he has made, upon the supposition that the trunk has increased in size even at the rate of young Dragon-trees up to within the last eight hundred or one thousand years, have more than once confounded his imagination. We cannot but assign the very highest antiquity to a tree like this, which the storms and casualties of four centuries have scarcely changed.

Upon the whole, we cannot resist the conclusion, that many trees have far survived what we are accustomed to consider their habitual duration; that even in Europe, where man has so often and so extensively changed the face of the soil, as his wants or caprices have dictated, some trees, favored by fortune, have escaped destruction for at least one or two thousand years; while in other, and particularly in some tropical countries, either on account of a more favorable climate, or because they have been more respected, or haply more neglected, by the inhabitants, a few may with strong probability be traced back to twice that period; and, perhaps, almost to that epoch which the monuments both of history and geology seem to indicate as that of the last great revolution of the earth's surface. After making every reasonable allowance for errors of observation and too sanguine inference, and assuming, in the more extraordinary cases, those estimates which give minimum results, we must still regard some of these trees, not only as the oldest inhabitants of the globe, but as more ancient than any human monument, as exhibiting a living antiquity, compared with which the mouldering relics of the earliest Egyptian civilization, the pyramids themselves, are but structures of yesterday.

ART. IX.-CRITICAL NOTICES.

1.The Literary Remains of the late Willis Gaylord Clark. Nos. 1, 2, and 3. New York. 1844. 8vo.

THESE three numbers of Mr. Clark's writings contain a series of essays and sketches, under the rather fantastic title of "Ollapodiana," which were originally published in the Knickerbocker. They are written in a free and flowing style, merry and sad by turns, now in the sunshine and now in the shade, but always with an under-current of deep feeling, in which there are no impurities. Occasionally, poems, sometimes original and at others selected, are introduced, showing the taste and graceful power of the author, and the habitual tendency of his mind toward the beautiful. Indeed, we think Mr. Clark a better poet than prose writer. The whole tone of his mind is highly poetical, and his thoughts continually flow into rhythm, if not into rhyme. The following poem is full of melancholy tenderness; and is remarkable alike for the expression it wears of sincere, deep-seated grief, and for the mournful melody of its verse.

"DIRGE IN AUTUMN.

""T is an autumnal eve, the low winds sighing
To wet leaves, rustling as they hasten by;

The eddying gusts to tossing waves replying,
And ebon darkness filling all the sky;

The moon, pale mistress, palled in solemn vapor,
The rack, swift-wandering through the void above,
As I, a dreamer by my lonely taper,

Send back to faded hours the plaint of love.

"Blossoms of peace, once in my pathway springing,
Where have your brightness and your splendor gone?
And thou, whose voice to me came sweet as singing,
What region holds thee, in the vast unknown?
What star far brighter than the rest contains thee,
Beloved, departed, -empress of my heart?
What bond of full beatitude enchains thee,
In realms unveiled by pen, or prophet's art?
"Ah! loved and lost! in these autumnal hours,
When fairy colors deck the painted tree,
When the vast woodlands seem a sea of flowers,
O, then, my soul, exulting, bounds to thee!
Springs, as to clasp thee yet in this existence,
Yet to behold thee at my lonely side;
But the fond vision melts at once to distance,
And my sad heart gives echo,—she has died!

"Yes! when the morning of her years was brightest,
That angel-presence into dust went down;
While yet with rosy dreams her rest was lightest,
Death for the olive wove the cypress crown;
Sleep, which no waking knows, o'ercame her bosom,
O'ercame her large, bright, spiritual eyes;
Spared in her bower connubial one fair blossom, —
Then bore her spirit to the upper skies.

"There let me meet her, when, life's struggles over,
The pure in love and thought their faith renew;
Where earth's forgiving and redeeming Lover
Spreads out his paradise to every view.

Let the dim autumn, with its leaves descending,
Howl on the winter's verge, yet spring will come:
So my freed soul, no more 'gainst fate contending,

With all it loveth, shall regain its home."

All Mr. Clark's friends (and few men have had more or warmer ones) will welcome this volume, as a mirror of his mind, of his quaintness, his humor, his pathos, his easy, careless manner, his disregard of conventionalities, and, above all, of his gentle, humane, and generous heart.

2. An Elementary Treatise on Mineralogy; comprising an Introduction to the Science; by WILLIAM PHILLIPS, F. L. S. Fifth Edition, from the Fourth London Edition, by ROBERT ALLAN; containing the latest Discoveries in American and Foreign Mineralogy; with numerous Additions to the Introduction. By FRANCIS ALGER, Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Bos

ton:

William D. Ticknor & Co. 1844. 8vo. pp. 662.

