period after he could remain no longer. The retreat is more inexplicable, because he must have seen the steamers coming down to his assistance, and could calculate accurately the time that would pass before their aid could be ren dered. The first mate, who is mentioned as having left the ship with one of the boats, jumped overboard to preserve that particular boat from sinking, and was drifted away from the vessel with out oars; but he returned whenever he was enabled, and assisted so successfully in rescuing selves. Some of the crew have given the captain a certificate of good conduct "under their hands;" but a certificate from them is eminently absurd. They need to be certified, and nobody would do that. The duties to be expected from the seamen of a passenger ship in moments of danger should be understood. If their first duty be to make out of the way, the passengers have no chance with them, because they must always have the readiest access to boats, or, as in this captain's case, to spars. There is no doubt whatever that the passengers, that he received their thanks, ❘ every lost life on that ship might have been and was particularly noticed by the French Princes on board of the Brazilian frigate. There is no imputation attached to him, for he acted the part of a cool and brave man in the midst of unexpected danger. The Queen of the Ocean yacht was the first vessel, as has been stated, that approached the Ocean Monarch; and the following note of seamen and of passengers saved by the yacht, will convince any person that the crew of the burned ship failed in their duty : "Seamen.- Captain Murdoch; William James Moore, carpenter; George Vane, William Blodget, Jonathan Sweet, Richard Brannon, Jolin M'Loughlin, Christian Christian, Thomas Hiler, Christopher J. Austin, Adam Jones, Charles D. Locke, William R. Neland, Isaac Stock well, Charles Nason, John Keeler, W. H. Pratt, Samuel Moray, Henry Colver, and Henry Jones. "Passengers. - Whiston H. Bristow, London; Patrick MacManas, John Horridge, Patrick Oregan, Patrick M'Mahon, Patrick Griffin, John Kelly, Dennis Cochrane, Peter Smith, Anna Roper, Bilston, Birmingham; Mary Maguire, County Cavan; Mary Carey, Thurles." This statement must be compared with another to bring out its full import: "The passengers on board were as follows:Steerage, 322; second cabin, 22; first cabin, 6; crew, 47; doctor, 1; making a total of 398. Of these, 32 were saved by the Queen of the Ocean, 160 by the Affonso, 16 by a fishing smack, and 17 by the Prince of Wales, being a total of 225 saved, leaving 173 to be still accounted for." saved by a few resolute men pointing out their danger to the passengers, and remaining on their vessel; for all the deaths were caused in lowering the anchors, by the fall of masts, or from persons in despair precipitating themselves into the sea. Their despair was not unnatural, when they found the ship abandoned by the captain and the crew. They must have deemed the danger, terrible as it was, nearer than the reality, and acted on that conviction. Only two persons connected with the vessel, according to the narrative, discharged their duty well. One of them, a stewardess, perished in attempting to remove some gunpowder from the cabin; and the other was the first mate. We refer to these afflictive losses, not with the view of recording events, however melancholy, but of offering the suggestions for which their occurrence makes space and opportunity; but we cannot pass from the narrative without noticing the coincidence through which the French Princes, Prince de Joinville and the Duc de Aumale, with the Princess and Duchess, in a Brazilian steam-frigate, were led to the spot at the time when they were enabled to be of essential service. The young Princes were anxious to be useful, and they were able to save more than half the passengers. Their conduct towards the unfortunate people, so strangely cast into their company, was most commendable. They cheerfully resigned the frigate for their accommodation, and placed all in their power at the emigrants' disposal, while at Liverpool they contributed liberally to their subsequent support. Diplomatists cannot meet a great accident by design, but there could not have been a better stroke of diplomacy than this affair for the interests of the Princes. We do not detract from their merit, and their benevolent exertions for, and kindness to, the passengers, 139 of whom were taken on board their vessel, when we note the business, in the present state of France, as a turning point in their favor. The French people admire gallant or generous acts, and the two Princes - one of them the most The crew and doctor were 48 persons, the passengers were 350 - the crew were not quite one-seventh of the passengers in number; but the first vessel that came up, when other vessels were in sight - and seamen should have known that more aid would probably reach them in time - picked up 20 of the crew and 12 of the passengers! At that time all the officers and crew appear to have been out of the ship, and they seem, with the exception of the chief mate, to render a very unsatisfactory account of them- | popular person in his family - will be mentioned in a different