his eye, and looks back with regret to the lofty cliffs, the green slopes, and murmuring streams of his native land.

In spite, however, of every human effort, some tracts are left uncultivated, in consequence of political disorder and misrule; while in others, nature, under the combined influence of heat and moisture, makes efforts so powerful as to baffle all attempts to modify or control her. She then riots in unbounded luxuriance, and covers large tracts with that dense, dark, impenetrable mass of foliage, crowded and twined together, called jungle, which opposes an almost impassable barrier even to an army. Trees spreading on every side their gigantic arms; thorny and prickly shrubs, of every size and shape; canes, shooting in a few months to the height of sixty feet, compose the chief materials of those natural palisades. Even in the open plain, the banian, and other single trees, when full scope is given to their growth, spread out into the dimensions of a considerable forest.

From the cultivated regions, the various classes of wild beasts are excluded with the utmost solicitude. Even the domestic species are not reared in great numbers, nor to any remarkable size or strength. There is a small cow with a hump, fit only for draught, but which the Hindoo regards as a sacred object. Light active steeds are bred by the natives for predatory excursions; though, for regular military service, the large Turkish horse is decidedly preferred. But the wooded tracks, where nature revels uncontrolled, are filled with huge and sometimes destructive animals, of which the two most remarkable are the elephant and tiger. The former, of a species distinct from that of Africa, is here not merely pursued as game, but, being caught alive, is trained for the various purposes of state hunting and war. The tiger, the most formidable tenant of the Bengal jungle, supplies the absence of the lion, and though not quite equal in strength and majesty, is still more fierce and dangerous. These two mighty quadrupeds are brought into conflict in the Indian hunts, when the elephant is used as an instrument for attacking his fiercer but less vigorous rival. The hunter, well armed, is seated on the back of his huge ally; and, in the first advance, the whole body of the assailants are ranged in a line. When the combat commences, the elephant endeavours either to tread down the tiger with his hoof, crushing him with the whole weight of his immense body, or to assail him with his long and powerful tusks. Whenever either of these movements can be fully accomplished, the effect is irresistible; but the tiger, by his agility, and especially by his rapid spring, resembling the flight of an arrow, often succeeds in fastening upon the legs and sides of his unwieldy adversary, and inflicts deep wounds, while the latter is unable

either to resist or retaliate. Even the rider, notwithstanding his exalted seat and the use of fire-armis, is not on such occasions wholly exempt from danger.—MURRAY's 'History of British India.'

ON looking at a map of the world we inhabit,' we find that its surface is divided between land and water, continents and oceans; each, for the most part, thrown together into vast masses, placed under different temperatures, peopled by different races of men, and inhabited by peculiar sorts of animals. Two questions, then, occur to the mind:-What are the causes that have produced this dissimilarity of creatures? and, secondly, is there method in all this amazing diversity? Each of these questions is highly interesting, and demands a separate consideration.

Man, although naturally formed to inhabit but one element, is yet enabled by art to traverse vast oceans; and by the reculiarity of his constitution to live in all climates which produce vegetation. In his natural state he is among the least qualified of living beings for making rapid transitions from one part of the carth to another, and yet he has peopled its entire surface. A “fair-haired" native of Europe migrates with his family, and settles among the woolly-haired and swarthy inhabitants of Africa. Do his descendants, in the lapse of a century, born under a scorching sun, begin to assume any of the characteristics of the races that surround them? Do their lips gradually become thick, their nose flattened, and their complexion black? Assuredly not; the supposition is refuted by actual experience to the contrary. Again: does an African diet, or a change of costume, create any change in their form, or their mental perceptions? Are their national characteristics, in short, in any degree lost, so long as their race is preserved pure? Let the Spaniards-settled for more than two centuries among the copper-coloured Indians of Mexico and New Spain; the Dutch Ecors of Southern Africa; the descendants of the whites who first settled in the West Indies; above all, the Jews, now scattered " among every nation under heaven:" let these, we repeat, tacitly reply to these questions. Such living testimonies,

known to all, should at once have dispelled the illusion which inany writers, and some of them able ones, have indulged in; that temperature, food, clothing, and other secondary influences, were the chief causes of that extraordinary variation in the aspect of the human species which the different nations of the earth exhibit, and which, so long as each race is preserved pure, is unchanging and unchangeable. Upon such a subject the modest and ingenious mind may indulge conjecture: but when we attempt to penetrate the darkness of primitive ages, and pretend to trace the first causes of such things, we wander in regions from which human knowledge is excluded. He alone, that great First Cause, "by whom all things were made that are made,” is master of this impenetrable secret.

