, or tears. barbarous people seem to have an innate love and re- | Tears ?—oh, no! her brain was on fire, her senses verence for the beautiful. Toolsee Bhye observed that some of these, more pressing than the rest, shrieked loudly, or cut themselves with knives, running back with blood-stained garments among the crowd, when they had obtained their object; but she thought little of the matter, for Orissa is full of fanaticism, and of fanatics of the wildest kind, and a Brahmin's daughter little heeds the phases in which Hindoo zeal may chance appear. She was charmed, too, with the bearing of the prince; never had he seemed so popular. The people received him with cries of joy, they wept they cast their garments beneath his horses' feet-they called him their protector, their benefactor, the delegate of the gods, the almoner of their bounties; and amid these scenes they reached the temple. It was illumined as for a festival; and beside the altar was a framework of green bamboos, with faggots of sandal-wood lying near it. What was that? she dared not ask. She had heard a horrible tale of victims placed in such frames, while the kindling fire around them dried and contracted their place of merciless execution. Her brain grew dizzy with the fearful thought; the shrieks of the victim seemed even now sounding in her ears, and as they replaced her on the cushions of her carriage, the Brahmin's daughter was scarcely conscious that in low obeisance the priests had pressed their lips upon her robe, or reeling, her pulses throbbing on to madness, there were no tears for her! Now she starts from her low cushion; she violently forces back the masses of dark hair that had fallen over her temples as she sat, and rushes to the terrace garden; instinctively her hurried footsteps lead her to her favourite resort, an ancient tomb, the shrine of some religious devotee, on which the simple piety of the Khond peasants kept a small lamp constantly burning; she stretches out her arms towards the hills, and cries aloud. But no; there is no hope for her there-she knows there is not; yet still she kneels, and presses her burning brow against the cold marble, and moans, and laughs, and shricks, in the agony of her despair. But madness now is stealing into her heart, her brain; and could the people see their victim, they would call her passion the inspiration of the gods! But a step approaches, a hand clasps hers, she is raised and drawn back from the garden, and a cup touches the lips of the devoted one-"Drink," it is the voice of the Goomsoor prince, "drink, favoured of the gods; this cup is filled with the umrita juice of paradise; to-morrow thou wilt drink it fresh in the bowers of Indra.” The girl falls upon her cushions; her fair arm pillows her flushed check, her dark hair sweeps round (1) Vide Illustration. her as a cloud. The opium has done its work. Visions steal upon her lulled senses, sweet visions of the past; she is once more on the banks of the cool Godavery, a gay and happy child—she floats her little bark of flowers, smiles and prattles in her father's arms, fondles her doves, and laughs, and laughs again, at the tricks of the old dervish, and his pretty pet. Sleep on, thou hapless one; would that waking hours had no reality for thee! It was a cave in a mountain fastness. Stretched on a pile of deer skins lay the young chieftain Dora Bisshye, his spear and matchlock were by his side, and at the mouth of the cave reclined a group of armed men, smoking their kaliuns by a bright fire kindled of bramble thorns. These heights were cold, but beyond the advantage of giving warmth, the fire was necessary to prevent the nearer approach of those beasts of prey whose roars reverberated among the dense jungles of the lower hills. The chieftain and his guard were weary, yet they had but halted until the return of a spy sent into Goomsoor, and then proposed a forced night march towards Boad, where their camp lay; this division of parties not being held as safe. Meanwhile as Dora Bisshye thus reposed, watching the fantastic forms with which the uncertain fire-light illumined the rough surfaces of the old cave, a thousand visions of gratified ambition, of fulfilled hope, of triumphant love, flitted before, and threw their bewitching forms on the mirror of his excited fancy. Long in league with the British, to abolish the hideous ceremonies of Orissa's faith, to break the car of Juggernath in pieces, and to banish human slaughter from the bloodstained land, the young chief saw in the unmistakeable dissatisfaction of the people the bursting seeds of universal revolt; he hailed it as a prestige of his fortunes, and tracing his hoped-for career step by step, the young chieftain may be pardoned, if as he there lay on the rocky floor of that dim cavern, he already fancied the time not far distant when he, the ally of the British power, should rule Goomsoor with mercy, and the Brahmin's daughter be his fair, his loved, his happy bride. From this delicious reverie the chief was rudely roused by hurried voices, with mingled expressions of astonishment and fear among his guards, but late so silent all and tranquil; and starting from his rude couch, the rebel leader sprang to the entrance of the cave; it was the returned messenger who spoke. 