by the action of the air, become earths, and these earths produce vegetables, the natural food of animals.

These vegetables and animals, having performed the duties assigned to them, return their parts and bodies to the earth; these when again converted into earth, reproduce vegetables, serving as food for a new generation of animals; thus every thing in nature is continually undergoing those changes necessary for the support of animal life.

Wind is the atmosphere or air, put in motion; winds are useful to man; they carry away smoke and impure air; they bring clouds and showers to water the ground; they fill the sails of ships, and waft them across the ocean to distant countries, and they turn the sails of the windmill that grinds our corn.

Hurricanes or whirlwinds are common in some hot countries, particularly in the West Indies, where they frequently do great injury, blowing down houses, tearing trees up by the roots, and completely destroying the crops that have not been gathered in.

Volcanoes, or burning mountains, are such as occasionally vomit forth fire, flame, ashes, cinders, and above all, a substance called lava; the principal volcanoes in Europe, are Etna, in Sicily; Vesuvius, in Naples; and Hecla, in the island of Iceland.

In the eruptions of Etna and Vesuvius, many towns and villages have been totally destroyed, and vast tracts of land rendered useless by the fiery floods of lava, which ran down the sides of these mountains.

Self preservation is the first law of nature, and every animal when in danger, uses some particular means to evade it; thus, the hare depends upon her speed, the rabbit makes to her burrow under ground, the hedgehog rolls itself up like a ball, and the frog, on the least alarm, leaps into the water,

The windows of our apartments, in the winter season, are sometimes covered with rime frost; the reason is, the warm air of the room being full of vapour, is condensed, or changed into water, when it comes in contact with the cold glass, and if the cold be sufficiently severe, that water is turned into ice, and appears in the form of rime frost.

Sound is air moving in small waves against the ear; if I throw a stone into water, the water at the surface will move in little circular waves, and the circles will grow larger and larger; when the church clock strikes, it makes the air around to move in circular waves, just as the water does when a stone is thrown into it.

The loadstone is a mineral which possesses the singular property of pointing north and south when balanced upon a pivot; it is this property which makes it so valuable to mariners in conducting ships from one country to another.

LESSON LII.

WINES.-SPIRITS.-COTTON.

Wine is the juice of grapes, or of some other fruit, fermented: the wines which we import from other countries, called foreign wines, are made altogether from grapes.

Wines differ in colour, because the grapes from which they are made, materially differ in that respect, but when the wine made from red grapes is fermented with the skins, it is red, and when the skins are previously taken out, it is light coloured.

The wine most extensively used in this country is

port, which takes its name from Oporto, a large town in Portugal: sherry is a strong white wine imported from Xeres,* a city of Spain; Madeira wine is produced in the island of Madeira, and also in the Canary Islands.

Champagnet is a fine French wine, of which there are two kinds, the one called still, and the other sparkling; the difference is, the still has undergone the process of fermentation before it is bottled, the sparkling is bottled while still in a fermenting state.

British wines are such as are made in Great Britain; many of these are made from raisins, and flavoured to imitate foreign wines; as these only pay a small duty, they are sold at a much lower price than those we import, but they are very inferior in quality.

The difference between wines and spirits is this: wines are fermented; spirits are distilled from some liquor previously fermented.

In distilling spirits, the liquid previously fermented, is made to boil, when its spirituous part is the first to fly off in vapour; this vapour, being conducted in a pipe, called a worm, through a large body of cold water, is condensed into a liquid, and this liquid is spirit.

Cognac brandy is a spirit distilled from such French wines as are unfit for exportation; if this spirit were re-distilled, it would be rectified spirits of wine.

Gene'va, or Holland's gin, is a strong spirit made from grain, and flavoured with the juniper berry: rum is distilled from molasses, a refuse obtained in the process of making sugar from the juice of the sugar cane: we import rum from Jamai'ca, and the other West India Islands.

British spirits are those we make at home; they are gin, brandy, and whisky, and distilled from barley or * Ze-res. † Sham-pain'. Cone-yack.

malt, but differently flavoured; these may also be obtained from any other grain, or from sugar, treacle, potatoes, and some other vegetables.

All spirits, when they come from the still, are of the same colour, namely, that of water; gin and whisky are allowed to remain that colour, while brandy is coloured with burnt sugar, or some other preparation.

Great Britain is the greatest manufacturing country in the world, and the material that employs the greatest number of hands is cotton, a downy substance contained in the pod of the cotton plant.

This country not being warm enough for the production of this useful article, we have it all to import, and the chief supply comes from the southern parts of the United States of America.

The great seats of our cotton manufacturies are Manchester, and its surrounding towns, Bolton, Preston, Oldham, Ashton, Blackburn, Stockport, and Wigan, most of which places owe their rise to the single article cotton.

After supplying our own wants, we export our cotton fabrics very largely to almost every country in the world, and, amongst the rest, to the very places from which we brought the raw material.

LESSON LIII.

THE GENTLEMAN AND THE BASKETMAKER.

There was, in a distant part of the world, a rich man, who lived in a fine house, and spent his whole time in eating, drinking, and amusing himself; he was excessively proud, and overbearing, and thought he had a

right to command all the neighbourhood, and that the poor were only born to serve and obey him.

Near this rich man's house, there lived an honest and industrious poor man, who gained his livelihood by making little baskets out of dried reeds, which grew upon a piece of marshy ground, close to his cottage.

Although he was obliged to labour from morning till night, to obtain a scanty living, yet he was always happy, cheerful, and contented; besides this, he was a well-disposed man, honest in his dealings, always spoke the truth, and was much respected by his neighbours.

The rich man frequently passed by the cottage of the poor basketmaker, who was always sitting at the door, singing over his work, and this provoked the gentleman in no little degree

"What!" said he, "shall a low born peasant, that weaves bulrushes for a scanty subsistence, be always happy and pleased, while I, who am a gentleman, possessed of riches and power, and of more consequence than a thousand reptiles like him, am always melancholy and discontented?"

This gave him so much uneasiness, that at last he determined to punish the basketmaker for being happier than himself; with this wicked design he gave orders to his servants to set fire to the rushes that surrounded the poor man's house.

It being the summer season, and the weather, in that country, extremely hot, the fire soon spread over the whole marsh, and not only consumed all the rushes, but extended to the cottage itself, and the basketmaker had considerable difficulty in saving his own life.

He waited upon the rich man, who treated him with great contempt, and would not give him any redress, he therefore set out on foot, and, after a few day's hard walking, he arrived at the court of the chief magistrate