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10 all lovers of natural scenery, woods

ve and ever

will continue to be, dear; while poets regard them as positive elysiums. Here is a graceful compliment to "Little Streams," from the pen of William Howitt.

LITTLE streams are light and shadow,
Flowing through the pasture meadow-
Flowing by the green wayside,
Through the forest dim and wild,
Through the hamlet still and small,
By the cottage, by the hall,
By the ruin'd abbey still,

Turning here and there a mill,

Bearing tribute to the river-
Little streams, I love you ever.

Summer music is there flowing-
Flowering plants in them are growing;
Happy life is in them all,
Creatures innocent and small;

Little birds come down to drink,
Fearless of their leafy brink;
Noble trees beside them grow,
Glooming them with branches low,
And between the sunshine glancing
In their little waves is dancing.

Little streams have flowers many,
Beautiful and fair as any:
Typha strong, and green bur-reed,
Willow-herb, with cotton-seed;
Arrow-head, with eye of jet,
And the water-violet.

There the flowering rush you meet,
And the plumy meadow-sweet;
And in places deep and stilly,
Marble-like, the water-lily.

Little streams, their voices cheery, Sound forth welcomes to the weary; Flowing on from day to day, Without stint and without stay.

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Here, upon their flowery bank,
In the old time pilgrims drank;
Here have seen, as now, pass by,
King-fisher and dragon-fly-

Those bright things that have their dwelling
Where the little streams are welling.

Down in the valleys green and lowly,
Murmuring not and gliding slowly,
Up in mountain-hollows wild,
Fretting like a peevish child;
Through the hamlet, where all day
In their waves the children play;
Running west, or running east,
Doing good to man and beast-
Always giving, weary never,
Little streams, I love you ever.

Our second engraving represents the last month of autumn, and, accompanying it, we give a very pretty poem from an anonymous writer, which makes it no less interesting:

THE year is now declining; and the air,
When morning blushes on the orient hills,
Embued with icy chillness. Ocean's wave
Has lost the tepid glow, and slumbering fogs,
On clouded days, brood o'er its level plain;
Yet, when the day is at meridian height,
The sun athwart the fading landscape smiles
With most paternal kindness, softly sweet,
And delicately beautiful; a prince
Blessing the realms whose glory comes from
him.

The foliage of the forest, brown and sere,
Drops on the margin of the stubble field,
In which the partridge lingers insecure,
And raises oft, at somber eventide,
With plaintive throat, her dull and tremulous
cry!

The sickle of the husbandman hath ceased,
And left the lap of Nature shorn and bare;
The odorous clover flowers have disappear'd;
The yellow pendulous grain is seen no more;
The perfume of the bean-field has decay'd;
And roams the wandering bee o'er many a path,
For blossoms which have perish'd.

blades,

Grassy

Transparent, taper, and of sickly growth,
Shoot, soon to wither, in the sterile fields.
The garden fruits have mellow'd with the
year,

No trace nor token of the summer's wealth!
And, save the lingering apricot, remains
Yet, on the wild-brier stands the yellow hip;
And, from the branches of the mountain-ash,
The clustering berries drop their crimson beads
Descending. On the dark laburnum's sides,
Mix pods of lighter green among the leaves,
Taper, and springless, hasting to decay;
And on the wintry honeysuckle's stalk
The succulent berries hang. The robin sits
Upon the mossy gateway, singing clear
A requiem to the glory of the woods.
And, when the breeze awakes, a frequent
shower

Of wither'd leaves bestrews the weedy paths,
Or from the branches of the willow whirl,
With rustling sound, upon the turbid stream.

THE UNITED STATES MINT.

FROM

ROM the first number of The Press, a new daily paper published in Philadelphia, we condense a few facts relative to the United Stated Mint, which, we doubt not, will be read with interest:

It is not generally known that to Jefferson we are principally indebted for the simple and convenient coinage of the country. The currency of the different colonies, anterior to the revolution, was of a very varied and incongruous character. Several of the different colonies had established Mints, and there were various coinages by individuals, without any reference to the harmony of the different issues, or the intrinsic value of the coins issued. Foreign coins, particularly of British and Spanish origin, formed a principal portion of the currency. After the conclusion of peace, Congress directed the Financier of the Confederation, Robert Morris, to lay before them his views upon the establishment of a national system of currency. He proposed a table of this sort:

Ten units to be equal to one penny.
Ten pence one bill.

MELTING, ASSAYING, REFINING, AND COINAGE OF BULLION.

A deposit of gold bullion having been regularly received by the Treasurer of the Mint, is removed to the deposit melting room in locked pans, (a duplicate key of which is in the possession of the foreman of the department,) where it undergoes the necessary melting, preparatory to the assay process. The object of melting is two-fold: first, to separate from the metal all the earthly matter; and second, to obtain a homogeneous mass from any part of which a small chip can be cut for an assay piece. To accomplish this end the bullion is mixed with borax, which at a high heat forms a chemical combination with the earthy impurities, and this, in the form of a vitreous compound, is readily separated, being lighter than the fused metal. The latter is now cast into convenient molds and carefully numbered, and reserved until the report of the assayer enables the Treasurer to determine its exact value.

