people increased to, an extraordinary - On the means of curing the Dry-Rot. -First. Make a strong caustic solution in water of barilla, kelp, or potash, and when boiling hot, wash the parts of the wood affected with the rot. The effect of this caustic ley will be the destruction of the vegetating fibres of the fungus. Secondly. Dissolve oxide of lead or iron in pyrolignous acid; and twelve hours after the first application of the leys soak the wood well with this solution. A decomposition of the metallic liquor takes place; the acid and alkali unite, and the oxide of the lead or iron is precipitated in the pores of the wood, and prevents the fungus from spreading. Another way of preventing the rot is, first, to wash the wood with the pyrolignous solution of lead, and ten or twelve hours after to wash it with a strong solution of alum (in the proportion of one pound and a half of alum to one gallon of water). A practical Treatise on the Use and Application of Chemical Tests; with concise Directions for analysing Metallic Ores, Metals, Soils, Manures, and Mineral Waters. Illustrated by Experiments. By FREDERICK ACCUM, Operative Chemist, Lecturer on Practical Chemistry and on Mineralogy, F. L. S. M. R. A. S. R. S. of Berlin, &c. 3d Edition, 8vo. pp. 606. We are much gratified to find that the success of this valuable little work has been so great, as already to give us an opportunity of noticing a third edition of it; and to recognise in the many elaborate improvements by which it is successively distinguished, a pleasing proof that the author is not insensible of the due return which he owes for the high share of favour which his labours have received from the public. Mr. Accum has in the present edition greatly enlarged the scale of his experiments, which are not confined to the illustra tion of the practical operations in the analysis of such metallic ores, metals, mineral waters, &c. as are commonly to be met with, but extend to minerals which occur but rarely, and the proper mode of analysing which, it is only therefore of so much the greater consequence to know distinctly. Two new plates have also been added, descriptive of the instruments most necessary for the analysis of bodies by means of reagents or tests. The work has upon the whole been much improved, and it is with confirmed satisfaction that we repeat our recommendation of it, as a most useful manual to every student of chemistry. Mr. Accum has in the press, a third edition of Chemical Amusements; comprehending a series of instructive and striking Experiments in Chemistry, which are easily performed, and unattended by danger. With plates by Lowry. Society for the encouragement of industry in France. For the application of the steam_engine to printing presses.-The Society proposes a prize of two thousand francs to the person who shall put in action, by means of the steam-engine, one or more typographic presses, constructed either according to the old method, or according to any other method. The press thus worked must produce in a given time a greater number of impressions than in the ordinary way, and the clear advantage gained by it must be much greater than what is commonly obtained. The competitors to transmit descriptive memoirs accompanied with designs of the presses which they have employed, and certificates from the local authorities of their having been in active use for three consecutive months. here and there, for particular purposes, and for the conveniency of private individuals, as is now the case, it is here proposed, through the medium of railways, to open extensive communications-to branch them out from the metropolis of Scotland in various directions, and to distant points-and thus to facilitate conveyance in general by an improved system of roads for heavy carriages. The Highland Society of Scotland, have, in a very patriotic manner, offered a premium of fifty guineas for the best essay on the means of attaining so desirable an object as the introduction of rail-ways for the purposes of general carriage. With a view to the establishment of the rail-way in question, for the conveyance of commodities to and from Edinburgh, and thereby to give a commencement to the system generally, a subscription for a survey has been opened, and plans by Mr. Stevenson, engineer, are in considerable forward ness. 