regards marriage, but also in revenging in- | and lines. On reaching home, the settler juries, in imputing witchcraft, and in the fights that so constantly occur. We presume, without dogmatizing, that the aborigine, in his anxiety to avoid family in termarriage, an anxiety found in many savage races, and in him most intense, was slowly building up a caste system, and made it easier to recollect the rules, and more difficult to practise deceit by enforc ing food regulations; but the extension of the system to all nature is, so far as we know, unique. Is it undeveloped tribal worship, or what, which makes a clan claim the sun, while discarding the moon? Yet the same people who recollect all these things recollect no traditions, and betray a sense of physical oppression under education which occasionally kills them. They die or run back to the woods, obviously to get rid of the burden. They have an art like that of children, making pictures of natural objects in the caves and on rocks, pictures of the rudest kind, but always recognizable, and they ornament both weapons and canoes, but have arrived at no idea of writing, though-and this is, we think, the only unchildlike thing we have found about them, the only practice suggesting indefinite possibilities of advance they have arrived at a means of sending messages intelligible to others than those for whom the message was intended. Tribes are often summoned by message. These messages were sent by notches on sticks, and are assumed by many who have seen them to be of the rudest kind, but it is possible, though not proved, that this is an assumption, and that some natives, probably very few, can carve something like a letter. At least, if it is not so, Mr. John Moore Davis, whom the author quotes as trustworthy, has drawn very largely on his imagination: went to the black's camp, and delivered the letter to the father, who thereon called together all the blacks who were living with him, and to the settler's great surprise, read off from the stick a diary of the proceedings of the party day by day, from their departure from the Edward River till their arrival at the new station, describing accurately the country through which they had travelled and the places where they had camped each night. Before Europeans landed, the aborigines had discovered fire and the use of cooking, but had never learned how to boil, or constructed the simplest instrument of pottery, or indeed anything to hold water, except hollowed wood. Their contrivance for creating fire — the rapid twirling of a stick in some dry wood was probably discovered by accident; but fire once made, they guarded it very jealously, the torch, as we may call it, being carried by women in all their marches. Like children, they refer always to the old for guidance, yet without creating any form of government; and like some children, they are a prey to endless unreal terrors and spasms of cruel excitement. They are always dreading something done against them somewhere by sorcerers, and go sometimes so nearly mad with grief, that in a sort of hysteria they begin fighting and kill one another. They have arrived, like children, at the notion of property in anything due to an exertion-as, for example, in the game they have struck-and they make partnerships for sharing game; but though they have tribal districts, they have no notion of property in land. Suicide is as unknown among them as among children. They have not, in fact, discovered the inevitabil ity of death, and do not, Mr. Smyth affirms, believe that death occurs naturally at all. Its sole origin is witchcraft, the aborigines not conceiving of any reason why the machine should stop of itself; and some of their weird ceremonials suggest a permanent doubt whether, even after witchcraft has done its work, the men really are dead: The late Mr. John Moore Davis stated in a letter to me, in 1874, that when on a visit to Benalla he became acquainted with the fact that the aborigines have the means of communicating with each other at a distance, and that peculiarly-formed notches on a stick con- Sometimes a long speech is delivered over vey their ideas in a manner similar to the the grave by some man of consideration in the knots on a cord used in the days of old by the tribe. Mr. Bridgman, of Mackay, in QueensMexicans. He adds that a friend of his, land, states in a letter to me that on one occahaving decided on forming a new station, sion he heard a funeral oration delivered over started from the Edward River with a lot of the grave of a man who had been a great warcattle, having with him several blacks. When rior which lasted more than an hour. The the settler was about to return home, one of corpse was borne on the shoulders of two the young natives asked him if he would carry men, who stood at the edge of the grave. a letter to his-the black's-father, and on During the discourse he observed that the expressing his willingness to do so, the young orator spoke to the deceased as if he were still man gave him a piece of stick, about one foot living and could hear his words. Burial in in length, which was covered with notches | the district in which Mr. Bridgman lives is only a formal ceremony, and not an absolute disposal of the remains. After lying in the ground for three months or more, the body is disinterred, the bones are cleaned, and packed in a roll of pliable bark, the outside of which is painted and ornamented with strings of beads and the like. This, which is called ngobera, is kept in the camp with the living. If a stranger who has known the deceased comes to the camp, the ngobera is brought out towards evening, and he and some of the near relations of the dead person sit down by it, and wail and cut themselves for half an hour. Then it is handed to the stranger, who takes it with him and sleeps by the side of it, returning it in the morning to its proper custodian. Women and children who die, Mr. Bridgman says, are usually burnt. It may be, as they believe in ghosts, and in some sort of future life in the stars, that they think the spirit lingers on