tubes, which alternately radiate or turn in towards the centre, rendering the moving power at one time strong, at another time weak; but preserving throughout such an intensity of force, that it is necessary to keep it in check by a regulator. **We remember to have seen, many years ago, a machine on a similar construction, made in London, but after a while the friction became too powerful to be overcome by the moving levers; M. M. may have succeeded better. From the Monthly Magazine. The annual revenues of the parochial clergy of England and Wales have been stated at 2,557,000l. But it must be remembered, that these revenues arise as well from glebe and augmentation lands, with surplice-fees, as from tithes in kind or by composition, which, on each parish, can scarcely be estimated on the average under 401. per annum, which, according to the number of 10,649 parochial benefices, will amount to nearly 526,000l.; which being deducted from the gross revenue of the parochial clergy, will leave 2,031,000l. as the actual receipt from the tithes in their possession. The impropriations are usually estimated at 3,845 in number; and of these, about one-third belong to the bishops, dignified clergy; and two universities, and the other two-thirds to the lay-impropriators: and the laity are also lessees of the one-third belonging to the superior clergy and universities. The collective income of which impropriations from tithes alone, at this time, may be taken at 1,538,000l. per annum. It appears, then, that the total receipt from the tithes in the possession of the parochial clergy, and impropriators, whether paid in kind or accounted for by composition, amounts to 3,569,000l. per annum: which, in proportion to that part of the agricultural lands in the kingdom, subject to the payment of tithes, namely, 28,000,000 of acres, and valued or rented at 158., 20s., or 258., per statute acre, will be under 3s. 5d. in the pound at 15s. per acre, a little above 2s. 6d. in the pound at 20s. per acre, and a little above 2s. in the pound at 25s. per acre. NORWICH STEAM-BOAT. An unfortunate accident befel a steam-boat within the month at Norwich, which has damped the ardour of many friends to their general introduction. We have taken some pains to inquire into the circumstances, and we find no ground of alarm, or any just ground of objection to steam-boats generally, more than might be taken against culinary fires, or lamps, or candles, from their occasionally setting houses on fire and burning persons to death; or against stage-coaches, which are so often fatally overset; or against horses, which kill above a thousand persons in England annually; or to ships and boats, which are the cause of the death of tens of thousands in every year. Multitudes of the most powerful steam-engines are in daily use in every part of Great Britain, yet how seldom are they a cause of any fatal catastrophe. In this new application of them, an accident may be likely to result from inexperience; and in this instance, at Norwich, the conductors of the boat are reported to be exceedingly blameable. It appears there was an opposition steam-boat, and, in order that one might go off in high style, and run ahead of the other, the regulating valve was so fastened down that, when the danger became apparent, it could not be raised, and an explosion of the confined steam was inevitable. A law should punish proven wantonness of this kind in an exemplary manner, and forbid the use of high pressure engines such as this in steam-boats, as a security to passengers, and as a protection to a navigating power so essential in opposing the current of rivers. In this magazine a foreign correspondent has suggested the application of a greater and a safer power than steam, which is worthy of attention; and, in the use of steam itself, the fears of the public may be removed by employing the steam-engine in a separate vessel, with which to tow that which is laden with passengers or goods. Our readers, too, cannot have forgotten, that we lately submitted to them the project of a team or horse-boat, the machinery of which may be worked by horses, as in a common horse-mill; while the keep of the horses amounts, it is said, to less than the expense of the fuel in a steam-boat. ib. From the Edinburgh Monthly Maga zine. A report made to the council-general of hospitals in Paris, relative to the state of those establishments from 1803 to 1814, contains some important facts. They are divided into two classes, called hopitaux and hospices; the former, ten in number, being designed for the sick and diseased; and the latter, which amount to nine, affording a provision for helpless infancy, and poor persons afflicted with incurable infirmities. The Hotel Dieu, the most ancient of the hospitals, contains 1200 beds. The general mortality in the hospitals has been 1 in 71-2, and in the hospices 1 in 61-2; and it has been more considerable among the women than the men. It is found, that wherever rooms of