374 Intelligence and Miscellanies. 



rising a little from the horizontal line, so as to give the great- 

 est effect to the discharge of the gun from the bush-house 

 which conceals the sportsman. 



The net, concealed by cut grass, is sprung by a rope which 

 is pulled at the moment after the pigeons alight upon the pre- 

 pared ground. 



1 3. Ohio oil stone. — In this useful mineral this country ap- 

 pears to be well furnished. Professor Olmsted first directed 

 the public attention to the very extensive beds existing in 

 North Carolina, and whose excellent quality, we liave had 

 occasion to prove by experiment. In the last number of 

 this Journal, page 185, we mentioned the novaculite of Lin- 

 coln and Oglethorpe counties, Georgia, and on a former oc- 

 casion, that of lake Memphremagog. It now appears that 

 the oil stone is found in Rocking county, Ohio : specimens 

 have been presented to the Lancaster Mechanics Beneficial 

 Society, and stated to possess a fine and uniform grain. Spe- 

 cimens were presented to the society by John P. Melfen- 

 stein, Esq. 



14. Report of the Chester county cabinet^ Pennstjlvania. 

 — The principal minerals of Chester county have been de- 

 scribed by Mr. Carpenter in this Journal, and the distinguish- 

 ed President of the cabinet, has favored this Journal with val- 

 uable communications. The society which is forming a cab- 

 inet in Chester county, as appears by its second report, re- 

 commends itself to public favor by its zeal and activity, 

 which, with the aid of its friends and correspondents, has, al- 

 ready enabled it to accumulate a considerable museum, in 

 the principal departments of natural history. This institu- 

 tion appears well worthy of encouragement, and the friends 

 of natural history throughout the United States cannot bet- 

 ter dispose of a part of their duplicate specimens, than by 

 sending them to this institution. 



In that part of their report which relates to birds, they 

 quote from Dr. Tinton's preface to Linne's System of Nature, 

 the following interesting passage, relating to the instinctive 

 wisdom of the Loxia Phillippina, a native of the Philippine 

 islands. 



"It constructs a curious nest with the long fibres of plants 

 or dry grass, and suspends it by a kind of cord, nearly half 

 an ell long, from the end of a slender branch of a tree, that it 

 may be inaccessible to snakes, and safe from the prying intru- 



