BERTHA’S
VISIT TO HER UNCLE
IN
ENGLAND.

IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
MDCCCXXX.
LONDON:
Printed by W. Clowes,
Stamford-street.

BERTHA’S VISIT.

April 1st.—The little buds of pear blossoms, which I told you had enlarged so much, have this day blown out completely. They are, I do think, a curiosity. They have been now about two months in water, but they had lain dry so long before, that one might have thought no life remained in them. The horse-chesnut leaves, which first came out, begin to droop; but on one of the twigs there is a nice young shoot, at least two inches long, which looks bright and fresh.

The lilac buds, I am sorry to say, have withered; but some of the ash leaves have opened out finely: three of them, however, were curiously twisted, and filled up with a cottony substance, which on examination was found to contain a little greenish insect. Mary thinks it is the aphis fraxina. What a long time the eggs must have remained there, for I do not think an aphis could have found out this branch in my room.

2d, Sunday.—Deuteronomy, the title of the fifth book of the Pentateuch, is derived, I find, from two Greek words, which signify the second law, or rather the repetition of the law. Mishnah, the name the Jews give it, has nearly the same meaning. “Moses, in this book,” said my uncle, “not only recapitulates the laws he had already ordained, but makes several explanatory additions, and enforces the whole by the most earnest and impressive appeals to the gratitude, the hopes, and the fears of the people. To them it is principally addressed, as most of what particularly related to the priests is omitted; and as it was drawn up in the last year of their abode in the wilderness, we may suppose that it was intended as a compendium for the benefit of the new generation, who had not been present at the first promulgation of the law.

“It is remarkable that, in the preceding books, Moses speaks of himself in the third person; but in Deuteronomy he drops the assumed character of an historian, and addresses himself to the nation in the animated language of a prophet, and with the authority of their chieftain and lawgiver. He begins by reminding them of the many circumstances since their departure from Horeb, in which they had experienced the Divine favour; and then contrasts the success and the victories that had marked their progress, with the disobedience and ingratitude that had provoked the Divine wrath. He frequently alludes to his own guilty conduct, and to the inexorable decree by which he was debarred from accompanying them to that land of promise, for which he had so zealously toiled. He dwells on every circumstance that could improve their hearts, and earnestly enjoins the succeeding judges of Israel to do strict justice, and to inculcate the principles of obedience and piety. He rehearses the commandments which he had delivered to the people direct from God; and exhorts them by every possible argument to fulfil the terms of that covenant, which the Lord had made with them. While he affectionately urges their future obedience, and severely reproaches their past misconduct, he loses no opportunity of unfolding the glorious attributes of Jehovah, and dwells on His mercy and compassion, and on His promised blessings. He then enters into a new covenant with the people; which includes that previously made at Horeb, and ratifies all the assurances long before given to Abraham and his descendants.

“The historical part of Deuteronomy contains a period of only two months; and concludes the life of Moses that truly great man and faithful servant of the Most High. His parting words to the people whom he had so long and so anxiously governed, were expressed in a hymn that is pre-eminent for the beauty and strength of its composition. It briefly but pathetically reiterates his warning exhortations, and ends with a repetition of the particular blessings promised to each tribe. His race being now run, we are told by the writer who finished this book, that Moses retired to the top of Mount Nebo, from whence he was permitted to behold the land which the Lord had declared the seed of Abraham should inherit; and he there died in the 120th year of his age, and in the year 2552 of the world.”

The coming of Messiah is more explicitly foretold in Deuteronomy, my uncle says, than in any other book of the Pentateuch; and the prophecies of that great event, as well as of many other circumstances in the history of the Jews, have been so fully and minutely realized, that they completely demonstrate the divine inspiration of Moses.

3d.—Besides the rocks which compose our five grand formations, there is another series, the trap formation, or overlying rocks; so called, because they are found in various places lying on almost every rock, from granite even to chalk. They sometimes traverse the other rocks in veins or dykes, and are sometimes found in immense shapeless masses, but never regularly stratified. It is evident from these facts, my uncle says, that their origin must be more recent than those rocks on which they repose; yet they are quite free from all organic remains—none, either animal or vegetable, having yet been found in any rock of this class in England, nor, he believes, in any part of the world.

These circumstances have given rise to much discussion as to the original formation of these trap rocks, whether by fire or by water; but that is a subject on which my uncle will not yet allow us to touch. Some species of this family have the appearance of crystallization; green-stone trap, for instance, has large distinct crystals of felspar; in others, every trace of distinct crystals vanishes, and the whole assumes a dull earthy appearance.

The famous basaltic rocks, of which there are such singular specimens in Scotland and Ireland, belong to this family; but I shall be able to tell you much more about them in a few months, my dear mamma, for my uncle says it will be necessary for him to visit Ireland, and he proposes to take us all with him to see the Giants’ Causeway. You will be surprised at this; but pray do not be alarmed; I assure you there is no danger now from the wild Irish. My uncle has been there already, and from what he says, I think some parts of that country must be very interesting. I am so full of the idea of our Irish travels that I can write no more to-day.

5th.—I have had another long walk to-day with Miss Perceval, and, therefore, another charming conversation. The infinite variety in the vegetable kingdom was our chief subject.

“Plants,” she said, “have not been thrown at random over the surface of the globe; in every region, we find those which are best adapted to each particular situation. Every climate, and every soil, has some peculiarity which influences its plants; and every plant seems to be subservient to some great and important object. From the brilliant profusion of vegetation in some countries, down to the stunted lichen, which just colours the rocks in others, every change points out the beneficence of the Creator; and those who endeavour to comprehend this beautiful order, and who trace these arrangements to the general system of Providence, can alone enjoy the study of botany in its full extent.”

She then told me a great deal about this distribution of plants, and mentioned many of the circumstances which appear either to fit them for the different regions of the earth, or to render them useful in supplying the local wants of the inhabitants. She began with the low plants whose small, close-set leaves resist the intense cold of high latitudes, or of stormy mountains; and tracing the gradual increase in the size as well as in the number of native plants through all the intermediate climates, she ended with the great stems, gigantic leaves, and splendid flowers of the torrid zone.

“A similar change,” she added, “may be observed in those adjective races of plants which depend upon others for support and protection. Instead of the dwarf mosses and lichens which clothe the bark of trees in colder countries, the luxuriant parasites between the tropics may be almost said to animate their trunks. Delicate flowers spring from the roots of the chocolate and calabash trees; and amidst the abundance of flowers and fruits, and the confusion of parasites and climbing plants, the traveller is at a loss to determine to what stem the leaves and blossoms belong. Humboldt describes a species of aristolochia, whose flowers are four feet in circumference; but Sir Stamford Raffles discovered a flower belonging to a parasite plant in the island of Sumatra, that was nearly ten feet in circumference. He brought home an exact model of it, which is now in the apartments of the Horticultural Society, and which your uncle told me he saw and measured when he was last in London. It has five petals of a deep red colour, and of a very solid fleshy substance, from a quarter of an inch in thickness at their outer lip to almost an inch at their base; and he understood that when the flower was first cut, it weighed fifteen pounds. The nectarium is so large and deep that he thinks it would hold eight pints of water; and the whole diameter of this giant flower he found three feet and two inches.”

I interrupted her to ask the name of this wonderful plant.

“It has been justly called, after its lamented discoverer, the Rafflesia. A model was an excellent method of making us acquainted with its appearance; for the northern nations can have but a faint idea of the majestic forms of tropical vegetation from mere drawings and descriptions; and still less can they judge of them from the sickly plants in our stoves and greenhouses.”

This is just what I have myself thought a hundred times, mamma. I then asked her about the Cactus tribe, of which we have so many singular-looking species in Brazil.

“It is, indeed,” she replied, “a most grotesque family; some with their round backs and spines resembling a hedgehog, while others appear like the pipes of an organ rising into long channelled columns. They are almost entirely confined to the New World, one species only being a native of the south of Europe. This is the C. opuntia, or prickly pear, which bears on the edge of its leaf an agreeably flavoured fruit. The melo-cactus has been named by St. Pierre the Vegetable Spring of the Desert: its shape is spherical, and though half concealed in the sand of the parched plains in South America, the animals, who are always tormented by thirst, discover it at a great distance, and notwithstanding its formidable prickles, greedily suck the refreshing juice with which it abounds.”

From the rich vegetation of America, we went to New Holland, and she told me that though but little of the interior has been yet explored, numbers of vegetables totally different from those of America, though in the same degrees of latitude, have been found there. “They seem to have quite a separate character; and those that are suited to the nourishment of man, are as rare in that country as they are common in America. The forests of New Holland, where the axe has never been heard, and where vegetation extends itself without restraint, are described as having a very singular appearance; the trees crumbling with age, and covered with mosses and lichens.—Among their most beautiful productions are the mimosæ, the superb metrosideros, and the whole tribe of eucalyptus; many of which are from one hundred and sixty feet to one hundred and eighty feet in height.”

I asked Miss Perceval whether South America or India had the greatest number of plants. “India, I believe,” said she; “its inhabitants have been so long in some degree civilized that, in addition to its native vegetation, many plants must have been naturalized, and many varieties produced by culture; and India exclusively boasts of the perfume of the most precious spices.

“But there is another part of the world which we must not forget,” continued Miss Perceval, “where nature seems to delight in multiplying the species belonging to each genus. I allude to the Cape of Good Hope, where the silvery lustre of the innumerable families of the proteaceæ gives to the woods an appearance quite unlike those of either Europe or America. The heaths are almost infinite in variety; the geraniums are scarcely less so, and the gladiolus, the ixia, and the whole order of irideæ, decorate the fields and thickets of the Cape, with an exuberance unknown in any other country.

“To form a just view of vegetable nature, we must observe it in those countries where the ground has not been turned by the hand of man. Few such spots are now to be found in Europe, except on the summits of the Alps and Pyrenees. There mountains piled on mountains, rising above the clouds, form so many gardens, furnished with a vegetation of their own, and the character of which changes with the temperature at each degree of elevation. The same gradation takes place on all other lofty mountains; and in Frazer’s account of the Himālā chain, which separates Thibet from India, there is a long list of English plants that he found there, at the altitude which corresponds with our temperate climate; such as horse-chesnut, birch and apricot, strawberries, raspberries, lily of the valley, and many others; and still higher up, he even saw the famous Iceland lichen.”

6th.—Yesterday Mr. Lumley and Mr. Maude dined here; and in conversing about the new books which Mr. Maude has just brought from London, he spoke very highly of Sir John Malcolm’s “Sketches of Persia.” He mentioned several interesting anecdotes which he found there; and to entertain Wentworth, he related some of the exploits of Roostem and his wonderful horse Reksh; of which you shall have the following as a specimen.

“All countries have their fabulous heroes, and Persia had her Hercules in the renowned Roostem. He undertook the deliverance of his sovereign who was a prisoner in Hyrcania, and set out alone on his good horse Reksh. Fatigued by his first day’s journey, he lay down to sleep, having turned his horse into a neighbouring meadow. There Reksh was attacked by a furious lion: but after a short contest, he struck his antagonist to the ground with a blow from his fore-hoof, and completed the victory by seizing the lion’s throat with his teeth. When Roostem awoke, he was more enraged than surprised that Reksh, unaided, should have risked such an encounter. ‘Hadst thou been slain,’ said he, ‘how should I have accomplished my enterprise?’”

This story produced a grand discussion—some doubted the power of the horse to strike such a creature as a lion to the earth. Wentworth quoted different books of travels to prove that horses always trembled with instinctive dread at the sight of a lion; and even Mr. Maude, highly as he estimated the courage of a horse, did not seem to think him capable of such a noble effort. I thought to myself that it was perfectly suited to the other fabulous adventures of Roostem.

My uncle waited to hear everybody’s opinion, and then said, “I will tell you a singular circumstance which an old friend of mine witnessed, when he was at the King of Sardinia’s court, at Turin, about forty years ago. Perhaps it may convince some of my young sceptics, not of the truth of Roostem’s exploits, but at least of the strength and spirit of horses. The king had a remarkably fine charger, but so untameably vicious, that, after having killed two grooms, he was ordered by his majesty to be shot. It was suggested, however, that as he was to die, it would be a good opportunity of putting to the test the bravery and vigour of a horse whose spirits had not been subdued by being domesticated; and the king readily consented that he should be turned loose into a well-secured arena, along with a ferocious lion that belonged to the royal menagerie. Arrangements were soon made; and both these animals were allowed to enter at the same moment through opposite doors. They approached a few steps—then stopped as if to take a survey of each other—and again they advanced, but very slowly, till almost close. There was now a pause for a moment, after which the lion stooped a little as if meditating an upward spring, in order to fix his dreadful claws in the neck of his adversary; but the horse seized the opportunity, and making a slight but deliberate plunge with one leg in advance, he struck the lion on the head, and with such fatal force as to lay him dead at his feet.”

“The remarkable pause,” said Mr. Lumley, “which was made by those two noble creatures is, I believe, the practice of all combative animals when going to make their onset. I cannot give you better authority than that of our highly valued friend, Major R., who you know was not less remarkable in India for his scientific knowledge and military talent, than for his intrepidity. In the course of service he had frequently been sent with a detachment, to drive away from the wheat-fields and jungles the tigers that often prowl about the camps or even enter the villages; and he bears terrible marks to this day of the danger of such an employment. He has lately told me, that more than once he has owed his safety to that moment of observation, when the animal seemed as if collecting his force; for, as it always took place at a very short distance, he seized that favourable pause, while his foe was stationary and steady, to take a deliberate aim at a mortal spot.”

7th.—In describing the changes that have been produced by the action of the deluge, my uncle has often dwelt on the vast force of large bodies of water, when moving with rapidity. He supposes that most of the vallies have been scooped out by those means, and he divides them into two classes: longitudinal vallies, or those which lie parallel to the chains of hills; and the transverse vallies, which intersect the chains. Caroline and I frequently talk over what he tells us, and we agreed to ask him in our walk this morning, why the violence that tore out the vallies did not disturb the hills at the same time.

“Those mighty currents,” he replied, “naturally made their first impression on some weak part;—the fragments that were thus detached assisted in excavating a channel as they rushed forward; and the more the water was confined to a channel, the more powerful was its action. But the hills have also been disturbed more or less; for the upper strata appear to have been swept off from extensive ranges that they once covered. This is proved by the separated hills, which geologists call outliers; and which, having the lower strata exactly continuous with those of the adjacent range of mountains, but wanting the superior strata, shew that the same convulsion which broke through and carried away the connecting parts, must also have torn off their summits. Another proof is the great quantity of their debris, or broken fragments, which are found scattered over parts of the country far distant from their original positions. In the gravel beds near London, I have found pieces of basalt, though that species of rock is not known to exist within a hundred miles of the county of Middlesex.

“These fragments,” he continued, “must, therefore, have been transported by some agent that was equal to tearing up and carrying away the parent rock; and when it is considered that all gravel must have had its edges and angles rounded by the rubbing of stone against stone, you will perceive that this could only have been effected by the violent and long-continued action of currents of water; in short, by the tremendous surge and confused motion which accompanied a general deluge. That this deluge has been comparatively recent is clear from the fact, that fragments of primitive and secondary rocks are often found promiscuously mixed in the same bed of gravel. In one large bed, near Lichfield, may be found fragments of almost every rock in England, from chalk to granite; and many of the pebbles contain organic remains.”

We spent a couple of hours wandering up and down some of the vallies in the neighbourhood; and though a cultivated country is not the best theatre for a geological lecture, my uncle contrived to shew us so many corresponding circumstances on the opposite sides of one of the transverse vallies, that it was quite evident to both of us that the ridge had been formerly uninterrupted. We saw also many examples of the gravel he had mentioned, all more or less rounded and smoothed, and containing specimens of very different series. This was a delightful walk; for though one may acquire very fine ideas at home of the operations of nature, there is nothing like seeing them in their proper places.

As we returned home, my uncle told us that this water-worn debris, which covers many parts of the earth, is named diluvium, from that great and universal catastrophe by which it appears to have been formed. This name is meant to distinguish it from the more modern debris daily produced by rivers and torrents, to which the name of alluvium is given.

“Diluvial gravel is highly interesting,” he said, “not only as it assists in explaining the causes of the present state of the globe, but as it even indicates the direction of the great currents of the deluge. For instance—when, within a few miles of the neighbouring town of Gloucester, we see rounded pebbles derived from rocks, which are found only in the mountains of the north-west of the island, we may be sure that a branch of that current must have rushed to the southward. It has, therefore, been a favourite object of some geologists to trace these travelled fragments to their native masses; and to discover the apertures in the mountain barriers through which they had been swept.