the same size are placed one over another, the mortality is greatest in the uppermost. In the Hospice de l' Accouchement, in 1814, there were delivered 2,700 females, of whom 2,400 acknowledged that they were unmarried. In the ten years from 1804 to 1814, there were admitted into the Hospice d' Allaitement, or Foundling Hospital 23,458 boys, and 22,463 girls, total 45,921 children, only 4,130 of whom were presumed to be legitimate. The mortality of infants in the first year after their birth was under 2-7ths. Du ring the ten years, 355,000 sick were admitted into the hospitals, and 59,000 poor persons into the hospices. The total number that received relief out of these establishments in 1813, which gives about the average of that period, was 103,000, of whom 21,000 belonged to the department of the Seine.-Some pains have been taken to ascertain the different causes of mental derangement. It appears, that among the maniacs the number of women is generally greater than that of men. Among the younger females, love is the most common cause of insanity; and among the others, jealousy or domestic discord. Among the younger class of males, it is the too speedy development of the passions, and with the others, the derangement of their affairs, that most frequently produces this effect. The calamities of the revolution were another cause of madness in both sexes; and it is worthy of remark, that the men were mad with aristocracy, the women with democracy. Excessive grief occasioned lunacy in the men, whereas the minds of the females were deranged by ideas of independence and equality. From the same. ITALY. M. Niebuhr, the Prussian envoy at Rome, has discovered, in the Vatican Library, the fragment yet wanting in Cicero's Oration pro Marco Rabirio, and a fragment of the Oration pro Plancio. These two fragments were discovered in the same MS. from which Amaduzzi has already extracted an unpublished fragment of Livy. The learned Prussian envoy has also found some passages of the Works of Seneca.. From the same. The Berlin Gazette gives the following account of Von Kotzebue's voyage round the world, which has been received from Kamschatka. Letters of an earlier date, which, after having doubled Cape Horn, he sent from the coast of Chili, have been lost, or at least are not yet come to hand. M. Von Kotzebue discovered three new islands in the South Sea, in 14° of latitude, and 144° of longitude, to which he gave the names of Romanzow (the author of the expedition), Spiridon, and Krusenstern.. Besides these, he discovered a long chain of islands in the same quarter, and two clusters of islands in the 11th. degree of latitude and 190th of longitude. (It is not specified whether the latitude is N. or S. or the longitude E. or W.) These he called after his ships, Rurich's Chain; the two latter Kutusof's Cluster (a group) and Suwarrof's Cluster. All these islands are covered with wood, partly uninhabited, and dangerous for navigators. The discoverer has sent to Count Romanzof a great many maps and drawings. On the 12th July O. S. Kotzebue designed to sail from Kamschatka to Bering's Straits, according to his instructions. He hopes to return to Kamschatka in September 1817. On the whole voyage from Chili to that place, he had not a single person sick on board. He touched at Easter Island, but did not find the inhabitants so friendly as La Peyrouse describes them. He thinks that something must have happened since that time, which has made them distrustful of the Europeans: perhaps it may be the overturning of their surprisingly large statues, which Kotzebue looked for in vain, and found only the ruins of one of them near its base, which still remains. He saw no fruits from the seeds left by La Peyrouse, nor any sheep or hogs, which by this time must have multiplied exceedingly. A single fowl was brought him for sale. It seems we may hope much from this young seaman, who is not yet thirty years of age. He was obliged, for many reasons, to leave the learned Dane, Wormskrold, behind in Kamschatka. From the Gentleman's Magazine. DRY ROT. "A disease known, is half removed." Many theories have been set forth to account for the dry-rot; many too have been the remedies prescribed to cure, and the means to prevent it: but I believe all have hitherto been alike unsuccessful; for although its nature may have hitherto eluded our search, yet I think its origin is not so obscure as to discourage our endeavours to discover it. I hope I may anticipate, that if the following essay do not completely develop its nature, and preventive, that I shall have furnished materials, at least, that may enable others to supply these desiderata, now so greatly needful for our shipping and our dwellings. I consider the dry-rot to be the result of the putrefactive fermentation, which is modified and much accelerated by situation and circumstances. It will, I conceive, materially assist many persons (shipwrights especially) to comprehend the whole of the subject, by giving