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a place in the royal crown. Many of the rivers in Ireland were also in high repute for pearls, more particularly those of Tyrone and Donegal. Several pearls obtained in these rivers sold for from four to ten pounds each, some for forty; and one belonging to lady Glenlealy, was valued at 80%., at least, she refused that sum offered for it by the duchess of Ormond.

From a very early period, indeed, Britain was celebrated for her pearls, and most probably some kind of commerce was carried on with the adjacent continent, where the valuable products were in request, for Suetonius says that it was in the hopes of obtaining pearls that Cæsar undertook his British expedition. This, however, is a very improbable motive, yet that he did acquire them is certain, for he brought to Rome a breastplate of British pearls (or richly covered with them), which he dedicated to Venus, and hung up in the temple. To this breastplate Pliny, at a subsequent period, alluded, and, in fact, adduced it as a proof of his statement, that the British pearls were ordinarily of small size, and indifferent colour.

In the common edible mussel of our coasts, and in the oyster, pearls are often found. After securing a few specimens of unio and anodon, we came to a spot at which the bank shelved gradually, around a sort of little shallow bay, where the water, transparent and bright, flowed very gently over a soft muddy bed, which gave root to various aquatic plants. It was just such a spot as numerous species of fresh water shells are found to colonize; and there, indeed, they were in abundance. I collected with ease specimens of the following species; the horny planorbis, (Planorbis Cornea,) the keeled planorbis, (Planorbis Carinata,) and two other species of this genus, one remarkable for its very compressed form, the common limnæa, (Linnea Stagnalis,) the spreading limnæa, (L. Auricularia,) the common physa (Physa Fontinalis,) another species termed physa hynorum, the minute paladina, (Paladina Parvula,) a species of ancylus, and one or two others, making in all about twelve species. To these may be added four or five terrestrial species of the helix family, found on plants about the banks.

While thus engaged, a glittering bird shot like an arrow down the stream, a few yards above the surface of the water. It was a kingfisher (Alcedo Ispida.) This

well-known bird is not uncommon on most of our rivers and streams, where it lives in pairs; each pair (for two or three pairs are sometimes to be met with in the course of a few miles) appropriating a certain extent of river range for their fishery. The flight of the kingfisher is extremely rapid and straight, but seldom long continued, and it usually settles upon some branch or stump projecting over the water, which it uses as a post of observation. Small fishes, aquatic mollusks, and insects, but especially the former, constitute its food. Perched upon its watch-tower, it gazes with keen eyes upon the water below, marking the movements of the winding shoals as they pursue their way. Soon one, unsuspicious of danger, approaches near the surface; swift as an arrow down darts the watchful bird, and the water closes over it, but only for an instant; it re-appears, scattering the spray from its glossy plumage, and bearing its prey in its beak, returns to its perch; it now commences the destruction of its captive, which it effects by passing the fish through its bill, until the tail-part is grasped; it then strikes the fish's head two or three times smartly against its perch, and then swallows it head-foremost. The kingfisher breeds in deep holes in the river-bank, at a sufficient elevation above the surface of the water to prevent their being flooded. They are three or four feet deep and slope upwards. It is said by some that these birds will occupy the holes of the water-rat or common rat; but we are doubtful of this; we believe that the birds excavate their own domicile, for we have more than once observed the entrance in the side of a very steep, smooth, perpendicular bank, inaccessible to any animal destitute of wings; the same retreat is used for many years in succession. The eggs, deposited without any nest, in a chamber at the extremity of the hole, are six or seven in number, and of a pale, transparent, pinkish white. The young, which are very voracious and clamorous, are incessantly supplied by the parents with fishes, which they disgorge into their bills; the bones are not digested, but formed into pellets and recast, as in the instance of the bones, fur, and feathers of their prey, swallowed by rapacious birds. In a short time the hole becomes strewed with these exuviæ, which exhale a fœtid odour. When able to quit their dark abode, the young are

"Lord, who has praise enough? Nay, who has any? None can express thy works, but he that knows them ;

And none can know thy works, they are so many And so complete, but only he that owes them.' M.

led by their parents to some adjacent | Creator of all. Well did George Herresting-place, where they perch, clamorous bert write when his feelings prompted for food. The plumage of the young birds, these expressive lines : which are soon fully fledged, equals in brilliancy and gloss that of their parents. Most birds do not acquire the plumage of their parents till after a moult; but here the contrary is the case; and in this circumstance, trivial as it may appear, we mark the care of Providence. The metallic gloss of the kingfisher's plumage is given, in order that the water may be thrown off without saturating the feathers when the bird plunges for prey; and the young, be it observed, soon begin to fish for themselves.

