or traditional. If we put the Orlando Furiso, the Gierusalemme Liberata, Robinson Crusoe, and Boccaccio's tales together, and hand them down as the sole relics of our civilization to posterity, what would they make of them? Five thousand years hence suppose any of these books to be discussed by a foreign nation of say highly civilized blacks, civilized as highly, or more highly, in some different way-for the forms of civilization are apparently endless, teste Egypt, China, Japan-than we now are. Suppose them even more wary, more critical, more scientific, indefinitely more ardent in the pursuit of truth, yet even with the humblest spirit of honest and faithful inquiry, it seems almost impossible that they could get over the preliminary difficulty of their ignorance whether the author, whoever he was, invented his story, and if he invented how much he invented, where fiction began and truth ended. How could they, except with knowledge which we can with difficulty conceive, say "This which reads so simply is a bitter sarcasm, that which is so vehemently told is pure imagination; that, again, is plain fact, and this, playful irony found Arabian Nights grew. Nor need this appear strange. The original of the Arabian Nights is probably separated by quite as wide an interval from modern Asiatic life as Homer from modern Greekdom. We know infinitely more about the modern Greeks than we do about the modern Orientals, at all events we understand them infinitely better, for they stand on the same plane of civilization, that is to say, within the same focus of ideas as ourselves. All we know of modern Greek life does not of itself throw any light on the authorship of Homer, or on the state of society out of which the Homeric poems sprang. Yet the literary filiation from Homer downwards through ancient Greek literature to modern times is perhaps the most luminous instance of literary filiation on record, and there is perhaps nothing to compare with it in history except the filiation we are here speaking of the literary and social relation of the Bible to modern European thought. Nor does any knowledge we may have of contemporary Asiatic life seem to afford more than the most general help. In the first place, the complexity of the existing Asiatic life is immense. In the next place, it is surprising how few Eng-ed upon twenty different threads of thought?" lishmen, even after a long and intimate acquaintance with Oriental life, ever seem to have penetrated beyond the mere outward shell and husk of the Oriental character. But it is precisely the relation of the inner idea of a people to the external evolutions of that idea in literary monuments which it would be interesting to recover, and which it is impossible to recover without penetrating from the circumference of a nation's perspective to its centre. Mr. Lane indeed tells us in his learned work on the Arabian Nights that the Arab sheikhs about Cairo delight in the Arabian Nights, and are minutely familiar with them, and that they are excellent commentators with regard to the manners and customs and religious allusions, mostly, it would seem, Mahommedan-contained in them. But what does not appear is in what light the Arabian Nights affect the modern Arab reader? Is it as Homer affected the contemporaries of Homer, or the contemporaries of Pericles, or the contemporaries of Lucian? Is it as Chaucer, for instance, affected Englishmen of the days of Chaucer, or of the days of Elizabeth, or of our own day? This is clearly a necessary inquiry before we can apply contemporary Oriental life and feeling, supposing us to understand it, as a key to the exposition of the Arabian Nights. But this is only a preliminary. We ourselves know well enough what impression Chaucer's works make upon us. Yet, instead of abandoning ourselves to random impression created upon us by their lazy perusal, an impression compounded of our own modern ideas flavored by his antique language, if we set to work in earnest to reconstruct the real temper, and feeling, and thought, the internal civilization of his day upon which his poetry blossomed as a natural and necessary fruit, how difficult the task is, even for us looking straight back in the line of our own familiar growth! Apply, again, the same canon to Gulliver's Travels. How innocently grave and infinitely child-like are the most poisonous sarcasms, how simple and matter-of-fact is the narrative, how candid and truthful to all appearance is the narrative of the most monstrous fictions, the art rising just in the proportion of the apparent truth and candor, and who could unravel all these elements looking at them out of a different civilization? Again, if we look at the question of the authorship it will make a difference whether the stories were written by one man or more, in one generation or several, whether they are fictions properly so called and purely imaginative, or fictions founded on a subtratum of fact, and that fact contemporary Upon this principle it is that the Arabian Nights are a perpetual source of speculative wonder. No book ever took possession of the world without, so to speak, an antecedent national pedigree of overwhelming literary power and force? No savage could have written Robinson Crusoe. All the bitterness of a nation's lifetime is in Gulliver's Travels, and it took the concentrated literary energy of antecedent centuries