On the reader's inquisitive approach to the 'unicorns and tailed men,' he finds them retiring into the doubtful records of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. And, finally, of the 'Negro' we do not learn any thing new, except some very capital stories. The book is written in a lively, smart, not to say fast style, representing Africa as it appeared in the eyes of a London exquisite and club lounger. As a young man of acute-deficient and also of little value." The portion of ness, education, means, leisure, and a taste for African travel, Mr. Reade had a splendid chance, and-missed it. When he avows that he traveled in such a region with no special object, but to flaner in the virgin forest, to flirt with pretty savages, and to smoke his cigar among cannibals,' what can we do more than congratulate him on the perfect success of his enterprise? But there is evidence that Mr. Reade has not done himself justice; he can write something better than this, which is a mere sowing of literary wild oats, to be followed, we doubt not, by other sowings and crops well worth the garnering."

MANY of our readers will recollect the recent visit of Dr. MASSIE to this country on a mission of sympathy and observation. The Westminster Review thus speaks of his book, just published by John

Snow, London:

issued the first volume of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Republic. Commencing with the destruction of Carthage, the author proposes to continue the narrative to the end of the Civil Wars. "It is probable,” he tells us, "that the second volume will contain the history of the same number of years as the first, and thus the two volumes will comprehend a period for which the evidence is time included in the first volume is about fortyeight years-namely, from B.C. 154 to B.c. 106; from the memorable epoch marked by the overthrow of the great rival power already mentioned, to the close of the war with Jugurtha. Such a period, in itself rich in interest, is rendered additionally so by independent research and original discussion. In Mr. Long we have no rhetorical narrator or prepossessed system-monger, but one who, not content to follow the leading of modern historians, and feeling strong enough to handle the original authorities, has, while availing himself of the labors of other historians and critics, reëxamined evidence, carefully thought out his views, and boldly recorded his opinions. The two most important topics treated in this volume are the slaverising in Sicily and the reforms of the Gracchi. A perennial interest attaches to a subject of such paramount social importance as that of masters and slaves, that of patrician proprietors and plebeian lackalls. In our own age, the great problem that baulked the statesmanship of Rome demands with growing importunity its solution from that of modern Europe. The account of the slave-war in the ninth chapter of Mr. Long's first volume is very well done. Here, as always, Mr. Long produces an adequate impression, not by highly-colored de scriptions, but by a simple statement of facts, and emphatic economy of language. After the Roman conquest of Sicily, the vacant lands stimulated the cupidity of the wealthy occupiers. The demand for labor was great, the market open, and "the demand brought the supply from all nations." Tho condition of the slaves thus imported was deplorable. "All of them had hard service, and their masters supplied them scantily with food and clothing. They cared little about their slaves; they worked them while they were able to work, and the losses by death were replaced by fresh purchases." At last their sufferings drove them into a conspiracy against their masters. The outbreak began with the slaves of the cruel Demophilus and his wife Megallis, who was "as bad as himself." The numbers of the rebels reached, it is said, 200,000. A very large number, at any rate, joined in the insurrection, till the slaves became masters of nearly the whole island. They were ultimately reduced by the consul P. Rupilius. Expecting no mercy from a Roman, at Taurominium "they held out till they were compelled to feed on human flesh "We can not too strongly recommend Dr. Mas--first on children, then on the women, and last on sie's book to many who would not otherwise expect to find in a mission-journal the good sense, intelligence, and accurate political information for which it is remarkable."

"It is also marked by such intelligence of the true issues at stake in the present conflict in America, and by such thorough study of the state of parties there, that it deserves the attention of a much wider public than is usually attracted by books of the kind. It is the best account we have seen of the condition of public opinion in America, and, what is still more valuable, it reflects the views of the more educated classes. It may perhaps be objected that the author necessarily fell into the hands of the republican party, and was forwarded from one to another of their partisans, and thus allowed to see only through their eyes; but this objection will not maintain itself after a full attention to his statements, nor is it at all supported by any of those partisan excesses, either of tone or statement, which would otherwise, in such a case, be sure to betray their origin. The evidence which he brings forward of the growth of American opinion on the subject in which he was most interested is overwhelming, and of the most satisfactory kind. Another point in which we do not think he exaggerates the usefulness of his mission is, the effect produced by his personal addresses in all the chief towns of the Union, in showing his audiences that there is a large party in England who do not share in the distorted views of the most influential of the daily papers, and of many of the weekly ones. This is a service that many who now scorn it may before long be grateful for.

