Let us fancy ourselves therefore, on a bright April morning, riding along with a friend—a stranger like ourselves—on the high road from Swansea into the interior of the peninsula. After cantering over about seven miles of hill and valley and common, we entered a woody defile, and at last opened, to use a nautical phrase, the "Gower inn," (eight miles) which was built, we were told, expressly for the convenience of tourists. After ascending a tremendous rocky hill, for road it cannot be called, about a mile onwards, Oxwich Bay bursts at last in all its beauty upon our sight. In our inquiries during the day, of the few passengers we met, as to the distance of the village of Penrice, the intended limit of our day's excursion, we were forcibly reminded of the "mile and a bittock" of the north. The country is very thinly populated here: at last we came in sight of the grounds of Penrice Castle, the beautiful mansion of Mr. Talbot, the member for the county; the entrance to the park is between two of the towers belonging to the extensive and picturesque remains of the ancient Castle of Penrice, which stands close to the road. Sixteen miles from Swansea, after "curses not loud but deep" upon Welsh roads, we reached the sequestered village of Penrice, which stands on a wooded eminence of no easy access, overlooking the eastern shore of Oxwich Bay.
(To be continued.)
SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY.
ARCANA OF SCIENCE FOR 1831.
It has been our invariable practice to notice, by extract only, such works as we are connected with, or to which we have contributed; and in the present case we shall do little more.
Now, the reader need not be here told that the plan of an Annual Register of Inventions and Improvements originated in The Mirror about four years since. Our intention there was to quote an occasional page or two of novelties of popular interest in science and art, and leave more abstruse matters to the journals in which they originally appeared. This plan led us through most of the scientific records of the year, in which we began to perceive that the reduction of all subjects of importance was not compatible within a few pages, and sooner than allow many papers of value to every member of society to be locked under the uninviting denomination of philosophy, we undertook the abridgement and arrangement of such papers, upon the plan of an "Annual Register," intending our volume specially to represent the progress of discovery just as the general "Register" is a contribution to history. The cost of the journals for this purpose proved to be upwards of Twelve Guineas, but this outlay only made us more pleased with the design. A single instance will suffice. The Philosophical Magazine, a work of high character, numbers among its purchasers but few general readers: it contains many mathematical, theoretical, and controversial papers, all of which may advance their object, but are not in a form sufficiently tangible for any but the scientific inquirer. Still, in the same Magazine, there may be papers of practical and directly useful character, and of ready application to the arts and interests of life and society. A person wishing to possess these popular papers must therefore purchase with them a quantity of matter which to him would be unintelligible, and the value of which could only be appreciated by direct study, a task of no small import in these days of cheap literature. That the plan has succeeded, and that its intention has been fully recognised, is borne out by the testimony of a score of our contemporaries. Of their praise we have no disposition to make an idle boast; and our only object in the present notice is to do for ourselves what we could not perhaps expect a weekly or monthly critic to do for us, viz. to quote the subjects of a few of the valuable papers in the present volume, and then leave the reader to form his own conclusions of its intrinsic value.
In Mechanical Science there are 100 closely-printed pages, or 90 articles. Among these are papers on novel applications of the gigantic power of Steam in Navigation and Agriculture, and especially in Railway Carriages; the grand invention of the Air Engine; improvements in Printing; machinery in manufactures; and contributions to experimental as well as practical mechanics.
In Chemical Science there are upwards of 60 New Facts. Among these is a valuable paper on Arsenic, by Dr. Christison, (from the Philosophical Magazine;) a method of ascertaining the vegeto-alkali in Bark; the influence of the Aurora Borealis on the Magnetic Needle; Lieut. Drummond's Plan for illuminating Light Houses by a ball of lime, (from the Philosophical Transactions); Laws of electrical accumulation, and the decomposition of water by atmospheric and ordinary electricity; the new Indigo; the spontaneous inflammation of charcoal; the nitrous atmosphere of Tirhoot, one of the principal districts in India for the manufacture of salt-petre; Discovery of a mass of meteoric iron in Bohemia; the chemical composition of cheese; Berzelius on the power of metallic rods to decompose water after their connexion with the galvanic pile is broken; an alkaline principle in Box-wood; Professor Davy on a new method of detecting metallic poisons; Mr. Bennet's new alloy for the pivot-holes of watches; experiments with Aldini's Fireproof Dresses; Dr. Ure on the composition of Gunpowder, and on Indigo; Dr. Bostock on the spontaneous purification of Thames water; Abstracts of Berzelius' statement of the progress of Chemical Science for 1829; Mr. Broughton on the effects of oxygen gas on various animals, &c.