An unexpected friend to man has been discovered in a kind of animalcule engendered by sewage, which prevents the decomposing matter from becoming a dangerous nuisance. Mr Angell, the public analyst for Hampshire, having examined the sewage-polluted fluid in Southampton Water, has discovered that where the suspended matters are thickest there is going on a silent destruction of the foul matters, through the agency of millions of the minute creatures, by some held to be of animal, but by Mr Angell believed to be of vegetable origin. On examining the muddy fluid through a microscope, it was found to contain myriads of little brown organisms, surrounded with a gelatinous substance. Each specimen was found to be active in its movements and of peculiar shape, being furnished with a belt of cilia round the centre of the body, and with a long transparent and very flexible tail. After death, these tiny atoms give off an odour similar to that of sea-weed, and change to a green colour. During life they evolve bubbles of oxygen gas, which serve to purify the water from the effects of the decomposing matter on which they themselves feed. It is a pity, however, that man, by polluting rivers with sewage, should stand so much in need of this self-developed scavenger. Canada, we are told, claims to have produced the largest cheese on record. It weighed seven thousand pounds, was six feet ten inches in diameter, three feet in height, and twenty-one feet in circumference; requiring one milking of seven thousand cows, or thirty-five tuns of milk to produce it.—Of numerical curious facts, it may not be uninteresting to state that no less than sixteen different shades of green are understood to be patronised by the fashionable world; and that fifteen persons may dine together a billion times without sitting twice in the same relative position, by merely changing a chair at each dinner. So much for the combination of numbers. A CURIOUS ANTIQUARIAN HOAX. Every one has doubtless read _The Antiquary_, and enjoyed the skill with which the keenest archæologist of the literary fraternity raised a laugh against his own favourite studies. The Kaim of Kinprunes and the ‘A.D.L.L.’ furnish the standard jest with which the Oldbucks of every future age will be assailed, and the bodle that he ‘thocht was an auld coin’ helps in the attack. Scotland being thus the scene of the most famous fictional story of this kind, it is curious to find it also the home of one of the best authenticated antiquarian hoaxes known to have been practised.