and back, and of all the characteristic na- This Relation is a rambling and ill-written tural phenomena of Spitzbergen. The short compilation from semi-fabulous Icelandic chapters, each headed with the name of some and Danish chronicles, mixed up, however, plant, bird, fish, &c., do not promise much; with some good pieces of description of the⚫ but, after Jessie's famous gleanings, we know country, superstitions of mariners, &c. of no more amusing little work of the kind Among the facts gravely recorded we find than this. F. Martens describes all he sees the following Dantesque account of "three with sufficient accuracy and minuteness to be sea monsters of enormous size" sometimes of service to the technical naturalist, and yet seen in the "sea of Greenland: " manages to delight the unscientific reader "The fish, which the Norwegians saw from with the touches of nature" to be found the waist upwards out of the water, they called among the ice and crags of Spitzbergen. Here haffstramb: it was like a man about the neck, are a few of our traveller's remarks, taken | head, face, nose, and mouth, with the exception from scores of others as good:

"There is hardly any difference of cold between night and day; yet at night, when the sun shineth, it seemeth to one that rightly considereth it, as if it was only clear moonlight, so that you may look upon the sun as well as you

can upon the moon."

Concerning the crags of Spitzbergen, he

observes:

Some are but one stone from the bottom to the top, appearing like an old decayed wall; they smell very sweet, as the green fields do in our country when it rains."

"On the 6th we had the same weather, and warm sunshine all night. Hard by us rode a Hollander; and the ship's crew, busie in cutting the fat off a whale, when the fish burst with so great a bounce as if a cannon had been discharged, and bespattered the workmen all over." "All the herbs and mosses grow upon the grit and sand of the stones where the water falleth down, and on that side of the hill which the east and north winds cannot easily get at.'

"If it be never so dark by reason of a mist, yet every bird knoweth how to find their own nest again, and flyeth directly to it.".

Concerning certain birds called mallemucks, he writes:

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They eat so much of the fat of the whales till they spew it up again, and tumble themselves over and over in the water until they vomit up the train-oil; and then they begin to eate afresh, until they grow aweary of eating, They bite one another and fight together, which is very good sport, about a piece of fat, fiercely, although there is enough for them all and to

spare.

Really these mallemucks bear a more insulting resemblance to humanity than monkeys themselves!

There are many curious and entertaining facts about whales and sea-horses, and other monsters of the polar deep; but we must leave room for the Relation du Groenland, by Isaac de la Peyrère, the celebrated preadamite, who writes this account to his friend, Mons. La Mothe le Vayer, in 1644, with the object, apparently, of disproving a certain theory of the descent of the Americans from the Greenlanders, and of the Greenlanders from the Norwegians.

DCXXXIII. LIVING AGE. VOL. XIV. 6

of the head being very much elevated and pointed towards the top. Its shoulders were broad, and at their extremity were two stumps of arms without hands. The body was slender below; but they have never been able to see its form There were heavy storms each time that this lower than the waist. Its look was chilling. phantom appeared on the water. The second

monster has been called marguguer: it was formed down to the waist like a woman. It had large breasts, dishevelled hair, and huge hands at the ends of the stumps of the arms, with long fingers webbed like the feet of a duck. It was seen holding fish in its hand and eating them. This phantom always preceded some terrible storm. If it plunges into the water with its face towards the sailors, it is a sign that they will not be shipwrecked; but if it turns its back to them, they are lost."

Our author tells us, upon what authority we know not, that "the sea of Spitzbergen" produces whales two hundred feet long; and that, when their bodies are opened, they find nothing but ten or twelve handsful of little black spiders, which are engendered by the bad air of the sea; and also a little green grass. The sea, he says, is sometimes darkened with these spiders, "and it is an infallible sign that the fishing will be good, for the whales follow the water that engenders this pestilence." The natural history contained in this tract seems to be as apoc ryphal, for the most part, as the rest of the matter, which is, upon the whole, about the least valuable and interesting of any hitherto redeemed from obscurity by the Hakluyt Society. But, to make up for this falling short, the third and last piece in the volume is one of the most lively interest. This account of "God's power and providence, showed in the miraculous preservation of eight Englishmen left by mischance in Greenland, anno 1630, nine moneths and twelve dayes," is a reprint of an extremely scarce tract. It has been before reprinted in Churchill's collection, but an analysis of it will be new to most of our readers.

