In confirmation of a circumstance prima facie so incredible, I have here to record a phenomenon, witnessed by myself, equally extraordinary.  I had frequently observed, in avenues of trees, that the entire ground engrossed by their shady foliage was completely saturated with moisture; and that during the prevalence of a fog, when the ground without their pale was completely parched, the wet which fell from their branches more resembled a gentle shower than anything else; and in investigating the phenomenon which I am disposed to consider entirely electrical, I think the elm exhibits this feature more remarkably than any other tree of the forest.  I never, however, was more astonished than I was in the month of September last, on witnessing a very striking example of this description.  I had taken an early walk, on the road leading from Stafford to Lichfield:  a dense fog prevailed, but the road was dry and dusty, while it was quite otherwise with the line of a few Lombardy poplars; for from them it rained so plentifully, and so fast, that any one of them might have been used as an admirable shower bath, and the constant stream of water supplied by the aggregate would (had it been directed into a proper channel) have been found quite sufficient to turn an ordinary mill.—­Mag.  Nat.  Hist.

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THE GATHERER.

  A snapper of unconsidered trifles. 
  SHAKSPEARE.

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HUMAN TIMEPIECE.

J.D.  Chevalley, a native of Switzerland, has arrived at an astonishing degree of perfection in reckoning time by an internal movement.  In his youth he was accustomed to pay great attention to the ringing of bells and vibrations of pendulums, and by degrees he acquired the power of continuing a succession of intervals exactly equal to those which the vibrations or sounds produced.—­Being on board a vessel, on the Lake of Geneva, he engaged to indicate to the crowd about him the lapse of a quarter of an hour, or as many minutes and seconds as any one chose to name, and this during a conversation the most diversified with those standing by; and farther, to indicate by the voice the moment when the hand passed over the quarter minutes, or half minutes, or any other sub-division previously stipulated, during the whole course of the experiment.  This he did without mistake, notwithstanding the exertions of those about him to distract his attention, and clapped his hands at the conclusion of the time fixed.  His own account of it is thus given:—­“I have acquired, by imitation, labour, and patience, a movement which neither thoughts, nor labour, nor any thing can stop:  it is similar to that of a pendulum, which at each motion of going and returning gives me the space of three seconds, so that twenty of them make a minute—­and these I add to others continually.”