EDlTOa'S TABLE. 



nine or ten stages, and at hanqucts was furnished with shelves of gold and silver plati 

 The walls wtTo wainscotofl with carvt'd oak panels, and these were fiiniishid with eijiher 

 mottoes. Klizabethan architecture was intended to please the traveller, the neighbor, an<l 

 the ]ias*er-l>y. Its inconveniences were that the rooms in street houses were low and dark, 

 the streets narrow and dim." 



Tlie following is a lively description of a great house in the time of Shakspeare : — 



" Hero was a town contained under a single roof, a vast family held within the same 

 walls; all living and hating, and wooing and fighting, within this network of courts, pas- 

 sages, towers, and chambers. Servingmen squabbling in the kitchen ; butlers drunk in the 

 cellars; pages stealing in the Imttery ; wenches chattering and being kisseil in the pastry 

 room ; matrons busy in the still room ; stewards weighing money in the bursery ; gallants 

 duelling in the orchard; lovers meeting on the staircase. Days of romance gone to the 

 grave forever." * * 



" Queen Elizabeth, when visiting Sir Thomas Gresham, remarked that the court should 

 have been divided by a wall. He immediately collected so many artificers, that the wall 

 was erected before the queen had arisen the next morning." 



The last paragraph reminds us of the Chinese magnificos, who are said to change the 

 whole of their expensive garden scenes in one night, wood, water, and all, so as to surprise 

 their visitors with an entirely new scene in the morning. 



The Patext Office Repokt is, as usual, filled with useful suggestions, many of which we 

 shall notice, as peculiarly adapted to the readers of this periodical. Mr. D. J. Browne, in 

 his report on " Seeds and Cuttings," gracefully admits that he was in error in stating that 

 the Tamarind grew and fruited in Virginia, his attention being called to the circumstance, in 

 these pages, by our correspondent, Yardley Taylor. 



Ax AxciEXT Oak. — One of the oldest trees in Europe was struck by lightning in the month 

 of July last. This tree, an oak, had been planted near Chatillion-sur-Seine (Cote d'Or), in 

 1070, by a Count of Champagne. The oak, which had therefore existed 786 years, measured 

 seven and a half metres in circumference, and had produced acorns up to 1830. 



The Tansy, and its Value. — M. De Morogues announces that tliis plant — dried — is excel- 

 lent sheep food, and that, when fresh, it makes capital litter for domestic animals. Its pecu- 

 liar balsamic odor most effectually drives away fleas. A lapdog sleeping on a bed of fresh 

 tansy, is immediately freed from these vermin. It should be renewed when the leaves are 

 quite dry. This seems a better application of the plant than following the example of our 

 grandmothers and making it into cakes. 



Destruction to House Bugs. — The French Academy of Sciences is assured, by Baron 

 Thenard, that boiling soap and water, consisting of two parts of common soap, and 100 

 parts of water by weight, infallibly destroys bugs and their eggs. It is enough to wash 

 walls, woodwork, &c., with the boiling solution, to be entirely relieved from this horrid pest. 



Negative Artesian Wells. — The Society of Arts have published Herr Bruckmann's paper 

 on " Negative Artesian Wells" — that is, wells which take in instead of giving out water. 

 Such wells serve as permanent drains ; they are sunk in loose strata, or where communica- 

 tions exist with fathomless fissures, or with deep-lying streams. Mr. Bruckmann, who is a 

 native of Wurtemberg, states that they may be established " in all the so-called normal or 

 sediment formations : diluvium, tertiary deposits, chalk, Jurassic rocks," and others. And 

 he brings forward examples of the benefits that have followed the sinking of negative wells 

 in towns or in swampy country districts. The drainage becomes at once perfect and con- 

 stant ; fluid matters of all kinds find their way to the mouth, and flow away, while solid 

 matters may be stopped and used in fertilization. 



