acute angle with the aorta; and its great elasticity, or greater muscular power, (for its parietes are thick and solit) soon occasions its contraction into a ligament. The umbilical arteries are obliterated in consequence of these changes and the extension of the legs, which straiten the folds of the femoral arteries, and produce a freer circulation in the lower extremities: whence, he might have added, arises a more rapid increase of their bulk soon after birth.

'XII. Memoir on the Art of making Gun-Flints, by M. Do lomieu.' It is, we believe, generally known that gun-flints are struck into their usual form by a lucky or a dextrous blow of the hammer. The agate flints are ground on a wheel. The cheapness of gun-flints supports the account of our author, which is truly astonishing, viz. that a good workman will prepare and finish a thousand gun-flints in three days. It is not a very nice or difficult task. M. Dolomieu describes the silex pyromachus, as he styles it, very particularly: it appears to be a very pure siliceous stone, and the same as is usually found in calcareous mountains. He seems to think it almost peculiar to France:-we dare not say that the facility of breaking may not be confined to a few countries: but a silex of this purity is extremely common. XIII. A Memoir on Mines, by M. Marescot.' The chief object of this memoir is to show that the explosive force of gun-pow der in mines is increased by not entirely filling the chamber. The expansion of the surrounding air is supposed, with some reason, to increase the power; but the experiments are neither finished nor conclusive.

'XIV. An Inquiry into the Cause of the connate Umbilical Her nia, by M. Lassas.' This memoir is, as usual, diffuse, but instructive. The swelling is not, strictly speaking, a hernia, but a tumor arising from the vast bulk of the liver, rupturing the linea alba, and leaving sometimes the liver, at others the small intestines, covered only by the peritonæum, exposed to view. It is usually fatal: but the little that art can effect is well detailed in the memoir before us.

'XV. The Passage of Mercury over the Sun, observed 18th Floréal, year VII, by M. Delambre.' This memoir is incapable of abridgement; but it is copious, profound, and instructive.

"XVI and XVII. Two Memoirs on new methodical Arrangements of Birds and mammiferous Animals, by M. la Cépède.' These memoirs show the author to possess comprehensive views of nature, and to hold no mean rank among natural inquirers. His work on serpents was a juvenile one; and some parts of his ichthyological system we have found reason to blame; yet, on the whole, he is a philosopher of considerable attain. ments; and his reflexions on arrangement, in general, are highly valuable. These we cannot enlarge on, but shall give the out

line of his two systems, and begin with the mammalia, as the more important class.

The mammalia are arranged in two divisions: the first, those without membranous wings or fins; the second, those with wings. We are much pleased with this distinction, because we avoid two incongruities, that of classing the bats with human beings, and the whales with land animals in general. The subdivisions are taken from the form of the extremities; and the first is the quadrumanes, four feet resembling hands, and the pedimanes, two feet resembling hands. We thus find the kangaroo and the opossum with the monkeys; but some incongruity cannot perhaps be avoided in every part of a system. The sub ordinate divisions are taken from the teeth. The third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh subdivisions, are the plantigrades, an articulated sole, adapted for walking; digitigrades, animals that walk on toes; pachydermes, animals whose toes are inclosed in a thick skin, and divided into more than two hoofs; bisulci, or ruminating animals with two hoofs; solipedes, those with one only; and, which is the last subdivision, and contains one genus alone, equus.

The second division contains the cheiropteres, animals whose fore feet are furnished with membranes like wings, and the nageoires, those with fins. In the former we find the American owl, defined by the four claws of the fore-feet greatly elongated. The finned animals are divided into the empetres, those whose fore-feet are in the form of fins; and the cetacea, animals without any feet behind.

Birds are divided into two sub-classes, which may be in general styled land- and water-birds. The former are more strictly limited by the following definition: the bottom of the leg furnished with feathers, toes in no instance wholly united by a large membrane: the latter, by the bottom of the leg wanting feathers, or, several of the toes being united with a large membrane.' The principal divisions are taken from the situation of the toes, the subdivisions from the toes and claws, and the orders from the beaks. The first subdivision comprises the climbers, chiefly the parrot kind, with large strong toes: the second division is divided into the birds of prey, with very strong and crooked claws; the sparrows, with claws slightly bent, toes very free, or united only the length of the first phalanx;' the platypodes, flat feet, with the external toes united almost through their whole length: these are the birds with large bills, as the buceros, &c.; and the gallinaceous, with the toes of the fore-feet united at their base by a membrane.

The divisions of the second sub-class are taken, as before, from the situation of the toes; the subdivisions from the membranaceous connexion; and the orders from the beaks. The

first subdivision are, the water-birds, whose fore-toes are entirely united by a membrane; the latiremes, whose fore-toes are united by a large membrane; the river-birds, whose toes are united at their base by a membrane. The second division contains the running birds, as the ostrich, dido, &c. These are not. all water-birds; so that M. la Cépède has not actually adhered to the distinction of terrestrial and aquatic. The two memoirs now noticed are the last of the volume; and we have no reason to think that the fourth volume of this collection has appeared.

We now enter upon the third volume published by order of the department of Moral and Political Sciences. This, as usual, consists of two distinct sections-its history, and its memoirs. The former, occupying seventy-five pages, exhibits an abridged account of the transactions of the class, a notice on the life and writings of M. Baudin, the prizes proposed, and a list of books presented. We must pay some attention to this part of the volume, before we proceed to the memoirs.

