instinct as true as that which brings vultures from | Scottish poetry, though that is, if not of the highthe remotest regions on the morning of a day of battle.-Spectator, 27 Sept. ALEXANDER WILSON was one of those men, who, if not exclusively confined to Scotland, are much more frequently found in that soul-ripening clime than in any other land. Though a few years younger, he was, as a poet, contemporary with Burns, and had composed The Pack, Watty, and Meg, and all his other celebrated Scottish pieces, and prophesied the utter decline of poetry, shortly before Campbell, Rogers, Scott, Byron, Southey, Coleridge, Professor Wilson, Hogg, Wordsworth, and Moore, the bright poetic galaxy of the first years of the century, had appeared. Alexander Wilson was born in Paisley in 1766. His parents were respectable persons, in comfortable, though humble circumstances; and, in childhood, his mother had mentally devoted him to the church, though, losing her when still very young, the hand-loom became his occupation. The future wanderer and watcher in the forests and savannas of America, heartily detested this sedentary employment, and, as one more agreeable, or less distasteful, while still a lad, Wilson became a pedlar, or hawker of muslins and other Paisley goods. He also published a volume of his early poems, and made an opportunity of vending the wares of his fancy's loom along with his more material tissues. The history of his adventures, while roaming with his pack, is interesting from the character of the youth, and not without instruction, especially to those in his own station in life possessed by the same turbulent spirit of intellectual activity. Poverty was his great enemy; but it must not be forgotten, that this poverty was, in a great measure, the consequence of unsettled habits, or, at least, anything like steady persevering industry. Wilson was, however, among those strong-minded men, who, when time is given them, are certain to redeem themselves from the consequences of the errors of their early training and unfortunate circumstances. While still young, and a hot democrat, he emigrated to the United States of America, where, after a few years spent in desultory employments, he settled as a schoolmaster, in which capacity he was much esteemed. That love of nature which marks the poet, and which had gained strength in his wanderings in Scotland, as a pedlar, became at length his ruling passion. He was an enthusiastic naturalist, and his poetic genius carried him into the wilderness to gratify his own longing inborn desires. Wilson thus became the most eminent ornithologist which the New World has produced; and no man has ever encountered the same hardships, or has had the same enjoyment in the pursuit of this branch of science, as the quondam Weaver and Packman. His descriptions of birds, and of his solitary wanderings in search of them, and his watchings of their habits, are his finest poems. The poems, the early history, and the subsequent adventures of this remarkable man, with selections from his prose writings, form, we need hardly say, a delightful Miscellany-a book that ought to be popular, and which will be so. The work has higher claims than those of its author's est, yet of a high order. As a specimen of his verse in his earlier years, and as an indication of that love of nature, and power of describing the common objects it exhibits to the searching or contemplative eye of genius, for which Wilson became preeminent, we select a few stanzas from his ju venile poem, Thomson. THE DISCONSOLATE WREN. On its journey, the burnie Fell dashing down some lins, Amid the joyous soun', Some mournfu' chirps, methought of wae, Whare, as I glinted down, I spied a bonny wee bit Wren And aye she tore her breast, and then, To hear her vent her strain To ken her cause o' pain. A social Robin came; Brought frae his e'e the pearly tear, Nane near to gie relief; He thus inquired her grief. We have no space for the direful catastrophe thus pathetically introduced. But none of Wilson's poetical descriptions of the fairy birds of the New World-the humming-bird or the lovely blue-bird-are more beautiful than this elegy of the bereaved wren. In his riper years, Wilson did not neglect poetry; and his Solitary Tutor, a poem of some length, bears testimony to the expansion and repose of intellect which had succeeded his fervid youth. The manner of Wilson's death was characteristic. He died in 1813 of a violent illness, caused by the ardent and imprudent pursuit of a rare bird of which he had long been in search. The moment he perceived the bird, he seized his gun, plunged into the neighboring river in pursuit of it, swam across, and caught the illness which, in ten days, closed his career. He came to be highly esteemed in his adopted country, where honors were heaped upon his memory. LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 78.-8 NOVEMBER, 1845. SCRAPS.-Violent Hail Storm; Great Drought, 260-Great Russian Railway, 261-Scripture Names, 273-Thirlwall's Greece, 296. POETRY.