Besides this singular inscription, the letters H. S. E. S. S. T. T. L. are also carved on the tomb, but of these no explanation is given.  Silo, Prince of Oviedo, or King of the Asturias, succeeded Aurelius in 774, and died in 785.  He was, therefore, a contemporary of Charlemagne.  No doubt the above inscription was the composition of some ingenious and learned Spanish monk.

CURIOUS CALCULATIONS.

CONSUMPTION OF AIR IN ACTIVITY AND REPOSE.

Dr. Radclyffe Hall makes the following interesting statement with regard to the amount of air we consume in repose, and at different degrees of activity:  When still, we use 500 cubic inches of air in a minute; if we walk at the rate of one mile an hour, we use 800; two miles, 1,000; three miles an hour, 1,600; four miles an hour, 2,300.  If we run at six miles an hour, we use 3,000 cubic inches; trotting a horse, 1,750; cantering, 1,500.

THE VALUE OF LABOR.

Cast iron of the value of L1 sterling is worth, converted into ordinary machinery, L4; in larger ornamented work, L45; in buckles and similar kinds of fancy work, L600; in neck chains, L1,300.  Bar iron of the value of L1 sterling is worth, in the form of knives, L36; needles, L70; penknife blades, L950; polished [Transcriber’s Note:  The original text reads ‘bottons’] buttons and buckles, L890; balance springs of watches, L5,000.

INTEREST OF MONEY.

Dr. Price, in the second edition of his “Observations on Reversionary Payments,” says:  “It is well known to what prodigious sums money improved for some time at compound interest will increase.  A penny so improved from our Saviour’s birth, as to double itself every fourteen years—­or, what is nearly the same, put out at five per cent. compound interest at our Saviour’s birth—­would by this time have increased to more money than could be contained in 150 millions of globes, each equal to the earth in magnitude, and all solid gold.  A shilling, put out at six per cent. compound interest would, in the same time, have increased to a greater sum in gold than the whole solar system could hold, supposing it a sphere equal in diameter to the diameter of Saturn’s orbit.  And the earth is to such a sphere as half a square foot, or a quarto page, to the whole surface of the earth.”

WONDERS OF SCIENCE.

A grain of gold has been found by Muncke to admit of being divided into ninety-fire thousand millions of visible parts; that is, by the aid of a microscope magnifying one thousand times.  A sovereign is thus capable of division into ten millions of millions of visible particles, being ten thousand times as many such particles as there are men, women and children in all the world.

SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION.—­Liebig, in his “Familiar Letters on Chemistry,” has proved the unsoundness of spontaneous combustion.  Yet Dr. Lindley gives nineteen instances of something akin, or the rapid ignition of the human body by contact with flame as a consequence of the saturation of its tissues by alcohol.