Ireland is taking a lead in a movement for the scientific training of agriculturists.

A great farm school has been established at Glasnevin, near Dublin.

The cook of Louis XVI. was known all over Europe for his mode of serving up eels.

His receipt was this: " Take one or two live eels; throw them into the fire. As they are twisting about on all sides, lay hold of them with a towel in your hand, and skin them from head to tail. This method is decidedly the best, as it is the means of drawing out all the oil, which is unpalatable." The consumption of eels as articles of food, throughout Europe, is enormous. In London, the number imported amounts to about ten millions annually; it is food alike for the alderman and the gamin in the streets.

In the earliest period of Roman history, every family had its garden, and as little animal food was consumed, it was from this source that the population principally drew its subsistence. Hence, in the laws of the Twelve Tables, the term hortus is synonymous to heredium, or inheritance; and the word villa is nowhere made use of. As a proof, indeed, of the honor paid to gardens by the old Romans, Pliny remarks that men of the highest rank were willing to borrow their names from its contents, as in the Valerian family, and the Lactucarii did not think themselves disgraced by taking their names from the Lettuce. These, however, were mere kitchen gardens, containing such plants and trees alone as were subservient to the daily uses of life; and in Cato's work, the only notice we have of a garden is of this description, although it be true that, according to Pliny, he recommended that plants which could be used for chaplets, should be likewise cultivated in it. In proportion, however, as civilization and wealth increased, a taste for ornamental plants became prevalent; and even in Rome itself, as we are informed by Pliny, it was the fashion of the day, among the lower classes, to have little gardens in the front of their houses, until debarred from that indulgence by the necessity of shutting out the robbers which so abounded in the city.

The melancholy scratch of the "Death Watch" (Anobium) loses all its terrors when it is known that this ominous sound is not a voice, but the mere result of mechanical friction. You have only to send him a counter-scratch from your side of the wainscot, when, mistaking you for a brother Anobium, he returns the signal. Entomologists declare that they have been able to train Anobia to do this trick at pleasure, by first accomplishing themselves in the accurate mimicry of the sound.

Wasps and flies may be caught in graperies by placing several small bottles, containing a mixture of beer and sugar, or molasses, in different parts of the house. The bottles should be emptied as often as filled with the pests. Fine netting, so fixed that the lights will slide up and down without interruption, will also be a good remedy. Improper ventilation, and a damp atmosphere, are, however, greater evils.

Professor Kirtland declares himself, in a letter to the Ohio Farmer, an entire convert to the discoveries of the Rev. Mr. Langstroth, in regard to the improvements in hives for bees, and the management of the honey-bee, considering it, beyond question, the true mode. The book of Mr. L. is published by Saxton, New York.

The Big Tree Grove, which we formerly announced (says the California Farmer), has added to its celebrity another group, discovered by Mr. Galen Clark, who was with us when we measured the first group. The Mariposa Gazette tells us that Mr. Clark, who resides at the South Fork, recently, while on a hunting expedition, discovered another group of these trees (eighty-six in number), situated about one mile south of these latter. He had no means of measuring them accurately, but estimates that there is one among the number which will exceed in size any of those previously discovered. According to his enumeration, there are now five hundred and sixty-three comprised in the three groves.

The same paper says: "Having written considerable, the present week, upon the value of our fisheries, it would be an omission, on our part, if we did not notice the great fish - a species of bass - which was caught in a seine, at Saucelito, last week. With one exception, it is the largest ever caught on this coast. Its dimensions are as follows: Weight, 187 pounds; length, 6 feet 2 inches; girth of the body, 4 feet 2 inches; girth of the head, 3 feet 4 inches; width of the tail, 2 feet; color of the flesh, reddish-white. The fish was of fine form, and the scales were nearly the size of a quarter of a dollar. It was exhibited and sold at the Washington market".

Every parent must have remarked the pleasure which children take in the acquisition of a new brood of chickens. The keeping of these domestic birds calls forth one of the faculties of the young which demands cultivation; but most fathers and mothers are contented when they have provided a pair or two for the instruction of their offspring. This is not enough. The same desire which prompts to observing the new brood, if carried onwards, would make naturalists and accurate observers of insects and birds. One of the most valuable mental acquirements is the power of discriminating among things which differ in many minute points, but whose general similarity of appearance usually deceives the common mind into a belief of their identity. The study of insects, in this point of view, is most peculiarly adapted to youth. In this study, the knowledge of things should go along with that of words. " If names perish," says Linnaeus, "the knowledge of things perishes also. To name a plant, or an insect, or a bird, or a quadruped, rightly, is one step towards an accurate knowledge of it, though it is not the knowledge itself.

It is the means, and not the end, in natural history as in every other science".

Adversity is like the cold March wind which shakes the trees, bending them to the dust, breaking, ofttimes, their groaning boughs, but which loosens the earth at their roots, so that the sap ascends, and the green buds blossom forth.

A central spot of the Rooky Mountains (2 1/2o of latitude by as many of longitude in extent) has the verdure and freshness of high mountains in Europe in summer, the snow and ice remaining late; but very much of this district is one of plateaus in its surface character, and, in its consequenoes, in every respect sandy, arid, treeless, and saline, in alternating tracts, interspersed, of course, with rich valleys. All the mountains near the Pacific coast are of great altitude, and affect the climate. Between the coast and the first range, the humid atmosphere and warm winter of Western Europe prevail, while, east of that, the change is such as to render it nearly a continental climate, with an atmosphere generally dry, and with variations of temperature similar to those of the Eastern United States. Passing the second range, the change becomes quite extreme from the climate of the coast and the country has very few cultivable districts. The northern areas beyond the United States, are very low, on the whole, and the great interior of British America is scarcely above the average altitude of the Mississippi Valley. Thus the great portion of the continent north of us is a low plain, so little elevated as to soften the climate rather than otherwise - a fact of the greatest interest for unborn millions of men.

Animals exposed to cold - breathing a colder, and therefore a denser air, containing more oxygen or fuel-burner per cubic foot - animals exposed to cold, requiring, therefore, greater expenditure of fuel to maintain the animal heat - do not, in practice, prosper as if kept in warmth and dryness. Most of their food goes as fuel; a great deal of their food is wasted and burned up within them. Again: Animals allowed to run about and take muscular exercise (thereby increasing the rapidity of respiration, keeping the bellows blowing at the fire within the lungs), do, in effect, not increase in fat or flesh so fast as when kept within bounds, and hindered from running to and fro. In all these particulars, then, the experience of the former tallies with the theory of growth as laid down by the chemist and animal physiologist.

Hydrangeas of a beautiful blue may be produced, it is asserted, by giving the plants plenty of mould from fir leaves.