CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL. the waves. All travellers have seen it; but it appears to me that very few, if any, have infused into their descriptions anything like the grandeur of the rock itself. Perhaps, with all their experience, they have found it impossible. To guard against similar failure, I shall not attempt a description, but merely state two or three facts which may assist the fancy in When the moon representing the scene to itself. shines over Naples, over its white buildings, its vast bay, its woods, its promontories, the eye wanders along delighted from Vesuvius outwards until it is arrested by the dark frowning mass of Capri. Scarcely can it be said to be delighted then. The imagination experiences a rough, abrupt, strong, almost painful shock, as it beholds this abode of Tiberius rearing its Titanian proportions into the sky. Cliffs of giddy altitude hang beetling over the waves, with sea-mews skimming about their bases, and eagles rising with Behind them stretch difficulty to their summits. boundless expanses of ether, of the tint of amethyst Stars of liquid brilliance hang tinged with smoke. over the summit of the rock like a coronet, while the moon here and there paints with white light the smooth parts of the rock, which appear to hang like polished tablets against a vast dusky wall. When we had gazed for some time at this prospect, 'On the very spot on which you and I are now consented to overlook the disparity of position. But "Your majesty's decision is perhaps the best. I "The king, glad to perceive that the Count Girolamo had not taken his refusal to heart, was willing to conciliate him by any concession he considered reasonable. 66 Well," replied Girolamo, "in a week from this time have it boarded over and lighted up brilliantly, so that I intend giving a party in the Blue Cave, and shall we may dance over the waves and banquet amid the rocks." 'The idea appeared at once new and striking to the king, and he promised to attend the party with his whole family. It is unnecessary for me to dwell upon the preparations made by Count Girolamo: they were on a scale of great magnificence; and on the appointed night, the royal barge, accompanied by numerous There, to their surprise, boats, filled with ladies and gentlemen, arrived at the entrance to the cavern. they found a series of steps, covered with costly carpets, leading up to what might be called the great saloon, then filled with a blaze of lights, adorned here and there with hangings, and in recesses of the rock, abounding with refreshments, wine sparkled in crystal goblets, and delicacies of various kinds tempted the appetite. After a while, the hall was cleared for a dance, and, as a special favour, Count Girolamo was permitted to lead out the queen. He was all gaiety, all smiles, and the whole company of dancers appeared intoxicated with delight. At length, as the evening drew on, the count enjoyed the pleasure of leading out the not known whether the lady herself felt any attachment princess upon whom his heart had been fixed. It is for Girolamo, though it is believed she did. Whatever may have been the case, as they were gliding along the floor, the count took her in his arms, and stamping violently, a trap-door opened beneath his feet, and down he went with his companion into the dark waves below. The terror and confusion that followed may The be easily imagined-the whole party rushed towards the opening in the floor, and lights being brought, they waves had sucked them out; and it was not until the sought to discover the bodies, but without effect. next morning that they were discovered, locked in each other's arms, beyond the entrance of the cavern.' As the doctor spoke, the light on both sides of the cave became more powerful, and shewed the surface of the water in the most distinct and vivid manner. The with niches and hangings of gorgeous tapestry. Prerocks seemed to have been transformed into pillars, sently a hissing sound ran along the sides of the cave, and we were left in total darkness. The boat then approached, and groping our way into it, we pushed 'What we have just seen,' observed the doctor, 'is a I often visit this cave, out silently into the moonlight. mere contrivance of my own. and have invented an apparatus for lighting it up; but be persuaded that it is often converted into a blaze of splendour by other than human hands, and that Count Girolamo and the princess are beheld sitting side by side at its extremity. Before them, the waves grow still, and appear to be converted into a marble floor, upon which hundreds of spirits whirl round in the mazes of the dance, while music breathes in through every crevice of the rock, and inspires them with unceasing activity.' I thanked the doctor for the interesting account he had given me, and returned to Naples, fully persuaded that he would soon need to be taken care of by his