first a short general account of the organisation of trees. Trees are organised bodies; being furnished with several sets of vessels, adapted to perform the several functions of elaborating, and circulating their vital fluids, and of respiration: they consist obviously of the roots, stem, branches, bark, and leaves; and these all contain vessels fitted to the functions each has to perform; it is generally agreed by naturalists, that these are of three kinds, besides the respiring vessels of the leaves; namely, first, the common vessels; these are long cylindrical tubes, passing up through the root and bole, into the branches, and terminating in the leaves; and their office is to convey the sap into the elaboratory of the tree (the leaves;) where it is changed into the peculiar juices of the plant; and is thence conveyed back again to the root by the second set, which are denominated the proper vessels, to nourish and supply aliment to the tree, for its growth and form; annually, a new zone of wood around the tree; these vessels are situated principally in the internal bark, and cellular tissue above it; and are, like the former, long cylindrical tubes, running from the leaves back into the root: the third set are the spiral vessels, accompanying the common vessels; and are supposed to be either absorbents, or air-vessels; but their office has not yet been clearly shown. In trees, besides their vascular structure, two kinds of fluids are found, the sap, and peculiar juices: the sap is a fluid nearly as liquid as water, is imbibed by the roots from the soil, and is conveyed, as before stated, by the common vessels through the tree: the peculiar juices are the sap concocted and changed by the leaves: they are found in the proper vessels, and are thus fitted to become the aliment of the tree. Having now related of the physiology of trees, what I consider necessary in this short disquisition, it will be proper to take a view of the method of Nature, in conducting her vegetable offspring to their final growths and uses. All things chauge,' is her motto, and wherever we turn we find ample proofs of its truth: the plant originates from the seed of its parent, is fed by its ashes, passes through the various stages of germination and vegetation, scatters the germs of a new generation, and finally nourishes its own offspring after the manner itself was supplied. All vegetable substances, when left to themselves, undergo the putrefactive fermentation; or in other words, they are gradually decomposed, and decay. It is necessary to this end, that water should be present, and that the temperature should not be below 45°, nor so high as to evaporate the water hastily. This process, therefore, depends upon the presence of moisture and heat: but the moisture must not be perpetually renewing; neither may the subject be submersed, nor the heat too great. Any temperature between 45o and 90o assists this process, and the nearer it approaches the maximum, the more rapid will be the process. When these circumstances meet in a tree which has passed its age of maturity; or in timber, the elementary parts of the water, the oxygen and hydrogen gases, attracted * by and attracting the principles of the wood, aided by heat, (and this heat is generated by the moist vegetable substance, as is exemplified in the case of damp hay or saw-dust) separate; and the fermenting and vegetating principle, oxygen gas, begins to act: the consequences of this action are, the formation of water, the springing forth of fungus, which owes its origin to the action of the oxygen gas upon the sap and juices of the tree (and be it remembered, that timber, as now felled and used, is loaded with them), that stimulus, assisted by the heat generated, exciting an unnatural or abortive vegetation of these, in consequence of the tree not possessing its complete organs to modify the vegetation; gaseous matter is also generated (carbonic acid gas); the loss of the weight and cohesion of the wood ensues, and this process is carried on until the whole vegetable matter has undergone a complete change; the organic texture is at last destroyed, and there results a heap of unorganized carbonaceous matter. It now remains to show that the putrefaction of wood, and the dry-rot, are one and the same process, under different modifications: this I shall endeavour to do by comparing the cases. The agents then in the first case are water and heat; the agents in the second case are the same. The circumstances are alike; being only more favourable to its rapidity in the second. It is found in the first, that when the water is frequently renewed, or the wood is submersed, that it proceeds very slowly, or not at all; and when the wood is kept dry, it does not occur. In the second case these circumstances affect in the same manner: those parts of a ship that are covered with water, as the floors and keel, very rarely have dry-rot; and those parts that are kept dry by being exposed to the sun and