mit is nearly 13,200 feet above the sea level, and when, after passing the mountain valley of Tunyan, 3,000 feet in depth, the traveler, faint with the difficulty of respiration at these heights, reaches the second summit, and looks through the Portillo, at the distant ocean-like pampas of Buenos Ayres, he has attained the elevation of 14,475 feet. For the "puna," or weakness and lassitude caused by exertion in the thin atmosphere of these great altitudes, onions and garlic are recommended as remedies; though it is quaintly mentioned that Dr. Darwin found nothing so efficacious in removing it as the discovery of fossil shells at the elevation of more than 13,000 feet above their parent ocean.

In the valley leading to the Portillo pass are beds of pure white gypsum, which are estimated (unless the printer has added a superfluous cipher) at 2,000 feet in thickness.

The less used passes of Come-Cavallo, (literally "eat-horse,") and Dona Ana, are at heights of 14,500 and 14,900 feet, so that the lower indentations of this chain are as high as the loftiest peaks of European mountains.

Few cross the range in the south of Chile. There are at least two passesthose of the Planchon and the Antucoat elevations of only about 6,500 feet; but east of the mountains the Pehuenches scour the pampas, and travelers prefer the danger and difficulty of the higher northern passes to the risk of encountering these fierce savages.

Among the mountains are many lakes, shut in the basins of upheaved rock. They are in many instances accessible only with difficulty; are fed by mountain torrents, and give birth to other streams which roar through rapidly descending gorges and valleys toward the ocean.

As might be expected, the rivers of Chile are short, turbulent, and rarely navigable. The largest, the Biobio, is navigable for boats only from forty to fifty miles. These streams, though not large in appearance, discharge great quantities of water; and it is believed that the Mapocho, at Santiago, though but thirty yards in width, pours through its sloping bed a greater vol

ume than is borne to the sea by the lake-like Potomac.

The climate of Chile, influenced by its situation between the mountains and the sea, is peculiar. At its northern extremity, the desert of Atacama lies under the southern border of the tradewinds, which, chilled in rising over the Andes, condeuse their moisture in heavy rains to nourish the forests, and feed the huge rivers of the Atlantic slope, and then come down the western declivities, so dry as to absorb, instead of shedding moisture. Here, and in the neighboring districts of Peru, rain scarcely ever falls, and the mode of building adopted is such that a rainy day will bring down more houses than an earthquake.

As we go southward and come under the influence of the return current, which, outside the tropics, sets from the westward to counterbalance the intertropical flow of the trade-winds, and brings the evaporation from the Pacific to the continent, the rains commence and increase, so that while in the northern part of Chile, there are, on an average, but fourteen rainy days in the year, there are in the southern districts forty. But even in central Chile the rains descend only in the winter months of May, June, July, and August, while during the summer, vegetation almost disappears; the hills become brown, and little efficient cultivation is practicable save by irrigation. The olive flourishes, and the grape yields good wine, but the sugar-cane and many other tropical plants do not succeed, for want of continuous moisture. In localities where this can be supplied, the native fruit-trees and a great variety of shrubs are evergreen, but Lombardy poplars and other introduced trees retain their deciduous habits. It seems strange to read of their yellow leaves falling in May, and their boughs remaining bare during June and July; but this is only one of the features of this land, the reverse of our own country, not only in its position relatively to the equator, but to the continent and ocean. Maize is raised to some extent, barley succeeds well, and rye was introduced for the purpose of distillation; but although the yield of grain was good, its cultivation was abandoned because the

name,

Chilenos preferred their own aguardiente, and would not take kindly to whisky. Wheat is a great staple, and Chile flour was for a long time almost the sole supply of California.

At Santiago there fell, in the brief rainy season in 1850, fifty-six inches of rain, and in 1851, thirty-nine inches; quantities quite equal to the rain-fall distributed through twelve months in New York. Lightning, though frequent in the Andes, is so rare in the valley that a sharp thunder-shower causes almost as much consternation as an earthquake.

Still further southward, the number of rainy days in winter and the constant humidity of the seasons increase, as is shown by the fact, that while Central Chile has scarcely a tree, except the exotic species planted along the watercourses, the southern provinces possess valuable forests of tall and heavy timber. Here there have been observed 156 rainy days in the year, and this region would probably well reward steady cultivation; but it yet remains, in great proportion, in the possession of warlike Araucanian Indians.

Still beyond, the cold, wet, and tempestuous climate of Cape Horn and the Straits of Magellan, has long been pro

verbial.