-The Stepmother, 256-Tea and Toast; Serenade, 264-The Exiled Londoner, 280-Perseverance, 296. CORRESPONDENCE. THE Western Coast of America is rapidly becoming important from its proximity to China. Perhaps the fear of American commerce is the motive which impels the French government to unite with that of Great Britain in giving check to the United States. A course so entirely against popular feeling in France, must have been the result of deliberate policy. From Mr. Walsh's letter to the National Intelligencer, dated at Paris, 29th September, we copy some parts which deserve the most careful consideration. herself, should feel for the Mexican side. The Americans, saith the Débats, have not distinguished themselves in warfare on land; their battle of New Orleans is the only great military exploit they can cite; and that afforded proof rather of courage and sang froid than knowledge of tactics. Their hostilities in Florida show that they are only middling soldiers; yet they are unquestionably superior to the Mexicans, and their officers are well taught on sea, they seem, however, strong and formidable; they can at once blockade the ports and stop the revenue of Mexico. The article opens with assigning all right in the case to Mexico, and imputing all wrong to the United States. It proceeds: We must say roundly that it is the concern and policy of Europe that Mexico should not be dismembered, and should be enabled to prevent fresh encroachments." Here is the end and moral : It was anticipated that, soon after the second consecration of the entente cordiale at Eu, there would be an adumbration, from the Journal des "The United States deserve applause for the Débats, of the sentiments and plans mutually prosperity they have gained, and good wishes for adopted in regard to foreign countries and events. its prolongation. They form a great nation which The understanding between Lord Aberdeen and cultivates most admirably the soil on which it is Mr. Guizot might embrace Switzerland, Ireland, planted by Providence, and has opened vast fields Greece, Turkey, Spain, the states of La Platte, to civilization, but the domain allotted to them is Tahiti, Mexico, and the United States. We have quite sufficient to satisfy any ambitious and enterbeen the first favored with a semi-official quasi prising people. It is ten times the extent of our manifesto on the return of the minister of Foreign France, which nevertheless is a very fine empire.. Affairs. The leading article of the Débats of the All the acquisitions required to consolidate them, 24th instant relates to "the menaces of war” and make them masters of their own possessions, between Mexico and our Union, the relative weak- they have already won by force or negotiation. ness of the one party, the limited, secondary They have the valley of the Mississippi, the belligerent faculties of the other, the inordinacy Floridas, and all that originally belonged to the of the American aims, and the predilection which Indians. What more have they need of? Have Europe, mindful of dangers, remote indeed, for not their twenty millions of people sufficient room Britain in relation to Mexico for the twenty-five years past, which should render her more suspicious and odious than the Americans to the impotent victim. Are the British and French flags to be combined against the United States, or is our moral influence merely pledged to our neighbor in the Oregon affair? The enlargements of the Russian and American empires are alone signal in their vast territories? If the United States dence by France and Great Britain is cautiously knew their own interest, they would be contented pretermitted-a measure which the Débats once with what they have. The civilized world cannot earnestly commended. Seeing its object-since view with indifference their aggrandizement on the betrayed-it was real machiavelism. The Débats Mexican side, for every inch of ground they gain now stimulates the blind rage of Mexico against in that direction is so much given up to the infa- the Americans, by charging them with the whole mous institution of slavery. For the political bal-evil, and overlooks all the transactions of Great ance of the world the conquest of Mexico by the United States may create eventual dangers, which, though distant, it will not be superfluous to guard against. Europe, therefore, watches with care a great empire which occupies in the east and in the north an immense surface, covered with a population of sixty-two millions, double that of France and that of Austria, and quadruple that of Prussia, and cannot help being filled with the contemplationized, and with studied significance: but Russian of another colossus which may occupy the whole space of the Isthmus of Panama, from the mouths of the St. Lawrence to the Columbia river in the Oregon, thus acquiring the disposal of the most productive cultivable lands and the richest mines of the earth, and extremely redoubtable at sea. Between the autocracy