friends. POLYGASTRIC ANIMALCULES. THE wits of London, better able to discuss the merits of a fable by Dryden or a comedy by Congreve, long continued to amuse themselves with the wonderful discoveries of a body of philosophers that, under the title of the Royal Society, held frequent meetings at Gresham College. The enthusiasm for research that prompted men endowed with ordinary judgment to dissect mal-formed calves-to study critically the motions of spiders, snails, toads-or to feel interested in learning whether there were in certain foreign countries blue bees that made black wax and white honey, and similar subjects of investigation, appeared to the man of fashion in those days a deplorable delusion-pardonable perhaps in the gloomy time of Old Noll, when playhouses were closed, and all sorts of amusement forbidden, but certainly unbecoming such as had the good-fortune to live in the reign of the Merry Monarch. Nor needs such an estimate of the infancy of the distinguished Society surprise us when we bear in mind the apparent uselessness of many of its experiments and researches, and the indifference of its most exalted patrons to the true advancement of science. The chief delight of its royal founder was to put such puzzling queries as neither common sense nor philosophy could satisfactorily solve, or to gratify his curiosity by witnessing an anatomical administration,' as the rather rare spectacle of a dissection was called in those days. Surely some apology was afforded to the idle for scepticism regarding the utility of Prince Rupert's glass manufactory, or such a contribution in natural history from the Duke of Buckingham as the horne of a unicorne.' Moreover, its Transactions, which, under the ponderous title of 'An accompte of the present undertakings, studies, and labours of the ingenious in many considerable parts of the world,' the Society began regularly to publish, contained not a little that must have appeared extremely ludicrous to such-at the time the majority of the public-as could not sympathise with the many errors through which experimental philosophy had to struggle in its progress towards maturity. Among the papers that appeared in the Transactions during the year 1675, was one that caused almost as much amusement to the Society as to the loungers of the Mall. It was from a Dutch contributor, Anthony Leuwenhock of Delft, whose ingenuity in improving microscopes-instruments to which the Society very wisely gave much attention-had procured him honourable distinction among his English associates. The curious observations which the superiority of his glasses enabled him to make, had not hitherto overstepped the limits of belief, but when, in the year mentioned, he declared himself as having discovered certain animals of such extreme minuteness that many thousands of them did not equal a grain of sand, his statement was received with derision. It is not impossible, from the proneness universally shewn by mankind to treat as profane such observations as reveal an elevated physical organisation in other beings, that the daring microscopist might in an earlier age have met the reward of Galileo. The splendour of Leuwenhock's discovery might well compensate him for an indifferent reception. He had the high fortune to have been the first to observe that beyond the power of the keenest vision there lay an unsuspected world of life, surpassing in number all the united occupants of air, earth, and water. Examined through his lenses, the smallest speck of the green mantle of the standing pool resolved itself into myriads of individual existences. It has been reserved to his successors to discover that the waters of the seas, lakes, and rivers, are equally prolific-a view of the boundlessness of animated nature which it is almost impossible to comprehend. From the facility afforded by vegetable infusions for procuring these little animals, they came to be known as Infusoria. This generic name is still retained; but, by the more scientific arrangement of the great Prussian naturalist, Ehrenberg, the class is divided into Polygastria, or many-stomached, and Rotifera, or wheel-shaped animalcules. It is to the former class that we ask the reader's attention, as the rotifers, from their more advanced organisation, are objects of inferior interest. The polygastrians are so low in the scale of being as to have no fixed type of form. Many important organs they want altogether, and such as they possess are very defective. They have neither brain nor spinal cord; nor eyes, blood, nor proper organs of locomotion. Many species have neither mouth nor digestive canal; and yet with all these defects, they are lively and playful, great eaters, and very fond of their ease. They have managed, in the successive eras of geological change over the globe, to avoid destruction. They are thus at once the tiniest and oldest inhabitants of the earth; nay, notwithstanding