GOLD MASK FROM THE BANKS OF THE EUPHRATES. This interesting relic of remote antiquity at present preserved in the Museum of e East India Company. It was found by lonel Rawlinson while engaged in rosecuting the discoveries commenced by yard and Botta, at Nineveh and Babylon; d is supposed to have belonged to King ebuchadnezzar. In exhuming from the ounds of these long-lost rival cities, the structive remains of this once gigantic ower, the Colonel discovered, in a perfect ate of preservation, what is well believed be the mummy of Nebuchadnezzar. The ce of the rebellious monarch of Babylon, overed by one of those gold masks usually und in Assyrian tombs, is described as ery handsome-the forehead high and ommanding, the features marked and regular. The mask is of thin gold, and independent of its having once belonged to the great monarch, has immense value as a relic of an ancient and celebrated people. The Arab tribes encamping about Wurka and other great mounds search in the loose gravel with their spears for coffins. Gold and silver ornaments, which have been buried in these graves for centuries, are worn by the Arab women of the present day; and many a rare object recovered from them is sold and melted by the goldsmiths of the East. The Arabs mention the discovery, by some fortunate shepherd, of Royal tombs, in which were crowns and sceptres of solid gold. THE DESOLATION OF EYAM. The ancient custom of hanging a garland of white roses, made of writing paper, and a pair of white gloves over the pew of the un T married villagers who die in the flower of | allowed a chaldron of coals. It weighed their age, prevailed up to the year 1837 in A PUDDING AS AN ADVERTISEMENT. A The following fact is interesting, inasmuch as it gives us an insight into the popular tastes of the period, and the power of mob-law: In 1718, James Austin, inventor of the Persian ink powder, invited his customers to a feast. There was a pudding promised, which was to be boiled fourteen days instead of seven hours, and for which he 900 pounds. The copper for boiling it was erected at the Red Lion in Southwark Park, where crowds went to see it; and when boiled, it was to be conveyed to the Swan Tavern, Fish Street Hill, to the tune of "What lumps of pudding my mother gave me." The place was changed to the Restoration Gardens in St. George's Fields, in consequence of the numerous company expected, and the pudding set out in proces sion with banners, streamers, drums, &c., but the mob chased it on the way and carried all off. STRANGE CURE FOR THE RHEUMATISM. Bridget Behan, of Castle-waller, in the county of Wicklow, Ireland, retained the use of all her powers of body and mind to the close of her long life, 110 years, in 1807. About six years preceding her death she fell down stairs, and broke one of her thighs. Contrary to all expectation, she not only recovered from the effects of the accident, but actually, from thence, walked stronger on this leg, which, previously to the ac cident, had been a little failing, than she had done for many years before. Another remarkable circumstance relating to this fracture was, that she became perfectly cured of a chronic rheumatism of long standing, and from which on particular occasions she had suffered a good deal of affliction. A short while before her death she cut a new tooth. THE QUEEN'S SHARKS. The harbour of Trincomalee swarms with gigantic sharks, and, strange to relate, they are all under British protection; and if any one is found molesting or injuring them, the fine is £10 or an imprisonment! Ho this ridiculous custom originated, it is hard to say; but we are told, that in the early days of British conquest in the East, sailors were apt to desert, and seek refuge in the then inaccessible wilds of the interior; and of later years, when civilization has unbarred the gates of Cingalese commerce to all nations of the world, the soldiers of the regiment stationed at Trincomalee, discontented with their lot in life, were wont to escape from the thraldom of the service, by swimming off to American and other foreign vessels, preferring chance unders strange flag, to a hard certainty under their own. Thus the Queen's sharks are duly protected as a sort of water-police for the prevention of desertion both from the army and navy. COMMON TRAVELLING. We have here the common travelling dress in use at the commencement of the 12th century, tempus Henry I. and Stephen. The original is intended for the Saviour meeting the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. The Saviour wears an undertunic, and his mantle, fastened by a narrow band across the chest, is held up by the right hand. The figures of the disciples are, however, the most curious, the central one particularly so, as he would seem to wear a dress expressly invented for travelling: his large, round hat, with its wide brim, seems to be the original of the pilgrim's hat, so well known in later times, and which formed