of Russia on the east, and the democracy of America thus aggrandized on the west, Europe may find herself more compressed than she may one day think consistent with her independence and dignity. It is not for the interest of Europe that the entirety of America should be in one hand, nor do we think America herself wishes it. Well then! The conquest of Mexico would be a wide step towards the enslavement of the world by the United States, and that a levy of bucklers by the Mexicans at this moment would lead the way to this subjection. There is, therefore, good reason why the public mind should be turned with attention towards what is now ¡passing on the other side of the Atlantic." power is, plainly, most formidable to Great Britain, who thinks of Persia-India. American power is the counterpoise to the British overweening pretensions on the ocean and projects of commercial monopoly. Great Britain is at our doors-Russia and America are far enough off. Our lordly and greedy neighbor has tripled her might and sway since 1830. The Esprit Public then specifies the British extension and designs in various parts of the East, in Oceania, on the southern coasts of Africa, in Egypt, Syria, South America: “England, with French concurrence or connivance, has assumed the police of all seas and flags; the political centre of Europe is transferred to London, and the Débats would have the world tremble at the annexation of Texas, and at Russian Asiatic progress, alone! We should comprehend such language in the Times and Morning Chronicle; in a French sheet and at Paris, it is insupportable. There is a bold naiveté in the manifestation of such a subserviency to our eternal rivals. Until now, there was a seeming or professed neutrality be tween Great Britain and the United States; the weight, moral weight of France at least, is now openly thrown into the British scale." HARPER & BROTHERS have issued two numbers of a geographical work, for which we desire, and doubt not, an abundant success, Morse's Cerographic Maps. These are in the form of a large Atlas, and are sold at 25 cents a number, being only 6 cents for each map. Blair's Sermons, a handsome octavo volume of matter which has long retained its popularity. Several of the French journals perceived and signalized at once the origin and drift of this appeal to Europe. The Courrier du Havre rallied the Débats for seeing only two colossal and portentous powers-Russia and the American Union. Great Britain might have been discerned, and even "modest France herself, if now a little giant, would grow to something when her projects in Africa, Oceania, and elsewhere were realized." The National and La Presse animadverted on the improvidence of this new aspect of the entente cordiale; the Siècle (25th instant) equally reproved the cabinet, arguing that France might profit by American aggrandizement long before she could have anything to fear from it; and that Mr. Guizot was only lending himself to the fears of Great Britain (the true colossus) about the Canadas, A very handsome volume has been sent to us, Oregon, California, and British maritime supre- called, "Elements of Geology for Schools and Colmacy. France would never sanction a new intervention and concert such as the article shadowed leges," by Dr. Ruschenberger, of the U. S. Navy. forth, and its authors might recur with benefit to It contains 300 well executed cuts, and cannot fail the arguments against a rupture or jarring with the to be popular as well as instructive. It is part of United States which came from the same oracle a series of first books on Natural History, and we when the government wished to settle differences see from the advertisements, that teachers and by paying the twenty-five millions of francs in- school committees at the South and West, have demnity. But the most elaborate and comprehensive direct reply to the Débats appeared in the greatly praised them. The seven books which Esprit Public, a new cheap daily paper, with an have preceded this we have not seen, but they are able editor and the special patronage of Lamartine. -Anatomy and Physiology, Mammalogy, OrniLet me indicate the heads of the reply. We now thology, Herpetology and Ichthyology, Conchollearn more of the extent of the stipulations con- ogy, Entomology, and Botany. We cannot be :nected with the seeming concessions in the Treaty of Visit. We have in the accredited organ of the government an article demi-hostile to the United States. This power is charged with despoiling Mexico; and the recognition of Texan indepen wrong in directing the attention of parents and teachers to this series. Dr. R. is the author of a Voyage Round the world," published several years ago. BOLDT. From the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal. pours forth, those of carbonic acid (mofetten) are still, at the present time, the most important, both in number and extent. Germany, in her deeplyCarbonic Acid and Sulphureous Acid Springs-cut valleys of the Eifel, in the neighborhood of