The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 13, No. 377, June 27, 1829

RECENT BALLOON ASCENT

(To the Editor of the Mirror.)

I trust you will pardon my feeble attempt last week, and I wish you had been in the car with us, to have witnessed the magnificent scene, and the difficulty of describing it. At our ascent we rose, in a few seconds, 600 feet; and instantly a flood of light and beautiful scenery burst forth. Picture to yourself the Thames with its shipping; Greenwich with its stately Hospital and Park; Blackwall, Blackheath, Peckham, Camberwell, Dulwich, Norwood, St. Paul's, the Tower of London, &c. and the surrounding country, all brought immediately into your view, all apparently receding, and lit up into magnificence by the beams of a brilliant evening sun, (twenty-seven minutes past seven,) and then say who can portray or describe the scene, I say I cannot.

P.T.W

THE NATURALIST

BEES

The faculty, or instinct of bees is sometimes at fault, for we often hear of their adopting the strangest and most unsuitable tenements for the construction of cells. A hussar's cap, so suspended from a moderate sized branch of a tree, as to be agitated by slight winds, was found filled with bees and comb. An old coat, that had been thrown over the decayed trunk of a tree and forgotten, was filled with comb and bees. Any thing, in short, either near the habitations of man, or in the forests, will serve the bees for a shelter to their combs.

The average number of a hive, or swarm, is from fifteen to twenty thousand bees. Nineteen thousand four hundred and ninety-nine are neuters or working bees, five hundred are drones, and the remaining one is the queen or mother! Every living thing, from man down to an ephemeral insect, pursues the bee to its destruction for the sake of the honey that is deposited in its cell, or secreted in its honey-bag. To obtain that which the bee is carrying to its hive, numerous birds and insects are on the watch, and an incredible number of bees fall victims, in consequence, to their enemies. Independently of this, there are the changes in the weather, such as high winds, sudden showers, hot sunshine; and then there is the liability to fall into rivers, besides a hundred other dangers to which bees are exposed.

When a queen bee ceases to animate the hive, the bees are conscious of her loss; after searching for her through the hive, for a day or more, they examine the royal cells, which are of a peculiar construction and reversed in position, hanging vertically, with the mouth underneath. If no eggs or larvae are to be found in these cells, they then enlarge several of those cells, which are appropriated to the eggs of neuters, and in which queen eggs have been deposited. They soon attach a royal cell to the enlarged surface, and the queen bee, enabled now to grow, protrudes itself by degrees into the royal cell, and comes out perfectly formed, to the great pleasure of the bees.

The bee seeks only its own gratification in procuring honey and in regulating its household, and as, according to the old proverb, what is one man's meat is another's poison, it sometimes carries honey to its cell, which is prejudicial to us. Dr. Barton in the fifth volume, of the "American Philosophical Transactions," speaks of several plants that yield a poisonous syrup, of which the bees partake without injury, but which has been fatal to man. He has enumerated some of these plants, which ought to be destroyed wherever they are seen, namely, dwarf-laurel, great laurel, kalmia latifolia, broad-leaved moorwort, Pennsylvania mountain-laurel, wild honeysuckle (the bees, cannot get much of this,) and the stramonium or Jamestown-weed.

A young bee can be readily distinguished from an old one, by the greyish coloured down that covers it, and which it loses by the wear and tear of hard labour; and if the bee be not destroyed before the season is over, this down entirely disappears, and the groundwork of the insect is seen, white or black. On a close examination, very few of these black or aged bees, will be seen at the opening of the spring, as, not having the stamina of those that are younger, they perish from inability to encounter the vicissitudes of winter.—American Farmer's Manual.

THE ELM

(To the Editor of the Mirror.)

I shall be obliged to any of your correspondents who can inform me from whence came the term witch-elm, a name given to a species of elm tree, to distinguish it from the common elm. Some people have conjectured that it was a corruption of white elm, and so called from the silvery whiteness of its leaves when the sun shines upon them; but this is hardly probable, as Sir F. Bacon in his "Silva Silvarum, or Natural History, in Ten Centuries," speaks of it under the name of weech-elm.

