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twenty to thirty feet high. The leaves | are from six to ten inches long, and about three inches wide; and the method of obtaining indigo from them, is similar to that already described, except that heat is employed.

Merchants are accustomed to speak of several kinds of indigo, such as the copper-coloured, the purple, and the blue. These varieties may probably be traced to the character of the plant from which they are extracted, the time of cutting, the method of manufacture, and many other circumstances, which, although apparently unimportant, may have a great influence upon the product.

We might here mention a variety of interesting chemical experiments, which may be made with indigo; but our space will compel us to confine our attention to a few facts relative to the use of this substance in the arts.

Indigo is not soluble in water, and yet can only be employed as a dye when in a liquid state. The blue vats of the dyer contain a solution of indigo, formed by dissolving it in sulphuric acid, and with the action of heat. The cloth is first impregnated with a mordant, and is then immersed in the vat. After having undergone the various mechanical manipulations of the dyer, it is washed, either in a running stream, or in large quantities of water. When the superfluous dye has been thus removed, the cloth retains a blue colour, more or less intense, according to the strength of the solution of indigo in which it was dyed.

Indigo is but little used in any other art than that of dyeing. The starchmaker employs it, to give a blue colour to his manufacture, and from it, also, two colours are made for artists. One of these, sold in cakes under the name of indigo blue, is formed simply by mixing the powdered indigo with gum or isinglass, a small quantity of sugar being sometimes added. The other colour, known in commerce under the name of intense blue, and by chemists, as indigotine, is a most remarkable and curious preparation. If indigo be powdered and subjected to a high temperature, a vapour will be given off, which, on cooling, will crystallize in the upper parts of the vessel. The crystals are of a prismatic or needle form, and have externally a lustrous copper hue; but they are also transparent, and when viewed against the light, have an intense and pure blue colour. They are ground, and made into

cakes by artists' colourmen, and possess a vastly superior tint, and are more easily used, especially by those who paint in water colours, than the indigo blue made from the raw produce of the fermented leaf.-H.

THE FIRST FRUITS OF REASON.

THE situation of man on the globe he inhabits, and over which he has obtained the control, is in many respects exceedingly remarkable. Compared with its other denizens, he seems, if we regard only his physical constitution, in almost every respect their inferior, and equally unprovided for the supply of his natural wants, and his defence against the innumerable enemies which surround him. No other animal passes so large a portion of his existence in a state of absolute helplessness, or falls in old age, into such protracted and lamentable imbecility. To no other warm-blooded animal has nature denied that indispensable covering, without which the vicissitudes of a temperate, and the rigours of a cold climate, are equally insupportable; and to scarcely any has she been so sparing in external weapons, whether for attack or defence. Destitute alike of speed to avoid, and of arms to repel, the aggressions of his voracious foes; tenderly susceptible of atmospheric influences, and unfitted for the coarse aliments which the earth affords spontaneously, during at least two-thirds of the year, even in temperate climates, man, if abandoned to mere instinct, would be of all creatures the most destitute and miserable. Distracted by terror, and goaded by famine, driven to the most abject expedients for concealment from his enemies, and to the most cowardly devices for the seizure and destruction of his nobler prey, his existence would be one continued subterfuge or stratagem; his dwelling would be in dens of the earth, in clefts of rocks, or in the hollows of trees; his food, worms and the lower reptiles, or such few and crude productions of the soil as his organs could be brought to assimilate, varied with occasional relics, mangled by more powerful beasts of prey, or contemned by their more pampered choice. Remarkable only for the absence of those powers and qualities which obtain for other animals a degree of security and respect, he would be disregarded by some and hunted down by others; till, after a

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The Water Melon. Cucurbita Citrullus.
CUCURBITACEOUS PLANTS.