one another." The insurrection ended in the impoverishment of the rich, not in the amelioration of the poor man's lot; and Mr. Long, in relating how the disorderly band of Eunous destroyed the very industry by which he and his men were supported, gen eralizes the lesson when he remarks that "the history of all servile insurrections and of people as ignorant as slaves shows that if they were not checked, such men would destroy the accumulated savings of ages without ever thinking of producing, and would finally perish amid the waste that they had made." From the specimens we have given of

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The genius of the poet is every where in them; but it is the genius of a poet moulded by art rather than fired by nature. Such poetry may be greatly admired, but it can never be popular. The condi tions necessary to a full appreciation of the skill and beauty to be traced in it are rare even among the educated. Where the meaning is a puzzle, pleasure is impeded, if not impossible. But Mr. Browning, like Mr. Tennyson, is not to be deterred by such considerations from following his bent.British Quarterly.

SCIENCE.

The White Limestone of Jamaica is described by Mr. A. Lennox as including a basement series of sandstones and shells, a hard white limestone, a yellowish limestone, and an uppermost member consisting of dark-red marl; it is estimated to be at least 2500 feet thick. At the junction of the calcareous rocks with the granite the former is often more or less altered, and thus affords good proof that the latter is of Tertiary age. Mr. Lennox considers that the diagrammatic section of the rocks of Jamaica, prepared by the late Mr. Barret, is erroneous, for the following reasons: 1st. There is no section in Jamaica in which the relation of the white limestone to the Hippurite limestone is seen. 2d. The white limestone is, in his opinion, of Miocene age; and 3d, the shelly and sandy beds represented in the section as overlying the white limestone are, he believes, in quite the opposito position. On physical and paleontological grounds, Mr. Lennox states his belief that the white lime stone is of Miocene date, and was probably deposit ed slowly in a tranquil sea.— -The Geologist, June, 1864.

Mr. Long's treatment of this question, it will be seen that he is led away by no mere indignationfeelings to take the part of the oppressed against the oppressor. Where he does not think the policy of the reforming party likely to promote the end which it is meant to reach, no sympathy with the people seduces him into acquiescence with or palliation of error. To our mind there is something very beautiful, and, so to say, Christian, in what is told of Tiberius Gracchus and his devotion to the popular cause; but Mr. Long, while giving him credit for good intentions, and acknowledging the tyranny and avarice of the Roman aristocracy, considers his object-the restoration of the old Italian system-to have been impracticable, and his conduct, in one instance at least the deposition of his colleague Octavius-to have been illegal. Moreover, he gives free expression to his opinions, even when he has to do so in opposition to an authority no less distinguished than Niebuhr, who holds that (in the case of Octavius) the people had a right to take away a commission from a man to whom they had given it. For the reforms of Caius Gracchus, again, Mr. Long seems to have no more admiration than for those of his murdered brother. Possibly Mr. Long's estimate is correct; but granting that it is, and allowing that the Gracchi were political Quixotes, we may still see in the policy of Tiberius, whose sympathies were not only with the Romans, but with the Italians, and who endeavored to improve by an agrarian law the miserable condition of the Italian cultivators, a foreshadowing of a more statesmanly policy, which on certain conditions shall insure to the employed the ability to earn an adequate subsistence, as we may see in that of his equally ill-fated brother, whose Lex frumentaria was "a kind of poor-law," and whose senatorial reform was an extension of the full rights of Roman citizenship to the Latins, or perhaps to all the Italians-an adumbration of modern | attempts for the improvement of the laborer's condition and the amelioration of representative gov-ical Society at one of its late meetings. The reernment. On the other hand, Mr. Long's strictures sults of this process, as seen in the West Indian on the turbulence, the incapacity, and ambition of fossil corals, being very remarkable, and having the Gracchi ought to be read with no less attention much obscured their specific characters, thus renthan his animadversions on the odious tyranny of dering their determination extremely difficult, Dr. the greedy nobles, and of a senate "whose conduct Duncan found it necessary to thoroughly examine after the defeat of the insurgents is a proof that their different varieties of mineralization, and to they were animated by a spirit of vengeance and compare their present condition with the different a resolution to destroy a political party." Among stages in the decay and fossilization of recent fosthe chapters in the present volume that deserve sils as seen now in progress. By this means he to be especially studied are the two that deal with was enabled to show the connection between the the question of the public land and the opposition destruction of the minuter structures by decomposbetweeen the patricians and the plebeians. In the ing membranes, and certain forms of fossilization arrangement of his narrative, Mr. Long has fol- in which those structures are imperfectly preserv lowed the order observed by Livy, but has not, ed. It appears from his researches that the filling like the author of the "Supplement," crowded the up of the interspaces by granular carbonate of events of each year together. By maintaining lime and other substances, as well as the induthis historical continuity, the author has gained ration of certain species, during a pre-fossil and for the transactions which he thus recounts un- post-mortem period, gives rise to certain varieties usual clearness and distinctness, as in the chapters of fossilization, and that the results of these operaon the insurrection in Sicily, the tribunates of the tions are perpetuated in a fossil state. Dr. Duncan Gracchi, and the war with Viriathus, the great describes no less than eight distinct forms of mincommander, who for fourteen years resisted the eralization, namely, calcareous, siliceous, sileceous progress of Roman conquest in Spain.- Westmins- and crystalline, siliceous and destructive, siliceous ter Review. casts, calcareo-siliceous and destructive, and calcareosiliceous casts. In describing these forms, especial DRAMATIS PERSONE. BY ROBERT BROWNING. Chap-reference was made to those in which the structures man & Hall.

Ir would require some space to say all we think about this volume of poems. They evince an extraordinary subtlety of thought and of expression. |

The Fossilization of West Indian Corals.-A most valuable paper upon the process of fossilization of corals was presented by Dr. Duncan to the Geolog

were more or less destroyed during the replacement (by silica) of the carbonate of lime which filled the interspaces, and during that of the ordinary hard parts of the coral.-Popular Science Review.

ex

and then from that till noon it rained and hailed, | title of the International Ocean Telegraphic Comthere was thunder at one, and at three P.M. a very singular form of hail fell in heavy showers, different from what has heretofore been described by natural philosophers. Ordinary hail-stones are generally flattened or round, and frequently more or less angular, and present concentric layers surrounding a nucleus. That which fell on the 29th of March was of a very different character. The stones were quite conical in form, being slightly concave at the base; the surfaces were covered over with little projecting six-sided pyramids of a transparent character, and a few of a similar form were observed in the concave portion of the base. They were about eight or ten millimetres wide, and from ten to thirteen millimetres in length. They weighed, in various instances, from one hundred and eighty to two hundred and fifty milligrammes, and seemed to be formed by the adhesion of several minute pyramids, leaving a cavity in the center. They fell point downwards. -Comptes Rendus, April 4th.

pany, which proposes to establish telegraph communication between Europe and America by a route which, it is contended, presents fewer difficulties than those met with in the course taken by the Atlantic Telegraph Company. Mr. W. Rowett, one of the directors of the company, attended at the Underwriters' Rooms recently to plain the nature of the project. The proposed starting-point of the line is Brest: thence it will be carried across the Bay of Biscay to Cape Finisterre; thence to the Azores, touching either at Terceira or Flores; and finally, skirting the southern edge of the great bank of Newfoundland, to St. Pierre, one of the Miquelon group of islands belonging to the French. The whole length of the line will be about two thousand three hundred miles, but the longest section-that between the Azores and Newfoundland-will not be more than eight hundred miles in extent. The distance across the Bay of Biscay is three hundred and sixty miles, and from Cape Finisterre to Azores Chemical Preservation of Statues.-This may be about seven hundred and eighty miles. The deepachieved by following the processes lately describ-est point of the route is three thousand seven ed at the French Academy. One of these methods hundred fathoms, and is between the Azores and is that of M. Dalemagne, who thinks that coating the Bank. Mr. Rowett produced a specimen of such objects with silica is quite sufficient to insure the cable which it is proposed to lay down The their preservation. In proof of this he calls at- telegraph wire is surrounded with a coating of intention to the circumstance that certain busts which dia-rubber, and this is inclosed within a spiral were submitted to the process of silicatization ten coil of hemp-a mode which Mr. Rowett mainyears ago are now in a state of perfect preserva- tained possessed great advantages over the outer tion, while others of the same age placed under covering of wire rope by which the Atlantic cable the ordinary conditions of the atmosphere, and was surrounded. Mr. Rowett explained that the even to which considerable attention had been great drawback hitherto in the use of india-rubber paid, are now in a state of more or less marked as an insulator had been that in the process of decay. manufacture it became mixed with foreign ingredients which were speedily acted upon by the salt-water, and the insulation destroyed. Recently, however, a mode had been discovered by which the india-rubber was preserved quite pure, and this would resist the action of the water. It was proposed also to preserve the hempen covering from decay by steeping it in a mixture of which Mr. Rowett was himself the inventor, and a testimonial to the efficacy of which he produced from Admiral Elliott. The weight of the cable proposed to be used was stated to be about 3 cwt. per mile, while that employed by the Atlantic Telegraph Company was between 15 cwt. and 16 cwt. Mr. Rowett expected that a superior cable could be constructed upon this plan for about £150 a mile, and the cost of the whole line he did not suppose would exceed £400,000. The company has obtained a treaty from the French government authorizing them to construct the line; and the money is only wanting, the capital required being £500,000, which it is proposed to raise by the issue of twenty-five thousand shares of £20 each.-English paper.