H.B.A

CROP OF BIRDS

Besides the stomach, most birds have a membranous sac, capable of considerable distension; it is usually called a crop, (by the scientific Ingluvies,) into which the food first descends after being swallowed. This bag is very conspicuous in the granivorous tribes immediately after eating. Its chief use seems to be to soften the food before it is admitted into the gizzard. In young fowls it becomes sometimes preternaturally distended, while the bird pines for want of nourishment. This is produced by something in the crop, such as straw, or other obstructing matter, which prevents the descent of the food into the gizzard. In such a case, a longitudinal incision may be made in the crop, its contents removed, and, the incision being sewed up, the fowl will, in general, do well.

Another curious fact relative to this subject was stated by Mr. Brookes, when lecturing on birds at the Zoological Society, May 1827. He had an eagle, which was at liberty in his garden; happening to lay two dead rats, which had been poisoned, under a pewter basin, to which the eagle could have access, but who nevertheless did not see him place the rats under it, he was surprised to see, some time afterwards, the crop of the bird considerably distended; and finding the rats abstracted from beneath the basin, he concluded that the eagle had devoured them. Fearing the consequences, he lost no time in opening the crop, took out the rats, and sewed up the incision; the eagle did well and is now alive. A proof this of the acuteness of smell in the eagle, and also of the facility and safety with which, even in grown birds, the operation of opening the crop may be performed.—Jennings's Ornithologia.

HATCHING

The following singular fact was first brought into public notice by Mr. Yarrel; and will be found in his papers in the second volume of the Zoological Journal. The fact alluded to is, that there is attached to the upper mandible of all young birds about to be hatched a horny appendage, by which they are enabled more effectually to make perforations in the shell, and contribute to their own liberation. This sharp prominence, to use the words of Mr. Yarrel, becomes opposed to the shell at various points, in a line extending throughout its whole circumference, about one third below the larger end of the egg; and a series of perforations more or less numerous are thus effected by the increasing strength of the chick, weakening the shell in a direction opposed to the muscular power of the bird; it is thus ultimately enabled, by its own efforts, to break the walls of its prison. In the common fowl, this horny appendage falls off in a day or two after the chick is hatched; in the pigeon it sometimes remains on the beak ten or twelve days; this arises, doubtless, from the young pigeons being fed by the parent bird for some time after their being hatched; and thus there is no occasion for the young using the beak for picking up its food.—Ibid.

MAN.—A FRAGMENT

 
Man is a monster,
The fool of passion and the slave of sin.
No laws can curb him when the will consents
To an unlawful deed.
 

CYMBELINE.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

THE CHOSEN ONE

 
"Here's a long line of beauties—see!
Ay, and as varied as they're many—
Say, can I guess the one would be
Your choice among them all—if any?"
 
 
"I doubt it,—for I hold as dust
Charms many praise beyond all measure—
While gems they treat as lightly, must
Combine to form my chosen treasure."
 
 
"Will this do?"—"No;—that hair of gold,
That brow of snow, that eye of splendour,
Cannot redeem the mien so cold,
The air so stiff, so quite un-tender."
 
 
"This then?"—"Far worse! Can lips like these
Thus smile as though they asked the kiss?—
Thinks she that e'en such eyes can please,
Beaming—there is no word—like this?"
 
 
"Look on that singer at the harp,
Of her you cannot speak thus—ah, no!"
—"Her! why she's formed of flat and sharp—
I doubt not she's a fine soprano!"
 
 
"The next?"—"What, she who lowers her eyes
From sheer mock-modesty—so pert,
So doubtful-mannered?—I despise
Her, and all like her—she's a Flirt!
 
 
"And this is why my spleen's above
The power of words;—'tis that they can
Make the vile semblance be to Love
Just what the Monkey is to Man!
 
 
"But yonder I, methinks, can trace
One very different from these—
Her features speak—her form is Grace
Completed by the touch of Ease!
 
 
"That opening lip, that fine frank eye
Breathe Nature's own true gaiety—
So sweet, so rare when thus, that I
Gaze on't with joy, nay ecstacy!
 
 
"For when 'tis thus, you'll also see
That eye still richer gifts express—
And on that lip there oft will be
A sighing smile of tenderness!
 
 
"Yes! here a matchless spirit dwells
E'en for that lovely dwelling fit!—
I gaze on her—my bosom swells
With feelings, thoughts,–oh! exquisite!
 
 
"That such a being, noble, tender,
So fair, so delicate, so dear,
Would let one love her, and befriend her!—
—Ah, yes, my Chosen One is here!"
 

London Magazine.