Beautiful atmospheric effects delight the visitor to this mountain land. At Santiago there is often a season of warm, hazy weather, like an Indian summer, but it occurs not in November, but in their autumn, about the last of March or first of April. Most remarkable are the sunset hues, which Lieut. Gilliss describes as flitting over the snowy Cordillera, after the plains are m shadow; successive tints of violet, purple, and rosy pink, creeping up the white slopes, and "forming a picture to which no words can render justice."

Yet, bright as are its skies, soft its breezes, and delightful its temperature, free from the fierce heats of the tropics and the frosts of winter, the climate of Chile is not regarded by Lieut. Gilliss as favorable to longevity. Few aged men are met with, and from the census returns of 1854 the population appears, during six years, to have increased only three per cent., or from 1,393,000 to 1,435,000. Probably other than climatic causes contribute to this effect, for the report before us gives but an unfavorable picture of the morals

and comforts of the people. Out of less than 45,000 births, more than 10,000 were illegitimate, and to the large mortality among children, arising from the neglect and insufficient care incident to such a state of things, are to be added the effects of scrofulous diseases, which are the secondary results of vicious habits, and of privations arising from that indolence which often inflicts on the apparently favored population of mild climates a degree of poverty and want unknown among the industrious sons of the north. Lieut. Gilliss gives, in several places, unpleasant accounts of the character and domestic life of the lower classes of the people, and represents the condition of the peon laborers as practically not less servile and dependent than that of the negroes of our own south; while they have not that legal claim on their masters for support and protection which, with the latter, forms some counterpoise to the weight of their unfortunate position.

The attention of Lieut. Gilliss and his associates was given with much care to the earthquakes, so common on the southern Pacific coast; but we do not perceive that the report affords much information in regard to them that is new. The establishment of a telegraph line, between Santiago and Valparaiso, enabled observers to prove that, at least in one instance, the shock was precisely simultaneous at these two points, though upwards of sixty miles asunder. This is the first satisfactory observation of the kind; for all previous observations of time, in which dependence was placed on clocks at remote points, were not to be relied on at all.

A large amount of details in relation to earthquakes is given, embracing accounts of the more severe convulsions since 1570. That of 1835 appears, so far as the southern provinces were concerned, to have been one of the most terrible. The towns of Concepcion and Talcahuano were destroyed, not more by the earthquake itself than by the huge waves, which rolled in from the ocean at intervals for hours after, sweeping ships 200 yards inland, overturning and removing from their places twentyfour pound cannon, and dragging back, in their seaward reflux, everything that was movable. On this occasion the island of Santa Maria, seven miles in length, was upheaved, bodily, to an average height of nine feet, together with the

bottom of the sea around, so that in places where, in 1834, there had been thirty feet depth of water, subsequent soundings showed but twenty-one. The island of Mocha, seventy or eighty miles distant, was, at the same time, raised about two feet. The celebrated Juan Fernandez, 360 miles from the coast, was violently shaken, and a volcano burst forth through 300 feet of water, at a distance of a mile from its shore.

In connection with such sudden and violent changes of level, which seem the effect of the same forces which, in past epochs. raised the Andes themselves from the sea, Lieut. Gilliss suggests that others may be going on imperceptibly, such as geologists know to have been for centuries raising the coast of Scandinavia. His meridian circle, standing on stone blocks, which rested immediately on the rock of Santa Lucia, showed, for many months, a distinct and almost uniform change of position. as if its eastern support was constantly rising, or the whole hill slowly tilting over to the westward.* Such changes have been suspected in parts of England, and we remember reading, some years since, of surveys made and monuments accurately fixed in the southern counties, by future inspection of which the slightest fluctuations could be detected in the rocky foundations of that reputed "fast-anchored isle."

We have seen it stated that the average annual number of earthquake shocks at Lima is forty-five, though no disastrous convulsion has occurred there

for a very long time. The present report gives the number occuring at Santiago during twenty-eight months as sixtynine, and twice as many were noticed during the same period of time in the northern province of Coquimbo. Most of these were comparatively trifling, serious damage being caused in but few instances. It has been thought that they occur more frequently in autumn than at other seasons, but it is not established that any connection exists between the changes of our atmosphere and these movements of the solid crust of our earth.

