WHAT A MAN CAN DO.-No man can tell how much he can do, till he tries to see what can be done by system and arrangement. It was said of a man who was distinguished with an almost unparalleled number of civil trusts, through an eventful period of our country's history, that while he was clerk to the House of Representatives of one of the thirteen original states, he actually wrote off the whole of the Bible, to occupy his leisure hours, besides attending promptly and regularly to his official duties. It was a good remark of a wealthy and sagacious merchant, on being met by a friend, who knew that he had a great number of vessels in port, requiring his personal attention, in addition to his other multifarious business, and who accosted him-"Why, sir, I should think you would be in a hurry, you have such an immense amount of business to do "—"That," said the merchant, “is the very reason I am not in a hurry. I have far too much to do, to be in a hurry with it."-BOSTON COURIER.

FLINT IN VEGETABLES.-Flint, or silex, exists in considerable quantity, in the stems of the grasses, and kindred plants. To this, probably, the extreme hardness of some of them is owing. The fact has been demonstrated by the actual production of glass, from the combustion of hay or straw-glass being mainly composed of silex; the other materials usually added being for the purpose of varying its quality, or rendering it fusible, an effect which the alkali naturally existing in the straw would produce, in the above mentioned experiment.

MECHANICS' INSTITUTIONS.-We expect before long, to furnish a Tract on the history of these Institutions. Mr. Claxton, a well known scientific mechanic, being about to revisit England, his native country, for the purpose, in part, of making observations in relation to improvements in the Mechanic Arts, and the state of Mechanics' Institutions, will probably be able to supply us with valuable information concerning those which exist or have existed in that country.

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE.

BY W. M. ROGERS.

Classification of science.

The blessings it bestows.

TRUTH is that view of things which God himself takes. Science is truth reduced to a system. In its limited signification, excluding theology, it may be divided into Mathematics, treating of numbers, relations and quantities -Metaphysics, and Ethics, treating of the intellectual and moral man-and Natural Philosophy, which relates to the properties of the objects of sense. These again are severally subdivided. In each and all of its branches, science has yielded rich blessings to man. You have only to look about you, and note the familiar things essential to our comfort and prosperity, to be satisfied that we owe much, very much to the intelligence of past generations of men-a debt which is best paid by adding something ourselves to the stock of human knowledge, and transmitting it through those who shall succeed us, with the accumulations of century after century, on to the last of our race. It is to the past and present developments of science that we are to refer the prosperity, with the promise of an indefinite increase, which meets us, look where we may. Go and stand upon the high places of our city, and while the hum of industry comes up to you, ceaseless as the murmur of the hive, observe the crowded dwellings of men stretching away in fair proportions to the distance; note the swelling sails of commerce, and the fire-sped

Aid of science to commerce.

Nature made tributary to man.

cars, bearing to and fro the riches of milder climes and the fertility of our own soil. Now what power was it which tore the granite from its bed, where it has rested since chaos, and piled it up a well ordered habitation for man? What knowledge guides that bark on its trackless, shoreless way amid the waste of waters ? What hand has penetrated the mountains, dragged the rugged ore from its concealment, fused it into shapes to suit its purposes, and laid it down as a pathway for man, while it compels fire and water to bear him on it with a speed which outstrips the flight of the bird. These are the triumphs of science. She makes nature tributary to man. She has thrown her spell over the world for his benefit. She has muttered the charm upon the rivers of the land, and forced them to work at the wheel like a bondman, and to speed the revolutions of the lathe and the spindle. She has vexed the bosom of the earth, and forced the unwilling soil to render up her treasures, to fill his granaries, to furnish his table, and to fill his heart with gladness. Science does not stint man to the blessings of his own skies; she levels the forest, and fashions it to her mind, until the oak floats a gallant ship upon the waters, as on its element; she clothes it with wings, and sends it across the ocean, compelling the very stars to tell the mariner his way withersoever he would go, that she may pour into the lap of man the blessings of climes of which nature has been chary to his own. Thus she binds the families of the earth together in the interests of commerce, enriching each with the good of all. These are the triumphs of science. Wonderful and beneficent as they are, they constitute but part of a scries succeeding many, in their day, as wondrous, and preceding others, which the imagination of man may not now compass. The spade, the screw, the plough, and all the common

The progress of invention.

The Caffres' opinion of the plough.

implements of industry, marked each in their day as decisive an improvement in the condition of the human race, as do the steamboat and the locomotive in our own. The common implements of industry are so familiar to us, that we do not readily conceive there ever was a time when they did not exist. But the very simplest of them marks in its invention the progress of mind, stimulated by the necessities of its position to seek devices for the better supply of its wants.

The Caffres, a barbarous tribe of Southern Africa, devote themselves to war and the chase, as pursuits worthy of man, while the ignoble occupation of cultivating the soil is confined, and with the rudest implements, to their wives and daughters. An English missionary stationed among them, introduced the plough. After training the unused oxen of the country to the yoke, the Caffre chiefs assembled by appointment to witness its powers. As furrow after furrow was successively turned up, they followed in mute wonder; and at the close of the exhibition, one of them expressed his estimate of the value of the implement, by saying, "that plough is worth ten wives." We leave it to the cynical and the solitary to vindicate the Caffre's opinion of the plough. But the illustration shows us, by a glance at the misery and destitution of savage life, that the plough and other implements of industry so common to us, that we suppose any one might have invented them, are themselves improvements on ruder implements.

Thus science has brought us, step by step, invention after invention, to the present state of civilized man. Nor I will she close her labors here. Her course is onward; and doubtless, in the progress of society, the locomotive and the steamboat shall come to be things of such familiar use, that they shall be estimated as we now regard the

True love of science.

Pleasures of scientific knowledge.

plough-things so easy in the invention as to occur to the mind of any man. We do not know what advantages, in the progress of the race, science has in store for us; but we do know that her resources are inexhaustible. She comes to man as a bride, with the treasures of the earth, the sea and the sky, for her dower. But it is not in her dower, rich and divine though it be, that her chief excellence consists. She is to be loved and prized for herself, as well as the blessings she brings with her; and they usually woo her most successfully, who seek her with no mercenary aims.

As the advantages of science to man would open too wide and too difficult a field for us to tread at the present time, let us confine ourselves to a narrower subject—the pleasures of that scientific knowledge, which is generally accessible to the readers of the Tracts. It will not harm us, in communion with nature from a love of nature, to breathe a fresher atmosphere, than the men who measure everything by its tendency to promote the wealth of individuals and the nation. The susceptibility of pleasure from science is wealth, which cannot, to be sure, be coined into eagles, but which ingots could not buy. It gives a healthier action to the mind, to turn from the selfish views of a narrow utility, and to share with the scholar his generous pleasure in communing with nature, developing her mysteries, watching her operations, and deriving from them all, lessons of contentment, reverence and gratitude. There is reward enough for every sacrifice, and all the toil of such pursuits, in the vigor of a mind tasked in a work it loves, in the wonders it discovers, and the noble thoughts it calls up in its investigations.

Action is a law of our nature. man in the walls of a dungeon,

You have only to enclose

shut up from intercourse

with his kind and nature, and his mind, with nothing to