“When the intervening country is nearly flat, there is no difficulty in ascribing the removal of the debris to the currents of which we have been speaking. But it is frequently found in situations that are separated by deep vallies from the parent hills from which it appears to have been torn. For instance, fragments of the primitive rocks that compose the Alps are found scattered on the sides of the Jura mountains, though, between those two ranges, the valley that contains the lake of Geneva is interposed. On the low hills, near Bath, we find the flints belonging to the chalk formation, though several deep vallies intervene. Many other examples might be given; and the way in which geologists obviate the difficulty is, by supposing that one set of currents tore off and transported these fragments, and that a subsequent rush of the waters excavated the vallies.”

My uncle ended by saying, that when the weather was more settled he would shew us a part of the country at no great distance from Fernhurst, which would make us more clearly comprehend this interesting subject.

8th.—The wonderful way in which the use of tobacco has spread into every country of the world, in less than three centuries since its first discovery in America, happened to be mentioned in conversation the day Mr. Maude spent here; and we were all amused by his account of the mode of smoking in Turkey. The sumptuous pipes in fashion there are so unlike the little cigars in everybody’s mouth in Brazil, that perhaps his description of them may entertain both you and Marianne.

The Turkish pipe, which is called a chibouque, consists of the tube, the bowl, and the mouthpiece, so that they are all easily separated and cleaned. The manufacturers of the tubes are seen at work every day in the shops of Constantinople, where there is a bazaar, or street of shops, entirely for their sale. They are made from the young straight stems of cherry tree or jessamine, on which the bark is carefully preserved; they are from two to six feet in length, and are nicely bored with a wire auger. The nursing these stems during their growth is often the support of a whole family, and requires a good deal of attention. To prevent the bark from splitting in the heat of the day, each stem is swathed with wet bandages, and the least tendency to become crooked is counteracted, either by a judicious application of the bandage, or by more copiously watering the plant on one side than on the other. A perfectly straight stem, with a uniformly shining bark, is, however, a great rarity, and sells for about two guineas.

The bowls are made of a clay called kefkil, found in Asia Minor, and in Greece. In its native state, it is soft and white, but when baked, it becomes hard; and, unlike the English pipeclay, turns to a black or red colour. These bowls are made of all sizes; the Turks do not like them very large; but those exported to Germany, where they are polished and finished with great elegance, are as large as a man’s hand. Mr. Maude says he was astonished by the piles of bowls in every shop of the bazaar.

The bowls are frequently ornamented with gilding, and the tubes with embroidery and jewels; but it is on the value of the mouthpiece that a Turk prides himself. None but the miserably poor would use anything but amber; and, though the common sort are cheap enough to suit all ranks, Mr. M. has seen some which have cost a hundred pounds, not from their size, but from some favourite tinge in their appearance.

“With such a pipe,” he says, “and with Saloniki tobacco, a Turk is supremely happy. Cross-legged on his Persian carpet, he enjoys it the whole day, and except to call for more tobacco, or for a cup of coffee, he seldom opens his mouth, as the smoke is emitted from time to time in long cloudy columns from his nose. Pipes take the lead in every visit, and are preliminaries to every conversation. The most flattering compliment a Turk can pay to his guest is to present him with his chibouque warm from his lips; and I shall never forget the mixed look of indignation and contempt which a Pasha of three tails threw at an Englishman, who unwarily wiped the superb amber mouthpiece before he introduced it between his own lips.”

9th, Sunday.—“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down and when thou risest up.”—Deut. vi.

After reading the whole chapter, my uncle called our attention to the above verses, and said, “The characteristic excellence of the Mosaical law consists in the inward principle on which obedience to it was founded; in other words, on the love of God. This is fully unfolded in the admirable commentary of Moses on the commandments, where we see that the love that is expected from us must be accompanied with the full vigour of our feelings; and that it must be daily excited by a constant and grateful sense of the long-suffering and forbearance we have already experienced; of the blessings we still enjoy; and of the promises held out to us by a God of mercy, of goodness, and truth. This is the love which should be the principle of all our motives, and the guide of all our actions. This is the love which expands our hearts, not only into grateful adoration towards the Author of our being, but into benevolence towards our fellow-creatures. ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself; I am the Lord.’ This emphatic conclusion shews that we are bound to do so for the Lord’s sake; and throughout the Mosaical law you will find that the love of God was made the basis of the love of our neighbour, as well as of all our other duties. In the same manner our Saviour declares that on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets; that is, the whole religion and morality of the Old Testament.

“It appears,” continued my uncle, “to be peculiar to the Jewish and Christian dispensations to have solemnly laid down the principle of the love of God, as a ground of human action: for though some wise and excellent heathens had certain elevated ideas of the Deity, none seem to have inculcated the love of the Deity as a governing motive of human conduct. This Moses did most expressly; and Christ not only adopted and ratified what the law had already declared, but singled it out and gave it pre-eminence over the whole body of precepts which formed the old institution.

“Let this noble principle then be pre-eminent in our minds; let us, who enjoy so many social comforts at home, and who have been happily taught to behold in our walks the beauties of this beneficent creation; let us, who can lie down to repose in health and security, and who can rise up refreshed to perform our duties; let us, my children, fill our hearts with the love of God; and let it purify our thoughts, direct our words, and govern our actions.”

10th.—I find great amusement in watching the young birds that are now coming out, and in observing the tender care with which their parents feed them. There are several nests in the tall trees near my window; and in a thick bush in my quarry garden, a favourite robin, who used to hop on my hand and feed there all the winter, has four young ones: I have named them after Mrs. Trimmer’s dear little red-breast family, which every child loves.

Robins seem less afraid than most birds of the human haunts; and my aunt says she has a friend, in whose bedchamber a pair actually built their nests, and brought up their young till it was time to fly away. The lady used to leave her window open all day; and often sat there to watch their manœuvres and to listen to their sweet song. They seemed to be aware of their comfortable quarters, and fiercely attacked any other birds that intruded themselves.

She also mentioned a singular circumstance of a wren, a bird that is never very familiar. A gentleman having occasion to repair some paling that was attached to an old hollow yew tree, the workmen discovered a nest in a small hole in the stem, with nine little unfledged birds. He was fortunately on the spot, and had it placed on the window sill of his study. The old wrens soon followed; and even when it was taken into the room or held in the hand, they boldly did their duty to their offspring. They repeated their visits for sixteen hours daily, coming every two or three minutes with fresh supplies of food, which the little things greedily devoured. When this was told, I well remembered having heard grandpapa tell it of himself long, long ago.

This season, I suppose, must be remarkably forward, for we have had quantities of primroses and other flowers already, though Warton says of the first of April,

Scarce the hardy primrose peeps
From the dark dell’s entangled steeps.

I should tire you with the long list of leaves or flowers opening or already burst out; but I have kept a very exact account of them in my naturalist’s calendar; and when you come home, mamma, you shall see it, and we shall be able to compare it with the advance of spring in some other year. Spring is really delightful; the great change from winter is so animating, and so full of interest to the gardener and farmer.

My hyacinth and jonquil beds are in great beauty; and, without vanity, my garden looks so well, that not only my cousins but even my aunt and uncle congratulate me on my industry and success.

Franklin is very busy now in every part of his farm; yet he pays constant attention to the workmen who are building his house, which is already far advanced: he says it is inconceivable how much waste he prevents by keeping his eye on them. Little Charles is beginning to be useful; his understanding is quick, and he already speaks plain English. The Franklins keep him always with them, without seeming to watch him; in hopes of breaking the habit of pilfering. His relations are not inclined to take him, so that my aunt will have a full opportunity of trying her benevolent experiment.

11th.—Caroline and I had a long walk, and a long conversation to-day with my uncle, about the alluvial changes on the surface of the earth. I wish I could tell you all he said; I can only give you a little sketch of it.

“Since the last great and general convulsion produced by the deluge, many gradual changes have occurred, and are every day occurring, from causes which we may easily trace. We see destruction going on in one place, and new formations in another; we find headlands and cliffs undermined and washed away by the incessant action of the waves; and we as often find the materials, thus carried off, thrown up again, and forming either extensive tracts of new land along the less exposed parts of the coast, or new banks and shoals in the adjoining sea. The action of frost and snow, and rain, have all a similar tendency: ice, by swelling in the rifts and crevices of the rocks, detaches small portions; the rain washes away the finer parts; the melting snow, which forms the winter torrent, carries down the larger fragments, and, dashed against each other, their angles are rounded off. The looser materials of the soil, through which these torrents pass, are still more easily swept away; and in this manner, year after year, the surface of the mountain is conveyed into the valley. As the torrent reaches the level ground, its rapidity lessens, the larger fragments proceed no farther, and only the earth and sand reach the river, where they subside to the bottom, and form alluvial flats, and push out the deltas which may be seen at the mouths of almost every river. Some of the prodigious deltas made by the great rivers of the continent, I think I mentioned to you in one of our earliest conversations, as well as the great deposit of new land on the coast of Italy.

“Fortunately, over a large part of the earth’s surface, these wasting causes have no influence; the green sward which clothes it is an effectual protection. The barrows of the ancient Britons, though above two thousand years old, retain their original outline, and the fosse surrounding them is still distinct. Even on the sides of mountains, where the causes which I have described are always more or less in operation, still there is a degree at which further waste will be checked; the abrupt precipice may in time be broken down into a slope; but vegetation will creep up, and that slope will then be defended by its grassy coat.

“Even the mighty action of the sea has a similar tendency to impose a limit to its own ravages; for it wastes its fury in vain on the barrier of loose stones which it had beaten from the cliff that they now protect.

“On some coasts, however, the agency of the sea does produce an injurious change. Where the shore is low, and consists of a flat, sandy bottom, the sand is thrown up by the surf; at every reflux of the tide, it becomes partially dried; the winds blow it higher up, and thus ranges of sand-hills are formed parallel to the beach. They encroach on the land so rapidly, that districts, which a few years ago were inhabited, are now become desert plains of sand. This takes place on a large scale, in many parts of the world; even in Norfolk it has been found that the only means of arresting the progress of the sand is to plant thick hedges of furze. On the east coast of Scotland, much property was laid waste by this destructive enemy, whose advance was occasioned about a hundred years ago, by the imprudent removal of the trees and the bent-grass which grew on the sand-hills. The effects were so alarming, that an act of parliament was made in the reign of George II. to prohibit the destruction of that useful plant, the sea bent-grass, which Providence has kindly formed to grow in pure sand, and to keep it firm. The Dutch may be said to owe their existence to it, as its spreading matted root fixes the sand on those great dykes or embankments, which alone preserve the country from the inundations of the sea. This grass is called murah, in the Highlands; on the coast of Lincolnshire, signs; in Norfolk, matgrass; and by Linnæus, arundo arenaria. It has long, sharp-pointed leaves, and, fortunately, no cattle whatever will taste it. The sea eryngo and the creeping restharrow, contribute also to defend us against these almost irresistible sands.”

When we returned home, my uncle shewed me an extract of a letter from the unfortunate traveller Bowdich; containing an interesting account of a sandy plain in Madeira, about eighteen miles from Funchal. I must copy a part of it for my dear mama.

“From Caniçal, by following a rough track, on the margin of shallow cliffs of alternate tufa and basalt, for about a mile and a half, we reached a depression, more like a basin than a plain, and covered with a deep bed of sand. This sand has, in some degree, been fixed by the numerous branches of the forest-trees which it has enveloped, and which are spread over the surface as well as beneath it, like a net-work of roots. Both the branches and the trunks are encased in a thick hard sheath of agglutinated sand; and in some instances, the wood having entirely perished, the envelopes are found empty, like tubes. Most frequently, however, the wood is still found within, where it has become a hard petrified mass.

“The trunks which remain in their natural position, have been broken off about a foot above the surface of the sand: how far they reach beneath it I cannot say, but there were two or three as thick as my body. They all appear to belong to the same species of tree, though of what family I do not think our present knowledge of the comparative anatomy of timber is sufficiently advanced to determine.

“This deposit of sand extends about three-quarters of a mile in each direction; and as innumerable fossil marine shells are mixed with it, as well as imbedded in the envelopes, it must evidently have proceeded from an irruption of the sea, although it is bounded by hills several hundred feet high, on which there is no trace of sand.”

12th.—My aunt was so kind as to take Mary and me with her this morning, to pay a visit to Mrs. B., who has always many pretty curiosities to shew. Her cousin, who is captain of an East Indiaman, has a constant commission to bring her any thing that is interesting. Fortunately for us, he arrived a few weeks since, and has lately sent her a collection of Chinese drawings of flowers and insects, which are most beautifully coloured. They are, however, amusingly defective in regard to proportion; for some of the flowers are much diminished, while the insects upon them are represented of their natural size.

He brought her, also, a few stuffed birds; one of which, the adjutant bird, is such a prodigious creature, that I scarcely looked at the others. It measures, from the crown of the head to the foot, five feet two inches; from tip to tip of the wings, fourteen feet; and the other dimensions are proportionably great. Its general colour is black, or slate blue, though a few of the small feathers round the neck, and on part of the body, are white.

It is called the hurgill, in Bengal. They say that when alive it majestically stalks along, and looks like an Indian; and when seen near the mouths of rivers with extended wings, might be taken for a canoe. There is a curious superstition among the Indians, that the souls of the Brahmins possess these birds. They are very ravenous, and have a most capacious stomach, as well as a large craw, which hangs down the fore part of the neck like a pouch. The captain told Mrs. B., that in the pouch of one which was killed, a land tortoise ten inches long was found, and in the stomach, a cat; even a leg of mutton, or a litter of young kittens, are easily swallowed. He heard of one that had been caught when young: he was easily tamed, and being always fed in the hall, he became so familiar, that at dinner time he stood behind his master’s chair; but the servants were obliged to watch him, as sometimes he would snatch a whole fowl off the table. He used to roost among the high trees, from whence, even at two miles distance, he could spy dinner carrying across the yard, when, darting home, he regularly walked in with the last dish. As he stood near the dinner table, he appeared as if listening to the conversation, turning his head alternately to whoever spoke.

The most curious thing about this species is the pouch. Dr. Adam, of Calcutta, supposes that it helps to sustain the birds in their great flights in the air, and also assists them in the waters in searching after their prey. From the structure of their limbs they cannot swim; and it appears that they have the power of distending this bag with air when they go beyond their depth. He says, that in the month of October, when the sky is not obscured by a single cloud, it is a beautiful spectacle to observe hundreds of these birds performing their graceful evolutions at a vast height above the earth; with a telescope, however, he could not perceive whether the bag was distended.

This huge bird occupied so much of our visit, that I scarcely recollect any thing else that I saw.

13th.—My aunt has been reading to us several interesting particulars of the Hottentots, from Latrobe’s Journal of his visit to South Africa.

There is a striking difference, he remarks, in the conduct of the uncivilized, and of the Christian Hottentots. All those who have been converted by the Moravian missionaries, have learned some useful trade, and, when they like their employment, work very industriously. They are naturally kind-hearted and obliging; and Christianity has had such a happy effect on them, that they live at the settlement of Gnadenthal united as brethren amongst themselves, and very grateful to their teachers.

The Hottentots have fine voices; they are fond of music, and are easily taught to sing. “One morning,” Latrobe says, “at four o’clock, I was awakened by the sweet sound of Hottentot voices singing a hymn in the hall before my chamber door. They had learned from some of the missionaries, that it was my birth-day, and I was struck and affected by this mark of their regard; nor was their mode of expressing it confined to a morning song. They had dressed out my chair at the common table, with branches of oak and laurel; and even the school-children, in order not to be behind in these kind offices, having begged of their mistress to mark on a large white muslin handkerchief some English words expressive of their good will towards me, they managed to embroider them with a species of creeper called cat’s thorn, and fastened the muslin in front of a table, covered with a white cloth and decorated with festoons of field flowers. This table, on which stood five large bouquets, I found in my room, on returning from my walk. The whole arrangement did credit to their taste. The words were, ‘May success crown every action.’”

14th.—I asked my uncle yesterday, whether a considerable change has not been produced in the level of the ocean, by the vast quantity of materials, which he had told us were carried into it by the rivers, and washed away from the coast by the waves.

