KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 



143 



often meet with on the moors, in August. I ima- 

 gine it to be the same as this ; but it is rather 

 larger in size. There is a strong smell attached 

 to them, for I once got a " dead point " at one, 

 over a very steady old dog, to the great amuse- 

 ment of my brother shooter. — W. H. F., Cupar. 



Goats. — Your correspondent who asks about 

 goats, and how to keep them, need give himself 

 no unnecessary trouble. They will take excellent 

 care of themselves in every way. Nothing comes 

 amiss to them, from the corn in the horses' 

 manger to the set of harness newly cleaned 

 (barring the brass -work); and even this they 

 would eat, if their teeth were strong enough to 

 bite it. I have nearly a score of them in my 

 deer park, at Feniscowles, Lancashire. This is 

 the only place in which I ever could keep them, 

 without their doing harm ; and even there, the 

 hollies have to be defended. They are very fond 

 of ivy. By the way, you have recently been 

 giving some curious anecdotes of dogs and cats. 

 I saw a little mongrel dog the other day, that 

 had suckled and brought up a cat. They now 

 play together like kittens ! — W. PI. F., Cupar. 



[We are much obliged to you, Sir William, for 

 the information contained in this; and also the 

 preceding paragraph.] 



POWERFUL INFLUENCE OF WOMEN. 



We rarely, very rarely, read novels. They 

 are poisonous trash ; demoralising to the mind of 

 youth, and foul engines of mischief to what ought 

 to be the ' s innocent " mind of Woman. Yet do 

 all women, more or less, revel in them! Young 

 and old, innocent and guilty, maids, wives, and 

 widows — all " live " upon novels ! Hard work 

 for us to set up as a moralist, to " lead" the pub- 

 lic away from such all-engrossing mental fare ! 

 Well, we will try. 



This prelude is in consequence of our eye 

 having accidentally, — quite accidentally, — fallen 

 on the pages of a novel called the " Young Hus- 

 band." Strange to say, we therein found some- 

 thing not unworthy our pages. We give it as a 

 " fragment," copied by us in a moment of sly- 

 ness, with a pencil ! 



" The inluence of a sensible woman is of no 

 ordinary kind, and happy is the man who is thus 

 favored; not indeed that sensible women are 

 more rare than sensible men, but because men 

 are too apt to monopolise the entire sense of the 

 family (in their own opinion), to desire the 

 women ' to leave the thinking to them,' — to treat 

 women as automatons — objects rather of amuse- 

 ment than rational beings— as children or dolls, 

 to be coaxed a id made fools of, rather than as 

 equals or friends, bound to one eternity, fellow- 

 sufferers who weep in their misfortunes, as par- 

 takers and heighteners of their joys, and as being 

 equally accountable to one God. Others, again, 

 look on women as the mere slaves of their will 

 — a sort of safety-valve for their spleen, by 

 means of which their ill-tempers find vent. Both 

 these characters, I trust, will be far from my 

 reader; but if he should have entertained such 

 erroneous ideas of what woman, in her high 

 moral capacity is, and ought to be, let me entreat 

 him to try for a short time (and he will then 



continue to do so), by kindness and affection, to 

 draw forth the hidden treasures from the mind and 

 the heart of his wife. If he have treated her as a 

 mere cipher in his family, let him gradually in- 

 troduce her to trust and responsibility; if he 

 have treated her as a child, incapable of ma- 

 turity of mind, let him now make her his confi- 

 dante, and in the many opportunities for in- 

 ference which will then occur, he will soon be 

 aware how much he has lost by past neglect ; and 

 if he have treated her as a tyrant, if he have 

 crushed the but half-uttered sentiment, if he have 

 satirised her tastes and opinions, if by coldness 

 he have thrown the oft-springing affections back 

 upon her heart, there to wither and to die, or 

 with the wound to rankle and become gall — let 

 him try, before it be too late, to restore sufficient 

 confidence to elicit opinion; let him then, by 

 especial gentleness, awaken the dormant affection, 

 and, by the warmth of his love, perpetuate its 

 flow. The unadulterated love of woman, is the 

 greatest boon Heaven itself can, in this world, 

 bestow on man." 



If the writer of the above be sincere, — few, if 

 any novel writers are so, — we congratulate him 

 on his sentiments. We men make women what 

 they are, by the way in which we treat them. 

 Their education is always faulty enough ; but we 

 add " fuel to fire," and quench the few latent 

 sparks of nature that the modern school has been 

 unable to extinguish. Is it not so? 



PHENOMENA OF THE BRAIN. 



One of the most inconceivable things in the 

 nature of the brain, is that the organ of sensa- 

 tion should itself be insensible. To cut the brain 

 gives no pain, yet in the brain alone resides the 

 power of feeling pain in any other part of the 

 body. If the nerve which leads from it to the 

 injured part, be divided, we become instantly 

 unconscious of suffering. It is only by commu- 

 nication with the brain that any kind of sensa- 

 tion is produced ; yet the organ itself is insensi- 

 ble. But there is a circumstance more wonderful 

 still. The brain itself may be removed, may be 

 cut down to the corpus callosum, without destroy- 

 ing life. The animal lives and performs all 

 those functions which are necessary to simple 

 vitality, but it has no longer a mind — it cannot 

 think —it requires that the food should be pushed 

 into the stomach — once there, it is digested, and 

 the animal will even thrive and grow fat. We 

 infer, therefore, that the part of the brain called 

 the convolutions, is simply intended for the 

 exercise of the intellect and faculties, whether of 

 the low degree called instinct, or of that exalted 

 kind bestowed on man, the gift of reason. 



VELOCITY OF LIGHTNING. 



Sound travels in the air with a velocity of only 

 113 feet in a second, but lightning at the rate of 

 195,000 miles in the same period of time. The 

 time in which the flash of lightning reaches us 

 from the different points of its course, may con- 

 sequently be considered instantaneous; but the 

 time which the explosion occupies will be very 

 appreciable, and will vary with the distance of 

 the several parts of the long line, which the dis- 