THE Cucurbitaceous plants, of which the cucumber and the gourd are the leading examples, form a very natural assemblage of individuals, allied to each other by marks that are easily recognized by the most common observer. The long climbing stem of the white briony, brionia alba, with its spiral claspers, and the form of its green-veined flowers, readily offer to the attentive mind an affinity with the cucumber, though one is made the object of studious care to the cultivator, and the other accounted a wild herb, scarcely worth the trouble of being known and remembered. But before we enter into

any particular details respecting the cucurbitaceous family, it will be more regular to give a concise delineation of its distinguishing characteristics. The most conspicuous part of the flower, which some call the corolla, and others, the calyx, is divided into five segments, and has a remarkable contraction just above the germen, upon the top of which it is seated. Some of the flowers yield stamens, and the rest pistils; that is, some furnish the pollen or fertilizing dust, and others, the embryo of the future fruit. Gardeners unacquainted with botanical discrimination and phraseology, have long been able to tell, by a single glance,

whether the flower is barren, or likely to be followed by an edible production in the instances of a cucumber and the pumpkin. The stamens in the barren flowers, are five in number, and are combined into a bundle. The filaments take their origin in the contracted part of the calyx. The anthers have only one cell, and by their mutual junction, form a curious head, like the capital of a pillar, which is grooved with double wavy lines. The reader is doubtless familiar with the external appearance of a blossom belonging to the cucumber, but if one should be at hand at the moment of reading this, he will find that it will recompense the trouble of a closer inspection. The care of the Creator in providing those winding cells for the lodgment of the pollen, and his economical wisdom, in appointing one flower to contribute these fertilizing atoms, and another to furnish a receptacle for their destination and ultimate sphere of usefulness, might suggest some useful lessons in reference to the right disposal of our time and means. Amid the profusion of nature the botanist often traces her economy, and what he is sometimes inclined, with submission, to call her parsimony, doubtless to remind the careful observer that, however copious his means may be, a certain degree of thrift and circumspection must be used in their expenditure. If we closely examine the barren flower, we shall find the unfinished rudiments of the germen. As in the fertile flower, we may sometimes find the imperfect stamens, in the shape of minute points, at the contracted part of the flower. The office of a perfect flower is to bear all those parts which are necessary for the production and maturation of the fruit. But in the cucurbitaceous plants, this office is divided betwixt two flowers, each being required to sustain only half the charge of bringing the fruit to its final state of preparation. This is at once the most simple and philosophical method of considering the matter. If we look at the flower of the potato (solanum tuberosum) we shall perceive that the corolla is below the germen; but if, for the sake of comparison, we turn to a fertile flower of the gourd or cucumber, we shall see that the fruit is below the flower. These two conditions are expressed by saying, that the germen is superior in the potato, and inferior in the cucumber. The fruit of the cucurbitaceous family comes under the denomination of a berry; that is, a mass of

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pulp penetrated with seeds. This berry has generally a solid, more or less tough, and is sometimes so dense as to acquire the consistence of wood by drying. The housewife opens a pumpkin for the purposes of the kitchen, and the traveller breaks up a water melon to allay his thirst: both of them remove the seeds, without ever reflecting, perhaps, that, while in most other fruits, the seeds are attached to a central column, or to walls immediately derived from it, in these instances they are fastened to the outer case which contains them. When the systematic writer states in the seriousness of scientific phraseology, that the seeds "inserted into lateral or cortical receptacles," he announces no more than the simple fact, that seeds are about the sides of their tenement, instead of being ranged about its centre.

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As examples of the cucurbitaceous plants mentioned in Scripture, we may cite the garden cucumber, so familiar to the eye and the palate. The cucumis sativa is a native of the East, but of which part it is not precisely ascertained; the same is the case with the wheat and the vine, and many other vegetables, that from time immemorial have been the subjects of cultivation. Notwithstanding the refreshing savour and perfume of the cucumber, it is generally found to be unwholesome, especially when eaten in large quantities. This must be ascribed to the absence of those natural heats, which the sun, in the latitudes of Egypt and Arabia, pours down upon vegetation, to ripen their juices, and mellow their flavour. For in the countries just alluded to, the cucumber is not only grateful to the taste, but wholesome to the stomach. The children of Israel, who were so prone to undervalue the present in comparison with the past, might well feel a kindling desire at the recollection of the cucumber, a desire that was stimulated and encouraged by the prospect of the thirsty tracts that surrounded them. Does the believer ever look back upon the world, and, forgetful of the hard bondage of sin, long to taste once more the sweets of pleasurable indulgence? if he does, he should remember the awful manner in which the Most High punished the slight thus put upon his goodness. The same Jehovah who has commanded us to renounce the enjoyments of the world, has a countless variety of sweets to bestow upon us, whenever we have a heart to ask for them, and wisdom to use them aright.

