and

fractions, as low as With these weights, the relative specifie gavity of any fluid may be ascertained, 80 penny weights being equivalent to 1.0, and 1 penny-weight to 10125. The counter-weight is always put in the same scale with the other weights, in weighing any liquor in the bottle.

The quantity of calcined mine required to produce a ton of alum varies according to the quality of the rock, as well as the management of the process: the mine taken from the upper part of the rock being vastly richer than what is taken from the lower part. According to an experiment made with great care by Mr. Bathgate, 50 tons of good burnt mine will yield one ton of roached allum, with skilful management: but, in a general way, it requires from 120 to 130 tons of calcined mine to produce one ton of alum. Each pan is reckoned to produce on an average 4 cwt. of alum daily, and to require about 18 bushels of coals, Winchester measure. About 22 tons of muriate of potash are necessary to produce 100 tons of alum.

The analysis of alum has been variously stated. According to Vauquelin, it is composed of 30.52 parts, sulphuric acid; 10-50, alumine; 10.40, potash; and 48 58, water. Mr. Winter's analysis gives the following result --Sulphuric acid, 33-34; alumine, 11-38; potash, 9.16; and water, 46-12. If urine be employed in the process, the alum contains also a portion of ammonia.

Miscellaneous Correspondence, &c.

QUERY ON THE ROT IN SHEEP.

To the Editors of the Northern Star.

I SHALL be glad, as a subscriber to your Numbers, to find any attention in them directed to the interests of agriculture, convinced as I am that the welfare of the country is so intimately involved in the judicious cultivation of that science: I beg of you, therefore, to insert the following ques tion, in hopes that it may elicit from intelligent farmers in the neighbourbood, such information as may be calculated to diminish an evil in its na ture so truly alarming.

It is, I believe, a fact, that at this time not less than two-thirds of the sheep are affected with the rot; and the object of my paper is simply to ask, If the experience of any neighbouring farmer has yet led him to any mode of treatment which promises to be more efficient than that imperfect one which has hitherto obtained? Surely the great importance of this subject should rescue it from neglect; and yet I have to learn that that due attention which it merits has been paid to it. I shall be gratified to see in your future Numbers any observations which may throw light upon it. Sheffield, March, 1818.

THE ACORN:-AN APOLOGUE.

40.40.40.440.40.40.

"THOU wast a bauble once;-a cup and ball,
Which babes might play with:-

Time was when, settling on thy leaf, a fly

Could shake thee to the root;-and time has been,
When tempests could not."

COWPER's Yardley Oak.

A HIGH wind shook the last acorn from an old Oak. In the following night, the tree itself was thrown down by the tempest. It had lived through five centuries; but though in that period it had produced millions of acorns, they had all been devoured by swine, or perished where they fell. Yet there was a prophecy, nearly coeval with the deluge, in the family, that from the fruit of this Oak there should spring a mighty forest. Age after age the venerable tree, declining in strength, and decaying from the core, till the shell of the trunk, and a stunted branch bearing six leaves and a single acorn, were all the insignia of its ancient honours; age after age, the venerable tree looked anxiously for tokens of the fulfilment of this prediction, in the growth of some sapling from one of its acorns. "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick; but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life." The old Oak knew this; and to the last moment of its existence believing, that He who had promised could not fail to perform, it prayed as it lay prostrate on the ground, that its orphan offspring, the sole survivor of its stock, might in due time be quickened, shoot up, and become the parent of a great family. While it was praying, the sap ceased to circulate through its rigid veins, and the old Oak died, lamented by all the trees of the field. A hoary-headed man, who appeared as far stricken in years as the tree itself, though but an infant in comparison with it, removed the relics, and built an hermitage of them in a solitary corner of his grounds, whither he was wont to retire for devotion, and where he was at length found dead, in the attitude of prayer, with the expression of hope full of immortality on his countenance.

even

The solitary Acorn had fallen into the deserted nest of a field-mouse, and the gigantic trunk of its progenitor descending close by, crushed the turf over its head, and buried it alive. In darkness, alone, and immoveably

wedged, the poor Acorn gave itself over for lost: and yet it could not but remember how merrily it had lived on the little bough that nourished it, dancing in the breeze, drinking the dew, enjoying the light; it could not but remember the radiance of the sun, the beauty of the moon, the multitude of the stars, the verdure of the earth, the diversity of hill and dale, the river rolling at the root of its aged sire; it could not but remember the sounds of winds, and birds, and waters, the motions and colours of the clouds, the forms, voices, and actions of men and animals, which it had remarked during its nonage above; it could not but remember these, and remember them with regret,-regret, acuminated to despair, in the apprehension that soon it must cease to hear, and see, and feel for ever. 2 B

VOL. II.

