INHABITANTS OF AN OYSTER.

Observations with the microscope have shown that the shell of an oyster is a world occupied by an innumerable quantity of small animals, compared to which the oyster is a colossus. The liquid enclosed between the shells of he oyster contains a multitude of embryos covered with transparent scales, which swim with ease; a hundred and twenty of these embryos, placed side by side, would not make an inch in breadth. This liquor contains, besides a great variety of animalcules five hundred times less in size, which give out a phosphoric light. Yet these are not the only inhabitants of this dwelling; there are also three distinct species of worms.

STRENGTH OF THE TIGER

The strength of the tiger is prodigious. By a single cuff of his great forepaw he will break the skull of an ox as easily as you or I could smash a gooseberry, and then taking his prey by the neck, will straighten his muscles and march off at a half trot with only the hoofs and the tail of the defunct animal trailing the ground. An eminent traveller relates that a buffalo belonging to a peasant in (?) having got helplessly fixed in a swamp, its owner went to seek assistance of his neighbours to drag the buffalo. While he was gone, however, a tiger visited......

THE CIRCUS

A circus came to town, and everybody knows how the music and the grand tent and the horses set all the boys agog. Quarters of dollars and big Rings are in great demand; and many a choice bit of money have the circus-riders carried away which was intent for better purposes. A little boy was seen looking around the premises with a great deal of curiosity. “Halloa, Johnny,” said a man who knew him, “going to the circus?” “No, sir”, answered Johnny, “father doesn’t like ‘em” “Oh, well, I’ll give you money to do,” said the man. “Father don’t approve of them,” answered Johnny. “Well, go in for once, and I’ll pay for you.” “No, sir,” said Johnny, “my father would give me money if he thought ‘twere best; besides, I’ve got 25 Cents in my strong box, twice enough to go.” “I’d go, Johnny, for once, it’s wonderful, the way the horses do,” said the man; “your father needn’t know it.” “I can’t,” said the boy. “Now, why?” “’Cause,” said Johnny, twirling his bare toes in the sand, “after I’ve been, I couldn’t look my father right in the eye, and I do now.”

American paper.

ELEVATION OF LONDON ABOVE THE SEA

The surface of the ground upon which London, or the districts usually termed the metropolis, it built, varies in elevation from the mean level of the sea to about 200 feet above that level.

THE WATERS AND THE DRY LAND

The whole area of the surface of the globe contains 197 million square miles, of which land occupies 53 million square miles, and the ocean 144 million square miles. The ocean, therefore, occupies nearly three times as much of the surface of the globe as the land.

THE SPIDER

The body of every spider contains four little masses pierced with a multitude of imperceptible holes, each hole permitting the passage of a single thread. All the threads, to the amount of a thousand to each mass, join together, when they come out and make the single thread with which the spider spins its web, so that what we call the spider’s thread consists of more than four thousand united. Leuwenhoeck, by means of microscopes, observed spiders no bigger than a grain of sand, which spun thread so fine that it took four thousand of them to equal in magnitude a single hair.

WONDERS OF NATURE

The polypus, like the Tabled hydra, receives new life from the knife lifted to destroy it. The fly-spider lays an egg as long as itself. There are four thousand and forty-one muscles in the caterpillar. Hook discovered fourteen thousand mirrors in the eye of the drone; and to effect the respiration of a carp, thirteen thousand three hundred arteries, vessels, veins, bones, etc., are necessary.