their subordinate position, they claim, through that wonderful chain of analogy that connects all nature, kindred with the representatives of the most exalted. Their vitality is so strong, that they are easily revived after several years' apparent death. Absence of air is the most favourable condition for their preservation; in fact, paradoxical as it sounds, interment is the surest way of keeping them alive. From their abundance and antiquity, we are not surprised to find that these animals have an important function to discharge in the economy of nature. The preservation of life in other beings depends directly upon them. The ceaseless appetite of the polygastrian is employed in reducing the vast mass of effete vegetable and animal matter in the globe that is always hastening to decomposition, and which, if allowed an unopposed development, would speedily make its noxious properties known. This view of their utility enables us to appreciate the fitness of the homely name given to them by Professor Owen-the scavengers of the atmosphere. Nay, further, the effete substances so intercepted become, from assimilation in the system of the polygastrians, adapted to the support of more highly organised animals. It may not be out of place to observe here that the objections made against such water as is seen through the microscope to abound in animalcules, has been frequently urged in forgetfulness of the dependence of pure water upon the presence of a certain number of such beings. Let us now consider a little in detail the organisation of a polygastrian. The animal essentially consists of a cell. A cell we know to represent the lowest order of vegetable or animal life. The polygastric cell is only a stage removed from the Gregarina, which stands upon the very border of the two divisions, and is only known not to be a vegetable from its power of independent existence, and never advancing to a further stage of development. Some polygastric species are bare; that is, the cell has no investment, but the majority are provided with a shell-covering either silicious or calcareous. This shell, fashioned after a variety of quaint patterns, is ingeniously adapted to the peculiar form of its wearer. Across some, it is placed horizontally; in others, it shoots out as a conical prominence over the tiny occupant; while in a third variety, this defensive armour expands in the shape of a shield. Immense accumulations of these shells are found in different parts of the world. occur in Bohemia and the United States, entirely made Strata of great depth up of infusorial shells. Sometimes their abundance occasions their being applied to unexpected purposes. Thus the berg-mehl, or mountain-meal, a white powder gathered by the people bordering upon Lake Lettnaggsjon, near Urnea, in Sweden, and much esteemed as an article of diet when mixed with flour, consists entirely of these. In animals that live in water, having neither fins, tail, nor any fixed form of limb, it becomes a curious subject to inquire into their means of locomotion. In such polygastrians as are attached to foreign bodies, no mechanism of the kind is required; but, in the greater number, progression is generally maintained by cilia or hair-like processes. Some, indeed, have such a mobility of substance as enables them to furnish an extempore limb upon an emergency, but this agreeable power of improvising a hand or foot is not frequently met with. Thanks, however, to its ciliary apparatus, the polygastrian can row nimbly through the water, seize firmly upon his prey, or, if none be at hand, make a slight agitation of the water that will soon accumulate sufficient materials for a meal. The manner of connection of these cilia with the body of the animal is not clearly understood. According to Ehrenberg, they are fixed by distinct muscular processes; but to grant that, were to claim for the order a higher degree of development in the animal kingdom than other observers are disposed to admit. The cilia are sometimes arranged in sets, but more frequently they are scattered irregularly over the animal. They occur in greatest number at the neighbourhood of the mouth, for the obvious purpose of facilitating the seizure of food. The cilia are also of use in the peculiar respiration of the animal, by causing successive currents of water to strike against it. Although destitute both of brain and spinal cord, the polygastrian is not without an analogue of these organs. A little red dot, once considered an eye, is now known to compose its limited nervous system. The functions of this part of the organisation are obscure, and to this may be ascribed the difference of opinion among naturalists respecting the movements of the animal. These are said by some to be automatic, and not the result of volition-a view apparently based upon the fact of the animal never having been observed in a state of quiescence. But even if there were not many ways of accounting for such restlessness, the evidence in favour of a contrary belief appears pretty conclusive. The most diminutive monad shrinks into a less form from the effect of fear, and carefully avoids, in his merry dance through the water, all contact with his playmates. 