OF HARTING. 405 



do, wish for additional testimony to the truth of the 

 statement I am about to make, I can refer you to 

 three or four respectable and intelligent individuals in 

 the village, who are quite ready to vouch for the actual 

 occurrence of the incident here related. I was one of 

 a party of aborigines who had casually met one fine 

 evening last summer, and were indulging in a social 

 chat. Among them was one, a local knight of the 

 thimble, whose intellectual resources fell short of ex- 

 citing the envy of his friends, although they appeared 

 to be eminently satisfactory to himself. He was the 

 authority on local traditions, and, his memory being 

 well stored with village chronicles and domestic inci- 

 dents of byegone days, he was so obtusely indifferent 

 to the admission of new ideas on any other subject 

 whatever, that he was wont to look with good-natured 

 suspicion on any statement not within the range of 

 his comprehension. I had just returned from London, 

 where you know I -had gone for the express purpose 

 of seeing Mr. Curtis's rich collection of insects, and, 

 having been much interested in the lectures and ex- 

 periments at the Polytechnic, I was relating a few of 

 the wonders of science I had witnessed there, as well 

 as at the Adelaide Gallery a few years before. The 

 chemical decomposition of water, for instance, in two 

 invisible gasses, one of which was made to explode 

 with such startling effect that ' a young man from the 

 country,' who happened to be seated near the table on 

 which the experiment was made, hastily sprung from 

 his seat and loudly exclaimed ' ketch me drinkin water 

 after that ! ' The Electric Telegraph, which was capable 

 of transmitting a message to-day that should reach 

 America some time yesterday ! The Electric Flash, 

 which showed distinctly and repeatedly that a spoked 

 wheel in rapid revolution was actually at rest while 

 the light was upon it ! The cooking a piece of meat 

 a hundred feet from any fire, by means of concave 

 reflectors ! Setting fire to water by throwing a piece 



