"I pray you, let us satisfy our eyes
With the memorials and the things of
fame

That do renown this city."

At Scilly there is no city, and this non-existent city boasts no "things of fame," unless we choose so to consider the spot where Sir Cloudesley Shovel was first interred, which culminates the negative attractions of the Isles by being no grave at all. I am quite serious. They ask you here, whether you have seen the grave; on investigation, this renowned spot turns out to be destitute even of the rudest stone or landmark to indicate where the bones of the wrecked admiral may imaginatively be supposed to lie; it is simply a strip of land on the coast, where no grass will grow by reason of the shifting sand. And yet, if "gossip report" be not wholly a fibber, somewhere in this neighbourhood lie the remains of the great admiral, who was wrecked as he returned home covered with glory, 1500 or even 2000 men perishing with him on these inhospitable rocks. This was a century and a half ago, and tradition, we know, is apt to magnify, vires acquirit eundo. Still, if they will keep up the tradition,

VOL. LXXXII.-NO. DI.

stone. Stones are abundant enough, in all conscience; and, if we believe the antiquaries, some of these stones are invested with the hoar of Druidical sanctity.

Druidical erudition is not common. On probing the recesses of my own knowledge of this mysterious subject, I found that the principal source of my familiarity with it was the opera of Norma. For more than twenty years I had reverently followed that splendid priestess Giulia Grisi, and that majestic priest Lablache; and if to these you add those fragments of undeniable Druidical remains in the persons of the very ancient virgins of the sun, forming the nightly chorus of that opera, little doubt should be thrown on the accuracy of my historical conceptions. With that erudition I had been content. But reaching Scilly, where the respectable Borlase assured me Druid temples and sacred rock-basins did veritably exist, I was not a little anxious to bring my operatic erudition into direct confrontation with fact. I even cleared my throat for a pathetic burst of moriam insieme, when I should really stand beside a Tolmen, and with the mind's eye behold my casta diva about to perish, the vic

Ꭺ

tim of a superstition which had small sympathy with lovers.

Following Borlase's directions, I soon came upon a towering altitude of stones, in solitary isolation on the shore. A less erudite eye would have seen here nothing but a pile of stones; but the forewarned mind descried in their symmetrical arrangement, ledge upon ledge, crag upon crag, the rude architecture of early days, especially when we glanced at the stone-hedges or stone-cottages near at hand, which assuredly were built by human architects, and showed a less symmetrical arrangement than the towering pile. Then, again, the rock-basins, in which the pure water of heaven was received, who could doubt that their oval form, and smoothly chiselled sides and bottoms, were the work of man? If the cairn of stones left vague doubts, these rock-basins veritably were Druidical remains; and thus fortified against scepticism, I indulged in the emotions which naturally accompanied the belief of being in the presence of remnants of a great human epoch long since passed

away.

Having indulged in these emotions, and extracted from them all the pleasure they could yield, it was with acquiescent equanimity that I afterwards learned how little probability historical scepticism allowed to these Druidical remains. It appears that the cairns are simply cairns, and not temples. The architecture is Nature's; and, indeed, the forms are repeated in almost every cairn along the shores. Moreover, those rock-basins, which looked so convincingly human in their design and execution, are proved by Science to be the result of the disintegrating action of winds and waters, the uniformity of the causes producing that uniformity of result which seemed the betrayal of design. There is something almost pathetic in an acute and erudite man like Borlase (a naturalist too, and inventor of the strange worm which bears his name, Nemertina Borlasia), wandering among these rugged rocks, and finding in them the traces of an ancient religion; noticing the oval basins, and believing them to be

human work; inventing a plausible explanation of their uses, admiring their design, and feeling a sacred awe in their presence; whereupon arrives the geologist with his disintegrating explanation, and the whole erudite fabric falls to pieces. Had Borlase lived in our time, imagine the ineffable scorn with which he would have looked down upon my Druidical authority Norma; yet, you see, he is, with all his learning, quite as unveridical as Giulia Grisi, and not half so beautiful. If Norma is not a good historical authority, it is at least a delightful one; and, with Voltaire, I exclaim

"On court, hélas, après la vérité ;

Ah! croyez-moi, l'erreur a son mérite."

