Cork Jackets.
The use of cork for making jackets, as an aid to swimming, is very old. We are informed that the Roman whom Camillus sent to the Capitol, when besieged by the Gauls, put on a light dress, and took cork with him under it, because, to avoid being taken by the enemy, it was necessary for him to swim across the Tiber.
Nothing New under the Sun.
The Romans used movable types to mark their pottery and indorse their books. Mr. Layard found, in Nineveh, a magnificent lens of rock-crystal, which Sir D. Brewster considers a true optical lens, and the origin of the microscope. The principle of the stereoscope, invented by Professor Wheatstone, was known to Euclid, described by Galen fifteen hundred years ago, and more fully in 1599, A. D., in the works of Baptista Porta. The Thames tunnel, though such a novelty, was anticipated by that under the Euphrates at Babylon, and the ancient Egyptians had a Suez canal. Such examples might be indefinitely multiplied; but we turn to Photography. M. Jobarb, in his "Neuvelles Inventions aux Expositions Universelles," 1856, says a translation from German was discovered in Russia, three hundred years old, which contains a clear explanation of Photography. The old alchemists understood the properties of chloride of silver in relation to light, and its photographic action is explained by Fabricius in "De Rubus Metallicis," 1566. The daguerreotype process was anticipated by De La Roche, in his "Giphantie," 1760, though it was only the statement of a dreamer.
How the Ancients Rewarded Inventors.
A Roman architect discovered the means of so far altering the nature of glass as to render it malleable; but the Emperor Tiberius caused the architect to be beheaded. A similar discovery was made in France during the reign of Louis XIII. The inventor presented a bust, formed of malleable glass, to Cardinal Richelieu, and was rewarded for his ingenuity by perpetual imprisonment, lest the French glass manufacturers should be injured by the discovery of it.
Deutsche Luft.
A German newspaper tells an amusing story of the famous scientist, Alexander von Humboldt, who took advantage of the exemption from duty of the covering of articles free from duty, formerly the rule in France. In the year 1805 he and Gay-Lussac were in Paris, engaged in their experiments on the compression of air. The two scientists found themselves in need of a large number of glass tubes, and since this article was exceedingly dear in France at that time, and the duty on imported glass tubes was something alarming, Humboldt sent an order to Germany for the needed articles, giving directions that the manufacturer should seal the tubes at both ends, and put a label upon each with the words "Deutsche Luft" (German air). The air of Germany was an article upon which there was no duty, and the tubes were passed by the custom officers without any demand, arriving free of duty in the hands of the two experimenters.
The Great Hero of the Bretons.
Merlin, the enchanter, is the great hero of the Bretons as he is of the Welsh, the same legends being common to both people. Among other lays respecting him is the following, which is of high antiquity:—