to inspire Swift with the very candor and transparency of his livid animosity. A whole antecedent phase of civilization came to a head in Cervantes' Don Quixote. The loves and hatreds, the myriad thoughts of centuries of bitterness, and suffering, and joy and ridicule, and passion, and contempt, are all condensed in the production of that book. And is it conceivable that the Arabian Nights with all their apparently elemental simplicity are nothing more than an assemblage of mere childish fictions, with no other meaning of any kind than the surface of each line conveys? To us this supposition is simply inconceivable. If, however, we are asked what do you conceive they really mean, we must confess our simple ignorance. We read them with wonder and helpless speculation. As an illustration, however, of what we mean, consider this passage taken at random from Gulhver's Travels. Gulliver is vindicating the reputation of the Lilliputian lady whose coach and six he was in the habit of lifting upon his table: "I am here obliged,' says he, to vindicate the reputation of an excellent lady, who was an innocent sufferer on my account. The treasurer took a fancy to be jealous of his wife, from the malice of some evil tongues, who informed him that her grace had taken a violent affection for my person, and the court scandal ran for some time that she once came privately to my lodging. This I solemnly declare to be a most infamous falsehood, without any grounds further than that her grace was pleased to treat me with all innocent marks of freedom and friendship. I own she came often to my house, but always publicly, nor ever without three more in the coach, who were usually her sister, and young daughter, and some particular acquaintance. But this was common to many other ladies of the Court. And I will appeal to my servants round whether they at any time saw a coach at my door without their knowing what persons were in it. On those occasions, when a servant had given me notice, my custom was to go immediatly to the door, and after paying my respects to take up the coach and two horses very carefully in my hands-for if there were six horses the postilion always unharnessed four-and place them on a table, where I had fixed a moveable rim quite round of five inches high, to prevent accidents, and I have often had four coaches and horses at once on my table, full of company, while I sat in my chair leaning my face towards them, and while I was engaged with one set the coachman would gently drive the others round my table. I have passed many an afternoon very agreeably in these conversations. But I defy the treasurer or his two informers. will name them, and let them make the best of it," &c., &c. I Five thousand years hence what will the best scholar, nursed in a different civilization, make of this passage beyond the bare sequence of physical ideas? How will he unravel the fun, the irony, the bitter ridicule, poured by the bitterest of Tory pamphleteers upon the, in his eyes, most contemptible of Lilliputians-Whig princelings and hop-o'-my-thumbs in their relations with what he considered really great men, himself among the number? Here is a passage taken equally at random from the Arabian Nights. The tailor is telling a story about the chattering barber: "Think what a situation was mine! What could I do with so cruel a tormentor? Give him three pieces of gold,' said I to the slave who managed the expenses of my house, and send him away, that I may be rid of him; I will not be shaved to-day.'-' My master,' cried the barber at hearing this, what am I to understand by these words? It was not I who came to seek you, it was you who ordered me to come; and that being the case, I swear by the faith of a Mussulman I will not quit your house till I have shaved you. If you do not know my value it is no fault of mine. Your late honored father was more just to my merits. Each time when he sent for me to bleed him he used to make me sit down by his side, and then it was delightful to hear the clever talk with which I entertained him.'" And so on. It so happens that in this story the comedy of boredom, let us say, is distinctly marked. But behind the simple, elementary, obvious comedy, who can tell all the intricate by-play of highly allusive and irrecoverable sarcasm which exists? In the passage quoted from Swift, there is on the surface a gentle vein of almost childlike comedy. Beneath this slender film there is Swift himself, wallowing-wallowing is the word-in all the Το virulence and passion of his age aud time. us the superfic ia glaze is still transparent. What will it be five thousand years hence? Butler's Hudibras already requires elaborate study, and many an antiquarian who piques himself on his penetration may, time upon time, be a hundred miles from the true mark of the author. To return to Mr. Dalziel's new edition of the Arabian Nights, we lately had occasion to remark upon the very great merit of the illustrations. They are gems in their kind, real works of art, containing an immense amount of thought, care, imagination, and wonderfully in harmony with the spirit of the tales themselves. They are in conception and expression mellow, childlike without being childish, surely one of the best features of good art, and totally free from the affectation of young sentiment. They have the best characteristics of the modern English