On the approach of winter, the kingfishers begin to descend from the rivers and streams in the interior of the country, towards the sea, where they frequent the mouths of rivulets and dykes, till the return of spring. To this habit, Belon, in his "Portraits d'Oyseaux," makes allusion in a stanza of quaint old French, which, keeping up a similar style, we may thus translate:

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The kingfisher, when wintry tempests roar,
Ydwelleth by the margent of the sea;
In summer on the lake or stream bides he,
And eke on fish yfeedeth evermore."*

As we proceeded in our walk, we observed high over head two or three herons sailing on their ample pinions, winging their way homeward. There is on the banks of the Holy Brook, in some wide-spread meadows at the termination of Coly Avenue, scarce a mile from the town of Reading, a fine heronry, which we often visited. One tree has some scores of nests, and most interesting is the spectacle. At another time we may attempt a description.

We now came in sight of Sunning church, round the old tower of which swallows were wheeling in a thousand mazy circles; flocks of starlings and chattering jackdaws colonized it, occupying various ledges and crevices, and the ivy was crowded with the nests of sparrows. From the churchyard we looked over the river and meadows on the opposite side. All seemed calm and reposed; and we felt those indescribable emotions, that mingled train of feelings, which few, at such times, and in such circumstances, have not experienced, and which raise the mind from creation to the great

* "Le martinet-pescheur fait sa demeure
En temps d'hy er au bord de l'ocean;
Et en esté sur riviere ou estan
Et de poisson se repaist à toute heure."

HEALTH AND LONGEVITY.

THE fitness or inability of the physical system to undertake active employment has an obvious and important bearing upon individual happiness, the welfare of dependents, and the discharge of the duties involved in the various relations of life. The announcement of the Creator to fallen man, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground," is a rule to which the great mass of his posterity in the present state is subject. Exemption from bodily toil as a condition necessary to obtain the materials of support and comfort, is a portion that falls to the lot of few. Society has, indeed, in all communities, its privileged classes, to whom the means of procuring food, raiment, education, and the agreeables of life, have descended by inheritance, or been sufficiently provided by previous industry; but the multitude daily eat the bread of carefulness, or that which is gathered by continuous effort in scenes of agrarian or commercial activity. The circle of operatives is in reality far more widely extended than what is implied in the sense given by political economy to the term. It embraces the merchant, the manufacturer, the agriculturist, and the professional man, to most of whom personal exertion is required, in order to carry on their respective avocations.

In the case of the major part of the population, the assailment of disease induces an immediate anxiety, wholly independent of that which may result from its moral connexions and anticipated consequence. It puts an instant check upon the ordinary sources of supply. It imposes upon many the necessity of looking to fresh channels for support. It removes them from dependence upon their own energies to a state of obligation to others; and throws them, perhaps to be esteemed a burden, upon the aid which their natural connexions are only able scantily to afford. Enfeebled and sickly life, as it often exists in the cottage of

the peasant and the garret of the mechanic, frequently occasions the largest amount of misery by its indirect effects. It is not the disease with which the individual is grappling that is felt most bitterly, but the penury it brings beneath his roof; and could a voice be given to the care which a thousand minds have felt in such circumstances, so that we could hear its moaning, it would form an impressive commentary upon the inspired statement, “We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened." Rightly to discern the nature and importance of events, we must look at them in the influences they exert, and the interests they effect. A father is disabled or dies, and in various classes of society this is an occurrence which tells immediately upon the present lot and the future fortunes of others. The economy of a household suffers an irretrievable derangement. The cable is cut which moored its members in a sheltering haven; and they are driven out upon the troubled waters of the world's pauperism.