While the Acorn lay thus ruminating on its helplessness, insignificance, and misery, it heard, or thought it heard, a voice from heaven saying to it, Produce an Oak !"—" Produce an Oak!" repeated the Acorn to itself; "that's impossible; no, it is not impossible; with God nothing is impossible; and if He commands me, I can do it, and I will do it." The Acorn had well learnt this lesson of faith from its parent, that the Ruler of the Universe always gives power to his creatures to do what he requires of them.

Immediately through every nerve of its frame, it felt a spirit in motion; and the germ between its double kernel, though small enough to pass through the eye of a needle, received a consciousness, that a whole treeroots, bark, bole, branches, leaves and fature fruit-lay folded, with exquisite minuteness, in the fairy casket of its bulb. There was no self-delusion in the Acorn; it had humbled itself, and it was about to be exalted. From that crisis, though the shell and the kernels began to waste away, the germ fed upon them; presently it swelled and put forth fibres which insinuated themselves through the soil to secure a permanent foot-hold. In spring there appeared above-ground a tiny shoot, which opened and presented

-"two lobes protruding, pair'd exact,"

The new-sprung plant was lower than the blades of grass, that rose in myriads around, and looked down contemptuously upon it as a stranger, whose shape was uncouth, and whose language they did not understand.

Hours days, weeks, months, passed swiftly away, and so did the grasses, but the offspring of the Acorn survived them all, and continued to grow till it became a sprig, with two full-formed leaves, and a bud between them, which tempted the bee and the butterfly to alight on their way, while the grasshopper chirped at its foot, or skipped over its head; nay, so vigorously did it push forth on the right and on the left, as well as upward, that the cowslip was compelled to hang its blossoms awry to make room for the sylvan intruder. Now year followed year, till the spring became a sapling, and one generation of men died after another, while the sapling expanded into an oak, and the oak advanced through two cepturies towards maturity. All this time the tree from the Acorn had preserved its innocence and its humility; though rooted in the earth, it aspired towards heaven; the nourishment which it drew from the soil and the river and the atmosphere, it received as the bounty of Providence, and it was thankful.

Meanwhile, the occasional lightnings played harmlessly around its head, and the tempest that agitated it above, caused its roots to strike deeper below. Thus flourished the Oak, the pride and the admiration of the whole country. The birds roosted and sang amongst its branches. The cattle chewed the cud, and reposed under its shelter. The lambkins in April ran races round the mount which its roots had upheaved from the plain. Man approached it with veneration, and as he lifted up his eye at so magnificent a spectacle, he glanced beyond it to the sky, and thought,

"How much glory can the Creator confer on one of his inferior works! How much of himself may be seen even in a tree!"

But one thing was wanting to consummate its felicity;-the Oak was barren; not an acorn had ever glistened in a rough cup on the most luxuriant of its boughs, though their foliage spread thick and beautiful to the sun, and rustled musically in the breeze; and though autumn in its turn brought a second spring of leaves, so delicately tinged, that they seemed to be the blossoms of the first. Now it came to pass, during a hard winter, that an old raven, driven by stress of weather from the sea-coast and travelling far inland, alighted one clear cold morning on the topmost twig of the Oak. Though stripped of its summer-attire, the grace and majesty of its form were the more striking in the fair proportions of its tail stem and naked branches, here and there tufted with brown clusters of dry leaves, of which now one, then another, fell,

-"slowly circling through the waving air,"

to the ground, where thousands of their brethren lay strown at the feet of their parent, in all stages of decay; some brilliantly bespangled with pearls of ice, and many so curiously pencilled with hoar-frost, that every vein was distinguishable. The raven, who was thin of plumage, and irongray with years, looked as if he had seen better days, but would never see such again. Age and adversity had soured his disposition, if ever it had been good, so that he could no longer behold happiness without envy, nor contemplate innocence without hankering to betray it; for happiness he knew was inseparable from innocence, and rarely, if ever, associated with guilt. While he sate shivering in the wind, that lifted up his ragged feathers with every breath, his lank sides were exposed to the chaffinches and red-breasts that hopped on the lower boughs, peeping askance at the stranger, wondering whence he came, and thinking not a whit the less handsomely of themselves and their gay plumage in comparison with him.

