exclusive of the South coast of the island, the population appeared considerably to exceed three millions.

The native Javanese are nominally governed by sovereigns who are the descendants of those Arabs who carried their arms, their commerce and their religion into the East, long before any Europeans made their appearance in that quarter. The islamism which prevails, however, is debased by Hindoo superstitions and the dogmata of the sect of Vishnu, from whom they affect to be descended. The Javanese of the interior still profess the religion of their ancestors, wear the Hindoo mark in the forehead, and the women of the better cast burn themselves on the funeral pile of their deceased husbands. Their alphabet, however, has no resemblance to the Devanagari either in the form of the letters or in the order of the sounds. It consists of twenty characters, varied and modified by means of four vowel sounds. From an inscription mentioned by Thunberg, it would appear that the ancient Javanese wrote from the right hand to the left. There can be little doubt, however, that antecedent to the invasion of the islands by the Malays they had received colonies from Hindostan ; and that both Malays and Hindoos mingled with the native islanders, who, there are many reasons to suppose, were of the same race as those of the South Sea islands. Throughout all Polynesia there is a mixture of the Hindoo features, colour and language, with those of the natives of the Pacific and South Sea islands. Many words are common to both; but by far the greater part of the language is Sanscrit.

The Javanese are in general well made, with features pretty regular, the face rather broad across the forehead, and the nose a little flattened, their complexion a light brown, their hair universally black, which they smear with a profusion of cocoa-nut oil; the women twist it into a knot on the top of the head, where it is fixed with gold or silver pins and decorated with sweet-smelling flowers. They live in mean huts of bamboo plastered with clay and thatched with leaves, and their food consists of boiled rice, fruits, vegetables and water. Theirs is a life of unvarying indolence. They inhabit an island so fertile, and so abundant in every species of grain and fruit for the sustenance of man, that nothing but force or necessity compels a Javanese to labour. This apathy ought not to be considered as a constitutional disease or the effect of the heat of the climate. The Chinese and the Malays are free from it. It affects the Javanese only. To what then can it be ascribed but to that hopeless. state of penury to which they are doomed by the unrelenting despotism of their rulers, and which affords them no security for, no enjoyment of, any little property which their labour might accumulate? The Dutch demanded so much produce to

be delivered to them at such a price. They had a resident at the coast of each of the soveriegns of Java to enforce those demands, and generally a fort which commanded the palace of the prince. The country was divided into districts, over each of which was a chief or governor called Tomagon. It was the duty of these tomagons to take care that the full share of the peasants' produce was delivered, for the use of the sovereign, the Dutch and themselves. What that share was, has not, to our knowledge, any where been stated, but there can be no question of its amounting to whatever quantity the uncontroled despot might find it expedient to impose.

A Javanese prince dreams away his existence. The day is consumed in smoking his hookar with the most placid indifference, while a troop of dancing men and women are supposed to afford him amusement. At other times the females of his zenana relate their long traditionary stories to amuse the despot with the loves of the deities, the faithful services of the genii, and the feats and adventures of the ancient heroes and demi-gods contained in their Cheritras or sacred books, which are said to bear a very strong resemblance to the Hindoo Puranas. Sometimes, however, he takes the diversion of exercising his guard in throwing the javelin. But his greatest delight is that of witnessing the fight of a tiger and buffalo. These wild animals are kept in cages for this purpose, and their keepers in turning them loose exhibit no small degree of courage and dexterity, for the tiger at least is much more disposed to attack the man than the buffalo. The latter requires to be irritated before he has any inclination to fall upon either. This is done by lashing him with bunches of the urtica stimulans, or buffalo leaf. Another source of amusement is the combat of a tiger and a condemned criminal, armed with no other weapon than a kris of eight or nine inches in length. Nothing can be more cruel; for should the man have the good fortune to vanquish his adversary, a second is brought forward, and a third, until his strength is exhausted and he is finally destroyed.

The Javanese women are generally marriageable at eleven or twelve years of age, till which time they go nearly naked, wearing only a belt round the waist with a metal plate in front, rings round the wrist, chains about the neck, and flowers in their black hair, shining with cocoa-nut oil. Not only all the Dutch inhabitants of Batavia, from the governor-general downwards, but every description of persons on the whole island, are firmly persuaded that many of these women, besides a knowledge of herbs of wonderful virtues and efficacy in the cure of diseases, possess great skill in philtres and fascination. If empiricism is found to thrive in the midst of regular and well-educated practitioners,

we cannot wonder that it should succeed where diseases are frequent and dangerous, and physicians ignorant and few. Men of sound understanding, in other respects, are the dupes of Javanese fascination. Mr. Titsingh is a person whose name has been brought forward by Sir William Jones and others in the records of literature; he long ago announced to the world his intention of publishing a history of Japan, where for many years he was chief of the factory; he was subsequently director-general of the Dutch possesions in the East; and ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to the emperor of China. This gentlemen who, we believe, is now in Paris, communicated to us, orally, the following anecdotes, the truth of which was, in his mind, incontrovertible. He had an amour, he said, with a lady of Batavia who was passionately fond of him, and who was equally the object of his affection. After some time, however, she imagined that the warmth of his passion was on the wane, and began to suspect a possibility of losing him.-To provide against the worst, she had recourse to a Javanese woman, who furnished her with a charm which was to render her lover incapable of transferring those attentions, of which she once fancied herself the sole possessor, to a new mistress. The spell succeeded to her wishes; and it was not till after long and earnest entreaties, that Mr. Titsingh (who was sufficiently sensible of its operation) prevailed upon her to relieve him. Application was again made to the Javanese Sybil, who prescribed certain medical potions, of which he thinks lime-water was a principal ingredient, for fourteen days, at the end of which he found himself completely cured, and determined never to put it into his mistress's power to repeat her charm.