realism, without any of its modern conventionalities, nor have they any of the conventionality of the late euphuistic school of English engraving, which reached its height in the hackneyed Oriental album. It is not too much to say that Mr. Dalziel's Arabian Nights constitute a new phase in the art of illustration. But having said this, we must repeat our criticism, that the predominant fault, throughout the earlier part of the volume especially, is a certain monotony of mechanical effect from the rough contrast of white and black which impairs the delicacy of the result. The defect wears away, however, towards the end of the volume. Thus in the illustration of the lady, showing Alnuchar the hidden treasure, there is not a trace of this, and a more exquisitely beautiful female figure in every detail, the firmnes and delicacy of the bust, the ripe and nervous beauty of the arm, the beauty of the foot, the grace and modest gentleness of the whole, we never remember to have seen. It is drawn by Mr. Tenniel. Many of the plates are evident copies from nature. Two will strike almost every one. One is a likeness of Mr. Leighton, the artist, wrapped in adoration of a lovely Jewess playing on the guitar. It is drawn by Mr. Thomas Dalziel, and the plate is called, "The Concert at the Palace of Schemselnihar." The other, also by Mr. Dalziel, is a photographic likeness of the Baroness Alphonse de Rothschild in her girlhood. In the plate, "Prince Amgiad and the Wicked Lady," the expression of female wickedness is well defined, a dry, cold, haughty, yet flaming and resplendent wickedness, as of a stalactite of cruelty, lit up by the blaze of a volcano. Did Mr. Tenniel imagine the woman, or does he know her? The Life of Robert Stephenson, F.R.S., late President of the institution of Civil Engineers. By H. JEAFFRESON, Barrister-at-Law, with descriptive chapters on some of his most important professional works by WILLIAM POLE, F.R.S., M.I. C.E. Two vols. Longman & Co. 1864.-The plan of double editorship of these volumes is most judicious. To Mr. Jeaffreson has been intrusted the personal history of these distingnished men. Though professing to be the life of Robert, a very large part of the working career, and much of the character of the father, are necessarily brought again before the public. Mr. Jeaffreson seems to have been very diligent and painstaking in tracing the early career of the father. During the latter part of 1860 he spent a great deal of time in North of his son. umberland and Durham, gathering material from the oral communications of relatives, from the reminiscences of men who had been the companions or patrons of either George or Robert, from parish registers, or the account-books of collieries or factories. From these materials he has been able to correct so many errors which have appeared in other biographies of the elder Stephenson, that he found it necessary to rewrite his life so far as it was mixed up with the history Mr. Pole undertook to describe the great works in which Robert was from time to time engaged. This portion of the book takes up the life of Robert Stephenson at 40, and carries it on till its close at 55. The "Battle of the Ganges,' "Iron Bridges," "The Britannia Bridge, ""The High-level Bridge at Newcastle," "Chester and Holyhead Railway, " "As Politician," "In London Society," "The Great Victoria Bridge," are some of the subjects selected by the biographer; but the second volume in reality takes in the history of the railway system with all its fights before Parliament and with the public, together with a graphic description of the difficulties which had to be overcome when crossing rivers, or making levels to suit the prejudices of people, or to contend with natural causes. There are excellent portraits of George and Robert, and engravings of the Britannia, the Conway, and the High-level bridge at Newcastle, and of the Victoria bridge at Montreal. The book is in the highest degree interesting, and well worthy of careful study by all who have faith in steady industry and enthusiasm.-Popular Science. The Hillyards and the Burtons: A story of two families. By HENRY KINGSLEY. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1865. The name of the popular author of this volume will secure for it a large number of readers., Cape Cod (the same publishers). By HENRY D. THOREAU, 1865. All who have read Thoreau's previous works will be likely to read this new volume. There is a peculiar fascination about his pen, especially when he describes natural objects and scenery. Poems. R. W. EMERSON. Essays. By R. W. EMERSON. First and Second Series. The same publishers, 1865. These volumes belong to the blue and gold series and are brought out in the exquisite style which characterizes it. We are not among Emerson's special admirers, but there are in these Poems, and especially in the volume of Essays, many beautiful gems of thought. SCIENCE. Meteors on the Sun's Surface. It will be remembered that a few years ago, while viewing the sun through a telescope, Mr. Carrington perceived a meteor passing across the disc. This was at his observatory at Redhill; but the appearance was independently seen and described by Mr. Hodgson, at London. A similar phenomenon was noticed by Mr. Brodie, of Uckfield, at 10:30 A. M. of October 2d. The length of its path in the field of view was about one minute of arc. the breadth of the head about four or five seconds of arc, and the duration of its visi bility about three-tenths of a second. It first appeared at the lower part of the field of view, and passed nearly vertically towards the centre. It had a slightly curved tail, with two very considerable "serrations" on its eastern edge. Mr. Brodie describes it as a very brilliant body, far surpassing in lustre that of the sun itself. As the telescope has an object-glass of 8 inches aperture, and the eye-piece specially adapted for looking at the sun, and found to be in good order, there can be no doubt in respect to the reality of the appearance.