Nor must we forget Barry's grand series of paintings upon the Society's large room; of which Dr. Johnson said, "there is a grasp of mind there, which you will find nowhere else." Upon the walls, too, hang some fine portraits of the early presidents of the Society, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. ------------------ VAST MIRRORS. Mirrors are cast of larger dimensions at St. Petersburg than elsewhere. In the imperial manufactory, there was cast for Prince Potemkin, a mirror measuring 194 inches by 100. One of the same proportions, valued at 3000 guineas, was cast for the Duke of Wellington many years since, but was broken to atoms in its conveyance from St. Petersburg to England. ------------------ TRANSPORTATION OF THE COFFEE-TREE. One of the most interesting episodes in the history of coffee is, that of the transportation of the plant of the coffee-tree, taken from the hothouses of Amsterdam, given to Louis XIV., and father of the three plants, one of which was taken to the French Antilles by Captain Declieux, who, in a scarcity of water experienced by the ship's crew, shared the small quantity which he had to drink, between himself and his dear coffee-plant. It is believed that from this plant has sprung all the coffee grown in the West Indies. ------------------ ARKWRIGHT'S SPINNING FRAME. Mr. Arkwright tells us, that he accidentally derived the first hint of this great invention from seeing a red-hot iron bar elongated by being made to pass between rollers; and, though there is no mechanical analogy between that operation and the process of spinning, it is not difficult to imagine that, by reflecting upon it, and placing the subject in different points of view, it might lead him to his invention. ------------------ SPINNING FEATS. Among the wonders of this branch of manufacture, the following deserve mention:--In 1745, a woman at East Dereham, in Norfolk, spun a single pound of wool into a thread of 84,000 yards in length, wanting only 80 yards of forty-eight miles, which, at the above period, was considered a circumstance of sufficient curiosity to merit a place in the records of the Royal Society. Since that time, however, a young lady of Norwich has spun a pound of combed wool into a thread of 168,000 yards; and she actually produced from the same weight of cotton a thread of 203,000 yards, equal to upwards of 115 miles:--this last thread, if woven, would produce about twenty yards of yard-wide muslin. ------------------ MARVELS OF THE ALCHEMISTS.