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potatoes or turnips, and may be cultivated in far greater abundance, upon the same space of ground. It is said, and by good authority, that nine hundred and sixty bushels* have been raised upon one acre.

They make a good table sauce; but the greatest object in cultivating them is for the use of feeding and fattening swine, horses, and cattle. They are so easily cultivated, and so hardy, that they may be raised in fields to great advantage. They will grow well in a soil that is but moderately rich, if it be ploughed deep and made mellow. Owing to the form of the root of this plant, and their penetrating so deep into the earth, it is but rarely injured by droughts, that cause other vegetation to droop, and many kinds to die.

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The ground should be ploughed in the fall preceding, and ploughed very deep it must be well harrowed before sowing, first with a heavy harrow, and afterwards with lighter one. After the seed is sown, the ground should be raked, otherwise, the seed being so light, and of a forked form, if it be harrowed, it will be too much collected.

The last week in April is the proper time for sowing, but later will answer. I have known good crops raised, that were sown as late as the middle of June.

The

earlier they are sown, the larger they will grow; but they are not so good for table use as those which are sown later. There will be no danger in thinning them early, as they are a plant that are seldom diminished by insects.

The European farmers make a practice of harrowing them after they have grown to some bigness. It is said that not one in fifty will be destroyed by the operation; it will loosen the soil, and greatly forward their growth. But it will be advisable to go among them after harrowing, and uncover those which

*This, however, is a very extraordinary produce, and not such as is often to be expected.

are buried under heaps of mould.

It will be found, by those who will try the experiment of raising carrots, to be a great improvement in our present system of agricul

ture.

A new method of curing convulsions has been practised in the hos pitals of Germany, with great suc

cess.

It was first resorted to by the late M. Stutz, a physician of eminence in Suabia, and he was led to this important discovery from the analogy of a simple fact. M. Humboldt had announced in his work upon the nerves, that on treating the nervous fibre alternately with opium and carbonate of pot-ash, he made it pass five or six times from the highest degree of inatibility, to a state of perfect asthenia.

The method of M. Stutz, who has been employed with the greatest success in the German hospitals, consisted in one alternate internal application of opium aud carbonate of pot-ash. It has been seen that when thirty-six grains of opium, administered within the space of twenty-four hours, produced no effect, the patient was considerably relieved by ten grains more of opium, employed after giving the alkaline solution. This new treatment of tetanus is worthy of attention.

Some time ago, a piece of ground at Allonby, in Cumberland, was sold, by public auction, at the rate of 46417. per acre, and the situation possesses no superior advantages whatever.

The Russian sloop of war Diana, captain Golivin, arrived at Spithead,on the 29th of September, from St. Petersburgh, fitted for a voyage of discoveries in the Northern Pacific Ocean. She is to touch at the Brazils, from whence she will proceed, round Cape Horn, to the sea of Kamschatka. The

object is to explore that coast and sea more to the southward than the great Cook went: where the Russians have lately established several ports.

Mr. Robertson, in a late communication made to the London Royal Society, has related a remarkable circumstance in the history of the variation of the compass. Since 1660, the compass has not varied at Jamaica. It is now what it was in the time of Halley, 6 degrees east. Of the grants, a map was given upon a magnetic meridian, and the direction of the magnetic meridian remains the same. Since the original grants, new maps upon new scales have been constructed, and all of them are found to agree with the first maps in the direction of the magnetic meridian. The districts were formerly by the cardinal points, and, examined by compass, the lines are found the same. Such well attested facts discover to us how little is truly known of the science of magnetism. And as very much depends upon a full know ledge of the variation, the variation is recommended to every friend of useful discovery.

Dr. Waterhouse, of Cambridge, has lately communicated, from a Madrid gazette, an account of the return of Dr. Balmis to Spain, after a voyage to communicate the vaccination to the Spanish territories. He sailed from Corunna the 30th of November, 1803, and was with his Spanish majesty on the 7th of September last. He passed to the Canary islands, and then the company divided, part going to the Spanish continent of America, and part to the American islands. From America the discovery was made in Asia. From Acapulco, Dr. Balmis passed to the Philippine islands, and from the Asiatic islands to Canton. He has now returned to Spain, with every testimony that in this work of humanity he has disco

VOL. VIII. NO. L.

vered just zeal, and has been crown" ed with uncommon success. We are happy to find also, that the emperor of Russia has assisted the vaccination over his vast dominions, and that it has been widely diffused in Siberia.

Garnerin has made a new and beautiful use of the balloon at Paris. He mounted from the gardens of Tivoli, at night, in a balloon illuminated with 120 lamps. He mounted from the gardens at 11 o'clock on a very dark night, under Russian colours, as a sign of peace. When floating high in the air, above the multitude of admiring spectators, a flight of sky rockets was discharged at him, which, he says, broke into sparks, hardly rising to his vision from the earth; and Paris, with all its blaze of reflecting lamps, appeared to him but like a spot like the Pleiades, for instance, to the naked eye. He gained an elevation, he says, of 3000 toises, and speaks with enthusiasm of his seeing the sun rise at that height. After a flight of seven hours and a half, he descended near Rheims, 45 leagues from Paris.

