have succeeded, by means of artificial heat, in hatching eggs without any aid from the mother birds.

According to the best descriptions of the Egyptian mamal, or hatching oven, it is a brick structure about nine feet high. The middle is formed into a gallery about three feet wide and eight feet high, extending from one end of the building to the other. This gallery forms the entrance to the oven, and commands its whole extent, facilitating the various operations indispensable for keeping the eggs at the proper degree of warmth. On each side of this gallery there is a double row of rooms, every room on the ground-floor having one over it of precisely the same dimensions, namely, three feet in height, four or five in breadth, and twelve or fifteen in length. These have a round hole for an entrance of about a foot and a half in diameter, wide enough for a man to creep through; and into each are put four or five thousand eggs.

When the fires have been continued for eight or twelve days, according to the weather, they are discontinued, the heat acquired by the ovens being sufficient to finish the hatching, which requires in all twenty-one days, the same time as when eggs are naturally hatched by a hen.

The number of ovens dispersed in the several districts of Egypt has been estimated at 386; and it has been computed that a million of chickens are annually hatched, in this manner, in Egypt.

STEAM ENGINES IN 1543.

It appears from a late valuable publication, Navarrete's Collection of Spanish Voyages and Discoveries, that the first known experiment of propelling a vessel by the agency of steam, was made at Barcelona, more than eighty-five years before the idea of procuring motion by means of it was first started by Brancas in Italy; more than a century before this power was applied to any useful purpose by the marquis of Worcester in England; and near three centuries before Fulton, adapting and combining the inventions of a host of contemporary mechanics, successfully solved the same wonderful problem in the United States. Singular, however, as the fact may be, it is fully established by various documents lately found in the archives of Simancas, and is so circumstantially stated as to be incontrovertible.

In the year 1543, a certain sea-officer, called Blasco de Gavay, offered to exhibit before the emperor Charles V. a machine by means of which a vessel should be made to move, without the assistance of either sails or oars. Though the proposal appeared ridiculous, the man was so much in earnest, that the emperor appointed a commission to witness and report upon the experiment. The experiment was made the 17th of June, 1543, on board a vessel called the Trinidad, of two hundred barrels' burden, which had lately arrived with wheat from Colibre. The vessel was seen at a given moment to move forward, and turn about at pleasure, without sail or oar, or human agency, and without any visible mechanism, except a huge boiler of hot water, and a complicated combination of wheels and paddles.

The assembled multitude were filled with aston

The harbor of Barcelona

ishment and admiration. resounded with plaudits; and the commissioners, who shared in the general enthusiasm, all made favorable reports to the emperor, except only the treasurer Ravago. This man, from some unknown cause, was prejudiced against the inventor and his machine. He took great pains to undervalue it, stating, among other things, that it could be of little use, since it only propelled the vessel two leagues in three hours; that it was very expensive and complicated, and that there was great danger of the boiler's bursting frequently. The experiment over, Gavay collected his machinery, and having deposited the wooden part in the royal arsenal, carried the rest to his own house.

Notwithstanding the invidious representations of Ravago, Gavay was applauded for his invention, and taken into favor by the emperor, who promoted him one grade, gave him two hundred thousand maravedises, and ordered the jealous treasurer to pay all the expenses of the experiment.

But

Charles was then taken up with some military expedition, and the occasion of conferring an inestimable benefit on mankind was neglected for the business of bloodshed and devastation; while the honor which Barcelona might have received from perfecting this noble discovery was reserved for a city which had not yet started in the career of existence.

The fact that a vessel was propelled by steam as early as the sixteenth century, thus rendered certain, the question next occurs, whether it in any way detracts from the honor due to Fulton, not for having made the first successful application of steam to purposes of navigation, (for he was even anticipated by Fitch, in the United States) but for hav

ing brought it into use over the whole civilized world. By no means. This experiment at Barcelona, owing to the absence of journals and newspapers, those modern vehicles and wings of intelligence, was unknown to the world generally, at the time of making it, as it ever was to Fulton. And,

besides, who can tell but that in like manner many inventions, which constitute at once the pride and profit of the present age, may have existed centuries ago, in countries of forgotten civilisation.-A Year in Spain by a young American.

ON THE VARIATIONS IN THE WEATHER.

There is scarcely any one subject upon which mankind display more shortsighedness and inconsistency than they do upon the weather. When exceedingly fine and pleasant weather cheers us, and makes all things around us seem doubly beautiful, we are almost sure to exclaim that we wish such weather could last forever!

In exclaiming thus we consult only our feelings; and leave our interests wholly out of consideration. It would undoubtedly be very delightful to bask in eternal sunshine, and be fanned by perpetual zephyrs. But though this uniform pleasantness of season would be very agreeable to our feelings, would it be equally serviceable in maturing those various productions of nature from which we derive nourishment while we are in health, and mitigation and cure when we are diseased? Many of the most valuable of our articles of food, and of our medicinal roots and shrubs, owe their perfection to weather which is as little soothing as possible to our taste and feelings. The comparatively valueless beauties of the hot-house would grow wild and untend

ed in all parts of the world were the weather always alike and every where mild. But we should pay dearly for those beautiful plants and flowers did we sacrifice for them the less comely but more serviceable alimentary and medicinal productions of the field and garden. If an equal temperature were perpetually kept up in all places, and during all times, two-thirds, at least, of our natural productions would disappear from the world. Instead of each nation and each country possessing something peculiar to itself and valuable to all, all nations would both possess and be destitute of precisely the same number and kind of articles. To say nothing of the deplorable state to which mankind would be reduced were they deprived of the largest portion of the valuable things which they now enjoy, this condition of things would put an instant and inevitable end to commercial intercourse between

distant people. We, as well as the natives of Hindostan, should have spices, but we should be destitute of those articles which we now have in such abundance, that over and above supplying our own wants, we are enabled also to supply those of the dusky denizens of the East.

Moreover, the most terrible consequences would result from an equalisation of the earth's temperature. Those wild and rustling winds which we so much complain of, and which mainly arise from the different temperature of different portions of our globe, would cease, indeed, to annoy us with their howling rudeness. But what would be the effect of the consequent stagnation of the air? Why, instead of being the most refreshing and the most healthful ministers to our health and comfort, it would become putrefied. We could not avoid inhaling it, yet to inhale it would be instant disease