Cold Springs-Hot Springs-Mud Volcanoes Lake Lach, in the Kesselthal of Wehr, and in Volcanoes. By Baron ALEXANDER VON HUM- Western Bohemia, as also in the burning foci of the primeval world, or their vicinity, shows us these effusions of carbonic acid as a kind of last effort of volcanic activity. In former epochs, where, with a higher temperature of the earth, and the frequency of fissures yet unfilled, the processes which we are here describing proceeded more actively where carbonic acid gas and watery vapors were mingled with the atmosphere in larger quantities than at present, the youthful vegetable world, as Adolph Brongniart has acutely observed, must have attained almost everywhere, and independently of geographical position, to the most rank luxuriance and evolution of its organs. In the ever hot, ever moist atmosphere, surcharged with carbonic acid, vegetables must have found such vital excitement, such superfluity of nourishment, as enabled them to supply the material of which it is difficult to conceive, and which now those beds of coal and lignite, the exhaustion of serve as foundations for the physical strength and the welfare of nations. Such beds are princi HAVING now taken a general survey of the activity, that is, of the internal life of the globe, in its heat, in its electro-magnetic tension, in its luminous emanations at the poles, in its irregularly-recurring phenomenon of motion, we come to chemical changes in the crust of the earth, and in the composition of the atmosphere, which are, in like manner, the consequence of planetary vital activity. From the ground we see effusions of watery vapor and of gaseous carbonic acid, mostly free from all admixture of azote; of carburetted hydrogen gas, in the Chinese province of Ssetschuan, for thousands of years, and in the state of New York, where, in the village of Fredonia, it has lately been employed for economical purposes in heating and lighting ;† of sulphuretted hydrogen gas, of sulphur fumes, and, more rarely, of sulphureous and hydro-chloric acid vapors. Such emanations from fissures in the ground, do not only indicate the dominion of volcanoes long extinct or still burning; they are farther observed exceptionally in districts in which neither trachyte nor any other volcanic rock appears at the surface. In the Andes of Quindiu, I have seen sulphur precipitated from hot sulphureous vapors issuing out of mica-slate, at a height of 6410 feet above the level of the sea; whilst the same, and, as it used to be regarded, primitive rock, in Cerra Cuelo, near Ticsan, south of Quito, exhibits an enormous bed of sulphur in pure quartz. Of all the gaseous springs which the earth *This extract from Cosmos, (English edition by Bailliere,) at present in course of publication, is slightly altered and enlarged. + Carburetted Hydrogen Spring at Fredonia.-Sailed in a steamboat to Fredonia, a town of 1200 inhabitants, with neat white houses, and six churches. The streets are lighted up with natural gas, which bubbles out of the ground, and is received into a gasometer, which I visited. This gas consists of carburetted hydrogen, and issues from a black bituminous slate, one of the beds of the Hamilton group of the New York geologists, or part of the Devonian formation of Europe. The lighthousekeeper at Fredonia told me, that, near the shore, at a considerable distance from the gasometer, he bored a hole through this black slate, and the gas soon collected in sufficient quantity to explode, when ignited.-Travels in North America. By Charles Lyell. Vol. ii., p. 89. Burning Spring of Niagara.-At the falls of Niagara, where we next spent a week, residing in a hotel on the Canada side, I resumed my geological explorations of last summer. Every part of the scenery, from Grand Island above the falls, to the ferry at Queenstown, seven miles below, deserves to be studied at leisure. *In Lyell's interesting Travels in North America, already quoted, we meet with the following remarks on the quantity of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, in which the plants of the coal formation flourished :-" Before concluding the remarks, which are naturally suggested by a visit to the Great Dismal, I shall say a few words on a popular doctrine, favored by some geologists, respecting an atmosphere highly charged with carbonic acid, in which the coal plants are supposed to have flourished. during the ancient era alluded to, that it was unfitted for Some imagine the air to have been so full of choke damp the respiration of warm-blooded quadrupeds and birds, or even reptiles, which require a more rapid oxygenation of their blood than creatures lower in the scale of organization, such as have alone been met with hitherto in the carboniferous and older strata. It is assumed, that an excess of oxygen was set free when the plants which elaborated the coal subtracted many hundred million tons of carbon from the carbonic acid gas which previously loaded the air. All this carbon was then permanently locked