On the 13th of March last, in the afternoon, the inhabitants of St. Petersburgh were alarmed by an uncommonly loud clap of thunder. At the moment of this explosion, two peasants belonging to the vil lage of Peremeschajew, in the canton of Wereja, being out in the fields, perceived, at the distance of forty paces, a black stone of considerable magnitude falling to the earth, which it penetrated to a conderable depth beneath the snow. It was dug up, and found to be of an oblong square figure, of a black colour, resembling cast iron, very smooth throughout, resembling a coffin on one side, and weighing about 160 pounds. This meteoric stone was sent by the governor of the province to the minister of the interior, count Kouchobei, by whom it

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has been transmitted, for examination, to the Imperial Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburgh.

A German author, who has lately published some statistical observations respecting the state of Europe, says, that Europe contains 171,396 square German miles, of which France either governs directly or protects 38,893; that it contains 182,599,000 inhabitants, of which 37,050,000 obey France, or enter into its federal system; that there are in Europe 2,549,836 soldiers, of which France can put 854,800 in movement. The total revenues of Europe he estimates at 1,173,750,000 florins, of which France receives about 700,000,000 of livres.

Huntingdon, Penn., November 12. Thursday last was the most remarkable dark day that has ever been witnessed by the citizens of this place. The darkness occasioned by the eclipse of the sun in June, 1806, was nothing in comparison to that of Thursday. The court, which was then sitting, tavernkeepers, and many private families, were obliged to light candles at 11 o'clock in the forenoon, and keep them burning for nearly two hours; the fowls went to roost, and every thing had the complete ap pearance of night. Indeed, it was the opinion of some, that the court ought to have suspended "the business of the country;" as there was every appearance of a sudden termination of earthly affairs, and that they, as well as all others, would soon have to appear before a higher tribunal. The morning had been foggy, and the atmosphere extremely cloudy, but whether that could have occasioned the total darkness at noon, we cannot pre

tend to say.

A furrier of Copenhagen has invented a method of making black hats of seal-skin, for which he has

obtained a royal patent, that entitles him to the sole fabrication of that article for three years.

The supreme court of justice at Copenhagen lately laid before the king an account of all criminals in the Danish dominions (including Iceland and the Indian colonies), on whom sentence has been passed in the year 1806: in which it is stated that 205 criminals, 18 of whom were foreigners, were in that year sentenced to corporal punishment, 5 for murder, 8 for other capital crimes, 7 for forgery, the rest for inferior offences, and that the number of crimi nals bears a proportion to the whole population of the kingdom and colonies as one to ten thousand.

Dr. Thornton, says an English print, has laid before the public two new cases, in which the oxygen gas asthma: the subject of one of these has performed striking cures in afflicted in the most alarming manwas a Mr. Williams, who had been ner for several years, but who, by inhaling the oxygen gas, aided with tonic medicines, was perfectly cured in two weeks. Mr. Williams has

been free from asthma upwards of two years since the experiment, which he ascribes entirely to the pneumatic medicine.

A Swedish naturalist has disco

vered the smallest animal of the order of mammalia that has yet been seen; he calls this animal sorex ciniculatus: it is a kind of earth mouse.

side near Edinburgh, a hen has At a Mr. Anderson's, Causewayhatched 12 birds. What is extraordinary, one of them has four legs, and is doing very well.

About eleven years ago, a large vessel called the Earl of Derby, of

Liverpool, was wrecked near Fra serburgh. The wreck was purchased by a gentleman soon after, but before he could remove any considerable part of her cargo, which was bar iron, the vessel was buried under such an extraordinary depth of sand, as to have been effectually shut up ever since. By a strange revolution in nature, the sand has within these few weeks disappeared, and left the vessel in such a situation that she has been buoyed up, floated off, and taken ashore.

A curious experiment has been tried, and succeeded in old Aberdeen. Some time ago a gentleman removed the nest of a bullfinch, with four eggs in it, from a hedge, and placed it in a cage in his room, where he kept a cock and hen canary. The hen immediately placed herself on the eggs, and continued to sit until she had brought out the birds. The cock supplied his mate with food during the incubation, and

is now equally attentive in feeding the young.

Parpoutier, a celebrated chemist, has discovered a new species of utility, besides the nutritive powers, in the potatoe, and his discovery has been proved in England by stucco plasterers. From the starch of potatoes, quite fresh, and washed but once, a fine size, by mixture with chalk, has been made, and in a variety of instances successfully used, particularly for ceilings. This species of size has no smell; while animal size, putrifying so readily, uniformly exhales a most disagreeable and unwholesome odour; the size of potatoes being very little subject to putrefaction, appears from experience to prove more durable in tenacity and whiteness, and for white-washing should always be preferred to animal size, the decom. position of which always exhibits proofs of the infectious effluvia.

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