Of the long accounts given of the government, church, and society in Chile, and of the presidential election of 1851, and its unhappy consequences

of domestic disturbance and civil war, we have not room to speak. It seems a very ungracious feature in a report made and published in such an official manner, to describe with what must be regarded as disapprobation any of the social, civil, or religious customs or transactions of a sister republic, with which we have been on friendly terms, and which received and aided the expedition with the utmost kindness and attention. Lieut. Gilliss seems to have anticipated such a view of portions of his volume, and deprecates it in an "apologetic conclusion," on the last page. Yet, it seems to us, that this government document should have left untouched, or very slightly referred to, topics so delicate, especially if not strictly embraced within the natural and legitimate scope of a scientific publication; and that their omission would have been one step well taken in retrenchment of the unnecessarily cumbrous dimensions of the work.

The chapters devoted to journeys through the provinces, and that from New York to Panama, and thence by the Peruvian coast, would furnish many quotations and facts of interest, but we must refer our readers to the book, which, by the "liberality of Congress," has been widely distributed. They will also find in it a valuable mass of statistics of a commercial character, in relation to products, exports and imports, mines, harbors, etc., etc.; and will have reason to admire the energy and ability which was able, during the brief intervals of engrossing scientific duties, to gather so great and so various a mass of general information.

The second volume is, as we have said, chiefly occupied with papers on antiquarian and scientific subjects. That on Indian remains, by Mr. Ewbank, describes and figures a great variety of relics, which, however, are almost exclusively Peruvian, very few of them being from Chile. Among the latter are copper axes and chisels, and a copper knife of crescent shape with a handle attached to its centre, very like the kind in use in every saddler's shop, or to others found among the collections of Egyptian antiquities. It is interesting to notice the uniformity in shape of tools which human ingenuity has contrived for its

own assistance, through such remote periods and regions.

These copper tools are not hardened to any considerable degree, as their proprietors seem to have valued highly the power of sharpening them by thinning the edge with a hammer, a method which shortened the otherwise long and tedious process of abrading them ou a whetstone.

Among the Peruvian relics are many vessels of earthenware, showing the proficiency which the aboriginal tribes had made in the art of the potter; others carved from wood; baskets, fragments of textile fabrics, bodkins, needles, and other humble household property, buried long ago in the graves with their dusky owners. A collection of Peruvian antiquities, examined by Mr. Ewbank in Brazil, has furnished most of the illustrations, not only of stone and earthen, but metallic objects-ornaments, small tools, and industrial implements, weapons, official batons or sceptres, and small statuettes, fabricated of copper, bronze, gold, and silver. All these, with innumerable relics of similar character, by which so much has been learned of the conditions of art at remote periods in all quarters of the world, we owe to that almost universal superstition (if we are at liberty to call it by that name), which led to the burial, with the lost friend, of the articles most useful to or prized by him during life.

The paper contributed by Mr. Baird, of the Smithsonian Institution, is occupied with the numerous specimens of the mammalia of Chile, collected by Lieut. Gilliss, and to a list of all the species yet known from that country. The existence of the "panther" of our northern forests through South America, where it is well known under the name of "puma" and "cougar," is a remarkable instance of the wide diffusion of a single species. Among the more interesting quadrupeds noticed, are an opossum, almost as small as a mouse and as downy as a flying squirrel; the coypou, that beaver-like, aquatic animal, whose skins are so important an article of trade under the name of "nutria" fur; and that rare armadillo, the chlamyphorus, one example of that remarkable family of mailed quadrupeds peculiar to the South American continent, where are found the fossil bones and plates of a gigantic predecessor, whose length Cuvier estimated at ten feet, and whose

armor was at one time supposed to have covered the megatherium.

Lieut. Phelps contributes an interesting account of the habits of the guanaco, one of the peculiar family of quadrupeds to which the cama and alpaca belong, and which, like the armadilloes, had among the lost races of the ante-human epoch a gigantic representative in the "macrauchenia." Mr. Phelps hunted the guanacoes among their native mountain heights, and seems to have found this chase a larger kind of deer-stalking, the animal being so shy and vigilant as to perceive and fly from the hunter while yet at two miles distance. He, however, succeeded in shooting them, though their propensity to bound over the nearest precipice, when struck by the bullet, made their recovery often difficult or impossible.