so distinguishing a mark in their costume. His short, green tunic, well adapted for journeying, is protected by a capacious mantle of skin, provided with a 'capa" or cowl, to draw over the head, and which was frequently used instead of a hat. He wears white breeches ornamented with red cross-stripes; they end at the ankle, where they are secured by a band or garter, the foot being covered by close shoes. companion wears the common cap so frequently met with, and he has his face ornamented to profusion by moustaches and beard, each lock of which appears to be most carefully separated and arranged in the nicest order. He has an under-tunie of white, and an upper one of red, and a white mantle bordered with gold; he also wears the same kind of breeches, reaching to the ankle; but he has no shoes, which frequently appears to be the case when persons were on a journey. His POST-HASTE ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. Glasgow is now within one minute of London; in the last century it was scarcely within a fortnight of it. It is a positive fact that when the post arrived there a hundred years ago, the firing of a gun announced its coming in. The members of the clubs who heard it tumbled out of bed, and rushed down to the club-room, where a tankard of hot herb ale, or a beverage which was a mixture of rum and sugar, was ready for them before breakfast. How forcibly do these things bring before us the size of Glasgow at that time, and the habits of its citizens. our pages. ECCENTRIC WILL.. The following will, as an exhibition of strange eccentricity, is not inappropriate to Rotherham, who died in 1810, bequeathed Mr. Tuke, of Wath, near funeral (there came from 600 to 700); 1s. one penny to every child that attended his the ringers to ring one peal of grand bobs, to every poor woman in Wath; 10s. 6d. to which was to strike off while they were the oldest navigators, one guinea for pudputting him into the grave. To seven of dling him up in his grave. To his natural daughter, £4 4s. per annum. To his old and faithful servant, Joseph Pitt, £21 per annum. To an old woman who had for eleven years tucked him up in bed, £1 1s. only. Forty dozen penny loaves to be thrown from the church leads at twelve handsome brass chandeliers for the church, o'clock on Christmas day for ever. and £20 for a set of new chimes. LARGE EEL. Two Lately, near Maldon, an eel was taken, measuring five feet six inches in length, seventeen in girth, and weighing 26 pounds, the largest of the species ever caught, or described in natural history. THE AIR OF TOWNS. THERE surely never was a time when the evils of impure air were hidden from men. They know that the Angel of Death came in the air-for Apollo slaying the children of Niobe was a myth only to those who had lost the original meaning; the breath of vile monsters polluted the air-for the typical Lernaan hydra, with its seven heads, was to Hercules and his compatriots but the rank Lernæan marshes steaming up death and poison to all who approached them; the corruption of the dead defiled the air, destroying whole cities, and almost whole countries, by pestilence and plague; for it is said, how truly or falsely we cannot determine, that the plague was first generated in Egypt, consequent on the superficial burial of the dead, the Christianizing of the country leading to the renunciation of even the most wholesome practices of the past. If that, indeed, be so, then was Greece, with her heroic funeral pyres, and Our sketch gives a good idea of some of these trees. The pendant branches of many of them take root in the ground to the number of thousands, forming stems from an inch to two feet in diameter, uniting in the main trunk more than eighty feet above the ground, and supporting a vast system of horizontal branches, spreading like an umbrella over the tops of the other trees. ancient Egypt, with her mummy-caves and rock-tombs, wiser than their descendants, when these discarded cremation and embalming as infidel and idolatrous, and took to surface interment, as more heavenlike, instead. The River of Death, the dark, sluggish Styx itself, was but the type of stagnant waters; as were also Avernus, and Acheron, and Cocytus, which, by destroying the pure air of heaven, were said to lead straight down to Hades. To one sect only, or rather to one brotherhood of sects, has impurity been held congener with holiness. To the monkish ascetic, with his hair-shirt unchanged for years, his matted hair and tangled beard, his abhorrence of baths, and his denunciation of clean linenas to his brothers in the present, the Hindù Sunyàsi and Fakir, with their fabulous personal uncleanliness, and their vitiated physical life-only to these misguided men have dirt and impurity been esteemed as righteous and divine; with all the rest of mankind the ideal aim has ever been towards purity for the law of Nature is one of putrefactive substances give out positive purity, and man