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hover over the putrescency of the grave.

What can be more striking and thrilling than the beginning of the last chapter of his Urnburial. "Now that these dead bones have already outlasted the living ones of the Methuselah, and in a yard under ground, and thin walls of clay, outworn all the strong and spacious buildings above them, and quietly rested under the drums and tramplings of three conquests, what prince can promise such diuturnity unto his relics, and might not gladly say,

"Sic ego componi versus in ossa velim."

Another singular sport of his mind is his Garden of Cyrus, or Quincunx; but of this, the character of Dr Johnson is so comprehensive and exact, as to leave nothing to be said by another. The following passage from it is admirably characteristic of Browne's style of writing. "Light which makes things seen makes some things invisible. Were it not for darkness and the shadow of the earth, the noblest part of the creation had remained unseen, and the stars in heaven as invisible as on the fourth day, when they were created above the horizon with the sun, or there was not an eye to behold them. The greatest mystery of religion is expressed by admiration, and in the noblest part of Jewish types we find the Cherubims shadowing the mercy seat. Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living; all things fall under this name, the sun itself is but a dark simulachrum, and light but the shadow of God." Quincunx in his works, page 47.

His other works, if we except his

Bibliotheca Abscondita,* and Christian Morals, have little in them worth notic ing. The latter of these works was com→ posed when he was advanced in years, and when he had lost much of that mental fire and vigour which, in his younger days, he so abundantly possessed, and when his fondness for originality, which before he loved to pursue through every difficulty, was in a great measure subsided and extinct. But though from these causes it is inferior to his former productions, though the language is frequently pompous and tumid, and the thoughts trite and unproportioned, yet still there are many passages equal to any he ever produced, and there is one essayt so excellent from its sterling weight and matter, and so interesting from its being the practical results of the experience of the author himself, that it alone deserves to rescue the other parts of the book from oblivion, were they even much worse than they are.

Such are the works of Browne, a never-failing treasury; to which the divine may resort for passages of fervent piety, the philosopher for deep inquiry into nature, and the poet for flights of sublimity and grandeur.That they have lost their former popularity, is a loss they suffer in common with many other compositions which deserve an immortality of fame ; but an ardent love for their excellencies, and conviction of their merits, induces me to hope that, in the present avidity for reprinting, his works will not be forgotten, who was most assuredly an ornament to the age that he lived in, and an honour to the country that produced him. I am, &c. your obedient servant. J. C.

LIVING TOADS FOUND IN STONES ARE PRODUCTIONS OF THE FORMER
WORLD, BY THE RECTOR OF PABSDorf.

THE occurrence of living toads in stones, is one of the most remarkable facts in natural history. Amongst many examples of this sort, we shall mention a few which put the matter beyond all doubt. A living toad was found in a large stone, at Newark on Trent, in England. It was of a white colour, measured three and a

half inches, but appeared incapable any more of bearing the light. For all its motions argued an incompatable state, and an hour afterwards it died. But in this time it was seen by several hundred people.

In a stone quarry, near Cassel, the workmen discovered three living toads lying together in a stone four feet

In his Miscellaneous Tracts.
+ Part 3d, Sect. 22 of Christian Morals.

long, three feet broad, and as many high, on the outside of which, before it was broken, not the slightest trace of an aperture was to be discovered. It was with difficulty that these animals could be brought from the spot they lay in, and as soon as they were taken out, they hopped in again. They appeared at first to be quite lively in the grass; but they died in half an hour.

The fact cannot, therefore, be disputed, and I could, were it necessary to prove the truth of these appear ances, quote many instances of this sort, which have been recorded. Some time since a living toad was found in slate, at Rothenberg on the Saale. We shall not, therefore, detain ourselves longer on this point, but endeavour rather to explain the matter. Every thinking reader, who has not heard of this phenomenon, will consider such as wonderful, and many even unaccountable. It appears also at first sight to be impossible, for a creature to be enclosed in a stone, such a length of time, without dying of hunger, or being suffocated.

Naturalists have endeavoured, to be sure, to shew, how this is possible; but no one has, if I remember, explained in what manner and when these animals came into the stones.

In order to solve the first problem, it is said, the stone in which the toads existed, was probably a porous sandstone, which imbibed moisture from rain, which the animal inspired by means of its pores, or its sucking warts. For these animals can be kept long alive on wet blotting paper, which is moistened from time to time. It is also known that toads and frogs are very tenacious of life, and can fast a long time.

