of Egypt may as well remain; here they are, at any rate, expected to be able to read,- an accomplishment in which it seems the birch-wielders of Egypt are palpably deficient. Under such a state of things, it need excite no wonder that the chapter which Mr. Lane devotes to "Literature and Science" is by no means cumbered with details; nor that the two which are required for the due exhibition of the "superstitions" of the people, are not only extensive, but full of all imaginable variety. And as, even these two are not sufficient, they are followed by another having for its subject a kind of medley of science and superstition— "Magic, Astronomy, and Alchemy." The pretensions of the Egyptian magicians to a knowledge of their art and mystery, are not by any means so contemptible as those of the schoolmasters. Mr. Lane relates, with great circumstantiality, certain feats of one of the tribe, to which he was an eye-witness, which would seem quite impossible to be effected by merely human agency,-very reason. ably expressing a hope that his candour on the occasion will not have the effect of throwing a slur on the credibility of the details given in the portion of the book relating to more every-day and more comprehensible affairs. Such, for instance, as the following, vouched for, be it observed, by Mr. Lane, in his own proper person. He describes sundry incantations performed by a respectable professional magician, with the object of producing in the palm of a boy's hand, smeared over with ink, the image of any person, either dead or absent; such image being visible to the " seer alone, who, in this case, was a boy taken promiscuously (and not by the magician) from a number of others. Passing over the requisitions of the rest of the company, we arrive at Mr. Lane's turn :

"He (the magician) now addressed himself to me; and asked me if I wished the boy to see any person who was absent or dead. I named Lord Nelson; of whom the boy had evidently never heard, for it was with much difficulty that he pronounced the name, after several trials. The magician desired the boy to say to the Sooltan' My master salutes thee, and desires thee to bring Lord Nelson: bring him before my eyes that I may see him speedily.' The boy then said so; and almost immediately added,' A messenger is gone, and has returned, and brought

a man dressed in a black* suit of European clothes: the man has lost his left arm.' He then paused for a moment or two, and looking more intently, and more closely, into the ink, said, 'No, he has not lost his left arm, but it is placed to his breast.' This correc tion made his description more striking than it would have been without it; since Lord Nelson generally had his empty sleeve attached to the breast of his coat; but it was the right arm that he had lost. Without saying that I suspected the boy had made a mistake, I asked the magician whether the objects appeared in the ink as if actually before the eyes, or as if in a glass, which makes the right appear left. He answered. that they appeared as if in a mirror. This rendered the boy's description faultless.

"The next person I called for was a native of Egypt, who has been for many years a resident in England, where he has adopted our dress; and who had been long confined to his bed by illness before I embarked for this country: I thought that his name, one not very uncommon in Egypt, might make the boy describe him incorrectly; though another boy, on the former visit of the ma gician, had described this person as wearing an European dress, like that in which I last saw him. In the present case the boy said, 'Here is a man brought on a kind of bier, and wrapped up in a sheet.' This description would suit, supposing the person in question to be still confined to his bed, or if he be dead. The boy described his face as covered; and was told to order that it should be uncovered. This he did, and then said, 'His face is pale, and he has mustachios, but no beard;' which is correct.

"Several other persons were successively called for; but the boy's descriptions of them were imperfect, though not altogether incorrect. He represented each object as appear ing less distinct than the preceding one, as if his sight were gradually becoming dim; he was a minute or more before he could give any account of the persons he professed to see towards the close of the performance; and the magician said it was useless to proceed with him. Another boy was then. brought in, and the magic square, &c. made in his hand; but he could see nothing. The magician said he was too old."

It is a pity he was not able to accom pany his wondrous tale with some probable explanation of the manner in which the imposition was effected; but this he leaves for "time and the curious to decypher," professing his own inability to

* Dark blue is called, by the modern Egyptians. eswed, which properly signifies black, and is there fore so translated here.

pluck out the heart of the mystery, and leaving the jugglers of Cairo in the very méridian of their glory. This is altogether a sad blot on his scutcheon as an observer whom nothing should escape.

The remaining portion of the first volume comprises, besides a chapter on the "Character of the Egyptians," a very ample picture of "Domestic Life," in three chapters; one appropriated to the higher, and one to the lower orders, while the middle one, for want of any "middle classes to delineate, is occupied by a sketch of "the Harem." The second volume commences with a view of the state of the arts and manufactures in the land which claims, in the judgment of many of the learned, to be the land of their birth. It is not of a very flattering

nature:

"It is melancholy to compare the present state of Egypt with its ancient prosperity, when the variety, elegance, and exquisite finish displayed in its manufactures attracted the admiration of surrounding nations, and its inhabitants were in no need of foreign commerce to increase their wealth, or to add to their comforts. Antiquarian researches show us that, not only the Pharaohs and the priests and military chiefs, but also a great proportion of the agriculturists, and other private individuals, even in the age of Moses, and at a yet earlier period, passed a life of the most refined luxury, were clad in linen of the most delicate fabric, and reclined on couches and chairs which have served as models for the furniture of our modern saloons. Nature is as lavish of her favours as she was of old to the inhabitants of the valley of the Nile; but, for many centuries, they have ceased to enjoy the benefit of a steady Government. Each of their successive rulers, during this long lapse of time, considering the uncertain tenure of his power, has been almost wholly intent upon increasing his own wealth; and thus a large portion of the nation has gradually perished, and the remnant, in general, been reduced to a state of the most afflicting poverty.