These spells are not confined to the Javanese. The neighbouring islands have similar pretensions; and Mr. Titsingh assured us, from his own knowledge, that the Japanese operate still more extraordinary effects by means of a powder, which not only relaxes every fibre of the living frame, but preserves the dead from rigidity, and, by its antiseptic virtues, wards off putrefaction. The practitioner puts a small quantity of this powder into the eyes and ears of the dead body. In a few minutes the joints regain their flexibility, the whole frame becomes soft and yeilding, every muscle contracts with ease, and the body is placed in whatever attitude or posture the friends and relations of the defunct may determine. Of the efficacy of this powder he was fully convinced, having tried it on a Dutch sailor. Two days after his death, when the body was quite rigid, and signs of putrefaction had appeared, the powder was put into the eyes and ears; in a few minutes it became soft and flexible, the progress of putrefaction was arrested; and Mr. Titsingh saw the

body in a cave many days afterwards in a recumbent posture, quite pliant and without farther marks of corruption. He purchased at a considerable price, a small quantity of this wonderful powder, but never made any use of it himself; he was even afraid to touch it, dreading that if it had such extraordinary powers over the dead fibres, it might act with still greater force upon the living ones, and be followed by more disastrous and permanent effects than those which he had already experienced from Javanese fascination.

We leave our readers to form their own conclusions on Mr. Titsingh's amusing stories. That the Javanese are well acquainted with the medicinal qualities of many of the native plants, there can be no doubt. Two vegetable poisons, whose strength and activity on the human frame, are probably exceeded only by the Woorara of Guiana, have recently been discovered by a French naturalist, who has published a very curious and interesting account of them, in the Annales du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle.

Mr. Leschinault was one of those numerous physiologists who embarked in the voyage of discovery in the southern hemisphere, of which we gave some account in a former number. He was recommended by the celebrated naturalist Jussieu, in the event of his touching at Java, to make all possible inquiry after the Upas. His researches for a time were fruitless: at Batavia and Samarang he could learn nothing; at Soura-charta, the residence of the emperor of Java, he was told that the Upas grew in the district of Bagnia Wangni, which he visited in July, 1805. His Javanese attendant killed some birds with arrows whose points had been touched with upas antiar, or the antiar poison; (upas, in the Javanese language, meaning poison.) There was another upas, he told him, of much greater power, called tieuté; but he was ignorant, he said, of the place of its growth, for the men who gathered it kept it a secret. He succeeded, however, in procuring one of these men, and by a present of some dollars prevailed on him to show him the growing plant. It was a creeper on which there was neither flower nor fruit; the rind of the root furnished the poison. The Javanese who pointed it out, boiled this rind in a copper vessel till the extract assumed the consistency of treacle; he then threw in a couple of onions, a clove of garlic, a pinch of pepper, two slices of the root of Kampheria galenga, a few pieces of ginger, and a single seed of capsicum, all of which was suffered to simmer for a short time over the fire. These ingredients of the cauldron,' which the Javanese pretended were indispensible for making the charm firm and good,' Mr. Leschinault discovered to be mere mummery, and that the simple decoction was equally active. A small quantity inserted in the breast of a fowl with a pointed instrument, killed

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it in the space of a minute; a large fowl wounded in the lower part of the thigh, died in convulsions in two minutes. Two dogs pricked in the thigh died in thirty minutes. This tieuté is a new species of strychnos.

The upas antiar is a large tree of the class monoecia, to which, being a new genus, Mr. Leschinault has given the name of antiaris toxicaria. He always found it growing in rich soils, and surrounded by other plants. The trunk is strait, the bark smooth and of a whitish colour; the leaves which are oval, coriaceous, and of a pale green, fall before the flowers appear. The juice of the tree is viscous and bitter, and flows abundantly from notches cut through the bark. The tree from which he collected his specimens and poisonous matter, was more than a hundred feet in height, and the trunk near the base, eighteen feet in circumference. A Javanese in ascending this tree to gather some flower-bearing branches, was taken ill about midway, and continued for several days indisposed with giddiness, nausea, and vomiting; another went to the top without experiencing the least inconveinence; and Mr. Leschinault himself had afterwards his naked arms and face besmeared all over with the resinous juice of the tree, without being at all incommoded by it: the indisposition of the first man may, therefore, be attributed to imagination or accident. Lizards and insects crawl on its trunk, and birds perch upon its branches with impunity. The preparation of the poison is conducted with the same mummery as that of the tieuté, with this difference, that it is done without fire in an earthen vessel. Its effect on the animal functions is somewhat slower than that of the tieuté; it first operates as a purgative and emetic, it then attacks the brain, causing convulsions and death. Various experiments are stated to have been made by Messrs. Delille and Magendie on the effects of these poisons, which clearly prove that they act through the medium of the absorbent and sanguiferous vessels, on the marrow of the spine (moëlle de l'épine) or, the brain and nervous system, we suppose they mean to say, causing tetanous, asphixia and death.

Mr. Brodie, whose researches in physiological science gained him the Copleian medal at the Royal Society, and bid fair for producing some valuable discoveries on the effect of vegetable poisons on the animal economy, has had an opportunity of making several experiments with the antiar. He found its effects on animals as active and powerful as the French physiologists had described them to be, but draws a very different, and we doubt not a more correct conclusion of the manner in which this poison causes death; which he says is, by rendering the heart insensible to the stimulus of the blood, and stopping its circulation. It appeared, from all his experiments, that the heart beats