y" i 
NATURAL HISTORY. 
METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS, MADE AT ROCHESTER, STATE OF NEW YORK. 
Longitude 77°, 51'. Height of Station above the Sea, five hundred and sixteen feet. 
Latitude 43°, 8', 17' 
August 
July. 
Junk. 
April 
March. 
1858. 
TnERMOMETER-Monthly Mean. 
vffiROEATJTICS IN PARIS. 
GRAPHIC ACCOUNT OP A BALLOON ASCENSION. 
Highest Degreo 
Lowest Degree. 
Bange 
Wannest day. 
Coldest day. 
Barometer _Monthly Mean. 
very interesting account of his balloon ascension 
from Paris, last September. Mons. Godard, who 
has successfully pursued scronautics for years, and 
has made more than six hundred ascensions, kind¬ 
ly offered him a seat in the car, the ascension to 
take place in the afternoon from the Hippodrome. 
Mr. Ward instantly accepted the invitation, which 
he had hoped to receive for some weeks. It need 
scarcely be remarked, that practical aeronautics is 
carried to great perfection in France, so that bal¬ 
loon ascensions are a very frequent, and in summer 
of almost daily occurrence at Paris. In this case 
the ascension was to the height of one and a half 
miles, or nearly 3,000 feet, where the diameter of 
Highest Observation 
Lowest Observation 
.North. 
North-East. 
East. 
South-East. 
South. 
South-West. 
West. 
North-West. 
Total of each Month 
Prevailing Winds.. 
.Fair days. 
Cloudy days. 
Total of each Month 
Bain. 
Snow. 
Rain and Snow. 
Amount of water in inches... 
Winds. 
Weather. 
TnE CAROLINA PARROT. 
This is the only species found native within the 
territory of the United States. The vast luxuriant 
tracts lying within the torrid zone, seem to be the 
favorite residence of those noisy, numerous and 
richly plumaged tribes. The Carolina parrot in¬ 
habits the interior of Louisiana, and the shores of 
the Mississippi, and Ohio, east of the Alleghanies. 
It is seldom seen north of Maryland. Their private 
resorts are low, rich alluvial bottoms along the 
borders of creeks; deep and almost impenetrable 
swamps, filled with sycamore and cypress trees, and 
those singular salines or licks, so interspersed over 
the western country. Here, too, is a great abund¬ 
ance of their favorite fruits. The seeds of the 
cypress tree and beech nuts, are eagerly sought 
after by these birds. 
The flight of the Carolina parrot is very much 
like that of the wild pigeon, in close compact 
bodies, moving with great rapidity, making a loud 
and outrageous screaming, like that of the red¬ 
headed woodpecker. Their flight is sometimes in 
a direct line, but most usually circuitous, making 
a great variety of elegant and easy serpentine mean¬ 
ders, as if for pleasure. They generally roost in 
the hollow trunks of old sycamores, in parties of 
thirty or forty together. Here they cling fast to 
the sides of the tree, holding by their claws and 
bills. They appear to be fond of sleep, and often 
, I retire to their holes during the day, probably to 
They are extremely so- 
Barometer corrected +037.—i. c. c. 
Observations made at 7 A. M. 
pump. In another instance, a well dug to the rock, 
had an Artesian boring to the depth of 30 feet or 
more into the rock, when abundance of hepatic 
water, or water holding hydro-sulphuretted gas, was 
obtained, which has proved permanent. As soon as 
this was done, a hepatic spring, used for bathing, 
fifty rods distant, commenced discharging pure 
water, and has had no return of hepatic water 
The boring evidently formed another outlet 
Seine winding its course across the whole nxe a 
silver thread. And above all this we soared like 
the gossamer in our noble balloon, enjoying the 
enchantment of the scene, and yielding to its im¬ 
posing influence. 
The mysterious, unearthly silence which pre¬ 
vailed was that which most impressed the mind, 
not a sound reached us from below, not an echo 
answered back to our voices from the solitudes of 
space around and above us, and almost impercepti¬ 
bly to us both our conversation lowered itself under 
this influence almost to the tone of a whisper. And j 
hear we were, all alone —in an isolation of w hich 
the hunter on the summit of the Alps, or the 
mariner in the silence of the Polar Ocean, has not 
a fuller experience,—our tiny car swinging like a 
pendulum over the abyss below. Unfortunately 
we had no wind to move us along, so that for more 
than an hour we remained in nearly the same 
point. Having then opened the valve in the top of 
since. 
for the discharge of the mineral water. 