air, are also free from it; except, indeed, when they happen to be continuations of timbers, the lower ends of which are in situations favouring the *It is, I think, worthy of remark, that the putrefactive fermentation of animal matter is productive of animals of inferior organisation to their parent: thus the varieties of maggots are the production of that process, in man and brute; so the fungi in their varieties, owe their origin to the same cause. change. Again, a high temperature is a favourable circumstance in the first case; so it is in the secend, as is exemplified in the case of sending newly built ships into hot climates; where they are remarked to decay in a rapid manner. Moisture is applicable in the same manner; let us notice those parts of ships most infected, and we shall find that there heat and moisture prevail; from the heads of the first futtocks up to the gun-deck beams, along the deadwood, in the stern-frame, in the cantbodies fore and aft, its ravages are most remarkable; and precisely in those situations do heat and moisture most prevail; there is a difference in situation and of circumstances in the latter case, which will account for its amazing rapidity, namely, the shutting up the timber in a damp state, as it were in a box; and surrounding it with a damp, heated and stagnant atmosphere; this must, according to the nature of the thing, cause it to decay faster than that which has the advantage of an occasional renewal of water and of air, and the frequent action of the sun's rays. The phenomena are the same; being slightly modified by circumstances and situation, and passing with greater rapidity. In the first case they are the occasional appearance of fungi; the extrication of carbonic acid gas; the formation of water; the reduction of the weight, solidity: and loss of the strength of the wood; and the destruction of its fibrous and organic texture. In the second case these are also the phenomena; the fungus is always found to precede it; this is so notorious, that it has been supposed by many to be the cause of it. The extrication of carbonic acid gas is also constantly found; this is evident from the unwholesome state of the atmosphere of ships below the gun- The usual to find the centre of a timber re. duced to an impalpable powder. The result is similar, being a mass of carbonaceous powdery matter. Having thus compared the two cases, and found the agents, phenomena, and results the same, the conclusion is irresistible, that they are the same process. **DRY-ROT.-In page 269 of vol. I. of the present series of the Analectic Magazine, is inserted a review of the treatises of Richard Pering, and Wm. Taylor Money, esq., on ship building, including some observations on the dryrot, to which we refer our readers. It is there ascribed to the vegetable life of the tree not yet extinct, and the remains of sap in the timber, owing either to its not being felled as it ought to be, in the winter-or not sufficiently dried before it is put to use. 3. There are four hypotheses still maintained on this difficult subject: 1. That the dry-rot is owing, as above mentioned, to the remains of sap in the timber. 2. To a parasite fungus that grows on and within the timber, nourished by the juices still remaining in the wood. To an insect similar in its habits and properties to the teredo that infests ship timber: and 4thly, To the chemical decomposition of the wood itself, as maintained in the dissertation now inserted, but, as it seems to us, not sufficiently supported. charcoal; we find none of these: the CHEVALIER ST. GEORGE. The chevalier St. George, so renowned for his skill in fencing, once stood close to a gentleman at the Opera, at Paris, who was not very clean in his person, which occasioned the chevalier to go to another part of the parterre. The gentleman, who supposed the chevalier went to find out a better place for seeing the ballet, followed him: the chevalier moved again, and was again followed. This took place a third and even a fourth time, when his patience being quite exhausted, he exclaimed, When people are offensive they should stand by themselves like other nasty noun substantives.' The gentleman took fire, and challenged the other to fight. Pho!' cried the chevalier, I am St. George, and should be through your lungs twice before you could touch me once.' If you were the devil,' replied the gentleman, 'you should fight me.' 'That,' rejoined the chevalier, would answer no possible end to either of us, for if you were even able to kill me, you wou'dn't stink a bit less, and if I were to kill you, you'd stink a d- -d deal more.' Eur. Mag. ART. X.-Poetry. If it were a chemical decomposition of the wood itself, we should find in the dry-rot some of its chemical elements, the gases, water, pyroligneous acid, For the Analectic Magazine. SONNET TO DESPAIR HAIL fell Despair! within yon wilder'd cave, I saw thee start, and heard a murmur deep, Its light shone dimly o'er thy faded breast; H. T. F. |