Let us now look to the animal world. Here we may see thousands of beings endowed with powers of locomotion which have been utterly denied to man. The swallow, darting like an arrow through the air, at the rate of sixty miles an hour, seems to mock the comparatively snail-like pace of our swiftest vessels; the curlew runs rapidly on the ground, mounts on the . breaking surge, or swiftly flies from one continent to another; thus traversing, with perfect ease, three elements-the earth, the air, and the sea. Thousands, in short, of little tiny birds perform journeys, every spring and autumn, any one of which to us would be the occupation of a year. Now the theoretical conclusion we should make on considering the facts would be, that animals, so peculiarly gifted with the powers of locomotion, would use it to wander in every clime, that they would spread their races in every region of the earth where food could be procured, or where they could enjoy a fit temperature. These deductions, theoretically, cannot be deemed otherwise than just. Yet they are diametrically opposed and contradicted by facts. The swallow of England might reach America or China in as short a space of time as it would travel to Africa, and in either country would find food and warmth congenial to its nature; but it has been appointed to pursue a certain course; and from that course, whether to the right or left, it never deviates. This is only one out of a thousand instances to prove that the limits of every animal have been fixed by an Almighty fiat,— "Hitherto shalt thou come and no farther." Man may do much with those animals which have been appointed for domestication; while food and temperature will have their accidental or local effects; but these causes, when viewed in reference to the great harmonies of the animal world, sink into insignificance, and can never for a moment be justly made to interpret the causes of animal distribution. Within

the limits of the range of every animal there are, like islands in the ocean, spots which are not congenial to its nature; and here the secondary causes, just alluded to, come into play; but we should no more think of making these spots so many characteristics of geographic zoology than we should say that the sun was not a luminous body because its entire surface is not equally bright.-SWAINSON.

THE field of Damascus is very striking-a plain of yellowish' soil, scantily tilled, or, at least, showing to-day very scanty crops; with bushes and low trees sprinkled here and there, and many streams crossing the track; and the whole plain closed in by many-tinted mountains, of which Lebanon is the crown. Far away, at three hours' journey from the hills, we descended a black stripe lay straight across the plain, which, as we approached, assumed more and more the appearance of what it really was, a "verdurous wall of Paradise." Above the great mass of verdure, sprang the loftiest poplars I ever saw; and when we came within a few miles, the pale minarets' appeared above the woods, in rivalship with the dark poplars. Embosomed in these woods lies Damascus.

On our way we saw the mirage3 in great perfection. If I had not known what the plain really contained, I should have been completely deceived; and as it was, I was perplexed about what was real and what mere semblance. Before us was a wide gleaming lake, with wooded shores. It was these shores that perplexed me, for I could allow for water. As we approached, the vision flaked away, and formed again behind us; only, the waters behind looked grey and dark, whereas they were gleamy when in the front. The woods on the shore resolved themselves into scrubby bushes,-the hiding places, one might suppose, of naughty little mocking elves. There is something unpleasant and disheartening in the sensation of the dissolution of a vivid mirage, even when one is not in want of water and shade. It gives one a strange impression that one must be ill; and when this is added to the real suffering of the wayfarer in the desert, the misery must be cruel.

After riding three hours over this plain, and approaching the line of verdure so near as to see yellow walls and towers within the screen, Giuseppe told me we were at Damascus. I was rather disappointed, for I had read of the thirty miles of verdure and woods, amidst which the city stands, and I had expected much from the ride among the trees. The walls turned out to be those of a village; and I soon discovered that Giuseppe called the woods Damascus, as well as the city. We rode on still for two hours, along green tracts, past gravel pits and verdant hollows, round villages, through cemeteries, under the shade of glorious groves.-H. MARTINEAU.

1. What effect has the termination ish on adjectives? Give other instances.

2. A minaret is a slender lofty tower rising by different stages or stories, surrounded by one or more projecting balconies, common in mosques in Mahometan countries. Minarets are used by the priests for summoning from the balconies the people to prayers at stated times of the day; so that they answer the purpose of belfries in Christian churches.

3. This French word is the name given to a phenomenon of unusual refraction, for which we have no specific appellative,

unless it be the sea-term forming. It is
an optical illusion, occasioned by the
refraction of light through contiguous
masses of air of different density; such
refraction not unfrequently producing
the same sensibie effect as direct re-
flection. It consists of an unusual eleva-
tion or apparent approximation of coasts,
mountains, ships, and other objects
accompanied by inverted images.
deserts, where the surface is perfectly,
level, a plain thus assumes the ap-
pearance of a lake, reflecting the sha-
dows of objects within and around it.
4. What case is hours in and why?

In

NEw Zealand, situated to the south-east of Australia, at the distance of about 1,100 miles, and near the antipodes of Great Britain, consists of two large islands and one of small dimensions, extending in a curved line from north to south. The northern island, or New Ulster, is about one sixth less than England and Wales; the middle, or New Munster, separated from it by Cook's Strait, is nearly one-fourth larger; the southern, or New Leinster, divided from the preceding by Foveaux Strait, is only equal in extent to a moderate-sized English county. The correspondence in area between the United Kingdom and the "Britain of the South," as the New Zealand group is frequently styled, from natural resemblances, has been thus stated: