"Beautiful!" he repeated, "you may well say so. before me, and grasped my arm. The horrible spell But this avails nothing. I have a fearful story to tell-was at once broken. The strange colours passed from would to God I had not attempted it; but I will go on. My heart has been too often stretched on the rack of memory to suffer any new pang.

66

before my vision. The rattlesnake was coiling at my very feet, with glowing eyes and uplifted fangs; and my wife was clinging in terror upon me. The next instant the serpent threw himself upon us. My wife was the victim! The fangs pierced deeply into her hands; and her scream of agony, as she staggered backwards from me, told me the dreadful truth.

We had resided in the new country nearly a year. Our settlement had increased rapidly, and the comforts and delicacies of life were beginning to be felt, after the weary privations and severe trials to which we had been subjected. The red men were few and feeble, and did not molest us. The beasts of the forest and mountain were ferocious, but we suffered little from them. The only immediate danger to which we were exposed resulted from the rattlesnakes which infested our neigh-rock. The groans of my wife now recalled me to her bourhood. Three or four of our settlers were bitten by them, and died in terrible agonies. The Indians often told us frightful stories of this snake, and its powers of fascination, and although they were generally believed, yet for myself, I confess I was rather amused than convinced by their marvellous legends.

"Then it was that a feeling of madness came upon me; and when I saw the foul serpent stealing away from his work, reckless of danger, I sprang forward and crushed him under my feet, grinding him upon the ragged side, and to the horrible reality of her situation. There was a dark livid spot on her hand; and it deepened into blackness as I led her away. We were at a considerable distance from any dwelling; and after wandering for a short time, the pain of her wound became insupportable to my wife, and she swooned away in my arms. Weak and exhausted as I was, yet had strength enough left to carry her to the nearest rivulet, and bathe her brow in the cool water. She partially recovered, and sat down upon the bank, while I supported her head upon my bosom. Hour after hour passed away, and none came near us, and there, alone in the great wilderness, I watched over her, and prayed with her, and she died!"

The old man groaned audibly as he uttered these words, and as he closed his long bony hands over his eyes, I could see the tears falling thickly through his gaunt fingers. After a momentary struggle with his feelings, he lifted his head once more, and there was a fierce light in his eyes as he spoke :

"But I have had my revenge. From that fatal mo

rible ordeal of affliction, to rid the place of my abode of its foulest curse. And I have well nigh succeeded. The fascinating demons are already few and powerless."

Years have passed since my interview with the rattlesnake hunter; the place of his abode has changed-a beautiful village rises near the spot of conference, and the grass of the church-yard is green over the grave of the old hunter. But his story is fixed upon my mind, and Time, like enamel, only burns deeper the first impression. It comes up before me like a vividly remembered dream, whose features are too horrible for reality. J. G. WHITTIER.

"In one of my hunting excursions abroad, on a fine morning, it was just at this time of the year, I was accompanied by my wife. 'Twas a beautiful morning. The sunshine was warm, but the atmosphere was perfectly clear; and a fine breeze from the north-west shook the bright green leaves which clothed to profusion the wreathing branches over us. I had left my companion for a short time in the pursuit of game; and in climbing a rugged ledge of rocks, interspersed with shrubs and dwarfish trees, I was startled by a quick, grating rattle. I looked forward. On the edge of a loosened rock lay a large rattlesnake, coiling himself as if for the deadly spring. He was within a few feet of me, and I paused for an instant to survey him. I know not why, but I stood still, and looked at the deadly serpent with a strangement I have felt myself fitted and set apart, by the terfeeling of curiosity. Suddenly he unwound his coil, as if relenting from his purpose of hostility, and raising his head, he fixed his bright fiery eye directly on my own. A chilling and indescribable sensation, totally different from anything I had ever before experienced, followed this movement of the serpent; but I stood still, and gazed steadily and earnestly, for at that moment there was a visible change in the reptile. His form seemed to grow larger and his colours brighter. His body moved with a slow, almost imperceptible motion towards me, and a low hum of music came from him, or at least it sounded in my ear a strange sweet melody, faint as that which melts from the throat of a humming-I bird. Then the tints of his body deepened, and changed and glowed, like the changes of a beautiful kaleidoscope; green, purple, and gold, until I lost sight of the serpent entirely, and saw only a wild and curiously woven circle of strange colours, quivering around me, like an atmosphere of rainbows. I seemed in the centre of a great prism, a world of mysterious colours, and tints varied and darkened and lighted up again around me; and the low music went on without ceasing until my brain reeled: and fear, for the first time, came over me. The new sensation gained upon me rapidly, and I could feel the cold sweat gushing from my brow. I had no certainty of danger in my mind, no definite ideas of peril, all was vague and clouded, like the unaccountable terrors of a dream, and yet my limbs shook, and I fancied I could feel the blood stiffening with cold as it passed along my veins. I would have given worlds to have been able to tear myself from the spot-I even attempted to do so, but the body obeyed not the impulse of the mind, not a muscle stirred; and I stood still as if my feet had grown to the solid rock, with the infernal music of the tempter in my ear, and the baleful colourings of his enchantment before me.