earth as long as its earthly temple survives, as Egyptians thought; but they either will not, or cannot, communicate their halfformed ideas on these subjects with sufficient definiteness. These strange people, who seem to have reached their limit early, just as the Chinese reached it late, are perishing so fast that they will speedily be only a memory. Small-pox and other diseases kill out the wilder tribes, and those "black fellows" who come among the whites seem unable to withstand the influence of their own sense of incompetence, which often produces a deep melancholy unknown among the larger-brained and more cheerful negroes. There are, Mr. Smyth thinks, not above forty-five hundred left in all Victoria, and they are rapidly dying out, a sad specimen of a people perishing without a use in the world. They have no past and no present, and no future; have apparently done nothing for mankind. They came, and they are, and they will go, just as might be said of all humanity, if the materialist's theory were proved beyond all question. How long they have been there is utterly unknown, and cannot even be guessed. It must have been ages upon ages, for On the coast of Victoria there appear in various parts, what at first sight one would suppose to be raised beaches, and if only a slight examination be made of these, their true character is not discovered. But instead of lying in regular and connected layers, they occur in heaps, beyond high-water mark, and they are always opposite to rocks laid bare at low water. Moreover, they are found to consist mainly of one kind of shell-namely, the muscle (Mytilus Dunkeri), with a small proportion of the mutton-fish (Haliotis nivosa), | the limpet (Pattella tramoserica), the periwinkle (Lunella undulata), and the cockle (Cardium tenuicostatum). These accumulations resemble in many respects the kjök-kenmöddings of Denmark. With the shells are stones bearing distinctly the appearance of having been subjected to the action of fire, and there are also numerous pieces of charcoal imbedded in the mounds. They are visible all along the coast where it is low, but never in any other position than that described; and when opened up, are seen to be formed of heaps not regularly superimposed one on the other. Those that have been frequented most recently exhibit clearly the mode of accumulation, and one can trace the old heaps upwards to the last, which is generally found on the highest part of the mound. The area covered by some of the largest of the mounds exceeds an acre in extent; and the shape of the heaps of shells composing them, which are separated by layers of sand, indicates their origin. The enormous period of time during which the natives have assembled on the shores to gather and cook the shellfish accounts for the great number and extent of the mounds. And yet it is extremely improbable that they are true aborigines, for all the evidence points to an immigration: It is proper to call attention to the fact that no works of art have been found in the recent drifts of Victoria, and these drifts have been largely and widely explored by gold-miners. preceded the formation of the gravels that Was Australia unpeopled during the ages that form low terraces in every valley, and the beds of soft volcanic ash that yet cover grass-grown surfaces? If peopled, why do we not find some evidence-a broken stone tomahawk or a stone spear-head — in some of the most recent accumulations? Their stone implements are not found in caves or in the mud of lagoons with the bones of the gigantic marsupials, or any of the now extinct predaceans that have their living representatives in the island of devil (Sarcophilus ursinus), the great kangaroo (Macropus Titan), the Thylacoleo, the Nototherium, and the Diprotodon, and those of a reptile (Megalania prisca) allied to the lace-lizards of Australia, are found abundantly in mud flats in various parts of Australia; but nothing has been discovered to show that the continent was inhabited by man when these now well-preserved relics were clothed with flesh, and the animals were feeding on the plains and in the streams, which were as well fitted then as now, as shown by the fruits and seeds that have been discovered, to afford the means of support to a savage people. What was the condition of Australia when the flint-implement makers of the drift period were living? Probably an unpeopled tract, where the then nearly extinct volcanoes shed at times over the landscape a feeble light, and the lion gnawing Tasmania. The bones of the Tasmanian From The Spectator. THE RUIN OF SZEGEDIN. the bones of a kangaroo was watched with | caped them. The destruction of the jackal-like eyes by the native dog, ready to eat Hungarian city, Szegedin, which has been up such scraps as his powerful enemy might going on for nearly a week, is in many leave when his hunger was appeased. It is almost certain that during the period of the We cannot recall the destruction of a Euways an almost unparallelled catastrophe. large carnivorous marsupials, man was not there to contest with the lion the right to the ropean city by water before. The destruction of house property is probably as proceeds of the chase. great as in the earthquake of Lisbon, and though the loss of life is much smaller probably not a fourth-it has still been very great. The officials make as light of it as they can, but the best observers place the loss at four thousand, while the expulsion and ruin of a population as great as that of Norwich, thousands of whom passed forty-eight hours in a marsh flooded with ice-cold water, without food, or firing, or shelter, represents a frightful aggregate of human misery. The destruction, too, was so complete. A city of seventy thou sand people is, on the Continent, a firstclass city; and Szegedin was a prosperous place, full of large warehouses, with a great trade in wool, and corn, and timber, and inhabited by a people so well off that they often refuse aid, and that an English reporter, observing them, declares that their prosperity has developed in them an almost American self-reliance. All Hungary has felt the shock, and the Hungarian Parliament seemed for a few hours as if it would become uncontrollable with grief and rage, grief for the people, and rage at a certain want of foresight which the majority thought they perceived in the official arrangements. The total destruc. tion of such a city is almost unique, or quite unique, in European annals; yet the interest felt in the occurrence here has been somewhat languid, and the subscriptions in aid, though liberal as far as individuals are concerned, have not risen to the dimensions which in England indicate that public feeling has been stirred. They do not approach the subscriptions for the survivors of the "Princess Alice." There has been nothing to check the flow of feeling. Hungary has been always popular in England; the people of Szegedin have be haved with great patience and courage the cases of incendiarism being, we imag ine, the result of efforts to save the insur ances, which were not granted against water, but against fire-and the place, though little known here, was civilized enough to be within the range of Western sympathy. Nevertheless, that sympathy has been comparatively tame. We presume the reason is that the English people, nearly exempt as they are from serious floods a few inches of water "out "" on the meadows is a "flood" here - do THERE is a certain apathy in the English mind about catastrophes caused by floods which it is very curious to notice. They excite less interest and less attention than any other kind of great calamity. So incuriously are they watched, that people forget how often they occur in some parts of the world, and do not realize to themselves in the least that though far less dramatic, they are often more destructive than earthquakes. The great floods which often ravage parts of Louisiana are less noticed than the most ordinary incidents in America, though a city like New Orleans, almost made by English capital, only lives by favor of its dykes; and though there is no lack of the sacer vates; Swiss floods are dismissed in a paragraph; and even the French floods, which threaten whole districts and great towns, raise no serious discussion. The flood of 1875 which so nearly destroyed Thoulouse, though minutely described at the time, is totally forgotten, and even the flood of Deccan-Shabazpore, which, in 1876, swept away half a million of British subjects, is a vague historic recollection. That was far and away the greatest catastrophe of our time, as regards the destruction of life and property; was perfectly described by a most competent authority, Sir Richard Temple, and was attended by circumstances so unique as should have stamped it into the minds of the whole people. Never before in the history of our race was there such an incident, a British county, inhabited by nearly six hundred thousand souls, depopulated in a night by the rush of a stormwave, the few survivors, some thousands, owing their lives to being flung | upon the thorns of the spiky trees abounding in the district. Yet the catastrophe was forgotten in a month; it was not introduced into the Indian paragraph of the queen's speech, and we venture to say that most of our readers will recall the event, which was minutely described in our own columns, with a sensation of surprise that its occurrence should have so nearly es not realize what a flood is, or what fifteen | nature and the desert. The slowness of feet of water in a city of sun-baked bricks mankind to quit homes where they can on a marshy foundation actually means. live pleasantly in the intervals of disaster They would understand an earthquake, but is incurable, and the people of the new the slow collapse of a city in the water, the Szegedin will sleep without minding the quick saturation of the soil, the yielding of Theiss, and without watching the dykes the foundations, and then the toppling which protect them much more carefully down, hour by hour, of houses, usually in than of old. Villages built at the foot of patches at a time, according to the condi- reservoirs do not empty for fear of the tion of the soil or previously unnoticed flood, nor are Swiss villages deserted in differences of level, does not come clearly positions where the avalanche must come home to their imaginations. They do not some day. The mass of mankind look feel that a flood like this accumulates on forward very little, and seem quite incapaits victims' heads the suffering caused by ble of imagining that the habitual rule of an epidemic, the horror of whole families the nature around them will ever be perishing at once, and the suffering broken; that the earthquake which has caused by a grand financial catastrophe. not occurred for centuries will happen in Thousands must have been made childless their time, or that the dyke which has been and pauperized by one and the same blow. | safe for a year may any day give passage It requires effort to think out processes to the waters. They think, if they think at men have not seen though one day they all, that they will be forewarned, and leave may see something like it on the banks of cataclysms, as they leave sudden death, out the Thames and they do not make the of their calculations. And we do not know effort. There is not, that we know of, any- that they are wrong. A flood which where in England a place quite under the sweeps away a city seems an awful thing conditions of Szegedin, planted in a marsh, to the on-looker who thinks of thousands with a river the bed of which has been at once, but it is to the single sufferer raised like the bed of the Po, in parts of only equivalent to a fire, which may happen its course, by continuous embanking, till its to any individual. He might be drowned floor is distinctly above the plain, and without a flood. Insurance will guard the safety depends entirely on the solidity of property, care will guard the dykes, and the dykes. The explanation does not quite the chance of a violent death to a dweller satisfy us, for there are close analogies in Szegedin marsh is probably not arithbetween a flood and