A Cheap and Ingenious Ice Machine.—M. Tonelli, says the Abbé Moigno, has just devised an ice-making machine which bids fair to become very popular in this country, since it is convenient, cheap, and efficient. The inventor calls it the "glacier roulante." It is a simple metallic cylinder mounted on a foot. The salt of soda and the salt of ammonia are added in two operations, the smaller cylinder, containing the water to be frozen, is introduced into the interior, and the orifice is close by an india-rubber disc, and then by a cover fastened with a catch; the cylinder is then placed in a sac, or case of cloth, and it is made to roll on the table with a slight oscillatory movement given by the hand. After a lapse of ten minutes, the water in the interior of the cylinder becomes a beautiful cylinder of ice. Nothing is more simple, more economical, or more efficacious than the new "glacier roulante" which costs 10 fr., and gives us, moreover, what could not hitherto be obtained with an apparatus containing freezing mixtures the means of freezing a decanter of water or a bottle of champagne. The apparatus, in a case, packed for travelling, with 20 kilogrammes of refrigerating materials and a measure, costs, at present, only 1l.—Popular Science Review.
The "Cybele Hibernica."—The invaluable work which Mr. Watson achieved for England is being imitated on the other side of the Irish Channel. Messrs. Moore & More have issued a volume upon the subject of the distribution of Irish plants, and the facts it lays before the botanical public are both numerous and interesting. Taking the number of species for Britain proper at Mr. Watson's estimate of 1,425 species, the authors of the "Cybele Hibernica" claim for Ireland about 1,000 species. Of the 532 plants of the British type, Ireland has all, or very nearly so. The Atlantic type is the only other one where she has decidedly more than half, forty-one species out of seventy. Of the boreal species, (Highland, Scottish, and intermediate types taken together,) although there is not a single one of the twelve provinces in which there is not a hill of upward of 2,000 feet in altitude, Ireland has only 106 species out of 238. Of the 458 English and local species she has just over one half; and, finally, out of the 127 Germanic species only 18.
Original.
New Publications.
History Of England,
from the Fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth. By James Anthony Froude, M. A. Vols. VII., VIII., IX. and X. 12mo. New York: Charles Scribner & Co.
The four volumes of this work which are now before us carry the history of the reign of Elizabeth from her accession to the death of Maitland and Grange, and the consequent extinction of the Mary Stuart party in 1573. The wars and troubles in Ireland, the invasion of Ulster, the insurrections and death of Shan O'Neil, the quarrels of the Ormonds and the Desmonds; the career of John Knox; the reign of Mary Queen of Scots; the English maritime adventures of the sixteenth century; and the St. Bartholomew massacre, are some of the exciting topics which Mr. Froude touches with his brilliant pen, and upon which he lavishes his wonderful powers of narration and his skill of dramatic arrangement. That our readers should be satisfied with the pictures he presents to them is not to be expected. They must not look in his pages for candor or judicial calmness. They will find Mary Stuart painted here in darker and more horrible colors than in any other modern work; John Knox lauded as "the one supremely great man that Scotland possessed;" and the Huguenot massacre detailed with all the exaggerations and harrowing circumstances which the partisan spirit of former historians has spread about it. Mr. Froude is too anxious to make an effective story ever to be an honest historian. A picturesque grouping of events and persons has a temptation for his refined literary taste which often overcomes the cardinal principle of historical composition, to tell the truth and the whole truth. The extravagant admiration of the Tudor dynasty with which he began to write has not cooled with the progress of his labors. The fealty which he held to Henry and Edward he has now transferred unshaken to Elizabeth; but there is this to be said for him, that Elizabeth, with all her many faults, (and now and again even Mr. Froude recognizes some of them,) possessed many really great qualities, which the most uncompromising of her enemies must admire.
We have no purpose to go into the vexed question of the character of Mary Queen of Scots; but it is only fair to mention that Mr. Froude fortifies his unfavorable conclusions by copious references to authorities which have only recently been brought to light, and that he has enjoyed in particular a free use of the important manuscript archives of Simancas to which historians were so long denied access.
The Student Of Blenheim Forest; or,
The Trials of a Convert.
By Mrs. Anna H. Dorsey. John Murphy & Co. Baltimore.
This is a new and revised edition of an old work. It is a narrative of the trials of a convert from Protestantism to the Catholic Church at the time it was written. These trials, thank God, are daily becoming less as the doctrine and practice of the church become better known, and prejudice and misrepresentation disappear. Not every convert is called to pass through such trials as the hero of this tale, although all should have the same willingness to suffer for Christ, to give up friends and worldly hopes rather than be untrue to one's conviction.