15 glutton removing every trace of his temporary mouth. In a few of the more advanced species-and we should larger and smaller polygastrics is as great as between always remember that the difference between the an elephant and a mouse-there is a regular form of mouth, and even a complicated dental apparatus. spontaneous fissure. A longitudinal or transverse diviThe most common mode of reproduction is by sion shews itself in some part of the animal, rapidly advances, and, when complete, two individuals result, both equal in size. Not unfrequently, the young, if we may so call it, begins immediately to divide. In the next most frequent process, that of gemmation, we trian. Here separate animals are thrown off in the are reminded of the vegetable kinship of the polygasform of buds, which differ from those produced by the former method in not attaining maturity for some time after leaving the parent cell. duction, since its existence is disputed, we may mention notice of a third, or the oviparous process of reproOmitting any the curious phenomenon observed in the volvox globator. the transparent texture of the mother. Like her, they In this little animal, the young may be seen through are provided with cilia, that enable them to swim almost as actively as after birth. In no long time, these, in their turn, become the recipients of independent existences. Well may Professor Owen say that Malthusian principles, or what are vulgarly so called, have no place in the economy of this department of organised nature.' existing between the polygastria and more superior We shall, in conclusion, state shortly the connection beings, as observed in the great law of unity of organisation. The infusorial monad is the sole unchanging organic form in the animal world. Every member of the four great sub-kingdoms-Radiata, Mollusca, Articulata, Vertebrata-has been a monad at some period of its existence. The little nervous and fluid, its displaceable stomachs, are but permanent dot of the polygastrian, its rude circulating apparatus representations of the temporary forms of the complicated nervous system, the highly organised blood, and the powerful digestion found in the most advanced class of animals. between the human embryo and the polygastrian is Even the similarity that exists retained in certain respects throughout life, for the cilia that line the nasal passages, the larynx, and bronchiæ of the adult man, are identical with those of the invisible monad. CONVENTIONAL REPUTATIONS. that there is anything more noticeable than what we may Literary life is full of curious phenomena. I don't know call conventional reputations. There is a tacit underwill not disturb the popular fallacy respecting this or standing in every community of men of letters that they that electro-gilded celebrity. There are various reasons for this forbearance: one is old; one is rich; one is good-natured; one is such a favourite with the pit that The venerable augurs of the literary or scientific temple it would not be safe to hiss him from the manager's box. may smile faintly when one of the tribe is mentioned; but the farce is in general kept up as well as the Chinese comic scene of entreating and imploring a man to stay shall by no means think of doing it. A poor wretch he with you, with the implied compact between you that he bandbox reputations. A Prince Rupert's drop, which is a tear of unannealed glass, lasts indefinitely, if you keep must be who would wantonly sit down on one of these it from meddling hands; but break its tail off, and it Though the polygastrians have no blood or proper circulating apparatus, there is a fluid, intermediate between blood and chyme, which circulates in a little central organ or heart, several pair of which lie along the backs of the larger varieties. But the most extraordinary parts of the organisation of these animals are those by which their digestion and reproduction are maintained. Although the view once held that the polygastrian consisted, as the name indicates, of an aggregation of stomachs, has not been confirmed by further observations, it is not without a certain amount of correctness, so far as the existence of a series of movable sacs or stomachs is concerned. Of these, which are dependent upon that mobility of texture noticed in connection with the means of loco-explodes, and resolves itself into powder. These celebrities motion, there may be from three or four to as many hundreds. Occasionally, when the animal wishes to gorge upon a victim as large as himself, these stomachs are all displaced-an opening is made at the most convenient position, and the prey enclosed, the little I speak of are the Prince Rupert's drops of the learned authorship comes to pick up chips of praise, fragrant, sugary, and sappy-always are to them! Well, life would be nothing without paper-credit and other fictions; so let them pass current. Don't steal their chips; don't puncture their swimming-bladders; don't come down on their pasteboard boxes; don't break the ends of their brittle and unstable reputations, you fellows who all feel sure that your names will be household words a thousand years from now.