from their affording an answer to the curious and, till now, undecided question, whether there be, or be not, in the southern regions of Asia, any remains of fossil quadrupeds analogous to those which are found so widely dispersed in the diluvium of Northern Asia, and of Europe and America. Mr. Crawfurd's specimens give clear proof of the affirmative. His specimens of fossil wood, the greater part of which is beautifully silicified, are mostly portions of large trees, both monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous, and were found along the whole valley of the Irawadi, from Ava to Prome, a distance of nearly five hundred miles.

STANZAS.

FROM the forest and the steppe,
From the mountain and the down,
From the dreary icy Cape,

And from castle, tower, and town,
From city, village, hamlet, and shed,
Lo! the myriads of the North,
In their panoply pour forth,
Till they shake the solid earth

With their tread.

Like the hurricane they haste

Or like Etna's lava-flood

From the mountain's flaming crest-
To be quench'd in human blood;
Or like an avalanche downward hurl'd;
Or like locusts in their flight,
They eclipse the solar light,
Spreading Desolation's blight
O'er the world.

Stern Justice wildly mourns
O'er the soul-appalling sight;
And dove-eyed Ruth returns
To her native fields of light,
To mingle with the angels on high;
For the Polish plains are red

With the life-blood of the dead

Even Mercy's self hath fled

To the sky!

But, like giants roused from sleep,
The enslaved shall burst their chains

On the wild Siberian steep

On the Asiatic plains.

In the forests-in the fens of the Swede,

This victor-shout shall swell

Over field, and flood, and dell-
"Ring! ring the despot's knell!
He is dead!"

Then Freedom's bark shall sail
On the mountain-waves sublime;
And her pennon on the gale,

Through the lapse of wanting time,
Shall flaunt above, majestic and fair;
And tyranny accursed-

By fiends and demons nursed-
Shall, like a bubble, burst

Into air!-DAVID VEDDer.

IMPORTANCE OF INVESTIGATING FOSSIL REMAINS.-The fossil remains of the bones of quadrupeds must lead to more rigorous conclusions than any other remains of organized bodies, and that for several reasons. In the first place, they indicate much more clearly the nature of the revolutions to which they have been subjected. The remains of shells certainly indicate that the sea has once existed in the places where these collections have been formed: but the changes which have taken place in their species, when rigorously inquired into, may possibly have been occasioned by slight changes in the nature of the fluid in which they were formed, or only in its temperature, and may even have arisen from other accidental causes. We can never be perfectly assured that certain species, and even genera, inhabiting the bottom of the sea, and occupying certain fixed spaces for a longer or shorter time, may not have been driven away from these by other species or genera. In regard to quadrupeds, on the contrary, every thing is precise. The appearance of their bones in strata, and still more of their entire carcases, clearly establishes that the bed in which they are found must have been previously laid dry, or at least that dry land must have existed in its immediate neighbourhood. Their disappearance as certainly announces that this stratum must have been inundated, or that the dry land had ceased to exist in that state. It is from them, therefore, that we learn with perfect certainty the important fact * of the repeated irruptions of the sea upon the land, which the extraneous fossils and other productions of marine origin could not of themselves have proved; and, by a careful investigation of them, we may hope to ascertain the number and the epochs of those irruptions of the sea. Secondly, the nature of the revolutions which have changed the surface of our earth must have exerted a more powerful action upon terrestrial quadrupeds than upon marine animals. As these revolutions have consisted chiefly in changes of the bed of the sea, and as the waters must have destroyed all the quadrupeds which they reached, if their irruption over the land

was general, they must have destroyed the entire class; or if confined only to certain continents at one time, they must have destroyed, at least, all the species inhabiting these continents, without having the same effect upon the marine animals. On the other hand, millions of aquatic animals may have been left quite dry, or buried in newly formed strata, or thrown violently on the coasts, while their races may have been still preserved in more peaceful parts of the sea, whence they might again propagate and spread after the agitation of the water had ceased. This more complete action is also more easily ascertained and demonstrated; because, as the number of terrestrial quadrupeds is limited, and as most of their species, at least the large ones, are well known, we can more easily determine whether fossil bones belong to a species which still exists, or to one that is now lost. As, on the other hand, we are still very far from being acquainted with all the testaceous animals and fishes belonging to the sea, and as we, probably, still remain ignorant of the greater part of those which live in the extensive deeps of the ocean, it is impossible to know, with any certainty, whether a species found in a fossil state may not still exist somewhere alive. Hence some naturalists persist in giving the name of oceanic or pelagic shells to belemnites and cornuaammonis, and some other genera, which have not hitherto been found, except in a fossil state, in ancient strata; meaning by this that, although these have not as yet been found in a living or recent state, it is because they inhabit the bottom of the ocean, far beyond the reach of our nets.

