Some four-fifths of the weight of the human body are nothing but water. The blood is just a solution of the body in a vast excess of water—as saliva, mucus, milk, gall, urine, sweat, and tears are the local and partial infusions effected by that liquid. All the soft solid parts of the frame may be considered as ever temporary precipitates or crystallisations (to use the word but loosely) from the blood, that mother-liquor of the whole body; always being precipitated or suffered to become solid, and always being redissolved, the forms remaining, but the matter never the same for more than a moment, so that the flesh is only a vanishing solid, as fluent as the blood itself. It has also to be observed, that every part of the body, melting again into the river of life continually as it does, is also kept perpetually drenched in blood by means of the blood-vessels, and more than nine-tenths of that wonderful current is pure water. Water plays as great a part, indeed, in the economy of that little world, the body of man, as it still more evidently does in the phenomenal life of the world at large. Three-fourths of the surface of the earth is ocean; the dry ground is dotted with lakes, its mountain-crests are covered with snow and ice, its surface is irrigated by rivers and streams, its edges are eaten by the sea; and aqueous vapour is unceasingly ascending from the ocean and inland surfaces through the yielding air, only to descend in portions and at intervals in dews and rains, hails and snows. Water is not only the basis of the juices of all the plants and animals in the world; it is the very blood of nature, as is well known to all the terrestrial sciences; and old Thales, the earliest of European speculators, pronounced it the mother-liquid of the universe. In the later systems of the Greeks, indeed, it was reduced to the inferior dignity of being only one of the four parental natures—fire, air, earth, and water; but water was the highest—ύδωρ μεν αριστον—in rank.—Westminster Review.
LOTTERY OF DEATH.
The Polish and German peasantry have given the authorities at Posen considerable trouble by their inquiries respecting a 'Rothschild's Lottery.' They have been led to believe, that the 'great Rothschild' has been sentenced to be beheaded; but that he has been allowed to procure a substitute, if he can, by lottery! For this purpose, a sum of many millions is devoted, all the tickets to be prizes of 3000 thalers each, except one; that fatal number is a blank; and whoever draws it, is to be decapitated instead of the celebrated banker! Notwithstanding the risk, the applicants for shares have been numerous. [There is nothing surprising in the number of applications for these shares. Every man who enters the army in wartime, takes out a ticket in a similar lottery. In China, human life is of still less account; for there it is easy for a condemned criminal, whose escape the authorities are willing to connive at, to obtain a substitute, who, for a sum of money, suffers death in his stead.]
A MAN FOR THE WORLD.
A successful merchant in New Zealand, a Scotchman, commenced business with the following characteristic entry on the first page of his ledger:—'Commenced business this day—with no money—little credit—and L.70 in debt. Faint heart never won fair lady. Set a stout heart to a stay (steep) brae. God save the Queen!'