-Atlantic Monthly. TOAD-WORSHIP. The practice, which seems so unaccountable, if it be once seriously thought upon, of worshipping some of the lower animals, was not unknown on the coast of Cumana, and their treatment of toads may be mentioned as a ludicrous instance of that kind of superstition. They held the toad to be, as they said, 'the lord of the waters,' and therefore they were very compassionate with it, and dreaded by any accident to kill a toad; though, as has been found the case with other idolaters, they were ready, in times of difficulty, to compel a favourable hearing from their pretended deities, for they were known to keep these toads with care under an earthen vessel, and to whip them with little switches when there was a scarcity of provisions and a want of rain. Another superstition worthy of note was, that when they hunted down any game, before killing it, they were wont to open its mouth and introduce some drops of maize-wine, in order that its soul, which they judged to be the same as that of men, might give notice to the rest of its species of the good entertainment which it had met with, and thus lead them to think that if they came too, they would participate in this kindly treatment.-Helps's Spanish Conquest in America. THE GOOD SHIP MARSHAL. "Twas the red sundown of Christmas Day, And off Cape Otway Head, That the Marshal stood for Melbourne port With canvas sparely spread. For all day long it blew a gale, And they looked for land a-lee; Yet under short and steady sail The ship went bowlingly. And all day long through send and wave, With sundown passed the driving wind It passed off gustily: And slowly down to its deep, deep rest Then the thoughts of all were full in port; As specks in the good ship's gleaming wake How strange the sound of 'Land, ho! land!' In the speech of home, heart spoke to heart; Week on week they had walked apart Nigher yet, and a flaunting group And late on the bulwark's side a-lee Tarried a little band Of those who could not sleep at sea In a ship so near to land. Looking, you saw a white low line A long low line of foam, While they talked of the cheerful frost and snow, Slowly the headstrong ship wore in Over the Marshal's shining deck, And her low shrouds traced so fair, There fell such calm, that spoken words Seemed to linger in the air. Steadily yet her topsails drew, Stood Pilot!' from the truck, When the good ship Marshal-struck. Then did the startled master's shout, And the women to weep below: Nearer the plunging vessel's keel, Nearer the depths beneath; To try the hold of their hearts on hope? The short night passed in the settling ship; Crossing an early angry sun, Rose something faintly dark; And answering back to the Marshal's gun Close in her cabin's scanty space, Through a stormy air and a seething sea, All sailed from the lonely wreck. Then the young hand with the old was crossed, And the brown head helped the gray; For their all but life was lost, was lost Sad salt-sea miles away.* Good ships, your ribs are stanch and tried; *One needs to know but little of the ways and means of the poorer emigrants to be aware that few venture to bear anything of value on their persons. Taught by the reported experience of others that their class of passengers is almost certain to be robbed, gold, silver, even bills, as well as other valuables in their little stock, are stowed away in the strong box, safe in the hold while the voyage is safe; and when the ship goes down, all goes with it. Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON, and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH. Also sold by WILLIAM ROBERTSON, 23 Upper Sackville Street, DUBLIN, and all Booksellers. No. 210. OF POPULAR LITERATURE Science and Arts. CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS. SATURDAY, JANUARY 9, 1858. PRICE 1d. gentlemen,' he exclaimed, on one occasion, after failing in the fifteenth line of an extract which none of us had ever so much as set eyes upon before, and you have absolutely never read his Age of Bronze!' Is not this at least as abominable as the conduct of the asker of rebuses, whom Sydney Smith recommends should be delivered over to immediate execution, without being suffered to explain the connection between his seventh and his eighth? Nor, again, is that noxious person, 'a man of anecdote,' to be looked upon with less disgust