The writer of this tract, Edward Pelham, himself one of the eight who passed the most marvellous polar wintering on record, prefaces his narrative by challenging all former tales of endurance and peril in the same

66

kind to compare with his. He makes par- waking in the morning, saw that both their ticular reference to the wintering of Barentz boats had been overturned, and were "swimand his men, of which we have already given ming up and downe the shoare" empty of our readers a sketch, and justly maintains, their lading of venison and whale-offal that the hardships of the Dutchmen's winter (found at Greenharbor), upon which their were not comparable to those of the eight only hope of existence depended. FortunEnglish. These eight, "being employed in ately they managed to recover from the the service of the right worshipfull company high-wrought sea not only their shallops, of Muscovie merchants "" on a whaling ex- but much of their provision, a good deal of pedition, were despatched from their ship to it much the worse for the brine. With this hunt and kill "venison" for the ship's pro- they at last reached Bell Sound, and provision. All that they took with them was ceeded to settle themselves for the winter, "a brace of dogs, a snap-hance, two lances, which was already upon them. Within a and a tinder-box," with victuals for a few large "tent" or building used by the coopdays while hunting. The second day their ers during the whaling season, these hearty ship was forced so farre to stand off into fellows built themselves a smaller apartment, the sea to be cleare of the yce" that they with a Robinson-Crusoe-like thoroughness of lost sight of her, and they thought it best to comprehension of what they required, and hunt along shore, in the direction of Green- excellent economy of their miserable means, harbor, the rendezvous of the whaling fleet. which chiefly consisted of another ruined On arriving there, after seventeen days, the shed from which they obtained some boards, ships were gone, nor were they to be found the bricks of the chimneys of some "boiling on any part of the neighboring coasts. furnaces," an old bed, and the skins of the Here, then, these men had to winter, with a slain venison. With these they constructed brace of dogs, a tinder-box, and a firelock quite a cosy and wind-proof apartment withfor all their provision; the coast and climate being such that, a short time previously, some malefactors who had been offered life on condition of making the experiment of passing one winter at this whaling station, on being taken to the spot, "conceived such a horror and inward feare in their hearts, as that they resolved rather to returne to England to make satisfaction with their lives than there to remaine.' "" Nine men, who had been left by a similar accident and by the same captain (!), were found dead on the following year, "cruelly disfigured by the savage beares and hungry foxes." After a short fit of prostration, they "began to conceive hope even out of the depth of despaire. Shaking off therefore all childish and effeminate feares, it pleased God to give us hearts like men. "" In order to make the best use of the very few days of open weather remaining, they travelled back in their shallop to the hunting-grounds near Green harbor, and succeeded, before the frost put a s.op to hunting operations, in killing venison enough to go a good way towards a winter provision.

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Returning with their store to the whaling station at Bell Sound, with the intention of returning for more, if the weather permitted, they were overtaken with night. The next day was Sunday: wherefore" (although their very existence seemed to depend on a day's work more or less,) "wee thought it fit to sanctifie the rest of it; taking the best course wee could for the serving of God Al-, mighty, although wee had not so much as a booke." The next day they made small way on account of bad weather. They had to pass a second night on the shore: and, on

in the coopers' house. Their "next care was for firing to dresse their meate withall, and for keeping away the cold."

Some

casks and crazie shallops," abandoned by former expeditions of the whaling company, afforded a considerable store; and their provisions were further increased by three "seahorses" which were opportunely slain. When all had been done, and the winter was upon them, finding our proportion too. small by halfe for our time and companie, we agreed among ourselves to come to an allowance, and to keepe Wednesdays and Fridayes fasting-dayes, excepting from the frittars or graves of the whale, a very loathsome meate." Some oil, found in the coopers' "tent,' " fed a lamp which they constructed out of a piece of sheet-lead and rope-yarn, during the long polar night; and thus, "humbling ourselves under the mighty hand of God, and casting ourselves down before him in prayer two or three times a-day, which course we constantly held all the time of our misery," they passed the time from August of one year to May the 25th of another, when there came two ships of Hull, and thus, by the blessing of God, came we all eight of us well home safe and sound."

And thus concludes for the present this series of admirably-edited publications. The "Report for 1855" contains a long list of

works in progress," which promise at least to equal in interest those which we have now noticed, -necessarily in a most imperfect manner; for ten times our space might have been well filled by the review of these sixteen issues of the Hakluyt Society.

