To this day, the custom of sucking wounds prevails among soldiers; and there is every reason to hope, from the experiments of the late Sir David Barry, that the exhaustion produced by cupping-glasses will be found of essential service in all venomous wounds. This practice of suction, no doubt, was known in Greece; Machaon performed it at the siege of Troy. The mothers and wives of the ancient Germans had recourse to the same process. In India the suction of wounds constitutes a profession. It was by this means that the Psylli cured the bite of serpents; and it is related of Cato, that his abhorrence of the Greek surgeons was such, that he directed Psylli to follow the Roman armies. Water affords a beautiful illustration of that indestructibility with which the Creator invested matter for the preservation of the world he formed from elementary masses, and appears to have existed unchangeable from the commencement of the universe. Its constituent parts are not broken into by any atmospheric revolution; they continue the same, whether in the solid ice, the fluid state of a liquid, or the gaseous form of a vapour. Its powers are undiminished, whether in the wave or the steam; the most effective agent in the hands of man to promote that welfare and happiness which his own errors deprive him of, frequently bringing on those calamities that his perversity attributes to the will of the Omnipotent. Water is the same in the atmosphere as on the earth, and falls in the very same nature as it ascends; electricity has no other influence upon it than that of hastening its precipitation. Chemical agents, however powerful, can only decompose its elementary principles upon the most limited scale. The heterogeneous substances with which water may occasionally be alloyed must be considered as purely accidental.