birds, which resort here annually to breed, and fill every little projection, every hole which will give them leave to rest. Multitudes were swimming about; others swarmed in the air, and stunned us with the variety of their croaks and screams. Kittiwakes and herring-gulls, guillemots and black guillemots, auks, puffins, shags and corvorants are among the species which resort hither. The notes of all sea-fowl are most harsh and inharmonious. I have have often rested under rocks like these, attentive to the various sounds over my head; which, mixed with the deep roar of the waves slowly swelling and retiring from the vast caverns beneath, have produced a fine effect. The sharp voice of the gulls, the frequent chatter of the guillemots, the loud notes of the auks, the scream of the herons, together with the deep periodical croak of the corvorants, which serves as a bass to the rest, have often furnished me with a concert, which, joined to the wild scenery surrounding me, afforded in an high degree that species of pleasure which results from the novelty and the gloomy majesty of the entertainment."-PENNANT'S Arctic Zoology.

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Northern Lights.

"THEY are the constant attendants of the clear evenings in all these northern islands, and prove great reliefs amidst the gloom of the long winter nights. They commonly appear at twilight, near the ho- | rizon, of a dun colour, approaching to yellow; sometimes continuing in that state for several hours without any sensible motion; after which they break out into streams of stronger lights, spreading into columns, and altering slowly into ten thousand different shapes, varying their colours from all the tints of yellow to the obscurest russet. They often cover the whole hemisphere, and then make the most brilliant appearance. Their motions at these times are most amazingly quick; and

they astonish the spectator with the rapid change of their form. They break out in places where none were seen before, skimming briskly along the heavens; are suddenly extinguished, and leave behind an uniform dusky tract. This again is brilliantly illuminated in the same manner, and as suddenly left a dull blank. In certain nights they assume the appearance of vast columns, on one side of the deepest yellow, on the other declining away till it becomes undistinguished from the sky. They have generally a strong tremulous motion from end to end which continues till the whole vanishes. In a word, we who only see the extremities of these northern phenomena, have but a faint idea of their splendour and their motions. According to the state of the atmosphere they differ in colours; they often put on the colour of blood, and make a most dreadful appearance. The rustic sages become prophetic, and terrify the gazing spectators with the dread of war, pestilence, and famine.

"About the Icy Sea. The Aurora Borealis is as common here as in Europe, and usually exhibits similar variations; one species regularly appears between the northeast and east, like a luminous rainbow, with numbers of columns of light radiating from it beneath the arch is a darkness, through which the stars appear with some brilliancy. This species is thought by the natives to be a forerunner of storms. There is another kind, which begins with certain insulated rays from the north, and others from the north-east; they augment little by little, till they fill the whole sky, and form a splendour of colours rich as gold, rubies, and emeralds, but the attendant phænomena strike the beholders with horrors, for they crackle, sparkle, hiss, make a whistling sound, and a noise even equal to artificial fireworks. The idea of an electrical cause is so strongly impressed by this description, that there can remain no doubt of the origin of these appearances. The inhabitants say, on this occasion, it is a troop of men furiously mad which are passing by. Every

animal is struck with terror; even the dogs of the hunters are seized with such dread, that they will fall on the ground and become immoveable till the cause is over."Ibid.

All Souls' Day.

"Ir is a custom at Naples on All Souls' Day, to throw open the charnel houses, lighted up with torches, and decked out with all the flowery pageantry of May-day; crowds follow crowds through these vaults to behold the coffins, nay, the bodies of their friends and relations. The floors are divided into beds like a garden, and under these heaps of earth the corpses are laid in regular succession. The place is perfectly | dry, for the soil is rather a pounded stone than earth, and parches up the flesh completely in a twelvemonth; when that period is elapsed the body is taken up, dressed in a religious habit and fixed like a statue in a niche many retain a horrid resemblance to what they were when animated, and some shew strong marks of agony in their distorted features."-SWINBurne.

"Ir was customary at Salerno, till a provincial synod held in the 15th Century condemned and abolished the practice, on the eve of All Souls to provide a sumptuous entertainment and beds in every house, that the souls from purgatory might come, make merry, and afterwards take a nap. During the whole night, the house was abandoned by its inhabitants, and that family was looked upon as accursed by Heaven, on whose table the smallest remnant of victuals was to be seen the next morning when the proprietor returned. This dreaded event seldom, if ever befell them, for the expected feast drew together all the thieves in the country, who went from house to house, revelling without control, and carrying off what they had not time to consume, while the master of the house was on his knees in the cold church."—Ibid.

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Pausanias Ghost-haunted.

"PAUSANIAS, in the heat of his lust, sent for Cleonice, a free-born virgin of Byzantium, with an intention to have enjoyed but when she came, out of a strange sort of jealousy and provocation, for which he could give no reason, stabbed her. This murder was attended with frightful visions, insomuch that his repose in the night was not only interrupted with the appearance of her shape, but still he thought he heard her uttering these lines:

To execution go, the gods are just, And rarely pardon murder join'd with lust.'

