MISCELIANEA.

Lyttelton Times, Volume III, Issue 128, 18 June 1853, Page 8

MISCELIANEA.

Remarkable Vegetable Transmutation. —That a miserable grass should in no more than twelve generations become such an important article of food as wheat, would have been incredible, in the absence of the direct and positive testimony that has been produced by M. Fabre. So unlike are the alpha and omega of this experiment that botanists with one consent, have placed them in distinct genera, and yet the plants are shown, by the plainest evidence, not only to belong to the same genus, but even to the same species. Let us see to what practical inferences M. Fable's discovery may lead. This gentleman found that a kind of wild grass (iEgilops ovata) was subject to what gardiners call " a sport" (M. triticoides.) Of that sport he sowed the seeds, and he found, that while on the one hand there was no disposition to return to its original form, there was on the other a decided tendency to sport still more. Of that tendency he availed himself with admirable patience. Year by year the change went on—but slowly. Little by little one part altered or another. The wretched, hungry grain grew plumper ; the flour in it increased; its size augmented. The starved -ears soon formed other spikelets; the spikelets at first contained but two flowers at last became capable of yielding four or five. The straw stiffened, the leaves widened, the ears lengthened, and corn softened and augmented, till at last wheat itself stood revealed, and of such quality that it was not excelled on the neighbouring farms. All this, too, be it observed, was done on a large scale; it was no obscure labority experiment, but the result of a farming operation carried on in the open fields. Men must be blind, indeed who cannot see to what this points. We shall leave our agricultural friends to reflect upon the prospects that are open to them; it is for them to double the length of their ears of corn, and augment their grain—to go on, in short, in crowds, in the tract that a few only of the most intelligent are following now. We must limit our horizon to the boundary of a garden. If any men know the importance of " sports," they are gardeners. Half the most striking of the flowers and fruit have been thus obtained. A poor ugly dwarf larkspur sports by chance to double; the seeds of the sports are saved carefully and sown; three-fourths of the seedlings are single, but a few are double ; the first are thrown away, the best of the second are saved for seed, and the second crop of seedlings come truer. So comes the race of double larkspurs. A double larkspur next sports to a stripe, that is to say, bands of red or of violet appear upon the pale ground of the petals of a few flowers ; these flowers are marked, the seed is saved, and so begins the breed of what are called the uniques, at one time the pride of the flower garden, though now discarded for new favourites. In the same way, first came camellias, chrysanthemums, and a host of others. The old purple chrysanthemum accidentally sported to buff: the buff branch was struck, proved true to its new nature, and became the ancestor, of the race of other buffs. The colour of a red camellia " breaks ;" red streaks appear in the flowers of a sporting branch ; the branch is separated from its more tranquil mother, and clapped upon a stout stock; on goes the sportive branch, retains its tendency, produces striped flowers all the better for the new blood infused into them, aud the tendency is fixed ; skilful gardeners cut it limb from limb, and every mutilated morsel starts into life another variegation. It is the same with vegetables ; a wild Carrot, accidentally found in cultivated ground, refuses to run to seed, but employs itself in building up a root stouter than any carrot had before. The watchful eyes of a gardener mark the change; the changeling, still a sport, flowers at last; its precious seeds are saved, and comcommitted to still richer ground. Nine-tenths of the seedlings run back to the wild form— your carrot is but an intractable gentleman after all—but a very few prove obedient to the will of man, shake oil their savage habits, refuse to flower till the second year, meantime spend their autumn and winter in the further enlargement of their roots, and rise up into blossom invigorated by six months' additional preparation, and yield more seed, in which the fixity of character, or if you will the habit of domestication, is still more firmly implanted. And thus begins the race of carrots.—Gardeners' Chronicle.