He replied, that it was a very natural question, and shewed that we reflected on what we had learned. “But,” said he, “though the quantity of materials which has for ages been accumulating in the sea must be vast, yet when compared with the capacity of the whole ocean, its disparity is so obvious, that it probably can have had no visible effect in elevating the general level of the water. I say the general level, because it is possible, that in the mouths of large rivers, and in narrow seas, it may have had some effect in raising the level of the flood tide; for the actual volume of water rolled in from the sea continues the same as it was formerly, but the space over which it has to diffuse itself being less deep and less broad, it must, therefore, force itself to a higher level. Other causes, however, may lead to the permanent rise of the sea in certain places; for instance, it is possible that the current which unceasingly rushes into the Mediterranean, may in the course of centuries have gradually widened the entrance; and consequently a greater quantity of water now pours in. This, combined with the deposits from the Rhone, the Po, the Nile, and other rivers, may, perhaps, account for the well known fact of the eastern end of that sea being now higher than it was formerly; many foundations of houses and other vestiges of buildings being visible there several feet under water.

“But none of these causes will account for the extensive submarine forests which have been discovered on several parts of the English coast, for example, in Lancashire, and in the Bristol Channel, near Bridgewater. In excavating the West India docks, in the Isle of Dogs, near London, a complete stratum of decayed hazel trees was found: the wood and bark were quite soft and decayed, but the nuts were in tolerable preservation. Your aunt, I believe, has some specimens of them, which she will readily shew you. The remains of the submarine forests of Lincolnshire were examined not very long ago, by a gentleman who has published a paper on the subject in the Philosophical Transactions, and if Caroline will fetch the volume for 1799, she and you may read his account.”

I shall make a few extracts from it here for Marianne’s benefit.

This gentleman, having learned that there were several sunken islets along the coast where the remains of trees could be seen, took the opportunity of a very low tide, to land on one of them, near the village of Sutton; and he found that it was a mass of roots, trunks, branches, and leaves of trees, intermixed with aquatic plants. An immense number of the stumps were still standing on their roots, which, as well as the bark of the branches, appeared almost as fresh as if they had been just cut; and in the bark of the birch, even the thin silvery membranes of the outer skin were discernible. The wood, on the contrary, was decomposed and soft: but he understood that the people of the country had often found very sound pieces of birch and oak of which they could make use. He remarked, that the trunks and thick branches were flattened, as if they had lain under the pressure of a heavy weight; which is observable also in the surturbrand or fossil wood of Iceland, and of the Feroe Islands. Above the matted branches, he found a thick bed of decayed leaves, which were scarcely distinguishable at first; but after soaking a little in water, the leaves of holly and of other indigenous trees were easily separated.

In a well that was digging in the neighbouring village of Sutton, a similar stratum of decayed wood and leaves had been cut through at the depth of sixteen feet, and, therefore, very nearly at the same level with that of the islets: it extends through all the eastern parts of Lincolnshire, and has been traced as far as Peterborough, more than fifty miles to the south-west of Sutton. The fisherman informed him that islets of the same kind are found as far north as Grimsby, on the Humber; so that this great subterraneous forest was nearly eighty miles in length; and as there can be little doubt of the woody islets along the coast having been a continuation of it, the breadth must also have been considerable.

Dr. Correa de Serra, who wrote this account, says that a most exact resemblance exists between maritime Flanders and the opposite low coast of England, both in elevation above the sea, and in the internal structure and arrangement of their soil. They contain similar organic remains of marine animals, as well as of tropical plants; and they each have a stratum of decayed trees and compressed vegetable matter below the present level of the sea. He, therefore, concludes that the two countries were once continuous; and instead of supposing that the sea is now higher than formerly, he gives it as his opinion, that this part of the earth’s surface has sunk below its ancient level. That the epoch at which this catastrophe took place, must have been in a very remote age, he thinks may be proved from the sixteen feet bed of soil, which now covers the submerged forest; and because it appears from historical records in the Academy of Brussels, that no change of that kind has happened in Flanders for more than two thousand years.

But the uncovering of the woody stratum in the Sutton islets by the action of the sea, he refers to a comparatively recent date. The people have a tradition that their parish church once stood on the spot where those islets are now; and it is very probable that before the skilful embankments were made which at present restrain the stormy inundations of the North Sea, the soil was gradually washed away by the waves, and the trees were thus left exposed.

When we had done reading the above, my uncle told us that he had himself visited the little hamlet of Sutton. The tides unfortunately were not low enough to expose the islets, or rather the sandbanks, which the Doctor mentions; but he saw a great number of the stumps and roots of the trees, which the country people had obtained at favourable opportunities. One fine oak stem had just been drawn on shore: it measured forty feet in length, and five feet in circumference; and the wood, though rather soft on the outside, was sound within, though all black. He cut off a few chips with his knife, and was so good as to give me one of them. So, mamma, if the stratum of earth which now covers this submarine forest was deposited there by the deluge, it is clear that the tree my uncle saw was antediluvian; and that the oak chip in my possession was of the same growth of timber as that of which the Ark was constructed.

16th, Sunday.—A question, that Wentworth asked, about the object and meaning of the prophecies contained in Deuteronomy, led to some observations of my uncle’s, which I will endeavour to give you.

“The prophecies of Moses increase in number and clearness towards the close of his writings. He appears to have discerned futurity with more exactness as he approached the end of his life. To be convinced of this, you have only to compare the records of history with his prediction of the successes as well as the dispersions and desolations of the Israelites; compare the rapid victories of the Romans, and the miseries sustained by his besieged countrymen, with his denunciations; and particularly compare his prophecies relative to the future condition of the Jewish nation, with their accomplishment which is still going on under your own observation, and which, indeed, may be called a standing miracle.”

“But are we certain that some of these distant prophecies have not been added in later times?” Wentworth said.

“I am glad that you have made that enquiry,” replied my uncle, “because it gives me an opportunity of shewing you how impossible it is that any such addition could have been made to the Pentateuch. In the fourth chapter of Deuteronomy are these words: ‘Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish aught from it.’

“This prohibition preserved these books from the slightest alteration; for it was considered so binding, that no copies were allowed to be made by any persons but the Scribes attached to the synagogue; and as the Jews were commanded to read portions of them every Sabbath day in their families, and as at certain times the whole ‘law’ was publicly read to the congregation, it is evident that any alteration must have been noticed. There is a remarkable proof of the fidelity with which that injunction was obeyed, in this fact; that the Samaritans have preserved the law of Moses to this day, as uncorrupted as the Jews themselves have done; although they were irreconcileable enemies, and though they have been exposed to all the changes and revolutions that can befall a nation during the long interval of two thousand four hundred years. No opportunity could have been more tempting than when the ten tribes separated from the house of David, and when each kingdom was zealously supported by a rival priesthood; yet both parties religiously preserved the books of the law, without changing a letter.

“From the Christian era down to this day, the Jews, though dispersed into every country of the globe, continue to read the books of Moses and the Prophets every Sabbath day, in the original Hebrew; and, however they may differ from us, or among themselves, in the interpretation of various expressions, they have always considered the strict preservation of the original text as the most important of their duties. Those books have now been translated into so many languages, and cited by so many authors, and have been the subject of so much discussion from the times of the Apostles, that it is absolutely impossible that any fraudulent change can have taken place since that period. I may add, that the books of the Old Testament were translated into Greek by the command of Ptolemy Philadelphus, about three centuries and a half before that period; and they have therefore been for upwards of two thousand years in the hands of heathens and sceptics, who would have been eager to detect any alteration that might have been attempted.

“It is, indeed, a most striking circumstance, that notwithstanding the many corruptions which the Israelites fell into while they had the sole custody of these books, no omissions should have been made in the copies, nor any attempts to suppress those parts of the law which bore directly on their misconduct; and I think we may safely infer, that it was the will of Him who had given the law, and who had inspired the prophecies, that they should remain an indestructible ‘memorial to all generations.’”

17th.—The more I learn from my uncle’s kind geological conversations, the more I see the necessity of acquiring some knowledge of mineralogy, in order to understand them. In the mean time, Caroline and I find even the general views he gives us so interesting, that we seldom miss an opportunity of leading him to the subject. This morning he told us, that the debris of the hills which accumulate in alluvial districts usually continue in the loose form of gravel or sand, or mud, or clay, in which they were deposited. “Their visible transformation,” he said, “into stone is of rare occurrence; in some circumstances, however, especially on the sea coast, we may perceive the consolidation of the sand and gravel into thin strata. If a stream, impregnated with oxide of iron, should empty itself on the beach, it acts as a cement, and the process goes on rapidly. The northern coast of Cornwall affords some examples of this sort of petrification at home; and abroad it may be seen on a much larger scale on the shores of Greece, Karamania, Sicily, and the West Indies. Abundance of sea shells and other organic remains are found in it; and at Guadaloupe a human skeleton was discovered in the beach, imbedded in a mass of that description.

“Some springs of water are so highly loaded with calcareous particles, that the sediment they deposit soon hardens into stone; and the stalactites which I shewed you are formed in a similar manner, in the caverns and fissures of all limestone countries. Those were very small specimens, but in some places, for instance in the celebrated grotto of Antiparos, one of the Greek islands, they are found of enormous magnitude, forming rows and clusters of columns, that reach from the top to the bottom of that great cavern. The water in slowly dripping through the rock becomes saturated with lime; as the drops exude from the crevices, or trickle down the stalactites already formed, they are exposed to the air; the watery part then evaporates, and the lime forms a hard stony crust; in some cases assuming the shape of small crystals.”

When we reached home, my uncle obligingly laid M. De Choiseul Gouffier’s voyage on the table for us; and we all read with astonishment his description of that wonderful cavern, which is a thousand feet long, and full of these curious productions. The stalagmites that grow upwards from the floor, are equally curious. My uncle explained to us, that when the quantity of water that trickles through the roof is more than can be evaporated from the surface of the stalactite, the remainder falls on the floor, where the same process occurs; and thus the upper and lower concretions proceed till they meet each other and form an entire column. In the middle of the widest part of the cavern there is a stalagmite of twenty feet in diameter and twenty-four in height; and on this superb natural altar, another French nobleman had mass celebrated by his chaplain to more than five hundred people who surrounded it. The cavern was lighted by a hundred large torches and four hundred lamps; and the splendour of this illumination, reflected by the concretions which hung from the roof, or which lined the sides, is described as producing a very magnificent effect.

18th.—It will not be my uncle’s fault if I do not pick up some information in this delightful house, for every day he tells us something new. He has just been describing the method of casting plate glass; and I hope some day to see the whole operation myself.

The furnace for melting the materials is about eighteen feet long, and it is surrounded by ovens for annealing the plates of glass when made, that is, for cooling them slowly. The pots in which the materials are melted, are made of a sort of tough clay that is found at Stourbridge, in Worcestershire, as it has the property of standing the most intense heat; and they contain about twenty hundred weight of melted glass, or metal, as it is called by the workmen. The cuvettes, or cisterns, which convey the liquid glass to the casting table, are made of the same clay.

When the metal is sufficiently fluid, refined, and settled, which happens in about thirty-six hours, it is put, by means of ladles, into the cisterns, which are left in the furnace about six hours longer, till the little bubbles formed by this disturbance of the glass have all disappeared. The door of the furnace is now opened, and by a chain the cistern is drawn out upon an iron carriage, and conducted to the casting table. Here it is raised, by means of a crane, against two iron bars, which are so contrived as to incline the cistern, and empty the fiery torrent on the table.

This table is covered with a thick copper plate made very smooth on the surface; and it is supported on wheels, so that it can be moved from one annealing furnace to another. To regulate the thickness of the glass, two iron rulers are placed along the table, and on these rest the extremes of a very heavy roller, or cylinder of copper, which, as it moves along, drives the superfluous matter before it, and renders the two faces of the glass parallel. The iron rulers being moveable, serve also to determine the width of the glass plate, and to prevent the matter from running over the sides; the waste metal falls into a trough of water at the end of the table, and is reserved for the next melting.

As soon as the glass has cooled to a proper consistence it is examined; and if any bubbles or flaws are found, it is broken up and returned to the melting pot: but if it has a sound appearance, the table is rolled to the mouth of the annealing furnace, and the plate is carefully deposited there. The heat of this furnace is at first very great, but it is diminished every day for a fortnight, by which time the glass is sufficiently annealed. This process renders the glass less brittle; for, if suddenly cooled, my uncle says, it would fly into pieces when touched.

19th.—Much as we were all interested by the manufacture of plate glass, my uncle steadily refused to carry us any further yesterday than the annealing furnace: this evening, therefore, as soon as we were comfortably collected round the fire, after dinner, we reminded him that he was to describe both the grinding and polishing operations; and the following is the substance of what he said.

The annealing furnace generally contains six plates of glass; when they are withdrawn, they are cut square by a large diamond, which moves in a wooden frame, and they are then carried to the grinding room. There each plate is laid on a table, covered with a large slate or flag; and to keep the glass steady it is bedded on the slate in wet plaster of Paris, which you know has the property of setting, or becoming hard, in a few minutes. A smaller plate of glass is then laid on the larger one, and being properly loaded and drawn forwards and backwards, with a constant supply of fine sharp sand and water, the two glasses grind each other to a smooth even surface. A ledge round the lower glass prevents the sand and water from running off; and the upper or moveable glass has a strong plank cemented to it on which the weights are laid. An upright pin is fixed to this plank, to which a handle, like a coach wheel, is attached for the workmen to give motion to the glass, and much skill is required to vary this motion in every possible direction; for if they were frequently to repeat the same stroke, the glasses would grind each other into furrows. But no matter what pains are taken to vary this motion, the two surfaces have always a tendency to become slightly spherical, one convex and the other concave; and to prevent this, the upper glasses of the different grinding tables are occasionally changed, so that two convex or two concave plates mutually correct each other.

When by these means a true surface has been obtained, finer sand is used, and then emery of increasing degrees of fineness, till the business of grinding is finished, and the plate is given to the polisher, whose operations my uncle was obliged to reserve for another evening.

20th.—Within the last few days the swallow has returned to us; I remember seeing it last autumn, but I did not notice it much.

I have observed that its motions are very rapid, and that it sometimes perches on the house, where it makes an odd little twittering noise.—It is a very pretty bird; the back and wings are black, glossed with purple; and the breast white, with a spot of dull red upon it. I have often read of swallows in poetry, and I shall be glad to watch this little summer guest, as it sports in the sunshine, or skims along the surface of the water. This species is, I find, the house or chimney swallow, and is distinguished from the rest of the tribe by a small white spot on each feather of the tail, which is more forked than any other species.

Mary tells me that these birds generally appear in England about the middle of April, though some few may be seen a little earlier; and that they remain to the end of September. Their arrival, she says, is always considered to be the harbinger of summer, as they come here from warmer climates.

See from bright regions, borne on odorous gales,
The swallow, herald of the summer, sails.

There is a remarkable conformity, my uncle says, between the vegetation of certain plants and the arrival of particular birds of passage. Linnæus remarked, that in Sweden the wood anemone blows on the arrival of the swallow, and the marsh marygold when the cuckoo sings; and a similar fact appears to have been observed in other countries also, for the same Greek word signifies both a cuckoo and a young fig, from their appearing at the same time.

These house swallows are the earliest of all the various species, as well as the most common. They build in barns, out-houses, and even in chimneys, the warmth of which they like; and they are said to pass with surprising address up and down the narrowest flues, to the depth of perhaps six feet, without soiling their wings.

All kinds of swallows, as they skim along the surface of the water, sip without stopping; but the common swallow only washes while on the wing; gliding through the pools many times together without seeming to stop.

21st.—After some little conversation about the alluvial alterations of the coast, and the changes produced in the interior by the different causes which my uncle had already mentioned, he said to us this morning, “Those alterations are so gradual that years are required to detect their operations, or to measure the rate of their progress; but the gigantic changes effected by volcanoes and earthquakes carry their desolation at once over whole districts. You have, no doubt, read an account of some of the destructive eruptions of mount Vesuvius, by which you know the city of Herculaneum was overflown with a torrent of melted lava, and Pompeii was buried, and remained concealed for many centuries under the ashes that were ejected from the crater.

“Large tracts of country seem to have been produced by volcanoes, and after the lapse of ages the decomposed lava has become a fertile soil. But even within the reach of history new volcanic mountains have been elevated, and new islands have sprung out of the ocean. Pliny and Seneca describe two marine volcanoes that raised themselves out of the water in the Grecian archipelago; and in the beginning of the last century the same thing again happened in the same place. In 1720, a small volcanic island rose out of the sea near Terceira, one of the Azores; and in 1811, among the same group of islands, another violent eruption of lava produced an island of considerable altitude; but in the following year it sunk into the ocean. In the sixteenth century the Lucrine Lake near Naples disappeared, and Monte Nuovo, a volcanic hill six hundred feet high, and four miles in circumference, rose out of the place it had occupied.

