From Chambers' Journal. CALIFORNIA GIANTS.

burning, that a whole family might lodge with all their household gear in the blackened excavations.

nal furrows, presenting the appearance of pillars or fluted columns. One has been stripped of its bark to a height of 100 feet; and a spiral row of pegs driven in, forms a not very safe means of ascent around the bare portion, yet the tree flourishes above as vigorously as ever.

upon.

Imagining ourselves for a moment to be in California, in Calaveras county, we follow the course of an affluent of the Stanislas, which winds serpentlike, and with many an eddy, along one of the valleys that penetrate the Sierra Nevada; and at about fifteen miles from Murphy's, we come to a circular basin sequestered among the hills. Its diameter may be a mile, and its elevation from 4000 to 5000 feet above the sealevel. Here we find ourselves in presence of the giants-real giants of the vegetable kingdom, such as we should never have expected to see in these post-diluvian days. Not without emotion, and a profound sense of admiration, do we gaze upon them. The wind blows cold, and the heights around are covered with snow; but we heed not the blast; the snow brings out the trees in better relief; the sight repays us for all our fatigue, and makes us forget the wearisome return-journey yet to be encountered. It is not an every-day occurrence to stand under the shadow of trees that began to grow about the time that Hannibal was marching victorious upon Rome, and were still in their infancy at the birth of Christianity. What changes have come over the world-how many empires have risen and fallen since first their branches waved in the breeze! There they stand, ninety of them, living witnesses of a past far more remote than the earliest dawn of American tradition.

The smallest of these giants is fifteen feet in diameter. They occupy an extent of about fifty acres in the basin above mentioned, where they tower above all others of their species. The tall trees among the latter appear dwarfs in comparison. Long fringes and festoons of yellow moss and lichen hang around their proud trunks; and a parasite growing from their roots-a kind of hypopithys-shoots its graceful stems, adorned with bractea and rose-colored flowers, to a height of ten feet. The place has thus the double charm of beauty and magnificence.

It will be understood, of course, that the giants here spoken of are pine-trees. The tops of many are broken and mutilated by the weight of the snow which in winter accumulates on their terminal branches; and some have been injured at the base by the camp-fires of Indians. A few have been so deeply hollowed by repeated

The proprietor of the neighboring tavern conducts his guests to the site of these prodigies of vegetation, and tells their names-he in most instances having been sole sponsor. First he calls attention to the Big Tree, which is, or rather was, 95 feet in circumference, and 300 feet high; for now it lies prostrate, a monarch pulled down by the hands of republicans. Five men were employed for twenty-five days in felling it. They drew a line all round seven feet from the ground, and along this they bored holes close together to the very centre of the stem with an enormous auger, so that the tree losing its equilibrium, at last fell with a shock that echoed like thunder among the hills. Three weeks more were spent in stripping off the bark for a length of 52 feet only and now the king of the forest has one side flattened to be used as a "bowling alley." To be told that a wagon and horses could travel easily along the overthrown stem, excites no surprise when we know that its diameter at the thickest end is 23 feet seven inches, without reckoning the bark, which would be about three feet more. The stump has also been turned to account; its upper surface is smoothed and polished, and supports a pavilion in which visitors may sit and contemplate the scene around.

Having satisfied our curiosity with regard to the Big Tree, we are next conducted to the Miner's cabin, which stands 300 feet high, and is 80 feet in circumference; to the Old Bachelor, the same height, but 20 feet less in girth; the Hermit, so named from standing a little apart from the rest, a handsome fellow, with one side of his trunk scorched, containing, however, according to the calculation of a knowing "lumber-merchant," 725,000 feet of timber. Then we have the Husband and Wife, not more than 250 feet high, leaning towards each other at the summit; and the Three Sisters, growing apparently from the same root-a remarkably fine group. They are all 300 feet high, and 92 in girth; and the midle one has not a branch below 200 feet. Further on, the Mother and Son attract attention-the lady being 325 feet high, and the youth 300; perhaps he has not done growing. In girth they are both alike-93 feet. Then the Siamese Twins and their Guardian; the Old Maid, like the Bachelor, isolated; but her head is bald; and the Bride of California, the Beauty of the Forest, Mister Shelby, and Uncle Tom's Cabin. This latter has a hollow at the

From the Pennsylvania Inquirer.

VENTILATION, FURNACES, AND SICKNESS.