But man is designed to move in a wider sphere than that which is bounded by the threshold of his earthly home. As a member of the body politic and social, he has a part to act in relation to the great community around him. The all-wise Governor of the world has linked men together by the ties of mutual dependence and advantage. He has closely interwoven their respective positions, and thrown around them the bond of mutual interest and reciprocal obligation. According to the constitution of Providence, no man can righteously live unto himself, but each part of the social fabric has an assigned office of positive utility to perform in relation to the welfare of the entire structure. We may practically disown our affinity to others, but we cannot destroy it. We may become careless spectators of the world beyond the range of domestic life, but we cannot do it justly. To restrict our sympathies and cares to the limits of individual existence and household scenes is a violation of the Divine law, and a fraud upon the human race. It is undoubtedly the case, that the more solemn responsibilities rest with those upon whom the greater advantages have been conferred; but as the humblest plants have an appointed utility in the economy of vegetable life, so the humblest individuals have a capacity to promote the general weal, for the due improvement of which each one is ac

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countable. "No grass grows where the sultan's horse has set his foot," is a Turkish proverb, referring to the selfishness of their rulers; but it will never hold good of one who has submitted to a right course of moral and intellectual training. Be his capabilities great or small, and his opportunities many or few, he will be a member of the human system generally useful to the rest. It is only, however, while the physical frame possesses the vigour of a healthy condition that the active duties of citizenship, patriotism, and religion, can be performed. The enfeeblement of the bodily powers makes retirement necessary from the benevolent occupations which engage the ready hand and the anxious tongue. He who has been prominently before the eye of public observation is compelled to retreat from its gaze. The curtain falls between him and the great world of life around, and suspends his chief means of usefulness to it, and of benefits from it. This is a dispensation which may be received without submission, and borne with fortitude, when the duties of our station have not been neglected, and it comes as part of the paternal discipline of the Almighty in the ordinary course of nature; but to induce it by human imprudences in early life, is to offend against Him, to sin against ourselves, against the claims which society has upon us, and to incur the responsibility of having the connexion with it in some degree voluntarily severed.

In these respects, and in various others that might be named, the health and longevity of human life is of vast importance; and no fact is now more incontrovertible than the conservative influence of civilisation and Christianity in relation to both. It was a sentiment of the French infidel philosophy, during the last century, that a reasoning man is a degenerate animal, enervated in body, in comparison with the savage; but the opposite of this is susceptible of wide illustration and decisive proof. The nations of the world may be divided into three classes:-the civilized, as most of the Europeans; the uncivilized, as the aborigines of America and New Holland; and those in a mediate or transition state, as the Chinese and Turks. In the amount of physical power possessed by these respective classes the pre-eminence is due to the first.

By means of an instrument called the dynamometer, invented by Règnier, the

relative forces of individuals may be subjected to trial. The mean strength of the arm of a New Hollander is found to be equal to one hundred and eleven pounds, that of a Frenchman to a hundred and fifty-two pounds, and that of an Englishman to a hundred and fifty-seven pounds; thus giving nearly one-third more physical power to the civilized man. This agrees with observation. When the Spaniards went to the New World, they found the natives in general far weaker than themselves. The Anglo-Americans have always shown themselves stronger than the Indians, troop to troop, and man to man. The travellers, Hearne, Mackenzie, Lewis and Clarke, found the same inferiority along the North American coast. Contrasting the native Patagonians in a barbarous condition, the Chinese in a state of mediate civilization, with the European, in point of animal strength, the average amount possessed by the latter is greater than that of the two former. Some of the bodily powers and senses of the old race,

"The Stoic of the woods, the man without a tear,"

are often remarkably vigorous. His eye will detect a trait, of which no trace is perceptible to a European vision. His ear will catch the faintest sound, and distinguish the most cautious human movement from that of the snake winding through the grass, or the wind rustling through the trees. His voice will give the fearful war-whoop, the shrill signal-cry of alarm, and the whisper of concealment. His agility and swiftness on the huntingground, or in the battle-field, are notorious, while his suppleness of limb will accommodate itself to almost every attitude and position. Many a warrior, too, has been in shape and gesture proudly eminent" over his civilized visitor; and hence the imagined superiority of the time.

"When wild in woods the noble savage ran,"

which poetry has caught. These are the chief physical accomplishments distinguishing a few specimens of the barbarous races; for in muscular energy, capacity to endure manual labour, and longevity, they are far behind civilized

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Indians; Bruce, of the Abyssinians; Cook and others, of the inhabitants of the north-west coast of America-have remarked the scarcity of old men among them; and all observation confirms the statement, that life approaches nearer to its maximum duration as communities ascend in the scale of civilization. The ancient Britons, roving the woods in nudity and wildness, are reported by the Greek physician, Asclepiades, to have frequently reached the term of one hundred and twenty years; but we may reasonably regard the account as undeserving of credibility. It appears from the returns of the last census, that out of a population of nearly sixteen millions in England and Wales, there were more than one hundred thousand at eighty years of age and upwards, which is a larger proportionate number of persons in advanced life than is exhibited in any previous census, or than is perhaps to be found in any other country of the globe. This cannot be attributed to the greater natural salubrity of our climate, for in this particular we must yield the palm to several other regions; but it is undoubtedly the effect of superior cultivation in manners and morals, largely as these require to be amended.