For it is said, in Psa. xxxvi., that he will make us to drink of the river of his pleasures.

In the same verse (Num. ii. 5.) we meet with the melon, which was in all probability the water melon, cucurbita citrullus. See the engraving on p. 384. The water melon is about the size of a pumpkin, nearly of the same form, but of a more pleasant green. The inside is of a rosy red colour, and abounds with a copious distilment of refreshing juice. It is at once both meat and drink, for the juice is so abundant as to allay the greatest thirst, though excited by the scorching effects of a vertical sun, while the fleshy part is very agreeable to the palate, and nutritious in the eating. It grows upon the driest soils, in fact, exactly in those situations where it is most wanted. It grows in the greatest abundance throughout Egypt and the Levant, and is met with in the Sandwich Islands, and others of the Pacific, and in all the warmer parts of America, where the writer has often been entertained with a piece of the water melon; it is in general the first thing the hostess presents to the traveller, as the earnest of his dinner, which is to come by and by. How much the parental care of the almighty Creator is set forth oftentimes in a single vegetable! Here we have one that, as if independent of the soil, drinks the moisture of the atmosphere, and lays it up under the transforming influence of the sun, for the use and comfort of man.

The wild vine, from which the unskilful young man gathered the wild gourds, as we are told in 2 Kings iv. 38-41, was perhaps the colocynth, or cucumis colocynthis. The Arabic translators seem also to have thought that this was the plant, and when we consider that they were natives of the regions in the neighbourhood of Palestine, they will be looked upon as competent judges. The colocynth is a violent purgative, and would therefore, in large doses, prove fatal; but God has given us a caution against its effects, by a bitter taste, that is scarcely exceeded in the wide range of the vegetable creation. The fruit is round, about the size of an apple, and of a yellow colour, with some variations, both in colour and shape. The form of the leaves and the climbing nature of the stem, furnished the reasons why it was called the wild vine. It is not easy to say what kind of gourd the youth intended to gather; for, in the language of prophecy,

the land lieth waste, so that many plants that were once perhaps fair and flourishing, are now not to be found to guide the botanist in his researches. Various kinds of gourds are used in the same way, that is, in the composition of pottage, of which the people in warmer climates are very fond. The most agreeable messes that we remember to have eaten were dressed

in this manner. The prophet's direction was only a continuation of the process, the "meal" used in this case to impart a consistency to the preparation. Nothing miraculous was to be ascribed to the meal; the harmless nature of the mess was the blessed effect of faith in the prophet and his disciples.

TRACES OF THE SABBATH IN ASHANTEE.

SOME traces of the sabbath are found in this part of Africa. The natives reckon time by moons; and the arbitrary division of weeks, which can only be satisfactorily accounted for by the original institution of the sabbath, was evidently known among them before they had an opportunity to learn it from Europeans. The names of the days in the week, in the several branches of the Inta or Ashantee (Ashanti) language, are native terms; and may be traced in the national customs backward to remote antiquity. The same day of the week is not, however, universally observed as the sabbath. When Mr. Freeman preached at Fómunah, and explained the Decalogue, Korinchi afterwards referred to the fourth commandment, and said he had entertained the belief, that God had appointed for each nation its own sacred day; that he had set apart one day for the Ashantees, another for the Fantees, a different one for the Wassaws, and others for other people. He could not, of course, support his belief by any show of argument; he had received it by tradition; and referred Mr. Freeman for proof to the wonderful old fetishman in the interior, who is supposed to know all things, and to be able to do all things. But the apprehensions expressed by several who were present at the discussion, that they would expose themselves to great danger, should they substitute the Christian sabbath for their own weekly fetish day, is evidence of the influence which their superstitions exert on their minds.

