he loses all sense and motion and dies unless speedily relieved. An aversion to blue and black, and an affection for white, red and green, are other unaccountable symptoms of its disorder. There is no remedy but one. While he lies senseless and motionless, a musician plays several tunes. When he hits on the right, the patient immediately begins to make a faint motion. His fingers first move in cadence, then his feet: then his legs, and by degrees his whole body. At length he rises on his feet, and begins to dance, which some will do for six hours without intermission. After this he is put to bed, and when his strength is recruited, is called up by the same tune to a second dance.

This is continued for six or seven deys at least, till he is so weak that he can dance no longer! This is the sign of his being cured; for if the poison acted still, he would dance till he dropt down dead. When he is thoroughly tired he awakes as out of sleep, without remembering any thing that is past. And sometimes he is totally cured; but if not he finds a melancholy gloom, shuns men, seeks water, and if not carefully watched, often leaps into a river. In some the disorder returns that time twelve month, perhaps twenty or thirty years. And each, time it is

removed as at first.

Equally unaccountable are the two relations published some years since, by a physician of undoubted credit. The first is, a gentleman was seized with a violent fever, attended with a delirium. On the third day he begged to hear a little concert in his chamber. It was with great difficulty the physician consented. From the first tune, his face assumed a serene air, his eyes were no longer wild, and the convulsions ceased. He was free from the fever during the concert ; but when that was ended, it returned. The remedy was repeated, and both the delirium and fever always ceased during the concerts. In ten days, music wrought an entire cure, and he relapsed no more.

The other case is that of a dancing master, who, through fatigue, fell into a violent fever. On the fourth or fifth day he was seized with a lethargy, which after some time changed into a furious delirium. He threatened all that were present, and obstinately refused all the medicines that were offered him. One of them saying, that perhaps music might a little compose his imagination; a friend of his took up his violin, and began to play on it. The patient started up in his bed, like one agreeably surprised, and shewed by his head (his arms being held) the pleasure he felt. Those who held his arms, finding the effects of the violin, loosened their hold, and let him move them, according to the tunes. In about a quarter of an hour he fell into a deep sleep. When he awoke he was out of all danger. We have many other odd accounts of the power of music;

and it must not be denied, but that on some particular occasions, musical sounds may have a very powerful effect. I have seen all the horses and cows in the field, where there were above a hundred gathering round a person that was blowing a French horn, and seeming to testify an awkward kind of satisfaction. Dogs are well known to be very sensible of different tones in music; and I have sometimes heard them sustain a very ridiculous part in

a concert.

The great old lion which was some years since kept at the infirmary in Edinburgh, while he was rearing with the utmost fierceness, no sooner heard a bag-pipe than, all his fierceness ceased. He laid his car close to the front of the den, nibbed his nose and teeth against the end of his pipe, and then rolled upon his back for very glee. I have seen a German flute have the same effect on an old lion and a young tyger in the tower of London.

There is found in America a kind of spider more mischievous than even the tarantula, chiefly in the vallies of Neyba, and others within the jurisdiction of Popayan. It is called a coYA. It is much less than a bug, and is of a fiery red colour. It is fourd in the corners of walls and among the herbage. On squeezing it, if any moisture from it falls on the skin of either man or beast, it immediately penetrates the flesh, and causes large tumours, which are soon followed by death.

The only remedy is, on the first appearance of a swelling, to singe the person all over with a flame of straw, or of the long grass growing on those plains. This the Indians perform with great dexterity, some holding him by the feet, others by the hands..

Travellers here are warned by their Indian guides, if they feel any thing crawl on their neck or face, not even to lift their hand, the coya being so delicate a texture, that it would immediately burst. But let them tell the Indian what they feel, and he comes and blows it away.

The beasts which feed there, are taught by instinct, before they touch the herbage with their lips, to blow on it with all their force, in order to clear it of these pernicious vermin. And when their smell informs them, that a coya's nest is near, they immediately leap and run to some other part. Yet sometimes a mule, after all his care, has taken in a coya with his pasture. In this case after swelling to a frightful degree, it expires upon

the spot.

An account of the fossil Asbestos, from which a kind of cloth is manufactured invulnerable to fire.

[Meth. Mag. Eng.]

THE most extraordinary of all fossils is the ASBESTOS. seems to be a species of alabaster, and may be drawn into fine silky threads of a greyish or silvery colour. It is indissoluble in water, and remains unconsumed even in the flame of a fur

nace.

A large burning glass, indeed, will reduce it to glass globules; but common fire only whitens it. Its threads are from one to ten inches long, which may be wrought into a kind of cloth. This the ancients esteemed as precious as pearls. They used it chiefly in making shrouds for emperors or kings, to preserve their ashes distinct from that of the funeral pile. And the princes of Tartary at this day apply it to the same use. The wicks for their perpetual lamps were likewise made of it. A handkerchief of this was long since presented to the royal society. It was twice thrown into a strong fire, before several gentlemen. But in the two experiments it lost not above two drachms of its weight. And what was very remarkable, when it was red hot, it did not burn a piece of white paper on which it was laid.

