The Havanese may be compared to the Chinese, in their love of smoking. Hen, women, and children, live with pipes in their mouths. The laborer smokes in the field, the clerk at his desk, the traveller on horseback. "If," says M. Hue," a person wakes in the night, he lights his pipe." The most certain sign that a sick man is about to expire is, that he ceases to inhale the fumes of tobaoco. Upon this he expends his latest breath; and the native Christians who came to summon M. Hue to administer the sacraments to the dying, always said, in proof of the desperateness of the case: "He no longer smokes." On volcanic rooks, bare earth, naked walls, or in pure sand, plants are found to vegetate. On the bare spots above enumerated, is deposited the vegetable mould of leaves, etc., and thus gradually a soil is made rich in organised matter, constantly increased in their decay; their successors live more healthfully upon the inheritance, being supported partly upon what they industriously take from the air, and partly upon the ancestral accumulation of vegetable mould. In this way, eacoh successive generation may enrich the soil; and when it dies, it bequeaths to the soil not only all it took from it, but all that it drew from the air.

It is in this manner, especially, that the humble lichens, mosses, ferns, and other plants, which short-sighted man terms useless, play an essential part in the economy of nature. They can live directly on the air. Their minute seeds, nuite invisible to the naked eye, and, in number, far surpassing man's power of computation - light almost as the air itself - are widely scattered by the winds over mountain and plain, and lodged upon every naked rock, or stagnant pool, or tract of barren sand, where all they need is moisture, to excite and maintain their growth. Some, like the lichens, require even little of this. They attach themselves to dry rooks or plains of lava, which are washed only by the occasional shower, and here they make the earliest inroads upon barrenness. Not only do the accumulated remains fill the crevices with fertile mould, and the water, which it holds like a sponge, by its freezing and thawing, aids in the disintegration of the rock, but many of them create, from aerial elements, oxalic acid - a powerful solvent - which, as it is gradually set free, acts upon and excavates the stony surface to which the plant firmly adheres. Thus the dying lichen digs for itself in the solid rook a sepulchre in which its dust may rest.

Well did Linnaeus, in his lively fancy, term the lichens vernaculi, or bond doves, chained, as it were, to the rocks which they labor to cover with soil for the benefit of others, though they derive from it no nqurishment for themselves. - A very curious passage in natural history might be written by any one who would group together what may be called fish paradoxes. Thus there are fish that fly; fish that climb; fish that hop like frogs, using their fins as veritable legs; fish that ruminate (the carp); fish that discharge electricity in sufficient intensity to decompose water; fish that migrate; fish that make nests; fish that incubate; and fish that bring forth their young alive. - Hugh Miller says: "As another family of plants, the Rosacea) was created in order that the gardens which it would be one of man's vocations to keep and to dress, should have their trees ' good for food, and pleasant to the taste;' so flowers, in general, were profusely produced just ere he appeared, to minister to that sense of beauty which distinguishes him from all the lower creatures, and to which he owes not a few of his most exquisite enjoyments. The poet accepted the bee as a sign of high significance; the geologist also accepts her as a sign.

Her entombed remains testify to the gradual fltting-up of our earth as a place of habitation for a creature destined to seek delight for the mind and the eye as certainly as for the grosser senses, and in especial, marks the introduction of the stately forest-trees, and the arrival of delicious flowers." - The same author illustrates the wonders revealed by geology by the bones of the Dinormus giganteus, exhibited by Dr. Mantell, in 1850, which greatly exceeded in bulk those of the largest horse. A large thigh-bone, it was held, must have belonged to a bird that stood from eleven to twelve feet high, the extreme height of the African elephant. - "If," says the President of the British Association, in his late speech, "as is indicated by the small density of the sun, and by other circumstances, that body has net yet reached the condition of incompressibility, we have, in the future approximation of its parts, a fund ot heat quite large enough to supply the wants of the human family to the end of its sojourn here.

