Lecky, the historian, and Tyndall, the descends, with the apex downward. When scientist, are both Irishmen. Among recent inventions there is an attachiment to pianos by which the tones can be converted into violin or guitar strains at the pleasure of the performer. A new use of paper is that of forming it into window-shutters, which are said to be fire-proof. The paper pulp, while wet, is pressed over a thin sheet-iron plate, which gives body to the shutter, while the exterior form is obtained from the mould in which it is pressed. When different colors are mixed together, the result is not the destruction of any of the coloring elements, or their chemical combination. The microscope shows that the particles of each of the colors entering into the mixture remain entirely separate and unchanged. The great pyramid of Egypt weighs 12, 760,000,000 tons, and according to Herodotus, it took the labor of 100,000 men twenty years to build it. Dr. Lardner affirms that 480 tons of coal, with an engine and hoisting machine, would have raised every stone to its position. An ingenious gas-man at Sanger's Grand National Amphitheatre, late Astley's, London, has invented a contrivance so that, by the simple turning of a lever, every gas-jet, including a large sun-light in the building, can be made to throw water with considera ble force in case of fire. The theatre is lighted by electricity, so that there is no necessity for separate cut-offs at each burner. | seen at sea, there are usually two cones, one projecting from the cloud, and the other from the water. These sometimes unite, and the junction is observed to have been accompanied with a flash of lightning; but they more frequently disperse before a junction has been effected. In calm weather, the column maintains a vertical position while carried along the surface; but, when acted upon by the wind, it becomes vertical to the horizon. The causes of the phenomenon are imperfectly known. By some, it is ascribed to a whirlwind of extreme intensity; by others, to an electric origin. The former explanation seems to be very plausible, when we take into consideration the shower of toads, fish, sand, and other substances of which the sources have been quite unaccountable. A German inventor claims to have discovered the secret by which glass is made malleable; and it is said that threads of this glass can be woven and braided. The announcement, however welcome, may yet be received with some reservation, as brittleness has always been recognized as not only a quality, but a physical property, of glass, though it may be that, when reduced to exceedingly fine fibres and properly annealed, this substance can be sufficiently bent to allow of its being woven into coarse fabrics, suitable for hangings and curtains. Coal was first discovered in England, near Newcastle, in the year 1134, and was first mined or dug at that place under a charter granted the town by Henry III. It was first used about 1280. Dyers, brewers, etc., began to consume it extensively in 1350. In consequence of an application from the nobility and landed gentry, Edward I, in Waterspouts are a phenomenon which are 1398, published a proclamation against it as generally observed at sea, but also occur on a public nuisance. It was imported from land, though usually in the neighborhood of Newcastle to London in 1350, and was in water. The appearance is usually that of a general use in that city in 1400, two years dense cloud, from which a conical pillar after the king's proclamation. HUMOR. A drunkard, on being told that the earth is round and turned on its axis all the time, said: "I believe that, for I've never been able to stand on the darned thing." NICE NEW BOOK.-A companion volume to "Insects at Home" is on the eve of publication. It will be entitled "Insects Abroad, by a Constant Sufferer."-Punch. SENSIBLE CIT.--Horace Walpole tells a story of a Lord Mayor of London, who, having heard that a friend had had the smallpox twice, and died of it, asked if he had died the first time or the second. HAY AND OATS.-All efforts to make hay | while the tents were being pitched, and by gaslight have failed; but it is discovered examined it with a critical eye all over, that wild oats can be sown under its cheer- with as much interest as if he had an idea ful rays. of getting one made like it; and then, after he was done figuring on it as an article of apparel, he began to contemplate it as an article of diet. He put his foot on it, and lifted one of the sleeves out with his teeth, and chewed and chewed at it, gradually taking it in, and all the while opening and closing his eyes in a kind of religious ecstasy, as if he had never tasted any thing as good as an overcoat before in his life. Then he smacked his lips once or twice and reached after the other sleeve. Next he tried the velvet collar, and smiled a smile of such contentment that it was plain to see that he regarded that as the daintiest thing about an overcoat. The tails went next, along with some percussion caps and cough candy, and some fig paste from Constantinople. And then my newspaper correspondence dropped out, and he took a chance in that-manuscript letters written for the home papers. But he was treading on dangerous ground now. He began to come across solid wisdom in those documents, that was rather weighty on his stomach; and occasionally he would take a joke that would shake him up till it loosened his teeth. It was getting to be perilons times with him, but he held his grip with good courage and hopefully, till at last he began to stumble on statements that not even a camel could swallow with impunity. He began to gag and gasp, and his eyes to stand out, and his forelegs to spread, and in about a quarter of a minute he fell over as stiff as a carpenter's work-bench, and died a death of indescribable agony. I went and pulled the manuscript out of his mouth, and found that the sensitive creature had choked to death on one of the mildest and gentlest statements of fact that I ever laid before a trusting public.---From Roughing It," by Mark Twain. A schoolmaster in Chicago, who asked a small pupil of what the surface of the earth consists, and was promptly answered, "Land and water," varied the question slightly, that the fact might be impressed on the boy's mind, and asked, "What, then, do land and water make?"-to which came the immediate response, "Mud." VELOCITY OF SOUND.-Josh Billings was asked, "How fast does sound travel?" His idea is that it depends a good deal upon the noise you are talking about. "The sound ov a dinner horn, for instance, travels half a mile in a second, while an invitashun tew git up in the morning i have known to be 3 quarter uv an hour goin' 2 pair of stairs, and then not hev strength enuff left to be heard." A GOOD SWALLOW.-Mules and donkeys, and camels, have appetites that any thing will relieve temporarily, but nothing satisfy. In Syria once, at the head waters of the Jordan, a camel took charge of my overcoat DE LA SALLE MONTHLY. VOL. VIII.-APRIL, 1873.-No. 46. THE LATE REV. JOHN BREEN. When the scholar departs from our benevolent man, whose cheering words midst, his productions remain as soothe the weary and drooping spirit, memorials of his greatness. The states- we conclude that his loss must be man leaves behind him a prosperous deeply felt by those whose daily avoand flourishing country, whose ame- cations brought them in contact with lioration has been effected through his him. A pastor who acquires the instrumentality. The patriot leaves, as esteem and confidence of his flock, a claim on the admiration of posterity, who ministers to their wants, consoles a nation freed from the yoke of them in afflictions, and watches over despotism, or rescued from the wiles their spiritual welfare, commands at of traitors. With all these we can once our respect and veneration. If commune through the medium of the there was ever a priest in whom all benefits they they have conferred on these qualities were preeminently humanity; and the lapse of ages serves united, that man was the Rev. John but to impart strength and brilliancy Breen, late pastor of the Church of the to their reputation. Annunciation, New York City. But when the kind and zealous This distinguished ecclesiastic was pastor departs this life, he needs born in the county of Carlow, Ireland, not the pen of the historian to transmit in the year 1822. Remarkable from his deeds to posterity. The remem- his very youth for his unremitting brance of his good works keeps his application to his studies, he early memory fresh in the hearts of those acquired the reputation of a good who experienced kindness and bene- student; and his zeal in the pursuit of volence at his hands. His pleasing smiles recur in visions of former days, the marks of his goodness remain long after he has departed, and his absence creates a void which time alone can fill. And when to his zeal as a pastor he adds the character of a good, kind, and VOL. VIII.-1. classical literature won for him the esteem and admiration of his professors. His early studies were prosecuted in Wexford under Meagher, the classical scholar; and the sad historic associations in which the place abounded, could not fail to have deeply impressed |