The invention to which this article refers, affords a warm subject for panegyric. That clothing for the feet be warm, medical writers have in all ages recommended, and truly upon the most rational as well as philosophic and experimental practice; the feet, lying the most remote of any member from the heart, require, and particularly by people in years, to be kept warm, in order for their present comfort, as well as to promote the essential evacuation of superfluous humours, by perspiration, without which no frame can be healthy. So strongly is this precept impressed in our national moral habits, that it has formed a general maxim for the preservation of health. Even Thomas Parr is said to have observed, upon being asked to what cause he attributed the protraction of his life, “To keep the head cool by temperance, and the feet warm by exercise, to eat only when hunger required satisfaction, and to drink only when thirsty.” We should suppose that this recipe would be at least worth a waggon load of the puffed quack pills which are palmed upon the public as made from a recipe left by that venerable man. The art of knitting nets is one of great antiquity, as those nets used by the Hebrews, as well as by the Greeks, are conceived to be similar to those used in the present day. It was thought by Ovid, in his sixth “Metamorphosis,” that the public were indebted to the spider for the origin of this ingenious invention; which would indeed seem probable, as it appears that the insect is prompted to be thus ingenious for the gratification of its natural wants, the web serving as a net or gin for the capture of flies and other small insects which supply it with food. And if our memory serve us, we recollect that the poet also, speaking of flies, observes that the web of the spider serves to secure the weak flies only, whilst the strong break it and escape; alluding to the influence of wealth and power to pierce through those laws which were made for the protection of the weak against the encroachments and violence offered by the strong. The author of Job, in the eighteenth chapter and ninth verse, mentions gins. However, in knitting stockings, the operation, as well as the effect, is essentially different from knitting nets. In the latter the twine is knotted into distinct meshes, which are secured by knots; in the former, the entire substance is produced without knots. To this distinction is to be ascribed the reason why knit stockings may become unravelled. In the other species the knots not only prevent the material being taken apart, but they also render the nets sufficiently strong to prevent even vigorous fish from escaping, yet being so capacious as to permit little fish to escape with the water.