quently made botanic excurfions into the mountains, in order to render more complete his collection of plants indigenous to Switzerland.

Haller had been chofen perpetual prefident of the academy, before he left Gottingen; and on the death of M. De Mofheim, his Britannic Majefty offered him the chancellorship. The Sovereign Council of Berne, however, fettled a penfion on him for his life, in order to retain him; which made him decline the lucrative post, and high honours, which he might have

received.

By the King of Pruffia, he was appointed to the chancellorship of the Univerfity of Halle: by Count Orlow, he was invited to Peterburgh. He did not accept of thefe fplendid offers: "Nefcio qua natale folum dulcedine cunctos "Allicit, immemores nec finit effe fui." From the King of Sweden he received the order of the Polar Star; and he was honoured with the notice of almost every learned fociety in Europe. He was vifited by travellers of the greatest eminence, and the higheft diftinction in his laft illness, the Emperor of Germany remained a confiderable time with him, in familiar converfation.

Haller had strengthened his conftitution, which was naturally delicate, by his temperance. He was, however, fubject to inflammatory diforders, and had frequently fuffered feverely by the gout. A difeafe in his bladder had preyed upon him, during his last years, and, after a long feries of excruciating torments, proved fatal to him. Opium alone afforded him relief; and by taking this medicine he was able to purfue his ftudies; and a few days before he died, the correction of works was his favourite occupation. He then enjoyed the fociety of his friends, though he was confined to his room, where he found

"The fweeteft footber man can know, "The lenient balm for every woe,"

in the tender attention of his wife, and the filial affiduities of his children.

During the intervals of his pain he finithed his phyfiology, and drew up a regular journal of his diforder, which

he fent to the academy at Gottingen. He felt the approach of death, without difmay, and continually remarked the decay of his organs. His life had been fpent in contributing to the advantages of his fellow-creatures, by his ftudies. He had not in any grand inftances infringed the divine ordinances. His diffolution he expected without terror, and committed himself to the will of heaven with the most patient refignation.

The twelfth day of December, 1777, was the laft of Haller's life. He felt his pulfe frequently, and, at laft, faid to M. Roffelet, his friend, who attended him, "My friend, the artery beats no longer." The words were fcarcely uttered, when he expired.

This year was fatal to fcience. In lefs than eight months died Juffieu, Haller, Linnæus, Voltaire, and Rouffeau. Literature and philofophy fcarcely ever experienced in a fhort period loffes fo fevere and fo numerous.

In converfation Haller was agreeable and entertaining. His extenfive erudition rendered his fociety acceptable to every various difpofition. His elocution was free, concife, and energetic. His knowledge was exquifitely diverfified: his reading moft extenfive: his judgement found, and his memory faithful. His affections were gentle, and his fenfibility was eafily awakened.

He was pious, without oftentation; and his love of virtue diffufed itself through his writings.

He was tall, and justly proportioned. His countenance was ferious and expreffive. He had eleven children, one of whom is a member of the Sovereign Council at Berne, and purfues the plan of life which his father adopted, in devoting his time to the fervice of his country, and the cultivation of fcience.

His days were fpent in his library. He was conftantly furrounded by his pupils, his friends, and fellow-citizens, his wife, and his family. In his latter years his application was rendered more laborious, by the increase of his fize, his weak eyes, and a habit of writing in a very fmall character. Yet ftill he purfued his ftudies with an ardour that appeared unextinguishable. Du

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ring

ring indifpofitions he was impatient to renew his occupations. He read or wrote as foon as his meals were finished, and the night was frequently half

BON

confumed before he retired. His whole life appeared to be a facrifice of his amufements and his health to his fondnefs for science.