There is an appointed time for man upon the earth, but life and health have been placed by Providence to a considerable extent in our own power. They are not absolute and stationary quantities. They depend upon a variety of circumstances, on proper nourishment, on clothing, on protection from the elements, on mental and personal tranquillity, on regular occupation of mind and body, as well as on physical situation; and these conditions of vigorous and prolonged existence are best acquired and ensured in an instructed state of society, and are most uncertain in a state of barbarism. improvements effected in the locality of a people, as a consequence of the diffusion of knowledge, largely and beneficially operate upon the human frame. Marshes are converted into pasturage, and forests into fields, while care being taken to remove all that is noxious in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, an impure atmosphere, one great cause of disease and death, of physical deterioration and mental imbecility, is avoided.

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One great promotive of health and longevity, according to theory and experience, is regular bodily and mental occupation. Among savage tribes exertion

is chiefly bodily, at times excessive, owing to the uncertainties connected with their condition; but at other periods there are long intervals of passive inaction, while they are strangers to intellectual cultivation. On the other hand, civilization tends to render daily life more entirely and regularly occupied; to bring both body and mind into play; and all facts show, that a due activity of the functions of the brain, as well as of the muscles of the limbs, exerts a beneficial influence upon the vitality of man. No axiom of physiology is clearer, than that an organ must perform its functions to preserve its health, and that the whole constitution sympathises more or less in a case of local injury. Hence it may be inferred, that intellectual exertion has a salutary physical effect, because hereby the functions of the brain are exercised—the most important organ of the body, with which every part of the frame has the closest connexion and the strongest sympathy. Excessive mental toil, indeed, like over manual labour, abridges the thread of life, but a due proportion of both contributes to its extent. Of one hundred and fiftytwo persons taken at hazard from the French academies, it was found that the sum of years lived among them amounted to 10,511, giving about sixty-nine years to each individual. The constitution of human nature, the bodily and mental powers which we possess, proclaim the employment of both to be the duty of man; and as these are the gifts of the Father of lights, their occupation is our distinction and privilege. The whole universe is continually preaching to us this truth, though there is "no speech nor language.' As we gaze upon the stately appearance of the firmament ever passing over our dwellings, in obedience to immutable laws, we may see the will of the Creator in relation to ourselves imaged forth from their infinite depths, which revelation enjoins by the precepts which forbid inaction, and summon us to employ the hand, mind, and heart, in harmony with his pleasure. Subjection to this appointment is the true policy of man both with reference to his present and future existence.

It is impossible to study the spirit and maxims of the Bible, without being struck with their salutary physical influence. It may seem to be taking low ground, to argue in favour of revealed religion on this account; but a prolonged and healthy term of life is frequently advanced in the

Scriptures as a motive to religious practice. The fifth command in the decalogue, the giving honour to parents, is enforced by the consideration of days being long in the land; and it may be surmised, that the spirit which respects not the paternal claims, will lead its unhappy possessor to those vicious irregu larities which decay the foundations of life, and prematurely overthrow the most naturally vigorous constitution. The choice that Solomon made of wisdom before the Divine presence at Gibeon, was signalized by the promise of lengthened days. Among the blessings connected with personal godliness in the ninety-first psalm, that of being satisfied with long life is specified; and those proverbs of the royal moralist, which are the result of his observation, abound with references to a protracted term of existence in the present state, as one of the natural consequences of a wise deportment:

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"By me thy days shall be multiplied,

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And the years of thy life shall be increased." "The fear of the Lord prolongeth days; But the years of the wicked shall be shortened." Even the New Testament, with its more pointed spiritual character, and more complete unfolding of the glories of immortality, does not overlook the bearing of religion upon the things that are temporal; but mentions the "promise of the life that now is," as a component part of the "great gain with which it is associated. It is evident that the inspired men who wrote these statements regarded life as a boon granted to man-a boon, the perpetuation of which, under existing circumstances, is of no mean importance to the individual and society, when rightly improved; whatever then has a tendency to conserve its term and amend its character is worthy of all acceptation. The direct tendency of the Christian laws and spirit is to answer both these ends. Those evil courses are abjured by obedience to the Divine authority which weaken the vital powers, while that calm of mind is experienced which assists the lamp of life to burn clear and strong. It is not a groundless

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