“Perhaps the most wonderful example I can give you of volcanic action, is the elevation of Mount Jorullo, near the city of Mexico, in 1759. Alarming sounds and repeated earthquakes, which continued for three months, had prepared the inhabitants for some dreadful convulsion; when at length a tract of ground, from three to four miles in extent, swelled up in the shape of a bladder to the height of 500 feet. The terrified natives, who witnessed this extraordinary scene from the neighbouring mountains, asserted that flames burst from the ground; that red-hot rocks were thrown to a prodigious height; and that the surface of the earth was seen to heave like an agitated sea. The surrounding district is covered by hundreds of small cones called hornitos, or ovens, by the inhabitants; they are about ten feet high, and from each a thick smoke ascends. From among these ovens six large masses arose from the plain, some of them upwards of 1200 feet; and the volcano of Jorullo, which has never ceased to burn, is now 1700 feet high. The place where this extraordinary convulsion took place was forty leagues from any volcano; and what renders this remarkable is, that Jorullo appears to be in the exact line of continuation of a chain of distant volcanoes, as if there were a subterranean communication. Though the fire is now much less violent, and though the plain and even the great volcano begin to be covered with vegetation, yet Humboldt found the air dreadfully heated by the small ovens, and the thermometer rose to 202° on being plunged into the aqueous vapour emitted by every fissure in the ground.

“It is said, that two rivers fall into the burning chasm, and that at some miles distance they emerge from the ground in a heated state. You may recollect Colonel Travers told you that he had seen the thermometer at 200° in a subterraneous spring called Nero’s baths, at Solfaterra, near Naples; and that he had eaten an egg which it had completely boiled in a few minutes.

“It is computed that there are at present nearly a thousand volcanoes known to exist, and yet there is no doubt that, in a former state of the globe, they must have been more numerous, and far more active and extensive in their operations. Remains of extinct volcanoes of great size are scattered in almost every country, and geologists are every day discovering large tracts of rocks and earths, which there is every reason to ascribe to volcanic agency.

“Several have been found in Europe, which for many centuries must have been at rest. Great part of Italy and Sicily are clearly volcanic. Near Coblentz, in Germany, are the remains of several craters, and large masses of lava are seen strewed over the surrounding country. Along the Rhine entire chains of volcanic hills are found; and near Spa there are traces of some very large volcanoes, with deep craters half full of water. Great part of Languedoc and Provence in France are volcanic; and Auvergne presents an astonishing example of the activity of its ancient volcanoes, for the whole country consists of lava. In the East Indian islands there are great numbers; Sumatra, Java, and the Molucca islands, possess some of the finest volcanoes now existing. You know, from Humboldt, how numerous they are on the western side of South America and Mexico; and Nootka Sound, in the 50th degree of north latitude, was observed by Captain Cook to be entirely volcanic. In the Pacific Ocean, Easter Island is a mere mass of lava and basalt; and I need scarcely mention the Sandwich Islands, as you have been lately so much interested by Mr. Ellis’s account of the great volcano in Owhyhee, with its sublime gulf of boiling lava, seven or eight miles in circumference.”

23rd, Sunday.—My uncle continued the subject of the prophecies of Moses, this morning.

“There are different kinds of prophecies in the books of Moses, some of which were fulfilled soon after the prediction, such as the conquest of the land of Canaan; and others the accomplishment of which was not to follow till after a long interval of time, such as those that relate to the coming of the Messiah, and the dispersion of the Jewish nation; but in all there is the same clearness and consistency, the same tone of inspiration and authority, and the same internal proofs of their truth. The Jews have always looked on him as by far the greatest of all their prophets. They assert, that the others received the divine communications by dreams and visions; whereas they were given to Moses by an immediate revelation from God.

“In the most important of all his prophecies—‘The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken’—Moses does not say a priest or a king, though the Messiah was to be both; but ‘a prophet,’ in order to put the people on their guard not to look for him among any of their priests or kings. They were not to expect a person clothed with the external honours of the throne, nor ranking high in the priestly form of their government; but were to consider divine inspiration as the true test of that great prophet to whom they were to hearken, and who was to be the future head of their religion.

“In consequence of this prediction, an expectation of some extraordinary prophet had always prevailed among the Jews, and particularly about the time of our Saviour. They understood and applied it, as well as other similar prophecies, to the Messiah, who they admitted would be as great as Moses: but, forgetting the distinct explanation with which it was accompanied, they looked for pomp and splendour, instead of the quiet manifestation of divine power on suitable occasions; they looked for the worldly attributes of dominion, instead of the meekness and humility which had characterized Moses, and which entitled him to use the expression, ‘like unto me.’

“When our Saviour had fed five thousand men by a miracle like that of Moses, who fed the Israelites in the wilderness, then all those that were present exclaimed,—‘This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world.’ St. Peter and St. Stephen[1] declared to the people that the prophecy directly applied to Jesus, for he fully answered the definition of a prophet like unto Moses. He was by birth a Jew of the middle class like Moses. He had immediate communication with the Deity, and to him God spake ‘face to face’ as he had done to Moses. He was a lawgiver as well as Moses, and he performed ‘signs and wonders’ greater than those of Moses.—‘I will put words in thy mouth,’ God said to Moses; and our Saviour says, ‘I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment what I should say, and what I should speak.’

“There is another circumstance to which I would call your attention. There are instances of kings, both Pagan and Jewish, who were described, long before their birth, by those holy men, whom the Lord inspired; but we do not find that any prophet was ever foretold by an antecedent prophet; this pre-eminence was peculiar to the promised Deliverer.

“Several prophecies in the Old Testament plainly ascribe the destruction of the Jewish church and nation to their rejection of the Messiah. The words in Deuteronomy xviii. 19 are remarkably strong. ‘Whosoever will not hearken unto my words, which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him.’ Daniel expressly assigns this as the cause of the destruction of their city and temple; and Zechariah describes the future repentance and mourning of the whole nation for their sin of ‘piercing’ or crucifying Christ, as preparatory to their general restoration.

“And,” added my uncle as he finished, “Let us hope that the time is fast approaching, when instead of a wandering and despised people, we may see the whole Jewish nation repenting of their former obduracy, and yielding up their unbelief to a full though tardy conviction.”

24th.—We claimed my uncle’s promise this evening of describing the mode of polishing the glass. “When the grinding operation,” said he, “has been completed on both sides of the glass, it is again secured in plaster on a flat table, and the surface is rubbed with a block of wood covered with several folds of woollen cloth. The workmen supply the cloth with polishing powders, such as crocus, tripoli, and putty, beginning with the coarsest, and changing gradually to the finest.”

Wentworth observed that he had never seen putty in a powdered state.

“The putty of which you are thinking,” my uncle replied, “is a mixture of chalk, or whiting with linseed oil, for the use of glaziers; but the putty to which I alluded is the oxide of tin. Crocus is a preparation of the brown oxide of iron; and tripoli is a natural earth, which was formerly imported from Tripoli in Africa, but is now found in other countries. Both the grinding and polishing of plate glass is performed in the large manufactories by the steam-engine.”

We begged of my uncle to describe to us the process of silvering, so as to make looking-glasses. “The coating a plate of polished glass with a thin pellicle of quicksilver, in order to give it the power of reflecting, is a very pretty and easy operation. I think Wentworth might readily perform it on a small piece of glass. Blotting paper is first spread on the table and sprinkled with powdered chalk; and over the paper is laid a sheet of tin foil; that is, tin beaten out in the same manner as gold leaf. On the tin foil quicksilver is poured and equally distributed, and cleaned from every speck by means of a hare’s foot. Over that a sheet of thin smooth paper is to be spread: fan paper is the best; and on this paper the glass is placed. With the left hand you are to press down the glass, while with the right the paper is drawn out, and with it most of the superfluous quicksilver. The plate is then to be loaded with a great weight, to squeeze out more of the mercury; and lastly the glass is set nearly upright that every particle that is not amalgamated with the tin may ooze out; for the thinner the coating of mercury, the more perfectly the metal adheres to the glass.”

If ever I should be in the neighbourhood of a plate-glass manufactory I will endeavour to see the whole process; in the mean time even the little knowledge one can pick up from a general description is better than entire ignorance. Wentworth lost no time in making an experiment of the silvering operation. My uncle furnished him with tin foil and quicksilver; my aunt supplied paper, and a small rubber of cloth instead of the hare’s foot; and we all assisted. There was a little bungling at first, but after a few trials we succeeded in making a scrap of looking-glass, which Wentworth intends to frame for Grace’s doll.

“As glass was comparatively a late invention, uncle, what were the looking-glasses which are mentioned in Scripture?”

“The word,” said my uncle, “should have been translated mirrors; they were formerly made of brass, or of a mixture of brass and silver, which takes a very high polish; and this inadvertence of the English translators is the more singular, because the context removes every difficulty. In the passage of Exodus[2], to which you refer, the laver is described to be made ‘of brass of the looking-glasses.’ Glass could not possibly have been converted into brass; but if the word be rendered by mirrors, the sense would be complete; that is, the laver and the foot of it were made of brazen mirrors.

“In Turkey, the common domestic mirrors at this day are made of brass; but I have heard that in Persia they are sometimes made of steel, and slightly convex. The metallic mirror, or speculum, which is now used in a reflecting telescope, is composed of about two parts of copper and one of tin; but what metals were employed by the ancients in their burning mirrors is not known.”

“You allude, I suppose, papa,” said Frederick, “to the famous concave mirrors with which Archimedes destroyed the Roman fleet.”

“Long before his time,” my uncle replied, “concave mirrors had been constructed, by which the sun’s rays were so concentrated as to burn substances placed in the focus: but those used by Archimedes were not concave, they had plane or flat surfaces, and it was by the combination of a great number that the effect was produced. For you can readily conceive that whatever portion of the solar heat can be conveyed by reflection from a single plane surface, the effect will be doubled if the rays from another plane surface be directed to the same spot. Five or six times the direct heat of the sun would set dry wood on fire; but as more than half the heat is dissipated by reflection and by other causes, we may say that eighteen or twenty small plane mirrors would be quite sufficient for that purpose. The Count de Buffon tried a great many valuable experiments on this subject; with 154 mirrors he succeeded in burning wood at the distance of seventy yards, and in fusing several metals at eight, ten, and even twelve yards, “There was another circumstance in your question, Bertha, on which I must set you right. It is true that glass has been brought to great perfection by modern skill, but glass was known in the earliest ages of which any remains of art are now extant. The mummies, for instance, which have been brought home from Egypt, are ornamented with beads and bits of coloured glass. Pliny describes the manner of making it; and there are various authorities for believing that glass was even used in windows before the third century.”

25th.—The nightingale, the next bird that appears after the swallow, has arrived, and I have twice had the pleasure of hearing the sweetness, fulness, and power of its melody.

It is supposed to visit Asia during its absence from England, as it does not winter in the south of Europe or in Africa, but is found at all times in the East, from Persia to Japan. I must acknowledge that its song is more agreeable than that of the bird we call nightingale in Brazil.

The wry-neck, and the cuckoo, which I have; just heard, arrive here very soon after the nightingale. The wry-neck is a very pretty little bird; the neck and breast are of a reddish brown, and crossed with waving bars of fine black. It sits so very erect on a branch, that its body appears to bend almost backward, while it is constantly turning its neck quite round from side to side; and it also has the power of erecting the feathers of the head like a jay. I have seen it feeding on ants, which it dexterously transfixes with the sharp bony end of its tongue; and the country people say, that the young ones, while in the nest, make a hissing sound like that of little snakes, which deters boys from plundering their nests.

There is something very cheerful in the notes of the cuckoo and the rail. They serve to mark one of the steps by which this changeful and busy season of spring steals on us with all its gradations of pleasure and interest; and which, dear mamma, I cannot help thinking preferable to the unvarying brilliancy of Brazil.

“Now Nature, soothed, assumes her wonted charms,
And like an infant, stilled, laughs through her tears,
That glittering hang on every bloomy spray.
The birds their woodland minstrelsy renew,
In chorus universal; while the sun
Gilds with effulgence sweet the azure vault,
And paints the landscape with a thousand flowers.”

I have seen the mole cricket to-day; it is a most remarkable insect, endowed with wonderful strength, particularly in its fore legs which are fitted for burrowing. The shanks are broad, and terminate obliquely in four large sharp claws, like fingers; and the foot, which consists of three joints, and is armed at the extremity with two short claws, is placed inside the shank so as to resemble a thumb, and to perform its offices. The direction and motion of these hands enable the animal effectually to remove the earth when it burrows under ground; and in wet and swampy situations, which it loves, it excavates very curious apartments.

There is the prettiest variety of wild flowers now in bloom all over our part of the forest; not gaudy and dazzling, like the natives of the Brazil forests, but small and delicate, and beautifully marked and tinted. I am sorry to say the primroses are fading; but wild violets, the wood anemone, and millions of cowslips with their pretty golden bells, make up for their loss.

I had almost forgotten to tell you that the buds and leaves of the branches I had in water, have all withered away; ashamed, I suppose, to appear now that there are abundance of real leaves.

27th.—My aunt has been extremely interested by an account she read of the progress of Christianity in the Sandwich islands.

It is almost a singular instance of a nation by general consent destroying their idols, and being sensible of the insufficiency of their own religion. The small opposition made to the change, and the manner in which many of the chiefs publicly professed Christianity, give one every reason to hope that it will take root in the minds of the people, and that the progress of Christianity and civilization will advance together. It appears to have been a spontaneous act of those intelligent and amiable islanders; and when the Blonde frigate arrived there in 1825, the new faith they had adopted had already materially purified their morals and improved their manners.

Besides wooden idols, the uninstructed natives had long worshipped the deities of their island at the foot of the stupendous mountain of Mouna Roa, imagining their favourite abode to be in the volcanoes it contained. Offerings were frequently made to court their favour; and at every fresh eruption of lava hogs were thrown alive into those fiery gulfs, to appease the anger of Peli, the principal deity. To put an end to these superstitions, Kapiolani, the wife of a chief of high rank who had recently embraced Christianity, determined to descend into the great crater, and, by thus braving the volcanic deities in their very home, she hoped to convince the people that they existed only in their imagination. A crowd of her friends and vassals accompanied her up the mountain, to the first precipice that bounds the sunken plain: there most of them stopped or turned back; and at the second, her remaining companions earnestly implored her to desist from her dangerous enterprise, which could only serve to tempt the vengeance of the deities whose sanctuary she was about to violate. She proceeded, however, to the verge of the crater, and being again assailed with their entreaties, she calmly replied, “I am resolved to descend; and if I do not return safe, then continue to worship Peli;—but, if I come back unhurt, you must learn to adore the God who created Peli.”

Few of her attendants had sufficient courage to follow this heroic woman; but she steadily persevered, and at length reaching the bottom of the dreadful chasm, she triumphantly thrust a stick into the burning lava, and for ever dissolved the spell of superstition which till that moment had bound the minds of the astonished spectators. Those who had expected to see the incensed goddess burst forth and destroy the daring intruder, were awe-struck; they instantly acknowledged the superiority of the God of Kapiolani; and from that time no reverence has been paid to the fires of Peli.

28th.—When I came down to the library early this morning, my uncle asked me several historical questions: taken thus by surprise, I should some months ago have been unable to answer, though, perhaps, I might have been acquainted with the facts; but now I conquered my difficulties in a tolerably satisfactory manner; and my uncle congratulated me on the improvement of my memory, or rather of my recollection.

“I believe, uncle, it is more from my not being quite so much frightened as I used to be at being examined; and besides, since I have been in this house, I have gained more knowledge.”

“Yes, my dear, you have gained more knowledge, but of what avail would it be if your memory could not supply you with a key to it? You have materially improved your recollection; and I will tell you how: first, by increased attention, the foundation of all memory; and next by exercise, for every power of body and mind may be strengthened by constantly, though moderately, applying them to their proper purposes. You have also, I think, wisely aided your memory by some of the expedients that I formerly hinted to you.”

“Do you mean, uncle, the classification of one’s knowledge; and the endeavour to connect detached ideas?”