"Suddenly a new sound came on my car. It was a human voice, but it seemed strange and awful. Again, again, but I stirred not; and then a white form plunged

POLITE UNTRUTHS.

When you have put yourself a little out of the way to accommodate a friend, in replying to his expressions of regret at giving you trouble, it is not necessary to say, "Oh, it is not the slightest trouble at all-it was perfectly convenient." It is quite as polite to answer, "I am most happy to have been able to render you any assistance," as you ought to be if you felt right upon

such matters.

A little tact and discretion, united with that kindly feeling to all around you, which constitutes the basis of sound morality, as well as true politeness, will always enable you to avoid giving offence, without compromising your conscience.

THE CHILD MUST OBEY.

It is a fixed rule under all circumstances that the child must learn to obey. Obedience is the first step in education. The child must be submissive to a higher will and a more matured knowledge. By degrees he will soon find out the reason why. Take heed, however, that you do not forbid or command anything, if you cannot or will not strictly and inflexibly enforce obedience; otherwise you introduce a laxity of principle into your action, which nothing can retrieve. Never give a command or a prohibition excepting from your determined purpose or your matured judgment.-Berthold Auerbach.

SIXTEEN AND SIXTY.

SIXTEEN.

HER form-oh, you might muse till night
And never image aught so bright,
So sweet-so delicately slight-

As that half-girlish form;

Which seem'd just bora for summer hours,
For love and kindness, smiles and flowers;
Unfit for cloud or storm!

Her forehead fair, as moonlight fair,
Half glancing 'neath her graceful hair,
Look'd like a shrine some angel there

For holy thought had won:

Her cheeks, where sixteen summers played,
Seem'd lilies that had lived in shade,
And never seen the sun :

And yet not pale-a lingering ray
Of day-break in the month of May,-
Or rose leaf that had lost its way-

Flushed through that snowy skin;
And, as each hue would nectar sip,
Rau dimpling to the cherry lip,

That closed the heaven within!

SIXTY.

Her form-'twas like a wintry day,
But cheerful still, as if a ray
Of heaven lit those temples grey,

Where change would still encroach
Yet even Age had touched her face
With something of a tender grace,

And soften'd Time's approach!

Her brow-the spirit was not there
That erst illumed her forehead fair,
But something yet, one could not spare,
Like beauty did remain;

And could a kindred charm impart,
As dear, as sacred to the heart,
As in her beauty's reign!

For oh, let but the heart be kind,
Let beauty linger in the mind,
And even Age appears refined-
Age even can delight!
Till Life, like day's departing ray,
Dies on the breast of heaven away,
And takes an Angel's flight!

CHARLES SWAIN.

exceptions, it will be apparent that the same state of
knowledge prevails. The voluptuary lives in the atmo-
sphere of pleasure, the orator in the applause of the
multitude, the votary of ambition amid reveries of pen-
sions, titles, stars, garters, and ribbons; the statesman
is occupied in balancing parties, overreaching diplomatie
wiles and craft, and piloting his devious and doubtful
track through the rocks and quicksands of a political life.
Each of them is immersed in his own particular vortex,
forgetful of all else, using mind for his purposes, but
ignorant of its nature. It is not here that the oracle
|will speak and reveal the secret. It is not among men
of action that we are to seek for the hidden knowledge.