must, if he would live, and substantial impurities into the air. conform to her laws. Men have defied the Vogel was the first who made the discovery. laws of Nature, and they have died; they He collected the air of a crowded classare still defying them, and they are dying room, after a lecture, by freezing the mois-dying by hundreds-or living a life worse ture, when organic matter-substantive than death, a life of disease, deformity, in- | impurity-was found. The substance thus capability, and suffering, perhaps of pauper- obtained deposited first white then green ism, perhaps of crime-all because of the flakes, having a strong smell of mildew: if violation of natural laws, and the vitiation exposed to the direct action of the sun's of natural elements. rays, it soon became a dark purple colour, like dark port wine, and then threw down a black powder. Dr. Southwood Smith, of the Board of Health, repeated the experiment, passing the air of a London feverdistrict through a tube cooled by ice, when a similar result was obtained. Since then, Dr. Angus Smith has followed in the same track, adding to the methods of his predecessors a most ingenious test of his own, of which we shall speak hereafter. It is a hard truth, but none the less a truth, that we are all actually poisonous to each other. The breath of the dearest has the seed of death in it; and the loving heads which sleep pillowed side by side but give and receive a mutual poison and mutual disease. Affection is sublime; but carbonic acid gas is deadly. As hard a truth is it, too, but as real, that the touch of the daintiest has contamination in it; that the loveliest and the whitest fingers leave on yours a something which must be washed off; and that the youngest and dearest face, if pressed against yours, leaves it a fraction less pure than it was before-itself contaminated as well. These are actual physical truths, ungracious and unwelcome as they are. And if these statements are true of the loving and the refined, what must be the condition of those who live in dense numbers and close personal contact, where there is no removal of contracted impurities, no ventilation, no cleanliness, where all is one seething mass of filth and disease, one great human Lernæa, whence steam up death and destruction to all within its influence? Yet this is the condition of the over-populated parts of London, and, indeed, of all our large cities; of the closebuilt hamlets in the north, undrained and heaped up with all manner of abominable substances; of hundreds of labourers' cottages and labourers' villages in the south; and of every collection of human dwellings where there is not space enough for each individual, and where drainage, the removal of offensive matters, and the means of personal cleanliness, are not sufficiently attended to or provided for. It was long an assertion, that no difference could be found by chemical tests between the air of the most crowded city and that of the purest hill-country, Analysis was then in its infancy, and chemical experiments were, like the old alchemists' trials, but a series of special failures, each leading up to general successes. We have overcome that scientific difficulty now; for, by a series of successful experiments, it is fairly demonstrated and established that To turn back to the earlier discoverers of organic matter in the atmosphere. Though not a decisive test, it was yet taken as a positive indication of the presence of this organic matter, that silver salts, which are decomposed by light and organic matter both, would assume the same appearance in air as they do when in a solution of starch or other soluble organic substances; an appearance specially remarkable when the salts were exposed to the air of a flowergarden, or to that of a hospital, or feverward, or of any locality of patent impurity. Rain, hailstones, snow, and water have also acted like organic substances on silver salts; of course the more powerfully as the atmosphere through which they fell was vitiated, or the source whence they were collected was putrid. Glass globes filled with ice were hung over the unhealthy rice-fields of Tuscany by Moscati. Hoar frost was deposited, which melted into transparent water; but after a time this transparent fluid, apparently so pure, deposited small flakes of a nitrogenized substance, which soon became putrid. The Languedoc marshes gave the same result; and the air of hospitals was also tested in the same manner, and with a like consequence. Dr. Angus Smith, of Manchester, next took up the question, and triumphantly demonstrated the presence of organic matter in crowded rooms, &c., by showing a mass of confervæ and a few microscopic insects generated from some impure air which he had collected and kept. Nitrogen was also present in that air. Continuing his researches, he found a very large quantity of organic matter in rain-water-largest when collected from towns, but distinctly present |