ON Ton has charms fo irrefiftible, that the most egregious follies become facred, if they originate from, or depend on fashion! Addifon nobly lafhed the little excrefcences of his day; what would he fay now, were he alive?-Suppofe he were to be embodied, and walk the Park for one day only; how would he ftare to behold dowagers fexagenaires, with the fafhes of giris; young men barneffed with buckles, with waistcoats fhaped like a lady's ftays, and equally short waited. An antediluvian would imagine (from the enormous clubs and queues of hair) that the chevelure of the prefent age was wonderfully increafed fince the days of natural curly locks. But of all the enormous ftrides the shoe-ftring feems the moft portentous!-Now, of ficers appear on the parade with filken rofes and high heels:-Rifum teneatis? -Will they not foon wear petticoats? -The ladies, however, keep them in countenance; becoming proportionably mafculine, as the gentlemen become effeminate.The fair fex drive four in hand, as fkilful as any male Automedon, brandifh their whips, cock their hats, and fhew the pretty ankle covered by a boot!-Glorious change!-Rouge alfo cafes to be an appendage merely feminine, as feveral of the firft rate Adonis's of the age fport Warren's cream of rofes, and Nixon de l'Enclos' bloom of Circaffia!-Being the other day in a perfumer's fhop, I overheard a curious meffage: A valet, bien poudré, came in a hurry, and faid his mafter ordered the bill inftantly, and that he would pay it, as he did not mean to ufe that shop any more, for he had found that the balm of lilies had totally failed to take away the tan which he unfortunately contracted in America.- - Indeed, it would require fomething very balfamic to wipe away the flains we got there!Perfons of fashion in this metropolis

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aim at pleasure in a ftyle fo very fingular, that an ignorant by-ftander would fuppofe they hunted after pain inftead of entertainment: the routine of vifiting is now fo embarraffing, that a woman of fashion has more drudgery to undergo than a menial fervant; more whims to gratify, and more caprices to ftudy. Not content with the inevitable ills of life, they form and cherifh a variety of fictitious woes; and, provided the pill is tonifbly gilt, they care not how bitter it is.-How many woe-begne faces we daily fee in equipages calculated to infpire the beholder with the utmost hilarity. In vain the feftive ball and foothing fong courts the unwilling fair; for, fighing for pleafures to come, the taftes not the prefent joys, but hurries to the next as to the acme of her felicity. I was led into the above train of thought by obferving that the fame perfons actually made a point of being every where the fame night: for inftance-Lady. Bell Bentley informed me that the was quite done up (to ufe a fashionable phrafe) as fhe went the preceding night to Ranelagh, the Siddons, the Pantheon, three private parties, five routes, and feventy-nine drop vifits, thirty of which the paid by proxy, and fent Fidêle (her dog) in the fedan to pay the remainder!-Tolerable flavery!-Now (methought I) who would be a perfon of fashion?-Tom Tulip then appeared, making the fame complaint-I requested a journal of the preceding day; which he inftantly gave me as follows:-In the morning at the hunt in Windfor Foreft with the Prince Re turned to drefs-Went down to the Houfe-Dined at ten o'clock at night at Richmond- -Went to Ranelagh af ter- Loft a thousand pounds at Brookes's, and got to the Fiffino at fupper by four in the morning!. -A fatigue equal to a campaign.

Were

and are never to be met with in rivers; that uniformity of foil in all the parts of thefe fteppes, confifting of nothing elfe, except in places covered with a flying fand, but of a pure fand connected with the flime at the bottom of the fea, or a yellowish clay without the fmallest trace of turf, and without any layers of mineral earths, till you come to a bed of clay, after digging to a confiderable depth; that general faline quality of the foil, produced for the moft part by a culinary falt; thofe innumerable flats and lakes of falt water; but, above all, that continued equality of country in all thefe vaft deferts, are fo many inconteftable proofs that they muft neceffarily have been formerly covered by the waters of the Cafpian fea. And although thefe plains have been forfaken by the fea for a great number of ages, yet, whether by the effect of the aridity of their pofition in a very hot climate, whether it be in confequence of the faltnefs inherent to them, and maintained by the clayey nature of the inferior ftratum; in fhort, whether by an effect of that property, they have only produced plants of the nature of thofe which required a faline earth and water, and which confequently make but little earth by their deftruction and a great deal of falt; from whatever cause it be, yet these plains have never hitherto been covered with vegetable earth, or turf, or any kind of wood what

ever.

It is then manifeft that the raised ground extending along the Sarpa, betwixt the Don and the Volga, as well as the highlands of the district of Obtfchei-Sirt, between the Volga and the Yaik, have been the antient banks of the fea of Hyrcania. For it is in thefe high lands that the difpofition of the earth in ftrata is firft difcovered, that the general faltnefs of the ground difappears, that its furface is covered with a thick turf, and prefents an upper layer of black mould of fome depth, and that the marine productions peculiar to the Cafpian fea are no where difcover le: and if we meet with whole banks of fhells and corals higher up the Volga, where the elevated lands

begin to be more mountainous, they muft neceffarily proceed from an inundation of the globe, fo much the larger and the more ancient, as the marine productions contained in thefe layers are all of fuch a nature as are not to be found either in the Cafpian fea or in the Euxine, but only in the depths of the ocean.