If we turn to the studious and thoughtful portions of humanity, shall we fare much better? Ask the question, and you will find that though there is an outpouring of words in answer to it, the substantial knowledge you will gain will require a mental microscope of the very highest order to enable you to perceive it. The poet will tell of the secret workings of those feelings which are within the nature of every man, and appear to cause the brightest moments which illumine our being, and the darkest eras which dim and blacken the pages of our personal history— which scatter flowers upon the path of some, and pave the way of others with the rough fragments of broken hopes and baffled desires-which glow forth in letters of glorious brightness upon the page of history, or darken its records with tales of murder, rapine, vengeance, hate and woe. He tells you in eloquent words, and musical tones, of the effects of mind; but to the reiterated question, "What is it?" he has no answer. It is a stern reality not to be found in the limits of the domain of fancy, or imagination. We hang, with rapture, over the inspired pages of minstrel lore-minds made them, but they are like a vast and lovely river rolling along in crystal splendour, of which we cannot discern the

source.

Turn to the divine, the physician who ministers "to a soul diseased." Will you find greater success there? Either you will meet a simple, earnest, straightforward, follower of the Evangelists, who taking the inspired history for his guide, and looking forward to the practical reality of an eternity of happiness or misery, teaches his creed by reference to material images-and from him you have no answer to your question; or you discover the subtle and learned theologian read in all the writings of the ancient fathers-learned in the learning of those who lived and wrote when magic was almost a recognised portion of religion, and witchcraft was thought possible by a contract with the father of all evil. With him you are forthwith plunged into an ocean of mystery and absurdity as unintelligible as the Cabala of the Jews. With him you attempt to separate mind from matter; and without the knowledge of anything but matter and its propertieswithout a point of comparison or a landmark in the land of confusion and bewilderment-without a solitary light to look to in the general gloom-the more you grope, the more inextricably you find yourself lost. may debate, through all time, whether angels, in passing from one point to another, pass through intermediate space without coming any nearer to the desired conclusion. You live in a world of matter, and cannot comprehend any thing distinct from it. It is not amid the lore of religious philosophy that a solution is to be found.

You

MIND AND BODY. WHAT is mind? A puzzling question truly; and if you were to pounce with it upon the most acute and learned of your acquaintances, the chances are, they would give you credit for a small portion of insanity for your trouble. Inquire of the busy, prosperous man, who lives a life of golden realities, adding wealth to wealth, house to house, and field to field, and you will find that although pretty well acquainted with the price of stock, the value of railway shares, the best opening for enterprise, or the most advantageous market for produce, he neither thinks, knows, nor cares anything for that which of, or through, or within him, enables him to pursue his trains of thought. His mind is immersed in matter, and it would be a subtle alchemy which could separate the one from the other. It is not to the man of the world we must look for any revelations upon the subject. We must not blame him that his attention does not turn into that channel, but lay the responsibility to the account of the mode, and the circumstances in and by which he has been edu-only to fall into Charybdis; and that among theories of cated. innate ideas, and external objects of sensation, Judgment, Imagination, Will, Consciousness, &c., confusion will only become worse confounded.

Push your investigations among other classes, and although, of course, here and there you will find partiel

If we ask the metaphysician for an explanation, our position will be still worse. He, too, will go to the age of occult philosophy and quote writers, both sacred and profane, besides calling in the aid of the abstract minds of Greece, and the dim, misty, and undefined theorists of the German school. We shall find that we have escaped Scylla

"

Look to the adminstrators of law, and take their to produce a class of men, who famed for their scientific opinion. They will not help you through the difficulty. acquirements and deep knowledge of natural operations, They, it is true, are often called upon to decide that a have come to the conclusion that this world of beauty man is sane or insane, but all their decisions are founded and order, with all its myriads of life, is only a combinaupon evidence of what the body has performed-of words tion of matter, destitute of an essentially distinct guiding spoken or deeds done by the individuals under considera- and controlling principle; and finding, amid all ortion. They consider the effects of the action of mind,ganized matter, no material traces of mind, they attribute and, guided and governed by medical testimony, they often refer insanity to a disease or lesion of the brain, or to some bodily injury; thus in effect making the healthy action of mind a property of matter, an error as great as that which metaphysicians fall into on the opposite side. Besides the dicta of the sages of the law are so conflicting and contradictory, that supposing we could adopt the physical or material hypotheses upon which they often rest, they furnish no sure guidance.

all the operations of intellect to physical organization. It seems strange, how men, so acute as they are, could suppose the possibility of an etherial essence, such as their opponents assert mind to be, leaving material traces behind it. Were such to be found, the mind would at once be proved to be material.