a shipwreck, and in metically greater by any perceptible fracshipwrecks the English interest is of the tion than the chance to a dweller anywhere keenest character; but it is the only one else. His prospect of drowning must be in which we can see any probability. a minute fraction, compared with the pros pect of any captain of a coasting collier, and the wharfingers have no difficulty in finding captains for their rotten hulls. No fear of fire deeply alarms a great city, though most great cities would burn, and a great fire would be by many degrees worse than a great flood. The great fire of London made a deep impression on Charles II.'s generation, but the impression was not one of fear of great fires, which were risked just as much after the calamity as before, and no more provided against than the recurrence of the great storm of a century ago, which shook the minds of that generation more than any calamity is ever known to have done. The human mind, in truth, accepts these great cataclysmal dangers as part of the order of things, and by a beneficial instinct refuses to consider them, or to waste energy in an insurance which may be all in vain. An inhabitant of Szegedin may be drowned, and so may any other person, and the fact that if he is drowned Szegedin will be drowned too, does not increase to his It is believed that Szegedin will be rebuilt in the same place, with stronger dykes; and if so, the population will flow back, and then go on increasing as before. The site chose itself, as it were, and, like all self-chosen sites, will not be deserted. The junction of the Theiss and the Maros in a country like Hungary, where watercarriage is everything, the vast spaces rendering all other carriage too dear, is too convenient a spot to be abandoned, and all experience proves that no fear of cataclysms recurrent at uncertain intervals will deter ordinary folk from the pursuit of a livelihood. The yellow fever does not empty New Orleans. No one quits the mainland of the Orkneys because it was once swept by a storm-wave, and might be again. The wave-swept island of DeccanShabazpore will be filled up. The people have gathered like ants for ages at the foot of Vesuvius, and if Pompeii were destroyed once more would gather again, rather than surrender the warm slopes where the olive flourishes so well, back to 2 V mind either the proximity or the magni- | critics call "mutilation," but which with tude of his risk. One Szegediner has but more propriety is called "topiary" work, one life, and so Szegedin, what with sub- from the Latin topiarius, shaped by cutscriptions, and grants, and drafts on the ting, the word being used in this sense by inhabitants' hoards-for their farmhouses Pliny, Vitruvius, and Cicero. But if I do are outside the flood. will be rebuilt, not defend the taste through thick and probably to be destroyed again, for the thin, I am prepared to admit that much inhabitants are not rich enough to rebuild may be said in its favor, and it is far from on piles, or we fear, to cut the mighty my intention to denounce it as either exreservoirs and build the lined canals travagant or foolish. It may be true, as I which would enable them on a stormy believe it is, that the natural form of a tree night like that of the 12th inst. to carry off is the most beautiful possible for that parthe overplus of the waters. Strengthen- ticular tree, but it may happen that we do ing the dykes is no final precaution, for not always want the most beautiful form, when that is done, the bed of the river al- but one of our own designing, and expresways rises, and the floods become even sive of our ingenuity. So far as authority more dangerous and severe. Nothing but bears upon the subject, it is all in favor of new channels for the water is of any use, topiary, for the Romans recognized the and the expense of building them in a cutting of trees into architectural forms as marshy delta, without a stone in it, to the an integral and essential part of the art needful height, would probably be too of horticulture. We have Shakespeare great even for the wealthy municipality quoted as an authority for anything and which Szegedin, if it were made tolerably everything, and especially in defence of safe, ought to become. Even France has "the natural in gardening. But the not regulated her rivers yet, though Napo- garden of Shakespeare's time was more or leon said it "concerned his honor that less a topiary garden; in fact the real "old rivers, like revolutions, should keep within | English garden," whence we are supposed their banks,❞—and Hungary is to France by a certain few narrow enthusiasts to as Shadwell to Belgravia. Money granted, derive all the flowers that are worth grow. the Austrian engineers or Sir John Hawk-ing, and not a single weed that we might shaw would soon render Szegedin fairly safe; but the State is poor just now, and a city just swept away is in no condition to mortgage its future industry. The old expedient of raising the dykes will, we imagine, be continued, and some day a new finance minister will be scolded as M. Szapary has been, not for not cutting channels for the overplus of water, but for not providing boats to carry away the people. The want of boats, not the condition of the bull, is always the first popular complaint, when a ship gets water-logged. From The Gardener's Magazine. THE yew-tree candlesticks and box-tree cups and saucers, and the larger work in the way of trees fancifully shaped by knives and shears, have been extremely useful to the traders in cheap indignation, for to rail against them is easy work, and may sometimes give a show of wisdom to people who are exceptionally shallow. Having enunciated an article of faith of my own to the effect that the most beautiful form for any tree is its own natural form, it will scarcely be expected of me to defend the taste that finds delight in what the modern with advantage discard, this old-fashioned 66 But he approves of arched alleys and "pretty Pyramides," and "Broad Plates of Round Colored Glasse, gilt, for the Sunne to Play upon," as well |