battery at Acre, and I did the French desperate mischief with the shells. I used to pitch in among them when they had sat down to dinner. But how do you think the scoundrels weathered me at last? They trained a parcel of poodle-dogs to watch the shells when they fell, and then to run and pull the fusees out with their teeth! Did you ever hear of such villains? By this means they saved hundreds of men, and only lost half a dozen of dogs.' 'Capital salmon this,' said

the captain; where does the billet get it from? By the by, talking of that, did you ever hear of the pickled salmon in Scotland?' We all replied in the affirmative. 'Oh, you don't take it. Hang it, I don't mean dead pickled salmon ; I mean live pickled salmon, swimming about in tanks, as merry as grigs, and as hungry as rats.' We all expressed our astonishment at this, and declared we never heard of it before. 'I thought not,' said he, 'for it's only lately they have been introduced in this country by a particular friend of mine. Dr MacI cannot now remember his horrid jaw-breaking Scotch name; he was a great chemist and geologist, and all that sort of thing-a clever fellow, I can tell you, though you may laugh. Well, this fellow, sir, took nature by the heels, and capsized her, as we say. What does he do, but he catches salmon, and puts them into tanks, and every day added more and more salt, till the water was as thick as gruel, and the fish could hardly wag their tails in it. Then he threw in whole peppercorns, half-a-dozen pounds at a time, till there was enough. Then he began to dilute with vinegar until his pickle was complete. The fish did not half like it at first, but habit is everything; and when he shewed me his tank, they were swimming about as merry as a shoal of dace; he fed them with fennel, chopped small, and black peppercorns. "Come, doctor," says I, "I trust no man upon tick; if I don't taste, I wont believe my own eyes, though I can believe my tongue." (We looked at each other.) "That you shall do in a minute," says he; so he whipped one of them out with a landing-net, and

when I stuck my knife into him, the pickle ran out of his body like wine out of a claret bottle, and I ate at least two pounds of the rascal while he flapped his tail in my face! I never tasted such salmon as that. Worth your while to go to Scotland, if it's only for the sake of eating live pickled salmon. I'll give you a letter, any of you, to my friend. He'll be glad to see you; and then you may convince yourselves. Take my word for it, if once you eat salmon that way, you will never eat it any other.'

We have left ourselves little space for any serious remarks on the subject of fibbing, but we believe that scarcely any grave reflections will be necessary. The utterly contemptible nature of the practice is too apparent to require any exposition, and we hope that the seemingly light manner in which we have talked of it will not make our true purpose or sentiments be mistaken. If there be any one unfortunate enough to have begun the practice of exaggeration, let him think of Jack Smithers, and stop in time; let him think of an amiable, generous man, for such the captain really was, made the scorn and laughing-stock of all who knew him, by a habit begun in youth, and continued until it became the one ruling passion of his nature, and threw all his better qualities into the shade.

DISCHARGING OF A SWISS LAKE.

In the Swiss canton of Unterwalden, lies a lake called the Lungern-see, about three miles long and a quarter broad, girt on all sides but one by steep and lofty mountains, which seem to ascend in most places from the water's edge. At the end not bounded by mountains, the lake is hemmed in by a ridge of land of considerable thickness, called the Kaiserstuhl, over which the superfluous waters flow precipitously, with a fall of more than 700 feet, to

the plain of Gieswyl, and there form the river Aa. When, towards the end of the eighteenth century, the village population began to outgrow its means of support, the elders turned their eyes to the space engrossed by the lake, and, remembering how their neighbours of Gieswyl had, in times past, obtained a large extent of land from the waters that covered it, bethought them how much might be added to their little territory, if the bed of the lake could be reduced to a smaller compass, by piercing the barrier at its northern end. On the 16th of November 1788, the subject was discussed in a meeting of the community. They calculated that, since the greater part of the lake was not more than 100 feet in depth, a conduit opened at a point 120 feet below its surface-level, would reclaim above 500 acres of land. This would be a most valuable acquisition. The attempt was determined upon, although as yet no one knew in what manner it could be executed; and one and all, after the old Swiss fashion, bound themselves to its accomplishment.