'On, on, my lord," he cried, "while there is time; a price is set upon your head, even now the myrmidons of the Chokra Bisshye are on your track. The prince is again all powerful, the people worship him almost as a god; to-morrow, the Meriah sacrifice will be given for them, and they already riot in the certainty of abundant crops, with joy to repay all the last five years has cost them; there will be no revolt now, and your only safety is in flight." The man spoke vehemently, but his listener seemed to think less of himself, than of the aspect of things the messenger described. "And is that poor pale victim so long immured in the Naga tower to fall at last? that hapless youth, said to have Feringee blood, who was stolen so long since by the accursed Kurti Vas from the Natch girl's tent at Delhi? Alas! poor youth, I thought to have saved thee;" and warrior as he was, a tear stood in the dark eye of the chieftain as he spoke. The messenger looked hesitatingly upon the faces of his fellows, but the eyes of all were fixed upon the ground. "No!" was the reply. "It is no common sacrifice that could have satisfied the people of Goomsoor, no ordinary blood sprinkling that could have saved the hated Chokra Bisshye. To-morrow's victim," he paused; "to-morrow's victim is the young child, purchased for such a time as this, of the Deckan grain merchants. The Meriah sacrifice of tomorrow is the adopted daughter of the prince." With a loud ringing cry the chieftain rushed forward, as if to cast himself from the scarped rock into the wooded depths circling the city; the guards caught him in their arms, they bore him back, they laid him on his couch of deer-skins, and for a while he seemed passive in their hands, as if in memory and thought, and power of action, all had left him. We cannot bear him on," exclaimed a warrior of the group, gazing with unutterable dismay and grief on the unconscious form and rigid features of his leader; "he will perish here: fly," cried he, turning to those who pressed around; "fly to the camp at Boad, and give the news without delay." There were brave men among that group, yet there wanted no second mandate to seek safety for themselves under any pretext; and when the first rays of early light struggled through the fissures of that rude cave, they fell but on the forms of two devoted men, the heart-stricken chieftain, and his one faithful friend and follower. Thousands of people are already there, the gates of the city were closed and strictly guarded, crowds from the suburbs had entered it at dawn, and all egress and regress was now forbidden. The temple itself was decorated with scarlet flags, and in its chambers were bands of musicians, the loud shrill discord of whose instruments were prepared to overpower even the wild shriek of agony that might echo from wall and altar, and ascend to the skies without awakening one throb of human sympathy from hearts now scarcely of human mould. In the verandahs of the temple lounged masses of priests, Jogers, Fakirs, Gosaens, demons in all but form, the saintly race of bigoted Orissa! wretches who urge the fanatics of their faith beneath the wheels of Juggernath, triumphing as they watch a surging sea of victims, (as it were,) flowing on to agony and death, that they may enrich the temples, and feed the iniquities of their priesthood! Around the temple thronged the masses of the people; maidens in festival attire, young mothers with their babes, grey-bearded elders, who had loved, and blest, and lived, in the reflected joy of daughters, as fair, as gentle, as she now doomed to be their sacrifice! All was hope, was in its heaven of rest, but whose visions, sweet, soothing, even joyous as they were, seem cold and dim and faded pictures, when compared with the realities that bless her now. CURIOSITIES OF SCIENCE. GUTTA PERCHA A GOOD ELECTRICAL INSULATOR. triumph; and as the day advanced, every eye was | and Toolsee Byhe, of all the passages of her life, returned in anxious expectation along that road strewn members only a delicious dream, that once lulled her with flowers, by which the procession must arrive. From the houses on either side of this well-guarded avenue, might be seen stretched across it, threads of scarlet silk. Those who had placed them there, joyed in the certainty that when their children wore them, no evil, no danger, could dismay or touch them. Noon had already past. The sacrificial priest, in robes of purest white, stood by the altar; the censer filled with Laban, cast its perfumed wreaths of incense round its base. The piles of sandal-wood, the green framework of split bamboo, the single cedar faggot, all were there. The anxious crowd began to murmur, but ere their anger was fully kindled, shouts of triumph rent the air, for there, amid elephants and horsemen, glittering arms, and splendid robes, appeared the open palankeen in which, in the dress the people had before seen, lay the lovely form of the beautiful Toolsee Byhe, the victim of the hour. By her side rode the prince, an aigrette of jewels in his turban, and his dark fierce eye gleaming with triumph as he gazed around on the multitude, now so wholly in his power. The shouts redoubled, yells and shrieks, mingled, with