when he attacks society under the thin disguise of a quotator: for where is the difference whether conversation be interrupted by his avowal that 'that reminds him of an anecdote,' and he at once blockades us by means of such regular approaches; or if he silence the company from some masked but not less fatal battery, such as: Ah, you know, that's what Sheridan said to Brumand so on for perhaps a quarter mell when they were going down Pall Mall. "I'll bet you," says he; . . . . of an hour.' This description of person, in case of his dramatis persona being celebrated and popular, will often introduce them with an air of easy patronage—as, 'that queer old Barham,' or 'that dear Leigh Hunt'— very hard to listen to; and when he begins in this fashion, he is particularly difficult to stop. If he do chance to set before us a good thing tolerably new, he spoils the effect of it by following it up with a course of ancient jokes, the entire contents of his jest-box QUOTATION. THE faculty of quotation is one of the most terrible an engine of colloquial oppresweapons of social life; sion' only less tremendous, perhaps, than the asking of riddles and the narration of anecdotes, and sometimes partaking of the worst qualities of both; for often a quotator, who must needs have his lion's share in the conversation at all hazards, whether he be certain or not of getting safe out at the other end of his selected passage, will stop in the middle of it (especially if it be poetry), and appeal to the general company to assist him in that strait to which his own imprudence has reduced him. This has all the ill effect of a conundrum in creating a dead silence, and is even destitute of that meagre hope which exists in the latter case of arriving at something amusing at last. Old gentlemen may be permitted to quote the classics to boys-' Arma virumque, what? You young dog! In my time, sir, I should have been flogged if I had not supplied the word by this time!'-because boys have no real relish for conversation: but learned persons and others should be very chary of indulging in this practice in real life, and among ordinary society. It is a pitiable spectacle to see an entire company, half of whom, perhaps, are ladies, put in abeyance, as it were, while a gentleman who has forgotten his Greek is depending upon people who never knew any to fill up the vacuum in some sonorous sentence which, after all, may be, is by no means illustrative of the matter in-putting them back, alas, very carefully afterwards, hand. Instead of being sorry for what he has done, too, this sort of character is commonly enraged with the audience, protesting not only that he shall forget his own name next, but that they are foolish and ignorant to an extreme degree. 'Every school-boy knows it,' cries he, without remembering that if that really be the case, there was no need for him to be so superfluous as to repeat it. We do not mean to state that a very first-rate conversationalist may not make himself appear to understand and appreciate a Greek quotation, but such a one must be near the top of his profession; nor can even he pay tribute to one only half delivered. Moreover, we are speaking of general society; amongst which are females who cannot divest themselves of an uneasy but not unnatural feeling, that what needs concealment in a dead language, must eertainly be something they ought not to hear. Difficulties in finishing occur by no means unusually in English. A revered friend of our own is perpetually entangling himself in verbose selections from the works of Lord Byron; and as that poet is by no means so universally read now as his admirer imagines, release is often hopeless. Good Heavens, for another time, but perhaps for the same people. Apropos of, it may be, pepper, he will remark: 'Poor Tom Hood, during his last illness, was much attenuated; and upon the doctors applying mustardplasters to his feet, observed: "Ah, sirs, there is very little meat for your mustard." Now, not above onethird of a company may have heard this before; and the kind of quotator of whom we speak is so elated by that unusual circumstance, that he goes on to tell of the bottle of ink being taken instead of the medicine, and the piece of blotting-paper the patient volunteered to swallow in order to neutralise it, and things even older yet. Still, quotation of some kind we must have. The apt use of it, with judgment and in moderation, is pleasant both to the talker and the hearer. If the latter recognise the 'selection,' his self-love is gratified almost equally with that of the former; but he must be careful not to display his rival knowledge by encumbering the first speaker with aid, and running along, as it were, by the side of the other's hobbyhorse with an unnecessary leading rein: one man is, in ordinary cases, sufficient for one quotation. In general conversation, a single line of poetry, or a couplet at |