We do not, of course, mean it to be inferred, that all anatomists belong to this materialist school; there are many of the highest of the profession who start with the postulate of an infinite mind, of which all organization is to them the evidence, and are therefore prepared to admit, and hold the belief of finite minds, without finding their traces in physical organization.

What shall we do amid all these conflicting opinions? They, none of them, furnish any real answer to the question with which we started; the conclusions of all are most lame and impotent, so far as practical application is concerned. We are as far off from a knowledge of the abstract nature of mind as ever, and are obliged to rest satisfied with the impression, that that which has eluded the most powerful and best cultivated intellects of all time is beyond our reach.

There is, it is true, an almost occult science, called Mesmerism, which bids fair further to enlighten us. Although its practice has been bound up with, and disfigured by much of imposture and trickery-although its conscientious advocates have been rash in theorizing on imperfect data, and predicting effects without sufficient knowledge, yet those who have patiently and impartially investigated its pretensions, must admit that it has a foundation of truth, and that marvels have been worked by it, through means incomprehensible to those devoted to physical science. This system, in the hands of competent operators, shows in a new light the action of mind upon

As a last resource we may ask the physiologist and the anatomist. They are the followers of inductive and experimental sciences; they live in the investigation of man and his nature; but they are unable to furnish us with the required information. They scrutinize merely the external appearance, noticing the distinctions which separate race from race, peculiarities of form, structure, and temperament, which, if they do not cause, are intimately connected with the mental aptitudes and dispositions of men; but still all their investigations are founded upon matter and its properties. They plunge the dissecting-knife into the frame, explain the form and functions of the viscera, divide the muscles which were once the agents of power, tear up the nerves which were once the channels of sensation, and the conductors of the current of will, anatomize the lungs where vital heat was once generated, trace all the ramifications of the vascular system, through which, from that powerful fountain, the heart, flowed the stream of life. But, in all this there is nothing but matter and its operations; we lay hold of no trace of mind. But the brain still remains, and, in connection with mind, that is the most important of all the organs. After ages of disputation, during which the feelings and intelligence of men have been placed in the heart and other organs, all men worthy of scientific reputation have concurred in recog-mind, and its partial independence of material agencies. nising the brain as the seat of the mind; and modern science, if it has not already recognised, has a tendency to hold to the theory, that, from the form of the brain may be inferred the mental powers and their specific direction. Go then to the brain; let the keen edge of the anatomist's blade separate its fibres and dive into its deepest recesses; notice its grey matter, its white matter, and its cellular tissue; observe how its convolutions are disposed; mark how the nerves all tend here as to a common centre; those nerves, it is settled, are the channels of those sensations which come to, and those volitions which go from the brain; everything announces that this is the temple of intellect-the seat of the mind; but the structure is vacant-the occupant has fled; with life fled mind-with mind intelligence. We have here the mere physical organization which, wedded to life, produced thought; here the highest conceptions of the poets, the most benevolent aspirations of the philanthropist, the profoundest theories of the philosopher had their rise, and first became embodied as ideas,-now we see a mass of inert matter, which does not bear upon it a trace of the noble uses which it has subserved. So, as a parallel, we may fancy with Hamlet, "Alexander's dust coming to stop a bung-hole." The anatomist must tell you, that all his researches end in the investigation of matter, from the most gross to the most delicate of all tissues, from the massive muscles to the attenuated nerves, from the firm unyielding bones to the soft pulpy brain, all is matter still; the subtle essence, mind, which once pervaded it and made it the instrument of will, eludes all research and baffles all investigation.

Studies, such as these, have, in a great measure, tended

But yet, even this is only in connection with physical organizations which also claim some share of the effects, and the whole is as yet so wrapt in mystery, is so uncertain, and appears so little subject to the known operation of fixed laws, that it must be long before it can become a trustworthy guide.

