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You have all noticed a kettle of water boiling over the fire, the fluid rising somewhat tumultuously around the edges of the vessel, and tumbling toward the center, where it descends. Similar currents are in action while the water is simply being heated, but they are not perceptible unless there are floating particles in the liquid. These currents are caused by the joint action of the added temperature and two or more qualities which the water possesses. 1st. Water, in common with most other substances, expands when heated; a statement, however, strictly true only when referred to a temperature above 39 degrees F. or 4 degrees C., but as in the making of steam we rarely have to do with temperatures so low as that, we may, for our present purposes, ignore that exception. 2nd. Water is practically a non-conductor of heat, though not entirely so. If ice-cold water was kept boiling at the surface the heat would not penetrate sufficiently to begin melting ice at a depth of 3 inches in less than about two hours. As, therefore, the heated water cannot impart its heat to its neighboring particles, it remains expanded and rises by its levity, while colder portions come to be heated in turn, thus setting up currents in the fluid.

You will, of course, observe that if Mrs. Bentley had sent the snuff-box to the buttery of St. John's College instead of Trinity, it would not have been language, for there would have been no covenant between sayer and sayee as to what the symbol should represent, there would have been no previously established association of ideas in the mind of the butler of St. John's between beer and snuff-box; the connection was artificial, arbitrary, and by no means one of those in respect of which an impromptu bargain might be proposed by the very symbol itself, and assented to without previous formality by the person to whom it was presented. More briefly, the butler of St. John's would not have been able to understand and read it aright. It would have been a dead letter to him--a snuff-box and not a letter; whereas to the butler of Trinity it was a letter and not a snuff-box.

It is almost impossible to convey in words an idea of the quickness and graceful address of her movements: they may indeed be termed aerial, as she seems merely to touch in her progress the branches among which she exhibits her evolutions. In these feats her hands and arms are the sole organs of locomotion, her body, hanging as if suspended by a rope, sustained by one hand (the right, for example), she launches herself, by an energetic movement, to a distant branch, which she catches with the left hand; but her hold is less than momentary; the impulse for the next launch is acquired; the branch then aimed at is attained by the right hand again, and quitted instantaneously, and so on, in alternate succession. In this manner spaces of twelve and eighteen feet are cleared, with the greatest ease and uninterruptedly, for hours together, without the slightest appearance of fatigue being manifested; and it is evident that, if more space could be allowed, distances very greatly exceeding eighteen feet would be as easily cleared; so that Duvaucel's assertion that he has seen these animals launch themselves from one branch to another, forty feet asunder, startling as it is, may be well credited. Sometimes, on seizing a branch in her progress, she will throw herself, by the power of one arm only, completely round it, making a revolution with such rapidity as almost to deceive the eye, and continue her progress with undiminished velocity. It is singular to observe how suddenly this Gibbon can stop, when the impetus giving by the rapidity and distance of her swinging leaps would seem to require a gradual abatement of her movements. In the very midst of her flight a branch is seized, the body raised, and she is seen, as if by magic, quietly seated on it, grasping it with her feet. As suddenly she again throws herself into action.

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