Scepticism refuses admission to these Druidical remains altogether, so that I need not occupy space with the description of them. But here is a story safe from the assaults of scepticism, and thrilling enough it is to deserve a place among moving accidents. On the 16th November 1840, the French brig Nerine, under Captain Pierre Everdert, with a cargo of oil and canvass, sailing from Dunkerque for Marseilles, was forced to heave to in a gale about ten leagues south-west of the Scilly Islands. The crew consisted of seven, including the captain and his nephew, a boy of fourteen. At seven in the evening, a heavy sea struck the vessel, and completely capsized her-turning her keel upwards. The only man on deck at the time was drowned. In the forecastle were three men, Vincent, Vantaure, and Jean-Marie: the two former, by seizing hold of the windlass-bits, succeeded in getting up close to the keelson, and so kept their heads above water. The unfortunate JeanMarie probably got his feet entangled

at any rate, after convulsivelygrasping the heel of Vantaure for a few seconds, he let go his hold and was drowned. "The other two, finding that the shock of the upset had started the bulkhead between the forecastle and the hold, and that the cargo itself had fallen down on the deck, contrived to draw themselves on their faces close alongside the keelson towards the stern of the ship, from whence they that they heard some voices. At

the time of the accident, the captain, the mate Gallo, and the boy Nicholas, were in the cabin. The captain caught the boy in his arms, under the full impression that their last moment had arrived. The mate succeeded in wrenching open the trap-hatch in the cabin deck, and in clearing out some casks which were jammed in the lazarette (a sort of small triangular space between the cabin floor and the keelson, where stores are gene rally stowed away): having effected this, he scrambled up into the vacant space, and took the boy from the hands of the captain, whom he then assisted to follow them. In about an hour they were joined by Vincent and Vantaure from the forecastle. There were then five individuals closely cooped together: as they sat, they were obliged to bend their bodies for want of height above them, whilst the water reached as high as their waists; from which irksome position, one at a time obtained some relief, by stretching at full length on the barrels in the hold, squeezing himself close up to the keelson." What a situation! To rightly conceive its horrors, we must know that their only means of distinguishing day from night, was by the light which struck from above into the sea, and was reflected up through the cabin skylight, and thence through the trap-hatch into the lazarette. "The day and night of Tuesday the 17th, and of Wednesday the 18th, passed without relief, without food, almost without hope; but each encouraged the others when neither could hope for himself; endeavouring to assuage the pangs of hunger by chewing the bark stripped off from the hoops of the casks. Want of fresh air threatening them with death from suffocation, the mate worked almost incessantly for two days and one night, in endeavouring, with his knife, to cut a hole through the hull." There is something very terrible in contemplating such a position, in seeing the mad energy of the mate thus to cut a hole, which would have caused instant destruction to the sufferers, since it was solely owing to this confined air that the vessel floated. Bad as the tainted air was, and threatening life every hour, it was the

sole safety of the crew. They knew nothing of this; and when the mate's knife broke, a savage wrath at their frustrated hope must have seized them." In the dead of the night of Wednesday, the vessel suddenly struck heavily on the third blow the stern dropped so much that all hands were forced to make the best of their way, one by one, further toward the bows; in attempting which poor Vincent was caught by the water and drowned, falling down through the cabin floor and skylight. After the lapse of an hour or two, finding the water to ebb, Gallo got down into the cabin, and whilst seeking for the hatchet which was usually kept there, was forced to rush again for shelter to the lazarette, to avoid being drowned by the sea, which rose on him with fearful rapidity. Another hour or two of long-suffering succeeded, when they were rejoiced to see by the dawning of the day of Thursday the 19th, that the vessel was fast on the rocks, one of which projected up through the skylight. The captain then went down into the cabin, and found that the quarter of the ship was stoved; and, looking through the opening, he called out to his companions above, Grâce à Dieu, mes enfans! nous sommes sauvés ! Je vois un homme à terre!' Immediately after this the man approached, and put in his hand which the captain seized, almost as much to the terror of the poor man as to the intense delight of the captain. Several people of the neighbourhood were soon assembled ; the side of the ship was cut open, and the four poor fellows were liberated from a floating sepulchre, after an entombment of three days and three nights in the mighty deep." There is another curious detail in this story which must not be omitted. On Wednesday afternoon, two pilot-boats fell in with the wreck floating bottom up, at about a league and a half from the islands. They took her in tow for about an hour, when their towing ropes broke, and as night was approaching, with a heavy sea running and bad weather threatening, they abandoned her, not having the faintest suspicion that there were human beings alive on board a vessel which