Yet it is essential that some understanding (rather than settlement) should be at once come to upon this vexed question. Unless that be done, we shall never have a really scientific and consistent system of education. We may trace many, if not all of our educational blunders, to the fact that, the highest intellects have been busy in contesting the abstract question of what it was that was to be educated, instead of pointing out the course that education should take; and thus the work of training mind has been left in comparatively inferior and incapable hands. We habitually entrust the education of children to persons with far less of scientific knowledge, and who proceed in their operations far less systematically than the surgeon to whom we confide our life, or the lawyer to whom we commit the safety of our estates. The systems are almost as many as the establishments in which education is conducted, and in most of them it would be difficult to discover a trace of a truly scientific foundation. The common object, however, seems to be, to stuff youthful minds with as many facts as can be crammed into them, without much reference to their powers to digest those facts, or to draw from them really useful knowledge; and worst of all, without any great regard to the prejudicial action of the overloaded mind upon the body, or the reaction of the enfeebled or diseased body upon the weakened mind. It would appear, that if any theory at all

has been adhered to, it has been the purely metaphysical one; and, although it is true that we can find many examples of men with feeble bodies, and powerful minds, yet the question must be asked,-would not their intellects have been of a higher order if their physical frames had been more perfect? And the other question, of how far the over cultivation, or rather the over straining of their mental powers, conduced to the degradation of their frames is worthy of investigation?

We must not be thought in this to do aught else than contend for an almost self-evident truism, that taking any particular man, his mind will be most active and powerful, and its manifestations most perfect, when his body, the instrument of his mind, is best fitted to per

form its natural functions.

With a system of medical supervision and control we should never see the nervous and the lethargic, the clever and the obtuse, the weak and the strong, bearing the same yoke, subjected to the same rule, stimulated by the same rewards, urged forward by the same punishments. The powers of each would then be estimated, not by an arbitrary standard of requirement, but by the talents and powers inherent in his natural constitution; we should then be in the high-road to a system of teaching, adapted to the various tendencies and aptitudes of different classes of minds. Education would become, instead of a chaos, a just and scientific system; much bodily disease would be avoided; much mental depravity would be kept undeveloped; a higher range of intellect, in its various phases, would be obtained; and, as men became what they might be, and as a properly directed education would make them, both wiser and better, we might hereafter arrive at a consistent answer to that important question-What is Mind?

Notices of New Warks.

Volcanic Phenomena.*

An article by Dr. Bush, in the second volume of "Dr. Winslow's Journal of Psychological Medicine," to which we recently referred in our article upon "Education," in No. 41, shows upon the one hand how mental action influences the frame, and on the other, how the diseased body acts upon the intellect. There will be found the observations of an eminently scientific mind, practised in the treatment of mental diseases, leading to what appears the necessary conclusion, that want of capacity in mature years, and even moral guilt, are too often the consequences of un- THE phenomena in connection with volcanos, while scientific education. Dr. Bush shows that precocity furnishing evidence as to the interior economy of nature, the exhibition of those early talents which inspire the have given rise to numerous theories by which they might relatives of children with pride and admiration, and lead be explained. Of these there are two, which, at the so often to future bitter disappointment, is itself often the present time, most command attention-the mechanical, manifestation of physical disease; and that the over- and the chemical. Some philosophers have regarded strained brain, possessing rather activity than strength, them as effects of the contraction of the earth's crust while putting forth buds of promise, is never to produce upon an igneous fluid mass in the interior; others refer mature fruit: that its activity is sowing the seeds of dis-them to chemical action, induced at unknown depths by ease destined to expand either into nervous disorder or mental imbecility. That such children, instead of being urged forward in the career of knowledge, should be sedulously and systematically restrained, till their physical organization has gathered sufficient vigour and strength to form a sure basis for mental action. While, on the other hand, those dull, heavy children, displaying at once so many early traits of obstinacy and stupidity, often present to the eye of the practised physician the latent traces of lethargic disorder, only to be obviated or counteracted by medical treatment and skilful mental training; and that the punishment to which they are too often subjected for their presumed faults, and inaptitude, only increases the evils it is intended to remove.

