Chapter 38

A painter of Toledo, having to represent the three wise men of the East coming to worship on the nativity of Christ, depicted three Arabian or Indian kings, two of them white and one black, and all of them in the posture of kneeling. The position of the legs of each figure not being very distinct, he inadvertently painted three black feet for the negro king, and three also between the two white kings; and he did not discover his error until the picture was hung up in the cathedral.

In another picture of the Adoration of the Magi, which was in the Houghton Hall collection, the painter, Brughel, had introduced a multitude of little figures, finished off with true Dutch exactitude, but one was accoutred in boots and spurs, and another was handing in, as a present, a little model of a Dutch ship.

The same collection contained a painting of the stoning of Stephen, the martyr, by Le Soeur, in which the saint was attired in the habit of a Roman Catholic priest at high mass.

A picture by Rubens, in the Luxembourg, represents the Virgin Mary in council, with two cardinals and the god Mercury assisting in her deliberations.

A STOPPAGE OF THE FALLS OF NIAGARA.

The following remarkable account of the stoppage of Niagara Falls, appeared in the _Niagara Mail_ at the time of the occurrence: "That mysterious personage, the oldest inhabitant, has no recollection of so singular an occurrence as took place at the Falls on the 30th of March, 1847. The 'six hundred and twenty thousand tons of water each minute' nearly ceased to flow, and dwindled away into the appearance of a mere milldam. The rapids above the falls disappeared, leaving scarcely enough on the American side to turn a grindstone. Ladies and gentlemen rode in carriages one-third of the way across the river towards the Canada shore, over solid rock as smooth as a kitchen floor. The _Iris_ says: 'Table Rock, with some two hundred yards more, was left dry; islands and places where the foot of man never dared to tread have been visited, flags placed upon come, and mementoes brought away. This unexpected event is attempted to be accounted for by an accumulation of ice at the lower extremity of Fort Erie, which formed a sort of dam between Fort Erie and Buffalo.'"

WONDERS OF MINUTE WORKMANSHIP.

In the twentieth year of Queen Elizabeth, a blacksmith named Mark Scaliot, made a lock consisting of eleven pieces of iron, steel and brass, all which, together with a key to it, weighed but one grain of gold. He also made a chain of gold, consisting of forty-three links, and, having fastened this to the before-mentioned lock and key, he put the chain about the neck of a flea, which drew them all with ease. All these together, lock and key, chain and flea, weighed only one grain and a half.

Oswaldus Norhingerus, who was more famous even than Scaliot for his minute contrivances, is said to have made 1,600 dishes of turned ivory, all perfect and complete in every part, yet so small, thin and

slender, that all of them were included at once in a cup turned out of a pepper-corn of the common size. Johannes Shad, of Mitelbrach, carried this wonderful work with him to Rome, and showed it to Pope Paul V., who saw and counted them all by the help of a pair of spectacles. They were so little as to be almost invisible to the eye.

Johannes Ferrarius, a Jesuit, had in his posession cannons of wood, with their carriages, wheels, and all other military furniture, all of which were also contained in a pepper-corn of the ordinary size.

An artist, named Claudius Callus, made for Hippolytus d'Este, Cardinal of Ferrara, representations of sundry birds setting on the tops of trees, which, by hydraulic art and secret conveyance of water through the trunks and branches of the trees, were made to sing and clap their wings; but, at the sudden appearance of an owl out of a bush of the same artifice, they immediately became all mute and silent.

CURIOUS DISSECTION OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS.

SHOWING THE NUMBER OF BOOKS, CHAPTERS, VERSES, WORDS, LETTERS, ETC.

In the Old Testament. In the New Testament. Total.

Books 39 Books 27 66 Chapters 929 Chapters 260 1,189 Verses 23,814 Verses 7,959 81,178 Words 692,489 Words 281,258 773,697 Letters 2,728,100 Letters 838,880 3,566,480

Apocrypha--chapters, 183; verses, 6,081; words, 152,185.

The middle chapter and the least in the Bible is Psalm cxvii.

The middle verse is the 8th of Psalm cxviii.

The middle line is in 16th verse, 4th chapter, 2 Chronicles. The word _and_ occurs in the Old Testament 35,543 times; in the New Testament, 10,684 times.

The word _Jehovah_ occurs 6,855 times.

OLD TESTAMENT.

The middle book is Proverbs.

The middle chapter is Job xxix.

The middle verse would be in the 2d of Chronicles, 20th chapter, between the 17th and 18th verses.

The least verse is the 1st of Chronicles, 1st chapter, and 1st verse.

NEW TESTAMENT.

The middle book is 2 Thessalonians.

The middle chapter is between the 13th and 14th of Romans.

The middle verse is the 17th of Acts xvii.

