site the b burial-ground. They had badges upon their backs which resembled knapsacks, except they were much broader, and came up higher on the shoulders. No sooner were they behind the fort than they commenced a promiscuous fire of musketry and artillery."

There was here a clever use made of means, and a rapid application to effective resources. On this occasion also the gunners exhibited skill and an acquaintance with practice, though the motion of the ship served to baffle their earnest intentions. We believe too, that the Chinese would neither have shown the promptitude nor the talent in warlike defence now described; nor indeed in some other important respects do the Celestials come up to the people under consideration. The Japanese junks, for instance, though clumsy and strong, are said to be more sea-worthy than those of China; so that, according to Mr. Parker's account, taking the nation altogether, Japan is a country, though most imperfectly known, that excites a peculiar interest, the facts which have really come to light indicating a great deal calculated to concern the politician, the merchant, and the philanthropist.

We cannot agree with those who would blame Mr. Parker and his party for intruding themselves upon the people of Japan, seeing that their purpose was that of benevolence and to carry blessings, which, without unsought pressure from without, are never likely to be communicated. Providence does not work in these latter times by miracles but by appointed and rational means. There is a difference (just that sort of difference which clears the difficulty in our opinion as to foreign intrusions) between the immediate and primary object of this expedition and the three expeditions of Major Mitchell. The main object of the one party was the conversion to the only benign and civilizing religion that ever was taught, that of the other was territorial acquisition. If, however, the main object of every encroachment or advance made upon savage or heathen nations, was their present and everlasting well-being, then we fear not the spirit of colonization; or if in every attempt of forming new settlements among such nations, in anticipation of extending commerce as well as secular, scientific, and literary knowledge, ample or the most anxiously guaranteed provisions were made that all would be conducted on Christian principles, that the strong would do as they would be done by, then the colonization of New Zealand, of the shores and Interior of Africa, of Australia Felix, or any other portion of the globe, by England or any other civilized people, would be an immeasurable good, and be placed on intelligible and never varying grounds.

But while we entertain these views, we must express our astonishment at finding a man of Mr. Parker's professions, and a man attached to a Missionary board, intimating an opinion and a wish that the rebuff of the expedition to Japan in which he was engaged should call forth the strong arm of a Christian nation. In the first

place the enterprise was not of a public, that is, a nationally authorized, character. But secondly, it would be an entire and bold violation of Christianity thus to make the edge of the sword, or what is the same thing, any stratagem of a forcible kind, to herald and plant the religion of peace, the faith that is valueless, if not according to heartfelt conviction. Christianity and the ministers of Christianity must not run violently in the face of constitutional and political establishments. The Japanese were only acting in consonance with their laws, their forms, and their principles; so that Mr. Parker or any missionary adventurers cannot have recourse to force, or the chastisement of persons unwilling to lend them a hearing, or even the privilege of a personal approach, without incurring, according to our reading of the doctrines of Glad Tidings, great guilt.

ART. XVII.-A General Outline of the Animal Kingdom. Part I. By PROFESSOR JONES of King's College. London: Van Voorst. 1838. AFTER the manner of Yarrell and Bell's beautiful Zoological works issued by the same publisher, and promising to be in every way worthy to rank with these popular productions, Mr. Jones has here given us the First Part of a new work upon the Classification of Animals, as followed out according to physiological principles and data. It may be said, that, by Henderson's recent edition of Cuvier's Animal Kingdom and other impressions of that celebrated work, the public has been or may be made perfectly master of the science as well as of the more popular details of the system adopted by the present author, who does not disturb or oppose Cuvier's classification. It will be found, however, that Mr. Jones, by a plain as well as comprehensive and philosophic arrangement, according to leading characteristics, does much to entice the ordinary as well as the more learned and enlightened reader to a study of Zoology, and to smooth the way to a satisfactory perusal, and a due appreciation of Cuvier and the other renowned Naturalists, whose works are still more technical and inaccessible. Besides, Cuvier throws into one large, undivided, and miscellaneous class, under the name of Zoöphytes, or Radiated Animals, all those which belong to the lowest degree in the scale of animated nature; whereas Mr. Jones, taking advantage of certain minute discoveries made by means of the microscope, which it did not fall within the design of the Great High Priest among Zoologists to pursue or note, makes his readers as clearly acquainted with the wide distinctions under the head of the inferior organized creations referred to, as those which the naked eye may discern or discover in the largest animals that inhabit the earth, and which to the reflecting mind are not more marvellous. Thus in one large group a nervous system may be observed, while in the very lowest link, that which seems immediately to connect the animal with the vegetable kingdoms, in which division sponges range,-no sort of nervous organization has been detected. Few people who ordinarily use a sponge are aware that it was at one time an animal, though now