After this, the apparition still haunting him, he sailed to Psycopompeion, in Hereclea, and by propitiations, charms, and dirges, called up the ghost of the damsel; which, appearing before him, told him in few words that he should be free from all his affrights and molestations upon his return to Lacedæmon; where he was no sooner arrived but he died."-PLUTARCH. Concerning such whom God is slow to punish. Pausanias says, he went to Phigalea, to the Arcadian avocators of souls.

Effects of a Demigod's death. "DEMETRIUs related that about Britain there were many small and desolate islands, some of which were called the Isles of dæmons and demy gods; and that he himself, at the command of the emperor, sailed to the nearest of those places for curiosity sake, where he found few inhabitants, but that they were all esteemed by the Britons as sacred and divine.. Not long after he was arrived there, he said, the air and the weather were very foul and tempestuous, and there followed a terrible storm of wind and thunder; which at length ceasing, he says, the inhabitants told him that one of the demons or demy-gods was deceased. For as a lamp, says he, while 'tis lighted, offends nobody with its scent, but when 'tis

extinguished it sends out such a scent as is nauseous to everybody; so these great souls, whilst they shine, are mild and gracious, without being troublesome to any body; but when they draw to an end, they cause great storms and tempests, and not seldom infect the air with contagious distempers. They say, farther, that Saturn is detained prisoner in one of those islands, where he keeps fast asleep in chains, and that he has several of those dæmons for his valets and attendants."-PLUTARCH. Why the Oracles cease.

War-engine.

"WHEN Archidamus the son of Agesilaus, beheld a dart to be shot from an engine, newly brought out of Sicily, he cried out, O Hercules! the valour of man is at an end.-Ibid.

Sleeping Naked.

"IN 1387, William of Wykeham visited the priory of Selborne. Among other complaints, he says, 'it has been evidently proved to him that some of the canons, living dissolutely after the flesh, and not after the spirit, sleep naked in their beds without their breeches and shirts,'' absque femoralibus et camisiis,' he enjoins that these culprits shall be punished by severe fasting, especially if they shall be found to be faulty a third time; and threatens the prior and sub-prior with suspension if they do not correct this enormity.

"The rule of not sleeping naked was enjoined the Knights Templars, who also were subject to the rules of St. Augustine." -GURTLERI, Hist. Templariorum.

"He also forbids them foppish ornaments, and the affectation of appearing like beaux with garments edged with costly furs, with fringed gloves, and silken girdles trimmed with gold and silver."-WHITE's Antiquities of Selborne.

Charles of Burgundy.

Credulity proceeds from a man's own integrity; a vice more honest than safe, the overthrow and death of the great Duke of Burgundy, who committed a maine part of his army to an earle whom he had formerly strucken."-SANDY'S Ovid.

Gualbertus' Beech.

"MABILLON tells us in his Itinerary, of the old Beech at Villambrosa, to be still flourishing, and greener than any of the rest, under whose umbrage the famous Eremit Gualbertus had his cell."-EVELYN'S Silva.

"WHILE We condemn the beech timber, we must not omit to praise the mast, which fats our swine and deer, and hath in some families even supported men with bread.' Chios endured a memorable siege by the benefit of this mast; and in some part of France they now grind the Buck2 in mills; it affords a sweet oil which the poor people eat most willingly. But there is yet another benefit which this tree presents us— that its very leaves, being gathered about the fall, and somewhat before they are frostbitten, afford the best and easiest mattresses in the world to lay under our quilts instead of straw; because, besides their tenderness and loose lying together, they continue sweet for seven or eight years long, before which time straw becomes musty and hard. They are thus used by divers persons of quality in Dauphiné; and in Switzerland I have sometimes lain on them to my great refreshment. So as of this tree it may properly be said—

"The wood's an house; the leaves a bed;" Silva domus, cubilia frondes."—Juvenal. Ibid.

Jefr we Jame.

"THE most celebrated work of Ali is intituled Jefr we Jame; it is written upon parchment in mysterious characters intermixed with figures, wherein are couched all the grand events that are to happen from the beginning of Muslemanism to the end of the world. This parchment is deposited in the hands of those of his family, and even to this time nobody has decyphered it in any sort of manner but Jaafer Sadek, for, as for the entire explication of it, that is reserved for the twelfth Imam, who is surnamed by way of excellence the Mohdi, or grand director."-ОCKLEY, H. of the Saracens."

Egyptian Almanack.

"THE Abbé Pluche, in his History of the Heavens, maintains, and I believe with reason, that the Egyptian grotesque figures, for example, a man with a dog's head, &c. were a sort of almanacks indicating the time of the increase of the Nile, &c. As the French have now in their almanack, opposite to every day in the year, à plant, an animal, or an instrument of husbandry, it would if engraved resemble not a little an Egyptian almanack. It is curious to observe how very ancient fashions and practices are revived."-MAC LAURIN. Lord Dreghorn.