'It seems to be desirable, that railways, for alternate carriage and general use, should proceed on a continual level, or upon successive levels: and a simple system of lockage (if it may be so called), by which loaded wagons may easily be elevated or depressed, from one level to another, would appear to be a desirable attainment. The edge rail-way is generally used and preferred in Scotland, as causing less friction, and less expense of horse power; and it would tend to facilitate the general use of rail-ways, if, by some simple change, the wheel usually employed for the road or street could be made also to suit the rail-way, or the rail-way wheel be made to suit the road or street, so that the cart or wagon which brings the commodity from the colliery or stone quarry, the farm-yard, or the manufactory, to the rail-way, might travel along it to the termination of the railway, and proceed from thence through the streets of the town to the dwelling of the consumer, without unloading, or change of carriage.' English and Chinese Dictionary. The Rev. R. Morrison, who has for ten years been collecting the materials, is printing, at Macao, an extensive Chinese and English Dictionary, containing forty thousand characters. It will be printed at the expense of the East India Company, who have liberally authorized Mr. Morrison to vend, for his own recompense, 650 of the 750 copies of which the edition is to consist. The three parts,-1. The Radicals or Keys. 2. The English and Chinese;-and, 3, the Chinese and English, will extend to upwards of 40 half-yearly numbers; but it is proposed that the total cost shall not exceed 20 guineas to subscribers. If, therefore, Mr. Morrison should live long enough, this great desideratum of European literature is, at length, likely to be achieved. South America.-The interest which is so generally felt for the issue of the great cause now pending in South America, will speedily render popular captain BONNYCASTLE'S History of Spanish America, which has just appeared. Modern and very recent voyages and travels have afforded much new information respecting all parts of the new world; but the books in which, the discoveries and observations of eminent travellers have been given to the public, are not only so numerous, but in general so costly, that comparatively, only few readers can obtain from such scattered and expensive sources the general results, which are so necessary to the progress of knowledge. Captain Bonnycastle has, therefore, rendered a most essential service to the public by devoting his talents to this compilation, which comprehends every new discovery in geography, geology, and natural history generally, together with a judicious selection of historical matter; without reference, however, to the political questions of the moment. work is enriched by two well-executed maps of Spanish North and South Ame. rica, and an engraving representing the comparative altitudes of the mountains in those regions. The Germany.-A considerable quantity of bones, of large size, were discovered last year, buried in the earth, in the neighbourhood of the village of Tiede, near Brunswick. They were examined by M. Dahue, who appears to have distinguished parts of the skeletons of five elephants. There were nine tusks among them, one of which was fourteen feet in length, another eleven, and many grinders, in which the enamel was arranged exactly as in the teeth of the African elephant. A complete head of a rhinoceros, with the horn and teeth, was also found very little altered. THE CARACCAS. From the third volume of Humboldt's After having described the scenery When I passed for the first time that table land, on my way to the capital of Venezuela, I found several travellers assembled around the little inn of Guayavo, to rest their mules. They were inhabitants of Caraccas, and were disputing on the efforts towards independence, which had been made a short time before. Joseph Espana had perished on the scaffold; and his wife groaned in prison, because she had given an asylum to her husband when a fugitive, and had not denounced him to the government. I was struck with the agitation which prevailed in every mind, and the bitterness with which questions were debated, on which men of the same country ought not to have differed in opinion. While they descanted on the hatred of the mulattoes against the free negroes and whites, on the wealth of the monks, and the difficulty of holding slaves in obedience, a cold wind that seemed to descend from the lofty summit of the Silla of Caraccas, enveloped us in a thick fog, and put an end to this animated conversa tion. Caraccas is the capital of a country which is nearly twice as large as Peru is at present, and which yields little in extent to the kingdom of Grenada. This country which the Spanish government designates by the name of the captain generalship of Caraccas, or of the (united) provinces of Venezuela, has nearly a million of inhabitants, among whom are sixty thousand slaves. It contains along the coast, New Andalusia, or the province of Cumana (with the island of Margaretta), Barcelona, Venezuela or Caraccas, Coro and Mara-Caybo, in the interior, the provinces of Varinas and Guayana, the first along the rivers of Santa Domingo and Apare, the second along the Oroonoko, the Casiquiare, the Atabapo, and the rio Negro. In the general view of the seven united provinces of Terra, we perceive, that they form three distinct zones extending from east to west. We find at first cultivated land along the shore, and near the chain of the mountains on the coast; next savannahs or pasturages, and finally beyond the Oroonoko, a third zone, that of forests, into which we can penetrate only