25 APRIL 1829, Page 12

GLEANINGS.

RECEIPTS FOR FASHIONABLE SUPPERS.—For a simple soiree, I recommend some sandwiches of fowl, of ham, of veal, of tongue, &c., some plates of

pastry, and here and there on the table some baskets of fruit. These, judi-

ciously placed on the table, with the lights, will present an agreeable coup d'ceil, and will cost leSs by three-fourths than a very common supper, where the guests are required to set to work in carving pates' barns, fowls, aspics, &c., &c., while-at a buffet, furnished as above, neither ladies nor gentlemen need remove their gloves, and can, notwithstanding, satisfy themselves in every way. For a select ball, I would have more variety in the composition of the articles. Put on the sideboard, in the first place, sandwiches of supreme of fowl, sandwiches with finnet de gibier ; sandwiches of fillets of soles; sand- wiches, of salad, and sandwiches of anchovies, for those who happen to like them. All these things, made with great care, have many admirers ; and I am confident that, if it were once customary tot adoptthem generally, they Would never again give place to those ancients,up.pers which are only ridi- bulous signs of the extravagance and bad.taste of tlie givers !—tide's French Cook, 10th edition.

MR. R D'S DREAM—The legend of Mrs. Grizel Oldbuck was partly taken from an extraordinary story which happened about seventy years since in the south of Scotland, so peculiar in its'circumstances that it merits being mentioned in this place. Mr. R d of Bowland, a gentleman of landed property in the vale of Gala, was prosecuted for a very considerable sum, the accumulated arrears of teind (or tithe) for which he was said to be indebted to a noble family, the titulars (lay impropriators of the tithes). Mr. R—d was strongly impressed with the belief that his father had, by a form of pro- cess peculiar to the law of Scotland, purchased these lands from the titular, and therefore that the present prosecution was groundless. But after an industrious search among his father's papers, an investigation of the public records, and a careful 'inquiry among all persons who had transacted law business for his father,.no evidence could be recovered to support his defence. The period was now near at hand when he conceived the loss of his lawsuit to be inevitable, and he had formed his determination to ride to Edinburgh the next day, and make the best bargain he could in the way of compromise. He went to bed with this resolution, and with all the circumstances of the case floating upon his mind, had a dream to the following purpose. His father, who had been many years dead, appeared to him, he thought, and asked him why he was disturbed in his mind. In dreams men are not surprised at such apparitions. Mr. R— d thought that he informed his father of the cause of his distress, adding that the payment of a considerable sum of money was the more unpleasant to him, because he bad a strong consciousness that it was not due, though he was unable to re over any evidence in support of his belief. sr You are right, my son," replied the paternal shade ; " I did acquire right to these teinds, for payment of which you are now prosecuted. The papers relating to the transaction are in the hands of Mr. - , a writer (or attorney), who is now retired from professional business, and resides at Inveresk, near Edinburgh. He was a person whom I employed on that oc- casion for a particular reason, but who never on any other occasion trans- acted business on my account. It is very possible," pursued the vision, " that Mr. may have forgotten a matter which is now of a very old date ; but you may call it to his recollection by this token, that when I came to pay his account, there was difficulty in getting change for a Portugal piece of gold, and that we were forced to drink out the balance at a tavern." Mr. R—d awaked in the morning with all the words of the vision imprinted on his mind, and thought it worth while to ride across the country to Inveresk, instead of going straight to Edinburgh. When he came there, he waited on the gentleman mentioned in the dream, a very old man ; without saying any thing of the vision, he inquired whether he remembered having conducted such a matter for his deceased father. The old gentleman could not at first bring the circumstance to his recollection, but on mention of the Portugal piece of gold, the whole returned upon his memory ; lie made an immediate search for the papers, and recovered them : so that Mr. R---d carried to Edinburgh the documents necessary to gain the cause which he was on the verge of losing. The author has often heard this story told by persons

who had the best access to know .the facts, whp were not likely themselves

to he deceived, and were certainly incapable of eption. He cannot there- fore refuse to give it credit, however egriordiriatir the circumstances may ap- pear. The circumstantial character of the information given in the dream, takes it out of the general class of impressions of the kind which are occa- sioned by the fortuitous coincidence of actual events with our sleeping thoughts. On the other hand, few will suppose that the laws of nature were suspended, and a special commnnication from the dead to the living permitted, for the purpose of saving Mr. R—......d a certain number of hundred pounds. The author's theory is, that the dream was only the recapitulation of informa- tion which Mr. R—d had really received from hin father while in life, but which at first he merely recalled as a general impression that the claim was settled. It is not uucommmon for persons to recover, during sleep, the thread of ideas which they have lost during their waking hours. It may be added, that this remarkable circumstance was attended with bad consequences to Mr. R—d, whose health and spirits were afterwards impaired by the attention which he thought himself obliged to pay lo the visions Of the night.— Note by Sir Walter Scott to the New Edition of the Waverley Novels.

