534 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



[September 



The leading characteristic of phosphorus is 

 its extreme combustabilitj'. Place a small 

 fragment of it in a glass tube, apply heat and 

 ignite it, when, on impelling a current of air 

 through the tube, the phosphorus burns with 

 great rapidity. The combustion having ter- 

 minated, two different residues are produced, 

 one a red coloured substance and the other a 

 white one. The latter, or white, is an acid 

 compound of phosphorus with oxygen. The 

 former was long imagined to be a combina- 

 tion of phosphorus with oxygen also, but in 

 a lesser ratio than necessary to constitute an 

 acid. Within the last few years, however, M. 

 Schrotter, of Vienna, demonstrated that the 

 red compound in question was merely phos- 

 phorus. No combination has taken place to 

 form this compound, but the phosp^|rus %as 

 assumed a second, or allotropic condition 

 just as sulphur does under the operation of 

 heat. 



Common phosphorus has to be kept in 

 water, for the purpose of guarding against 

 spontaneous combustion ; allotropic phospho- 

 rus, however, may be kept unchanged in at- 

 mospheric air ; indeed it may |>e wrapped up 

 in paper, and carried in the pocket even with 

 impunity. Common phosphorus readily dis- 

 solves in the sulphuret of carbon, whereas al- 

 lotropic phosphorus does not. 



Phosphorus exists in all grains, and it forms 

 a minute portion of every loaf of bread we 

 eat. It exists in the human brain, but the 

 greatest quantity of it is found combined with 

 lime, in the bones of animals. The phosphate 

 of lime sells at high prices, as a: fertilizing 

 agent, simply because it is a substance diffi- 

 cult to obtain large quantities of. Unlike sul- 

 phur and lime, which are obtained most abun- 

 dantly from the mineral world, all our phos- 

 phorus is obtained from organic creation. 



Scientific American. 



Sister's Love. 



Beautiful is the love of a sister; the kiss 

 that hath no guile, and no passion ; the 

 touch is purity, and bringeth peace, satis- 

 faction to the heart, and no fever to the 

 pulse. Beautiful is the love of a sister; 

 it is moonlight on our path — it hath light, 

 but no heat; it is of heaven, and yet sheds 

 its peace upon the earth. 



English Women — Their Good Sense and 

 Practicality. 



The following extract from a recent letter of 

 an English traveler, who has had the best op- 

 portunities for observation, may surprise some 

 of ouvfine ladies : 



" I can assure you that, having lived all my 

 life about in the different castles and manor 

 houses of Great Britain, and been accustomed 

 to the industrious habits of Dutchesses and 



Countesses, I was utterly astonished at the 

 idleness of American fine ladies. No English 

 woman of rank, (with the exception of a few 

 parvenues,) from the Queen downward, would 

 remain for one half-hour unemployed, or sit in 

 a rocking chair, unless seriously ill. They 

 almost all (with hardly an exception) copy the 

 letters of business of their husbands, fathers 

 or brothers ; attend minutely to the wants of 

 the poor around them, and even take part in 

 their amusements, and sympathise with their 

 sorrows; visit and superintend the schools; 

 work in their own gardens ; see to their house- 

 hold concerns; think about their visitors ; look 

 over the weekly accounts, not only of domestic 

 expenses, but often those of the farm and the 

 estates. 



"The late Marchioness of Lansdowne was 

 so well acquainted with the cottagers in her 

 neighborhood that she used to visit and look at 

 the corpses of the dead, because she found that 

 her doing so soothed and comforted the be- 

 reaved. 



" I have known her to shut herself up with 

 a mad woman in her poor dwelling, who used 

 to lock the door, and could not be induced to 

 admit any one else. Lady Lansdowtte's only 

 daughter used one hundred guineas (given her 

 by her father-in-law, Lord Suffolk, to buy a 

 bracelet,) to build pigsties, with his permis- 

 sion, at her husband's little country residence. 

 She educates her own children without assist- 

 ance, teaching the boys Latin and the girls all 

 the usual branches of education. 



"The late Duchess of Bedford, I acciden- 

 tally discovered when on a visit to Woburn, 

 had, for thirty years of her married life, risen 

 at six o'clock, summer and winter, lit her own 

 fire, made some tea for the Duke and herself, 

 and then, as he wrote his own letters of busi- 

 ness, she copied them, and came down to a 

 large party of guests at ten o'clock, to dispense 

 breakfast, without sayingvone word of their 

 matutinary avocations ; so that you might have 

 been a visitor of the house without finding out 

 that the Duke and Dutchess had transacted the 

 necessary business cf the day — before, per- 

 haps, you had risen." 



We add to the foregoing, the following from 

 Col. Hiram Fuller's new work : " Sparks from 

 a Locomotive:" 



" The English Women — It is very evident 

 that a large foot is not considered a detriment 

 to female beauty in England ; as the ladies 

 make no effort to diminish the size of their 

 feet by wearing pinching slippers. On the 

 contrary, they wear clumsy gaiters, with heavy 

 soles, which make their steps anything but 

 fairy-like. And in this they show their good 

 sense. One half of the consumption cases 

 among the American woman are owing to the 

 wafer-soled shoes, which render walking both 

 difficult and dangerous, and so they sit pining 

 in satin chairs, in their overheated rooms, suck- 

 ing cough candy and waiting for the doctor, 



