bellows properly at work, by exercise, and
your fire will seldom want poking.' The
Doctor's pokers, you know, are pills, mixtures,
leeches, blisters, lancets, and things of that
sort."

"Indeed? Well, then, my heart-burn, I
suppose, depends upon bad management of
my fire? " surmised Mr. Bagges.

"I should say that was more than probable,
uncle. Well, now, I think you see that
animal heat can be accounted for, in very
great part at least, by the combustion of the
body. And then there are several facts that
—as I remember Shakspeare says—

"' help to thicken other proofs,
That do demonstrate thinly.'

"Birds that breathe a great deal are very
hot creatures; snakes and lizards, and frogs
and fishes, that breathe but little, are so cold
that they are called cold-blooded animals.
Bears and dormice, that sleep all the winter,
are cold during their sleep, whilst their
breathing and circulation almost entirely
stop. We increase our heat by walking fast,
running, jumping, or working hard; which
sets us breathing faster, and then we get
warmer. By these means we blow up our
own fire, if we have no other, to warm
ourselves on a cold day. And how is it that we
don't go on continually getting hotter and
hotter?"

"Ah! " exclaimed Mr. Bagges, " I suppose
that is one of Nature's mysteries."

"Why, what happens, uncle, when we take
violent exercise ? We break out into a
perspiration; as you complain you always do,
if you only run a few yards. Perspiration is
mostly water, and the extra heat of the body
goes into the water, and flies away with it in
steam. Just for the same reason, you can't
boil water so as to make it hotter than two
hundred and twelve degrees; because all the
heat that passes into it beyond that, unites
with some of it and becomes steam, and so
escapes. Hot weather causes you to perspire
even when you sit still; and so your heat is
cooled in summer. If you were to heat a
man in an oven, the heat of his body generally
wouldn't increase very much till he became
exhausted and died. Stories are told of
mountebanks sitting in ovens, and meat being
cooked by the side of them. Philosophers
have done much the same thing—Dr. Fordyce
and others, who found they could bear a heat
of two hundred and sixty degrees. Perspiration
is our animal fire-escape. Heat goes out
from the lungs, as well as the skin, in water;
so the lungs are concerned in cooling us as
well as heating us, like a sort of regulating
furnace. Ah, uncle, the body is a wonderful
factory, and I wish. I were man enough to
take you over it. I have only tried to show
you something of the contrivances for warming
it, and I hope you understand a little about
that!"

"Well." said Mr. Bagges, " breathing, I
understand you to say, is the chief source of
animal heat, by occasioning the combination
of carbon and hydrogen with oxygen, in a
sort of gentle combustion, throughout our
frame. The lungs and heart are an apparatus
for generating heat, and distributing it over
the body by means of a kind of warming
pipes, called blood-vessels. Eh ?—and the
carbon and hydrogen we have in our systems
we get from our food. Now, you see, here is
a slice of cake, and there is a glass of wine—
Eh ? now see whether you can get any
carbon and oxygen out of that."

The young philosopher, having finished his
lecture, applied himself immediately to the
performance of the proposed experiment,
which he performed with cleverness and
dispatch.

THE HOME OF WOODRUFFE THE
GARDENER.
IN EIGHT CHAPTERS. —CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.

IT was observed by Woodruffe's family,
during one week of spring of the next year,
that he was very absent. He was not in low
spirits, but absorbed in thought, and much
devoted to making calculations with pencil and
paper. At last, out it came, one morning at
breakfast.

"I wonder how we should all like to have
Harry Hardiman to work with us again?"

Every one looked up. Harry! where was
Harry? Was he here ? Was he coming?

"Why, I will tell you what I have been
thinking," said their father. " I have thought
long and carefully, and I believe I have made
up my mind to send for Harry, to come and
work for us as he used to do. We have not
labour enough on the ground. Two stout men
to the acre is the smallest allowance for trying
what could be made of the place."

"That is what Taylor and Brown are
employing now on the best part of their land,"
said Allan; " that is, when they can get the
labour. There is such difference between that
and one man to four or five acres, as there
was before, that they can't always get the
labour."

"Just so; and therefore," continued
Woodruffe, " I am thinking of sending fof Harry.
Our old neighbourhood was not prosperous
when we left it, and I fancy it cannot have
improved since; and Harry might be glad
to follow his master to a thriving
neighbourhood; and he is such a careful fellow
that I dare say he has money for the journey,
—even if he has a wife by this time, as I
suppose he has."

Moss looked most pleased, where all were
pleased, at the idea of seeing Harry again.
His remembrance of Harry was of a tall
young man, who used to carry him on his
shoulders, and wheel him in the empty water-
barrel, and sometimes offer to dip him in it
when it was full, and show him how to dig in
the sand-heap with his little wooden spade.