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divested of the "thin film of glairy, semifluid matter, composed of aggregated transparent globules," which clothed, lubricated and served its innumerable organs and limbs. An account of the gestation in the case of sponges, and of their birth, infancy, and youth, will astonish and amuse the reader.

"At certain seasons of the year,if a living sponge be cut to pieces, the channels in its interior are found to have their walls studded with yellowish gelatinous granules, developed in the living parenchyma which lines them; these granules are the germs or gemmules from which a future race will spring; they seem to be formed indifferently in all parts of the mass, sprouting as it were from the albuminous crust which coats the skeleton, without the appearance of any organs appropriated to their development. As they increase in size, they are found to project more and more into the canals which ramify through the sponge, and to be provided with an apparatus of locomotion of a description which we shall frequently have occasion to mention. The gemmule assumes an ovoid form, and a large portion of its surface becomes covered with innumerable vibrating hairs or cilia, as they are denominated, which are of inconceivable minuteness, yet individually capable of exercising rapid movements, which produce currents in the surrounding fluid. As soon therefore as a gemmule is sufficiently mature, it becomes detached from the nidus where it was formed, and, whirled along by the issuing streams which are expelled through the fecal orifices of the parent, it escapes into the water around. Instead, however, of falling to the bottom, as so apparently helpless a particle of jelly might be expected to do, the ceaseless vibration of the cilia upon its surface propels it rapidly along, until, being removed to a considerable distance from its original, it attaches itself to a proper object, and, losing the locomotive cilia which it at first possessed, it becomes fixed and motionless, and develops within its substance the skeleton peculiar to its species, exhibiting by degrees the form of the individual from which it sprung. It is curious to observe the remarkable exception which sponges exhibit to the usual phenomena witnessed in the reproduction of animals, the object of which is evident, as the result is admirable. The parent sponge, deprived of all power of movement, would obviously be incapable of dispersing to a distance the numerous progeny which it furnishes; they must inevitably have accumulated in the immediate vicinity of their place of birth, without the possibility of their distribution to other localities. The seeds of vegetables, sometimes winged and plumed for the purpose, are blown about by the winds, or transported by various agencies to distant places; but, in the present instance, the still waters in which sponges grow would not have served to transport their progeny elsewhere, and germs so soft and delicate could hardly be removed by other creatures. Instead therefore of being helpless at their birth, the young sponges can, by means of their cilia, row themselves about at pleasure, and enjoy for a period powers of locomotion denied to their adult state.'

The manners, the functions, and the history of the daily life of a sponge are given with no less particularity, and are no less wonderful. Then as

to the Polypus and certain marine inhabitants that devour muscles and other small fry, though apt to be considered vegetable or merely inert matter, more interesting particulars still are detailed by our author,the whole being illustrated by the art of engraving, so as to render the

natural history of vegetating animalcules a subject for calling forth the deepest homage of that wisdom, power and goodness, whose witnesses loudly and beautifully declare themselves wherever man wanders, whatever man investigates.

ART. XVIII-A Hand Book for Travellers in Switzerland, Savoy, and Piedmont. London: Murray. 1838.

We think this is the best, certainly it is the fullest and most minute, of the excellent series to which it belongs. Accuracy, variety of details, and literary skill distinguish it, and especially when compared with the great majority of guides. It may be said that, in regard to Switzerland, the most abundant materials exist for filling a book of this description. But this very superabundance would have bewildered many a selector, and shown how difficult it is to condense, and at the same time not to be repulsively bald and dry. Then what shall be said of the Alpine regions of Piedmont and Savoy, which to English travellers are new and almost untrodden? Yet here the author is as pleasing and informing as the reader can wish. In short, while this Hand Book nust hereafter be one of the very best guides ever published, it is full of matter that is amusing and interesting.