-Popular Science. Bright Band round the Moon's Edge in Solar Eclipses. Professor Challis recurs to this subject in the last number of the Astronomical Society's notices. He now admits with Professor Airy that this bright band can not be explained by refraction through a lunar atmosphere. He has examined three of the photographs taken of the last solar eclipse by Professor Alexander, and finds that, when they are looked at too closely or too distant, for distinct vision, a white band not only appears round the edge of the moon, increasing in intensity towards the cusps, but also in the interior of the sun's border. On viewing them with distinct vision, the bands, however, disappeared entirely. But at the same time a narrow luminous fringe, not of uniform breadth or brightness (the latter increasing towards the limb), was seen surrounding the moon, but could not be detected on the sun. He likewise tried the effect of pasting a piece of the dark photographic paper across the bright lune, and also saw the luminous band at its edges. Professor Challis is of opinion that the bands and the fringe are different phenomena, the former being due to indistinct vision, while the latter is plainly seen. It is clear that it is not due to photographic effect, as it has been seen by eye-observation, both by Mr. De La Rue and Professor Argelander. It has been stated, however, that the same sort of fringe is sometimes observed in photographs of mountain scenery along the dark outlines, and it has been surmised that it is due to the illuminations of the atmosphere from light reflected beyond the dark boundary from the innumerable facets of objects. He is of opinion that the corona and red flames can not be accounted for by the reflection of the light of the photosphere from the solar atmosphere, but thinks that the ether in its neighborhood may be so disturbed that it may become luminous, and adduces the great height of the Aurora Borealis as a case in point, which is sometimes found to be much greater than the supposed limits of the earth's atmosphere.— Popular Science. Value of Sewage as a Manure.-It is well that the farming world should know that, though the sewage of large towns contains many of the ingredients of plants, and will, on the first application to a soil produce an increased crop, it is, nevertheless, not to be regarded as a true manure. Sewage does not contain all the mineral ingredients of plants, and hence can not be depended on by the agriculturist for the restoration of the plant-ashes to the soil. These facts have very recently been urged upon the attention of the English public by Baron Liebig, who addressed a long letter upon the subject to Lord Robert Montagu, M.P. In what may be termed its natural state, says the Baron, sewage is not a universal manure like stable dung, which is efficacious at all times and in all localities, but a special manure, the continued application of which tends to impoverish the land. Stable dung contains all, a special manure only some, of the elements which ought to be restored to the soil in order to make it permanently fertile. Peruvian guano, for example, belongs to the class of special manures; and experience has shown that in certain countries (eg., Germany and Scotland), the application of guano to meadow land, which produced, in the first year, enormous crops of grass or hay, had later no effect at all; and that the same man who at first overrated the use of guano, eventually cursed its employment. Sewage contains ammonia, potash, and phosphoric acid, like guano, but phosphoric acid in much smaller proportions. On a soil rich (in its natural state) in phosphoric acid, sewage will have an excellent effect; it will produce, for instance, large crops of grass, turnips, and corn, if the soil supplies the quantity of phosphoric acid wanting in the sewage; but, as in each sucessive crop a certain quantity of phosphoric acid is abstracted, the total quantity in the soil is, by continual application of the sewage, gradually diminishing every year, and a time must arrive when the phosphoric acid will be insufficient for further crops, and when sewage will cease to produce its former effects. Such being the probable results of the application of sewage per se, there are two things to be done: Firstly, it must be made intelligible to all that sewage matter in its natural state does not replace stable-manure, and that if used exclusively it will produce abundant crops only for a time; secondly, the farmer must be made acquainted with the names of those ingredients which it will be necessary to add to the sewage in order to render it a permanent and useful manure. Baron Liebig suggests that the composition of sewage being known-a recipe should be placed in the hands of the farmer, for the additional elements to be employed.