William Griffith, Esq. of Burlington, N. J., a gentleman highly recommended by the veterans of the bar in this city, has issued proposals for printing a new work to be called the 'Law Register'—to make one volume of at least 500 closely printed pages, royal 8vo. for five dollars, per annum, payable on delivery. Subscriptions to be addressed, (post paid,) to Mr. David Allison, Burlington, N. J.
On the increase of sounds during the night.—It has been remarked, even by the ancients, that the intensity of sound is greatly increasing during the night.—Humboldt was particularly struck with this fact when he heard the noise of the great cataracts of the Orinoco in the plain which surrounds the Mission of the Apures. This noise is three times greater in the night than in the day. Some writers have ascribed this to the cessation of the humming of insects, the singing of birds, and the action of the wind upon the leaves of trees: but this cannot be the cause of it at the Orinoco, where the humming of insects is much greater in the night than in the day, and where the breeze is never felt till after sunset. Humboldt, therefore, ascribes it to the presence of the sun, which acts on the propagation and intensity of sound, by opposing them with currents of air of different density, and partial undulations of the atmosphere, caused by the unequal heating of different parts of the ground. In these cases the waves of sound are divided into two waves, where the density of the medium suddenly changes, and a sort of acoustic mirage is produced, arising from the want of homogenity of the air in the same manner as the luminous mirage is produced from an analogous cause.—Ann. de Chim.
Gil Blas and Don Quixote.—These very ingenious and diverting authors seem calculated to please readers of very different descriptions. I have observed that literary men are most delighted with Don Quixote, and men of the world with Gil Blas. Perhaps the preference of Don Quixote in the former may be ascribed to the sympathy which learned readers feel for the knight, whose aberrations of intellect originated from too intense an application to books of his own selection, and from whims which his own brains engendered.
Learned Ladies.—A person who frequently attended the Royal Institution, and who was both astonished and delighted with the numerous attendence of the fair sex at these scientific lectures, observed with a smile somewhat Sardonic, that he saw great advantage arising from that circumstance, as he was sure that for the future the sciences would no longer have any secrets.
Baron Smyth's Riddle.—Some men of the greatest talents have taken delight in composing or endeavouring to unravel riddles. Dean Swift is a case in point. Sir William Smyth, the learned Irish Baron of the Exchequer, at one time spent two days and nights in considering the answer to this conundrum: Why is an egg underdone, like an egg overdone? He would not suffer any one to give him the answer, which he at last discovered. It is a tolerable pun enough. Because they are both hardly done.
Disputants.—How often men who love argument in conversation follow victory, and not truth. In order to entrap the adversary, a brilliant illustration is substituted for argument, to amuse the opponent, and divert him from the line of his reasoning. Bird catchers carry a light with them to intice their prey into their nets, and so the leathered tribe are allured to their captivity. High-flying disputants who are thus led aside by false lights are not uncommon.
GOVERNORS.
In the different states, are chosen as follows:
New Hampshire, annually, in March, by the people.