the combined force of heat, moisture, and pressure. Among the advocates of the latter theory is Dr. Daubeny, a second edition of whose work is now before us, and whose views on the subject appear sufficiently interesting for a little wider diffusion. Without pretending to a positive decision of the question, this writer considers the chemical theory as the one most calculated to lead to minute study and investigation of volcanic action, as the mere contraction of the earth upon a fluid centre, fails to explain many minor effects which chemistry regards as essentially important. It has sometimes been thought that the operations of volcanos at the present day are altogether different from those of the past; but repeated observations have led to the conclusion that they are precisely We do not intend this paper to take the form of a me- the same, only, that formerly they may have been on a dical essay, or we might copy and dilate upon the long more gigantic scale than now. Geologists, as is pretty list of moral, mental, and physical diseases which Dr. well known, are agreed in not referring certain natural Bush specifies in his article, as the result of want of know-effects-the grouping of hills, scattering of blocks, excaledge of what education really is, and how it should be pro-vation of valleys, &c., to one general convulsion or deluge, moted; but with such considerations and facts before us but rather to a series of causes, which they endeavour to we must, in calling attention to the subject, advocate exemplify by something actually going on. In this way as essentially necessary, the union in the work of training the past suggests the present, and the present confirms youth, of the physician with the mere teacher. We the past. must, after the experience of ages, and with all our boasted knowledge, return to the wisdom of the ancients, who looked for the desideratum of a sound mind in a

sound body. While the nature of mind is unsettled by the contending parties, we must allow both the metaphysician and the mere studier of organization to be consulted,-the one to lead on the mind as fast as it can safely go, the other to see that the body is not injuriously affected by its over-exertion; because, whatever else we are ignorant of, this at all events we know, that they mutually affect each other, for good or evil. In short, we are entitled to ask, that man shall be treated as a compound of the spiritual and material, and to require that whatever the capacity or the value of his more ethereal portion, the laws which govern that physical structure through which alone his mental power can be manifested, shall not be violated.

According to the popular notion, all burning mountains are volcanos, but the flame and exhalations of gas and steam which rise in various places, are very different from the eruptions which burst from such mountains as Hecla and Etna. Volcanic action often exists apart from extraordinary effects, as in Auvergne, where lava and scorice remain to prove the existence of volcanos, at a period long anterior to that in which the surface of the country received its present conformation. "We have no right," observes Dr. Daubeny, "to assume an entire extinction of the processes throughout the district; for the frequency of thermal and of acidulated springs-the copious evolution of carbonic acid which takes place in the mines of Pont Gibaud, as well as in other localities-the springs

* A Description of Active and Extinct Volcanos, &c. Daubeny, M.D., F.R.S. London, R. and J. E. Taylor.

By C.

of bitumen also met with-and the abundant deposition carbonic, muriatic, and sulphurous acid; sulphuretted of travertin now taking place near Clermont, where it hydrogen, and nitrogen. The inconceivable quantity of has stretched across a rivulet, forming a natural bridge hydrogen exhaled in past times is shown by the sulphur over it, cannot but be viewed as indications of a languid mines of Sicily, which sometimes yield 400,000 cwt. of action of volcanic forces still continuing underneath. In the mineral in a year. The amount of gas required for other parts of the same province the remains of animals, the production of this deposit defies calculation. Boussindifferent from any of the existing species, have been gault mentions a case of a spring in New Grenada, which found imbedded in the materials ejected from volcanos- gives out every twenty-four hours nearly two hundred an important evidence of eruption, were there no other, pounds of muriatic acid gas, and sulphuretted hydrogen at an early era of the earth's history. In the pumice in nearly equal quantities. At the eruption of Etna in and sand that fell on Pompeii, infusoria of fresh-water | 1842, a curious circumstance happened: the stream of origin were discovered by Ehrenberg, indicating either lava was seen by the alarmed inhabitants of the district to that the material from which the pumice was derived had flow into a small lake. They retired to a distance, exbeen produced by successive generations of these minute pecting the usual shock from the contact of heated maanimalcules, or had for a long time constituted a suitable terials with water, but none took place. A few of the nidus for their growth. It shows also that any degree of number ventured back to watch what was going on, when heat, below that productive of absolute liquidity, and the lake blew up with a frightful concussion, and many consequently of a state of actual vitrification in the vol- persons were injured by the falling fragments of lava. canic material, is compatible with the preservation of the Much discussion was excited as to the cause of the acciorganic forms of these bodies." dent; the explanation has, however, been furnished by M. Boutigny's experiments, showing the repulsion between intensely heated substances and water. On entering the lake, the temperature of the lava was such as to repel the surrounding fluid, and it was only after being cooled down that the explosion occurred.