Mr. Editor:-In your paper of Tuesday last was an article about the fearful increase of Scarlet Fever, &c., that the number of deaths from that disease in Philadelphia, last week, was fiftyseven, and that some of our most distinguished physicians have, of late, paid considerable attention to the subject; but thus far it should seem but with little advantage, &c. By inquiry, they will find that there are few cases of fever in summer, compared with winter, and one of the principal reasons is an entire want of ventilation in most of our dwellings, especially in sleeping apartments; and more so since the introduction of furnaces for warming dwellings exclusively, and the entire abolition of open fires, grates, &c. Ventilation is a matter entirely overlooked in the construction of buildings, and yet it is one of the most important for health. The positive, as well as the negative, effects of breathing unrenewed air, can hardly be better illustrated than by the well known case described by Howard, in his work on Lazarettos, of the imprisonment of one hundred and forty-six captives in the Black Hole of Calcutta. When the prisoners had remained there ten hours, but twenty-six were found alive, and most of the others suffered with malignant fevers. Another case among the less delicate organization of the inferior animals may be mentioned. Not long since, the Managers of the Zoological Gardens of London caused to be erected a large new habitation for Jocko, closed everywhere with glass, and warmed with furnaces. Into this well imagined structure sixty healthy monkeys were put, and for a day or two there was fine fun; but poor Jocko could not stand it. They began to sicken, and at the end of four weeks, but ten of the sixty were alive, when the cause was found out, and the building ventilated. By removing part of the glass covering, the monkeys recovered, and became perfectly healthy. From the Register of an extensive Hospital at Dublin, it appears that, by means of a thorough ventilation alone, the proportion of deaths among patients of the same description was at once reduced from one in six to one in twenty. So, too, it is agreed among all medical writers, that the higher rate, among women than among men, of deaths by pulmonary consumption, must be ascribed to the more in door life prevalent among the women. The difference has been found in Massachusetts, by a Register kept there in 1845-46, to amount to sixty-three per cent. in favor of the male sex. (See Dr. Jarvis' Physiology.) Some two or three years since, there was scarcely an emigrant ship that arrived at any of our ports, but had more or less deaths, and in some cases a fearful waste of life by fevers. As soon as a law was passed obliging the owners of emigrant ships to ventilate their vessels this evil was abated. Many

persons recollect the fearful ravages, by cholera, in the Arch Street Prison (1832.) It broke out on the Sunday morning. Nearly one hundred persons were attacked, but before night seventy had died. The prisoners were removed, and few, if any, died from that cause. Not more absolutely does the stomach require, at due intervals, a regular supply of food, than do the lungs need, all the time, a fresh supply of oxygen. Both are equally necessary to the performance of the vital functions. Without the due provision of both, health cannot be preserved nor life maintained. But as some stomachs can much longer than others sustain the privation of food, so the lungs of particular individuals are more capable than others of continuing to inhale a deteriorated atmosphere. Dr. Ure says that the great principle of ventilation, is never to present the same portion of air to the lungs twice over, for that to do so, predisposes the system to disease, and no one is free from danger in setting or sleeping in unventilated apartments. During the years of 1855 and 1856, I visited the Hos pitals in France, Naples, Rome, Ancona, Trieste, Vienna, Prague, Leipsic, Dresden, Berlin, Munich, Paris, London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and the different provinces, and in many of them I found little or no arrangement for ventilation, but wherever attention was paid to ventilation, there was a marked difference in the looks of the patients. The most deplorable lot of miserables I saw, was at Ancona, on the Adriatic, and Heidleburgh on the Rhine, and from inquiry, the patients were dying daily, I should say from poison. I have no doubt, from nearly 35 years' experience that the present mode of warming buildings of any size by hot air furnaces, is the greatest curse ever introduced. Years ago, persons if they had a furnace put up in a dwelling, could never think of giving up open fire places for wood or grates. These afforded good ventilators. Now a house is warmed, and not a fire place in one half the houses to be found, not even for a sick chamber. In the few houses in this city, where they still have open fire places, burning wood and coal, you will not find the inmates complaining of loss of appetite, fulness in the head, nausea, cold feet, loss of sleep, and many other evils which will be the case as long as buildings are unventilated. Many persons are led to the conclusion, that in order to free a room of its foul air, it is sufficient to make an opening in the ceiling, for the vitiated air, being heated, will ascend. An opening of this kind will accomplish but little, its effects depending on the relative and constantly varying condition of the air within and without. Most of those patent ventilators, except in certain kinds, are useless, depending in some degree, where they are placed on roofs, &c. The principles of ventilation are very simple; millions of dollars have been expended in the different mines

