attacked by insects. Tawed leather, used for gloves, is made by impregnating the skin with a liquor containing alum and salt, and afterwards washed in a mixture of yolks of eggs and water; the saline and animal matters combine, and give it that peculiar softness, and such leather is afterwards coloured as may be required; having been rolled over wooden rollers, in which are grooves, it is called Morocco leather.  These are the principal varieties of leather employed in this country.—­Brande’s Lectures—­Lancet.

Mites.

An indefatigable naturalist has undertaken the very difficult task of arranging the family of acarides, or mites; he divides them into sixty-nine genera, the greater part of them new!

Electro-Attraction of Leaves.

The results of a French experimentalist have lately led him to conclude that the leaves, hairs, and thorns of plants tend to maintain in them the requisite proportion of electricity; and, by drawing off from the atmosphere what is superabundant, they also act in some measure as thunder-rods.

Enormous Whale.

The skeleton of a whale, 95 feet long by 18 feet high, has lately been deposited in the Cabinet of Natural History at Ghent.  In the opinion of many naturalists, among whom is M. Cuvier, this fish could not have been less than 900 or 1,000 years old!

Fly in Wheat.

In North America, much damage is done to crops of wheat by the Hessian fly.  The female deposits from one to eight or more eggs upon a single plant of wheat, between the vagina or sheath of the inner leaf and the culm nearest the roots; in which situation, with its head towards the root or first joint, the young larva pass the winter.  They eat the stem, which thus becomes weak, and breaks; but are checked by another insect, called the destructor, otherwise whole crops of wheat would be annihilated.

Spiders.

A correspondent of London’s Magazine of Natural History says, that he lately amused himself for more than an hour in observing the proceedings of a little spider, whose bag of eggs had been removed and restored!

Light of the Sea.

Its appearance previous to a storm is a very old observation among sailors.  It is, however without foundation, as it is to be seen, more or less, all the year round in the Carribean sea, where there are no storms but in the hurricane months.  In the hand it has a kind of mucous feel.—­Mag.  Nat.  Hist.

Woodpeckers.

A specimen of the least woodpecker was lately shot near Newcastle; and another has since been heard and seen near Coventry.  Its noise resembles that made by the boring of a large auger through the hardest wood; whence the country people sometimes call the bird “the pump-borer.”—­Ibid.

The Tea Shrub

Has been naturalized in Java with complete success; so that, sooner or later, the Chinese monopoly will come to an end.