tone in their own country from ❘ and to receive license before he be permitted to that used towards them generally since February last. There is one man, Frederick Jerome, a sailor on board the New World, whose courage saved, in the last extremity, fifteen persons who were left on the ship, then burning violently, after all the other passengers then alive had been extricated. He carried a line up the bows of the vessel, and lowered fifteen passengers, principally women and children, singly and safely into the boats, and was the last man that left the Ocean Monarch, which was burning by that time like a furnace. That man occupied the captain's place, and discharged his last duty on his vessel. The fate of this ship, and half of her passengers, indicates several changes essentially necessary in the construction and management of emigrant ships. The accident was reported to have arisen from a fire having been put ignorantly into a wooden ventilator by a passenger. The captain denies that statement, and ascribes the catastrophe to a pernicious practice: "As to the origin of the fire, I differ from a published statement that I have seen. There was no wooden ventilator on board the ship; the ventilators were of iron. The fire originated, in my opinion, from smoking, among the steerage passengers; the night before several pipes were taken from them. The fire was instantaneous; five minutes after it was discovered, the whole stern of the ship was in flames. The cargo consisted of iron, dry goods, salt, and earthenware, the latter being packed in crates stuffed with straw." It is impossible to prevent emigrants from smoking on their passage out; but it would neither be expensive nor difficult to provide a fire-proof smoking apartment, where they might, if they would, safely for themselves and others, indulge in that luxury. The regulations for emigrant vessels should involve a rigorous arrangement of all luggage and berthing before the vessel leaves the port. British laws cannot reach the captains of the United States ships; and if the Navigation Laws are to be repealed, it will be impossible to impose any restrictions whatever. But, for our part, perceiving no injurious monopoly in the principle of these laws, although their operation may be in divers cases harsh, we should prefer to their repeal a new enactment regarding the examination of officers for ships, especially emigrant or any passenger vessels, in which so many lives are entrusted to the care of one man, and that man often inadequate. practise; but there are no surgeons who have ever in their professional capacity the care of 398 lives on their hands. The rapidity with which the fire spread indicates the necessity of some change in the internal construction of emigrant and passenger ships. The captain denies that any of the ventilators were of wood; while one of his officers ascribes the calamity to a fire being accidentally kindled in a wooden ventilator. There is some discrepancy in this case; but it is not material; for most persons are aware that in emigrant ships there is a great number of divisions run up with thin dry laths, and it is astonishing that a greater number of accidents by fire do not occur. It would be easy to obviate this danger, but the remedy would increase the cost of construction. The internal divisions of emigrant vessels might either be completed of iron or covered with zinc, or a less expensive metal. The change would be in favor of the passengers in every respect. It would promote cleanliness, and consequently comfort, on board, and very greatly diminish the risk of fire. The boats of a passenger ship should be competent to convey, in an ordinary sea, the number of persons for which the vessel was licensed, in addition to the crew; and should be so stowed away that they could be launched without the loss of time, evidently incurred in this case. From the moment that the fire was discovered to be dangerous, the boats shou'd have been prepared and placed, so far as possible, out of harm's way. All the boats except two were destroyed in the conflagration; but as there were 398 persons on the Ocean Monarch, it would be interesting to know the exact number that she carried. In accidents of this or any other nature, boats are frequently swamped, or rendered useless in the struggles of the passengers to crowd them; but that could not occur if it were known that they were sufficient to carry away every person in the ship. The boats were burned in this unfortunate case; and although we cannot recall any previous instance of a ship's boats being burned in similar circumstances, still, even that fatality might be prevented. There is no reason for building boats of wood alone; and it would not cost a large sum to sheathe them with copper, which would prevent a recurrence of the accident, mentioned by Captain Morgan in this narrative. The necessity of nautical reform in many respects stands undoubted. Every effort of ingenuity has been expended, not to make ships safe, but to make them cheap. The shipwrecks that occur annually, causing a great waste of A surgeon requires to pass an examination | life and property, are the direct results of the cheap system. Very few vessels ever