"Those of the congregate churches, and many other godly people in London and parts adjacent, have appointed Friday, the 25th instant, as a day of solemn fasting and prayer, for a blessing upon the armies at land, the fleet at sea, and negociations abroad."
THE FIRST WATCHES IN ENGLAND.
In 1584 watches began to come from Germany, and the watchmaker soon became a trader of importance. The watches were often of immense size, and hung in a rich case from the neck, and by fops wound up with great gravity and ceremony in Paul's or at the ordinary dinner. Catgut mainsprings must have been slightly affected by changes of weather, and sometimes a little out of time in wet Novembers; but, Sessa, let the world live! An early specimen of the watch that we have seen engraved was, however, not larger than a walnut, richly chased, and enclosed in a pear-shaped case. It had no minute hand, but was of beautiful workmanship. Country people, like Touchstone, sometimes carried pocket dials, in the shape of brass rings, with a slide and aperture, to be regulated to the season.
EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCE.
Jesse, in his interesting "Gleanings in Natural History," gives the following remarkable instance of an extraneous substance being found imbedded in the solid timber of an ash:—"A person on whose accuracy and veracity I can place every reliance, informed me that hearing from some of his brother workmen, that in sawing up the butt of a large ash-tree, they had found a bird's nest in the middle of it; he immediately went to the spot, and found an ash cut in two longitudinally on the saw-pit, and the bird's nest nearly in the centre of the tree. The nest was about two-thirds of a hollow globe, and composed of moss, hair, and feathers, all seemingly in a fresh state. There were three eggs in it, nearly white and somewhat speckled. On examining the tree most minutely with several other workmen, no mark or protuberance was found to indicate the least injury. The bark was perfectly smooth and the tree quite sound." In endeavouring to account for this curious fact, we can only suppose that some accidental hole was made in the tree before it arrived at any great size, in which a bird had built its nest, and forsaken it after she had laid three eggs. As the tree grew larger, the bark would grow over the hole, and in process of time the nest would become embedded in the tree.
PORT COON CAVE.
The above is a sketch of a cave which well deserves a place among our collection of Wonders. It is called Port Coon Cave, and is in the line of rocks near the Giants' Causeway. It may be visited either by sea or by land. Boats may row into it to the distance of a hundred yards or more, but the swell is sometimes dangerous; and although the land entrance to the cave is slippery, and a fair proportion of climbing is necessary to achieve the object, still the magnificence of the excavation, its length, and the formation of the interior, would repay greater exertion; the stones of which the roof and sides are composed, and which are of a rounded form, and embedded, as it were, in a basaltic paste, are formed of concentric spheres resembling the coats of an onion; the innermost recess has been compared to the side aisle of a Gothic cathedral; the walls are most painfully slimy to the touch; the discharge of a loaded gun reverberates amid the rolling of the billows, so as to thunder a most awful effect; and the notes of a bugle, we are told, produced delicious echoes.
ANECDOTE IN PORCELAIN.