Cowper writes thus to his friend Newton: "I delight in baubles, and know them to be such; for, viewed without a reference to their Author, what is the earth? what are the planets? what is the sun itself but a bauble! Better for a man never to have seen them, or to see them with the eyes of a brute (stupid, and unconscious of what he beholds), than not be able to say: ' The Maker of all these wonders is my friend.' The eyes of many have never been opened to see that they are trifles; mine have been, and will be till they are closed forever. They think a fine estate, a large conservatory, hothouse, rich as a West Indian garden, things of.consequence; visit them with pleasure, and muse upon them with ten times more. I am pleased with a frame of four lights, doubtful whether the few pines it contains will ever be worth a farthing; amuse myself with a greenhouse which Lord Butler's gardener could take upon his back, and walk away with it; and, when I have paid the accustomed visit, and watered it, and given it air, I say to myself: 'This is not mine;

'tis a plaything, lent me for the present. I must leave it soon.'" - The extent of the credulity of mankind scarcely needs illustrations; the changes of opinion are, however, truly curious. Till very lately, real mummy was sold, in the Philadelphia drug stores, as a curative remedy. Powder of silkworms was formerly given for vertigo; mellipedes, for the jaundice; fly-water, for earache; five gnats were considered a dose of excellent physio; lady-birds, for colic and measles; ants were incomparable for leprosy and deafness. A learned Italian professor assures us that a finger once imbued with the juices of a certain beetle, will retain Its power of curing toothache for a year. One pundit taught that the efforts of the silkworm to spin its cocoon, was the result of colic. - The instincts of insects in constructing their habitations, defy our penetration; there is one species which excavates a gallery upwards of two feet in length, and half an inch broad. It is furnished at the orifice with a curiously constructed door, actually turning on a hinge of silk, and, as if acquainted with the laws of gravity, she invariably fixes the hinge at the highest side of the opening, so that the door, when pushed up, shuts again by its own weight. - The minority report of the Regents of the Smithsonian Institute, in 1854, signed by Hon. James Meachan, contains some home truths.

Alluding to the publications of the Institute, it says: "They are Smithsonian contributions just in the sense that the publications of Appletons, Putnam,and Lippincott, maybe called Appletonian contributions to knowledge,Putnamian, or Lippincottian contributions to knowledge. The only difference is the degree of credit obtained for the work! - In Syria, apricots are dried in great quantities, says a late traveller, and exported to Egypt under the name of Mishmash, where they constitute a most palatable and convenient article of a traveller's commissariat, as, when stewed, they make an excellent dish, soon got ready; the fruit keeps perfectly well in this dry climate, and sufficient for a month's consumption, or longer, can be stowed in a very small compass. Mishmash was a principal article in our cuisine during our voyage up the Nile, and, from its portability, it is excellently adapted for desert travelling. Zumner e deen (the moon of the faithful) is the same fruit differently prepared, and is equally known as mishmush, but is very inferior in quality to the former kind.

It consists of the pulp of the apricot rolled out (after drying, I should suppose) into thin sheets two or three feet long, and a foot or two in width; and, from its dark color, and the edges of the sheet being left untrimmed (as in the case of the peach leather of America), it resembles nothing so much as a blacksmith's old leather apron; when dressed, however, it is no despicable dish, and, in the npper country, is the kind of mishmash most usually seen in the markets; we could seldom procure the entire fruit, and when we could it was rarely of the best description. - Patchouly, the favorite perfume, is obtained from an otto contained in the leaves and stem of an herb which grows extensively in India, and resembling our garden sage. Its odor is the most powerful of any derived from the botanic kingdom. In its pure state, it has a kind of mossy or musty odor, analogous to lycopodium. Chinese or India ink is scented by some admixture of patchouly. - Shagreen, much used, formerly, for spectacle and other cases, is made in Astracan. The material is the strong skin that covers the crupper of the horse.

In its preparation, the roughness is produced by treading into the skin hard, round seeds, which are shaken out when the skin has been dried; it is then stained green with copper filings and sal ammoniac, and the grains or warts are then rubbed down to a level with the rest of the surface, which thus presents the appearance, that used so much to puzzle us, of white dots on a green ground. - What is a billion of billions? The number is a quadrillion, and to count it at the rate of 200 in a minute, would require all the inhabitants of the globe, supposing them to be a thousand millions, to count incessantly for 19,025,875 yea,rs, or more than 3,000 times the period during which the human race has been supposed to have been in existence. - The hop pillow was formerly a popular application to produce sleep, one of the most active ingredients of the hop being its narcotic essential oil, which gives the flower a peculiar smell. It was a great favorite with George the Third, in his sleepless fits. - The line run between the United States and Canada, in accordance with the Ashburton Treaty, it is not generally known, cost the labor of three hundred men for eighteen months. For three hundred miles, a path was cut through the forest, thirty feet wide, and cleared of all trees.

At the end of every mile is a cast iron pillar, painted white, square, and four feet out of the ground, and bearing, in raised letters, on its sides the date and the names of the commissioners who ran the line. - Arago has left us this important diction:

Whatever may be the progress of the sciences, never will observers who are trustworthy and careful of their reputation, venture to foretell the state of the weather" It is best, therefore, when asked if you are weatherwise, to say: "No; otherwise!" - A tunnel through the earth from England to New Zealand, would be nearly eight thousand miles long.

There is just now a perfect fury among collectors for majolica ware; it was made in Italy, though originally in Majorca, and the best belongs to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Raphael is supposed to have painted some of it, and his pupils more. A Mr. Bernal set the fashion of collecting it; his collection contained about four hundred pieces, which cost him less than $5,000, but realized, at his late sale, $35,000. - The great Pyramid of Gizeh, it has been calculated, could not now be built for less than a hundred and fifty millions of dollars. - "The acquisition of the language of botany, the technical terms employed, is generally considered," says Dr. Darlington, "a formidable affair." He does not recommend learning a parcel of uncouth terms, without comprehending the objects to which they are applied, but rather to look at the objects, and examine their structure: their organs must have a name, and these, once acquired, are no more burdensome, but an acquisition. It might be dull work to take up a Directory, and commit to memory the names of the inhabitants of a city, but if we go among them, and form some interesting acquaintances, we find no difficulty in learning the names of our friends.

Thus, we ought never to waste our time in learning mere names apart from objects; the study of names and things should always go together. As soon as we know a plant or tree, we feel a little affection for it; to a new acquaintance, there is the formality to be undergone of an introduction; in botany, thus, we are continually acquiring new friends. - The evident mode of getting rid of annual weeds in gardens and farms, is not to let them ripen their seeds; this is done by keeping the ground stirred or ploughed for a year or two, as well to prevent a new crop as to promote the vegetation of all the old ones in the soil. This applies to annuals, but, in the case of plants that spread by roots, the extirpation by hand or instrument is the only mode. - Shakspeare, in his Winter's Tale, tans alludes to the violet: - "Violets, dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, Or Cytherea's breath".