"The male portion of the population of Egypt being scarcely greater than is sufficient for the cultivation of as much of the soil as is subject to the natural inundation, or easily irrigated by artificial means, the number of persons who devote themselves to manufactures in this country is comparatively very small; and as there are so few com petitors, and, at present, few persons of wealth to encourage them, their works in general display but little skill.

"Painting and sculpture, as applied to the representation of living objects, are abso

lutely prohibited by the Mohhammadan te ligion; there are, however, some Moos'lims in Egypt who attempt the delineation of men, lions, camels, and other animals, flowers, boats, &c., particularly in (what they call) the decoration of a few shop-fronts, the doors of pilgrims' houses, &c.; though their performances would be surpassed by children of five or six years of age in our own country. The art in which the Egyptians most excel is architecture. The finest specimens of Arabian architecture are found in the Egyptian metropolis and its environs; and not only the mosques and other public buildings are: remarkable for their grandeur and beauty, but many of the private dwellings, also, attract our admiration, especially by their interior structure and decorations. Yet this art has, of late years, much declined, like most others in this country; a new style of architecture, partly Oriental and partly European, and of a very plain description, being generally preferred. The wood-work of the doors, ceilings, and windows of the buildings in the older style, display considerable taste, of a peculiar kind; and so, also, do most of the Egyptian manufactures; though many of them are rather clumsy, or ill finished. The turners of wood, whose chief occupation was that of making the latticework of windows, were very numerous, and their work was generally neater than it is at present; they have less employment now, as windows of modern houses are often made of glass. The turner, like most other artisans' in Egypt, sits to his work. In the art of glass-making, for which Egypt was so much celebrated in ancient times, the modern inhabitants of the country possess but little skill: they have lost the art of manufacturing coloured glass for windows; but, for the construction of windows of this material they are still admired, though not so much as they were a few years ago, before the adoption of a new style of architecture diminished the demand for their work. Their pottery is generally of a rude kind; it mostly consists of porous bottles and jars, for cooling, as well as keeping, water. For their skill in the preparation of morocco leather, they are justly celebrated. The branches and leaves of the palm-tree they employ in a great variety of manufactures; of the former, they make seats, coops, chests, frames for beds, &c. of the latter, baskets, panniers, mats, brooms, fly-whisks, and many other utensils. Of the fibres, also, that grow at the foot of the branches of the palm-tree, are made most of the ropes used in Egypt. The best mats (which are much used instead of carpets, particularly in summer) are made of rushes. Egypt has lost the celebrity which it enjoyed in ancient times for its fine linen; the linen, cotton, and woollen cloths, and the silks, now

woven in this country, are generally of coarseor poor qualities."-Vol. ii. p. 1.

Besides this general sketch, we have a more particular description of a branch of industry which has been more heard of in England than any other now practised in the land of the Nile, and has excited more curiosity, and, probably, more incredulity than many descriptions of manufacture much more difficult and more elaborate, although less striking to the million. We allude to the artificialhatching of eggs, which has been carried: on in the north of Africa from time im memorial, but is not, perhaps, so well suited to our variable climate, if we may judge, at least, from the circumstance that the speculator who, some few years ago, attracted so large a share of public attention to his patent system of hatching chickens by steam, has long since given up his establishment, and left his business. to those natural patentees, the hens of the United Kingdom. Mr. Lane indulges: his readers with a somewhat full account of the process used by the Egyptians, which we make no apology for transfering to our pages, since the Mechanics' Magazine is expected to record all improvements on the old-fashioned methods of producing any "manufactured article.”

