* * * * * SENSIBLE ADVICE.--Avoid condolence with those who are mourning the loss of friends. Condolences, as well as mournings, are bad things. Men, and more especially women, give actual increase to their grief while, under the notion of duty, and even of merit, they make display of it. If mournings were altogether out of use, a vast mass of suffering would be prevented from coming into existence. Some savage or barbarous nations make merry at funerals: they are wiser, in this respect, than polished ones.--_Bowring’s Deontology._ * * * * * When a native of Java has a child born, he immediately plants a cocoa-tree, which, adding a circle every year to its bark, indicates the age of the tree, and therefore the age of the child. The child, in consequence, regards the tree with affection all the rest of its life.--_Buck’s Harmonies, &c., of Nature._ THE THUGS. The Thugs were known in the time of the Emperor Akbar of Delhi, by whom many were executed. They were first known to the British government in 1812, and then many were hanged in Bundelkund. Again, in 1817, they attracted notice by their horrible acts, and twelve villages in Bundelkund, which were peopled almost entirely by them, were taken by a force sent against them. They were then dispersed, but assembled in various parts in Sindhia’s and the Nagpoor country, also in Holkar’s dominions. From 1817 till 1831 they were not molested, and, in consequence, increased greatly in the latter year. Measures were taken to suppress them, which have been attended with great success. One hundred and eleven were executed at Jubbulpoor, and upwards of four hundred transported for life to the eastern settlement of Pinang. The Thugs form a perfectly distinct class of persons, who subsist almost entirely upon the produce of the murders they are in the habit of committing. They appear to have derived their denomination from the practice usually adopted by them of decoying the persons they fix upon to destroy, to join their party; and then, taking advantage of the confidence they endeavour to inspire, to strangle their unsuspecting victims. There are several peculiarities in the habits of the Thugs, in their mode of causing death, and in the precautions they adopt for the prevention of discovery, that distinguish them from every other class of delinquents; and it may be considered a general rule whereby to judge of them, that they affect to disclaim the practice of petty theft, housebreaking, and indeed every species of stealing that has not been preceded by the perpetration of murder.