Now Ralph was a soothsayer, and many an evil omen had he exhibited to the poor fishermen on the coast where his haunt was; soaring delighted in anticipation of the storm, and preying when it was over on the carcases of shipwrecked mariners. As he understood all languages that were spoken in the days of fable, he quickly entered into conversation with the Oak, wormed out its whole history, and was sagacious enough to discover, what the tree itself scarcely suspected, that innocent and happy as it was, secret anxiety had begun to corrode its heart, lest, notwithstanding its health, strength, and virtue, aud notwithstanding the ancient prophecy, it might at length die without issue, there being little hope, after such an age of sterility, that it would yet become fruitful.

The subtle raven caught his cue, and by a train of sophistry, of which history has not furnished the particulars, (perhaps lest others who are not trees should be beguiled by them,) he succeeded in persuading the Oak, that it was such a favourite of Providence, that the course of nature was suspended with respect to its destination, and it was either governed by such a mysterious heavenly influence, or had within itself such an original power, that it could do or be whatever it pleased: thus, instead of propagating its species by acorns, it might continue to increase in bulk, in

height, in breadth, in depth, in strength, in every thing, through an illimitable period to come, till the heavens were filled with its branches, and the earth overcanopied with its verdure.

The Oak listened unsuspectingly to the tempter, whose plausible insinuations soon perverted its simplicity, and it began indeed to think, that all that it was it had made itself, and it had only to go on growing for ever by its own volition, to become as great and as glorious as the raven had prognosticated. "If," said the poor dupe within itself, when I was an acorn I wrought myself out of the ground, and have since risen by my own choice to be the noblest tree in the universe, why should I rest here, and not go on to magnify my form, till my trunk towers above the clouds, and sustains in mid-heaven a burthen of boughs more numerous and ample than the forests on a thousand hills, thus in my own person accomplishing the ancient prophecy, instead of dying as my predecessors have done in the vain hope of leaving innumerable posterity ?"

66

Off flew the raven to the left hand, the moment his blandishment had prevailed, and the innocence of his victim had departed from it; leaving it to the indulgence of proud imaginations, and to the sad consequences of its apostacy. Early in the succeeding spring, at the first motion of the sap from the root, when the noon-sun was warmly shining, the Oak heard the same voice from heaven, which once called it out of the kernel, saying now to it, “Produce acorns !"--"Produce acorns!” indignantly it repeated, no, I will produce oaks! My slenderest twig shall be a tree as mighty and as ramified as I am myself at this hour." Forthwith, as it fondly imagined, the vain boaster began to exert its native energies, and to strain through every fibre to enlarge its dimensions; but its bulk remained the same as before; it had reached a standard which it never could exceed. Spring vanished, summer followed, and autumn found the Oak laden with acorns! They were shaken to the ground; the swine devoured them: none took root. The oak was mortified, and enraged, but not humbled. “I will do better," it exclaimed, "next year:" and yet it scarcely believed itself, for there was a strange misgiving in its mind, which it durst not acknowledge, and feared to investigate.

66

The next year came, and the next year went. What did the Oak? In spite of itself it produced acorns as before, but only to feed swine; not & single one was quickened. Still it would have hardened itself in rebellion against its Maker, but during the first frosty night of the winter ensuing, it was awakened by a pang at the core as if an arrow had glanced through it, and the wound had been instantly healed. An arrow had passed through it, but the wound was not healed; it was the arrow of death, and though the anguish at that time was only momentary, disease, decay, and dissolution had seized upon its vitals, never to relinquish their prey till they had consumed it atom by atom. The offender was roused to reflection; it was convinced at once of its mortality and of its guilt. Shame, remorse, and self-abhorrence followed; the whole winter was a season of humiliation; till the Oak was contented to be whatever its Creator had made it, and resigned to suffer whatever his justice might hereafter inflict.