would be wrecked, if they were properly manned and found, and handled carefully and skilfully. The grand object in this country is low freights; and a few thousand lives are sacrificed annually to our idolatry. We have read carefully the discussions in Parliament on the navigation laws, during the session of this year, but all the arguments turned on the means of cheapness, rather than the means of safety. The loss of several thousand lives annually occupied no share of time and attention from the Legislature. The disgraceful condition of many emigrant ships a condition not greatly superior to that of slaveships-caused no such indignation as the fearful security must be sought, and next, but only next, economy. Unless a feeling - a true feeling of this nature can be engendered by judgment on calamity, and calamity on judgment, we shall go forward in the walk of nautical manslaughter, regarding each successive tragedy only as a three days' wonder. - Tait's Edinburgh Magazine. STEEL PENS. - Who does not remember the time when a steel pen cost as much as a dozen quills? Who is ignorant of the marvellous reduction that has taken place in the market value of these tiny bits of steel? Sixpence a piece, fact, that perhaps we paid one penny per lb. sixpence a dozen, sixpence a gross, - thus have more freight than some other nation. The judgments of August will fall vainly, if they do not teach us that life is more than money - security better than cheapness. The habit of insurance is unformed amongst the fishers of Scotland, because they resist its cost. They take the risk of ruin rather than a small fixed payment. They encounter the daily or nightly danger of death, rather than adopt decked vessels. To save a few shillings on the cost of passage, emigrants risk themselves and their families in inferior vessels, with contracted accommodation and the strong probability that when they reach their destined port their health may be undermined, and require longer time to re-establish than is value for the entire sum in passage-money together. The experience of such seasons as the last falls lightly upon the Legislature. They do not overlook the sufferings. They cannot plead ignorance of the deaths and sickness on emigrant vessels. They do not affect to doubt the intensity of the evil. They even vote a grant to the colonies for their extraordinary charges in curing the sick. Thus they afford the most appalling evidence that life is very cheap with them, and money greatly respected. Nothing is done to prevent the repetition of such scenes. Nothing will be done to prevent another moving village of emigrants being wrapped in fire on the waters. Nothing will be proposed to hinder another evening gale from laying a range of sea-coast in mourning again. On all these subjects the Legislature will be silent, unless the people rise and say that life is preferable to money; and, reading right the lessons taught by the blazing ship off Formsby Light House, and the reproaches seen in the pallid cheeks of the corpes strewn on the eastern coast, or the warnings given by the broken boats, wrecked on the granite rocks, say that life is dearer than gold - that life must be saved if money should be lost - and that first where mankind, and their existence is staked, they come down in value. All this could not have been done but for the application of machinery. Men's hands employed in cutting and pressing and shaping the pens, would never have permitted this cheapening to have gone to such an extent. And yet there are actually more men employed in the manufacture than were employed when machinery was less used. The machinery, in fact, has created a demand, which requires large numbers both of machines and of men to supply. Some of the steel pen manufactories of Birmingham are very large establishments, containing ranges of highly finished machines, and giving employment to large numbers of workmen. One of these manufacturers, in his advertisements, states his yearly produce at millions of dozens; and there is no reason to doubt that it does reach that extraordinary pitch. The Land we Live in. A PLEA FOR HEDGE AND OTHER BIRDS. Farmers and gardeners are sad enemies to hedge-birds. Making up their minds that they are enemies, and only such, they destroy them with an unsparing hand. They put a premium on their heads-their eggs - their young their nests. They add cupidity to the destructiveness of youthful depredators, and goad them on to destroy, far and wide, every bird which builds a nest, as if it were amongst the thorns and thistles wherewith the Almighty had cursed our race. The ignorance of this is as great as its cruelty. Very often they hire the destruction of their best friends, and then grumble that their crops are gone by the aphis and the caterpillar. They grudge the bird the food which harbors the parent; and therefore it escapes, and breeds ten millions of consumers. We remember some sapient entry in an antique parish book, when the constable "payd for vi. tomtits' heads;" and cannot but pity the poor wretches who have evidently more money than wit. Farmer's Journal. IMPORTANCE OF THE INSIGNIFICANT. It is one of the marvellous arrangements of Providence, that