It is singular enough, that a discovery of modern chemistry should long have been practically employed in some parts of Norway, for the purpose of making vinegar from a large species of black ant. The method employed in Norlanden is simply this: they first collect a sufficient quantity of these little animals, by plunging a bottle partly filled with water up to the neck in one of the large ant-hills; into which they naturally creep, and are drowned. The contents are then boiled together, and the acid thus produced is made use of by the inhabitants as _vinegar_, being strong and good. _Soil For Fruit Trees._ Low grounds that form the banks of rivers are, of all others, the best adapted for the growth of fruit trees; the alluvial soil of which they are composed, being an intermixture of the richest and most soluble parts of the neighbouring lands, with a portion of animal and vegetable matter, affording an inexhaustible store of nourishment--_Trans. Horticultural Society_. _Watch Alarum._ A patent has recently been procured for a most useful appendage to a watch, for giving alarm at any hour during the night. Instead of encumbering a watch designed to be worn in the pocket with the striking apparatus, (by which it would be increased to double the ordinary thickness), this ingenious invention has the alarum or striking part detached, and forming a bed on which the watch is to be laid; a communication being made by a lever, projecting through the watch case, to connect the works. This appendage is described to be applicable to any watch of the usual construction, and is by no means expensive. * * * * * THE MONTHS. [Illustration] NOVEMBER. November is associated with gloom, inasmuch as its days and nights are, for the most part, sullen and sad. But the transition to this gloom is slow, gradual, and almost imperceptible. The mornings of the month are generally foggy, and are thus described by a modern poet:-- "Not pleasureless the morn, when dismal fog Rolls o'er the dewy plain, or thin mist drives; When the lone timber's saturated branch Drips freely." In the progress of day, "Shorn of his glory through the dim profound, With melancholy aspect looks the orb Of stifled day, and while he strives to pierce And dissipate the slow reluctant gloom, Seems but a rayless globe, an autumn moon, That gilds opaque the purple zone of eve, And yet distributes of her thrifty beam. Lo! now he conquers; now, subdued awhile, Awhile subduing, the departed mist Yields in a brighter beam, or darker clouds His crimson disk obscure." The country has now exchanged its refreshing varieties of greens for the hues of saffron, russet, and dark brown. "The trees," says an amusing observer of nature, "generally lose their leaves in the following succession:--walnut, mulberry, horse-chestnut, sycamore, lime, ash, then, after an interval, elm: