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not have been exchanged for those of another; commerce would have been unknown; and knowledge, from being limited to particular districts, would have been of the most stunted and feeble growth, in the same way that a native crab-stock produces sour and worthless fruit, till some slip from the tree of another climate is grafted upon it. Thus, instead of the learning of the Egyptians being communicated from country to country, and instead of the produce of the East being brought to the West, to induce that taste for comforts which principally develops the human mind, many portions of mankind, which were early civilized, would probably at this day be in the same state of ignorance as the Indians of South America, whose communications are cut off by sandy deserts and inaccessible mountains.

Think of the camel, therefore, as a benefactor of man as well as an example of patient endurance; and admire the wisdom and goodness of Providence in providing an animal in all respects so admirable and useful.

The Menageries.

THE REIN-DEER.

THE rein-deer is a native of the Polar Regions, and presents another of the many forcible examples of the inseparable connexion of animals with the wants of human society, and of the goodness of God in providing for his creatures. The rein-deer has been domesticated by the Laplanders from the earliest ages, and has alone rendered the dreary region in which this portion of mankind abides at all supportable. The civilization of those extreme northern regions entirely depends upon the rein-deer. The traveller from Norway to Sweden may proceed with ease and safety even beyond the polar circle, but when he enters Finmark he cannot stir without the rein-deer. The rein-deer alone connects two extremities of a kingdom, and causes knowledge and civilization to be extended over countries which, during a great part of the year, are cut off from all other communication with the other portions of mankind.

As camels are the chief possession of an Arab, so the

The

rein-deer comprise all the wealth of a Laplander. number of deer belonging to a herd is from three hundred to five hundred; with these a Laplander can do well, and live in tolerable comfort. He can make in summer a sufficient quantity of cheese for the year's consumption; and, during the winter season, can afford to kill deer enough to supply him and his family pretty constantly with venison. With two hundred deer, a man, if his family be but small, can manage to get on. If he have but one hundred his subsistence is very precarious, as he cannot rely entirely upon them for support. Should he have but fifty, he is no longer independent, or able to keep a separate establishment.

As the winter approaches, the coat of the rein-deer begins to thicken in the most remarkable manner, and assumes that lighter colour which is the great peculiarity of polar quadrupeds. During the summer the animal pastures upon the green herbage, and browses upon the shrubs which he finds in his march; but in winter his sole food is the lichen or moss, which he instinctively discovers under the snow.

Harnessed to a sledge, the rein-deer will draw about 300 lbs., though the Laplanders generally limit the burden to 240 lbs. The trot of the rein-deer is about ten miles an hour, and their power of endurance is such, that journeys of one hundred and fifty miles in nineteen hours are not uncommon. There is a portrait of a rein-deer in one of the palaces of Sweden, which is said to have drawn, upon an occasion of emergency, an officer with important despatches the incredible distance of eight hundred English miles in forty-eight hours. Pictet, a French astronomer, who visited the northern parts of Lapland in 1769 for the purpose of observing the transit of Venus, started three rein-deer in light sledges for a short distance, which he actually measured in order to know their speed, and the following was the result :The first deer performed 3089 feet in two minutes, being at the rate of nearly nineteen English miles in an hour; the second did the same in three minutes; and the third in three minutes and twenty-six seconds. The ground chosen for the race was nearly level.

:

The rein-deer requires considerable training to prepare him for sledge-travelling, and he always demands an experienced driver. Sometimes, when the animal is ill broken and the driver inexpert, the deer turns round, and rids himself of his burden by the most furious assaults; but such instances of resistance are exceptions. He is ordinarily so docile that he scarcely needs any direction; and so persevering that he toils on, hour after hour, without any refreshment except a mouthful of snow which he hastily snatches.

Lib. of Entertaining Knowledge.

BIRDS OF PASSAGE.

BIRDS, joyous birds of the wandering wing!
Whence is it ye come with the flowers of spring?
"We come from the shores of the green old Nile,
From the land where the roses of Sharon smile,
From the palms that wave through the Indian sky,
From the myrrh-trees of glowing Araby.

"We have swept o'er cities in song renowned,-
Silent they lie with the deserts round!

We have crossed proud rivers, whose tide hath rolled
All dark with the warrior-blood of old;
And each worn wing hath regained its home,
Under peasant's roof-tree or monarch's dome."

And what have ye found in the monarch's dome,
Since last ye traversed the blue sea's foam?

"We have found a change, we have found a pall,
And a gloom o'ershadowing the banquet's hall,
And a mark on the floor as of life-drops spilt,—
Nought looks the same, save the nest we built!”

Oh! joyous birds, it hath still been so;
Through the halls of kings doth the tempest go!-
But the huts of the hamlet lie still and deep,
And the hills o'er their quiet a vigil keep,—
Say what have ye found in the peasant's cot,
Since last ye parted from that sweet spot?

"A change we have found there-and many a change! Faces, and footsteps, and all things strange!

Gone are the heads of the silvery hair,

And the young that were have a brow of care,

And the place is hushed where the children played,——
Nought looks the same save the nest we made!"

Sad is your tale of the beautiful earth,
Birds that o'ersweep it, in power and mirth!
Yet through the wastes of the trackless air,
YE have a Guide, and shall we despair?
YE over desert and deep have passed,-
So may we reach our bright home at last!

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have their seeds

of the earth. Grass and strawberries,

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and spread. Thistles and dandelions
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walnuts and cocoa-nuts, upon the wa

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of the of again, to throw its dusky PALEY.

MAP OF THE WORLD-ASIA.

ASIA is distinguished, by natural divisions, into Central, Northern, South-eastern, and South-western Asia. Central Asia is separated by ranges of mountains into the middle, eastern, and western regions. The middle region may be considered as the headland of Asia, from which the mountains break off in all directions, and from which the immense rivers of Asia run to the east and to the west, or fall into the Icy Sea or into the Indian Ocean. This elevated region of snows and clouds, which maintains an almost unbroken winter in the vicinity of the tropic, has assimilated its peculiar inhabitants to itself, who, in their stunted frames and flattened features, bear the impress of their iron soil and relentless sky. Yet even here there are favoured spots; some sheltered enclosure protected by the projecting rocks from the icewind, or some valley which the rivers have hollowed out and clad with soil, or some plain to which an almost vertical sun has given a transient but abundant vegetation. Central Asia is somewhat softened in its

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