Bouts Rimes are words or syllables which rhyme, arranged in a particular order, and are given to a poet with a subject, on which he must write verses ending in the same rhymes, disposed in the same order.  Menage gives the following account of the origin of this ridiculous conceit.  Dulot, (a poet of the 17th century,) was one day complaining in a large company, that 300 sonnets had been stolen from him.  One of the company expressing his astonishment at the number, “Oh,” said he, “they are blank sonnets, or rhymes (bouts rimes) of all the sonnets I may have occasion to write.”  This ludicrous story produced such an effect, that it became a fashionable amusement to compose blank sonnets, and in 1648, a quarto volume of bouts rimes was published.

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Poisoned Arrows used in Guiana are not shot from a bow, but blown through a tube.  They are made of the hard substance of the cokarito tree, and are about a foot long, and the size of a knitting-needle.  One end is sharply pointed, and dipped in the poison of worraia, the other is adjusted to the cavity of the reed, from which it is to be blown by a roll of cotton.  The reed is several feet in length.  A single breath carries the arrow 30 or 40 yards.

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Sterling Applause.—­Lord Bolingbroke was so pleased with Barton Booth’s performance of Cato, at Drury Lane Theatre, in 1712, that he presented the actor with fifty guineas from the stage-box—­an example which was immediately followed by Bolingbroke’s political opponents.

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Claret has been accused of producing the gout, but without reason.  Persons who drench themselves with Madeira, Port, &c. and indulge in an occasional debauch of Claret, may indeed be visited in that way; because a transition from the strong brandied wines to the lighter, is always followed by a derangement of the digestive organs.

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Quarantine in America.—­Dr. Richard Bayley is the person to whom New York is chiefly indebted for its quarantine laws.  His death was, however, by contagion.  In August, 1801, Doctor Bayley, in the discharge of his duty as health physician, enjoined the passengers and crew of an Irish emigrant ship, afflicted with the ship fever, to go on shore to the rooms and tents appointed for them, leaving their luggage behind.  The next morning, on going to the hospital, he found that both crew and passengers, well, sick, and dying, were huddled together in one apartment, where they had passed the night.  He inconsiderately entered this room before it had been properly ventilated, but remained scarcely a moment, being obliged to retire by a deadly sickness at the stomach, and violent pain in the head, with which he was suddenly seized.  He returned home, retired to bed, and in the afternoon of the seventh day following, he expired.