econd when and where each of the planets may be seen in
the heavens at any minute for the next three years. The current number
of the Nautical Almanack is for the Year of Grace 1853.

In this quiet sanctuary, then, the winds are made to register their own
course and force, and the rain to gauge its own quantity as it falls;
the planets are watched to help the mariner to steer more safely over
the seas; and the heavens themselves are investigated for materials from
which their future as well as their past history may be written.

RAPID GROWTH OF AMERICA.

Every one who visits America has something to say of the rapidity with
which towns spring up in the West. Sir Charles Lyell, however, mentions
some facts which remind us very forcibly how close to our own times was
the settlement of the first English colony upon the continent. At
Plymouth he sees the tombs of the first pilgrims, who came out in the
Mayflower. Some of the houses which they built of brick brought from
Holland, are still remaining, with their low rooms and paneled walls. In
some private houses he saw many venerated heir-looms, kept as relics of
the first settlers; among others, an antique chair of carved wood, which
came over in the Mayflower, and which still retains the marks of the
staples which fixed it to the floor of the cabin. He also saw a chest,
or cabinet, which had belonged to Peregrine White, the first child born
in the colony. Part of the rock upon which the pilgrim fathers landed
has been removed to the centre of the town, and, with the names of
forty-two of their number inscribed upon it, inclosed within an iron
railing. This is the American _Roll of Battle Abbey_. But to return to
Peregrine White, the first child born in the colony: Colonel Perkins,
the munificent founder of the asylum for the blind, where we found our
friend Laura Bridgman, informed Sir Charles Lyell, in 1846, "that there
was but one link wanting in the chain of personal communication between
himself and Peregrine White." White was known to a man of the name of
Cobb, whom Colonel Perkins visited, in 1807, with some friends, who
still survive. This Cobb remembered when there were many Indians near
Plymouth; the inhabitants of the town frequently firing a cannon to
frighten them, to which cannon the Indians gave the name of "Old
Speakum." So that, in this case, one link is sufficient to connect men
now alive with the first whites born in New England, and with the tim