An unexpected friend to man has been discovered in a kind of animalcule engendered by sewage, which prevents the decomposing matter from becoming a dangerous nuisance. Mr Angell, the public analyst for Hampshire, having examined the sewage-polluted fluid in Southampton Water, has discovered that where the suspended matters are thickest there is going on a silent destruction of the foul matters, through the agency of millions of the minute creatures, by some held to be of animal, but by Mr Angell believed to be of vegetable origin. On examining the muddy fluid through a microscope, it was found to contain myriads of little brown organisms, surrounded with a gelatinous substance. Each specimen was found to be active in its movements and of peculiar shape, being furnished with a belt of cilia round the centre of the body, and with a long transparent and very flexible tail. After death, these tiny atoms give off an odour similar to that of sea-weed, and change to a green colour. During life they evolve bubbles of oxygen gas, which serve to purify the water from the effects of the decomposing matter on which they themselves feed. It is a pity, however, that man, by polluting rivers with sewage, should stand so much in need of this self-developed scavenger.
Canada, we are told, claims to have produced the largest cheese on record. It weighed seven thousand pounds, was six feet ten inches in diameter, three feet in height, and twenty-one feet in circumference; requiring one milking of seven thousand cows, or thirty-five tuns of milk to produce it.—Of numerical curious facts, it may not be uninteresting to state that no less than sixteen different shades of green are understood to be patronised by the fashionable world; and that fifteen persons may dine together a billion times without sitting twice in the same relative position, by merely changing a chair at each dinner. So much for the combination of numbers.
A CURIOUS ANTIQUARIAN HOAX.
Every one has doubtless read The Antiquary, and enjoyed the skill with which the keenest archæologist of the literary fraternity raised a laugh against his own favourite studies. The Kaim of Kinprunes and the ‘A.D.L.L.’ furnish the standard jest with which the Oldbucks of every future age will be assailed, and the bodle that he ‘thocht was an auld coin’ helps in the attack. Scotland being thus the scene of the most famous fictional story of this kind, it is curious to find it also the home of one of the best authenticated antiquarian hoaxes known to have been practised.
The story which we are about to narrate dates back to the reign of George the Third; and though now sixty years since, one of the parties to the hoax then perpetrated has just made the details of the story public in a letter read before the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland at an early meeting in the present year. The circumstances which led to the hoax being perpetrated were that, when the ruins of the eastern portion or choir of the old Abbey Church of Dunfermline were to be removed for the erection of what forms now the parish church, great anxiety was manifested to prove the truth of the statement, which, although found in the records, was to some extent believed to be doubtful, that Bruce the patriot king of Scotland was interred there. It may suffice for the purposes of the present sketch to state that the evidence that King Robert Bruce was really buried here is stated by the Rev. Peter Chalmers, in his History of Dunfermline, to be ‘clear, varied, and strong.’ Bruce died at Cardross in Dumbartonshire in 1329; and although he had confided to his faithful follower Sir James Douglas the task of conveying his heart to the Holy Land, Dunfermline was chosen by himself as his place of sepulture. Mr Chalmers quotes various entries in the Chartulary of Dunfermline in support of this; while in Barbour’s famous poem the king is spoken of as having been laid
In a fayr tumb, intill the quer.
In Fordun’s Scotichronicon mention is also made of Bruce being interred ‘in the middle of the choir’ of the Abbey Church.
When the excavations were being made in 1818 for the erection of the new church, the operations were watched by many with great interest; and the Barons of Exchequer in Scotland, in whose custody were the royal palaces, &c., took some pains to secure that the remains of the king, if found, should be properly treated. Fulfilling completely the expectations entertained, a body incased in lead was found by the excavators, occupying exactly the place which the king’s remains would be expected to do. It was inwrapped in a double casing of lead; and some fragments of gold-embroidered linen cloth were also found, shewing that here at least was the tomb of no common person. The skeleton was that of a kingly man, six feet in height, with a splendid head, and in every way worthy of Scotland’s hero. And when the body came to be examined, previous to its reinterment, it was found that the sternum or breast-bone had been sawn through longitudinally from top to bottom, this being the method adopted by the anatomists of the fourteenth century to reach the heart, for separate interment. This fact and the position of the body seemed to render it all but certain that the remains were those of Bruce; but still there remained a possibility of mistake.
It was at this point the hoax was perpetrated of which we now proceed to speak. On the exhumation of the body, it was at once returned to the earth, and the place where it was found was closed in, flat stones being placed over the aperture. The discovery was reported to the Barons of Exchequer, and excited great interest in the minds of all Scottish people of patriotic or antiquarian feelings. Considerable delay, however, was made in determining what should be done; and it was not till November 1819 that, with much ceremony, the skeleton was recoffined and reinterred. The tomb was filled up with pitch, carefully built over and inclosed, and an elaborate Latin epitaph was prepared to the effect that the interesting discovery had been made amongst the ruins of the old church, &c. But as we have said, there was a possibility of mistake; and it entered into the heads of two young men that it would be a capital thing to convince the good folk of Dunfermline that their town really did contain the body of the king. One of these was the younger brother of the architect engaged in the new church, and the other an artist comrade. Their design was to get an old or old-looking bronze plate, and after inscribing suitable characters upon it, to find some means of getting it put into the partially opened grave, so that it would be discovered on proceeding with the work. Assisted by the gentleman who now tells the story, a plate was accordingly prepared bearing a device.