praises of the gods, and homage to the prince. The fakirs started from the temple, they rushed around the victim, leaping, dancing, and wounding themselves with knives and daggers, and trampling madly on the people. The prince lifted the victim in his arms, and bore her to the altar; she was passive as the dead. The priest received her, she laid like a bent lily in his grasp, he invoked the gods, he raised the sacrificial dagger, he cast aside her veil,-ah! what sees he there, that priest? The Lotus Flower of Crishna's favoured race has saved his votary, the father for a moment clasps his long-mourned daughter to his heart, and then with a loud cry he rushes from the altar, and the life-blood of Gomsoor's prince flows at the Brahmin's feet. There is a crash of instruments; the people shout, "The Meriah sacrifice is now complete;" some frantically force their way to dip their garments in the still warm blood. The truth is known; the people rush wildly from the spot; the gates are opened, and in a moment more the temple courts are filled with the allies of Dora Bisshye. They seek not to part that father and his child, and as they bear them from the altar's base, she sleeps upon his bosom, and dreams once more of early and of happy days. On a miniature but very lovely lake, formed by a bend of the bright blue stream of the sparkling Jumna, stands a marble water palace, in form resembling the Taj of Agra. Around it are clustering trees of richly tinted foliage, and birds innumerable plume and dress themselves on the pellucid waters, while the brilliant little honey sucker, the mangoe bird, and the cicala abound amidst its shades. It is a fairy home, of joy, and love, and beauty, that tiny water palace, and in its cool and shaded hareem the chieftain, Dora Bisshye, hastens to seek rest with his fair Hindoo wife, from the toil of government, or the active labours of the chace. The past to them is now as it had never been, DR. FARADAY has found Gutta Percha to possess high insulating power. Thus, it makes very good handles for carriers of electricity in experiments or induction, not being liable to fracture; in the form of a thin band or string, it makes an excellent insulating suspender; a piece of it in sheet makes a most convenient insulating basis for anything placed on it. It forms excellent insulating plugs for the stems of goldleaf electrometers, when they pass through sheltering tubes, and larger plugs supply good insulating feet for extemporary electrical arrangements; cylinders of it, half an inch or more in diameter, have great stiffness, and form excellent insulating pillars. ness, and form excellent insulating pillars. lent substance for the excitement of negative electriBecause of its good insulation, it is also an excelsold by shoemakers out of paper, or into the hand, city. It is hardly possible to take one of the soles without exciting it to such a degree as to open the leaves of an electrometer one or more inches; or, if it be unelectrified, the slightest passage over the hand or face, the clothes, or almost any other substance, gives it an electric state. Some of the gutta percha is sold oiled silk. if a strip of this be drawn through the very thin sheets, resembling, in general appearance, fingers, it is so electric as to adhere to the might also be made into a plate electrical machine, hand, or attract pieces of paper. A thicker sheet for the production of negative electricity. in Then, as to inductive action through the substance, a sheet of it is soon converted into an excellent elec trophorus; or, it may be coated, and used in place of a Leyden jar, &c. CHANGES IN SOLID FORMS. The gradual change of form of a body which still continues solid, is a problem at which many are confounded, because they cannot imitate the great experiment of nature. On a grand scale, it does not hold; but, in a smaller way, the barley sugar, which, in course of time, becomes crystalline and dull, presents an example of change of structure without any alteration of its solidity; and copper coins, buried in the carth, become oxidysed without losing their impressions.—Herr Karl Bruner, jun. MYRIADS OF ANIMALCULES. In the Arctic seas, where the water is pure transparent ultramarine colour, parts of twenty or thirty square miles, 1,500 feet deep, are green and turbid, from the vast numbers of minute animalcules. Captain Scoresby calculated it would require 80,000 persons, working unceasingly from the creation of man to the present day, to count the number of insects contained in two miles of the green water. What then must be the amount of animal life in the Polar regions, where one-fourth part of the Greenland sea, for 10 degrees of latitude, consists of that water! Fahr. below zero; the density is .03573; and the atmosphere ceases altogether at a height of 22.35 miles. M. Biot has verified a calculation of Lambert, who found, from the phenomena of twilight, the altitude of the atmosphere to be about eighteen miles. The condition of the higher regions of the atmosphere, according to the hypothesis adopted by Ivory, is very different, and extends to a much greater height. GEOLOGICAL CHANGES.