Ocean so that if the highest spring-tide from the south reached the Nore at twelve o'clock in the day, the highest spring-tide from the north would not occur till twelve o'clock at night.

THE Camel is an inhabitant of the old world, and is found almost exclusively in Asia and Africa.

It has been created with an especial adaptation to those regions wherein it has contributed to the comfort, and even to the very existence, of man, from the earliest ages. It is constituted to endure the severest hardships with little physical inconvenience. Its feet are formed to tread lightly upon a dry and shifting soil; its nostrils have the capacity of closing, so as to shut out the driving sand, when the whirlwind scatters it over the desert; it is provided with a peculiar apparatus for retaining water in its stomach, so that it can march from well to well without great inconvenience, although they be several hundred miles apart. And thus, when a company eastern merchants cross from Aleppo to Bussorah, over a plain of sand, which offers no refreshment to the exhausted senses, the whole journey being about eight hundred miles, the camel of the heavy caravan moves

of

cheerfully along, with a burden of six or seven hundred weight, at the rate of twenty miles a day; while those of greater speed, that carry a man, without much other load, go forward at double that pace and daily distance.

Patient under his duties, he kneels down at the command of his driver, and rises up cheerfully with his load: he requires no whip nor spur during his monotonous march; but, like many other animals, he feels an evident pleasure in musical sounds; and, therefore, when fatigue comes upon him, the driver sings some cheering snatch of his Arabian melodies, and the delighted creature toils forward with a brisker step, till the hour of rest arrives, when he again kneels down, to have his load removed for a little while; and if the stock of food be not exhausted, he is further rewarded with a few mouthfuls of the cake of barley, which he carries for the sustenance of his master and himself. Under a burning sun, upon an arid soil, enduring great fatigue, sometimes entirely without food for days, and seldom completely slaking his thirst more than once during a progress of several hundred miles, the camel is patient, and apparently happy. He ordinarily lives to a great age, and is seldom visited by any disease.

The camel with one hump, which we ordinarily call the dromedary, has been reared at one place in Europe for two centuries: this place is Pisa, in Italy. His habits are there, to a certain extent, the same as in his native region; but the soil and climate of Europe are ill adapted to his organization. The camels of Pisa have degenerated; they are weaker than those of the East; and their lives are of comparatively short duration. This circumstance is a convincing proof that the natural locality of the camel is an arid and thirsty region, offering little vegetable food, and that little of the coarsest kind. The camels of Pisa have the advantage, at San Rossora, the place where they are reared, of a flat and sandy country, having brambles and low bushes, which administer, in some degree, to their natural habits. But still they are degenerated. They are not, by any means, completely naturalized; and, probably, will become more

and more influenced by their peculiar situation, the farther the breed is removed from the original stock.

Mr. MacFarlane mentions the precision with which these docile creatures executed their duties, without scarcely a command from their drivers. Marching into the yard in single file, they formed a crescent; and the first camel having knelt down to be relieved of his load, the rest patiently waited till it should come to the turn of each to be disburdened in a similar manner.

MINERAL KINGDOM.

No. 3.-IRON.

IRON is the most valuable of all the metals. Though mentioned in the Pentateuch, we have reason to believe, from the facts, that the fabrication of steel was unknown to the ancients, and that they were wholly destitute of metallurgical skill-that its uses were little known in the earlier periods of society. Its use has followed the progress of civilization in the world; and the amount of it consumed by any nation, at the present day, indicates very truly the degree of its advancement in the arts and sciences. The alchemistical name of iron was Mars. The Romans employed, as a substitute for it in their armor, an alloy of copper and tin.

Iron is the most universally diffused metal throughout nature. It is found in animals, in vegetables, and in almost all bodies. It is seldom found native, but combined with a great variety of substances. It is particularly distinguished by its magnetical properties, by its hardness and elasticity, by its ductility, and the property of being welded; but it is very difficult to fuse. Iron soon rusts, or oxydates, when exposed to the action of Iron filings, agitated in water, become oxydated, and assume the form of a black powder, called martial Ethiops. When fused in large furnaces it is made to flow into a kind of mould formed in sand. This first product, which is exceedingly brittle, and not at all malleable, is called cast iron, of which are formed stoves, pipes,

water.

cannon, and other articles. Cast, or crude iron, is in three states, white, gray, or black, according as it contains a larger proportion of carbon, an exact proportion of carbon and oxygen, or a larger proportion of oxygen. To render the iron malleable, it must be freed from the carbon and oxygen which it contains, by being fused and kept in that state for some time, stirring and kneading it all the while; by this means the carbon and oxygen unite, and are expelled in the form of carbonic acid gas. It is then subjected to the action of large hammers, or to the pressure of rollers, by which the remaining oxyde of iron and other impurities are forced out. It is now called forged or wrought iron, and is capable of being welded and worked by hammers into any form.

There are several varieties of iron in this state, arising from the intermixture of other substances. There is one kind of forged iron, which when cold is ductile, but when heated is extremely brittle; it is also fusible. Another kind possesses precisely the opposite properties. The causes of these peculiarities have not been perfectly explained. Iron is capable of being reduced to a third state, which is that of STEEL, a most valuable metal, consisting of iron combined with carbon. It is chiefly used for edged tools, and other sharp and cutting instruments, where hardness is required, and from the high polish of which it is susceptible, it is used in ornaments of various kinds. By heating steel to redness and cooling it suddenly, it can be made much harder than any other metal; and if heated to a lower temperature than redness, and suddenly cooled, it becomes the most elastic of all the metals.

Cast iron contains too great a quantity of carbonaceous substance-it may be called steel too much steelified-it is therefore exceedingly brittle, and not at all malleable. Forged iron is iron purified from all foreign substances. And in regard to its property of being welded, we may judge from the following account: Were it not for the property iron has of being welded, that is, united in various parts without the assistance of rivets or solder, this very plentiful metal would be useless for many purposes;

but, as it is, what may not be accomplished by it! The most stupendous metallic fabric ever executed by man, is the Chinese bridge of chains, hung over an awful precipice near Ringtung, to connect two mountains. In this bridge there are twenty-one chains, stretched over the valley or abyss-these are bound together by other chains which cross them. The whole forms a perfect and safe road, extending from the summit of one mountain to that of the other.

Native or natural malleable iron is a rare production of this globe, nearly all that has ever been found upon it having come to us from the atmosphere. It occurs in a vein traversing a mountain of gneiss, near Grenoble, in France. It has also been found at Kanesdorf, in Saxony, and more recently in three places in the United States at Canaan in Connecticut, in Pennsylvania, and in North Carolina. At the latter place it was found loose in the soil, in a mass weighing more than twenty pounds. Meteoric iron is contained in all meteoric stones; in some it exists in a very feeble proportion; in others it forms one quarter of their weight; and again in others, it constitutes nearly the entire mass; while the largest masses of it ever found, consist of it wholly, without the smallest mixture of foreign matters. In the two first mentioned conditions, it has often been seen to fall from the heavens, while in the solid state it never has been observed, by credible witnesses, to fall, but on one occasion at Agram, in Croatia. Some of the largest masses of meteoric iron known, are the following: that found by Pallas, in Siberia, weighing one thousand six hundred and eighty Russian pounds; that discovered by Rubin de Celis, in the district of Chaco-Gualamba, in South America, and which weighed fifteen tons; and that found near Red River in Louisiana, weighing three thousand pounds, and which is now deposited in the collection of the Lyceum of Natural History in New-York. Beside these, other very considerable pieces have been noticed in Africa, Mexico, and Bohemia. Meteoric iron has been worked, as a curiosity, into knives, swords, and other instruments.