Turpentine.

Common turpentine is the produce of the Scotch pine.  Trees with the thickest bark, and which are most exposed to the sun, generally yield the most turpentine.  The first incision is made near the foot of the tree, and as the resin flows most abundantly in hot weather, the operations are begun about the end of May, and continued to September.  The juice is received into holes dug in the ground, is afterwards taken out with iron ladles, poured into pails, and removed to a hollow trunk, capacious enough to hold three or four barrels. Essential oil of turpentine is obtained by distillation. Common resin is the residuum of the process for obtaining the essential oil. Tar is obtained from the roots and other parts of old trees. Med.  Botany.

Gum Arabic.

The purest and finest gum arabic is brought in caravans to Cairo, by the Arabs of the country round Mounts Tor and Sinai, who bring it from this distance on the backs of camels, sown up in bags, and often adulterated with sand, &c.  The gum exudes spontaneously from the bark and trunk of the branches of the tree, in a soft, nearly fluid state, and hardens by exposure to the air, or heat of the sun.  It begins to flow in December, immediately after the rainy season, near the flowering time of the tree.  Afterwards, as the weather becomes hotter, incisions are made through the bark, to assist the transudation of the juice.—­Ibid.

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SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

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RECOLLECTIONS OF A R*T.

Written by Himself.

From Blackwood’s Magazine.

This is a pleasant piece of satire upon the autobiographic mania of the present day.  The original article extends to twenty pages, and is throughout a masterly graphic sketch.  We have marked a few extracts, which we shall endeavour to connect.

  “A R—­t! a R—­t! clap to the door.”

POPE.

As I intend to write the following pages entirely for my own amusement, and as they will most probably never meet the eye of mortal man, who alone can decipher them, it is unnecessary for me to make any observations on the doctrine of metempsychosis, to which indeed my reader (if there shall ever be one) may perhaps not be inclined to give implicit belief.  It is unnecessary for me, therefore, to begin by alluding to my former visit to this earth.  I shall not even hint, whether if it ever took place, it was in antediluvian ages, or during the Babylonian, Grecian, or Roman glory; or in more modern times.  Be assured, however, gentle reader, (if any there ever be,) that I have the faculty of observation—­that I have seen many generations of men—­that I have been in almost every corner of the habitable world, and that I am intimately acquainted with the