-PAST AND PRESENT. All the researches of modern Geology seem to prove that nothing is changed in the order of nature, and that the same causes which operated in the first ages of the world, are still influencing the occurrences which take place under our own eyes. Certain facts, however, have hitherto appeared not to be referable to this common origin; and the petrifaction of organic remains, in the midst of geological formations, is daily adduced as one of the most weighty arguments against this general law. THE LARGEST CORAL FORMATION.-ROLLING OF WAVES. A barrier-reef off the north-cast coast of the continent of Australia, is the grandest coral formation existing. Rising at once from an unfathomable ocean, it extends one thousand miles along the coast, with a breadth varying from two hundred yards to a mile, and at an average distance of from twenty to thirty miles from the shore, in some places increasing to sixty and even seventy miles. The great arm of the sea included between it and the land is nowhere less than ten, occasionally sixty fathoms deep, and is safely navigable throughout its whole length, with a few transverse openings, by which ships can enter. The Few persons, indeed, will be ready to admit what, reef is nearly twelve hundred miles long, because it however, is an indisputable fact, that there are now stretches nearly across Torres Straits.—Mrs. Somer-forming, in the bosom of seas, petrifactions which, in ville. the double respect of chemical composition and mode of petrifaction, are altogether analogous to those which are formed in the bed of the ancient sea. To demonstrate this general fact, and to study the phenomena by means of which it is brought about, MM. Marcel Sederres and L. Figuier have contributed a valuable memoir to the Annales des Sciences Naturelles. BEAUTIFUL ACTION OF THE SUN. The rolling of the billows along this great Australian formation has been admirably described: "The long ocean-swell, being suddenly impeded by this barrier, lifts itself in one great continuous ridge of deep blue water, which, curling over, falls on the edge of the reef in an unbroken cataract of dazzling white foam. Each line of breaker runs often one or two miles in length, with not a perceptible gap in its continuity. There is a simple grand display of power and beauty in this scene, that rises even to sublimity. The un-in a remarkable degree by the plant cacalia ficoides: broken roar of the surf, with its regular pulsation of thunder, as each succeeding swell falls first on the outer edge of the reef, is almost deafening, yet so deep-toned, as not to interfere with the slightest nearer and sharper sound.” METALS IN THE HUMAN BLOOD. M. E. Millon has proved, by analysis, that the blood of man constantly contains silex, manganese, lead, and copper. The copper and lead are not in a state of diffusion through the blood; they are fixed with the iron in the globules, and everything leads us to believe that they share with it organization and life. CURIOUS ICELANDIC PLANTS. Many of the plants of Iceland grow to an unnatural size, close to the hot springs. Thyme grows in the cracks of the basin of the Great Geyser, where every other plant is petrified; and a species of chara flourishes, and bears seed in a spring hot enough to boil an egg! HEIGHT OF THE ATMOSPHERE. Sir John W. Lubbock, according to the hypothesis adopted by him in his Treatise on the Heat of Vapours, shows the density and temperature for a given height above the earth's surface. According to that hypothesis, at a height of fifteen miles the temperature is 210° 6' The illuminating influence of the sun is displayed its leaves combine with the oxygen of the atmosphere during the night, and are as sour as sorrell in the morning; as the sun rises, they gradually lose their oxygen, and are tasteless by noon; and by the continued action of the light, they lose more and more, till towards evening they become bitter.-Mrs. Somerville. FERTILIZING EFFECTS OF RAIN-WATER. Rain is never absolutely pure water it is variously impregnated; and this in consequence of two offices which it seems to have to perform (not to mention others); namely, the purifying of the atmosphere, and the fertilising of the earth. Carbonic acid, oxygen, and azote, are always contained in it, and the former in considerably larger proportion than in the atmosphere, oxygen being more soluble in water than azote. And, besides these, there are other matters, such as carbonate of ammonia, and various substances, which it brings down with it, exercising its purifying function, from the atmosphere, in which they were suspended or dissolved.