-Vide Letter to the Times, November. An Ancient Mining Wheel, upwards of twenty feet in diameter, and eleven feet six inches breast, has recently been exhibited at the Academy of "Arts et Métiers" at Paris, by M. A. Sanson, who states that it was discovered in a Portuguese mine, and was doubtless employed by the Romans to raise water in the operation of draining the mine. Eight other of these wheels have lately been discovered by the miners, who are now working the same old mines. These wheels are made of wood-the arms and felloes of pine, and the axle and its support of oak, the fabric being remarkable for the lightness of its construction. It is supposed that these wheels can not be less than 1,450 years old, and yet the wood is in a perfect state of preservation, owing to its immersion in water charged with salts of copper and iron. From their position and construction, these wheels are presumed to have been worked as treadmills, by men standing with naked feet upon one side.-Vide The Artizan. VARIETIES. A. R. A., from the Picture by W. P. FRITH, R. A. Published by the Art-Union of London. This is the print which the Art-Union of London offers to its subscribers of the current year. In making selections of subjects year by year for this purpose, the society, actuated by the policy which can alone render it popular, chooses those that are likely to attract the multitude, yet without ignoring the real merit of the picture as a genuine work of Art. To do otherwise-that is, to select a truly dignified subject which only the few could appreciate-might imperil the existence of the institution; it was once tried in the case of Hilton's "Crucifixion," and failed. No other resource, then, is open, but to adopt what will please, even if it does not teach. Such a work is Mr. Frith's "Claude Duval," exhibited at the Royal Academy not very long since. The picture must be well remembered, for it was one of the principal attractions of the gallery that year. This noted highwayman, who rendered himself a terror to all aristocratic travelers about the early part of the last century, by levying black mail on all who carried with them any thing worth taking, has with sundry other freebooters, his companions, stopped some grandee's family coach, turned out its occupants, and while some of the scoundrels are possessing themselves of the valuables, Claude compels a handsome young lady, one of the travelers, to dance with him on the heath. The story is capitally told in all its varied incidents, but the interest of the spectator centres in the dance and in the young lady, who tries hard to make herself an agreeable partner at such an unusual "ball," though the anxiety of her face shows her to be but ill at ease. Howeyer, there is honor among thieves, for, as the story goes, Claude releases the lady and her companions, taking only a small proportion of their property, because she had complied with his polite request of standing with him in a coranto, the dance of the period. The engraving-a large one in line-is by Mr. Stocks, who, presuming, and rightly too, that the subject is not over refined, has treated with boldness rather than delicacy in the cutting; but it comes together very effectively, while the figure of the young lady appears in great contrast, by the softness of texture in both flesh and drap ery. It is most highly finished. The print can scarcely fail to be popular, aed deserves to be so, if only for the excellency of the engraving. The Art Journal. Lord Camden in the Stocks.-A ludicrous story is told of his being on a visit to Lord Dacre, in Essex, and accompanying a gentleman, notorious for his absence of mind, in a walk, during which they came to the parish stocks. Having a wish to know the nature of the punishment, the chief justice begged his companion to open them so that he might try. This being done, his friend sauntered on, and totally forgot him. The imprisoned chief tried in vain to release himself, and, on asking a peasant who was passing by to let him out, was laughed at and told he "wasn't set there for nothing." He was soon set at liberty by the servants of his host; and afterwards, on the trial of an action for false imprisonment against a magistrate by some fellow whom he had set in the stocks, on the Claude Duval. Engraved by LUMB STOCKS, counsel for the defendant ridiculing the charge and declaring it was no punishment at all, his lordship leaned over and whispered, “Brother, were you ever in the stocks?" The counsel indignantly replied," Never, my lord." "Then I have been," said the chief justice; "and I can assure you it is not the trifle you represent it."-Foss's Lives of the Judges." Sir William Napier's Truthfulness.