The gold assay slips, properly marked and numbered to prevent any possibility of interchange, pass to the assayer's department, and are each separately assayed. This process is one of the most carefully conducted of chemical analysis. The first part of it is the weighing

Ten bills one dollar, (about two-thirds of the of the assay slips on a beam of great sensibility, Spanish dollar.)

Ten dollars one crown.

This system, however, was not received with much favor, and in 1784 Mr. Jefferson made a report upon the subject, in which he proposed making the Spanish dollar, which was already familiar to the American people, the basis of the new currency, and to strike four coins, namely:

A golden piece of the value of ten dollars.
A dollar in silver.

A tenth of a dollar, also in silver.

A hundredth of a dollar, in copper. In 1785, Mr. Jefferson's report was adopted by Congress, and in 1786 legal provision was made for a coinage upon that basis. These proceedings, however, occurred during the Confederation, and the respective States still preserved the right of coinage, though subject to the direction of Congress. The Constitution, adopted in 1787, vested the right of coinage solely in the General Government. In 1790, Mr. Jefferson, then Secretary of State, submitted a report on moneys, weights, and measures, and carnestly urged the commencement of coinage by the General Government. In 1792, a code of laws was adopted for the establishment and regulation of the Mint, providing for a Gold Eagle of ten dollars, and a half and quarter eagle; a silver dollar, and a half, quarter, tenth or dime, and twentieth or half dime; and the copper cent and half cent. The weight and fineness fixed for these respective coins remained unchanged, except by slight amendments, for a period of forty years, or until 1834, when an act was passed changing the weight and fineness of the gold coins and the relative value of gold and silver. The coinage of gold dollars was commenced in 1849; of double eagles in 1850; of three dollar pieces in 1854; of three cent pieces in 1851; and the first issues of the new cent, composed of nickel and copper, were made in May last.

the weights used being a demi-gram; and its decimal divisions to one ten-thousandth part of the unit. After the slip is weighed, it is inclosed, with the proper proportion of pure silver, in a small piece of lead pressed in bullet form, and is then ready for the laboratory process. This consists first, in the cupellation or separation of the oxydable metals, which is conducted in a small furnace brought to a proper heat, and in small cups, called cupels, prepared from calcined bones, in which the leaden ball with its contents is placed, and by which the base metals, in a state of oxydation and fluidity, are absorbed. Lead possesses the property of oxydizing and vitrifying under the action of heat, and at the same time promoting the oxydation of all other base metals.

When the cupellation is finished, the disc or button, being pure gold and silver, is detached from the cupel, and by a series of manipulations, is rolled into a thin slip in order to give surface for the action of nitric acid, to which it is next subjected to separate the gold from the silver. The slip thus rolled out is placed in a glass matrass or bottle, containing the necessary quantity of acid, to which heat is applied by a gas apparatus. The acid dissolves all the silver, leaving the gold pure in the form of a spongy brittle mass, which is returned to the balance, where the loss is ascertained, and the precise proportion of pure gold accurately determined. The result is then reported to the treasurer, and constitutes the basis for calculating the value of the deposit represented by the assay slip.

The assay of silver may be conducted by the cupellation process, but is more delicately determined by the humid assay, which is based on the well-known property of a solution of common salt precipitating the silver from its solution in the form of the chloride, the ultimate particles being thrown down by a prepared decimal solution, and the fineness determined

by a table corresponding to the number of charges used in precipitating the chloride.

The bullion having been thus assayed, is then delivered to the melter and refiner, to be refined, and made of the legal standard for coinage.

Native gold being more or less alloyed with silver, and the latter metal being almost unnecessary in gold coin, it is customary to free the gold from the greater part of it. This operation is termed refining. California gold contains on an average eleven per cent. silver-the covering power, however, of gold is such, that nitric acid, a ready solvent of silver, will only remove the smallest fraction of it. One pound of the gold is therefore melted up with two pounds of pure silver, which being thoroughly mixed, is ladled out into cold water, whereby the mixed metal is divided into small pieces, termed granulations. Each particle of gold is thus surrounded by two particles of silver, and in this shape presents a large amount of surface, so that when heated in porcelain jars with nitric acid, all the silver, except about one per cent., is dissolved out of the gold. The nitric acid, holding the silver in solution, is then drawn off from the pots by a large gold siphon, and passed into a large vat, partly filled with a strong solution of common salt, when the silver falls down as a white powder, called chloride of silver, insoluble in water. It is next run on filters, which hold the chloride, and let the liquid pass through. The chloride, after being washed for many hours by hot water until perfectly clean, is thrown into leaden lined vats together with granulated metallic zinc, where a violent action takes place, the zinc forcibly seizing the chlorine, and making a solution of chloride of zinc, while metallic silver is left in the form of a gray powder, which, after being washed and filtered, is pressed into large cakes by a hydraulic press, dried by fire, and is again used to refine more gold.

The pure gold, transferred from the bottom of the porcelain pots to a filter, is thoroughly washed from every trace of nitrate of silver, and from its state of fine division, has no metallic appearance, but closely resembles mahogany sawdust. It is then pressed, dried, melted with a sufficient amount of copper to bring it to the legal standard, and cast into ingots or bars, suitable for the manufacture of coin.