It may here be very reasonably asked, by what natural event the Cafpian fea, which receives from the rivers that enter it a body of water nearly equal to that it lofes by evaporation, fince no fenfible reflux has been obfervable for many years, could have loft at one time fo great a body as to leave dry a fpace of country doubtlefs more than fifteen fathom higher than the actual bed of that fea, and of fo vaft an extent as the plains of the deferts from the Lower Don to the Yaïk, and from the Yaik to the lake Aral, and behind this lake towards the mountains Ural, which are a fouthern prolongation of the Moguldfharian mountains? If we admit the fuppofition, which Tournefort has rendered highly probable, that the mountains of the Thracian Bofphorus were in perfect contact, and formed a boundary which feparated the Euxine from the Mediterranean, in fuch fort that the former of these feas, which received into it fuch great rivers as the Danube, the Dniefter, the Nieper, the Don, and the Kuban, prefented in the midst of the circumjacent lands an immenfe lake, whofe level was much more elevated than that of the Mediterranean fea and the ocean; that by the rupture of this mighty mound, occafioned either by the fuccefive action of the waters, or by an earthquake, the waters of the Euxine rushed with impetuofity into the Mediterranean fea to gain its level, and that the firft influx of this enormous torrent was the occafion of thofe inundations, which, according to the moft ancient records of hiftory, deluged a part of Greece and the Archipelagian ifles, we fhall be able not only to explain this diminution of the Cafpian fea, but the visible traces that ftill fubfift of the ancient elevation of the latter of these rivers will give a great ac

cellon

ceffion of credibility to the opinion of Tournefort.

At the fame period of time the feadogs, the different kinds of fturgeon, the atherina, the fyngnathus pelagicus, and the shells called combs, might have been carried into the Cafpian fea; which, by its actual pofition, is too remote from all the other feas to permit us to fuppofe that these different living creatures could have come from them.

So foon as the Euxine had found a means for discharging its waters through the Propontis into the Mediterranean, the firft fall of its level converted a

great part of the flat and fhallow fides into falt deferts. The Cafpian fea, which was joined to the Euxine only by a ftrait of little depth, was in a fhort fpace of time intirely detached from it, because the level of this latter is much lower than the bottom of that ftrait, and thenceforward the Cafpian fea became no more than a great lake confined within the land: but as it did not receive into it fo many nor fuch large rivers as the Euxine*, and as the waters of the latter no longer flowed into it, for want of communication, a greater fpace of ground by far was left uncovered along its fhores, partly from the natural evaporation, and partly in confequence of the retreat of the waters; by which means this fea was confined to bounds much narrower ftill: and it was only at this time, perhaps, that the communication it had had with the Aral lake likewife ceafedt. That which before was banks of fand was changed into flying fand, which rofe in eminences fimilar to those we find in the fand of Naryn, and towards the Lower Volga; and what had before been iflands were now fmall mountains at the bottom of this dried fea, fuch as thofe of Inderfki and others might have been; and a number

of deeper places, when the waters had run off from over the level parts, remained lakes or falt bottoms, fuch as are found fo very frequently in the deferts.

In vain will it be objected against fo vifible a diminution of the Cafpian fea, that travellers relate what they have obferved near Baku, that the fea gained upon the land, and had even already fwallowed up a part of the town. For if we confider the phlogiftic nature of the foil in those parts, we fhall find infinitely greater reafon for admitting a finking of the earth and of the mountain than an increase of the fea, which could not in any manner be the cafe; whilft, on the contrary, a bare infpection of all the countries that furround the northern part of the Cafpian fea, leaves no room for doubting that it has undergone a diminution much more confiderable than the Mediterranean, or any other known fea; nay, it is even very prefumeable that it continues now to diminish every day. But even without fuppofing, as we do at prefent, the fudden paffage the Euxine feems to have forced into the Mediterranean, might we not attribute to the fole diminution which every fea without exception experiences, and which feems almoft generally adopted, that feparation between the Cafpian fea and the Euxine on one part, and the lake Aral on the other, as well as the drying up of the ftrait of communication, which muft by degrees have been the confequence in times much nearer our's; and might we not then, likewife conceive how, when once this communication was stopped, the fole difproportion between the body of water that entered the Cafpian fea by the rivers that ran into it, and what it loft by evaporation, might produce the fame effect, and fink its level much beneath the general plane of the feast.

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