From Chambers' Journal. EXPERIMENTS ON THE GENERATION

OF INSECTS.

and red at the nether end, such as daily frequent butchers' shops, or any place where there is dead flesh."

others revelled on the carcasses themselves. On the third day, they had all disappeared, leaving nothing of the frogs but the bones.

"and, relinquishing the sad ash color, became dressed in a vivid green, marvellously brilliant. It was now so much larger than THE belief in the generation of insects before, that it seemed impossible to conceive from putrid animal matter, which is now how its little shell could have contained it." confined, if it exist at all, to the most illit-In fourteen days, some of the black chrysaerate, prevailed universally amongst the lids burst, and produced a larger fly," black, learned down nearly to the close of the sev-marked with white, hairy on the abdomen, enteenth century. How it came to be exploded, it is our present purpose to relate. There lived in Florence, about the year 1680, a physician of the name of Francesco The important fact, that one kind of meat Redi, who was led by circumstances, which should produce two kinds of flies, so antagoit is unnecessary to recount, to question the nistic to the dogmas of the age, stimulated truth of the prevalent opinion. In order, the experimentalist to fresh exertions. Intherefore, to put it to the test of experiment, stead, therefore, of only one kind, he put he caused three snakes, of a species which many kinds into different boxes, and obtained he calls Angui d'Esculapio, to be killed, the same results as before, except that the and put into an open box. The snakes were different species of insects were more nusoon covered with small maggots, which daily merous. increased both in size and numbers; they were He next put some skinned river-frogs into all shaped alike, being conical, but their di- a glass vessel, which he left open. On the mensions varied considerably. Having con- following day, he found them covered with sumed the flesh of the reptiles in an amaz-maggots, some sporting in the fetid liquor ingly short time, they all succeeded in escap- that had distilled from the frogs, while the ing unobserved through the fissures of the box, leaving the naked bones of the snakes in a corner. In further prosecution of his experiment, Redi had other three snakes killed, and put into a box as before. In a few days, they were peopled with maggots of the same shape as the former; but some, smaller than the rest, were inclined to a flesh-color; while the others were entirely white. Having devoured the snakes, they anxiously tried to escape; but as Redi had taken more care than before to secure all the outlets from the box, they were unable to effect their purpose. Gradually, therefore, they became more quiet, and after some time lay motionless, as if asleep. Shrinking into themselves, they imperceptibly began to take the form of eggs; by the twentieth day they had all assumed that shape. At first, the seeming eggs were of a white color, but by slow degrees they became first golden, and then red. Some remained of the latter color; but the rest continued to grow darker and darker, till they became quite black; while, from being soft and tender, their skins had changed to the hard and brittle shell of the chrysalis or pupa. On examining both species more closely, Redi found that the black eggs were more strongly marked than the red, which were nearly smooth. At the end of eight days, the latter burst, and from each chrysalid issued a fly of a dull ash color, "turbid, dismayed, and, so to speak, wrinkled, unfinished," and with wings unfolded; but in the space of half an hour, it had dilated its little body, expanded its wings,

He died in 1697.

Some fish from the Arno were the next victims to Redi's inquisitive spirit, and these also were soon peopled; but on the fish, and on the sides of the box in which the fish were placed, he discovered not only maggots, but also some very small eggs, which, when crushed between the nails, gave forth "a white subtile fluid," clearer and less viscous than the white of bird's eggs. By the twentieth day, they were all hatched; and the maggots had increased to twice their original size, weighing from twenty-five to thirty to the grain; but on the twenty-first day, they were so amazingly enlarged as to weigh about seven grains each. Meanwhile, they continued to devour the fish, finally leaving nothing but the bones, and these "as white and clean as if they had just come from the hand of the most delicate anatomist in Europe."

Having taken means to prevent their escape, which they all attempted, Redi watched their gradual progress towards perfection. The perfect insects were of five kinds-four of them he had seen before; the fifth, a little black fly, greatly exceeding in numbers the numbers of its pupa, which were black and large, he had never observed till then. Seeing this curious disproportion between the number of the pupae and the number of flies, he opened one of the former, and found that they contained, upon an average, from twenty-five to thirty flies, but never more than forty.

