animal substances, till coming into contact with fluid matter of whatever description it starts into life, and swarming in the ocean, and its tributary streams; it was not thus dispersed everywhere, either alive or in a state to revive and live, but for some great purpose, for which its organisation, structure, and station amongst animals, particularly adapt it.

[We have gleaned these interesting particulars from the Rev. WILLIAM KIRBY'S Bridgewater Treatise, "On the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God," a work that ought to be in the hands of every thinking man in the kingdom. We congratulate the public on these "Bridgewater Treatises" having come into the possession of Mr. H. G. BOHN, who, at a cost merely nominal, is about to present them in all their freshness to the world at large. We say "freshness," because their original cost was fearfully exorbitant. They were "sealed books" to the masses.]

POPULAR DISCUSSIONS.

THE BOOKSELLERS' QUESTION-No. II.

WE HAVE ALREADY SHOWN how bitterly the large Publishing houses have repented their rash act of folly in interfering with the profits of the Retail trade. They have opened the eyes of the public at large to "a great fact," of which some few only were before cognisant; but of which, now, the world at large will of course take advantage. We have settled the point of discussion about the rate of profit allowed by the wholesale booksellers to the retail booksellers; and proved that it is, under all circumstances, by no means exorbitant. How ever it is, we learn, to be considerably reduced, if not altogether held back. This,

time will show.

We are to-day to deal with the "cheap booksellers." These are few in number, at least the very 66 cheap booksellers," who regularly take off 20 per cent. from the published price of all new books. We well know, but do not consider it needful to mention, the parties who have given most offence. These gentlemen are book merchants, dealing very largely in second-hand books, and valuable "remainders" of books purchased at "trade dinner sales," and also privately, of their respective publishers. These, when first purchased, are in what are technically called sheets or quires, that is, unbound. Strangely however, and handsomely are they soon arrayed, and bedizened in calf, morocco, and other taking" bind ings; and thereby their value becomes enhanced-we will not say to what extent. If however we 66 guessed" that from 50 to

66

100 per cent. is often realised on some of these purchases, and generally 50 per cent., we need not fear contradiction; we are quite within the mark.

Now then, we come to the why and because of the very "cheap booksellers " making the public so large an allowance on New Publications. It is with a view to entice them to their well-stored shops. Once there, book-buyers soon find cause sufficient to repeat their visit. Indeed, if these cheap booksellers were to sell new publications without any profit at all, it would answer their purpose admirably well,-on the same principle that a grocer sells his sugars at cost price to secure customers for his teas and other articles.

We do not see how this can be prevented. When a man buys anything,—either in large or small quantities, surely the purchase is his own; de jure et de facto, as the lawyers say. There is no law existing that can prevent it, but there is a law existing that permits it. Hence the folly of the Great Houses attempting to bark," when their teeth are drawn. They would bite, but they can't bite. As for their growl, Lord Campbell laughed at it,-so did the "cheap booksellers;" so did the Public. They are now muzzled.

We have thus satisfactorily shown, wherein consists the much-vaunted philanthropy of the "cheap booksellers," who talk so loudly about disseminating knowledge at a cheap rate-for the "benefit of their fellow man!" We have lived long enough to know, that selfishness exists largely in us all; and we verily believe that in every case, where we find cheap folk "selling off at ruinous sacrifices for the benefit of the Public," they are realising thereby an extra profit for themselves of some 50 per cent. over the former prices.

So much for the "cheap booksellers." We have perhaps let them off too easily,but we deprecate anything like bitterness.

BIRDS OF SONG.

Give me but Something whereunto I may bind my heart, Something to LOVE, to rest upon,-to clasp AFFECTION's tendrils round.-MRS. HEMANS.

NO. XVII. THE NIGHTINGALE.

WE ARE GLAD TO KNOW, and as happy to be able to record it, that this has been a "bad season" for nightingales-bad in so far as their enemies, the bird-catchers, are concerned. These human, or rather inhuman vermin, have laid in wait for their innocent victims in vain. The weather has been cold and chilly, and the abundance of rain which has fallen has clothed the trees with such rich

verdure, that the miscreant's trap has failed to become seen. Hence, the number of old nightingales for sale this year has been comparatively small.

