Note 16 — LITERARY NOTICES.

Since the above was in type, we have met, in the scientific deliberations of the 'Mudfog Association,' reported by the humorous 'Boz,' in the last number of 'Bentley's Miscellany,' with the remarks of two members greatly prone to these 'figures of speech.' They are too characteristic to be omitted here. The one stated, that he 'had found that the total number of small carts and barrows engaged in dispensing provisions to cats and dogs in the metropolis, was one thousand seven hundred and forty-three. The average number of skewers delivered daily with the provender, by each cart or barrow, was thirty-six. Now multiplying the number of skewers so delivered, by the number of barrows, a total of sixty-two thousand seven hundred and forty-eight skewers daily, would be obtained. Allowing that, of these sixty-two thousand seven hundred and forty-eight skewers, the odd two thousand seven hundred and forty-eight were accidentally devoured with the meat, by the most voracious of the animals supplied, it followed that sixty thousand skewers per day, or the enormous number of twenty-one millions nine hundred thousand skewers annually, were wasted in the kennels and dust-holes of London, which, if collected and warehoused, would in ten years' time afford a mass of timber more than sufficient for the construction of a first-rate vessel of war for the use of Her Majesty's Navy, to be called the 'Royal Skewer,' and to become, under that name, the terror of all the enemies of England!' This speaker was followed by an amateur philanthropist, of kindred parts, who had ascertained, from authentic data, 'that the total number of legs belonging to the manufacturing population of a town in Yorkshire, was, in round numbers, forty thousand, while the total number of chair and stool legs in their houses was only a fraction over thirty thousand, which, upon the very favorable average of three legs to a seat, yielded only ten thousand seats in all. From this calculation, it would appear—not taking wooden or cork legs into the account, but allowing two legs to every person—that ten thousand individuals, (one half of the whole population,) were either destitute of legs at all, or passed the whole of their leisure time in sitting upon boxes!'