Littell's Living Age/Volume 131/Issue 1688/Miscellany
It is to be supposed that the Old and New Testaments are a good deal read in this country, and yet there seems to be no little indistinctness in many minds as to what is in them and what is not. It is not uncommon to hear statements both of fact and doctrine solemnly affirmed to be contained in Scripture, for which, when chapter and verse is sought, the real authority turns out to be either Milton or Watts's hymns. On the other hand, it is said that a candidate indiscreetly quoting the New Testament on the hustings was greeted with the comment, "Bravo, Shakespeare." So, if a weekly contemporary is to be believed, one of the leaders in the late disturbance at Bristol denied that the New Testament contained any mention of St. Bartholomew. And this, whether true or not, is at least possible; for the best historian of Scotland, in his first edition, set down that apostle in a list of "saints not mentioned in Scripture." So Mr. Buckle commented at some length on the words "hell hath enlarged herself," mistaking them for the literal statement of a Scotch Presbyterian divine, instead of the oriental imagery of the prophet Isaiah. At Bristol, indeed, it is not at all clear whether the adoration of the magi is not looked on as something for which there is no scriptural warrant. To be sure it would be hard to find scriptural warrant for the royal character of Caspar, Melchior, and Balthacar, or for the blackness of the last of the three. But it may be well to have it understood that the magi in a vaguer shape are in the book, and St. Bartholomew also; and, on the other hand, that many curious details which are popularly believed on the authority of "Paradise Lost" are certainly not to be found there. Pall Mall Gazette.
Bread. — Bread contains 80 nutritious parts in 100; meal, 34 in 100; French beans, 92 in 100; common beans, 89 in 100; peas, 93 in 100; lentils, 94 in 100; cabbages and turnips, the most aqueous of all the vegetables compared, produce only 8 lb. of solid matter in 100 lb.; carrots and spinach produce 14 lb. in the same quantity; whilst 100 lb. of potatoes contain 25 lb. of dry substance. From a general estimate it results that 1 lb. of good bread is equal to 2 1-2 lb. or 3 lb. of potatoes; that 75 lb. of bread and 30 lb. of meat may be substituted for 300 lb. of potatoes. The other substances bear the following proportions: 4 parts of cabbage to 1 of potatoes; 3 parts of turnips to 1 of potatoes; 2 parts of carrots and spinach to 1 of potatoes; and about 3 1-2 parts of potatoes to 1 of rice, lentils, beans, French beans, and dry peas.