After this, he made many more experiments-on lions' and tigers' flesh, and on

various species of fish, flesh, and fowl, cooked | lighting on it, others hovering in the air duand raw, and found that the insects were ring the operation; and he also noticed that promiscuously produced on all kinds of meat; each deposited six or seven eggs at a time. and, indeed, one piece would sometimes contain all the species he had discovered; and he generally observed not only maggots, but

eggs.

These experiments strengthened the opinion he had been at first inclined to entertain, that the eggs were deposited on the meat by flies similar to those which they produced, instead of being generated by the putrid mass; and he was the more confirmed in this opinion, from finding invariably that flies resembling those afterwards engendered in the flesh alighted upon it previously to the appearance of the maggots:"but vain," he adds, "would have been the doubt, if experience had not resolved it."

In order that he might, if possible, do this, he put into four wide-necked flasks a snake, some river-fish, some eels from the Arno, and some veal, and covered the mouths of the flasks with paper tied on tightly and sealed. Four other flasks containing similar meats he left open.

This was the point he wished to attain; and he had now discovered that insects supposed to be engendered by corruption were, in reality, propagated by their own species.

Notwithstanding this discovery, the belief in the spontaneous generation of insects in the body of living men and animals seems to have remained undisturbed till quite a recent period. The writers who have thrown most light upon the subject are Von Liebold, Küchenmeister, Goodsir, Owen, Quekett, Dr. Allen Thomson, and now Dr. T. Herbert Barker, in the case he has just published of cystic entozoa in the human kidney. These entozoa, it appears, although apparently different species of animals, including the cysticercus, conurus, and echinococcus, are merely different early stages of the mature entozoa [intestinal worms], of which the common tape-worm is the best illustration; and they all arise from there having been taken into the body some larvæ or ova, the various resulting developments "being subject to certain fixed laws of transformation, which are at once as interesting to the pathologist as to the natural historian."

In a few days, the fish and meat in the open flasks were, as usual, covered with maggots; but in the closed flasks, the flesh, although putrid, was entirely free from them, The curious transformations of the ova although on the outside of the paper he when introduced into the bodies of animals found a few, as well as several clusters of are established by direct experiment. Küeggs-the former having used, and still chenmeister found that "when young dogs using, every endeavor to enter. After this, were made to eat along with their food a Redi made many similar experiments, and number of the cysticerous pisiformis, so comalways found that uncovered meats in a short mon in the rabbit, the entozoa produced were time teemed with life; while, on the con- converted in a few weeks into the tænia sertrary, those that had no communication with rata. He also found that by giving the the external air, corrupted, but never ver- conurus cerebralis of a sheep to a dog, the minated.

During the course of these experiments, he ascertained the curious fact, that when the common fly dies, it serves as a nest for its own species, equally with any other kind of dead flesh.

same result ensued. Thirdly-and this is the most telling experiment with regard to the human subject- he gave a number of cysticerci, taken from the hog and rabbit, to a condemned criminal, at periods varying from one hundred and thirty to twelve hours Not yet satisfied, Redi determined on mak- before execution. After death, a number of ing a new experiment. He put some fish and young teenis in different stages of developflesh into a large vessel covered with very fine ment were found in the intestines. After gauze. This vessel he then put into a large proving his position so far, the same experibox covered with a similar gauze, so that the mentalist varied his experiment. Having air might penetrate to the meats, while the produced a tænia serrata in a dog by feeding intrusion of insects should be prevented. it with the conurus, he caused lambs to take On these meats he did not see a single mag- the tænai joints, and obtained, in the short got, but frequently observed the little crea- space of eighteen days, a development of tures writhing about on the outer gauze, try- the conurus in the brain, in the muscles, ing to make their way through; and it was and under the skin of these animals." Von with difficulty that, on one occasion, he suc- Liebold performed similar experiments. ceeded in preventing two, which had got From the entozoic larvæ he produced a dehalf through the inner gauze, from fall-velopment of the tape-worm, which in the ing upon the meat. He also noticed flies, course of two months attained the length of attracted by the exhalations of the meat, from ten to twelve inches; and, in like manand unable to make their way to it, drop their eggs upon the gauze; some of them

*Hamilton, Adams, & Co. London: 1856.