The shortest verse is the 35th of John xi.

The 21st verse of the 7th chapter of Ezra contains all the letters of the alphabet.

The 19th chapter of 2 Kings, and the 37th of Isaiah, are alike.

It is stated that the above calculation took three years to complete.

REMARKABLE INSCRIPTION.

The following singular inscription is to be seen carved on a tomb situated at the entrance of the church of San Salvador, in the city of Oviedo. The explanation is that the tomb was erected by a king named Silo, and the inscription is so written that it can be read 270 ways by beginning with the large S in the center. The words are Latin, "Silo princeps fecit."

T I C E F S P E C N C E P S F E C I T I C E F S P E C N I N C E P S F E C I C E F S P E C N I R I N C E P S F E C E F S P E C N I R P R I N C E P S F E F S P E C N I R P O P R I N C E P S F S P E C N I R P O L O P R I N C E P S P C C N I R P O L I L O P R I N C E P E E N I R P O L I S I L O P R I N C E P E C N I R P O L I L O P R I N C E P S P E C N I R P O L O P R I N C E P S F S P E C N I R P O P R I N C E P S F E F S P E C N I R P R I N C E P S F E C E F S P E C N I R I N C E P S P E C I C E F S P E C N I N C E P S F E C I T I C E F S P E C N C E P S F E C I T

Besides this singular inscription, the letters H. S. E. S. S. T. T. L. are also carved on the tomb, but of these no explanation is given. Silo, Prince of Oviedo, or King of the Asturias, succeeded Aurelius in 774, and died in 785. He was, therefore, a contemporary of Charlemagne. No doubt the above inscription was the composition of some ingenious and learned Spanish monk.

CURIOUS CALCULATIONS.

CONSUMPTION OF AIR IN ACTIVITY AND REPOSE.

Dr. Radclyffe Hall makes the following interesting statement with regard to the amount of air we consume in repose, and at different degrees of activity: When still, we use 500 cubic inches of air in a minute; if we walk at the rate of one mile an hour, we use 800; two miles, 1,000; three miles an hour, 1,600; four miles an hour, 2,300. If we run at six miles an hour, we use 3,000 cubic inches; trotting a horse, 1,750; cantering, 1,500.

THE VALUE OF LABOR.

Cast iron of the value of £1 sterling is worth, converted into ordinary machinery, £4; in larger ornamented work, £45; in buckles and similar kinds of fancy work, £600; in neck chains, £1,300. Bar iron of the value of £1 sterling is worth, in the form of knives, £36; needles, £70; penknife blades, £950; polished [Transcriber's Note: The original text reads 'bottons'] buttons and buckles, £890; balance springs of watches, £5,000.

INTEREST OF MONEY.

Dr. Price, in the second edition of his "Observations on Reversionary Payments," says: "It is well known to what prodigious sums money improved for some time at compound interest will increase. A penny so improved from our Saviour's birth, as to double itself every fourteen years--or, what is nearly the same, put out at five per cent. compound interest at our Saviour's birth--would by this time have increased to more money than could be contained in 150 millions of globes, each equal to the earth in magnitude, and all solid gold. A shilling, put out at six per cent. compound interest would, in the same time, have increased to a greater sum in gold than the whole solar system could hold, supposing it a sphere equal in diameter to the diameter of Saturn's orbit. And the earth is to such a sphere as half a square foot, or a quarto page, to the whole surface of the earth."

WONDERS OF SCIENCE.

A grain of gold has been found by Muncke to admit of being divided into _ninety-fire thousand millions of visible parts_; that is, by the aid of a microscope magnifying one thousand times. A sovereign is thus capable of division into ten millions of millions of visible particles, being ten thousand times as many such particles as there are men, women and children in all the world.

SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION.--Liebig, in his "Familiar Letters on Chemistry," has proved the unsoundness of spontaneous combustion. Yet Dr. Lindley gives nineteen instances of something akin, or the rapid ignition of the human body by contact with flame as a consequence of the saturation of its tissues by alcohol.

VIBRATIONS OF THE AIR.--If a person stand beneath a railway girder-bridge with an open umbrella over his head, when a train is passing, the vibration of the air will be distinctly felt in the hand which grasps the umbrella, because the outspread surface collects and concentrates the waves into the focus of the handle.

THE EARTH'S CENTER.--All bodies weigh less the further removed they are from the center of the earth. A block of stone weighing 700 pounds upon the sea-shore, will weigh only 699 pounds if carried up a mountain three miles high. A pendulum oscillates more quickly at the poles than at the equator, because the earth is flatter by twenty-six miles at the poles--that is, the "bob" of the pendulum is that much nearer the earth's center, and therefore heavier, and so swings more quickly.