The fall of the Rosenberg occurred in 1806, and destroyed in a few minutes several villages, and at least 450 persons besides an immense amount of property. Many affecting particulars must have been associated with this appalling and destructive convulsion! We quote notices

of a few.

"An inhabitant, being alarmed, took two of his children and ran away with them, calling to his wife to follow with the third; but she went in for another, who still remained (Marianne, aged five). Just then Francisca Ulrich, their servant, was crossing the room with this Marianne, whom she held by the hand, and saw her mistress; at the instant, as Francisca afterwards said, The house appeared to be torn from its foundation (it was of wood), and spun round and round like a tetotum; I was sometimes on my head, sometimes on my feet, in total darkness, and violently separated from the child.' When the motion stopped, she found herself jammed in on all sides, with her head downwards, much bruised, and in extreme pain. She supposed she was buried alive at a great depth; with much difficulty she disengaged her right hand, and wiped the blood from her eyes."

The woman and child were discovered and restored to health. Yet they had been carried down about 1500 feet. Here are some more of the attendant circumstances of the awful catastrophe.

"Such a mass of earth and stones rushed at once into the lake of Lowertz, although five miles distant, that one end of it was filled and at. prodigious wave passing completely over the island of Schwanau, 70 feet above the usual level of the water, overwhelmed the opposite shore, and,, as it returned, swept away into the lake many houses with their inhabitants. The village of Seewen, situated at the farther end, was inundated, and some houses washed away, and the flood carried live fish into the village of Steinen. The chapel of Olten, built of wood, was found half a league from the place it had previously occupied, and many large blocks of stone completely changed their position."

ART. XIX.-Elements of Geology. By Ca. LYELL, Esq. London:
Murray. 1838.

MR. LYELL, whose "Principles of Geology" formed an era in the history of the science, has in the present work adopted a different arrangement, and brought to his aid all the progressive discoveries which recent investigation has furnished, as well as a maturer process of analogical reasoning, 1 and philosophic composure. Nothing in these "Elements" has pleased us more than the anxiety with which the author confines himself to facts and avoids the flights of seductive theories, where no legitimate parallels have been found to warrant their extravagance, their brilliancy, or their merely possible accuracy.

Geologists have been greatly engaged with the doctrine of a consecutive formation of the different kinds of rocks as these now present themselves to the eye; and have very generally drawn from the phenomena thus exhibited much more sweeping principles than Mr. Lyell considers himself warranted to set down or yield to. Thus, it has been supposed that our globe has not only been in a chaotic state, taking the term chaotic as meaning the most disorderly confusion, but that it has undergone various mighty and sudden changes. On the other hand our author does not feel himself authorzied to regard the phenomena of our earth in any other light than the result of such gradual operations as are now in force.

We need not attempt to indicate even by the most rapid outline the various theories as to the formations of rocks which have been entertained at different times, but will proceed to our author's classification of these substances, begging our readers previously to understand that geologists apply the term "Rock" to all strata indifferently, whether soft or stony.

1st. Mr. Lyell describes Aqueous rocks, which the action of water has produced. These cover a greater extent of the earth's surface than any of

the others.

2ndly. Volcanic rocks, the evident result of fiery action, and which are generally without stratification and without fossils.

3rdly. Plutonic rocks, such as granites and certain porphyries; these resemble in various particulars the second class. While, however, it has been inferred that they have been formed at great depths of the earth, and have cooled and crystallized slowly under enormous pressure where the contained gases could not expand, no attempt is made to account positively for their origin, seeing that no such formations are now going forward at the surface of the globe.

4thly. Metaphoric rocks, which are stratified, such as gneiss, mica-schist, clay-slate, &c. These Mr. Lyell thinks were once aqueous and subject to the partial heat of the Plutonic formations. He avoids, however, saying anything of the original matter which constituted our globe, and throws over-board as hitherto untenable any doctrine that would decide as to the relative age of the several rocks, as has been done by those who divide such formations into primary, transition, secondary, and tertiary. But enough is still offered by our author's reasoning and recorded facts to awaken our wonder as to the slow but mighty processes that are always and even now going on, in the formation, for instance, of Aqueous rocks. After describing the series of deposits that are frequently found at the bottom of drained lakes, he says,

"In the estuaries of large rivers, such as the Ganges and the MissisVOL. II. (1838.) No. 11.

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