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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



were superstitious times, and a legend goes that 

 poor Mary was burned for witchcraft. At the 

 village of Stiimen, amber was first accidentally 

 found by a rustic who was fortunate enough to 

 turn some up with his plough. 



Accidents have prevented as well as caused 

 the working of mines. At the moment that work- 

 men were about to commence operations on a 

 rich gold-mine in the Japanese province of 

 Tskungo, a violent storm of thunder and light- 

 ning burst over them, and the miners were 

 obliged to seek shelter elsewhere. These super- 

 stitious people, imagining that the tutelar god 

 and protector of the spot, unwilling to have the 

 bowels of the earth thus rifled, had raised the 

 storm to make them sensible of his displeasure, 

 desisted from all further attempts to work the 

 mine. 



A cooper in Carniola having one evening 

 placed a new tub under a dropping spring, in 

 order to try if it would hold water, when he came 

 in the morning found it so heavy that he could 

 hardly move it. At first, the superstitious notions 

 that are apt to possess the minds of the ignorant 

 made him suspect that his tub was bewitched ; 

 but at last perceiving a shining fluid at the bot- 

 tom, he went to Laubach, and showed it to an 

 apothecary, who immediately dismissed him with 

 a small gratuity, and bade him bring some more 

 of the same stuff whenever he could meet with it. 

 This the poor cooper frequently did, being highly 

 pleased with his good fortune ; till at length the 

 affair being made public, several persons formed 

 themselves into a society in order to search far- 

 ther into the quicksilver deposits, thus so unex- 

 pectedly discovered, and which were destined to 

 become the richest of their kind in Europe. 



Curious discoveries by ploughmen, quarry- 

 men, and others, of caves, coins, urns, and other 

 interesting things, would fill volumes. Many val- 

 uable literary relics have been preserved by curi- 

 ous accidents, often turning up just in time to 

 save them from crumbling to pieces. Not only 

 mineral but literary treasures have been brought 

 to light when excavating mother earth. For 

 instance, in the foundations of an old house, 

 Luther's " Table-Talk" was discovered " lying in a 

 deep, obscure hole, wrapped in strong linen cloth, 

 which was waxed all over with beeswax within 

 and without." There it had remained hidden 

 ever since its suppression by Pope Gregory XIII. 

 The poems of Propertius, a Roman poet, long 

 lurked unsuspected in the darkness of a wine- 

 cellar, whence they were at length unearthed by 

 accident, just in time to preserve them from de- 



struction by rats and mildew. Not only from 

 beneath our feet but from above our heads may 

 chance reveal the hiding-places of treasure-trove. 

 The sudden falling in of a ceiling, for example, of 

 some chambers in Lincoln's Inn, revealed the 

 secret depository of the Thurloe state papers. 

 Other literary treasures have turned up in an 

 equally curious manner. Milton's essay on the 

 " Doctrines of Christianity " was discovered in a 

 bundle of old dispatches ; a monk found the only 

 manuscript of Tacitus accidentally in Westphalia ; 

 the letters of Lady Mary Montagu were brought 

 to light from the recesses of an old trunk ; the 

 manuscripts of Dr. Dee from the secret drawer 

 of an old chest ; and it is said that one of the can- 

 tos of Dante's great poem was found, after be- 

 ing long mislaid, hidden away beneath a window- 

 sill. 



It is curious to trace how the origin of some 

 famous work has been suggested apparently by 

 the merest accident. We need but remind the 

 reader how Lady Austen's suggestion of " the 

 sofa" as a subject for blank verse was the begin- 

 ning of " The Task," a poem which grew to for- 

 midable proportions under Cowper's facile pen. 

 Another example of — 



"What great events from trivial causes spring," 



is furnished by Lockhart's account of the gradual 

 growth of " The Lay of the Last Minstrel." The 

 lovely Countess of Dalkeith hears a wild legend 

 of border diablerie, and sportively asks Scott to 

 make it the subject of a ballad. The poet's ac- 

 cidental confinement in the midst of a yeomanry 

 camp gave him leisure to meditate his theme to 

 the sound of a bugle ; suddenly there flashes on 

 him the idea of extending his simple outline so 

 as to embrace a vivid panorama of that old bor- 

 der-life of war and tumult. A friend's sugges- 

 tion led to the arrangement and framework of the 

 " Lay " and the conception of the ancient harp- 

 er. Thus step by step grew the poem that first 

 made its author famous. The manuscript of " Wa- 

 verley" lay hidden away in an old cabinet for 

 years before the public were aware of its exist- 

 ence. In the words of the Great Unknown : " I 

 had written the greater part of the first volume 

 and sketched other passages, when I mislaid the 

 manuscript ; and only found it by the merest ac- 

 cident, as I was rummaging the drawer of an old 

 cabinet ; and I took the fancy of finishing it." 



Charlotte Bronte's chance discovery of a 

 manuscript volume of verses in her sister Emily's 

 handwriting led, from a mutual confession of the 

 furor poelicus, to the joint publication of their 