“Yes,” said he; “I have carefully observed you, Bertha—and I perceive that you have in some degree acquired the faculty of catching the points by which ideas are related to each other, and thus of associating them in your mind with some one common principle. This is the true way of strengthening the memory, and, indeed, at the same time, of improving the understanding. Every one who steadily pursues it will find, that the facility of this kind of arrangement increases every day, till at length it becomes so habitual as to be performed almost mechanically; that is, without the intervention of the will. The advantage is obvious; every new fact, every new idea becomes a catch-word to some other; and when referred to the common principle by which they are all combined, the mind rapidly and almost unconsciously runs through every link in the chain, and literally recollects those which may be wanted for the subject under consideration.”

“Do you not think, too,” said I, “that as we increase our knowledge, those links become more numerous; and therefore, that the more new facts we learn the more easily we can recollect the old ones?”

“In some measure,” he replied; “but it is not merely by the new facts or ideas that we acquire that our real increase of knowledge must be estimated; it is by the number of relations which they bear to those already in the mind. New knowledge does not merely consist in our having access to a new object, but in forming new combinations of the ideas which it excites with our former ideas of similar objects; it is not by loading the memory with insulated facts, but by putting those facts in their right places, that we augment our stock of knowledge.”

“Indeed, my dear uncle, I feel the truth of that every day; for the more I know, the more my curiosity is excited, and I ramble on from one thing to another, till my head contains nothing but a confused heap of unconnected facts. Then, when I go back and try to put them in some sort of order, I find that the most useful circumstances are forgotten, and only those well remembered which happened to connect themselves with things long known.”

“That leads me,” said he, “to another point, which I would earnestly press on your attention;—discrimination—or the selecting from the necessarily confused mass of new ideas which are constantly presenting themselves those of the greatest importance. By grasping at all, you lose the real acquisitions within your reach; and though the sacrifice may at first appear great, you will be a gainer in the end. Every day your selection will be more judicious, and in time more abundant; and your knowledge of useful and connected truths will advance gradually and securely, because you will have learnt to hinge them properly together, without encumbering your mind with those that are insignificant.”

I then asked him if he approved of my writing this journal, and whether he advised me to continue it.

“Certainly I do, Bertha, because I am sure it is highly satisfactory to your mother, not only to know what you are doing, but to trace the progress of your mind. Besides, though I suspect that no young lady can write a great deal without introducing a little desultory matter, yet, from the pages you have occasionally shewn me, I am sure there is much in your journal that may be advantageous to Marianne. Indeed I am glad you mentioned it, for I think it forms no bad illustration of the unconnected manner in which knowledge presents itself in every-day life; and if our present conversation finds a place in it, tell your sister, from me, to attend to what I have said about discrimination, and to try her skill in selecting, and classifying in her memory, the many useful topics on which you have touched.

“The benefit to yourself of committing to paper the detailed knowledge that you acquire, is quite another question. As a help to which the memory may refer I am inclined to think that it is injurious; except in so far as the time occupied in writing forces one to dwell sufficiently on the ideas, to perceive their analogy with others. But you may, I think, make a common-place book really useful, by stating your general impressions of the books you read, and of the discussions you hear; and by sometimes recording those passing thoughts which suggest themselves to every reflecting person. By thus frequently marking the state of your mind, you can hereafter judge of its progress; and you will be able to correct the prejudices which may have impeded its steady improvement.”

29th.—I begged of my uncle to describe some more of the remarkable animals that have been found in a fossil state. He readily complied; and as it is possible that I may one day have an opportunity of seeing some of these curious petrifactions in the museums, I carefully noted what he told us.

“One of those huge oviparous quadrupeds to which the name Monitor has been given, was found at Maestricht, in soft limestone rock mixed with flints. The skeleton was about twenty-four feet long; the head four feet; and from the great breadth and strength of the tail, the animal is supposed to have inhabited the sea.

“There are but two living species of sloths known; and two fossil animals have been found which seem nearly allied to them. One of these animals, the megalonix, is of the size of an ox; and was first discovered in a limestone cave in Virginia. The other, the megatherium, is as large as a rhinoceros; its remains have been found only in South America; and it is a curious fact, that greatly as these animals exceed the sloth and the ant-eater in size, they not only appear to belong to the same family, but their bones are found only in America, the very country inhabited by sloths and ant-eaters.

“The gigantic fossil elks of Ireland are also an extinct species: they are found under bogs, or in deep marl pits; and generally in an erect position, as if the herd had been suddenly overwhelmed by the mass in which they are imbedded, while it was in a fluid state. The distance between the tips of the horns of a skull, now in the museum of the Royal Society of Dublin, is eleven feet and ten inches; and I have heard that a still larger specimen has been discovered in that country.

“The skull of the fossil ox, or buffalo of Siberia, cannot be identified with any of the known species of this animal; and it is conjectured to have lived at the same time with the fossil elephant and rhinoceros, as it is found in the same alluvial tracts.

“Two distinct species of elephant are at present known; the African and the Asiatic; but only one fossil species has hitherto been discovered, which has been called the mammoth, a name borrowed from the Russians. Though differing from both the existing species, principally in the structure of the teeth, it more nearly resembles the Asiatic than the other. The remains of this animal have been found also in the alluvial soil round London, and in a great many parts of England, and even in this county. In Ireland also, in Sweden and Norway, and in almost every country of Europe, they have been discovered. Humboldt found their teeth in South America; the North American naturalists have also found them; and lately, Lieutenant Kotzebue, the Russian navigator, perceived them in an iceberg near Behring’s Straits. But it is in Asiatic Russia that they occur in the greatest abundance: there is scarcely a river there with alluvial banks that does not afford remains of the mammoth, and generally accompanied by marine shells.”

My uncle then was so good as to go to the library for an account of a fossil elephant that was found in a state of perfect preservation, though its great antiquity is evident, from the whole race to which it had belonged being now extinct. The account was drawn up by the celebrated M. Cuvier, from observations made on the spot by Mr. Adams.

“In the year 1799, a portion of an ice-bank, near the mouth of the river Lena in the north of Siberia, having fallen down, a Tungusian fisherman perceived a strange shapeless mass projecting from the remaining cliff of ice, but at a height far beyond his reach. The next year it was a little more exposed, by the dissolving of the ice; and in the end of the summer of 1801 he could distinctly see that it was the frozen carcase of some enormous animal. He continued to watch it till the year 1804, when the ice having melted earlier and to a greater degree than usual, the carcase became entirely disengaged, and fell down from the ice-cliff on an accessible part of the shore. The fisherman carried away both the tusks, and so well had the ice preserved the ivory, that he sold them for fifty rubles. This circumstance having come to the knowledge of Mr. Adams in 1806, he travelled to the spot to examine the animal, but he found the body greatly mutilated; much of the flesh had been taken away by the natives to feed their dogs, and one of the fore legs had been carried off, probably by the white bears. The rest of the skeleton was entire; the head was uninjured, even the pupil of the eye was still distinguishable; and the ears were well covered with bristly hair. A large quantity of the skin remained, which was extremely thick and heavy; and there was a long black mane on the neck, the stiff bristles of which were more than a foot in length.

“About thirty pounds weight of reddish brown bristly hair was collected in the mud, into which it had been trampled by the bears while devouring the carcase, as well as a quantity of coarse wool of the same colour. The wool was evidently the same kind of covering that lies next the skin of all the inhabitants of cold climates; and this very interesting fact proves that the fossil elephants of Siberia were residents of that country, and that they belonged to a race which no longer exists, which was fitted by nature for a rigorous climate, and which could not have endured the sultry regions where those animals are at present found, and where their skin is nearly bare.”

My uncle added that it was impossible to conjecture at what period this elephant had been buried in the ice, but that it was evident he had been frozen at the moment of his death, which sufficiently accounts for the preservation of the flesh. In cold countries it is common to preserve meat through the longest winter by freezing it; and all kinds of provisions are sent at that season from the most remote of the northern provinces, to St. Petersburgh.

Gmelin, a German traveller, tried how deep the ground had been thawed by the heat of a whole summer at Jakutsk, in 62° north latitude: he found it soft to the depth of two feet and a half; there it became harder; and at half a foot lower, it scarcely yielded to the spade. The inhabitants of that place keep their provisions continually frozen in caves which are only six feet below the surface.

30th, Sunday.—I asked my uncle to-day to explain to me the nature of those three feasts at which all the Israelites were enjoined to attend in the course of the year; the feast of Unleavened Bread; the feast of Weeks; and the feast of Tabernacles[3].

“Feasts,” he replied, “were appointed to commemorate those great events with which the existence of the Israelites, as a separate people, was identified; they also afforded opportunities of giving general instruction, of expounding the law, and of keeping up a useful connexion between the distant tribes, by meeting each other at stated times in the holy city. The first and most ancient of feasts, you know, was the Sabbath, a day of general rest, in memory of the creation; and there was also a Sabbatical year of rest every seven years; and a jubilee year every seven times seven years. The feast of Atonement took place in the seventh month; the feast of Trumpets celebrated the first day of the year; and in after times feasts were instituted on the restoration of the Temple, and on the deliverance of the Jews from Haman’s plot.

“But of all the annual festivals, the three about which you inquire were the most sacred and important. The feast of Unleavened Bread was only another name for the feast of the Passover. It lasted seven days after the Paschal lamb had been killed; sacrifices were offered on each of the days; no bread but such as was unleavened was permitted to be eaten during its continuance; and the first and the last days were observed with peculiar and impressive ceremonies. The departure of the Israelites from Egypt, and the wonderful acts of Divine power by which their liberation had been accomplished, were the objects commemorated at this great assemblage of the people;—but we have so often conversed on the Passover, that I need not renew that subject now.

“The feast of Weeks,” my uncle continued, “was so called because it was kept at the end of seven weeks, or a week of weeks, after the Passover, that is, on the fiftieth day; and therefore it has been also called the feast of Pentecost, from a Greek word signifying fiftieth. It lasted seven days, and was held in remembrance of the law which was given to the people at Mount Sinai on the fiftieth day after their leaving Egypt. At this feast two loaves of bread and a certain quantity of meal, to represent the first-fruits of the ground, were offered as a solemn and grateful acknowledgment for the harvest which in that fine climate and fertile country had already commenced. The modern Jews keep this festival with great strictness; but they mix various traditional rites with the ceremonies. In this country, I understand that they decorate their houses with garlands of flowers, and strew roses in the synagogues; and in Germany each Jewish family has a high rough cake, to represent Mount Sinai, composed of seven layers of paste, to designate the seven heavens through which they pretend that Jehovah descended to declare the law to Moses. As the Passover was the type of the sacrament of the Lord’s supper, so the feast of Weeks was the type of our Christian Pentecost, which took place fifty days after the resurrection, and on which the astonishing miracle was performed, of the gift of tongues to the Apostles.

“The feast of Tabernacles was established in the middle of the seventh month of the ecclesiastical year, or in the first month of the civil year, which began in September. All Israel were obliged to assemble in order to celebrate this feast, and to live in tents or booths made of green boughs, during its continuance. The same word in Hebrew signifies both tabernacles and tents, and this great religious festival was held in memory of the journey through the wilderness, and of the mode in which their forefathers had dwelt there in tents, during forty years. On the first day, the people, with branches of palm trees, willows, and myrtles in their right hands, and a citron bough bearing its fruit in the left, joined in procession round the altar, waving the branches and singing Hosannas. The six following days burnt offerings were made, and the latest fruits of the year were presented at the temple; on the eighth and last day the procession with branches was repeated with still greater solemnity, and the whole feast concluded with what was called the Hosanna Rabbah, or the great Hosanna. This word literally means ‘Save, I beseech thee;’ it was a common form of religious blessing or salutation; and thus to that ancient mode of solemnizing the feast of tabernacles you may trace the branches that were cut down, and the acclamations of ‘Hosanna to the son of David,’ with which our Saviour was received on his public entry into Jerusalem.”

May 1st.—This has been a day of amusement; and the Miss Maudes and their brother, who came here yesterday, have greatly added to our gaiety. Very early this morning we all went out, not exactly to gather May-dew, but to see the numbers of people that went out Maying. Several May-poles and garlands had been erected; but we were most interested by that which the little school children had dressed up opposite to their house. They had also placed an arch of flowers and hawthorn branches over the door; with a magnificent C in the middle of it, made of daisy flowers strung on thread.

This was in compliment to Caroline, and when she passed under it, they all joined in chorus, singing these lines of their own composition:—

We’ll welcome Miss Caroline with flowers so gay,
To the school where she teaches us goodness and truth;
Oh! may she be happy on ev’ry May-day,
And most graciously pardon the follies of youth.

My uncle says it has been always the custom to celebrate May-day in this county,—and that to have a pretty May-bush is still considered quite important.

In Huntingdonshire, Miss Maude told us that the children hang every place with garlands, and sometimes they make very pretty triumphal arches. To a horizontal hoop, two semi-hoops are fixed, so as to form a sort of crown, which is ornamented with flowers, ribbons, necklaces, spoons, and all kinds of finery. This is suspended across the road by a flowery rope, extending from house to house, while the children sing, dance, toss their balls over it, and ask money from the passengers: Miss Maude repeated to us their usual song.

The May-day Garland.

“To the lilac, laburnum, and iris, which cheer,
The hawthorn, the cowslip, and king-cob so gay,
Each beauty which gladdens the spring of the year,
And the kerchiefs and ribbons our friends have supplied
In bows and in streamers are tastefully tied,
And form our sweet garland, our garland of May.

“Beneath it we’ll dance, and we’ll throw up the ball,
And all shall be gladness, good humour, and play,
We’ll sing, and in chorus we’ll join one and all,
And glad as the season, we’ll lift up our voice,
And all, within measure and reason, rejoice
Beneath the gay garland, the garland of May.”

My uncle observed, that in Cornwall, where customs have been less changed than in most parts of England, the May-day ceremonies are kept up with great care. He learned from a friend, who lived in a remote town in that county, that all the houses were thrown open; lively music was everywhere heard, and the young maidens, decked with wreaths and festoons of flowers, danced along the streets, or formed dancing parties in every house they chose to select.

“The annual celebration of this day,” he continued, “may be traced up to a very high antiquity. The Romans had their Floralia, or games in honour of Flora, during the calends of May; and in Asia, when the sun entered the constellation of Taurus, which corresponded to that period, the same kind of festivities took place, accompanied by a similar display of flowers. Some antiquaries have shown that May-day was celebrated in this country long before the Roman invasion, and they ascribe the introduction of the custom to an Asiatic colony that settled here, and who of course brought with them their national habits. In the East, customs have undergone but little change; and many of the sports which are prevalent on May-day in some parts of England and Ireland, and which, at first sight, appear to proceed from unmeaning caprice, may be proved to be fragments of ancient Eastern ceremonies, by their similarity to those still practised there on that day.”

My aunt said, that she had seen a May-bush very prettily hung with flowers at Chamouni, in Switzerland; and she added, “in the old-fashioned custom too of making fools on the first of April, there is probably a vestige of the Eastern celebration of the season when the sun enters Aries; that is, when the year commences. In Persia, medals of gold were struck with the head of the Ram, on the festival of the Nauruz or new year’s-day; and the frolic of making fools still distinguishes the Nauruz festival, and is practised, I believe, from one end of India to the other.”

I asked my uncle when that Eastern colony to which he had alluded came to England, as I did not recollect seeing it mentioned in the History of England.

“The ancient Britons,” said my uncle, “had a tradition of their being descended from an Eastern tribe called Sacca; and undoubtedly there are many points of resemblance between their modes of worship, and those practised in some of the Indian provinces. It would probably be tiresome to a young person like you, Bertha, to read all the arguments on this disputed point; but hereafter you may find it a subject of curious inquiry to examine the coincidences said to exist in the manners of such remote nations of the East and the West.”

3rd.—I have such a severe cold, that, fine as the weather is, I am not allowed to go out; so I can write without interruption to my dear mamma. I must confess my own foolish imprudence was the cause of this cold: on the evening of May-day, my aunt allowed the school children to have a dance on the green, and we all joined in it round their pretty May-bush. I exerted myself so much, that I was soon over-heated; and, then stood in the wind to cool myself. My aunt warned me of the consequence, but I was too much diverted to attend immediately to her advice, and the next morning I had a violent head-ache, and all the symptoms of a heavy cold. However, as my uncle had arranged every thing for showing a cloth manufactory, several miles from this, to the Maudes and Miss Perceval, I could not bear to give up what I might not have another opportunity of seeing. Besides, we were to cross the river at the ferry, where horses had been ordered to meet us; and I hoped to see a great deal of new country. My friends, indeed, advised me to remain in bed, but I would not acknowledge how ill I was; and persisted in accompanying them. Of course my head grew very painful, and my cold oppressed and stupified me so much, as to prevent my remembering distinctly the half of what I saw.

