I see that one of your correspondents is inquiring about rustic work. I therefore beg to send you a plan of making rustic vases, as I made a few about twelve months ago. As most of our florist friends are no doubt in the habit of getting their groceries from one place, I advise them to go to their grocer and get him to give them a small butter-tub; when got, saw it in halves, or according to the exact depth they would like the vase; after which go to the Oak-yard with a saw, cut some tolerably straight sticks, without bark, one inch or more in diameter; but do not forget a pillar of three inches in diameter. I give 2s. per cwt. for the Oak.

Nail the sticks close together all round the vase, in whatever form may suit the caprice of the individual. Make holes at the bottom for drainage, by boring with a red-hot poker; after which nail the vase to the top of the pillar, being sure to make it firm. Paint over with oak varnish, thinned with a little turpentine. It -will not disgrace the Crystal Palace. For a finish I nailed a few crooked sticks round the top, which appear like handles, and round the rim a piece of strong rope. - S. Tattersall.

The Anachis which infests rivers and lakes in England seems likely to spread over the whole kingdom. It has already seized upon the large basin at Kew, and obstructed several rivers; the thread of this plant is wonderfully rapid.

The moon still has an important agency assigned to it, in moulding the incidents of climatology, at least, and this view is by no means confined to what is technically called popular belief; many of these points have been examined by the aid of the most rigid analysis of long periods of observation, with the result of rejecting the whole agency in every case. The Her-schels repel the charge or assertion that either of them advocate existence of any system of lunar influences, and they particularly repudiate the weather table often attributed to them.

It is curious to notice that so important an observation as that of the quantity of water failing in rain, had its origin in bold doubts of a prevalent belief that fountains and rivers were supplied from internal masses of water, arteries and veins of the sea, circulating the life blood of the earth. A French author, Demys Papin, printed a work on the Origin of Fountain*, at Paris, in 1674, the object of which was to show that the rain and snow-waters are sufficient to make the fountains and rivers run perpetually.