The song of these birds is now about to cease for the season. If therefore you have neglected to make your purchases, you are just too late. After June, they are not worth the trouble and anxiety that must be bestowed on them, if you wish them to be happy. We speak, of course, about the old birds. Nestlings are just now coming into the market; and if you are determined on keeping them, you should lose no time about securing a nest of young birds. Make your wishes known at once to some of the dealers. In this matter they cannot cheat you. Out of a nest, you are likely to rear one or two fine male birds. The hens, when proved to be such, will of course be liberated, but not in the winter.

"Branchers" too, will be on sale in a few days, and should be caged as soon as caught. You will find them, for the most part, cheerful and sociable; and so imitative, that they quickly learn to unite a number of other voices with their own. They possess however, the charm of executing whatever they attempt, to perfection; so that this variety will be pleasingly agreeable.

Branchers and nestlings-the latter in particular-never sing their own natural only; unless indeed they be brought up immediately under an old steady song

song

bird, and allowed to hear the voice of none other. Here let us caution you, never to forget to pay your "pets" marked attention; for nightingales are apt, if slighted, to grow sulky, and refuse their regular food. This they will do for very many hours. In such cases, you must give way; and win their favor by presenting to them their favorite morceau. This will cause them to return to their food. We have seen many a bird exhibit these signs of obstinacy. Indeed, we believe some would literally die before being the first to give in. These lovely little fellows know their powers, and will be treated with becoming respect. But if you treat them with affection-what a reward will be yours! Their motto to a "friend" is,-"Je ne change qu'en mourant." Faithful are they to their last dying gasp. We have proved it, again and again.

By

Apropos of the affection of the nightingale, where he observes a corresponding feeling on the part of his admirer. remarkably good fortune, one of the most extraordinary of these songsters has recently taken full possession of our garden. We call the gay, joyous fellow "extraordinary," for we never yet heard such seraphic strains, such perfect freedom of song, from any of the tribe,-much as we have had to do with

them. And what makes us value this merry little rogue the more, is-his almost incredible tameness. He sings, the night through, just under our chamber window, and seldom leaves the garden, by day or by night, for more than a few minutes at a time. We usually rise to greet him at 5 A.M.; and on venturing an humble imitation of his swelling note, he flies to us at once. Seating himself on a shady bough, and bending slightly forward, there he remains-holding converse with us so long as our time permits us to tarry; and he improvises such music the while, that we can hardly tear ourselves away from him. He knows our voice, and we know his. Thus do we, morning by morning, exchange familiarities; and greatly do we love to return, after the fatigues of a day of toil, to renew our intimacy. We believe the pleasure is quite mutual. We cannot but imagine that this bird possesses an unusual charm; for he has drawn into one focus a host of blackbirds, thrushes, robins, black-caps, and other vocalists, whose orchestral accompaniments, blending with his own heavenly voice, almost lead us to suppose we are in fairy land. They rehearse early in the evening; and the concert once commenced lasts until long after sunrise. Perhaps, this has been one of the finest, though the shortest nightingale seasons ever

known.* Nor do we remember ever before

to have observed so much "interest" shown his beauty that has worked this charm?

towards this bird of Paradise. It cannot be

Most assuredly not. It may be, that our good word has had something to do in the matter. Let us hope so.

The nightingale so far from being handsome, is of a remarkably common presence; show." No person, to look at him, would yet has he "within, that which passeth set any value upon him. This bears out our old favorite saying,-that Nature seldom gives rare excellences and a handsome person united. Look at the beautiful plumage of many of the American and other foreign birds-yet have they no voice. Exquisite in form, of faultless symmetrical proportions

yet not one particle of music, or of vocal melody, is there among the entire tribe! and learn how vain is beauty without mind. Here again we find practical instruction;

We never see any of these gaudy automata without a feeling of pity. They were never intended by Nature to visit our country; nor were they ever intended to be immured

We speak more particularly as regards our own neighborhood, and parts adjacent. Hammersmith, Chiswick, Kew, and Richmond, have been most highly favored this year. We have heard Philomel's lovely voice in all these localities. Never sang he more joyously, never did he show more contempt for his prowling enemies! Safely concealed among the luxuriant foliage, he has sung defiance to all his foes; and he is now "safe."

in cages. They cannot be said to "live" here. Theirs is an "existence" only; for they are never well, never happy. They suffer a martyrdom in their confinement, and die in the very prime of life. We throw out these remarks advisedly, and in the kindest spirit of humanity, trusting they will not fall far short of their intended aim.