up in the solid seams of coal, and the chemical composition of the earth's atmosphere essentially altered. But they who reason thus are bound to inform us what may have been the duration of the period in the course of which so much carbon was secreted by the powers of vegetable life; and, secondly, what accession of fresh carbonic acid did the air receive in the same. We know that, in the present state of the globe, the air is continually supplied with carbonic acid from several sources, of which the principal are, first, The daily putrefaction of dead animal and vegetable substances; secondly, The disintegration of rocks charged with carbonic acid and organic matter; and, thirdly, The copious evolution of this gas from mineral springs and the earth, especially in volcanic countries. By that law, which causes two gases of different specific gravity, when brought into contact, to We visited the "burning spring" at the edge of the become uniformly diffused and mutually absorbed through river above the rapids, where carburetted bydrogen, or, in the whole space which they occupy, the heavy carbonic the modern chemical phraseology, a light hydro-carbon, acid finds its way upwards through all parts of the similar to that before mentioned at Fredonia, rises from atmosphere, and the solid materials of large forests are beneath the water out of the limestone rock. The bitu- given out from the earth in an invisible form, or in bubminous matter supplying this gas is probably of animal bles rising through the water of springs. Peat mosses of origin, as this limestone is full of marine mollusca, crus- no slight depth, and covering thousands of square miles, tacea, and corals, without vegetable remains, unless some are thus fed with their mineral constituents, without fucoids may have decomposed in the same strata. The materially deranging the constituents of the atmosphere invisible gas makes its way in countless bubbles through breathed by man. Thousands of trees grow up, flout the clear transparent waters of the Niagara. On the down to the delta of the Mississippi and other rivers, and application of a lighted candle, it takes fire, and plays are buried, and yet the air, at the end of many centuries, about with a lambent flickering flame, which seldom may be as much impregnated with carbonic acid as touches the water, the gas being, at first, too pure to be before. inflammable, and only obtaining sufficient oxygen after mingling with the atmosphere at the height of several inches above the surface of the stream.-Lyell's Travels in North America, vol. ii., p. 90.-Edit. of Phil. Journal. Coral reefs are, year after year, growing in the ocean; springs and rivers feed the same ocean with carbonic acid and lime; but we have no reason to infer, that when mountain masses of calcareous rock have thus been gra that falls; which last, again, according to the mode of its origin, differs in its temperature from that of the lower strata of the atmosphere. Cold springs, as they are called, can only give the mean temperature of the air, if unmixed with water that is rising from great depths, or that is descending from considerable heights, and when they have flowed for a very long way under the surface-in our latitudes from 40 to 60 feet, in the equinoctial zone, according to Boussingault, one foot. These depths are those, in fact, of the stratum of rock in which, in the temperate and torrid zone respectively, the point of invariable temperature begins, in which the hourly, diurnal, or monthly variations in temperature of the air are no longer perceived. pally contained in basins, and are peculiar to certain parts of Europe. They are abundant in the British Isles, in Belgium, in France, on the Lower Rhine, and in Upper Silesia. In the same primeval times of all-pervading volcanic action, too, must those enormous quantities of carbonaceous matter have issued from the bowels of the earth, which all the limestone rocks contain, and which, separated from oxygen, and represented in the solid form, composes about an eighth part of the absolute bulk of those mountain masses. The carbonic acid which the atmosphere still contained, and which was not absorbed by the alkaline earths, was gradually consumed by the vegetation of the primeval world; so that the atmosphere, purified by the processes of vegetable life, by and by contained no more of the gas than was uninju- Hot springs burst out of the most diversified rious to the organization of such animals as people mineral strata; the hottest of all the permanent the earth at the present time. Sulphurous or sul-springs which have yet been observed, and which phuric acid vapors, too, occurring more frequently, I myself discovered, flow remote from all voland much more abundantly, then than now, occa- canoes. I here refer to the Aguas calientes de sioned the destruction of the inhabitants of the Las Trincheras between Porto Cabello and New inland waters-mollusca and numerous genera of Valencia, in South America, and to the Aguas