But there is a kind of asbestos wholly different from that known to the ancients. It is found so far as we yet know, only in the county of Aberdeen, in Scotland. In the neighbourhood of Achintore, on the side of a hill, in a somewhat boggy soil, about the edges of a small brook, there is a space ten or twelve yards square, in which pieces of fossile wood petrified lie very thick. Near this place, if the ground be dug into with a knife, there is found a sort of fibrous matter, lying a little below the surface of the ground, among the roots of the grass. This the knife will not cut: and on examination it proves to be a true asbestos. It lies in loose threads, very soft and flexible, and is not injured by the fire.

Yet it is sometimes collected into parcels, and seems to form a compact body. When this, however, is more nearly examined, it appears not to be a real lump, but a congeries resembling a pledget of pressed lint, and being put into water, it separatęs into its natural loose threads.

A stranger discovery still has been lately made. The proprietor of a forge, upon taking down his furnaces to repair them, found at the bottom, a great quantity of a substance, which upon repeated trial, effectually answered all the uses of the asbestos.

It was equally well manufactured either into linen or paper, and equally well endured the fire. Upon prosecuting the inquiry, it appeared to him, that both the native asbestos (at least one species of it) and this obtained from the forge, were nothing more, than what he terms calcined iron, deprived, whether by nature or by art, of its inflammable part: and that by uniting the inflammable part, either with this, or the fossile asbestos, it may at any time be restored to its primitive state of iron.

But it is certain, there is asbestos which has no relation to

Both in Norway and Siberia, there are petrifying waters which, pervading the pores of wood lying therein, fill it with stony particles; and when by a caustic, corrosive power, derived from lime, they have destroyed the wood, a proper asbestos remains, in the form of a vegetable, which is now no more. To which of these does the following belong?

Signor Mareo Antonio Castagna, superintendent of some mines in Italy, has found in one of them a great quantity of linum asbestum. He can prepare it so as to make it like either a very white skin, or a very white paper. Both these resist the most violent fire. The skin was covered with kindled coals for some time being taken out, it was soon as white as before : neither had it lost any thing of its weight. The paper also was tried in the fire, and without any detriment. Neither could any change be perceived, either with regard to its whiteness, fineness, or softness.

Singular adventure of a tame Stork.

[Meth. Mag. Eng.]

THE following adventure of a tame stork some years ago in the university of Tubingen, seems to shew a degree of understanding, which one would scarce expect in the brute creation. This bird lived quietly in the court yard, till count Victor Gravenitz, then a student there, shot at a stork's nest, adjacent to the college, and probably wounded the stork then in it. happened in Autumn, when foreign storks usually leave Germany. The next spring a stork was observed on the roof of the college, which after a time came down to the upper gallery ;— the next day something lower, and at last, by degrees, quite into the court. The tame stork went to meet him with a soft, cheerful note, when the other fell upon him with the utmost fury. The spectators drove him away; but he came again the next day, and during the whole summer there were continual skir

mishes between them. The spring following, instead of one stork, came four, and attacked him all at once. A surprising event followed. All the turkies, ducks and geese, that were brought up in the court ran together, and formed a kind of rampart round him, against so unequal a combat. This secured him for the present But in the beginning of the third spring, about twenty storks suddenly alighted in the court, and before the poor stork's life-guards could form themselves, or the people come to his assistance, they left him dead on the spot; which none could impute to any thing but the shot fired by count Victor at the strange stork's nest.

An account of the Polypus, a wonderful production of the sea; it is a kind of animal which possesses life in every part, and is capable, if cut into many pieces, of forming itself into a distinct animal of its kind again—and shows, though ruined and dismembered, that it can assume its former power, and repopulate and live.

[By John Wesley, LL. D.]

Look into this rivulet, whose bottom is covered with broken pieces of plants: what do you perceive upon them? Spots of mouldiness. Do not mistake this mouldiness is not what it appears to be; and you already begin to suspect so; you think that you greatly ennoble them by advancing them to the rank of vegetables; you conjecture they are plants in miniature, that have their flowers and seeds, and plume yourself on being able to judge of these mouldinesses in a different manner from the vulgar. Take a magnifying glass: what do you discover?Some very pretty nosegay, all the flowers of which are in bells. Each bell is supported by a small stalk, which is implanted in a common one; you now no longer doubt of the truth of your conjecture, and cannot be persuaded to quit this microscopic parterre. You have not however sufficiently observed it. Look stedfastly on the aperture of one of these bells you will there perceive a very rapid motion, which you cannot be weary of contemplating, and which you compare to that of a mill.This motion excites little currents in the water, that convey towards the bell a multitude of corpuscles, which it swallows up. You begin to doubt whether these bells are real flowers; and the motions of the stalks which appear to be spontaneous, increase your suspicions. Continue your observations: nature herself will teach you what you ought to think of this singular