Their next step was to seek the advice of some one versed in mining operations. At that time, lead-mines were at work in the Valley of Lauterbrunn; and the director of these, Herr Degeler, was brought over to survey and measure the site, and fix the plan of their undertaking. On examination of the ground, he recommended that a shaft should be driven from a point near the bed of the Aa, through the steepest face of the Kaiserstuhl, slightly inclining upwards, until it reached the waters of the lake. He was questioned as to the details and practicability of the event, with a minuteness and forethought remarkable in simple herdsmen ; especially respecting the damage which any sudden outlet of the waters might cause to the plain below. He reported favourably of the scheme, the cost of which he estimated at a sum much less than the value of the land to be reclaimed, and strongly advised the villagers to attempt the work. Thus encouraged, they proceeded to settle the contribution, in money or labour, to be rendered by each inhabitant. Four miners from Lauter

brunn were then hired, to direct in alternate gangs the progress of the workmen; and they began to open the shaft in November 1790.

For eight years the task was steadily pursued. The great hardness of the limestone-rock made the advance slow and difficult; by this time, however, a gallery or tunnel six feet high and five feet wide had been driven for a distance of 700 feet through the mass of the Kaiserstuhl ridge towards the bed of the lake. Embarrassments of different kinds now stopped the furtherance of the project; and, for a short period, the military invasion of the country directed attention to more important pursuits. For about thirty years the work stood still. At length, in 1831-2, the design was renewed in earnest, and money advanced by a wealthy individual towards its completion. The excavation of the tunnel was pushed forward until the autumn of 1834, at which time it was calculated to have arrived within a short distance from the basin. It therefore became necessary to proceed with greater caution, lest the water, rushing through some fault in the rock, should overwhelm the miners; and the boringtool was employed to examine the ground before them, in the following manner: a horizontal hole of eighteen to twenty feet long, was driven in the direction of the lake, and, finding no water, the blasting was resumed; care being taken to leave a thickness of twelve feet untouched, until the process of boring had been again employed. As they advanced further, the trial was made by piercing upwards for twelve feet, after which the remaining half of the distance, left in a horizontal direction, was excavated. In this manner, alternately piercing and blasting, the miners continued their toil, which every day became more difficult. The want of pure air, the outburst of crevice-water, and the excessive hardness of the rock, alternately impeded their progress. the 1st April 1835, the shaft having then been extended, under the engineer Sulzberger's direction, seventy-two feet, the trial with the boring-rod discovered friable ; and when the iron was struck, an unusually

stone

On

clear vibration followed. As the water was known to be near, the necessary precautions were adopted; and, on the 14th, a rod twelve feet long was driven into the basin. At first, half-fluid clay only flowed through the aperture; a few moments afterwards, clear water rushed out with such force, owing to the superincumbent pressure, that it burst through every crevice of the safetyshield, in jets thirty feet long. When it became known in the village, that the long-expected event had at length taken place, without accident to the miners, for whose safety great anxiety had been felt, the delight of the people was boundless.

The next chief step was to excavate a hollow upwards from the termination of the tunnel, and into this chamber was placed a barrel containing a bag with 950 pounds of gunpowder. The barrel was raised as high as possible by rough building, and from it a tube, containing gunpowder, was led into the tunnel, where it might be ignited by a match. It was calculated that the springing of this mine would effectually open a channel for the water of the lake.

On the day following the completion of these operations, January 6, 1836, the villagers were assembled at an early hour, in breathless expectation of the event. The intensity of their interest in the fate of an enterprise pursued for nearly fifty years, and so important to their humble fortunes, may be readily conceived. Before the mine was ordered to be sprung, Sulzberger, accompanied by many of his scientific friends, once more visited the shaft, from which all the rubbish and loose timber had been already removed; and was encouraged by the discovery, that the fusee remained dry, even on its under side. The concerted signal was now given, by mortars fired from the Kaiserstuhl, to the dwellers in the plain below, as a warning to be prepared for the coming of the waters. A cannon, on the Landenburg over Sarnen, took up the signal, and continued the alarm through Obwalden, as far as the Lake of the Four Cantons.

The spectators having crowded to the heights which