A boy of ten years old, living in a New-Hampshire village, had one of his legs crushed so as to require amputation. The little fellow was furnished with a "Peg" and stumped round upon it for ten years. We can imagine what he suffered as he grew into adolescence under the cross of this unsightly appendage. He was of comely aspect, tall, well-shaped, with well-marked, regular features. But just at the period when personal graces are most valued, when a good presence is a blank check on the Bank of Fortune, with Nature's signature at the bottom, he found himself made hideous by this fearful-looking counterfeit of a limb. It announced him at the threshold he reached with beating heart by a thump more energetic than the palpitation in his breast. It identified him as far as the eye of jealousy could see his moving figure. The "peg" became intolerable, and he unstrapped it and threw himself on the tender mercies of the crutch. But the crutch is at best an instrument of torture. It presses upon a great bundle of nerves; it distorts the figure; it stamps a character of its own upon the whole organism; it is even accused of distempering the mind itself. This young man, whose name was "B. FRANK. PALMER," (the abbreviations probably implying the name of a distinguished Boston philosopher of the last century, whose visit to Philadelphia is still remembered in that city,) set himself at work to contrive a limb which should take the place of the one he had lost, fulfilling its functions and counterfeiting its aspect so far as possible. The result was the "Palmer leg," one of the most unquestionable triumphs of American ingenuity. Its victorious march has been unimpeded by any serious obstacle since it first stepped into public notice. The inventor was introduced by the late Dr. John C. Warren, in 1846, to the Massachusetts General Hospital, which institution he has for many years supplied with his artificial limbs. He received medals from the American Institute, the Massachusetts Charitable Association, and the Great Exhibition in New York, and obtained an honorary mention from the Royal Commissioners of the World's Exhibition in London,--being the only maker of legs so distinguished. These are only a few of fifty honorary awards he has received at various times. The famous surgeons of London, the _Société de Chirurgie_ of Paris, and the most celebrated practitioners of the United States have given him their hearty recommendations. So lately as last August, that shrewd and skilful surgeon, Dr. Henry J. Bigelow, who is as cautious in handling his epithets as he is bold in using the implements of his art, strongly advised Surgeon-General Hammond to adopt the Palmer leg, which, after a dozen years' experience, he had found none to equal. We see it announced that the Board of Surgeons appointed by the Surgeon-General to select the best arm and leg to be procured by the Government for its crippled soldiers chose that of Mr. Palmer, and that Dr. Hammond