tion goes, no where to be found, but in these two passages. If you read the whole chapter, from which the lines above are taken, and the perusal will abundantly repay your trouble, you will find throughout a great similarity of thought between the Philosopher and the Preacher. In the short passage immediately before us, the Preacher appears to have given more of pathos to the subject, by a judicious amplification illustrating the general sentiment by specific instances, very happily chosen to affect the feelings.

Dr. Ogden was undoubtedly well versed in all the works of Xenophon. May we not therefore suppose, without any derogation from his merit, that, while he was composing this admirable sermon, his thoughts might take their colour from the tints, collected upon his mind by frequent communication with this fine writer?

Whatever may be your opinion on this point, you will not, I am persuaded, regret my having called your attention to an old acquaintance, nor think your time misemployed in comparing the works of two such authors as Xenophon and Dr. Ogden; from either of whom you cannot fail, as you read, of receiving the highest gratification.

I could amuse myself, if I thought it would be equally amusing to you, with tracing these literary resemblances still further. But I rather wish you now to consider with me another species of imitation, if it may be so called; "the management of which," Dr. Hurd says, "is to be regarded, perhaps, as one of the nicest offices of Invention;" I mean, the allusions often made by the first writers to old rites and ceremonies, or to prominent circumstances in ancient or modern history.

Dr. Hurd somewhere notices a beautiful specimen of this delicate allusion in a poem, called the Spleen, by Mr. Green, of the Custom-house. The Poet is recommending exercise, as a sovereign remedy against

all the circumstances attending an interesting history, which we have been accustomed to read from our childhood, and to think important from an early reverence for the writings, in which it is contained, are at once recalled to the mind; and give to the passage a life and spirit beyond what the greatest refinement of thought, with all the embellishments of language, could ever have produced.

Fling but a stone, the giant dies.

Of the same class with this I have always considered that fine imagery, under which Mr. Gray represents the indications of genius, supposed to discover themselves in the infancy of our immortal Shakspeare ....the early promise of his future greatness. On the awful appearance of NATURE, who comes in a majestic form to invest her darling with the happily-fancied ensigns of that high office, which he was destined afterwards to fill with such astonishing powers,

.........the dauntless child Strech'd forth his little hands and smil'd.

Did you ever contemplate the animated figure of this "dauntless child without recurring, at the same time, in your mind, to the fabulous description of Hercules in the cradle, grasping in his infant hands

In these examples every thing is plain and obvious. The propriety and aptitude of the allusions are seen at once. But it has often occurred to me, that we lose many beauties in the ancient poets from not knowing the facts, to which probably, frequent allusions are made, to us, at this distance of time totally inexplicable.

I have been led into this train of thought by an obscure passage in one of the Odes of Horace; which has created no small perplexity amongst the scholiasts and commentators, such of them I mean, as have ventured to remark upon it; for some of the first order, as Bentley, Gesner, and others, with a reserve not very unusual where real difficulties occur, have kept a wary silence.

.Hinc apicem rapax Fortuna cum stridore acuto Sustulit, hic posuisse gaudet.

CARM. LIB. 1. O. 34.

It may not be unamusing to observe for a moment, how these learned Critics puzzle themselves in endeavouring to explain what, by their aukward attempts, they very plainly shew that they did not at all understand.

One gravely interprets the term rapax by mutabilis, acuto by luctu

080.

Another, by an exposition still more extrardinary, renders rupax sustulit by clam sustulit.

A third, with great importance, on the words cum stridore acuto, his verbis puto significari Fortu

Bene, says a modern Editor, in general an acute and sagacious interpreter of his author, Baxter, cum stridore acuto, cum ante posuerit rapax, adinstar scilicet procel. losi turbinis.

This roar of storm and thunder seems also to have rumbled in the ears of M. Dacier; though, when on second thoughts he explains stridore acuto by the sounds made by the wings of Fortune, he seems to have caught a glimpse of the real image, which the Poet had in his eye, that of a soaring eagle; as will appear from an extraordinary occurrence related by the historian. I will beg leave to transcribe the

passage.

cum

"Ei (Lucumoni) carpento sedenti cum uxore, AQUILA suspensis demissa leniter alis pileum aufert superq. carpentum magno clangore volitans rursus, velut ministerio divinitus missa, capiti apte reponit; inde sublimis abiit. Accepisse id augurium læta dicitur Tanaquil, perita, ut vulgo Etrusci, celestium prodigiorum mulier. Excelsa et alta sperare complexa virum jubet. Eam alitem ea regione cœli, et ejus Dei nunciam venissc. Circa summum culmen hominis auspicium fecisse. Levasse humano superpositum capiti decus, ut eidem divinitus redderet." Liv. lib. i. c. 34.