I recollect, however, being shewn how the wool was washed and beaten in order to clean it. When well dried and picked, it was carded on large cylindrical brushes, made of wire instead of hair, which laid all the fibres in one direction; the wool was then oiled, and again combed or brushed with finer cards on the knee, and at last spun into yarn—that intended for the warp being always smaller and more twisted than that of the woof. The yarn for the woof was then wound on little bobbins or tubes; and in weaving, one of these is placed in the middle of the shuttle, on a pin, round which it easily turns, so as to let the thread run off through a hole called the eye of the shuttle, as it travels from side to side of the loom.

I will not tease you with the manner of warping the yarn from one beam to the other; nor with a description of the heddles, or looped strings, which raise and depress the alternate threads of the warp for the shuttle to pass between them, and which the weaver works by his feet; nor of the batten and reed for driving the woof home every time the shuttle carries it across; all these appeared very simple, while looking at the operation, but I am afraid that I should give but a very lame account of them. Still less can I attempt to describe a power-loom which has been just set up; it seems to do every thing without the interference of the weaver—the heddles rise and fall, the batten strikes in regular time and with equal force, and the shuttle flies to and fro from selvage to selvage as if it was alive.

At another loom they were taking off the cloth from the beam on which it had been rolled in the process of weaving, and many hands were immediately employed with iron nippers in trimming and cutting off the knots and threads. The obliging proprietor of the manufactory partly described and partly shewed us the subsequent operations of scouring the cloth with potter’s clay, steeping and fulling it, and then stretching it lengthwise to take out the wrinkles. This is repeated several times, then it is washed in clear water, and given wet to other workmen to raise the nap, by means of a flower called teasel, which somewhat resembles a thistle. When the nap is well raised on the right side, it is given to the shearers, and then to the dyer; and when dyed it is again washed in plain water, and spread on a table, where the nap is laid properly with a brush. It is then hung up to dry, and stretched in every direction; after which it is folded and laid under a press.

It seemed very curious to see a homely wild plant like the teasel, fresh from the field, used along with so much complex machinery: many imitations of it have been tried, but nothing answers so well as the beautiful little hooks contrived by nature. In the west of England, therefore, wherever the soil is dry and gravelly, teasels are cultivated on a large scale for the cloth manufactories.

I remember little more of what I saw or heard yesterday, except that my uncle remarked as we passed a sheep-walk in our drive home, what an astonishing number of people combine their labours to produce any one manufacture, and how necessary the different trades are to each other. From the grazier, for instance, who rears the sheep and sells the wool, and the various artificers employed in preparing, spinning, weaving, dyeing, and pressing it, up to the retail shopkeeper who keeps the cloth ready for our use. “But in fact,” said he, “these are only a few links of the chain; we must recollect the numerous hands employed in making the machinery, the miner who raises the iron ore, the smelter who converts it into metal, the smith who works it, and the collier who supplies them with coals; the carpenter who constructs the frame-work, and the engineer who contrives the whole. Then come the merchants, and shipwrights, and sailors who bring home from distant countries the articles requisite to colour the cloth, and the dyer, who, by the aid of chemistry, compounds them; and lastly, the farmer who cultivates the humble teasels. See, Bertha, what a prodigious number of heads and hands are thus toiling for the accomplishment of a single object, and, though all impelled by individual interest, yet all co-operating for the general good.”

4th.—As I am still paying for my imprudence, and confined to my room, kind Mary has been entertaining me with the conversation she had heard below stairs, and particularly with Mr. Maude’s account of Venice. Nothing in Italy so much struck his imagination, as the view of that city, with all her towers and pinnacles rising from the sea, where, the poet said,

“Venice sits in state, throned on her hundred isles!”

But now it has a most melancholy appearance: the port, which in times of prosperity was crowded with shipping, is now almost empty; and the muddy canals which intersect the town in every direction, are no longer enlivened by multitudes of gondolas gliding swiftly through the water. The showy palaces which rise from the sides of these watery streets, were once adorned with all that painting and sculpture could perform; but they are now neglected, moss-grown, the habitations of owls and bats, and fast sinking to decay: and many of the great families who had inherited their wealth and honours in direct succession for a thousand years, are now obliged to part with their splendid mansions, or to see them gradually crumbling into ruins, from the want of means to repair them.

Notwithstanding all this, Mr. Maude says that Venice is still a magnificent looking place; and amongst its many beautiful buildings, he describes the cathedral as being most venerable and interesting. It was built so long ago as the ninth century, and enriched with the spoils of Greece and of Constantinople. He once went through the city at night, to see the effect of moonlight on its superb buildings; but the few of them which were still dazzling with lamps, as if enjoying their former glory, made such a contrast with the pale light and dark shade of the moon, and with the general stillness, that the whole scene had even a more deserted appearance than in the day-time. Now and then the gloomy silence was interrupted by the sounds of the harp or guitar, or by the wild and plaintive airs of a few gondoliers, as they kept time to the gentle splashing of their oars.

Mr. Maude, she says, added a great deal about the present government, the state of society, and the remaining commerce of Venice; and my uncle, who was much pleased with his observations, remarked that few of the changes recorded in history, offered a subject of deeper interest, than the long-continued grandeur and present fall of Venice. “It rose,” he said, “as it were, from the waves, when, on the invasion of Italy by the Huns, numbers of people took refuge in that cluster of islands where the city now stands. So early as the year 421, they formed a little state, strong enough to oppose the invaders, or at least to secure themselves from molestation. Commerce soon followed security; and from this small beginning arose that wealth and power which continued for many centuries, and which extended the influence of Venice over all the states with which she was connected. Her foundations were laid in the darkest ages of Italian misery; but she soon became the spectator of the dissolution of the Roman Empire. She witnessed the ravages of many continental wars, and the rise and fall of many nations; till at length she fell in her turn also. Somebody has well remarked, that she was the last surviving witness of antiquity, the common link between the two periods of civilization.

“Her whole history,” continued my uncle, “has a paradoxical and peculiar character. Her romantic achievements in the East; the noble lead she took in the struggles of Christendom with the empire of the Turks; and the heroic defence she made against the attacks of numerous enemies, place her resources and power in singular contrast with the smallness of her territory. On the other hand, her selfish policy; her imperious conduct wherever her influence extended; and her deadly jealousy of the neighbouring republic of Genoa, rendered her the object of universal envy and hatred. While at home the rigorous despotism of her government, which was ill concealed under the mask of republican freedom, and the inquisitorial tyranny of the senate, which silently pervaded every house, and controlled almost the thoughts of every individual, could tend only to alienate her subjects. These are points of deep moral and historical interest; but it may be safely said that her government outlived the age to which it was suited; no timely reform adapted it to the growing changes in the public mind—no concessions to the people united them in common cause with their haughty masters—and the fall of Venice may be ascribed more to her internal vices, than to the overpowering armies of France.”

5th.—I have been so much better all day that I was allowed to go down to tea; and had the pleasure of hearing Mr. Maude describe the fruitiéres in Switzerland. I quite misunderstood that word at first; for I find that it means a kind of dairy, something like that described to us by our Savoyard friends last winter. The person by whom the fruitiére is managed receives their milk daily from all the neighbouring peasants; he sells the cream, and butter, and makes the cheese; and at the end of the season pays the contributors either in cheeses or money. He keeps an exact account, not only of the quantity of milk brought in, but to prevent fraud, such as mixing it with water, he ascertains its quality by a kind of hydrometer, or floating gauge. Persons detected in cheating are struck out of the book, and lose what they had already contributed. The fruitiére man who manages the business and keeps the accounts, is paid by a small per centage on each cheese.

This plan is chiefly adopted in those parts of the country where the cattle are taken in summer to pasture in the mountains; the farmers confide their cows to a man who lives in a chalet, such as Madeleine mentioned, and spends night and day in milking the cows, and in making and turning the cheeses.

The same practice has been introduced into Piedmont and Lombardy. All the dairies in which the Parmesan cheeses are made, are supplied in this manner. The meadows of Lombardy, in the vicinity of the Po, are the most fertile in the world: being constantly watered, they produce three or four crops of hay in the season; but as they are occupied by a great number of individuals, there are few who can support a dairy, because the making cheeses requires a large quantity of milk, the produce of at least fifty cows. To effect this the Lombards have formed societies in order to make their cheese in common; and twice a-day the milk is sent to the principal house, where the dairy-man keeps an account of each person’s share.

This subject reminds me that my aunt has had a satisfactory letter from Bertram and Madeleine. He is much improved in strength. She appears to be very happy, and the little girl is going on well.

7th, Sunday.—Wentworth has been so much interested by the character of Moses, and by the explanations my uncle has occasionally given of his prophecies, that during the last week he prepared a long string of questions for this morning. His father was pleased by this eagerness to obtain information, and answered them all most kindly and fully. I need not repeat the questions, I shall only tell you the general substance of the answers; and you, dear mamma, who are so well acquainted with the subject will easily trace my omissions.

The prophecies of Moses may be considered in some measure as supplemental to those of Jacob and Balaam. He enters into many details of the perverseness and the corruptions of the Israelites, and the consequent calamities of famine, pestilence, and war, which should afflict them under the government of their kings. He states them almost with the simplicity of an historical narrative; while all other prophecies, except those of our Lord, are expressed in more poetical, and in far more obscure language.

The 28th chapter of Deuteronomy contains several passages which are plainly indicative of the captivity of the ten tribes by the Assyrians, and of the two remaining tribes of Judah and Benjamin, by the Babylonians. In examining the books of Kings and Chronicles, we find that most part of those predicted judgments were fulfilled in the order he foretold; as in the dearths that took place, the plagues that carried off numbers of the people, and the repeated invasions of the country by the Moabites and Philistines, and afterwards by the Ammonites, Chaldees, and Syrians. The captivity of Jehoiachin by the Babylonians was a striking accomplishment of the prophetic threat in the 36th verse. “The Lord shall bring thee and thy king which thou shalt set over thee, unto a nation which neither thou nor thy fathers have known:” for it was delivered long anterior to the establishment of any king. The conclusion of that verse, “and there thou shalt serve other gods, wood and stone,” was also precisely fulfilled, as the people were compelled by their cruel conqueror to worship his idols.

The circumstantial prophecy contained in the last twenty verses of that chapter, was fulfilled most literally by the invasion of the Romans, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the complete dispersion of the Jews. The Romans were described in it with characteristic precision eight hundred years before they existed as a nation. It is said that they were to come “from far, from the end of the earth:” now the western parts of Europe were at that time the limits of the known world; and it is remarkable that the armies of Titus and Adrian were principally composed of Gauls and Spaniards. The rapidity of the Roman marches is compared by the prophet to the flight of the “eagle,” and it is not too much to suppose, that in that expression he alludes also to the eagles which were the Roman ensigns. Their language was not to be understood by the Jews; and the “fierce countenance,” for which the Romans were distinguished from the earliest periods of the republic, is noticed, as well as the merciless ferocity of their conduct.

The horrors of the siege of Jerusalem are next foretold with dreadful exactness; as well as the miseries the people were to endure in their subsequent dispersion. “The Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other; ... and among these nations thou shalt find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest.” “Observe now,” said my uncle, “the fulfilment of that prophecy. Since their calamitous expulsion, the Jews have wandered over the face of the globe for one thousand seven hundred years, without national possessions, government, or laws. Their riches have exposed them to plunder, and their poverty to contempt. Driven from place to place, they have been persecuted even in Christian countries with unrelenting cruelty; they seem to have lost their rank in the creation, and have been made to feel the ‘trembling heart,’ ‘the sorrow of mind,’ and the uncertainty of their lives, of which their great prophet so emphatically warned them.

“Yet, notwithstanding their sufferings, they have been preserved a distinct people through all the changes of nations; for the same prophet said, they should ‘only be oppressed and crushed;’ not exterminated and rooted out like the Canaanites. They have adhered to their religion and retained the sacred language of the Scriptures; they appear to have been preserved for ‘a sign,’ and for ‘a wonder;’ and they may be said to be the depositaries of the prophecies, the continued accomplishment of which is really a standing miracle of the most extraordinary and convincing nature.”

I am ashamed, dear mamma, of the slight sketch I have given of what my uncle said at great length in answer to Wentworth; but, though I have done him very little justice, it has all made a deep impression on my mind, and I am going to read a book he has lent me on the comparison of the prophecies with profane history.

8th.—At last I have escaped from confinement, and am enjoying the delight of fresh air. Everything looks gay; the sweet flowers, the bright green shrubs, the butterflies flitting about in the sun-beams, and, above all, the unceasing singing of the birds. Oh, mamma, how can you bear to live where you hear so few warbling birds?

The change that one short week has produced in my garden is quite magical; it is really a sheet of flowers; and I found there a new proof of the goodnature of my cousins, for they had pulled up every weed that disfigured it while I was confined to the house.

In my aunt’s garden there is a tree of the Yulan Magnolia just opening its large tulip-shaped blossoms, which are so fragrant, and of so pure a white. It is nearly twenty feet high, and it is so hardy, that she wonders this beautiful shrub is not more common in all gardens.

What a peculiar character the hawthorn gives the hedges in this country! It is called May, and indeed it is so pretty, that I think it deserves that honour.

“For thee, sweet month, the groves green liveries wear,
If not the first, the fairest of the year.
For thee the Graces lead the dancing Hours,
And Nature’s ready pencil paints the flowers.”

I have been examining with my aunt the tendrils of the sweet pea; they are so generally found just in the right places for attaching themselves to some convenient support, that one would almost imagine they knew exactly where to put out; but she pointed out some that were idle and useless. She then shewed me the beautiful arrangement of nature by which the honeysuckle supports itself: when a straight shoot becomes long and weak, it curls into a spiral figure which gives it great additional strength, even if alone, and enables it to take a firm grasp of any twig that it meets. But if two or more shoots should touch, they immediately twine or screw themselves round each other, like the strands of a rope, for mutual support.

Another fact my aunt told me on this subject is, that the claspers of briony always shoot forward in a spiral, in search of support; but if they meet with nothing, after completing a spiral of about three turns, they alter their course, and proceed in some other direction.

9th.—Caroline and I had a nice walk this morning with my uncle, and I hasten to write down the additional facts that we learned from him on the subject of fossil remains.

Shells, he told us, are generally found entire, and the skeletons of fishes are frequently discovered in such a perfect state, that both their families and species can be easily ascertained. But the fossil remains of quadrupeds are very rarely complete; some of the parts are wanting; the bones are either scattered at a distance from each other, or else lying confused together, and generally broken. Yet these misplaced fragments are the only means left for naturalists to determine the species of the animal to which they had belonged; and in frequent cases a single bone has been sufficient for that purpose. This is effected by the science of Comparative Anatomy, or, in other words, a comparison of the construction and the functions of the corresponding parts of the inferior animals, with those which belong to the human body; and perhaps no science furnishes more instances of ingenious observation and beautiful reasoning.

Every organized being forms an entire system of its own; all its parts have a mutual relation to each other; and each of them, taken separately, will, therefore, clearly point out the other parts to which it must have belonged. Suppose a ploughman turns up in a field a few bones, the only conclusion he can draw is, that some unknown animal had died near that spot; but the comparative anatomist can tell the size of the whole animal, its general form, the structure of its jaws and teeth, and, consequently, whether it belonged to the herbivorous or carnivorous tribes. None of these separate parts can vary their forms without a corresponding variation in the other parts of the animal; and, consequently, each of those parts, taken separately, indicates all the others to which it had belonged.

If the stomach of an animal is organized so as to digest only flesh, then the jaws and the incisive teeth must be constructed for devouring flesh; the claws for seizing the prey; and the entire system of the limbs for pursuing and catching it. Every one of those organs is indispensable in the structure of carnivorous animals; so that by the bones of the paw, or the arm, or the shoulder-blade, or the leg, the construction and disposition of all the rest may be determined; and, consequently, the whole form, species, genus, and class of animal must necessarily be discovered by the examination of a single bone.

