gloves, is made by impregnating the skin with a liquor containing alum and salt, and afterwards washed in a mixture of yolks of eggs and water; the saline and animal matters combine, and give it that peculiar softness, and such leather is afterwards coloured as may be required; having been rolled over wooden rollers, in which are grooves, it is called _Morocco_ leather. These are the principal varieties of leather employed in this country.--_Brande's Lectures--Lancet_. _Mites_. An indefatigable naturalist has undertaken the very difficult task of arranging the family of _acarides_, or mites; he divides them into sixty-nine genera, the greater part of them new! _Electro-Attraction of Leaves_. The results of a French experimentalist have lately led him to conclude that the leaves, hairs, and thorns of plants tend to maintain in them the requisite proportion of electricity; and, by drawing off from the atmosphere what is superabundant, they also act in some measure as thunder-rods. _Enormous Whale_. The skeleton of a whale, 95 feet long by 18 feet high, has lately been deposited in the Cabinet of Natural History at Ghent. In the opinion of many naturalists, among whom is M. Cuvier, this fish could not have been less than 900 or 1,000 years old! _Fly in Wheat_. In North America, much damage is done to crops of wheat by the Hessian fly. The female deposits from one to eight or more eggs upon a single plant of wheat, between the vagina or sheath of the inner leaf and the culm nearest the roots; in which situation, with its head towards the root or first joint, the young larva pass the winter. They eat the stem, which thus becomes weak, and breaks; but are checked by another insect, called the destructor, otherwise whole crops of wheat would be annihilated. _Spiders_. A correspondent of London's _Magazine of Natural History_ says, that he lately amused himself for more than an hour in observing the proceedings of a little spider, whose bag of eggs had been removed and restored! _Light of the Sea_. Its appearance previous to a storm is a very old observation among sailors. It is, however without foundation, as it is to be seen, more or less, all the year round in the Carribean sea, where there are no storms but in the hurricane months. In the hand it has a kind of mucous feel.--_Mag. Nat. Hist_. _Woodpeckers_. A specimen of the _least woodpecker_ was lately shot near Newcastle; and another has since been heard and seen near Coventry. Its noise resembles that made by the boring of a large auger through the hardest wood; whence the country people sometimes call the bird "the pump-borer."--_Ibid_. _The Tea Shrub_ Has been naturalized in Java with complete success; so that, sooner or later, the Chinese monopoly will come to an end. _Floating Island_.