ner, by the administration of the tænia- | cysticercus cellulose of measly pork. Upon heads, he produced cystic entozoa. the whole, the probabilities are, that all such Dr. Thomson is of opinion that in the hu- diseases will be found, when science has adman subject the tænia is produced by swal-vanced further in this direction, to have a lowing the larvæ of the scolox with the food, dietetic origin. the common source of which animal is the

ISAAC AND ISHMAEL. The lot of the unfortunate Ishmael and his unoffending mother, have always been to me peculiarly interesting. An infant expelled his father's house for no offence, thrown under a tree to starve, the victim of an old man's dotage and a termagant's jealousy. God forgive the wicked thought (if it be wicked); but, speaking in a temporal sense, and knowing the histories of the two families, I would rather be the outcast Ishmael than the pampered Isaac, the father of the favored people of God. I know not what divines may see, but I see nothing contrary to the divine attributes in supposing, that when in the one, God thought proper to give a grand example of mercy and benevolence, he should think proper to give in the other a grand example of retributive justice. The descendants of the pampered Isaac have known little but misery, have become a by-word of contempt, the slaves of slaves: but the descendants of the outcast Ishmael, in their healthy country, proverbial for its luxuries and happiness (Felix), have walked with heads erect. The world has

bowed beneath their yoke, or trembled at their name; but they never have either bowed or trembled, and I hope and trust they never will. Godfrey Higgins' Celtic Druids.

EPITAPH OF WHALLEY'S GRANDFATHER. Richard Whalley, grandfather of the regicide, died in 1583, at the age of 84, and these verses were inscribed on his monument: "Behold his Wives were number three;

Two of them died in right good fame;
The third this Tomb erected she

For him who well deserved the same,
Both for his life and godly end,
Which all that knows must needs commend,
And they that knows not, yet may see
A worthy Whalley lo was he.

"Since time brings all things to an end,
Let us ourselves apply,

And learn by this our faithful friend,
That here in tomb doth lie,
To fear the Lord, and eke behold
The fairest is but dust and mold:
For as we are, so once was he;
And as he is, so must we be."

A FAST DAY.

in the place where our sitting is, and no one -This day we kept solemn fast with us but ourselves, the Scotch commissioners, and some parliament-men. First Mr. Wilson gave a picked psalm, or selected verses of several psalms, agreeing to the time and occasion. Then THE DEVIL ATTACKS THE SPIRIT THROUGH Dr. Burgess prayed about an hour: after he had THE FLESH. "The powers of darkness," says done, Mr. Whittacre preached upon Isa. XXXVII. Dr. Watts, in one of his Sermons, "chiefly at-3, "This day is a day of trouble," &c. Then tack our spirits by means of our flesh. I cannot believe they would have so much advantage over our souls as they have, if our souls were released from flesh and blood. Satan has a chamber in the imagination; fancy is his shop wherein to forge sinful thoughts; and he is very busy at this mischievous work, especially when the powers of nature labor under any disease,

and such as affects the head and the nerves. He seizes the unhappy opportunity, and gives greater disturbances to the mind by combining the images of the brain in an irregular manner, and stimulating and urging onwards the too unruly passions. The crafty adversary is ever ready to fish, as we say, in troubled waters, where the humors of the body are out of order.'

JOHN KNOX'S PROPHECY. John Knox, the Scotch Reformer, received the news of the massacre of St. Bartholomew when on his death-bed, and prayed that no French king might ever have a son to sit on his throne. (See M'Crie's Life of Knox.) Has any French King since that time had a direct heir?- Notes and Queries.

having had another chosen psalm, Mr. Goodwin prayed; and after he had done, Mr. Palmer preached upon Psalm xxv. 12. After whose sermon we had another psalm, and Dr. Stanton prayed about an hour; and with another psalm, and a prayer of the prolocutor, and a collection for the maimed soldiers, which arose to about £8 15s., we adjourned till the morrow morning. Lightfoot.

DEADENING GLASS WINDOWS. -Mix mastic varnish with a small quantity of white lead, merely sufficient to dim it; apply it to the inside of the pane of glass with an old, much worn, stumpy, large paint-brush, using a very small quantity of the varnish at a time, and applying it to the glass with the points of the hairs of the brush only.

I have windows so dimmed, and looking like ground glass, twenty-two years ago, as perfect as ever, except where the untutored assiduity of a new housemaid may have exerted itself, not quite in vain, to scrub off the varnish. — Notes and Queries.