by means of the rivers that traverse them. In the first zone are felt the preponderance of force, and the abuse of power, which is the necessary consequence. The natives carry on a civil war, and sometimes devour one another. The monks endevour to augment the little villages of their missions, by availing themselves of the dissensions of the natives. The military live in a state of hostility with the monks, whom they were intended to protect. Every thing offers alike the melancholy picture of misery and privations. In the second region, in the plains and the pasture grounds, food is extremely abundant, but has little variety. Although more advanced in civilization, men without the circle of some scatered towns do not remain less isolated from one another. At the view of their dwellings, partly covered with skins and leather, it would seem that far from being fixed, they are scarcely encamped in those vast meadows, which extend to the horizon. Agriculture, which alone lays the basis, and draws closer the ties of society, occupies the third the shore, and especially the hot and temperate vallies in the mountains near the sea. zone, If we examine the state of the captain-generalship of Caraccas, we perceive that its agricultural industry, its great mass of population, its numerous towns, and whatever is connected with an advanced civilization, are found near the coast. This coast extends farther than two hundred leagues. It is bathed by the Little Carribbean sea, a sort of Mediterranean, on the shores of which almost all the nations of Europe have founded colonies. The coasts of Venezuela, from their extent, their stretching towards the east, the number of their ports, and the safety of their anchorage at different seasons, enjoy all the advantages of the interior Carribbean sea. The communications with the greater islands, and even with those that are to windward, can no where be more frequent than from the ports of Cumana, Barcelona, La Guayra, Porto Cabello, Coro, and Maraycabo and no where has it been found more difficult to restrain an illicit commerce with strangers. Can we wonder, that this facility of commercial intercourse with the inhabitants of free America, and the agitated nations of Europe, should have augmented in conjunction, in the provinces united under the captain generalship of Venezuela, opulence, knowledge, and that restless desire of local government, which is blended with the love of liberty and republican forms? The copper-coloured natives, or Indians, constitute a very important mass of the agricultural population only in those places, where the Spaniards found regular governments, a civil community, and ancient and very complicated institutions at the conquest, as in New Spain, south of Durango; and in Peru, from Cusco to Potosi. In the captaingeneralship of Caraccas, the Indian population is inconsiderable, at least beyond the missions and in the cultivated zone. At the moments of great political dissensions, the natives excite no fear in the whites, or the mingled casts. Computing in 1809 the total population of the seven united provinces at 900,000 souls, it appeared to me that the Indians made only one ninth; while at Mexico, they form nearly one half of the inhabitants. Among the casts that compose the population of Venezuela, that of the blacks, is not important from its num ber, but it is so from its accumulation on a small space of territory. In all the captain-generalship the slaves do not exceed a fifteenth of the whole population. In the island of Cuba, of all those in the West Indies where the negroes bear the smallest proportion to the whites, they were, in 1811, as one to three. The seven united provinces of Venezuela have sixty thousand slaves; Cuba, the extent of which is eight times less, has two hundred and twelve thousand. The sixty thousand slaves which the Seven United Provinces contain, are so unequally divided, that in the province of Caraccas alone, there are nearly forty thousand, one fifth of which are mulattoes; in that of Maracay bo, ten or twelve thousand; in those of Cumana and Barcelona, scarcely six thousand. To judge of the influence which the slaves and the men of colour exert in general, on the public tranquillity, it is not enough to know their number; we must consider their accumulation at certain points, and their manner of life, as cultivators or inhabitants of towns. In the province of Venezuela, the slaves are assembled together on a space of no great extent, between the coast and a line that passes (at twelve leagues from the coast) through Panaquire, Yare, Sabana de Ocumare, Villa de Cura, and Nirgua. The Leanos or vast plains of Calaboso, San Carlos, Guanare, and Barquecimeto contain orly four or five thousand, who are scattered among the farms, and employed in the care of cattle. The number of freed men is very considerable; the Spanish laws and customs are favourable to affranchisement. What is most interesting in the colonies next to the state of the blacks, is to know the number of white