results of the greatest magnitude and importance are not unusually caused by operations apparently so insignificant as to be reckoned scarcely worthy of notice. Nothing, however, is really insignificant all has a meaning - all tends to one harmonious whole in the order of creation. nually consumed of it at Berlin for different purposes. Two origins are now ascribed to limestone one, that of chemical precipitation; the other, which has a direct connection with our subject, ascribes the formation to the labors of the infusoria. There can be no doubt that many of the enormous beds of this substance with which we are familiar are the results of the accumula Some beautiful illustrations of this proposition ❘tion of innumerable millions of these tiny crea are to be found in the animal kingdom, particularly in the immense and wonderful influence of minute animated organisms upon the actual form and mass of the globe! The chalk formation fills every reflective mind with wonder. The chalk-beds of England are many hundred feet thick, and many miles in extent. Who raised this wall of white around our coast? Who piled up those precipitous masses, from which all the labor and skill of man can only detach a few comparatively insignificant morsels? "We did!" utter a myriad-million animalcules, whose dead bodies we thus behold. It is beyond conception; but the microscope assures us of the fact. These vast beds are composed of the shells of infusory animalcules. A "line" is the 12th part of an inch. Now these creatures vary from the 12th to the 280th part of a line in thickness! It has been calculated that ten millions of their dead bodies lie in a cubic inch! "Singly," says a popular writer, "they are the most unimportant of all animals; in the mass, forming as they do such enormous strata over a large part of the earth's surface, they have an importance greatly exceeding that of the largest and noblest of the beasts of the field." Theirs is a safe humility; for while the greater creatures have many of them become extinct, and left no posterity, the descendants of these ancient earth-architects live and thrive to this very hour. The polishingslate, or tripoli of Bilin, presents us with another instance in point. The investigations of that greatest of microscopical observers, Professor Ehrenberg, have shown that this substance consists almost entirely of an aggregation of infusoria in layers, without any connecting medium. These are much more minute than the chalk animalcules. A cubic line contains about twenty-three millions of them, and a cubic inch has been calculated to be the cenotaph of forty thousand millions of these beings! The weight of a cubic inch is about 220 grains, and that of the siliceous shield of a single animalcule is estimated at the 187,000,000th part of a grain! The infusorial rock at Bilin forms a bed fourteen feet in thickness, and about fifty hundred weight is an tures. They swarm in all waters, indifferently in salt as in fresh; and secreting from the lime held in solution by such water the necessary material for their shields or calcareous skeletons, they form by their enormous aggregation, in process of time, the vast strata of which we speak. For this purpose, it is necessary that they should be capable of multiplying immensely; and this they do by the different processes of spontaneous fissuration, gemmation, and the development of ova. The white calcareous earth so common at the bottoms of bogs and morasses has its origin in the ceaseless labors of these creatures; and the "bog-iron ore" of geologists consists of the ferruginous shields of others. Thus, as has been aptly remarked by the old Latin proverb, "iron, flint, and lime, all formed by worms," which was probably a sly sarcasm against philosophy, modern science has shown to be actually true in the history of the animalcules. The Great Pyramid of Egypt has been looked upon by men as a miracle of human power and skill: yet every stone in its composition is a greater far, for the limestone of which this vast structure is built was erected long ago by an army of humble animalcules more numerous than all the hosts of a thousand Pharaohs. It has been finely said by Young "Where is the dust that has not been alive?" though perhaps he little knew the wide application of the truth he was enunciating. In Lapland, we are told that in certain places there exists a stratum of earth called bergmehl, full of fossil animalculites. It contains four per cent. of animal matter, for the sake of which the wretched inhabitants, when hard pressed for food, collect this earth, and mixing it up with a portion of the bark of trees ground to powder, use it as food. The town of Richmond in Virginia is entirely built on a bed of siliceous marl composed of these creatures, and on the average about twenty feet in thickness. From the consideration of these stupendous results of animalcule labor, we may turn to the equally interesting one of that of the zoophytes. When we mention the term coral formations, ited, that an act of the government was called will certainly convey to the major part of our readers that impression of the vast importance of apparently insignificant beings which we desire, since, thanks