THE TEMPERATURE OF THE EARTH.-Of one fact there can be no doubt, viz. that the present temperature of the earth is much lower than the temperature in remote past time. The rocks called primitive, as granite and gneiss, constituting the interiors of our great mountain masses and the substrata of our plains, bear evident marks of having been at one period in a molten state, from which they have been solidified by a very gradual cooling; and even the whole mass of the earth at some time must have been so fluid or soft, as in obedience to gravity to have assumed its rounded form, and in obedience to the centrifugal force of its whirling to have bulged out, as its great circumference or equator, the seventeen miles which its equatorial diameter exceeds the polar; the same, by the by, in degrees corresponding to the various speed of rotation, being true of all the other planets belonging to the solar system. Again, while in excavating below the surface of the globe, or in examining its structure, as exposed to view by volcanic or other convulsions, men encounter, in

very many situations, a thickness of more than a mile of the wreck and remains of former states of the world, as on digging eighty feet under vineyards near Mount Vesuvius, they encounter the buried cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii; they further discover that the animal and vegetable remains buried, without number, in the present cold climates of the earth, and evidently resting near where the creatures lived, are all of kinds now inhabiting only the warmer or tropical regions. Lastly, in the operations of mining, the deeper men go, the higher they find the temperature to be, at the rate of a degree for about two hundred feet of descent; which fact, as heat tends to equable diffusion, proves both that the central heat of our earth must have had another source than a radiation from the sun, of the present intensity; and that the surface of the earth is now radiating away more heat than it receives from the sun. The conclusion then follows, that the temperature of the world is still falling, although perhaps so slowly that a change may not be detected, even within centuries. Possibly in very remote antiquity that may have been true which the early Greeks erroneously thought true in their day, viz. that the equator of the earth, by reason of its great heat, was a barrier impassable by man between the northern and southern hemispheres.

VARIOUS VIEWS OF THE EARTH.

THE VALE OF BAIE.

YES! I have gazed from high Misenum's steep
O'er the blue waters of the Tyrrhene deep;
Have seen outspread before my dazzled eyes
That glowing rivalry of seas and skies:
The shore, the classic shore, around me lay,
Eash vine-clad precipice, each silv'ry bay ;
There rose fair Pozzuoli's patrician bowers,
Baia's rent fanes, and Cuma's ruin'd towers;
Green waved the copse where lone Avernus slept;
Sparkling to shore Fusaro's ripples crept;
Capri's steep rock, and Ischia's sloping height,
Traced their dark outline in the vivid light;

While o'er the scene's whole calm, yet bright repose,
With soften'd terrors far Vesuvius rose.

Each spot of haunted earth here breathed its tale-
Of the rapt Sybil-of the fated sail

That wafted to this strand the Phrygian throng-
Of Scipio's exile, and of Virgil's song.
Here, too, the purple masters of mankind
The gorgeous cares of empire, pleased, resign'd,
And sought beneath Campania's azure sky
A charm the world's dominion could not buy:

While Rome's degen'rate nobles, fear'd no more
On Zama's plain, or Actium's beetling shore,
Forgot to sigh, 'mid Baia's golden bay,

For Honour lost, or Freedom cast away.-LORD MORPETH.

JERUSALEM. The traveller who approaches Jerusalem from Jaffa is amply repaid for the toil and peril of the route, by one of the most splendid prospects his eye has ever dwelt upon. He has passed through a scene of sterility hardly to be equalled from Ramah to Jerusalem; he has heard of nothing but the desolation of the Holy City-he has read of little in its modern history but of its miserable aspect; and all at once a noble city rises on his view, with stately walls and lofty towers, and studded with gilded domes of mosques and monasteries.

GREATEST ELEVATION OF THE APPENINES.-Nearly in the centre of the continuous chain which extends from the Col di Tenda to the Capo dell' Armi, ulterior Calabria is crested by the noble summit of Mount Corno, which commonly bears the apposite cognomen of the "Gran Sasso d'Italia." Immense masses of calcareous substance, stratified and intersected with beds of pyramidal quartz, form the component matter of this mountain, as well as of its compeers, the Velino, Sibylla, and Majella. The lowest strata of carbonated chalk have a horizontal inclination of about forty-five degrees; these are succeeded by strata running parallel with the horizon; and above the latter are vertical layers, which take a gently horizontal direction when they approach their greatest elevation, and thus form a moderately inclined plane at the summit. From this point, on a fine clear day, the spectator enjoys a magnificent view of the Mediterranean on the one hand, and of the Adriatic on the other, as far as the last ripple which curls along the shore of Dalmatia. Reuss gave this summit an elevation of 8,791 English feet above the level of the sea; Professor Schow, of 9,585; and Delfico, of 10,191. The disparity in these admeasurements is accounted for, as regards the former, from the circumstance that he did not visit the Sasso personally, nor contemplate it otherwise than from a considerable distance. The estimates of the latter approximate nearest to one which has been taken by Orsini after four years' successive observations, and gives to this " great rock of Italy" an elevation of 10,119 feet. ITALY. Extract of a recent letter from Italy." The very beauties of this country savour strongly of volcanic action— those wild and fantastic forms that now make such an impression on the imagination, have at some time or other been produced by these convulsions of nature. Sometimes,