Relation of Periodic Times.-Mr. Finlayson, of Dover, points out the following singular proportion: The period of rotation of the earth on its axis is in the same proportion to the periodic time of the moon round the earth as that of the period of rotation of the sun on its axis is to the periodic time of Mars round the sun.

The Supposed Early Photographs.-The startling claims advanced in support of these photographs have melted into thin air. Based as they were on mere rumors and conjectures, little else indeed could have been expected; and yet how many were the uplifted hands and wondering eyes, and how loud the exclamations with which such claims were at first received! The impressions on metal appear to be comparatively modern productions by the process of Daguerre, and it is more than suspected that the paper pictures were produced by some clumsy, half-mechanical, half-secret process called in its day the polygraphic, which merely printed outlines previously made by an artist to be aftewards filled in by hand. The Mr. Price, too, whose statements originated all this fuss, has been proved quite unworthy of belief; and has, moreover, absconded to escape the unpleasant results of an imperfect appreciation of "meum et tuum," and the search of the detective police; while in con sequence of the abstracted papers containing certain family secrets, the angry representative of Matthew Boulton-to whose statements we owe our last piece of information concerning Mr. Price-heaps unsparing abuse on the head of Mr. Smith for his undue enthusiasm in the cause of scientific discovery. Sic transit gloria mundi!—Popular Science Review.

Telegraphic Communication with America.-A company has recently been started, under the

The Forces in Nature. "The concussion of one pound of hydrogen with eight pounds of oxygen is equal, in mechanical value, to the raising of forty-seven million pounds one foot high! I think I did not overrate matters when I said that the force of gravity, as exerted near the earth, was almost a vanishing quantity in comparison with these molecular forces; and bear in mind the distances which separate the atoms before combination-distances so small as to be utterly immeasurable; still it is in passing over these distances that the atoms acquire a velocity sufficient to cause them to clash with the tremendous energy indi

ART.