was floating with little more than her keel above water. Nevertheless, although they abandoned the wreck, their temporary aid had been essential; had they not taken her in tow, the set of the current would have drifted her clear of the islands into the broad Atlantic waste.*

Granite is the substance of these islands. Generally it is thought that Scilly is only a continuation of the granite of Land's End ; against which conclusion the idea of a separate and distinct range seems supported by the fact that, in dredging between the islands and the mainland, sea-weed is often brought up attached to bits of slate and greenstone; and the Wolf Rock, which lies not far southward of a line from the Land's End to Scilly, is composed of this same greenstone. What geologists call "the strike" of the granite here is, with few exceptions, towards the north or north-north-west. The rock itself is not always confined to the constituent parts of quartz, felspar, and mica shorl is a very common ingredient, sometimes accompanying the mica, sometimes replacing it. Hornblende is rare, chlorite still rarer. Veins of pure white quartz, of considerable size, often intersect the granite; rose-coloured quartz, and even chalcedony, have been found; but the general nature of the stone is of a coarse kind, useless for quarrying; and the granite needed for the new lighthouse is brought from Cornwall,

The reader will be curious to know about the zoological wealth of Scilly. Rich the place undoubtedly is, yet not so rich as I anticipated. When Dr Acland, of whom Oxford is justly proud, commenced the foundation of that anatomical museum over which he presides, Scilly was the first place chosen by him for the collection of specimens, on account of its geographical position, at the entrance of the Bristol, Irish, and English Channels, with Rennel's Current near. He employed Victor Carus, since known by an excellent work on Morphology,t as his purveyor for six months, exploring and dredging. Carus has

contributed a little paper to North's Week at Scilly, in which he gives expression to his opinion that the "sea is not a dense one, although there are multitudes of zoophytes and hosts of fishes; there are only a few molluscs, some worms, and a not very large number of echinoderms." On the whole, he does not think Scilly equal to the Channel Islands. Either I have been lucky, or my wishes pointed in different directions from those of Victor Carus; for although unable to dredge, and confined, therefore, to tide-pools, I have had an embarrassment of riches rather than a want hereof. His verdict, however, is worth remembering, because, as these Isles are very inaccessible, and are hyperborean in the imperfection of their commissariat, the naturalist should weigh advantages with disadvantages before coming here. The attractions are manifold, as I have before explained; but the attraction of a very rich fauna Scilly cannot boast, unless zoophytes be the main object of search. The Anemones are various, and prodigally abundant. Anthea, and the noble Crassicornis, are almost as frequent as the Smooth Anemone is at Ilfracombe and Tenby. Gemmaceas abound; Daisies are frequent; the Dianthus is to be had; also the Orange-disked; and two species, probably yet undescribed— of which more anon.

To learn the geographical position of Scilly-above all, to get a glance at the coast-you would imagine it to be a wonderful place for marine zoology. The first obstacle lies in the nature of the rock. Granite, indeed, as mere granite, is almost as bad as chalk cliffs, which let no ingenuous reader waste his holiday upon. The weeds are loth to grow there; and where no weeds grow, no herbivorous animals will congregate for pasture; consequently no carnivorous animals will be there to pasture on them. The large amount of silica in granite resists the decomposing action of winds and waves, and of course still more energetically resists the animals,