creoles, whom I call Hispano-Americans, and that of the whites born in Europe. It is difficult to acquire notions sufficiently exact on so delicate a point. The people in the new, as well as in the old world, abhor numberings, suspecting them to be made in order to augment the weight of taxes. The men in office, on the other hand, sent by the mothercountry to the colonies, dislike these statistical enumerations as much as the people, and this from motives of jealous policy. If we compare the Seven United Pro vinces of Venezuela to the kingdom of Mexico, and the island of Cuba, we shail succeed in finding the approximale number of white creoles, and even of Europeans. The first, or Hispano-Americans, form in Mexico near ly one fifth, and in the island of Cuba, according to the very accurate enumeration of 1801, a third of the whole population. When we reflect, that the kingdom of Mexico is inhabited by two millions and a half of natives of the copper-coloured race; when we consider the state of the coasts that are bathed by the Pacific ocean, and the small number of whites in the intendencies of Puebla and Oaxaca, comparatively with the natives; we cannot doubt, that the province of Venezuela, at least, if not the capitania-general, has a greater proportion than that of one to five. The island of Cuba, in which the whites are even more numerous than in Chili, may furnish us with a limiting number, that is to say, the maximum that can be supposed in the capitania-general of Caraccas. I believe we must stop at two hundred, or two hundred and ten thousand Hispano-Americans, in a total population of nine hundred thousand souls. The number of Europeans included in the white race (not comprehending the troops sent from the mother-country) does not exceed twelve or fifteen thousand. It certainly is not greater at Mexico than sixty thousand, and I find by several statements, that if we estimate the Spanish colonies at fourteen or fifteen millions of inhabitants, there are in this number, at most, three millions of creole whites, and two hundred thousand Europeans. It seems to excite surprise in Europe, that the Spaniards of the mother-country, of whom we have remarked the small number, have made during ages so long and so firm a resistance. Men forget that the European party in all the colonies is necessarily augmented by a great mass of the natives. Family interests, the desire of uninterrupted tranquillity, the fear of engaging in an enterprise that might fail, prevent these latter from embracing the cause of independence, or aspiring to establish a local and representative government, though dependant on the mother-country. Some shrink from violent measures, and flatter themselves, that a gradual reform may render the colonial system less oppressive. They see in revolutions only the loss of their slaves, the spoliation of the clergy, and the introduction of religious toleration, which they believe to be incompatible with the purity of the established worship. Others belong to the small number of families, which, either from hereditary opulence, or having been long settled in the colonies, exercise a real municipal aristocracy. They would rather be deprived of certain rights, than share them with all; they would prefer even a foreign yoke to the exercise of authority by the Americans of an inferior cast; they abhor every constitution founded on an equality of rights, and above all, they dread the loss of those decorations and titles which they have with so much difficulty acquired, and which, as we have observed above, compose so essential a part of their domestic happiness. St. Thomas, in Guiana, will be necessarily, at some future day, a place of trade of high importance, especially when the flour of New Grenada, embarked above the confluence of the Rio Negro and the Umadea, and descending by the Meta and Oroonoko, shall be preferred at Caraccas and Guiana to the flour of New England. It is a great advantage to the provinces of Venezuela, that their territorial wealth is not directed to one point, like that of Mexico and New Granada, which flows to Vera Cruz and Carthagena; but that they possess a great number of towns equally well peopled, and forming so many various centres of commerce and civilization. The climate of Caraccas has often been called a perpetual spring. It is found every where, half way up the Cordilleras of Equinoctial America, between four hundred and nine hundred toises of elevation, unless the great breadth of the valley joined to an arid soil causes an extraordinary intensity of radiant caloric. What, indeed, can we imagine more delightful, than a temperature, which in the day keeps between 200 and 26°; and at night between 16° and 18°, which is equally favourable to the plantain (cambury), the orange-tree, the coffee-tree, the apple, the apricot, and corn? A national writer compares the situation of Caraccas to the terrestrial paradise, and recognizes in the Anauco and the neighbouring torrents, the four rivers of the garden of Eden. |