In all the countries along the coast, the regular fetish day is Tuesday, the

day which is observed by the king of Ashantee (As-hanti.) Other days in the week are held sacred in the bush. On this weekly sabbath, or fetish day, the people generally dress themselves in white garments, and mark their faces, and sometimes their arms, with white clay. They also rest from labour. The fishermen would expect, that were they to go out on that day, the fetish would be angry, and spoil their fishing; and, in the interior, should a man go into his plantation on the sabbath, and by chance see a panther or leopard there, it would be concluded, that the fetish, who knew his intention to labour, had sent its messenger, to prevent him from carrying his purpose into effect.

The people, moreover, regard their natal day with a kind of religious veneration; and honour the day of the week on which they were born, with some of the observances practised on the fetish day, or sabbath.-Beecham.

THE UNCOMFORTABLE TRAVELLER.

IT was about ten o'clock when I entered a night mail, in which there were three travellers; one of whom, as well as I could judge, by the momentary flash of a lantern, which the coach agent held at the door as I entered, was about thirty years old, and apparently in rude health; but he grumbled exceedingly at being disturbed from his recumbent position, and at the uncomfortableness of the chilling air. The other two passengers were elderly females, who were sitting both upright and wide awake, and not indisposed to conversation.

I exchanged a civil word or two with them, and making a slight apology for doing so, drew out a nightcap from my pocket, as a preventive against the piercing wind, and to avoid the unpleasant pressure of a hat upon my forehead.

The wind was from the north-east, terribly penetrating, and accompanied with frequent showers of sleet, which rattled at the windows and upon the roof; and full as the coach was, and protected as all of us were with pelisses or cloaks, we all complained of the very low temperature; while the ladies expressed some compassion for those who were outside.

The gentleman opposite me moaned a good deal at intervals; and I thought, for a time, that he was either suffering some

severe bodily pain, or else benevolently commiserating the condition of those who were so much less favourably circumstanced than we: it was evident that he was ill at ease, from some cause; and as we rolled on, his groanings became more frequent, and louder in their expression. At length he started up, as if affected by a spasmodic impulse, and looking at my nightcap steadily, one of the lamps afforded sufficient light for the purpose, exclaimed in a peevish tone, that he had been very uncomfortable, because his servant had not given him his travelling cap at starting. I agreed with him, that when a man wished to sleep in a coach, a hat was not very comfortable; but suggested that a handkerchief would not be a bad substitute for his missing cap; however he did not take my hint, but twisted and grumbled, as if he had been labouring under a fit of cholic; while the ladies, who sat in their great broad bonnets, which must have completely prevented them from leaning backwards in a comfortable posture, did not complain at all.

After a while, he got the fidgets in his legs, which he said were a great deal too long for such a small coach; and though I accommodated him as well as I could, by moving my own legs as much as possible out of his way, he still complained; and I feared that he might be experiencing some twinges from the gout.

He then told us, that he was particularly uncomfortable from want of a cigar; but smoking in the coach was out of the question, and therefore the luxurious gentleman had no immediate relief in this respect. We advanced, at the ordinary quick pace, amidst that constrained and broken conversation in which English travellers sometimes indulge, if huddled together without previous acquaintance, for about an hour and a half, when another change of horses took place. During the brief halt which this occasioned, I let down the window which was next to me, in order to admit a little fresh air, cold as it was, when the cry of a child on the roof of the coach, startled and distressed me. I inquired of the guard, if any unfortunate female was outside on such a dreadful night, and was informed that the widow of a coachman on that line, who had been killed a few weeks before by an overset, had got a free seat from the proprietors to London, where she was to be admitted into an asylum, and that she had an infant in

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