to the interesting and popular character of many of our valuable scientific works, much information on the subject is now abroad. Let us, however, mention a few of the remarkable works executed by these indefatigable laborers. Captain Flinders describes a coral-reef on the east coast of New Holland which is 1000 miles long. In one part it is unbroken for a distance of 350 miles. Enormous masses of this structure also brave the fury of the widespread waters of the Pacific. These groups are from 1100 to 1200 miles long, by 300 or 400 in breadth. The following extract from that most interesting work, "Darwin's Journal," will convey a good idea of the extent of these labors in one spot-Keeling Island, which is an entire mass of coral: - "Such formations rank high amongst the wonderful objects of this world. Captain Fitzroy found no bottom with a line 7200 feet long, at a distance of only 2200 yards from the shore. Hence this island forms a lofty submarine mountain, with sides steeper even than the most abrupt volcanic cone. The saucershaped summit is ten miles across; and every single atom, from the least particle to the largest forth, decreeting that everybody should assist in the extermination of the insects. But they were not to be annihilated by "act of parliament:" cold and rain killed them. The Hessian fly, supposed to have been carried by the far less formidable Hessian troops from Germany, committed for a length of time the most awful ravages in North America. At one period it was thought they would annihilate the culture of wheat altogether. They came in enormous numbers, thickening the very air, crossing lakes and rivers like a cloud. In a tumbler of beer, 500 met death by drowning! The privy council, we are told, met day by day to consult what measures could be adopted to destroy these ravagers. Expresses were despatched to France, Austria, Prussia, and America, for full information; and the minutes of council and necessary documents fill upwards of 200 pages. All this about an insignificant fly! The weevils, likewise, have an evil name for their destroying powers. Every voyager knows them, and has watched their manœuvres in his biscuits, or has been on the point of swallowing hundreds in his soup. A great brewer used to say that he collected them out of his granaries by bushels; which cannot be wondered at, when we remember that a single pair will, in the course of one year, become surround fragment of rock in this great hill - which, how-ed with a family of 6000! Our grapes are often ever, is small compared with very many other lagoon islands - bears the stamp of having been subject to organic arrangement. We feel surprised," he adds, "when travellers tell us of the vast dimensions of the Pyramids and other great ruins; but how utterly insignificant are the greatest of them when compared to these mountains of stone accumulated by the agency of various minute and tender animals." The entomologist, jealous for the honor of his science, will tell us that a similar lesson may be learned by equally striking illustrations from the page of insect life; nor is it a violation of our prefatory compact to include the displays of insect power under the dynamics of insignificance. When countries have been shaved of their increase, when kings and councils have been perplexed, and whole nations have trembled, at the sound of an insect's wing, we are justified in giving their deeds a record in this place and on this occasion. Let him that can count the leaves of the thickest forest despise, if he can, the powers of that legion of caterpillars of which Reaumur speaks as having brought a premature winter upon a dense wood in France, which he visited. Every tree was overrun with them; and in a brief time, from the refreshing green of spring, the whole scene assumed the parched brown aspect of late autumn. Such was the alarm excit cut down for us, and withered before their time, by the larvæ of other insects. In the course of the last century they multiplied so excessively in Sweden, that numbers of meadows became white and dry, as if scorched. The larvæ of our childhood's friend, "Daddy long-legs," some years ago entirely destroyed hundreds of acres of the best and richest pasture-land, all becoming brown, dry, and dead. A piece of turf, a square foot in size, when examined, contained the enormous number of 210 grubs! After all, what are these to the locusts, that oppressive scourge with which Providence occasionally visits nations? To quote a single instance: - In Russia, in 1650, they came at three points in vast multitudes: they darkened the very air, covered the earth, and in some places their dead bodies formed a stratum four feet deep; the trees literally bent under them, and were of course stripped clean in a very little time. On one occasion they are said to have been the indirect causes of the death of about a million men and animals. Surely here is a display of power which redeems insects from the stigma of insignificance! But this is not all. The insect known as the Teredo navalis commits a more subtle, but scarcely less terrible work upon the wooden structures of our piers. The piers of Holland are suffering immensely from the destroying |