NATURALIea Wate.—The little excursions of the naturalist, from habit and from acquirement, become a scene, of . constant observation and remark. The insect that crawls, the note of tile bird, the plant that flowers, or the vernal leaf that. peeps out, engages hisattention, is recognized as an intimate, or noted for some novelty that it presents in sound or aspect. Every season has its peculiar product, and is pleasing or admirable from causes that variously affect our different temperaments or dispositions ; but there are accompani- ments in an autumnal morning's woodland walk that call for all our notice and admiration : the peculiar feeling of the air, the solemn grandeur of the scene around us, dispose the mind to contemplation and remark ; there is a silence in which we hear every thing, a beauty that will be observed. The stump of an old oak is a very landscape, with rugged Alpine steeps bursting through forests of verdant mosses, with some pale, denuded, branchless lichen like a scathed oak, creeping'pp the sides or crowning the summits. Ram- bling with unfettered grace, the tendrils of the briony (tames communis), fes. toon with its brilliant berries, green, yellow, red, the slender sprigs of the hazel or the thorn ; it ornaments their plainness, and receives a support its own feebleness denies. The agaric with all its hues, its shades, its elegant variety of forms, expands its cone sprinkled with the freshness of the morning : a transient fair, a child of decay, that s' sprang up in a night, and will perish in a night." The squirrel, agile with life and timidity, gambling round die root of an ancient beech, its base overgrown with the dewberry (rebus canius) blue with unsullied fruit, impeded in his frolic sports, half angry, darts up the silvery boleagain, to peep and wonder at the strange intruder upon his haunts. The jay springs up, and screaming, tells of danger to her brood : the noisy tribe repeat the call, are hus.d, and leave us. The loud laugh of the wood- pecker, joyous and vacnnt ; aki e hammering of the nuthatch (s Eitroprea) cleaving its prize in the chin l of some dry bough ; the humble bee, torpid on the disc of the purple thistle, jest lifts a limb to pray forbearance of injury, to ask for peace, and bids us' :.

' " Leave him, leave him,to repose."

The cinquefoil, or the vetch; with one lingering bloom yet appears, and we note it for its loneliness. Spreading on the light foliage of the fern, dry and mature, the spider has fixed her toils, and motionless in the midst watches her expected prey, every thread and mesh beaded with clew trembling with the zephyr's breath. Then falls the "sere and yellow leaf," parting from its spray without 'a breeze, tinkling in the boughs, and rustling scarce audibly along, rests at-our feet, and tells us that we part too. All these are distinctive symbols of the season, marked in the sobriety and silence of the hour, and form perhaps a deeper impression on the mind than any afforded by the %erg dant promises, the vivacities of spring, or the gay profuse luxuriance of sum- mer.—Journal of a Naturalist.

MOTIVES TO MIGRATION IN Bines.-g-The passage to our shores is a long and a dangerous one, and some imperative motive for it must exist ; and, until facts manifest the reason, we may, perhaps without injury to the cause of research; conjecture for what objects these perilous transits are made. We know that all young creatures require particularly compounded nutriment during their infant state ; and nature, as far as *e are acquainted with it, has made in every instance provision for a supply of fitting aliment. In many instances, where the removal of station could not be conveniently accomplished, instinct has' been given the parent to provide the fitting aliment for its new- born young. .,.Thus insects, in some cases, store their cells with food ready for the animation of their progeny ; in others, place their eggs in such situa- tions as will afford it when they are hatched. The manunalia, at lean the quadrupeds belonging to this claSs, which could least conveniently more their station, have supplies given them of a milky secretion for this purpose. Birds have nothing of this nature, and make no provision for their young; but they of all creatures, except fishes, can seek what may be required in distant stations with most facility. A sufficiency of food for the adult parent-may be found in every climate, yet the aliment necessary for its Offs' spring may not. Countries and even counties produce insects that differ, If not in species, at least in numbers ; and many young birds we cannot suc- ceed in rearing, or do it very partially, by reason of ignorance of the requisite food. Every one who has made the attempt, well knows the variety of expedients he has resorted to, of boiled meats, bruised seeds, hard eggs, boiled rice, and twenty other subtances that nature never presents, in order to find a diet that will nourish them: but Mr. Montagu's failure in being able to igise the young of the cirl bunting, until he discovered that they required grasshoppers, is a sufficient instance of the manifest necessity there is For a peculiar food in one period of the life of birds ; and renders it pro- bable, that to obtain a certain aliment, this willow wren and others of the insect and fruitleeding birds, direct their flight to distant regions, and is the principal cause of their migrations—Journal of a Naturalist.