The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1845-07-15 00:00:00

NOVEL MODE OF CATCHING BOOKS.—I have found
on the observation of many years, that these birds arrive
with us, in or about the 9th of October, and leave on the
same day of March. Ido not remember where I first
saw or heard of the following way of catching rooks.
A few small cones of paper, such as are used by grocers
for trifling articles, smeared with bird-lime in the inside,
and with a small piece of flesh dropped in it by way of
bait, should be thrust with the points downwards, in dung
heaps, or other places frequented by rooks. The birds
plunge their heads in to extract the flesh, and the cone,
attaching itself by means of the bird-lime, the bird is
completely " bonneted." It immediately towers upwards,
in a spiral direction. till exhausted, and then drops to the
earth, when it may be easily caught.—Thompson's Note
Book of a Naturalist.
ORIGIN OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND.—The Bank of
England, which has long been the principal bank of depo-
sit and circulation, not in this country only, hut in Eu-
rope. was founded in 1694. Its principal projector was
Mr. William Paterson, an enterprising Scotch gentleman.
Government being at that time much distressed for want
of money, partly from the defects and abuses in the sys-
tem of taxation, and partly from the difficulty of borrow-
ing, because of the supposed instability of the revolution-
ary establishment, the bank grew out of a loan of
£1,200.000 for public service. The subscribers, besides
receiving eight per cent. on the sum advanced, as interest.
and £4OOO a year for the expense of management, in all
£lOO,OOO a year, were incorporated into a society deno-
minated the Governor of the Bank of England ; the char-
ter is dated the 27th of July. And it was enacted in the
same year in which the bank was established, by statute
6 William and Mary, c. 20, that the bank " shall not deal
in any goods, wares, or merchandise (except bullion), or
purchase any lands or revenues belonging to the crown,
or advance or lend to their majesties, their heirs or sue-,
cessors, any sum or sums of money by way of loan or
anticipation, or any part or parts, branch or branches,
fund or funds of the revenue, now granted or belonging,
or hereafter to be granted to their majesties, their heirs
and successors, other than such fund or funds, part or
parts, branch or branches of the said revenue only, on
which a loan is or shall he granted by parliament.—/IPCul-
loch's History of Political Economy.
IRREGULARITY OF THE TIDAL RISE. —Various causes
operate to introduce irregularity in the phenomena of the
tides. The positions of the sun and moon vary with
reference to each other and the equator, the moon being
sometimes as much as 28° on each side of the plane of
the latter. The action of the winds also, and their vary-
ing force, with currents in the ocean, affect the disturb-
ance of its level by the solar and lunar influence. But
the most energetic causes of complexity in the tides, are
the inequalities that mark the bed of the sea, and its
geographical distribution in contact with immense masses
of dry land in its basin. Shoals, peninsulas, and promon-
tories, offer obstructions to the flow of its waters, and
vary their direction. In some narrow seas, channels,
and gulfs, they are prodigiously accumulated, so that the
tides rise to a far greater height than in the main ocean.
Thus, on the coasts of the islands of the South Sea, the
tides have only an elevation of one or two feet ; and at
St. Helena, a solitary islet in the heart of the South At-
lantic. the rise very rarely exceeds three feet; but in the
Testi Sea and English Channel the periodical flew attains
a much greater height. At the mouth of the Wye the
tidal rise amounts to about fifty feet ; at the mouth of
the Avon, to forty-two feel; at Milford Haven, to thirty-
six feet ; at London and Beachy Head, to eighteen feet ;
at the Needles, off the Isle of Wight, to nine feet; and
at Weymouth. to seven. The consequence of these ex-
traordinary elevations is, that large tracts are alternately
oceanic and parts of the mainland, where the shores are
low. This is particularly observable along the south
coast of Lincolnshire and in the Bay of Lancaster. The
latter estuary becomes at low water an expanse of sand,
across which there is a road, the channel of the river
Lune presenting the chief obstacle to the passage dry-
shod. In other narrow seas, however, there is scarcely
any perceptible tide at all, owing to the conditions under
which they communicate with the general sweep of the
deep. The distribution and configuration of the land,
together with the influence of the winds, greatly involve
th, problem of the tides, and render it one of the most
difficult in the whole range of physics.—The Gallery of
Nature.

WANT OF A POOR LAW FOR SCOTLAND.—SOme pau-
pers have begged and prayed to be allowed imprisonment
as a boon ; and the harrowing distresses, the agonies
which the no•poor law inflicts upon the lower stratum of
the Scotch community, are sometimes lighted up by
ics of -

span neroism and endurance which ought to melt the
hearis—if they had them—of the philosophers. Here is
one specimen :—" There are at the present time," says
Mr. Frederic Hill, inspector of prisons in Scotland, in
his report of 1812, " nearly forty persons in the prison of
Glasgow, who -have voluntarily subjected themselves to
all the rigour of itnprisonmeht (and of imprisonment on
the separate system), in order to obtain food and shelter.
Some have been in this kind of civil death for more than
a year, giving up every particle of personal 1;1----

forminia task of ten hours

erty, per-
.
'labour every day, before they
can earn a penny for themselves, living on very plain food,
rising early in the morning both in winter and summer.

and many of them confined day after day, month after
month, in a small cell, apart from all human beings, ex-
cept the officers of the prison ; and this with the know-
led!.,.e that, at any moment, they have but to utter a word,
and they can be placed at perfect liberty." So much for
the boasted independence of the Scottish character, which

a regular provision for the poor would, it is feared, take
away! From the succeeding and eighth report, we learn
that as the prison was not meant to serve the purposes of
a workhouse, these destitute " voluntaries" were ordered
by the General Prison Board to be ejected. "The result
has unfortunately been," writes the inspector, in 1843,

eir willingness to give up t

iberty, to

all the rules of a pri-un, thai they were sincerely desirou

of avoiding a life of guilt, and of living peaceably and ho-
nestly. Nearly halt of those who have been thus ejected
from the Glasgow prison, have already returned as offend-
ers ; and some of them under serious charges. One, a
girl of thirteen. who had much pleased the governor by

her industry, docility, and good conduct, but who had no
good home or good parents to go to, was committed to
the prison within one month after she had been compelled
to leave, and is now under sentence of transportation."
Of the fact that the poor-system has rendered Scotland a
huge manufactory for criminals the public mind will not
remain stisfied by the adduction of solitary instances ; we
therefore turn to the criminal returns of the emp're, and

three kingdoms have increased 65 per cent., crime has
augmented during the past forty years 700 per cent. in
England, 800 per cent. in Ireland, and in Scotland three
thousand six hundred per cent—Douglas Jerrold's Shil-
ling Magazine.

SINGLE COMBAT BETWEEN A COCKNEY AND A
KANGAROO.—Witiding his way to the right he came to
an open space of green grass clear of brush and stones,

and to his inexpressibledelight beheld a living specimen