It is generally among the older formations that volcanos break out; at all events, the action is evidence of the prodigious depth from which the materials must be ejected. These materials-pumice, lava, scoriæ, gases, are said to be all produced from trachyte. This rock consequently is supposed to constitute the chief part of the underground mass, or to be made up from the fusion of others. An interesting example of the mode in which ejections of basaltic lava have contributed to the formation of natural caverns is seen near Bertrich, in one of the volcanic districts of Germany. This is described as a natural grotto, in the midst of the lava, about six feet high, three broad, and twelve or fifteen long, open at both extremities, and thus making part of a foot-path which overlooks the ravine containing the torrent of the Issbach. The walls of this grotto are composed of basalt, slightly cellular, and forming a number of concentric lamellar concretions, piled one upon the other, and, in general, somewhat compressed, so that the interstices between the balls are filled up. The grotto itself has obtained the name of the cheese-cellar (Käse-keller), from the resemblance which the configuration of the basalt bears to an assemblage of Dutch cheeses; it beautifully illus. trates the origin of the jointed columnar structure which this rock so often assumes, since a little more compression would have reduced these globular concretions into a prismatic form, each ball constituting a separate joint in the basaltic mass. The most probable way of accounting for the existence of this natural grotto is, to suppose the lava which forms its walls to have cooled near the surface, before the mass had ceased to flow in its interior; hence a hollow would be left, in which the basalt had room freely to assume the form most natural to it, and the concretions being but little compressed on account of the cavity within, retain their original globular figure. If it be asked, why the same appearances are not presented in Fingal's Cave, and in others of the same kind, it may be replied, that the two cases differ, the Käsekeller being a hollow existing from the first, whereas the basalt at Staffa, probably, constituted a continuous bed, until undermined and eaten into by the sea."

Warm springs may be regarded, as before explained, as evidence of a still-existing languid volcanic action; they throw off the same kinds of gases as those which rise from volcanos; and it is a remarkable fact, that large tracts of country which exhibit no volcanic appearances, are equally destitute of warm springs. Sir Roderick Murchison, during his late researches in Russia, satisfactorily verified this fact; warm springs were found only at the foot of mountains; they were altogether wanting in the immense level regions of the empire. In mountainous countries it is no uncommon occurrence to see hot-springs gushing from rocks which seem built up of ice.

The gases most commonly emitted from volcanos are

A dissertation on volcanic action necessarily involves the phenomena of earthquakes; according to mathematicians, the shock to produce one of these convulsions must "move with such an immense velocity, as to displace bodies by their inertia-have a horizontal, alternate motion, either much quicker in one direction than in another, or different in its effects—and be accompanied by an upward and downward motion at the same time." Rigid as the earth may appear, it is certain that waves of motion pass through it as through water. If, as is sometimes the case, a shock begins somewhere under the bed of the ocean, three waves are transmitted, one through the land; a second through the air, producing the noise usually taken for thunder; and the last, through the sea itself, which rolls in upon the shore long after the earthshock has passed; as at Lisbon, where a great wave 40 feet high rushed in and swept 3,000 persons from the quay to which they had fled, to be out of the way of falling buildings. The difference of shocks is accounted for by the difference of strata through which they pass, a hard substance suddenly intervening will deflect a shock into a new direction. The greatest mischief is found to occur where hard and soft materials meet. From observations on the elasticity of different substances, it is calculated, that the speed of a wave passing through limestone would be forty miles a minute, sandstone fifty-seven, marble seventy-three, clay slate one hundred and forty. The focus of the Lisbon shock was sixty miles from the land.

The upheaval of land in the north of Europe, and in South America, where a line of coast 3,000 miles in extent was elevated, has been ascribed to slow volcanic agency. The effect of shocks is most rapidly propagated in a loose soil; in the hard primary rocks it is much less destructive. Messina is built on a foundation, one half granite, the other alluvial rocks. At the time of the earthquake, that portion of the city erected on the granite, escaped comparatively uninjured, the other was nearly all thrown down. Certain localities in South America which are never affected are called bridges, from the belief that some very unyielding material is deposited beneath, which prevents the shock from passing. Hollows in the ground are considered a protection; the Romans dug deep excavations under the Capitol to ensure its safety. And the deep wells of Capua, and large natural caverns under Naples, are supposed to account for the little injury which those two places have sustained from earthquakes.

As far as the question has hitherto been investigated,