Rochester, N. Y., Dec., 1858. 
Written for Moore's Rural New-Yorker. 
ARTESIAN WELLS. 
The Human Thermometer. —The marvellous 
balance between supply and loss exhibited by the | 
human organism, and indeed by that of most warm¬ 
blooded animals, may be seen in the following 
facts: — Our temperature is 98°, and this is the 
standard, no matter what may be the external heat. 
In the tropics, the thermometer during several 
hours of the day is 110°. In British India it is 
sometimes as high as 120°. In the Arctic Zones it 
Though the Chinese are said to have used them | 
for many hundred years, they are a recent result in 
Europe. The oldest was bored in the province of 
Artois, France, the ancient Artesium, which origi¬ 
nated the name Artesian, and is perhaps not 150 
years old. Its water flows in a constant stream to 
the height of eleven feet above the surface. 
The Artesian Well of highest interest at this 
time, is at Louisville, Ky. It has been lately de¬ 
scribed by Dr. J. Lawrence Smith, Professor in 
the University of Louisville, in the Drily Courier of 
that city. A friend has kiWdlMfcn^m me the paper, 
| and I propose to give an abs^PWB^ i -’rof. Smith’s 
interesting account. 
Dupont’s Artesian Well. —It was completed 
take their regular siesta. 
cial and friendly towards each other. 
They build in companies in hollow trees. This 
bird is thirteen inches long; the forehead and 
cheeks are orange red; down and round the neck 
a pure yellow ; the shoulder and bend of the wings 
also edged with rich orange red. The general 
color of the rest of the plumage is a bright yellow¬ 
ish silky green, with light blue reflections. It is 
altogether superior in elegance of figure, and 
beauty of plumage, to many of the foreign parrots. 
It is docile and sociable, and soon becomes per¬ 
fectly familiar, but cannot be taught to speak.— 
These birds are rapidly diminishing. According 
to Mr. Audubon, very few of them are to be found 
north of Cincinnati; and there are not, at present, 
half the number along the Mississippi, that existed 
Messrs. Editors To the 7th question of Frank, there twenty years ago. 
I will answer in part from my experience, that a mill 
post bottom upivards in the ground will last longer —j? 
than if placed in its natural way. Twenty-four W 
years ago, having no shelter for my wagons from 
storms and sun, I went to work to build a shed by 
inverting six black ash poles about eight inches in i 
diameter, and from nine to twelve feet in length, 
and three feet in the ground, the but-end being VN 
was easily done, and its ascensional powei ^ut steadily beyond 
tested, audfovnd to be equal to the weight of about u jj 0 - g j e jj 0 i 0 g ne ” a 
four men. No one, however, saw fit to join us, so ^ ou 0 f gt. Cloud. T 
we got into the car together, and untied the rope ag was a pproachin 
below, amid the huzzas of the audience and the scen( j the earth, v 
strains of the orchestra. f ew minutes in the vi 
We went up like a rocket, or rather, to describe Qu j. p ar j g j 
the seemipg instead of the actual, the earth fled g a ti iere d to meet us, 
from below us as if we were stationary and it ueie ^ 
suddenly falling from its wotned position. We ^ 
swung our hats, and shouted to the people below, but ^ 
in a moment this was ended, for their faint and ^ 
almost whispered cries of “Bon voyage ! “ Jlereuse ^ 
descente!” showed ns by their indistinctness that ^ 
we, likewise, were no longer heard. M. Godard c 
then occupied himself in launching a number of ^ 
small paper parachutes, which remained stationary . 
in the air, but seemed to fall like bullets, so rapidly , 
did we ascend. Meanwhile I kneeled on the bottom ^ 
of the car, crossed my arms over its side, and lost 
myself in contemplating the scene below. 
The crowd in the Hippodrome had ceased to re¬ 
gard us, and were thronging like little ants through 
the outer passage. The streets began to appear 
narrower, the houses to look smaller, and the car¬ 
riages to move slower. The various edifices, too, 
commenced to approach each other, so that the 
same glance showed us very different parts of the 
city; and although we were rising in a nearly 
right line, we seemed at one moment to be over 
one church or square, then au instant later, to be 
over another, a mile distant from it. I or about 
twenty minutes we had been rising, first swiftly, 
then slowly, but in the whole we had appeared to 
me to be perfectly stationary. It was only when 
our last parachute remained floating like a little 
satelite by our side, that M. Godard informed me 
that we had ceased to ascend, and that we were 
about 1 y 2 miles above the earth. At this elevation 
we remained about an hour, which I could have 
wished to be a year, so beautiful was the view. 