"The Egyptians have long been famous for the art of hatching fowls' eggs by artificial heat. This practice, though obscurely described by ancient authors, appears to have been common in Egypt in very remote times. The building in which the process is performed is called, in Lower Egypt, ma'amal el fira' kh, and in Upper Egypt ma'amal elfurroo'g; in the former division of the country there are more than a hundred such establishments and in the latter, more than half that number. The proprietors pay a tax to the Government. The ma'amal is constructed of burnt or sun-dried bricks; and consists of two parallel rows of small chambers and ovens, divided by a narrow, vaulted passage. Each chamber is about nine or ten feet long, eight feet wide, and five or six feet high; and has above it a vaulted oven, of the same size, or rather less in height. The former communicates with the passage by an aperture large enough for a man to enter; and with its oven by a similar aperture: the ovens, also, of the same row communicate with each other; and each has an aperture in its vault (for the escape of the smoke), which is opened only occasionally; the passage, too, has several such apertures in its vaulted roof. The eggs are placed upon, mats, or straw, and one tier

above another, usually to the number of three tiers, in the small chambers; and burn ing gel'leh (a fuel composed of the dung of animals, mixed with chopped straw, and made into the form of round, flat cakes) is placed upon the floor of the ovens above. The entrance of the ma'amal is well-closed. Before it are two or three small chambersfor the attendant, and the fuel, and the chickens when newly hatched. The opera tion is performed only during two or three months in the year-in the spring; earliest in the most southern parts of the country. Each ma'amal, in general, contains from twelve to twenty-four chambers for eggs, and receives about 150,000 eggs during the annual period of its continuing open; one quarter or a third of which number generally fail. The peasants of the neighbourhood supply the eggs; the attendant of the ma'amal examines them, and afterwards usually gives one chicken for every two eggs that he has received. In general, only half the number of chambers are used for the first ten days; and fires are lighted only in the ovens above these. On the eleventh day these fires are put out, and others are lighted in the other ovens, and fresh eggs placed in the chambers below these last. On the following day, some of the eggs in the former chambers are removed, and placed on the floor of the ovens above, where the fires have been extinguished. The general heat main={ tained during the process is from 1000 to 1030! of Fahrenheit's thermometer. The manager, having been accustomed to the art from his youth, knows, from his long experience, the exact temperature that is required for the success of the operation, without having any instrument, like our thermometer, to guide him. On the twentieth day, some of the eggs first put in are hatched; but most on the twenty-first day, that is, after the same period is required in the case of natural incubation. The weaker of the chickens are' placed in the passage; the rest, in the innermost of the interior apartments, where they remain a day or two before they are given to the persons to whom they are due. When the eggs first placed have been hatched, and the second supply half hatched, the chambers in which the former were placed, and which are now vacant, receive the third supply; and, in this manner, when the second supply is hatched, a fourth is introduced in their place. I have not found that the fowls produced in this manner are inferior in point of flavour, or in other respects, to those produced from the egg by incubation. The fowls and their eggs in Egypt are, in both cases, and with respect to size and flavour“: very inferior to those in this country. In one of the Egyptian newspapers published by order of the Government (No. 248, for the

What a pity that no machine has yet been invented to lay, as well as hatch the eggs! Till that has been done, the artificial process is but half complete.

With the exception of the opening chapter, Mr. Lane's second volume is almost wholly devoted to the festivities and amusements of the modern Egyptians, on which he dilates at very considerable length, and with, apparently, a perfect knowledge of the subject; on the head "Public Recitation of Romances" he is particularly diffuse-and the chapters on the "Public Religious Festivals of the Mahometan Year" are, as might be expected, long and full of matter. These two form the "leading articles," and are well supported by the chapters on Private Festivities, Games, Music, Public Dancers, and the Bath; while Superstition claims another notice in that relating to "Serpent-Charmers, and Performers of Tricks of Legerdemain." Any pic ture of Oriental manners would be imperfect without a pretty considerable view of the "Use of Tobacco, Coffee, Hemp, and Opium;" and "Funeral Rites" most appropriately wind-up the whole.

We were rather surprised to find Mr. Lane adhering so very strictly to the letter of his title-page, as not to allow himself to give even a short outline of the interesting proceedings of the present Pacha, which bid fair to change the whole face of society in his dominions. A very few pages are, indeed, devoted to his "Innovations" in the Supplement, but this is all. We had hoped for a somewhat lengthened account of his introduction of the learning, the arts, and the inventions of Modern Europe, and the effects it has produced upon his subjects, or seemed likely to produce. Mr. Lane, however, eschews the Modern History of Egypt with as much circumspection as the Ancient, and pays no more heed to the canals, the railways, and the other public works of the Pacha, than to the temples, and pyramids, and

ruined cities of his predecessors by some thousands of years. All this, we sup pose, is yet to come, in the other works whose appearance is promised in the preface. It might have been as well, nevertheless, to have touched even lightly upon these subjects; it would have connected a sort of European interest with the book. Besides, we have a kind of right to be informed whether any, and what, change has been produced in the "Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians" by the "more extended commercial relations, since the Pacha's cultivation of the cotton trade, by the return of the young Egyptians sent by him to be educated in Europe, by the introduction of English engineers and French physicians among the haughty Beys of the country, and a host of other innovating measures of

Mahomet Ali."

1

GAS-STOVES.