PHRENOLOGY FOR THE MILLION.

itself, and the individual takes no account of the action of external things, it has been thought proper to call it an internal life. Those who find the supposition of "a soul," necessary to explain these phenomena, give it the name of a vegetative soul.

and in man. Fecundation, assimilation, nutrition, growth, secretions, and excretions, &c., are performed in them equally by the laws of organisation, by a blind necessity, without perception, consciousness, or will. Man and animals, there

The same functions are exercised in animals

BY F. J. GALL, M.D.

(Continued from page 407.)

We shall commence to-day with the FIRST SECTION of what Dr. Gall calls the MORAL Part of his Work. This treats specially of THE NATURE OF MAN, and of the DIFFERENCE BETWEEN VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL LIFE.

THE phenomena which take place in Man, from the moment of his conception to that of his death, taken together, constitute the nature of

man.

All these phenomena are perhaps the result of one single and uniform principle; but they manifest themselves under forms and conditions so different, that to acquire a clear and detailed knowledge of them, we must examine them under points of view, as various as these forms and conditions themselves; we must study man in all his relations, in all his points of contact with entire nature.

the vegetable kingdom. But they likewise enjoy functions of a more elevated and essentially different order; they possess the faculty of sensibility, of perceiving impressions, external and internal; they have the consciousness of their existence; they exercise voluntary movements, and the functions of the senses; they are endowed with mechanical aptitudes for industry; with instincts, propensities, sentiments, talents; with moral qualities and intellectual faculties.

As soon as one or more of these functions take place in any being, it is considered as possessing animal life. And as men have thought, that all these faculties were the product of impressions on the senses, it has been called the life of relation, or external life.

It is therefore with reason, that the parts of the body have been divided into organs of vegetable life, and organs of animal life.

We may, without inconvenience, neglect the relation of man to unorganised nature. Let us leave to the cultivator of natural history, the care of determining the laws of contractility, clasticity, weight, attraction, crystallisation, the action of capillary tubes, electricity, &c. But, it is impossible to avoid an endless confusion of words and notions, and not to lose ourselves in the most absurd explanations, unless we distinguish the functions which man has in common with the vegetable kingdom, from those which are peculiar to him as an animal.

The vegetable kingdom offers us organisation infinitely varied. We recognise in it the act of fecundation, assimilation, nutrition, growth, a species of circulation, secretions, and excretions, irritability, and an elective force, or a faculty of placing itself in relation with objects out of itself; of choosing, for example, the most suitable nourishment; of attaching itself to surrounding objects; of avoiding or seeking the light; of closing the leaves or flowers by day or by night, &c. All these operations take place from the influence of a blind necessity, without sensation, consciousness, or will. For this reason we assign to the vegetable kingdom a life, but a life purely organic, automatic, vegetative; and as all this passes in the interior of the organism

These means, these organs, form a peculiar apparatus, of which vegetables and zoophytes are still deprived: it is the nervous system. The nerves alone are the instruments of sensibility, of voluntary movement, of the functions of the senses. Without a nervous system, there is no mechanical aptitude, no instinct, no propensity, no sentiment, talent, moral quality, or intellectual faculty; no affection, no passion.

Each particular order of the functions of animal life is affected by a peculiar nervous system, by particular nerves, distinct from the other nervous systems, and from other nerves. There is a peculiar nervous system for the viscera, and for the vessels principally destined to vegetable life; there is a nervous system, the instrument of voluntary movements; there is one which belongs to the functions of the senses; finally, the noblest in animals and in man the most considerable, the brain, has all the others under its dominion; it is the source of all perception, the seat of every instinct, of every propensity, of all power, moral and intellectual. In order to proceed from the simple to the compound, I shall give my readers some views of the nervous system, with which the animal character commences, but the functions of which belong even more to vegetable than to animal life.

In all animals placed in the scale of living beings above the zoophytes, that is, in all animals properly so called, there exist one or

more masses of a gelatinous substance, very vascular, of different color and consistence, which give rise to white threads, called nervous filaments. These filaments unite and form nerves, nervous chords, which go to this or that viscus and there spread themselves. These masses of gelatinous substance, called ganglions or plexuses, these sources of nervous filaments and the nerves formed from them, are more or less numerous, according to the number of parts or viscera with which the animal is provided, and for which they are destined.