Mr. Cassin's article on the birds is illustrated by handsome colored plates, partly executed by the new chromotypic process. Though many of the Chilian birds differ very widely from those of our northern temperate zone, there still occur, among the wading and swimming kinds, some of the identical species known in Pennsylvania and New England, while among others we notice that striking similarity in general appearance which often occurs in species which are reasonably regarded as having sprung from entirely different origins. This apparently indicates (if we may use such an expression in reference to the inscrutable creative agency) a tendency in nature to produce closely similar forms in remote regions, in a manner analogous to that in which the palæontologist finds similar forms to have been produced and reproduced at remote epochs.

Facts of this nature strike us with especial interest, if viewed in connection with the disputes which prevail respecting the unchangeable character of species, and the unity or diversity of similar races. An example of this kind may be found in the close resemblance of our golden-winged woodpecker to the red-quilled species of the Cape of Good Hope; where two species, which a careless observer might deem to be accidental varieties, caused by climate or other circumstances, are proved, by the impossibility of their transmission or migration across wide oceans, and the impassable torrid zone, to be of radically

distinct character. The reader, who can look over the immense and almost unrivaled ornithological collection of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, will find an hundred illustrations of the same fact. Among those conspicuous in Mr. Cassin's memoir are the large blackbird, so like our own large grakle, the smaller species almost the counterpart of our red-wing, except that his gay epaulette is of gold instead of crimson, and the sturnella, scarcely differing from our familiar meadow lark, but with a breast of red instead of yellow.

Mr. Girard, also of the Smithsonian, deals with the reptiles and crustacea. No lover ever yet made his sonnet to his mistress's eyebrow with the devotion and minuteness with which a thorough herpetologist scans the surocular, postfrontal, subgular, or symphyseal scales and plates of snakes. If the reader would be amused by two quarto pages of detailed description of a single lizard, without a word of its habits or manner of life; or entertained with five pages about the form and arrangement of the maxillipes, caudal paddles, chela, rostra, and antennæ of the little crustaceous wretch, called, for want of a shorter name, Rhyncocinectes, let him borrow Vol. II. of this report, and sit down cheerfully to it. We suspect, however, that he, with us, would be better pleased with some book of natural history, dealing more with the complete living form and its habits than with minute structural details, and the changing arrangements of system and nomenclature. Nevertheless, let justice be done to the patient investigator of the driest anatomy. His laborious accumulation of facts in natural science, is like the collection and arrangement of medals and inscriptions, and half interpreted alphabets and hieroglyphics. By-and-by, when the series of observations is nearly complete, will arise the man of wide views, the combiner and generalizer, to sweep the whole army of facts into their disciplined array; and the story is told, the world listens, and learns in a few words the great results of lifetimes of toil. This facile or fortunate employer of others' observations, this eventual interpreter into popular form, of truths before scattered and hidden in technical books, is, like a commanding officer, too apt to concentrate on himself the laurels which in great share

belong to less conspicuous, but not less able laborers in the same field.

Dr. Wyman's article is a brief description of some mastodon bones from Southern Chile, belonging to different species from those known in the United States.

Mr. Conrad describes and figures some fossil shells, whose interest is very great on account of the position of their localities. Some, of Oolitic or Jurassic age, are from the Cordillera de Dona Ana, at the height of 13,400 feet above the sea, and furnish certain evidence that since the secondary geological epoch, when they died and were buried, this part of the Andes has been raised by more than one half of its present enormous elevation. Probably, when those rocks were forming, and including the relics of the living forms of their parent ocean-long after the silurian regions of our northern states had risen above the sea, long after the Pennsylvania coal measures and the ridgy Alleghanies had been crumpled into their present distorted and folded form, and after the sea-beach bird-tracks had hardened in the red sandstones of the Connecticut Valley-this huge mountain chain only showed above the waves a line of peaks and ridges forming a long series of mountain islands.

Other shells, found on the line of the Copiapo rail-road, at the elevation of 420 feet above tide, are identical with species now living in the Pacific. This part of the Chilian coast must, therefore, have been raised at least 420 feet since the existence of the fauna, now inhabiting its bordering waters. The researches of Dr. Darwin, and other previous explorers, have shown yet more remarkable facts, proving that this enormous chain, and the broad continental plains to the eastward of it, have, during the latter periods of geological history, undergone oscillations of elevation and depression of astonishing extent.

Before closing this necessarily brief and imperfect sketch, we should mention the liberal and enlightened course of the Chilian government in supporting extensive scientific researches on its soil, and in its efforts for the education of its people. The work of M. Gay, published by the state, comprises, in addition to five volumes of political and civil history and two of documents, eight volumes of zoology and nine of botany, illustrated by 350 elegantly en