The ingots are then passed to the coining department, where they are annealed or heated to redness, to soften them for rolling. They are then rolled out in the "Rolling Presses," in long and thin slips, in which form they are carried to the drawing bench, where they are drawn through plates of the hardest steel, accurately set to reduce the slips to their proper thickness. In the next place, they are passed through the cutting process, and planchets or blaucs of the proper size are cut. This opera tion is carried on with great rapidity, one hundred and sixty planchets being cut out, on an average, per minute. The clippings (as the strips after being thus cut are called) are then folded up and sent back to the melter and refiner, to be again melted up and made into ingots. The planchets are then accurately adjusted and passed through the milling machine. The latter operation is done to raise the edges

of the planchets, to afford protection to the surface of the coin.

The planchets, after being thoroughly cleaned, are ready for stamping. The coining presses are moved by steam-power; each press receives the planchets in a tube from the hand of a workman, and itself slides them, one by one, to a point exactly between the coining dies. There each piece is powerfully impressed and instantly carried away a perfect coin, to be followed as instantly by another. The coins are then counted, weighed and packed, and delivered to the Treasurer of the Mint.

AMOUNT OF AMERICAN COINAGE.

The increase in the coinage of the country has fully kept pace with, if, indeed, it has not exceeded its extraordinary progress in all other respects. The total value of the coinage of the United States, for the first twenty-four years after the establishment of the Mint, from 1793 to 1817, was but $14,198,593 53, while the coinage of 1856 alone amounted to $64,567,142 80 The total amount of the coinage of the United States, to the close of 1856, is as follows:

100.

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THE VOICE-TELEGRAPHS OF MON- avant courier had been I had no idea; but

TENEGRO.

in one respect this mysterious attendant was very useful, as the best lodging and

HE electric telegraph is, unquestion- provisions which the place afforded were

modern days; and we have reason to feel thankfulness as well as admiration at a triumph of science which enables us to communicate, almost instantaneously, with friends who are separated from us by hundreds or even thousands of miles. We believe, however, it is not generally known that in the art of sending messages with extraordinary celerity and accuracy, the semi-barbarous inhabitants of Montenegro, and some of their Slavonic brethren in the neighboring countries, are in advance of the most civilized nations of Europe, as this mode of conveying intelligence was in use there for ages before the electric telegraph was thought of.

Some years ago I had occasion to pass through the wild mountain region of Montenegro, or the Black Mountains, so named from the dark pine forests that once covered them. This country, though no more than sixty miles in length and thirtyfive in breadth, has preserved its independence for centuries against the subjugators of the neighboring districts, and though, when I visited it, the inhabitants recognized the protectorate of the Russian power, they were not brought to do so by force of arms. They belong to the Greek Church, live in a rude style, and have not attained any high degree of mental cultivation. Even the arts of reading and writing are an unusual accomplishment among them; but, as I have already intimated, they have one peculiarity which must produce a strange effect upon a foreigner traveling in their country, and of which, as witnessed by myself, I am about to give some account.

Little did I imagine that the indistinct sounds which I had heard floating about me on the mountain winds, were conveying to distant localities a signalement of myself more exact than that of many a written passport.

On one occasion I had been obliged to send a messenger to a village for the purpose of ordering a mule, as a relay on which to continue my journey. When I arrived there the following morning I found, to my utter dismay, that the animal had been sent to pastures several miles up in the mountains. I am ashamed to say that this piece of information disturbed the equanimity of my temper so much that I spoke too sharply to the owner, telling him that, as it would be quite impossible to send a messenger, and get the mule back from so great a distance before it would be too late to prosecute the journey for that day, I should be obliged to remain for the night where I was, at a serious inconvenience, all in consequence of his inexcusable neglect. He bore the rebuke quite unmoved, and, with a smile assuring me that the mule should be ready at the very hour I had appointed, went into the open air. I followed, and immediately | heard the murmur of the wind-voices which had so often before excited my surprise. At first the low moaning sound, of which I could not distinguish one word, seemed to come from a distance; but, on closer examination, I discovered that tne tones were emitted by the lips of my host. I was now in possession of a clew to what had so much puzzled me, and with some investigation the mystery was unraveled.

These people possess the power of making their voices, and the words they utter, distinctly audible at distances which, to those who have not witnessed it, must seem perfectly incredible, and thus they carry on conversations from mountain to mountain, as we do face to face. The voice, in this singular method of communication, is not elevated, but, on the contrary, is low, and the words are pro

In traveling over the mountains, or crossing the valleys of Montenegro, I frequently heard mysterious sounds floating around me in the air. They seemed to be a kind of suppressed howl; and what they were, or where they came from, I could not discover. It also frequently happened that when I arrived at one of their villages, I found the whole population prepared to meet me, and coming out to see the stranger, though I had not sent,nounced slowly, and with a peculiarly the slightest intimation of my visit; nor would it have been possible, owing to the rapidity of my movements. Who my

drawling accent. Thus they fall distinctly on the ear of the distant interlocutor, although to those standing near the person

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