The hoofed animals, it is plain, must be herbivorous, because they are possessed of no means of seizing their prey; it is also evident that their fore-legs, being only necessary to support their bodies and to assist their progressive movement, they have no occasion for any rotary motion in that joint that corresponds to the human wrist; and their food being herbaceous, their teeth must have flat surfaces; but at the same time, in order to bruise seeds and tough plants, the teeth are composed of alternate layers of hard enamel and soft bone; and a horizontal or grinding motion is given to the lower jaw, which for that purpose has a peculiar conformation of its joint. Again, we know that ruminating animals alone are provided with cloven hoofs, so that, from a simple foot-mark we can be perfectly certain that the animal possessed such and such teeth, jaws, legs, shoulders and horns; and that it fed on herbage.

The same laws and the same modes of reasoning, of course, equally apply to petrified bones; and in this manner seventy-eight different fossil quadrupeds have been ascertained and classed, of which forty-nine are of extinct species. It is remarkable, that oviparous quadrupeds are generally found in more ancient strata than the viviparous tribes. A few bones of marine animals, such as seals, are found in the shell limestone which immediately covers the chalk strata, but no bones of land quadrupeds have been discovered in that formation; they generally occupy the ancient alluvial beds composed of sand and pebbles which lie over the limestone.

Some species, which though now extinct, belonged to families that still exist, have been found among the remains of the more ancient and unknown genera; but none of the animals which at present inhabit the earth are ever found, except on the sides of rivers, or at the bottom of marshes, or in the superficial formations; and though their deposition has been comparatively recent, their remains are always the worst preserved.

10th.—The plants which I placed in baskets in the pond have flourished so greatly, that I want to try the same plan with other plants of the same nature: my uncle laughs at me, and says I would put the whole contents of the conservatory into my pond; but indeed I only want to try a crinum, a pancratium, and one or two others. However, I shall confine my wishes now to an agapanthus, or African lily, because my aunt thinks that we shall be in Ireland at the flowering time of the others, and that I should not witness the success of my experiment. I have re-potted the agapanthus in a rich sandy compost, but I have only put the fibrous part into the earth: the whole of the tuber remains above ground. This is to be plunged to the rim in the pond, and the gardener has directions to watch its progress, if I should not be here.

Mary has had some plants of the lobelia fulgens in the conservatory for some time; they were planted in good strong loam, and the pots stand in saucers continually supplied with water; they have already grown amazingly, and will, I am sure, be five feet high before the flowers are out. But alas! we shall be away from this dear place when they blossom.

11th.—I had some confused idea that the great fossil animal, which is called the mastodon, was the same as the mammoth; but my uncle told me to-day, that though the remains of the mastodon have some general resemblance to the elephant, yet there is no doubt that they were quite distinct animals. The bones of the mastodon have been found in great numbers both in North and South America, but no complete skeletons have yet been put together. A small species of this animal has been discovered in Saxony, as well as in some other parts of Europe; and naturalists now divide the whole family into five species. The principal points of difference are not only the disposition and shape of the grinding-teeth, but the bulk of the animal; for the great mastodons that have been found on the banks of the Ohio must have stood twelve feet high.

My uncle had before told me that the term mammoth came from Russia; it is said to be of Tartar origin, derived from mama, which signifies the earth; for the Siberians believe that elephants of that description still live under ground. He says that their tusks are found in such abundance in Eastern Siberia and in the Arctic marshes, that almost the whole of the ivory-turner’s work in Russia is made from Siberian fossil ivory, and that it is not at all inferior in quality to the living ivory of Africa and Asia. Although for a long series of years thousands have been annually procured from the banks of the rivers and from the shores of the Frozen Sea, yet they are still collected in abundance. The best fossil ivory is found in the countries within the arctic circle, where the ground is thawed at the surface only during their very short summer.

The remains of two other huge animals have also been discovered in America, the megatherium, about the size of the rhinoceros; and the megalonix, which was something smaller. From the construction of their teeth they were both herbivorous, and M. Cuvier supposes their prodigious claws to have been employed in digging up roots. They appear to be different species of the same family; and, though related to the sloth genus, they are, like the mammoth and mastodon, entirely extinct. I asked him how he knew that they were extinct, and he told me it was quite impossible that they could still inhabit the interior of America without its being known to the European settlers on the sea coasts; some of them, in the course of time, must have strayed out of the forests, and have been observed by travellers; or, in our constant intercourse with the natives, who have traversed the country in all directions, some accounts of such large animals must have reached us. In South America the Indians point out these large fossil bones as the remains of gigantic monsters, which would have destroyed the whole human race if they had not been themselves destroyed by the interference of the Great Spirit. Nor is it likely, continued my uncle, that any of the other animals, which we know to be extinct now, should have existed since the deluge: no great catastrophe since that time has happened, which could have been equal to the sweeping away of a whole species; and almost all those that at present inhabit the three continents of the old world are mentioned in the writings of Aristotle, or of other ancient authors. The Romans had such a passion for collecting wild beasts, that in the time of Commodus twenty lions, twenty African hyenas, and ten tygers, were killed in one day’s sport at Rome; and thirty-two elephants, a hippopotamus, and ten camelopards were exhibited there at the same time. To such industrious hunters and showmen there could have been few species unknown.

My uncle mentioned a curious circumstance, which, he says, has not been much noticed: that none of the extraordinary animals which inhabit “New Holland’s continental isle” have ever been found among the fossil remains in any other part of the globe; and of the fossil strata there, very little is yet known.

I asked him if there was any foundation for the chimæra, and the other imaginary monsters of the ancients. “Those ideal creatures,” he replied, “may be partly referred to the marvellous traditions that accompany the early records of all nations; and partly to the habit, which was so prevalent in those times, of describing real objects as well as passions and events by means of metaphor and allegory. It would be childish to expect that we should now find in any part of the globe remains of such animals as the flying pegasus, or as the sphynx of Thebes; but we must not reject as altogether fabulous those which appear in the hieroglyphics of Egypt and Persepolis. The rude sculpture of those ages has perhaps been the common source of many mistakes; for the most simple and natural method of drawing any animal is by its profile; and in this way, the oryx and the unicorn may appear to have had but a single horn—although the bas relief or outline might have been intended to represent the antelope or some other creature with two horns.”

12th.—There were so many changes from brightness to cloudiness this morning, that as my uncle rose from the breakfast-table, he repeated these lines so descriptive of those rapid alternations.

“With every shifting gleam of morning light
The colours shifted of her rainbow vest.”

I asked him where those lines were to be found.

“Is it possible,” said he, “that you have never read the ‘Tears of old May-day!’ Well then, Caroline will, I am sure, be so kind as to shew it to you; and I think you had better celebrate this famous day, by writing an explanation of this beautiful poem, now so little read.

“You may explain it if you can, in the style of ‘Readings on Poetry;’ a very favourite book, you know, in this house. If any of the mythological allusions are not quite obvious, I will endeavour to explain them; and I will now only premise that the poem proceeds on the Eastern idea, that the year begins in May:

‘For ever then I led the constant year’

is therefore quite in character for

‘The flow’ry May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip, and the pale primrose.’”

This was a terrific task, and occupied me great part of the morning. At last, when it was finished, I came to the hall to refresh myself with my cousins at a new play, called La Grace, or the Flying Circle, which we have lately imported, and the description of which will probably divert Marianne more than any learned dissertation of mine on the “Tears of old May-day.”

Two people stand at opposite ends of the room, as in playing shuttlecock; each hold two nicely turned sticks, one end of which is pointed; and by a dextrous movement of these pointers, a light, elastic hoop, about eight inches diameter, is sent flying forward towards the person opposite, who catches it on her pointers, and immediately lets it fly back again. When played with two hoops it is still prettier, and requires much more expertness than shuttlecock.

Mary and I had played at it successfully for some time, when we were interrupted by poor little Grace, who, looking very sad, ran into the hall, put her pencil-case into Mary’s hand and vanished, brushing away a large tear from her cheek.

Mary followed her, and afterwards told me that she had given Grace a silver pencil-case some months since, on condition that she never would again scribble in books; a habit which she had unaccountably acquired. Grace delighted to have her long-wished for pencil-case, agreed to the compact, and punctually kept it till this unfortunate day. The moment that she recollected herself, she came to return the pencil to Mary, with true honesty indeed, for she had only scribbled in one of her own little books, which might never have been observed. Though sorry that she should thoughtlessly have broken her engagement, yet all were pleased at finding that she had that fine principle of honour which disdains deceit. My aunt has certainly contrived to fix steady good principles in the hearts of my cousins, which really influence their conduct. Instead of having to watch them, she places the most perfect reliance on their integrity; and most justly, for I, who see them at all times, know that they have not mere show-sentiments or show-manners; but that they are just the same when not observed by their mother as when in her presence.

13th.—I believe I noted in my journal that I had been practising the art of budding. As soon as I had acquired a little expertness, I tried my hand on various roses just as the leaf-buds began to swell, having seen, in the “Transactions of the Horticultural Society,” that period recommended as the best for roses. The April showers were of great use, and most of my buds have now become nice flourishing shoots. Yellow roses are said to thrive particularly well when budded on the China rose, and I hope mine may not be attacked by those troublesome little green caterpillars that ate away the heart of the buds on Mary’s yellow rose last year. She kept one of them, which changed into a small brown chrysalis, and this morning it has become a very pretty buff moth, marked all over in brown patten work: it is small, but the antennæ are as long as the whole moth, circular, and bowed towards its nose like cow’s horns.

I have also several young rose grafts of different species growing on the wild rose—

“Of simpler bloom, but kindred race,
The pensive Eglantine——.”

Mr. Biggs asserted that this process would improve their colours. I thought it rather extraordinary that the “simpler bloom” of the wild rose should have that effect; but my uncle said, “Try the experiment first, and reason about it afterwards.”

When I showed these budded roses to Miss Perceval, I expressed my surprise that amongst the numerous South American plants which have been collected in this country, I had not heard of any new species of rose.

“Are there any native roses in South America?” she asked.

“Oh! of course,” said I, “in such a flowery country. You know there is an island in the Rio de la Plata called the Isle of Flores, which I suppose is covered with flowers.”

“Can you describe any of your indigenous Brazilian roses?” said she, laughing.

After considering some time I was obliged to acknowledge that I could not recollect any one that I knew to be a native of Brazil.

“This is one of the numerous instances of taking for granted which we meet every day,” said she. “You imagined that the rose must be wild in all parts of the world because it is everywhere cultivated:—you will therefore learn with surprise, that it is generally believed that all the roses yet known have been found between the 19th and 70th degrees of North latitude; none, therefore, belong to South America, though the profusion of China roses, cultivated in Brazil, might very naturally have given you the idea of their being natives. It is possible, however, that hereafter new species may be discovered south of the line, which will come under the head Rosaceæ, for the industry of botanists has wonderfully increased this family in a few years. In Wildenow’s book, published in 1800, he enumerates only thirty-nine species, yet there are upwards of one hundred now known and cultivated in this country; and a foreign professor has given a list of even two hundred and forty species. He proposes to divide them into twenty-four series, each of which is to bear the name of some botanist who has distinguished himself by a knowledge of that beautiful genus. For instance, Rosa Candolliana,—Wildenowiana,—Pallasiana, and so on.”

She told me also that all the apple and pear tribes are placed in the natural order of Rosaceæ; in the rose, the calyx, which is pitcher-shaped, encloses the germ; and in the former the germ is beneath the calyx. She mentioned, too, as a curious circumstance of the dog-rose or eglantine, that the farther North it is found, the more woolly are the styles, while to the Southward, as in Madeira, they have no hairs whatever.

The rose seems to be prized particularly in Persia, where it is the chief ornament of the garden. In that very entertaining book “Sketches of Persia,” the author mentions a breakfast which was given to him at a beautiful spot in the vicinity of Shiraz:—

“We were surprised and delighted to find that we were to enjoy this meal on a stack of roses! On this a carpet was laid, and we sat cross-legged like the natives. The stack, which was as large as a common one of hay in England, had been formed without much trouble, from the heaps or cocks of rose leaves, collected before they were sent into the city to be distilled.”

In Foster’s travels, too, Mary shewed me a description of the city of Kashmire, where the houses though slightly built, have flat roofs of sufficient strength to support a covering of earth; this is planted with roses and other flowers, and gives the town a very beautiful appearance. The earth also preserves the houses from being chilled by the quantity of snow that lies on them in winter; and in summer it gives them a refreshing coolness. Every creature he met had roses in their hands; and you may recollect, mamma, that the same thing is said of the city of Bisnagar in the Arabian Night’s tales. The province of Kashmire, Foster says, has been always famous for roses, particularly for one extremely fragrant species, of which the best attar of rose is made; but it will not grow in a more southerly climate.

He mentions a lake, near the city, in which there were several islands covered with rose-trees; they were all in brilliant blossom when he was there, and looked like large baskets of roses. How pretty the floating Chinampas of Mexico would be if they were planted with the Kashmire rose; or, what would suit them better, with the little rose of Jericho. Miss P. says this is one of the most singular plants in the world, and is found no where but in the deserts of Arabia. It is only six inches high, root and all; and its tiny branches curve inward, so as to enclose its numerous flowers in a sort of hollow globe. I think this may be truly called a Lilliputian tree.

14th, Sunday.—The thirty-second chapter of Deuteronomy, or the song of Moses, was the subject of our conversation this morning. My uncle told us that it consists of six parts.

“It opens in the first five verses with a summons to the whole universe to listen to the inspired voice of the prophet; and contrasts the power, truth, and justice of God with the iniquities of the ‘perverse generation’ whom he was addressing. In the next nine verses he expatiates on God’s continued indulgence and more than fatherly affection towards the Israelites; he makes an affecting appeal to their gratitude; and he dwells on the unceasing protection they had experienced from their first helpless origin, up to their entrance into the rich land of promise, in a manner which shows that Moses spoke from a full recollection of the scenes he had witnessed, and that he deeply felt the extent of the almighty power and goodness.

“In the expression ‘When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance,’ we are to understand the tribes of Israel; each of which, from their extraordinary increase of population, might be considered as a nation in itself, while the whole composed ‘His people,’ the most highly favoured of all the nations of the earth.”

I begged of my uncle to explain what was meant in the 13th verse by “He made them ride on the high places of the earth;” and afterwards by “sucking honey and oil out of the flinty rock?” He answered, “The former phrase applies to the victories which the Israelites had already achieved through the divine assistance, as well as to the final conquest of the land of Canaan by the same means. The honey and oil are allusions to the fruitfulness of the country, which abounds with wild bees, who build their honeycombs in the rocks; and with the finest olive trees, which it is well known strike their roots into the rocky crevices.

“The third part of the song,” he continued, “begins with the fifteenth verse, and describes the usual effect of prosperity upon a thoughtless and ungrateful people. ‘But Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked.’ This figure of speech is probably taken from a pampered horse, who becomes unmanageable and vicious; and you will find it repeated in Hosea[4]. ‘According to their pasture they were filled, and their heart was exalted; therefore they have forgotten me.’ Jeshurun is derived from a word signifying upright, and is put here, as well as in Isaiah, for Israel. It would not be very difficult to apply the whole of this passage to more modern nations, who have far less excuse than even the Israelites for ‘forsaking God, and lightly esteeming the rock of their salvation;’ but, as individuals, at least, we may take a useful lesson from it; let us beware of the seductions of prosperity, lest our hearts become too much engrossed by the happiness that we enjoy, or too much depressed by the salutary disappointments that we sometimes undergo.

“The fourth part, from the nineteenth verse to the end of the twenty-fifth, expresses the indignation of the Lord, and his threats of rejecting apostate Israel, and of adopting in their room the believing Gentiles. It is quoted by St. Paul, as having that interpretation; and I will only further remark, that it is written with the most awful strength that language can supply; and that all its denunciations have been literally accomplished.

“The fifth division, to the end of verse 35, states the wise and gracious reasons of the dispersion of the Jews into all lands, both for their ultimate preservation, and to prevent their enemies from vainly ascribing to themselves their destruction. It was not indeed from any merit of their own that those enemies were allowed to triumph, they were only employed as the instruments of punishment; and God declares in the sequel that they will have to answer for their own corruptions and idolatries in the day of vengeance.

“‘For their rock is not as our Rock; even our enemies themselves being judges.’ This remarkable passage was evidently introduced by Moses in a parenthesis. He prophetically knew that their conquerors would often have to confess the superiority of the God of Israel over their own deities; and accordingly many examples of it may be collected in Scripture. I need scarcely remind you of Nebuchadnezzar’s decree, when he perceived the three faithful Jews escaping unhurt from his fiery furnace[5]; nor of his touching acknowledgment of the one true God when he regained his reason[6]; and in profane history you no doubt recollect the declaration of the Roman emperor Titus, after the conquest of Jerusalem,—That he was only an instrument in the hand of God, whose wrath had been so signally manifested against the Jews.