In the account of the transactions, we find that the labours of the class have been considerably directed to the formation of a system of pasigraphy, or universal language, founded not upon a uniformity of tongue, but of signs selected for the representation of ideas. This visionary attempt has been so frequently brought forward in all ages from the times of the Greeks and Romans to the present, and so frequently relinquished as an impossibility, even by its most sanguine inventors, that we have no expectation of success from any new exertions. Four or five different theories upon this abstruse subject, all of them said to be highly ingenious, have nevertheless been presented to the class, which has not only attended to their development, and discussed their respective merits in a variety of sittings, but has named a committee from its body for investigating still further the question of their practicability.

To another committee has been referred a project of M. Buttet, equally fugacious and chimerical; which, considering words as algebraic expressions, consists in resolving them by an algebraic analysis. According to this fanciful system, every individual word is compounded of one or more prepositions, of a proper radical and termination: of these elementary members the preposition is regarded as a co-efficient, and the termination as a quotient. M. Buttet investigates the value of the former, in connexion with that of the latter; and combining these three imaginary data of a term, its preposition, its radical, and its termination, he affects to deduce, from a series of rules constructed for the occasion, the most precise meaning of which the term is capable, and thus conceives that he is equally promoting the rectification of ideas and the perfection of language.

The labours of the Institute appear to more advantage in propounding for solution a variety of queries, many of them well digested and of considerable moment, to the Institute establi hed a few years since by Bonaparte in Egypt, when, in the zenith of his victorious career in that quarter of the world, he was ambitious of adding the character of Mæcenas to that of Cæsar. Of the answers we are not as yet presented with any statement; and we are fearful that the destruction of the esta blishment by posterior circumstances- -an event which we can. not but deplore, as it is not likely to be replaced by any other nation-will effectually preclude our attaining the information we might otherwise have possessed.

To inquiries of this description the National Institute haş subjoined others, concerning the mode of commercial communication with the East anterior to the discovery of America and the Cape of Good Hope. It is well known that at this periodto wit, from the twelfth to the fifteenth century--such communication was principally maintained by the Levantine states, and especially the Genoese; and to the public archives of the latter therefore, to the libraries of the archbishop and abbots of the republic, the National Institute has applied for many important documents they are supposed to possess; while it has referred the farther investigation of the subject to a committee composed of MM. Bouchard, Papon, De Salles, and Lévesque,

In our last article we noticed that much attention had been paid by the class of Moral and Political Sciences to the important subject of burials, both with regard to the health of the public and a decent veneration for the deceased. From the his tory before us, we learn that this attention has been carried to a still greater extent; that many valuable memoirs have been received, in answer to several very pertinent questions addressed to the nation at large; and that a committee has been appointed to consider of them generally, and to concentrate their contents into one homogeneous and practical paper. We cannot transcribe all the regulations which are herein proposed; it is enough to assert that many of them evince much political wisdom, and discover much sensibility of heart: some are, nevertheless, far too fanciful, and the whole purposely abstracted from all considerations of religion or a future state. We must make some allowance, however, for the fashion of the ре riod in which they were drawn up. The profession of religion has of late been regaining its ascendency; and as the combi nation of religious tenets of every description is admitted in their fullest extent with the proposed code, there can be no doubt that such a combination will instantaneously be effected. Of the remaining labours of the class, the chief we have to notice are, first, an attempt to revivify an examination proposed as early as the year 1734, by the Academy of Inscriptions and

Belles Lettres, as to What has been the state of letters in France from the age of Charlemagne to that of Francis I. ?' and,. secondly, an account of a decimal telegraph, invented conjointly by several ingenious artists; the basis of which is to designate every word in the French tongue by an appropriate cipher; the correspondence of which words and ciphers are to be learned by a dictionary, also devised and presented to the class by the same artists.

The department of Moral and Political Sciences has been truly unfortunate in the loss of several of its most valuable members and associates since the date of its last volume. Of the latter it has to commemorate the death of four--MM. Gautier de Sibert, Cafarelli du Falga, La Forbonnais, and D'Arçon; and of each we meet with an honourable mention, in a brief but appropriate biography. To the former it is a custom of the Institute to allot a larger space, in an express chapter, entitled a notice. Such a notice we now have, in consecutive order, on the life and writings of M. Baudin, by the secretary, M. Champagne. The class has indeed to deplore the death of two other resident members, MM. Creuzé-la-Touche and Legrand d'Aussy; the latter of whom is already known by name to the majority of our readers, from the analysis we have given of his contributions to the common stock of labour. But the biography of these philosophers is deferred till a future volume.

To Baudin the National Institute has been much indebted. He was one of its most active members; and a slight glance over, our own articles upon this subject will show that his memoirs are among the most valuable it has produced.-Peter Charles Lewis Baudin was born at Sedan, October 18, 1748, of parents who were allied to the first families of the magistracy. He was designed for the bar, and was in consequence very sedulously educated under a tutor who had been the pupil of Rollin and Coffin, and from whose system of ethics he acquired a severity of morals which procured him the name of Cato. He completed his education at Paris, in the college of Louis le Grand, commenced the profession of advocate, and, in spite of the most se ductive offers to the contrary, maintained the cause of the exiled parliaments in 1770. However, at the instigation of his friend Gilbert de Voisins, whom he tenderly loved, he quitted the bar a few years after he had been admitted to it, to become the instructor of his friend's children. In 1783 he married, returned to Sedan, occupied a variety of posts of honour in his native town; was afterwards elected into the legislative assembly, by the suffrages of the department of the Ardennes; next into the national convention; and, finally, into the council of ancients. With less violence than most of his collegues, Baudin appears to have possessed far more honesty as well as