THE increasing attention paid to mineralogy, both in Europe. and our own country, has created a demand for elementary treatises on this fascinating branch of science, which has been met by several of our accomplished mineralogists in a manner of which we have just reason to be proud. To Professor Cleaveland, of Brunswick, belongs the honor of having been the first to prepare a work, which, while it gained for him an enviable reputation in Europe, as well as at home, allured many to the study of the science, and gave an impetus to its prosecution which is still felt. The number of students who have engaged with ardor in mineralogical researches has been constantly increasing, and discoveries of new, beautiful, and valuable miner

als, in all parts of the United States, have been most rapid and numerous. European cabinets are now rich in American specimens, while many of the collections in the public institutions in this country are rarely surpassed, even in places where the science has been cultivated for a much longer period.

In 1822, a second edition of Professor Cleaveland's highly popular work appeared, and the call for a third was soon made, though we regret to say, that the author has not as yet found time to respond to it, in consequence, no doubt, of the arduous duties of his professorship. We trust, however, that the appearance of the works of Mr. Dana and Mr. Alger will not induce him to abandon the completion of his third edition, upon which, it is understood, he has been engaged whenever his official duties and health have permitted.

In his Preface, Mr. Alger informs us, that, in consequence of Professor Cleaveland's work" having been long out of print, there had been for some time an urgent call in this country for an elementary system," and that he at first contemplated a work on the basis of Dr. Thomson's, but relinquished the idea "on learning that Professor Webster had been engaged in the same labor, and had actually prepared a volume on the basis of Dr. Thomson's and Phillips's, which was even publicly announced as in the press." Learning, however, after some time, that the publisher, who had announced the work as in his press, had suspended its publication, Mr. Alger deemed the call for such a work so general and urgent, that he resumed his task, and the work before us is the result. He might almost have called his book an original one, as he has made so many and so important changes, corrections, and additions in that which he has taken as a basis.

Mr. Phillips's treatise has long been in the hands of mineralogists, and after his death, an edition was edited by Allan, who made many additions and improvements, though it was still left in an imperfect state. In the present edition, Mr. Alger has supplied many deficiencies, corrected many errors, given new measurements of crystals, new chemical analyses, and made most valuable additions to the introductory chapters. Especially has he enhanced the value and utility of this part of the work by the revision of the whole subject of crystallography, and the intelligible manner in which he has explained the new doctrines of Pseudomorphism, Isomorphism, and Dimorphism, of which so little was known when Mr. Phillips prepared his last edition, and which were entirely overlooked by Mr. Allan.

The value of the work is also enhanced by the introduction of the symbolic characters and mineralogical formulæ of Dr. VOL. LIX.No.124.

21

Thomson, for which purpose it was necessary to make a new arrangement of the introductory sections on the metals and other simple bodies, and "to express their atomic relations to each other, according to the system of equivalents which had been arrived at by the investigations of Drs. Thomson and Prout." The student will find the tabular form into which these have been thrown, and the illustrations of their uses, of great convenience.

The volume exhibits, throughout, evidences of great labor and research. The discoveries and results contained in it were to be collected and deduced from numerous periodical journals, from the memoirs of societies, and from treatises in various languages, of all which Mr. Alger has faithfully availed himself. He has profited by the skill and learning of two of our eminent men of science, Mr. Teschemacher and Mr. Hayes, whose crystallographical and analytical examinations of a great number of the substances described greatly enhance the value of the work.

Among the new minerals described by Mr. Alger is a remarkable borate of lime from Peru, to which he has given the name Hayerine, a deserved compliment to the analytical skill of the accomplished chemist who first ascertained its chemical composition. The very rare and beautiful mineral, hitherto found only in Siberia, and of which but a single specimen had been met with, the Pyrrhite, appears likely to become better known, having, as we learn at page 625, been discovered in the Azores by Professor Webster. Among the new minerals, a pure magnesian alum is described, from Peru, to which the name Pickeringite has been given, in honor of the President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Mr. Alger has shown great fairness and impartiality in his notices of the discoveries of American minerals, and collected many facts of interest connected with them. Of this we have an example in the note on page 145, in relation to an interesting species which occurs in New Jersey, Condrodite or Brucite, than which, remarks Mr. Alger, "there is no mineral in the whole range of the science that offers a more interesting history, considered in reference to its chemical nature; and it is to American mineralogists and chemists, that we owe our most important knowledge concerning it." We are compelled to refer the reader to the work for a particular account of it, and we would also direct his attention to the history of the beautiful chrysoberyl of Hadham.

In the general arrangement of the book, Mr. Alger does not appear to have made much change; but he has occasionally