Socinian) the first words of St. John. From all eternity God created the universe, and the earth became waste and void, &c. It might have been a comet-it might have been, as to its whole surface, ruined by a comet. It is a rule of infinite importance that the Scriptures always speak not ad rem in seipsa, sed quoad hominem. It is a moral and religious, not a physical revelation, and in order to render us good moral agents, not accurate natural speculators, to make us know ourselves and our relations, both present and future, not to make us knowing in nature-without industry or intellectual exercitation.-S. T. C.

"And so Claudian, who largely reasons the case on both sides, for Providence and against it, at last tells us what it was which was the main cause of his doubts, viz.-the long impunity of Rufinus :

Abstulit hunc tandem Rufini poena tumultum,
Absolvitque Deos.

Rufinus' death doth clear the gods and set

My mind at ease."-P. 521.

More than all, I admire the force and elegance of the Bishop's translations. He would have been a dead hand at a travesty !-S. T. C.

"Many causes concurred to the making of this Deluge; first, the air was condensed into clouds."-P. 543.

Excellent chemist! If he can turn air into water, why not rather turn earth? It is nearer at hand.-S. T. C.

"I do not find, saith he (Sir W. Raleigh), that the highest (mountain) exceeds thirty miles in height."—P. 544.

Thirty miles! Was the man mad? The highest point of the Andes is not four. Sir W. R. must have confounded the height of a mountain with the length of a main road up to its summit. Thus Etna is about two miles high—the road from its basis to the crater about thirty-five.— S. T. C.

"So that if we take a perch to contain ten Hebrew cubits the whole capacity of the Ark will be 450 cubical perches."-STILLINGFLEET, 552.

I have seen many calculations of the capacity of the Ark, but none as to its tonnage and burthen. A ship may contain some million pounds of quicksilver, can it carry as much ?-S. T. C.

R.

THE POLAR BEAR.

(Thalassarctos maritimus.*)

NOTWITHSTANDING ice and snow, and the darkness of a nine months' winter, the Arctic regions are tenanted by several mammalia. Some of these are constant residents, the rest are migratory visitors. Of the former division, one of the most conspicuous, as it is certainly the most formidable, is the Polar Bear,—a creature between eight and nine feet in length, which, shuffling along the snow at a very quick pace, and being an excellent swimmer besides, cannot fail to inspire dread. The large wide head and fearfully armed jaws are united by a strong neck to powerful shoulders, from which spring the thick and muscular fore-legs. The paws, both of the fore and of the hind feet, are broad and admirably adapted, with their long hairy covering, to keep the polar bear from sinking in the snow. Although the creature has an appearance of clumsiness, it is the reverse of inactive. Every one who knows the boundless spaces it has to traverse, when in a state of liberty and the "monarch of all it surveys," cannot but pity it as a prisoner in the Regent's Park, where a tolerably capacious den, supplied with a bath of water of very limited dimensions, affords the restless creature less liberty than a squirrel has in its round-about, or a poor lark in its cage.

Voyagers to the Arctic regions describe it as wandering over the fields of ice, mounting the hummocks and looking around for prey. With outstretched head, its little, but keen eye directed to the various points of a wide horizon, the polar bear looks out for seals; or scents with its quick

* Θάλασσα, sea; άρκτος, bear.

nostrils the luscious smell of some stinking whale-blubber or half-putrid whale-flesh. Dr. Scoresby relates that a piece of the kreng of a whale thrown into the fire drew a bear to a ship from the distance of miles. Captain Beechey mentions, that his party in 1818, as they were off the coast of Spitzbergen, by setting on fire some fat of the walrus, soon attracted a bear to their close vicinity. This polar Bruin was evidently unaccustomed to the sight of masts, and when approaching, occasionally hesitated and seemed half inclined to turn round and be off. So agreeable a smell as burning walrus-fat dispelled all distrust, and brought him within musket-shot. On receiving the first ball, he sprang round, growled terrifically, and half raised himself on his hind-legs, as if expecting to seize the object which had caused so much pain; woe to any one who had at that moment been within reach of his merciless paws! Although a second and third ball laid him writhing on the ice, he was not mastered; and on the butt end of a musket directed at his head breaking short off, the bear quickly seized the thigh of his assailant, and, but for the immediate assistance of two or three of his shipmates, the man would have been seriously injured. In these very seas-nearly fifty years before the hero of Trafalgar encountered this Arctic tyrant, and, when missed from his ship, was discovered with two comrades attacking a large specimen, separated from them by a chasm in the ice. On being reprimanded by his captain for his foolhardiness, "Sir," said the young middy, pouting his lips, as he used to do when excited, "I wished to kill the bear that I might carry the skin to my father."

Barentz, in his celebrated voyage in 1595, had two of his men killed by "a great leane white beare." In these early days, so unused were polar bears to man, that though thirty of their comrades attempted a rescue, the prey was not

*Account of Arctic Regions, I. 517.