but keeps them shut with equal force, and (as I have been informed by a clergyman of great veracity, who had the account from a creditable eye-witness to the fact) its enemies have a skill imparted to them to counteract this great force.  As he was fishing one day, a fisherman observed a lobster attempt to get at an oyster several times, but as soon as the lobster approached, the oyster shut his shell; at length the lobster having awaited with great attention till the oyster opened again, made a shift to throw a stone between the gaping shells, sprung upon its prey, and devoured it.”

P.T.W.

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INSTINCT OF SPIDERS.

(For the Mirror.)

The following fact is copied from a French work entitled Archives sur Anatomie:—­“A small spider had spread its net between two neighbouring trees, at the height of about nine feet.  The three principal points, to which the supporting threads were attached, formed here as they usually do, an equilateral triangle.  One thread was attached above to each of the trees, and the web hung from the middle of it.  To procure a third point of attachment, the spider had suspended a small stone to one end of a thread; and the stone being heavier than the spider itself, served in place of the lower fixed point, and held the web extended.  The little pebble was five feet from the earth.”  The whole was observed, and is described by Professor Weber, of Leipsig.

MEDICUS.

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SPIRIT OF THE

Public Journals.

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COBBETT’S CORN.

(Concluded from page 79.)

The first operation on the grown plants is that of topping; this is the planter’s hay harvest; the tops serve for chaff, for dry food instead of hay, for fodder.  They are cut off above the ears, collected by a cart going along the intervals or roads, and stacked for winter use.  Mr. Cobbett’s harvest of tops was not so successful as it might have been:  this arose from his absence at the favourable opportunity for stacking.

The ears of corn are stripped off when the grain is hard, and carried in carts to the barns, and placed in corn cribs adapted for the purpose.  The grains are taken off the pithy cylinder on which they grow, by being rubbed or scraped on a piece of iron:  in America a bayonet (a weapon called by the Yankees Uncle George’s toasting fork) is invariably used for the purpose:  the cylinder, now bared of its grain, is called the cobb.  The delicate leaves by which the ear is enveloped is, as has been mentioned, called the husk; it may be used for the stuffing of beds:  Mr. Cobbett has converted some of it even into paper.

In Mr. Cobbett’s sanguine temperament the uses to which the grain is applicable are wonderfully numerous and important.  Under the heads of pig-feeding, sheep-feeding, and cow-feeding, poultry-feeding, and horse-feeding, he gives an account of his own experiments and observations.  Of the thriving condition of the American horses Cobbett gives an example in his amusing vein, and by a trial made at his own farm in Long Island, he proved that neither their strength nor speed deteriorates on corn.