Sir, Your correspondent, Evander,, having requested some information respecting gas-stoves, and the cause of some peculiar, phenomena which take place by the combustion of coal-gas, I am. happy to afford him the information he desires.

The heat produced by these stoves is proportional to the quantity of oxygen, abstracted from the atmosphere, which enters by combustion into combination with the carburetted hydrogen, or coalgas; the quantity of oxygen required for its perfect combustion varying with he quality of the ga. On an average of quality of the common carburetted hydrogen, every cubic foot which is burnt, unites with two cubic feet of oxygen; and the product of this combination is 2.6 cubic inches of water, and 1 cubic foot of carbonic acid gas: the weight of these being exactly equal to that of the oxygen and carburetted hydrogen consumed. For of the two constituents of the carburetted hydrogen, the one (hydrogen) unites with one half the oxygen abstracted from the atmosphere, and forms water; and the other (carbon) unites with the remainder of the oxygen, and forms carbonic acid gas.

By a stove which burns 15 cubic feet of carburetted hydrogen gas per hour, there will be formed 39 cubic inches of water (nearly a pint and a quarter), and 15 cubic feet of carbonic acid gas. Ther

is no difficulty, then, in accounting for the fact which your correspondent states, "that the windows of a room where such a stove is used are covered with moisture:" for if the stove be used for fourteen hours a day, it will in that time form just two gallons of water, which must all be deposited on the windows and walls of the room, or on any other cold surfaces. There are no means of preventing this formation of water, as it has no connexion whatever with the nature of the materials of the stove; for, whenever hydrogen gas is burned with oxygen, water is necessarily formed.

When a flue-pipe is attached to a stove of this description, to carry off the impure air, there is a very great loss of heat: for the combination of the hydrogen and oxygen takes place at so high a temperature, that the product assumes first the state of steam; and if this steam escapes uncondensed the whole of its latent heat, and a considerable part of the sensible heat, must be lost, as regards any beneficial effect in warming the room. If the whole of the two gallons of water, which we have shown above to be formed by a stove of this kind, per day, escapes uncondensed, as much heat will be lost as would have raised 111,000 cubic feet of air 10. Though, in point of fact, the whole of the steam cannot under any circumstances escape uncondensed, this calculation will show how much heat must be lost, by having a flue-pipe to carry off the products of the combustion, which

would therefore render the stove much more expensive to burn.

In answer to your correspondent's inquiry, whether these stoves would render the air unwholesome to breathe, I will erdeavour to point out some of the physiological effects which result from their use.

All persons are aware, that air when expired from the lungs is loaded with a considerable quantity of vapour; and it is this capability of the air to absorb mois. ture, which prevents its accumulation on the lungs, to any unnatural extent.

But

if the air when taken into the lungs is already saturated with vapour, it is evident that it cannot carry off the full quantity from the lungs at its expiration; though as its temperature is then considerably higher, it will always receive an additional quantity in its passage, as the capacity of air for absorbing moisture increases with its elevation of temperature. With

out going into any minute calculations on this head, it may be stated that the average quantity of vapour which ought to pass off in pulmonary transpiration, is about three grains per minute; but that by breathing air at a temperature of about 60o, already saturated with vapour, this quantity would be reduced to about one half; which being unnatural, cannot be otherwise than unhealthy: it would, in fact, induce various pulmonary complaints, and not improbably end in consumption.

But this is not the only effect produced by these stoves. We have already seen that a large quantity of carbonic acid gas is produced. The destructive effects of this gas on the human frame are well known the choke-damp of mines and wells is identical with it, the dangerous effects of which require no comment. In addition to this, when the oxygen is abstracted from the air to support the combustion of the coal-gas, as already de scribed, a large quantity of nitrogen is set free, and escapes and mixes with the air of the room. This gas likewise is peculiarly inimical to animal life; and the quantity amounts to four times that of the oxygen consumed. In such a stove as we have calculated above, there would, therefore, be 15 cubic feet of carbonic acid gas, and 120 cubic feet of nitrogen, per hour, which escapes from the stove, and mixes with the atmosphere of the room. It will easly be perceived, then, that unless a very rapid ventilation is provided in a room

where a stove of this kind is used, the air must soon become extremely unwholesome to breathe, and produce effects inimical to health.

As to the expense of burning one of these stoves, I believe that no exact information can be given, because it depends upon the diameter and height of the jets; and no two stoves will burn exactly the same, and even the same stove will vary at different times. The average of small sized stoves I believe to be from 12 to 15 cubic feet of gas per hour, which would, if it were a close stove, afford sufficient heat for a small shop or counting-house. The stove will burn with the greatest economy when the gas escapes with the least velocity; as the combustion is then more perfect for otherwise a portion of it escapes unburnt, and therefore without producing any effect. The velocity of escape may be diminished, by increasing