A French Veteran. —An old officer, well known at Calais and Lille for many years by the name of Commandant Coulombon, or Coulombon ITmmortel, has just died at the latter town, aged 88. His history is a curious one. He entered the army in 1784, at the age of 19, and passed with honour through all the lower grades of the army. In 1792 he entered the King's Guard, and at the end of that year, being raised to the rank of commandant, was charged with the task of organizing the ninth battalion of the Pas de Calais. In the war of La Vendee he distinguished himself particularly, and it was to his exertions that General Hoche owed, in part, his success in the affair of Quiberon. At the head of some hundreds of men, Coulombon surprised the fort of Penthievre, in which there were 2,000 emigrants. Being without a tiag, Coulombon raised up above the wall a soldier's cap, which Hoche perceiving, sent him aid, and the fort surrendered. Some time after Coulombon, accompanied only by a small escort, was proceeding to St. Brietic, whither he. had been summoned by General Valletaux, when he was attacked by a body of Vendeans, his horse killed under him, and his escort put to flight. Coulombon being taken prisoner, was condemned by the Vendeans to death, but Was informed that he should be pardoned on condition of his divulging the password of the army and facilitating the capture of Lamballe. Coulombon, who was then a married man, and the father of two sons, refused with indignation, saying, " Do your duty ; my children shall never have to blush for their father." Immediately after he was taken out, and, a file of men being placed at a short distance from him, the word to fire was given, and he fell pierced by two balls in the lower part of the body and eight others in the breast. To make the matter still more sure, four stabs were given him with a bayonet, and a number of blows administered to him on the body with the butt-ends of the men's muskets. A grave was then dug, and the body was about to be thrown into it, when the sound of a drum was heard, which caused the Vendeans to make off. The escort had given the alarm to the garrison of Lamballe, and a body of men was sent out to the aid of the commandant. When the men came up, the body of Coulombon was found to still give some signs of life. He was carefully removed, and, after several days' lethargy, he recovered his senses, aud by the unremitting attention of eight medical men his life was saved. He was then 28 years of age, and he lived for 60 years afterwards. For 20 years he wore ort his breast a silver plate, which covered a vast wound which took 14 years to close up. Coulombon being decorated in 1804, when the Order of the Legion of Honour was instituted, continued to serve until 1814. His eldest son was killed at Waterloo, being then a lieutenant of artillery. Since then Coulombon has lived in honour among his other children, who had become manufacturers, and one of whom at present directs an important establishment at Lille.

The Celt and the Saxon.—A Roman Catholic clergyman, the Rev. D. Lonergan (an unmistakeable Celt), of Boytownrath, near Cashel, has, with almost superhuman courage, undertaken the defence of the unhappy •' Saxon" from the combined assaults of the host of journalists and lecturers who have been delighting their readers and listeners with bloodfreezing tales of the atrocities of John Bull. Let all those who would immortalize the Celtic character at the expense of the Saxon, peruse with due attention the following extract from a letter addressed by the Rev. gentleman to the Ultramontane Telegraph : —"I have resided for many years in England, and had the best possible opportunities for knowing the real character of the people in all their grades, from the highest to the lowest. I am, therefore, in a situation to assure your correspondent that he is much mistaken, and that the English, in very truth, are a sober people. An Englishman, after a hard day's work, goes into a publichouse, takes his glass or his pint in peace, and comes out sober; or if, by accident, he ' should get beyond the line,' he is as quiet as a lamb, and as silent as the grave, unless he sings some national song, such as—-' Britons never, never shall be slaves.' To deny that the English are < intelligent,' would be to deny the light of the sun. Look at their army and navy, and their spinning-jenny, their manufactures, their system of agriculture, and their astonishing bridgas and tunnels, and then tell me if they are not intelligent. I have often compared the English

to a machine, every part of which must be perfect, or else it fails in the intended purpose. Every Englishman understands his business thoroughly, does it honestly, and in a manner the most complete. Is there anything more required to constitute intelligence ? If so read their poets (not Irish, Scotch, or foreigners), their historians, their orators, their mathematicians, their expounders of the law, &c. You deny that they are ' religious or charitable/ If you are correct, I ask you, why have they contributed so largely, and so often, towards reviving our countrymen in a state of starvation? Why did they support the French priests when reduced to the utmost need and distress ? Or, why are they so bountiful to all refugees, many of whom would otherwise perish in the streets? Instead of gratefully acknowledging those noble traits of character, you find it more convenient to run back a course of 300 years, to introduce matters with which the present generation of Englishmen (and it is of them we are speaking) had no more to do than you or I had with the battle of Clontarf. If, I say again, you are right iv your conclusions, will you explain upon what principle so many millions of the English people have left the Protestant Church, and built chapels at their own expense ? Why collect so many thousand pounds a year to support their various religious, establishments ? Do not these facts prove, with one stroke, that they are religious, and that there is perfect religious freedom in England ? You travel to London for the purpose of showing that the ' English are not a moral community !' Let me inform you that you stand on very slippery ground, and that the sooner you learn it the better. If you remain there a little longer, you will find, t<> your surprise, that as many, if not far more, Celtic than Saxon eyes of a certain class will stare you in the face. Abandon that locality,, my good sir, and choose a different company, which you may do to your satisfaction iv all parts of England. They are no more the English, in the proper sense of the word, in the matter before us, than a similar class in Dublin are the Irish, or the three tailors in Tooleystreet were the people of England. An Englishman may appear sometimes lofty and stiff, but that appearance soon wears off, and after he his, perhaps, shown some Waterloo consequence, and, it may be, has cursed all nations but England, he becomes, gentle, kind, generous, and, as every one knows, hospitable to strangers. Alarm not yourself about the consciences of Englishmen—they are in safe keeping. The voter, as he never quarrels with his own bread and cheese, goes with his landlord to the hustings; but, although he may d n the opposing candidate and his suporters, still he really does not trouble his conscience about the relative merits of the parties engaged in the combat, as he well knows that they have only one object in view—that is, the interest, the renown, the glory, and honour of England. The English, in truth, are not responsible for their press, talented and respectable as it certainly is; and it must be observed that although the Times occasionally gives us an awkward lefthanded blow', still it frequently raises the strong right arm in our defence. Upon the whole,, taking the English as a nation, as lovers of justice and fair dealing, sincere in their professions, steady in their friendships, honourable in their engagements, proud of their institutions, and determined to maintain them—my conviction is, speaking impartially, that they have not, and that they never had, an equal, much less a superior, in the world."