cated by the above numbers. After combination, | themselves in the path of the ice. Even pebbles the substance is in a state of vapor, which sinks to imbedded in masses of pudding-stone, but rising 212 deg., and afterward condenses to water. In sometimes above the level of the general surface, the first instance, the atoms fall together to form often have their northern side polished and the compound; in the next instance, the molecules scratched, while the southern one remains unof the compound fall together to form a liquid. touched.-Atlantic Monthly. The mechanical value of this act is also easily calculated: 9 pounds of steam, in falling to water, generate an amount of heat sufficient to raise 956x9-8703 lbs. of water 1 deg. F. Multiplying this number by 772, we have a product of 6,718,- The Chementi Pictures.-The controversy start716 foot-pounds [a foot-pound is a pound raiseded by Sir David Brewster concerning these picone foot high] as the mechanical value of the mere tures, and which he advanced and argued from as act of condensation. The next great fall of our 9 having been executed in the middle of the sevenlbs. of water is from the state of liquid to that teenth century for stereoscopic purposes, has been of ice, and the mechanical value of this act is recently revived in the pages of the British Jourequal to 993,564 foot-pounds. Thus our 9 lbs. of nal of Photography by Professor E. Emerson, in water, in its origin and progress, falls down three reply to a letter from Sir David published in the great precipices: the first fall is equivalent to the Philosophical Magazine for January last, which descent of a ton weight urged by gravity down a letter was itself a reply to remarks contained in precipice 22,320 feet high; the second fall is equal an article in the aforesaid British journal on "The to that of a ton down a precipice 2900 feet high; Perception of Relief," written by Professor Emerand the third is equal to the descent of a ton down son. Mr. Emerson states that copies made for him a precipice 433 feet high. I have seen the wild by hand from the photographs of these drawings stone-avalanches of the Alps, which smoke and convey an amount of relief neither greater nor thunder down the declivities with a vehemence less than that obtained from the photographs almost sufficient to stun the observer. I have also themselves, and gives, as illustrative of the ease seen snow-flakes descending so softly as not to with which even our much-talked of "own eyes" hurt the fragile spangles of which they were com- will deceive us, the fact that he has frequently posed; yet, to produce, from aqueous vapor, a mounted "two identical or right-eye views of the quantity of that tender material which a child same scene side by side, and never failed to get a could carry, demands an exertion of energy com- verdict, even from very skillful observers, that petent to gather up the shattered blocks of the they exhibited stereoscopic effect, which was imlargest stone-avalanche I have ever seen, and possible." The Professor says, if Chementi had pitch them to twice the height from which they executed works which must have been such startfall."-Tyndal on Heat. ling novelties, it is neither likely that his discovery would have become lost, nor that only one specimen of it would have been now in existence, although we think both these circumstances might be shown, by historical evidence, to be by no means improbable. The supposed stereoscope, bearing_date 1670, advanced in evidence by Sir David Brewster, is asserted to be no stereoscope, and the size of the Chementi drawings, namely,

Journeyings of the Rocks.-The mineralogical character of the loose materials forming the American drift leaves no doubt that the whole movement, with the exception of a few local modifications easily accounted for by the lay of the land, was from north to south, all the fragments not belonging to the localities where they occur being readily traced to rocks in situ to the north of their present resting-places. The further one journeys from their origin, the more extraordinary does the presence of these bowlders become. It strikes one strangely to find even in New-England fragments of rock from the shores of Lake Superior; but it is still more impressive to meet with masses of northern rock on the prairies of Illinois or Iowa. One may follow these bowlders to the fortieth degree of latitude, beyond which they become more and more rare, while the finer drift alone extends further south.

It is not only, however, by tracking the bowlders back to their origin in the north that we ascertain the starting-point of the whole mass; we have another kind of evidence to this effect, already alluded to in the description of the roches moutonnees. Wherever the natural surface of any hillhaving a steep southern slope, is exposed, the marks are always found to be very distinct on the northern side and entirely wanting on the south ern one, showing, that, as in the case of many of the roches moutonnees in Switzerland, the mass moved up the northern slope, forcing its way against it, grinding and furrowing the northern face of the hill as it moved over it, but bridging the opposite side in its descent without coming into contact with it. This is true, not only of hills, but of much slighter obstacles which presented

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about 'twelve inches high, by eight and a half broad," is certainly evidence on the side of the Professor. After giving very imperfect wood-cuts of the drawings, and advancing the publicly expressed opinions of various gentlemen in support of his views, Mr. Emerson winds up with a long series of measurements, which, taken in conjunction with the principles governing the perception of solidity, at least show that if these drawings were intentionally stereoscopic, their execution could not have been based on such scientific calculations. Our own opinion of this controversy is simply that it is a very useless one, because the evidence on either side is insufficient for the formation of any specially useful or important conclusions.-Popular Science Review.

New Method of Taking Portraits.—A new era in portraiture is predicted from the discovery of a Mr. Swan, who presents a solid, life-like likeness of any one inclosed in a cube of crystal. The effect of the new process is to exhibit the subject of the portraiture with life-like verisimilitude, in natural relief. You take up a small case, and look through what appears to be a little window, and there stands or sits before you, in a pleasantlylighted chamber, a marvelous effigy of a lady or gentleman, as the case may be. The projection of the nose, the moulding of the lips, and all the gra