de fishes, as well as the formation of the strangely Comangillas, near Guanaxuato, in Mexico. The contorted beds of gypsum, which have often, appa- first spring issuing from granite, indicated 90.3° rently, been shaken by earthquakes. C.; the second, which issues from basalt, showed 96.4° C. The depth of the source of water of these temperatures, from what we know of the law of increase of temperature in the interior of the earth, must probably be about 6700 feet (more than half a geographical mile.) If the cause of the heat of thermal springs, as well as of active volcanoes, be the universally diffused heat of the earth, then would rocks produce an effect only through their capacity for, and their power of, conducting heat. The hottest of all the permanent springs, those, namely, from 95° to 97° C. (204° to 207.6° F.,) it is remarkable, are the purest, are those that contain the smallest quantity of mineral matter in solution. Their temperature appears, on the whole, to be less permanent than that of springs between 50 and 74° C., the invariableness of which, both in regard to temperature and mineral impregnation, has been maintained so wonderfully, within the confines of Europe at least, during the last fifty or sixty years, i. e. since accurate thermometrical observations and chemical analyses were made. Boussingault found that the thermal springs of Las Trincheras had risen in temperature, in the course of twenty-three years (from 1800, when my journey was performed, to 1823,) from 93.3° to 97° C. This very smoothly-flowing spring is, consequently, at this time 7° C. higher in temperature than the intermitting Geyser and Strokr, the temperature of which has been lately more carefully ascertained by Krug of Nidda. One of the most remarkable proofs of the origin of these hot springs being due to the percolation of cold meteoric water into the interior of the earth, and its contact there with a volcanic focus, was presented in the preceding century, in connection with the volcano of Jorullo in Mexico, which was unknown to geography till after my South American journey. When this mountain suddenly made its appearance in September, 1759, rising to a height of 1580 feet above the surrounding level, the two small streams Rios de Cuitimba y de San Pedro disappeared; but some time afterwards they made their appearance again, under the dreadful shocks of an earthquake, as hot springs. In 1803, I found their temperature 65°8 C. Under precisely similar physical relations, there were further thrown out from the bosom of the earth various gases and liquids, mud, and, from the eruption cones of volcanoes, which are but a species of intermitting springs, streams of molten earths. All these matters owe their temperature, and the nature of their chemical constitution, to the place of their origin. The mean temperature of ordinary springs is lower than that of the atmosphere where they appear, when the water is derived from high levels; their temperature increases with the depth of the strata with which they come in contact at their origin. The numerical law of this increase has been stated above. The mixture of the waters, which come from the mountain elevations, or from the depths of the earth, renders the position of the isogeothermal lines, or lines of equal internal heat of the earth, difficult of determination, when the conclusion has to be come to from the temperature of springs as they rise. So, at least, did I and my friends find it in some experiments which we made in Northern Asia. The temperature of springs, which has been so constant an object of physical investigation for the last half century, depends, like the height of the line of perpetual snow, on numerous and highly complex causes. It is a function of the temperature of the stratum in which they have their origin, of the capacity for heat of the ground, and of the quantity and temperature of the atmospheric or meteoric water ually formed in the sea, any essential change in the chemical composition of its waters has been brought about. We have no accurate data, as yet, for measuring, whether in our own time, or at any remote geological era, the relative supply and consumption of carbon in the air or the ocean, causes the amount of those elements to vary greatly; but the variation, if admitted, would not have caused an excess, but rather a deficit, of carbon, in the periods most productive of coal or peat, as compared to any subsequent or antecedent epochs. In fact, a climate favoring the rank and luxurious growth of plants, and, at the same time, checking their decay, and giving rise to peat or accumulations of vegetable matter, might, for the time, diminish the average amount of carbonic acid in the atmosphere—a state of things precisely the reverse of that assumed by those to whose views I am now object ing-Travels in North America. By Charles Lyell. Vol. i., p. 150.-Edit. of Phil. Journal. the same places as they did in the times of HelleThe springs of Greece still flow apparently in |