Wonders and prodigies ever attend the remeter periods of great states and kingdoms. They never fail to be recorded in their earlier

annals; are superstitiously deliver ed down from father to son, and received with an easy and willing credence amongst the populace. Of this description is the tale of Lucu MO and the EAGLE; which I doubt not was as familiar amongst the Romans, as well-known, and as often repeated, as with us the legends

rubbish thrown over it, from time to time, by professed critics and laborious annotators. Reposing securely on this assurance, for the present I will bid you

MOTH.

Adieu.

Thus it appears, that the Poet, when he attributed so uncommon a figure to Fortune, with so singular a mode of action, alluded to a popular story in every body's mouth. The allusion, of course, was immediately acknowledged by the reader and felt in all its force.

By the light hence thrown on the subject, whatever there was of obscurity has vanished, all difficulties are done away, every expression resumes its usual and proper signification, and the sentence becomes clear and luminous.

The term rapax is not, you see, to be understood as epithetical to Fortuna, but to be taken, as adjectives are often used by the poets, adverbially, and joined in construction with the verb sustulit. Rapax sustulit, i. e. rapaciter sustulit, rafuit.

By the expression stridore acuto, the great stumbling-block of the commentators, are plainly signified, as intimated by a vague conjecture of the learned Frenchman, the sounds made by the eagle clapping its wings, and screaming in its flight; which the historian expresses by the words magno clangore.

I will not fatigue you by dragging you further through these dry and tiresome disquisitions into the niceties of grammatical arrangement, which, I suspect, are not much to your taste. You will not however think that labour in vain, which tends in any way to elucidate the sense of a favourite author, and to draw forth into more open view a latent beauty, which has so long lain buried under the accumulated

By Mr. Rembrandt Peale.

THE Mammoth is so called from the Russian name, supposed to have been derived from the Hebrew Behemoth, Job, chap. xl. It is properly continued, both words being expressive of a large and extraordinary animal.

For a number of years past many large and extraordinary bones and teeth have been discovered both in Siberia and America which at first were generally attributed to the elephant, except some very large teeth of the carnivorous kind totally different from those of any animal known.

In Siberia they were attributed to the mammoth, whose fabulous existence they supposed to be under ground, and of which Isbrand Ides pretends to give a description. In North-America these large bones and carnivorous grinders have been found in great abundance on the Ohio and its tributary streams, washed from their banks, or discovered by digging in salt morasses in the neighbourhood of Cincinnati; where they are found intermixed with the bones of buffaloes and deer, which a tradition of the Indians states to have been destroyed by a

* Naturalists were led to this idea

in consequence of finding, in a few instances in America, but frequently in Siberia, some large graminivorous teeth, which probably belonged to an animal of the elephant kind, though certainly of different species from any

known: these teeth are remarkable for size, and in the number of lameletcd veins of enamel which pervade them.

herd of these animals which came upon them from the north. This event happened, the Indians believe, as a punishment for their sins; but they say the good spirit at length interposed to save them, and, seating himself on a neighbouring rock, where they show you the print of his seat and of one foot, hurled his thunderbolts among them. All were killed except one male, who, presenting his forehead to the shafts, shook them off, until, at length wounded, he sprung over the Wabash, the Illinois, and the Great Lake, where he still lives.

These bones were forwarded with great eagerness to all parts of Europe, and deposited in museums, where they attracted the curiosity of all naturalists, whose conjectures and theories on them were very various, until Dr. Hunter, by a more accurate comparison between them and the bones of other animals, determined that they must have belonged to a large nondescript animal of the carnivorous kind, somewhat resembling the hippopotamus and the elephant, yet essentially different from both.

The subject is now completely elucidated. Not long since some farmers in the state of New-York, digging marle from their morasses in the neighbourhood of New-Windsor, accidentally discovered several of these bones, which were preserved by physicians in the neighbourhood. In the autumn of 1801, my father Charles W. Peale and myself, having obtained possession of these bones, persevered for nearly three months, at the expense of much time, labour, and money, in a search for the remainder of the animal; and were fortunate enough to obtain two skeletons, found in two distinct situations, and unmixed with bones of any other individual whatever: one of these is preserved in the museum at Philadelphia, and the other is now exhibiting in the old academy-room, Pall-Mall, previously to its being taken to Paris.