-Dr. Dary, F.R.S. A PETRIFIED FOREST. M. Blast, of Bombay, has discovered, in the neighbourhood of Cairo, an entire forest converted into silex; the vessels, medullary rays, and even the most slender fibres, are distinctly visible. The petrified trees are from sixteen to eighteen metres in length. | Mediterranean, 1028.82, showing this sea to be con siderably salter than that of the oceans which surround the globe. But the saltest, at least the heaviest of all the waters on the earth, is the Dead Sea, which is impregnated not only with salt, but also with sulphurous and bituminous ingredients. The specific gravity has been found to be 1211, showing an impregnation eight times greater than sea-water. This phenomenon extends over a surface of many hundred miles. The whole desert which is crossed by the road from Cairo to Suez, is strewed with these trees, which seem to have been petrified on the spot, and in the existing era. At least, this forest is covered by nothing more than sand and gravels. The latter, and the trees imbedded in them, rest on calcareous limestones, which contain oysters, with their texture and colour so little altered, that one would believe them to have been left but recently by the waters of There are works for this purpose in India, tanks the sea. It is therefore probable that these substances and aqueducts of immense magnitude, miles in cirbelong to our own era; and we may adduce this in-cumference and length, which excite the wonder of teresting fact as tending to prove the transformation the passing traveller, and are, in the labour expended of living shells into new calcareous carbonate. on them, little inferior to the Pyramids of Egypt; MM. Marcel de Serres and L. Figuier. themselves, it has been imagined, erected for hydraulic purposes.-Dr. Davy, F.R.S. EFFECT OF COLOURED GLASS UPON VEGETATION. VAST IRRIGATION. GALVANIC SHEATHING FOR SHIPS. In 1827, by the advice of Sir Humphrey Davy, the English Admiralty caused the copper sheathing of vessels to be covered with a certain number of plates of zinc, in order to oppose, by a galvanic action, the Violet-coloured glass is stated to have been first used in France for aiding the ripening of grapes; the rationale of the experiment being the partial exclusion of the caloric rays, and the greater encouragement of the chemical rays. In England the experiment has failed; and French-beans and strawberry-plants grew rapidly rapid corrosion of the metal in sea-water, particularly under violet-coloured glass, but were long, spindly, on some parts of the coast of Africa. But this and tremulous; in short, very unhealthy. A very siderable deposits of shells and agglutinated sand expedient had soon to be abandoned, because conlight green has been found to answer better than a encrusted the vessel so rapidly, that its progress was colourless glass for conservatories; and, by recom-retarded. The galvanic action in this case accelerated mendation of Mr. Hunt, author of "Researches on Light," &c., the new vast conservatory at Kew has been glazed with this kind of flat glass, in order to afford the plants protection from the scorching heat of the meridian sun. A great improvement would be effected by the panes being of an arched form, and placed in such an aspect that the morning and evening rays of the sun would not have a tendency to reflect the rays back again, as is the case with thick flat glass, the irregular thicknesses of which, when the rays pass through them at right angles, act as burning-October, 1847, derived from conversations with glasses; whereas, by the arrangement above suggested, the rays would pass in a direct course through the glass, and the condensed " drip" on the inside would be effectually carried off by channels on each side of the interior of the frames.-Mr. Apsley Pellatt's Curiosities of Glass-making, (in the press.) CHEMISTRY OF ANIMAL HEAT. The perpetual combination of the oxygen of the atmosphere with the carbon of the food, and with the effete substance of the body, is a real combustion, and is supposed to be the cause of animal heat, because heat is constantly given out by the combination of carbon and oxygen; and, without a constant supply of food, the oxygen would soon consume the whole animal, except the bones.-Mrs. Somerville. SALTNESS OF SEA WATER. In the Northern and Arctic Seas the specific gravity of the water has been found by Dr. Marcet, Mr. Scoresby, and Dr. Fyfe, 1026.7, and nearly the same at all depths. Under the equator, 1028. In the electrical by the pile formed by the superimposed the phenomenon. The copper, rendered negatively zinc and copper, attracted the insoluble bases, the magnesia and lime, held in solution in the sea-water, carbonate of lime and magnesia, the shells and sand and the side of the vessel began to be covered with being then precipitated on these earthy deposits. EARLY GENIUS OF ALEXANDER BRONGNIART. The celebrated Alexander Brongniart, who died in Franklin the germ of that mild and practical philosophy which he never abandoned; from those of Lavoisier, his earliest notions of chemistry, which formed one of the foundations of his scientific career. He gave carly indications of that clearness of elocution which formed one of his merits as a professor; and it is related that Lavoisier himself took pleasure in listening to a lecture on chemistry delivered by Brongniart, when he was scarcely fifteen years old. At nineteen years of age, too, he was one of the founders of the Société Philomatique.-Funeral Eloge, by M. Elie de Beaumont. CHANGES OF VEGETATION AND CLIMATE. M. Adolphe Brongniart considers everything to prove, on the one hand, that the different vegetable creations which have succeeded each other on the globe, have become more and more perfect; on the other hand, that the climate of the surface of the earth is greatly modified since the earlier times of the creation of living beings up to the commencement of the present epoch. |