Not to mention the impulse which its progress has given to a host of other sciences, what strange and unexpected results has it not brought to light in its application to some of the most common objects! Who, for instance, would have conceived that linen rags were capable of producing _more than their own weight of sugar_, by the simple agency of one of the cheapest and most abundant acids?--that dry bones could be a magazine of nutriment, capable of preservation for years, and ready to yield up their sustenance in the form best adapted to the support of life, on the application of that powerful agent, steam, which enters so largely into all our processes, or of an acid at once cheap and durable?--that sawdust itself is susceptible of conversion into a substance bearing no remote analogy to bread; and though certainly less palatable than that of flour, yet noway disagreeable, and both wholesome and digestible as well as highly nutritive? * * * * * FIRST ENGLISH COLONY IN AMERICA. The first attempt of the English to effect any settlement in America, was made by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who, in the month of June, 1578, obtained a patent from Queen Elizabeth, authorizing him to plant a colony in that country. Gilbert's project failed; but it was afterwards resumed by his half-brother, the celebrated Sir Walter Raleigh, who, in 1584, obtained a patent similar to that which had been granted to Gilbert, and next year planted a colony at the mouth of the Roanoke, naming the country _Virginia_ in honour of his royal mistress. But all these settlers, as well as others who crossed the Atlantic during the next twenty years, either perished by famine and disease, or by the hands of the Indians, or returned to England.--_Cabinet Cyclopaedia_, vol. xiii.; _being_ vol. i. _of the History of the Western World--United States of America_. * * * * * TRADITIONS OF THE INDIANS. According to the unambitious belief of the Osages, a people living on the banks of one of the lower tributaries of the Missouri, they are sprung from a snail and a beaver. The Mandans believe their ancestors once lived in a large village under ground, near a subterranean lake; that by means of a vine tree, which extended its roots to their cheerless habitation, they got a glimpse of the light; that informed by some adventurers, who had visited the upper world, of the numerous buffaloes pasturing on the plains, and of the trees loaded with delicious fruits, the whole nation, with one consent, began to ascend the roots of the vine; but that, when about the half of them had reached the surface, a corpulent woman climbing up, broke the roots by her weight; that the earth immediately closed, and concealed for ever from those below the cheering beams of the sun. From a people who entertain such fanciful notions of their origin, no valuable information concerning their early history can be expected.--_Ibid._