"When smiling forests, whence the tuneful cries
Of clustering pea-fowls shrill and frequent rise,
Teach tender feelings to each human breast,
And please alike the happy or distressed."
The peacock flies to the highest station he can reach, to enjoy himself; and rises to the topmost boughs of trees, though the female makes her nest on the ground.
F.R.Y.
A WARNING TO FRUIT EATERS.
(For the Mirror.)
The mischiefs arising from the bad custom of many people swallowing the stones of plums and other fruit are very great. In the Philosophical Transactions, No. 282, there is an account of a woman who suffered violent pains in her bowels for thirty years, returning once in a month, or less, owing to a plum-stone which had lodged; which, after various operations, was extracted. There is likewise an account of a man, who dying of an incurable colic, which had tormented him many years, and baffled the effects of medicine, was opened after his death, and in his bowels was found the cause of his distemper, which was a ball, composed of tough and hard matter, resembling a stone, being six inches in circumference, when measured, and weighing an ounce and a half; in the centre of this there was found the stone of a common plum. These instances sufficiently prove the folly of that common opinion, that the stones of fruits are wholesome. Cherry-stones, swallowed in great quantities, have occasioned the death of many people; and there have been instances even of the seeds of strawberries, and kernels of nuts, collected into a lump in the bowels, and causing violent disorders, which could never be cured till they were carried off.
P.T.W.