“The last part of this celebrated song is called the consolation of Israel: it holds out a gracious promise of future reconciliation when they should have repented of their obstinacy, and abjured the vain idols in whom they had trusted for protection; it gives an awful warning to their oppressors, that the day of account and of vengeance for them also will come; and the words in the concluding verse, ‘Rejoice, O ye nations with his people,’ seem to have been cited by St. Paul,[7] to prove the future conversion of both Jews and Gentiles to Christ, and their mutual exultation in his then undivided kingdom.”

15th.—I seized an opportunity of asking my uncle some questions about the beds of coal in the forest of Dean, and I learned that the coal formation there, is an irregular elliptical basin, occupying nearly the whole of the forest tract. It is ten miles long, and six broad; and all the strata dip uniformly to the centre of the basin. He shewed me the extent of it on a geological map, which he has made of this county; and which marks in the prettiest manner all the principal strata. Each kind of rock has a particular colour, so that its extent is seen at a glance; and by a section at the bottom of the map, the dip or inclination of the strata, and the manner in which they lie on each other, are very distinctly shewn. He made Caroline and me observe that we could trace on it the mountain-lime and old red-sandstone (which enclose the coal-field) across the river Wye into South-Wales: there, he says, they contain another coal district, of much greater extent; and he showed it to us in Mr. Greenough’s beautiful geological map of all England. I should never have been tired of looking at these maps, if Caroline, who knew how little time my uncle could spare, had not asked him something about the origin of coal.

“Before I answer that question,” said he, “we must have a little discussion on the nature of peat; a substance which seems to be very closely allied to coal, and which, there is no doubt, has been produced by the decay and decomposition of vegetable matter. There are different kinds of peat, therefore, according to the different kinds of plants of which it is composed, and the different situations in which the process has been carried on; such as marsh, forest, and marine peat. Some extensive bogs have been caused within the memory of man, by the decay and natural fall of forests, over which the sphagnum palustre and other mosses rapidly spread; agricultural implements and various domestic utensils have been found under them; and we may therefore assume, that as peat appears to be in the act of progressive increase, it belongs to an order of causes still in action. When examined, peat appears to be an entire mass of vegetable fibres: towards the surface they are nearly in an unchanged state, but in the middle the peat becomes more compact; and at the bottom of a very deep and ancient bog, they are almost obliterated, the substance being dense and black, and having all the chemical characters of jet. In some instances beds of peat alternate with beds of mud or sand, which must have been deposited in the bottom of lakes, and in these cases they appear something like an incomplete coal formation.

“In a short time,” continued my uncle, “we shall have a better opportunity of studying this curious substance, if your interest in it continues, when we are in Ireland, as that island contains a greater proportion of bog than any country with which we are acquainted.”

“My interest in it, my dear uncle, I replied, is not very likely to fail while I have your kind assistance; but as we are as yet in a coal country, perhaps you will tell us something of the formation or origin of that mineral.”

“There is no possible doubt,” he said, “that the general origin of coal must be referred to the vegetable kingdom; and I began with peat, to show you how masses of vegetable matter may be collected in thick and very extensive beds, ready for whatever process nature may afterwards employ in converting them into coal. Some species of coal are merely fossil wood (or lignite) impregnated with bitumen: the branches, trunks, and roots, though closely pressed together, are scarcely altered in texture, in some places; while in others they gradually lose every vegetable feature, and the substance in colour, lustre, and fracture, resembles pitch. Of this nature is the Bovey coal of Devonshire, and the Surturbrand of Iceland; and I have some specimens of the former, in which the fibres were flexible when I took them out of the pit, though now hard and brittle. From the disposition of those Bovey lignites, which lie in alternate strata with clay and gravel, it has been reasonably inferred that the trees and vegetables of the adjacent mountains were washed down at different periods into a lake; the clay and gravel, of course, sank first to the bottom, and formed the floor; but in time the trees saturated with moisture, and pressed down by an accumulation of other trees, sank also; and were again, perhaps in succeeding ages, covered by successive depositions.

“The common, or cubical coal, as it is called from the shape into which it breaks, does not bear the same obvious marks of vegetable origin in its structure; but where one species of coal can be so clearly demonstrated to be only altered vegetable matter, it would be bad philosophy to ascribe the other species to other causes. In the prodigious beds of coal, however, in Staffordshire, there is no want of vegetable traces; and even in the Newcastle coal the impressions of leaves and branches are frequently found, as well as in the freestone and slate-clay which intervene between its numerous strata. At Kilsyth, in Scotland, a very singular specimen was discovered; a tree standing upright, with its roots resting on a bed of coal, from which they could scarcely be distinguished, and its stem passing into a stratum of sandstone rock. The lower end was completely bituminated, and it burned with a clear flame; yet the upper part, though scarcely altered in the grain or apparent texture of the wood, was converted into sandstone similar to that by which it was enclosed. Round the stem there was a space of about an inch in thickness filled with coal, which renders it probable that the same process that converted the roots into coal acted upwards on the bark. The rock contains innumerable remains of plants; some of which are so perfect that their species have been made out, and no pencil could trace their delicate ramifications with greater nicety.

“In short,” continued my uncle, “it appears more than probable that every species of coal has proceeded from vegetable matter of different kinds, but under different circumstances; and that its chemical change was effected under the pressure of deep water. In one stage of that process it must have been in a soft pulpy state, like the lowest part of a deep peat-bog; for this is the only way that I can account for the impression of leaves, canes, seed-vessels, and shells, which are so commonly found on the external surface of coal.”

My uncle shewed us a beautiful specimen of a fern leaf, where the impression was as perfect as if it had been made with wax.

He then continued, “Sir James Hall thinks that peat may have been converted into coal by heat acting under great compression; and he has actually succeeded in making a substance very like it. When I have more leisure I will describe the ingenious process which he adopted, as well as some other experiments of the same nature, by which this distinguished philosopher discovered the means of fusing limestone, of imitating volcanic lava, and of forming solid sandstone from loose sand.

“But to return to our coals: the chief difference between the various kinds of coal which are applied to economical purposes, arises from the proportion of bitumen they contain. What is called caking coal yields about 40 per cent.; when burning it swells, agglutinates, and emits much smoke and gas, which inflame at a certain temperature. Cannel coal has only 20 per cent. of bitumen, and does not agglutinate or cake. It burns with a bright flame like a candle, from which circumstance it takes its name, cannel being the common pronunciation of candle in the North of England. The third sort I shall mention is called anthracite by mineralogists; but its common name is blind coal, or Kilkenny coal, from a district in Ireland, where there are vast beds of it. It contains little or no bitumen; it neither cakes nor flames, and gives out very little smoke. But as there are several varieties of coal between those principal species, much confusion has taken place in their names.”

16th.—When Mary and I were in the garden to-day, I observed a very odd appearance on the under surface of some of the leaves of a pear-tree; they appeared thickly set with strange little downy russet-coloured things like spines growing out of the leaf, perpendicular to it, and about a quarter of an inch in length, and very little thicker than a pin, with a protuberance or excrescence at the base.

Mary was amused at my surprise, and told me that they were the habitations of insects. She then took one of these tubes off the leaf, and on giving it a gentle squeeze, a minute caterpillar, with a yellowish body and black head, came out of the lower end; for the head is always downwards. We examined the place from which she had removed it, and I saw that there was a small hollow in the outer skin and pulpy part of the leaf, which had been eaten away by the caterpillar. It moves this little tube or tent from one part of the leaf to the other, and eats no other part than what the tent covers; and when these insects are abundant, Mary says that every leaf is covered with little withered specks, where they have feasted themselves.

The tube in which the caterpillar lives, is composed of silk, spun from its mouth almost as soon as it comes out of the egg, and as it increases in size it enlarges the tube, by slitting it in two, and introducing a strip of new materials. To preserve the perpendicular posture of its tent, this ingenious insect attaches several silken threads from the protuberance at the base to the surface of the leaf; but it has a still more singular device to protect the tent against any violence: it forms a vacuum in the protuberance at the base, which fastens it to the leaf as effectually as if an air-pump had been employed. This vacuum is caused by the insect’s retreating on the least alarm up the tube, which its body so completely fills that the space below is free of air, and the tube is pressed down like the exhausted receiver of an air-pump.

Mary easily convinced me of this when she seized it suddenly while the insect was at the bottom, the silken cords readily gave way, and the tube was detached by a very slight force; but when she touched it gently, giving the insect time to retreat, we found that a much stronger effort was required to loosen it. As if aware of the effect of the admission of air from below, this little philosopher carefully avoids gnawing quite through the leaf; and when he has eaten as deeply as he can venture, he cuts the cords of his tent and pitches it on a fresh part of the surface. When it has attained its perfect state, it becomes a small brown moth.

17th.-Mary has been trying a grand experiment, which has succeeded so well that mamma must have an account of it.

My uncle determined to remove a valuable jargonelle pear-tree from one wall to another. I forget his reason, but no matter; it was, however, much too late in the season, and the tree sickened, and seemed to be dying. The gardener declared it could not live; but Mary, who had read that trees in such a predicament might be saved by a gentle but continual drip of water being guided to the roots, requested my uncle to let her try the effect of this plan. He is always anxious to encourage useful experiment, and willingly consigned the tree to her prescriptions.

She took two large flower-pots, and, having carefully corked the holes, she suspended one to each end of a stick, which was fastened across the stem of the tree. A piece of cloth-listing or selvage, long enough to reach the ground, was put into each pot, with a stone tied to it to prevent its slipping out; and the other end of the listing was slit into three parts, which were slightly pegged into the ground. She then had the pots filled with water, and the whole of the listing being wetted, each of them acted like a syphon, drawing the water up over the edge of the pot, as my uncle says by capillary action, and conducting it slowly and regularly into the ground. The moisture spread to the roots, and in three days the young leaves began to revive. The pots were filled every morning, and she changed the listing once a week, as the filaments of the cloth became clogged, and the water was not so freely transmitted. The daily improvement of the tree was very gratifying to my uncle, who enjoyed Mary’s ingenuity and success; and even the gardener has this morning pronounced it to be out of danger.

18th.—I am afraid that my dear mamma will call me a little credulous simpleton when she reads this account of the singular sagacity of a cat; but my aunt took great pains to ascertain that it was quite correct.

Dame Moreland has some remarkably fine cats, and she is in the constant habit of drowning all their progeny, except one kitten of her favourite, Mrs. Snowtip’s, which she selects with due attention to its beauty. This time, however, pussy thought proper to choose that one for herself, and carrying it from the garden into the house, she left the rest to perish. Accustomed to their being regularly taken away, she seemed to agree to that arrangement, and devoted herself to the one she had saved.

A few weeks afterwards another of the cats kittened, and its whole brood being destroyed, the poor thing became very uneasy, and suffered much from the want of her little ones to relieve her of the nourishment provided for them. On which, the fat Mrs. Snowtip being very ill-supplied herself, actually employed the poor bereaved cat as a nurse. This office she performs with proper fidelity, and the two ladies agree perfectly; for while the nurse feeds little Snowtip, the mother smooths and dresses it herself, and on any alarm flies to its protection, while the nurse seems contented with doing her own duty, and never interferes on such occasions.

19th.—I have had a good deal of work at my strawberry bank, for Mr. Biggs warned me that the beds ought never to be dug, but constantly hand-weeded; and he recommended also that the runners should be nipped off as soon as they appeared. I undertook to do all this myself; and both weeds and runners seem determined that I shall not be idle.

This strawberry bank is such a very dry soil, that I found the plants wanted water continually; and I asked my uncle to let a little channel be made, for the purpose of bringing to the top of the bank a small rill that runs across the back of the shrubbery. Something I had heard about irrigating meadows suggested this idea, and my uncle approved. The channel has been cut, and it brings the water on a level along the upper edge of my bank, from whence it trickles down the slope along each row of strawberry plants. When they have had enough, I put a slate edgeways across the channel, which acts as a little sluice, and turns the water aside into the pond. This method of watering has so far answered very well, for I think my strawberries look more healthy than any of the others; they are now in full flower, and I am in high hopes of having the first and best fruit to present to my uncle for his kindness.

20th.—I had a long walk yesterday evening with Miss Perceval and Mary through some of farmer Moreland’s fields, which are shut up for meadow. The grasses are opening their blossoms, and Miss Perceval taught me the names of several that I had not known. She then asked me if I could describe the leading characters of the grass family.

I considered, and hesitated, and tried; but my attempts were very awkward, and I acknowledged that trials of that sort were sometimes exceedingly useful in making us acquainted with our own ignorance. She smiled, and put the same question to Mary.

Mary said, “I will do my best, but on condition that you will tell me where I am wrong. The stem is generally smooth, and its hollow cylindrical form enables it to stand upright even when four or five feet high; it is usually jointed, which gives it additional strength; and it is terminated by the flowers, which are either tufted, or in spikes, or panicled:—the leaves are alternate, and always undivided—one of them springing from each knot, and enveloping the stem with a sheath, which is split down to the knot. All grasses have a chaffy flower inclosed in a glume or husk; and each flower has a single seed. These are all the general characters that I can recollect, which mark the tribe distinctly.”

“Very clear, indeed,” said Miss Perceval, “and quite full enough. The grasses are easily distinguishable from all other plants, except the Cyperacea; and even they shew a well-marked line of separation, as their stems are sometimes triangular, and very seldom jointed; and the sheath is always entire, not split like that of the grasses.

“The grasses are of the greatest importance,” she continued, “in the economy of nature; they form in most countries the chief covering of the earth; they are the principal support of terrestrial animals; and you know that the basis of all agriculture is the cultivation of plants which belong to their order.”

Miss P. easily allows herself to be drawn out, and before we reached home, we obtained the following particulars of that numerous family.

“There are about eighteen hundred species already known; and the industry of botanists is every day adding to the list: there are both land and fresh-water grasses, but no marine grass. They occur in every soil; generally in society with other grasses, but sometimes a single species will be found occupying a considerable district. Sand appears the least favourable to their growth; but even sand has species peculiar to itself. They are spread over the whole vegetable kingdom, from the equator to the polar regions; and from the sea-shores to the tops of the highest mountains, at least to the line of perpetual congelation.

“We are still in want of a perfect natural classification, by which their distribution on the globe might be made more distinct: at present, each of the ten groups into which they are arranged, contains too many, so that not one of the groups belongs exclusively to any one zone. Some, however, may be regarded as tropical, and some as chiefly inhabiting the temperate climates. The variation of the grasses in the different continents is still less perceptible; there is scarcely any difference between those of North America and those of the temperate regions of the European continent. Between the two temperate zones also the distinction is inconsiderable. Of thirty-six species from the Cape, thirty occur in the northern hemisphere; while in other tribes of plants, Southern Africa has many that are peculiar to itself. I may mention poa as being one of the most extensively distributed genera; some of its species are found in every part of the world, from Spitsbergen to New Holland.”

“We may say then,” said Mary, “that latitude has but little influence on these plants.”

“Yes, it has a decided influence,” said Miss Perceval, “on their vegetation; the tropical grasses acquire a much greater height, and almost assume the appearance of trees. Some species of the bamboo, which you know belongs to this tribe, are fifty feet high. The leaves too are broader, and approach more in form to the leaves of the other families of plants.”

I then asked Miss P. to give me some idea of the distribution of those grasses which are cultivated.

“The cultivated grasses,” she said, “which extend farthest to the north in Europe, are barley and oats. These, which in milder climates are not generally used for bread, afford the inhabitants of Norway, Sweden, and Scotland, their chief vegetable nourishment. Rye comes next to these; it is the prevailing grain along the borders of the Baltic, and in part of Siberia. Next follows a zone including Europe and a large part of Western Asia, where rye disappears, and wheat almost exclusively furnishes bread.

“The next district extends across Barbary, Egypt, Persia, and the countries of the East, where, though wheat abounds, rice and maize are extensively cultivated; and in some of those countries the sorghum, which yields a grain resembling millet, and the poa Abyssinica, are largely used by the inhabitants. In the eastern parts of the temperate zone, including China and Japan, rice predominates over all other grains. Between the tropics, maize prevails in America, rice in Asia, and both in nearly equal quantities in Africa; probably because Asia is the native country of rice, and America of maize. The native country of wheat has not yet been ascertained, but there are few places into which it has not been introduced. Several other grains and plants that supply food, are cultivated in the torrid zone, but we cannot touch on them now, as they are not grasses.