It has been calculated that an amount of condensation which would diminish the diameter of the sun by only the ten-thousandth part, would suffice to restore the heat emitted in 2,000 years." - Jewellers' gold is now alloyed (adulterated) with zinc instead of silver, and presents a fair appearance; but a galvanic action is produced upon gold so alloyed, by means of which the metal is split into separate pieces, and the articles rendered I perfectly useless. Gold chains, pencil-cases, thimbles, and lockets, are the articles of which 1 the public will do well to take heed, as these hare, among some other things, been lately so constructed in vast numbers. Ladies should know that what they wear as gold is far otherwise. - A few tablespoonfuls of brown sugar will preserve fresh fish for some days, so as to be as good, when boiled, as if just caught. If dried, and kept free from mouldiness, there seems to be no limit to their preservation, and they are much more'nutritious in this way than when salted. If salt be desired, a teaspoonful or two may be added. Saltpetre may be used instead of salt, if it be wished to make the fish hard.

Efforts should be made to furnish our cities with fish at less cost than is now done; they bring twice their value, for instance, in our Philadelphia markets, which are brought by railroad within two hours of the sea. - The best remedy for the nuisance of mice in a house, is to starve them. What food is carelessly left on the floors, etc, constitutes the food of mice. Remove every particle of food from floors and tables every evening, and burn it, and place all food fit for use in safes of some kind which they cannot enter, and the propagation of these troublesome little animals would nearly cease in large towns, or confine them to drains and sewers. - The lotus leaf turns water off its upper surface in a pool like quicksilver. The cause has been ascertained to be that it is covered with short, microscopic papillae, which entangle the air, and establish an air-plate over the whole surface, with which, in reality, the water never comes into contact at all. The same phenomenon is believed to be exhibited by water-fowl, and that this is not due to the presence of grease or oil.

The suggestion may be turned to account by practical men, perhaps, vis: Might not the manufacturers of water-proof cloth manage to produce a surface such as would entangle and retain a film of air while it permitted transmission of air through it? - Somebody told Jerrold that a celebrated auctioneer was dead, and, of course, his business would go to the devil. " Oh, then, hell get it again," said the wit. "Well, my dear Jerrold," said a tedious old gentleman, " what is going on?" "I am," quoth the questioned, and immediately shot off along the pavement. - The most magnificent specimen of Chinese Wistaria in Europe, is trained upon the walls of the London Horticultural Society, where it occupies a space three hundred and seventy-five feet in length. This plant may be forced to advantage, and is by no means to be despised as a greenhouse climber. Its recommendations are, great freedom in the production* of its flowers, great beauty, and fragrance. Pruned, it may be brought into a dwarf condition, and grows well in ordinary garden earth. - It is now evident, that whatever the home of the cotton plant, primarily, it is most valuable near the northern or cold limit of its actual cultivation, from the climatological advantages there presented.

As to forced Indian cultivation of cotton, there is little to be expected; the American adaptation was apparently a spontaneous result, and not the triumph of a conflict with climatological difficulties, and it appears to be wholly impossible to transplant its peculiar success. About 400,000 bales of inferior cotton, is all that has ever been received from India, in one year, after efforts spread over many years and various temperatures; its tropical climate not only injures the annual varieties, but also soon changes them to perennials.-----The sub-tropical tree-forms begin to be abundant in Ohio, and, southward, they increase in number rapidly, till they become exclusively tropical in the oranges, palms, live oaks, and mangroves of the lower half of the Florida peninsula. The papaw, cypress, and gum-trees, commence in the Ohio Valley, while long-leafed pines, cypress, and live oak, appear on the Atlantic coast, at Norfolk; evergeen magnolias, palmettoes, and the wild olive, follow before reaching Savannah, and the border of the Gulf affords many constant forms equally marked as tropical. The forest of the coast at Charleston is rich with tropical forms, red and white bays, giant laurels, cabbage palms, live oaks, etc.

At St. Augustine, the wild orange is added, and, in the southern part of the peninsula, satin-wood, mahogany, mangroves, the cocoa-nut, and a variety of truly tropical palms.

A Pine Portrait or F. A. Michaux, engraved on steel, will ornament our December num-ber, and form an admirable frontispiece to the year's volume.

A Portrait of Dr. Brinckle, extremely well executed in photograph, has been laid on our table. Long may the able Pomologist live to benefit his race.