The skeleton of the mammoth bears some general resemblance to

VOL. I....NO, IV.

that of the elephant, yet on examination even the general figure is found to be considerably different; principally in the effect of the tusks, structure of the head, prominence and pointedness of the back over the shoulders, its great descent thence to the hips, together with the comparative smallness of the body and the necessarily detached effect of the hind-legs....proofs of greater activity than in the clephant. On a closer examination, the characteristic features are greatly multiplied; and with respect to the hind-legs, the idea of activity is confirmed from the structure of the thigh-bones, which are extremely broad and flat, and well adapted for great exertions of strength, beyond that of the elephant, whose thighbones are not flat, but round. This effect of strength likewise prevails in the ribs, which are of a very unusual structure, being bent edgewise and having their greatest thickness at top, gradually becoming smaller towards their junction with the cartilage; whereas in the elephant they are bent flatwise, like those of the ox, and are narrow at top and broad at the lower ends. This peculiarity in the ribs of the mammoth is worthy of particular notice, not only on account of the unusual position of strength, but because,from their distance between each other, they show the animal to have had considerable flexibility in its body; to which the breadth and proximity in the ribs of the elephant as well as the ox, are a certain impediment. Besides, as I observed before, the body is comparatively smaller, in consequence of the small length of the ribs.

The spines of the back over the shoulders are of an unusual magnitude, which gives the appearance of a hump, like the bison, and are calculated to give power and motion to the head. Those in the elephant are not so large over the shoulders, but much more so all the way to the sacrum: consequently his back is more arched. The proportionate length of the processes from the

spine of the scapula differs essentially from all other animals. And, independently of any other variation in form, all the bones of the limbs in particular, are astonishingly thick and strong.

We now come to the head, where the most striking features of this animal are to be found; and since between the corresponding parts of all animals there is a general analogy, it is the province of comparative anatomy not only to trace out the points of distinction, but, since they originate from certain fixed principles, in the discrimination of variations, to confirm their propriety by an examination of the principles on which they are founded.

Although it is sufficiently evident to those who are accumstomed to this kind of investigation, from the observation of a few facts, that this animal must have been carnivorous; yet to others it is necessary to introduce every proof and conclusive evidence. Many persons, from a false impression, believe that teeth are determined to be carnivorous merely from their having a rugged surface: with this opinion they very properly ask, " May not the vegetable food be of a coarser quality?" It is true that the surface is roughest on those graminivorcus teeth which are employed in the mastication of the coarsest vegetable substances, not only because such roughness is requisite, but because the teeth are rendered so from the quality of the food, the bony interstices wearing down more easily than the ridges of enamel, which operate as the roughness in a mill-stone. It is not therefore from this species of roughness that we presume on so important a determination: the roughness existing on the surface of carnivorous teeth is of another nature, much more strongly marked, and far from being rendered so by usage: the more they are used, the more even do they become. The tooth of a graminivorous animal is composed of alternate veins of enamel and bone, which thus pervade the whole mass ....those of carnivorous animals are

covered with a shell or crust of enamel, which is merely external, and exists as well in the cavities as on the ridges; which is not the case with other teeth. This enamel is required in the cavities, because the teeth interlock with each other, the prominences striking into the cavities.

An uniform composition of tooth, as it respects the intermixture of enamel and bone, is observed to prevail in those of the elephant, horse, ox, &c. principally differing from each other in the figure which those veins of enamel assume, and by which alone they may be discriminated among themselves. On the other hand, carnivorous teeth, incrusted with enamel as far as the gums, yet vary in the form and number of their protuberances, so as generally to designate their species: yet among them there is a very proper distinction to be observed, which is, that those carnivorous animals, the form of whose teeth and the attachment of whose jaws allow them the side or grinding motion, are always of the mixt kind. Man, the monkey, hog, &c. are carnivorous animals, because their teeth are incrusted with enamel, and because they do eat flesh; yet they are adapted for other food, by the rotatory motion of their jaws and the form of their teeth: this rotatory motion does not exist in the jaws of those animals which live entirely upon flesh; for they are attached by an oblong head or process inserted into a transverse groove, and consequently have no other motion than up and down. In graminivorous animals the under jaw is attached by means of a considerably round head (condyloid process) to a prominence of flat surface, so that they rotate; and, to favour this motion, the coronoid process is generally thicker and not so long as the condyloid; whereas in carnivorous animals the coronoid process is extremely flat and long, being never acted on except lengthwise.

But it must not even be supposed that an animal may be of the mixt