—Sir William Napier was one day taking a long country walk near Freshford, when he met a little girl about five years old sobbing over a broken bowl; she had dropped and broken it in bringing it back from the field to which she had taken her father's dinner in it, and she said she would be beaten on her return home for having broken it; then, with a sudden gleam of hope, she innocently looked up into his face, and said, "But you can mend it, can't ee?" Sir William explained that he could not mend the bowl, but the trouble he could, by the gift of a sixpence to buy another. However, on opening his purse, it was empty of silver, and he had to make amends by promising to meet his little friend on the same spot at the same hour next day, and to bring the sixpence with him, bidding her meanwhile tell her mother she had seen a gentleman who would bring her the money for the bowl next day. The child, entirely trusting him, went on her way comforted. On his return home he found an invitation awaiting him to dine at Bath the following evening, to meet some one whom he specially wished to see. He hesitated for some little time, trying to calculate the possibility of meeting his little friend of the broken bowl, and still being in time for the dinner party in Bath. Finding this could not be, he wrote to decline the invitation, on the plea of a "pre-engagement," saying to one of his family as he did so, "I can not disappoint her, she trusted me so implicitly." A Chinese Dinner.-A traveler recently arrived from Pekin, gives the following description of a Chinese dinner :-"The first course consisted of a kind of square tower formed of slices of breast of goose, and of a fish which the Chinese call cow's head,' with a large dish of hashed tripe, and hard eggs of a dark color preserved in lime. Next came grains of pickled wheat and barley, shell-fish unknown in Europe, enormous prawns, preserved ginger, and fruits. All these are eaten with ivory chopsticks, which the guests bring with them. On grand occasions the first dish is always birds'-nest soup, which consists of a thick gelatinous substance. Small cups are placed round the tureen, each containing a different kind of sauce. The second course was a ragout of seasnails. At Macao these are white, but at Ningpo they are green, viscous, and slippery, by no means easy to pick up with small sticks. Their taste resembles that of the green fat of turtle. The snails were followed by a dish of the flesh covering the skull of sturgeons, which is very costly, as several heads are required to make even a small dish. Next was a dish of sharks' fins mixed with slices of pork, and a crab salad; after these a stew of plums and other fruit, the acidity of which is considered a corrective for the viscous fat of the fish; then mushrooms, pulse, and ducks' tongues, which last are con sidered the ne plus ultra of Chinese cookery; deers' tendons a royal dish which the Emperor himself sends as a present to his favorites; and Venus's ears a kind of unctuous shell-fish ; lastly, boiled rice, served in small cups, with acanthus seeds preserved in spirits, and other condiments. Last of all tea was served."Galignani. Fate of Sir John Franklin's Expedition - The singular fate of La Perouse and his expedition was unknown to the civilized world for thirtyeight years, and then brought to light only by the exertions of one individual, Captain Dillon, an English master of a merchant ship. Here, too, we have the first intimation of the fate of Fro bisher's five men-after being shrouded in mystery for two hundred and eighty-five years-all but determined by personal inquiry among the natives. Why not, then, be able to obtain from the same natives—that is, of the same Innuit race all those particulars so interesting, and many of them so important to science, concerning the Lost Polar Expedition? I was now convinced, more than I had ever been, that the whole mystery of their fate could have been, and may yet be determined.—“ Life with the Esquimaux.” Survey of Jerusalem.---While the survey of the city is proceeding, Captain Wilson has been exploring underground, and has made some important discoveries to elucidate its ancient topography, the most important of which is the discovery of" one of the arches of the causeway which led from the city to the Temple, in a very good state of preservation, the span of which is between forty and fifty feet, and composed of large stones like those seen in the Jewish wailing-place." He has also discovered another large cistern in the Haram or Temple area, and says the whole area is perfectly honeycombed with passages and cisterns; and he had himself lowered eighty-two feet down a well, which is in what was formerly the Valley of the Cheesemongers, and followed the stream for a considerable distance till he came to the spring, with some steps down into it, which were cut in the solid rock.-Colonel James, of the Ordnance Survey Office. Steel-Pen Making at Birmingham.-A quick female worker will cut out in one day of ten working hours 250 gross, or 36,000 pens, which involves 72,000 distinct motions of the arm, two in every second.-Report of Children's Employment Commission. In the last advices from Senegal, that country is reported as infested by locusts in numbers larger than ever, and a fact is mentioned which enables readers at a distance to judge of the prodigious swarms. A French steamer, with the governor on board, was lying in the river, when a swarm of locusts passed, flying inland, in such inconceivable numbers as completely to hide the shore from the company in the vessel. It was, in fact, a dense cloud of locusts, forty-five miles long, which occupied from sunrise to sunset in passing. As an illustration of the proverb concerning an ill-wind, we read further, that while this invasion of lucusts filled the black farmers with despair, the Moors, who are not agriculturists, were in high spirits, as they kill and preserve large quantities of the insects for food.-Leisure Hour. |