in Europe in trying experiments, and now the matter is so simplified, that a small fire will expel the foul air; even a steam jet or a body of grates will effect what machinery failed to do. I have a letter, an official one, given me at the House of Commons, London, last year, by the gentleman having charge of the building, stating that there was expended by Dr. Reid, Barry, Stevenson and others, £282,000 (pounds, not dollars.) The further they went, the worse they got. There were two steam engines, twelve horse power, one of twenty to drive fans, one of which was thirty feet diameter. The whole of this costly affair is abandoned and taken out of the building, and an apparatus costing £6000 answers a better purpose. The plan is that of ventilating the deep mines in Cornwall. Once more at the great fair in London, 1850, there were a number of furnaces, stoves, &c., exhibited there, and this led many persons to adopt that mode of warming houses, and the iron men did a rushing business in making them for their customers, but the furnaces made but a short run. John Bull found he was retrograding, losing his appetite, head bad, and fifty complaints. The stove and furnaces went down quicker than they went up, and they returned to their open coal fire, and Johnny became in a good humor, and doctors less feed. Now I wish you to understand I do not condemn furnaces, if properly put up in connection with perfect ventilation, and for a perfect ventilation there should be just as much air passing through the room in midwinter as midsummer, and when this is done you will find no more fever in winter than in summer.

Very respectfully, JOHN SKIRVING.

The Austrian government are about despatching one of their vessels, the "Novara," for a scientific expedition around the globe, an undertaking which excites much remark in Austria, and causes the Augsburger to wish that one or two frigates might be attached to the expedition in order to make an impression on the Chinese and Japanese, and perhaps gain from them similar commercial privileges to those already conceded to the United States and England. This, it is thought, would be more desirable, in view of the opening of the canal of Suez, aud would be even more readily granted by the Chinese and Japanese to an unpretending maritime power, like Austria, than to their grasping and formidable brethren of England and America.

While, however, as the expedition at present stands, politico-commercial ends are not to be overlooked, great attention is to be paid to scientific research in the rich fields offered by the islands of the East Indian Ocean. The Nicobar Islands are to be examined with an eye to geology; the zoologists, ethnographists, and botanists are to revel in the treasures of Borneo, Celebes, and the Moluccas; while the Philippines and

Sandwich Islands will furnish most interesting examples of active volcanoes. The geologist and zoologist of the expedition are respectively Messrs. Hochsteter and Frauenfield. The department of commercial economy, history, and ethnography belongs to Dr. Scherzer, who enjoys at present a great reputation in Austria for his accurate knowledge of the modern languages and literature, his experience of the world, and his prepossessing manners and address. The Augs burger Gazette concludes by hoping that many other distinguished savans of the nations will attach themselves to the expedition, and ventures the assurance that any such would be warmly welcomed by the Austrian government.—N. Y. Evening Post.

CHILDREN, BE PROMPT.

Never say, when told to do anything, "In a minute," or "by and by." This leads to a bad habit, which, if not overcome, will prevent all confidence in you as you grow up. You will then put off duties you owe to your neighbor in the same way, and lose his confidence. Many men lose the respect of their neighbors, not so much because they mean to do wrong, as through carelessness. "By-and-by," and "To-morrow," have ruined thousands, robbed them of their character, and made them anything but blessings in a neighborhood. Little confidence can be placed in their word, not because they mean to tell falsehoods, but because of their carelessness. No obligation is fulfiled when it should be. And it is sometimes so in their own affairs. They lose days and weeks because business is not attended to when it ought to be. A tool is lost, because not promptly put back when done with. Fulfil promptly every promise made. Put off not an hour.

PHILADELPHIA MARKETS.

FLOUR AND MEAL.-The market for Flour is still

dull. Good is offered at $6 25. Sales of better brands for home consumption at $6 37 a 6 44, and extra and fancy brands at $6 62 a 8 25. There is very litle export demand. Rye Flour is worth $375 per barrel. Corn Meal dull, at $3 00 per bbl. for fresh ground. Sales of prime Pennsylvania red are making at $1 45 a 1 46 and $1 60 a 1 62 for good white. Rye is inactive; sales of Penna. at 81c. Corn sells at 60 a 65c.

GRAIN. Wheat is dull, and prices favor buyers.