Paris lay below us in all its splendor, teeming with 
its bustling multitudes and myriad deafening j 
sounds. Yet no sound reached us,—all was hushed 
to the stillness of night. No signs of life manifest¬ 
ed themselves, not a man nor a conveyance was to 
be seen in the streets, save only one railway train, 
which noiselessly left the capital, tracing its path 
by a pencil wreath of white smoke. The Public 
Monuments were wondrously concentrated, — the 
Madelaine, the Hotel des Invalides, the Pantheon, 
Notre Dame — all, leaving their wide separation, 
stnod side bv side—the streets were like the micro- 
FENCE POSTS. 
This water is a strong mineral water, and con¬ 
tains many ingredients, as 17 species of salts, be¬ 
sides silica, and three gases. It may prove of great 
sanitary importance, unless this great number 
diminishes the general good results. Dr. Smith 
mentions many diseases, upon which it will pro¬ 
duce a beneficial result. It is evident that this 
water greatly resembles that of the famous mineral 
springs at Kissengen, Bavaria. 
This well is in the Devonian formation of rocks, 
and is continued far into the Upper Silurian strata 
which underlie the county of Monroe and this lati¬ 
tude for some hundred miles east and west. 
The source of the water must be traced to strata 
which are 2,086 feet below the surface at Louisville, 
but rise to the surface at some distance. Dr. 
Smith locates the rock at the distance of 76 miles, 
iu another county, and elevated 500 feet above 
Louisville. 
The well-known principal of the rise of water in 
Artesian Wells, viz., that water will rise no higher 
than its level, connected with the small inclination 
of the rocks there, shows that the source must be 
distant. If that source is 500 feet above the sur¬ 
face of Louisville, the pressure would be increased 
one-fourth, and there would be an additional reason 
for the force of this stream. 
No other well has been bored to so great a depth 
in our country, or in Europe, so far as known. 
TnE thrasher, or brown thrush. 
This is the largest of all the American thrushes, 
and is a well known and distinguished songster, 
and from the tops of hedgerows, apple or cherry 
trees, he salutes the opening morning with his 
charming song, which is loud, emphatical, and full 
of variety. At that hour, you may plainly distin¬ 
guish his voice at half a mile’s distance. These 
notes are not imitative, but solely his own. 
Early in May, he builds his nest, choosing a 
thorn-bush, low cedar, thicket of briers, or cluster 
of vines for his situation. It is constructed of 
small sticks, dry leaves, and fine fibrous roots.— 
He often attacks the black snake in defence of his 
j young, and with success, as his bill is strong and 
powerful. His food consists of worms, caterpil¬ 
lars, beetles, and berries. He also destroys vast 
commanded my feelings. I think that I could in a 
moment have made myself perfectly miserable by 
calculating the chances and effects of a fall, or by 
watching too closely the strings which bound us 
to the balloon.” 
Thus closes the account of this elegant explora¬ 
tion in the atmosphere, an element very different 
from the geological regions below, in which Mr. 
Ward has so laboriously toiled for the past years. 
Still, the lofty elevation had not “ turned his head,” 
or cooled the ardor of his mind in his favorite pur¬ 
suit. True to his geology, he writes to a friend 
about the “ Balloon Excursion,”—“ The view of the 
‘ Paris basin ’ was magnificent. How I regretted 
not to have seen it from some such safe point of 
view, when the waters of the diluvial period were 
ravaging it, and sweeping away whole square 
miles of the strata, which are now wanting.” How 
many thousand years before the creation of Adam, 
was this convulsion by the diluvial waters ? 
January 8d, 1S59. c. d. 
running in ch: 
two white bars. 
One to-day is worth two to-morrows. 
Richest is he that wants least. 
Annual Results. 
1858. 
1857. 
43.2 
46.1 
91 
95 
—16 
—12 
107 
107 
25th J une. 
27th July. 
31st Jan. 
18th Jan. 
29.415 
29.439 
30.04 
30.15 
28.03 
38.33 
2.01 
1.82 
40% 
42% N. 
2 3% 
24% N. E. 
■51% 
12% E. 
■M% 
23 S. E. 
28 5-6 
55 s. 
41 % 
70 s. w. 
108 1-6 
88% w. 
53 5-6 
49 n. w. 
365 
366 
W 
W 
11% 
81% 
253% 
283% 
365 
365 
78 
99 
‘ 34 
47 
7 
16 
35.897 
42.591 