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Holidays originally humane. "LINGET in his Annales Politiques, vol. 2, p. 180, after approving very much of the abolition of several holidays which had recently taken place (in 1770), maintains that no blame can attach to those who introduced a great number of holidays; their motive, he says, was humanity, not superstition; for at that time, the common people were serfs, adscripti glebæ,' whose labour was entirely for the benefit of the master, who gave them little more than bare maintenance. It certainly was, therefore, humane to diminish the number of working days at that time; but now that the common people

are free, it is necessary to increase them, as they have in general even by industry little enough to support themselves."-Ibid.

Seasons altered.

"IT is long since many, of whom I am one, have maintained, that the seasons are altered; that it is not so hot now in summer as when we were boys. Others laugh at this, and say that the supposed alteration proceeds from an alteration in ourselves, from our having become older and consequently colder.

"In 1783 or 1784, in the course of a conversation I had with my brewer, who is very intelligent and eminent in his way, he maintained that an alteration had taken place. This observation he made from a variety of circumstances; the diminution of the number of swallows, the coldness that attends rain, the alteration in the hours of labour at the time of sowing barley, which a great many years ago was a work performed very early in the morning, on account of the intenseness of the heat after the sun had been up for some time. He added that for many years past he had found that the barley did not malt as formerly, and the period he fixed on was the year in which the earthquake at Lisbon happened.

"I was much surprised at this last observation, and did not pay much attention to it till last summer, when I happened to read Les Annales Politiques of Linguet, a very scarce book, which I was sure my brewer had never read; for there to my astonishment I found the very same opinion, with this additional fact, that in Champagne, where he was born, they have not been able since that earthquake to make the same wine. He says too that he has seen the title-deeds of several estates in Picardy, which proved that at that time they had a number of excellent vineyards, but that now no such crop can be reared there. He also attempts to account philosophically for that earthquake having such effects."-Ibid.

Murder of Fergus.1

"FERGUSIUS III. periit veneno ab uxore dato. Alii scribunt, cum uxor sæpe exprobrasset ei matrimonii contemptum, et pellicum greges, neque quicquam profecisset, tandem noctu dormientem ab eâ strangulatum. Quæstione de morte ejus habitâ cum amicorum plurimi insimularentur, nec quisquam ne in gravissimis quidem tormentis quicquam fateretur, mulier alioqui ferox tot innoxiorum capitum miserta in medium processit; ac è superiore loco cædem à se factam confessa, ne ad ludibrium superesset, pectus cultro transfodit: quod ejus factum variè pro cujusque ingenio est acceptum, ac perinde sermonibus celebratum."-Bu

CHANAN.

Dog-ribbed Indian Woman.

"ON the 11th January (1772) as some of my companions were hunting, they saw the track of a strange snow-shoe, which they followed; and at a considerable dis

tance came to a little hut, where they discovered a young woman sitting alone. As they found that she understood their language, they brought her with them to the tents. On examination, she proved to be one of the Western Dog-ribbed Indians, who had been taken prisoner by the Athapuscow Indians, in the summer of 1770; and in the following summer, when the Indians that took her prisoner were near this part, she had eloped from them, with an intent to return to her own country; but the distance being so great, and having after she was taken prisoner been carried in a canoe the whole way, the turnings and windings of the rivers and lakes were so numerous that she forgot the track; so she built the hut in which we found her, to protect her from the weather during the winter, and here she had resided from the first setting

in of the fall.

"From her account of the moons past

See the "Wife of Fergus," a Mono-drama. Poems, p. 111.-J. W. W.

since her elopement, it appeared that she had been near seven months without seeing a human face; during all which time she had supported herself very well by snaring partridges, rabbits, and squirrels; she had also killed two or three beavers, and some porcupines. That she did not seem to have been in want is evident, as she had a small stock of provisions by her when she was discovered, and was in good health and condition; and I think one of the finest women, of a real Indian, that I have seen in any part of North America.

"The methods practised by this poor creature to procure a livelihood were truly admirable, and are great proofs that necessity is the real mother of invention. When the few deer sinews that she had an opportunity of taking with her were all expended in making snares and sewing her clothing, she had nothing to supply their place but the sinews of the rabbits' legs and feet; these she twisted together for that purpose with great dexterity and success. The rabbits, &c. which she caught in those snares not only furnished her with a comfortable subsistence, but of the skins she made a suit of neat and warm clothing for the winter.

It is scarcely possible to conceive that a person in her forlorn situation could be so composed as to be capable of contriving or executing any thing that was not absolutely necessary to her existence; but there were sufficient proofs that she had extended her care much farther, as all her clothing, beside being calculated for real service, shewed great taste, and exhibited no little variety of ornament. The materials, though rude, were very curiously wrought, and so judiciously placed as to make the whole of her garb have a very pleasing, though rather romantic appearance.

"Her leisure hours from hunting had been employed in twisting the inner rind

or bark of willows into small lines, like netthoms by her; with this she intended to twine, of which she had some hundred famake a fishing-net as soon as the spring advanced. It is of the inner bark of willows