TREES THAT GROW SHIRTS.
"We saw on the slope of the Cerra Dnida," says M. Humboldt, "shirt trees, fifty feet high. The Indians cut off cylindrical pieces two feet in diameter, from which they peel the red and fibrous bark, without making any longitudinal incision. This bark affords them a sort of garment which resembles a sack of a very coarse texture, and without a seam. The upper opening serves for the head, and two lateral holes are cut to admit the arms. The natives wear these shirts of Marina in the rainy season; they have the form of the ponchos and manos of cotton which are so common in New Grenada, at Quito, and in Peru. As in this climate the riches and beneficence of nature are regarded as the primary causes of the indolence of the inhabitants, the missionaries do not fail to say in showing the shirts of Marina, 'in the forests of Oroonoko, garments are found ready made upon the trees.'"
A FEMALE VENTRILOQUIST.
A female ventriloquist, named Barbara Jacobi, narrowly escaped being burnt at the stake in 1685, at Haarlem, where she was an inmate of the public Hospital. The curious daily resorted thither to hear her hold & dialogue with an imaginary personage with whom she conversed as if concealed behind the curtains of her bed. This individual, whom she called Joachim, and to whom she addressed a thousand ludicrous questions, which he answered in the same familiar strain, was for some time supposed to be a confederate. But when the bystanders attempted to search for him behind the curtains, his voice instantly reproached them with their curiosity from the opposite corner of the room. As Barbara Jacobi had contrived to make herself familiar with all the gossip of the city of Haarlem, the revelations of the pretended familiar were such as to cause considerable embarrassment to those who beset her with impertinent questions.
CALMUC OPINION OF LIGHTNING.
The Calmucs hold the lightning to be the fire spit out of the mouth of a dragon, ridden and scourged by evil Dæmons, and the thunder they make to be his roarings.
THE HEADING OF THE EXPIRING PENNSYLVANIA JOURNAL.
Journalism has had its trials and difficulties in England as well as in America; but we do not remember to have ever seen a more quaint last Number, than the subjoined facsimile exhibits:—