Sub-mabine Habitations.—ln the diving boat of Monsieur Payerne you are in a room filled with good air, just as in your own chamber with the windows shut. Only, as at the bottom of the sea the windows cannot be opened to let in fresh air, a contrivance exists by which air is made When on earth you ,wish to write you retire to your study, you choose such hours of the day or night as are least liable to disturbance by noise. Yet you cannot wholly avoid disturbance. Would you not be delighted to be able to retire to the bottom of the sea, in order to study in perfect quiet ? What would you say to a furnished hotel under the waves ? Compared to such solitude, what is the seclusion of the Chartruese or the convent of La Trappe ? a very complete system of solitary confinement might be established at the bottom of the sea. The convicts might be sent down to their submarine prison for one year or ten years, according to sentence, and drawn up again at the end of the term The French are certainly^a. very odd people. They are always crying out

for something new. When they are tormented with ennui, they commit the most unheaid of violence; they become capable of every excess, even of excesses so mad, that the perpetrators might fairly be supposed incapable of anything rational. Yet at the very moment when they are calling furiously for novelties, they show some fear of what is really new. The novelty which pleases them is, in fact, old, patched up, turned, and recovered! Now this time there is something truly new. The base of the sea is made accessible, —that is, two-thirds of the surface of the globe; and no one troubles his head about it, even to inquire whether it be real or not! M. Payerne was a long time before he could get his first experiment tried with the submarine boat. He was told the thing was impossible. At last he made an offer which overcame the incredulity of men in office. If a spot were designated at the bottom of the sea, he would descend to it in his boat, and remain there one year!.........An inventor is like a man who is walking one way on a pavement where a crowd is going in the opposite direction. When an inventor, like a great poet, is dead, everybody is eager to praise him. The world has inherited his discoveries. Then people chuckle as they say to one another, " We Frenchmen found out that," just as a worthy shopkeeper, sitting at his fireside playing at dominos, says,'-' We beat the English at Victoria andthe Austriansat Marengo." „ For about two years' past M. Payerne's diving boat has been employed in the public service, in deepening harbours, removing rocks, &c. It goes down regularly in the morning, with its crew of a dozen men, who return in the evening to the surface of the water only because they have finished their day's work. Well, this extraordinary invention is far less thought of by the public than the appearance of a new dancer at the Opera, or the announcement of anew cake by a famous pastrycook.— Alphonse Karr.

Michael Faraday.—Michael Faraday, England's most eminent chemist, was bom in 1794, the son of a poor blacksmith. He was early apprenticed to one Ribeau, a bookbinder in Blandford-street, and worked at the craft until he was twenty-two years of age. Whilst an apprentice, his master called the attention of one of his customers (Mr. Dance, of Manches-ter-street,) to an electrical machine and other things which the young man had made; and Mr. Dance, who was one of the old members of the Royal Institution, took him to hear the last four lectures which Sir Humphry Dayy gave there as professor. Faraday attended, and seating himself in the gallery, took notes of the lectures and at a future time sent his manuscript to Davy, with a short and modest account of himself, and a request if it were possible, for scientific employment in the labours of the laboratory. Davy, struck with ' the clearness and accuracy of the memoranda, and confiding in the talents and perseverance of the writer, offered him, upon the occurrence of a vacancy in the laboratory in the beginning of 1813, the post of assistant, which he accepted. At the end of the yeav, he accompanied Davy and his lady over the continent, as secretary and assistant, and in 1815 returned to his duties in the laboratory, and ultimately became Fullerian Professor. Mr. Faraday's researches aud discoveries have raised him to the highest rank among European philosophers, while his high faculty of expounding to a general audience the result of recondite investigations makes him one of the most attractive lecturers of the age. He has selected the most difficult and perplexing departments of physical science, the investigation of the reciprocal relations of heat, light, magnetism and electricity ; and by many years of patient and profound study has contributed greatly to simplify our ideas on these subjects. It is the hope of this philosopher that, should life and health be spared, he will be able to show that the imponderable agencies just mentioned are so many manifestations of one and the same force. Mr. Faraday's great achievements are recognised by the learned societies of every country in Europe, and the University of Oxford in 1832 did itself the honour of enrolling him among her doctors of laws. In private life he is beloved for the simplicity arid truthfulness of his character, and the kindliness of his disposition. Why is a young lady who walks under the misletoe like an old lady standing on the edge of the pavement at Charing Cross with three parcels, a basket,and an umbrella?— What is it that Adam never saw, never possessed, and yet he gave two to each of his children ?