These nervous apparatuses exist, even in animals which have neither spinal marrow nor brain; consequently, their origin and their action in these imperfect animals are independent of all other nervous systems.

They are the type of the nervous system of the viscera, of the abdomen, of the chest, and of the vessels of animals of the most perfect organisation, and of man.

As long as there exists in an animal of the lower order, a sole internal part, and a sole ganglion with its nervous filaments, this nerve acts in an insulated manner; but as soon as, in a single individual, the existence of several organs renders several ganglions and several nerves necessary, these ganglions and these nerves ordinarily enter into communication by means of filaments, passing from one to the other.

There are then as many of these ganglions and of these different nerves, as there are different viscera; and as each viscus is destined to a particular use, to digestion, to the secretion of bile or semen; as each viscus has its specific irritability, these ganglions and these nerves must necessarily have their interior structure and their functions, differing from each other.

It is probable, that in animals, even of the lowest order, this nervous system is endowed with sensibility; but in man, and the higher animals, it is, like the spinal marrow and the nerves of the senses, entirely under the dominion of the brain. In a state of health, the viscera and the vessels execute their functions without any volition on our part, and without our having the slightest consciousness of the fact: the intestines are in fact in continual motion; they choose the nutriment which suits them, and reject heterogeneous substances; they form the secretions and the excretions.

But, we have seen that vegetables present to us similar phenomena: the capacity of being stimulated, of re-acting against stimulus, a character of irritability, ought not to be confounded, as most physiologists do confound it, with the faculty of perceiving a stimulus, of having a consciousness of it, of feeling it. The perception, the consciousness of an irritation, of an impression, are inseparable from the nerve of sensation. Sensation, or organic sensibility without consciousness, is a contradiction in terms, but a contradiction very sagely preserved and professed in our schools. Sensibility, or the faculty of feeling, constitutes the essential character of the animal. When the changes produced by an impression take place without consciousness, they must be considered the result of irritability, and as belonging to automatic life; but when changes take place with consciousness, with per

ception, with sensation, this act of consciousness, of perceiving, belongs to the animal life.

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But," you will say, "admitting that, in a state of perfect health, we have no consciousness of what passes in the heart, stomach, liver, &c., still we feel hunger and thirst, and the need of certain evacuations; we experience trouble, uneasiness, and pains, in the intestines, &c., and in general it would be difficult to find a part of the body, the bones, tendons, and even hair, not excepted, which may not, under certain circumstances, transmit sensations, and consequently become an organ of animal life. How happens this?"

of the viscera and vessels communicate together; We have seen, that the ganglions and nerves they send several filaments of communication connected with the brain. to the spinal marrow, and this is immediately It is thus that all the impressions on the other nervous systems are transmitted to the centre of all sensibility, and that the influence of all the nerves on the brain, and of the brain on all the nerves, is established. It is for this reason, that the nervous apparatus of the chest and abdomen has received the name of sympathetic nerve, or, because its branches of communication take their course between the ribs to the spinal marrow, the intercostal nerve. Besides these means of reciprocal action and reaction, several nerves of the spinal marrow and of the head, such as the hypoglossal nerve, the glosso-pharyngeal, the abductor, the facial nerve, unite themselves with the sympathetic.

The organs of both lives can only perform their special functions in proportion to their development, to their organic function. Before the liver, the kidneys, the stomach, are formed, there can be no secretion of bile, of urine, of gastric juice; in like manner, the propensities and talents cannot unfold themselves until the brain is developed.

The divers ganglions, plexuses and nerves of the sympathetic, are not developed simultaneously; and for this reason, the functions of the organs of vegetable life do not commence and terminate simultaneously. It is the same with the various ganglions and pairs of nerves of the spinal marrow and of the nerves of the senses. Their successive and independent development and death, explain their successive and independent perfection and failure of the various organs of voluntary motion, and of the senses.

I shall hereafter prove, that the different constituent parts of the brain, each of which is destined to a peculiar function, are equally subjected to successive development and destruction. This explains how instincts, propensities, and talents do not all either appear or fail, at the same periods of life.