An English naturalist made a trial, how long he could keep a toad without nourishment; he placed it in a pot, and buried it in the ground, closing it carefully. He forgot by chance to dig up the pot, until two or three years were elapsed. He found his toad still live ing, and buried it a-fresh. We have to wait the issue.

But this explanation does not appear quite satisfactory to us. Such a creature can be preserved living by means of moisture or water, for a certain time. But many thousand years, how would that be possible? For we cannot admit of a shorter period, since

which our rocks, even slate, lime, and sandstone, and who knows, even if it were a porous sandstone in which the toads lived.

be

We can more easily explain how such an animal can exist and preserved in a tree. For a living toad has been found in the cavity of a tree, which, according to its rings, must have been more than eighty years old. It probably had crept into a hole of one of its boughs, and had not been able to come out again; and the opening had in the course of time completely closed. Here it could easier subsist, than in hard stone, but the sequel will show, that the preservation of these animals does not depend upon nourishment, but upon another circumstance, and quite other causes. We come now to the second question, how and when the toads came into the stones. In order to render this clear to ourselves, we must remember, that besides our own present world, in which we exist, one has already preceded it, which contained, as ours, terrestrial and marine animals. Yet there was a time, when the whole continent was but an immeasurable ocean; as the secondary mountains, with their petrified beds of muscles, fishes, and sea productions prove. After some unknown great catastrophe, which our earth suffered, the sea at length disappeared, and from a world of wa ters arose, if I may be allowed the expression, a world of land. There, where at present the plough turns up the soil, and countless corn fields shine with their golden harvests, where immense forests spread forth their luxuriant trees, amongst which numerous wild animals sport, where hills and mountains raise their varied summits, where herds of cattle graze, where rivulets and rapid streams wind through the vallies, and where cities and villages are now situated, there formerly raged the waves of this ocean there swarmed hosts of animals, of numberless forms, and magnitudes.

At the command of the Almighty the waters disappeared, and with them the then existing world of marine animals and of plants, which were thus placed upon the dry land.

The bowels of the earth have preserved to our times the remains of such only as have withstood decay, and have become petrified. And the

bottom of the sea became dry land, and the slime and mud it had left behind was hardened into stone. But another terrestrial world, besides the one of water above mentioned, must have existed, before the present one was formed. This can be seen from the numerous remains of terrestrial animals and productions which we find in different countries, and which do not belong to the present period of the earth. There are as many and as large forests under the earth as there are above it, which have been buried thousands of years ago, and have been transformed into coal. There were formerly as many, perhaps more, large and small animals on the earth than there are at present. We must, therefore, suppose that the sea and dry land have been continually changing places with each other on the surface of our earth, and that after each change of this description a new creation of animals and plants took place on it. For this reason we find, that wood in a state of coal, and the bones of quadrupeds, occur intermixed with marine productions in the same bed; nay, even under the bottom of the sea we discover river museles, and the beds of former great rivers. It may be conjectured, that at a future transformation of the earth new intermixtures will arise, and the productions of our present world will be united to those of a former one, and rest with them in one common grave, in order to make place for a new and better world. It is impossible to determine the time when the last great transformation took place, I which caused the former world to make place for this. But every one who knows how much time is necessary to produce a new creation of plants and animals out of the bosom of the earth, according to the laws of nature, must easily discern that many centuries must have passed away since that great catastrophe happened.

The living toads already mentioned must have been inclosed in their stony prisons during this last revolution of the globe. For on the present period of the earth having commenced, and the productions of the former world being buried in mud and slime by the overflowing of the sea, the whole surface of the earth became turned into solid strata by some unknown process of nature, and out of

the sand-banks and coral reefs of the sea, arose the secondary limestone and sand stone mountains. The toads of the former world met with the same fate as its fish and other animals; they were covered and buried with mud. They would have perished like their fellow creatures, in water or in mud, had not their peculiar organization prevented this. These animals possess the property of sleeping and remaining in a state of torpor during the winter, without having occasion for any nourishment during the whole period. Frogs are often to be found, in winter, in ice, and on its thawing, they are again revived. And it is well known, that frogs and toads, when the weather is warmer than usual in the spring, come forth from their holes in the earth, and commence a new life. During the great revolution of our globe, just mentioned, when the whole animal and vegetable creation was buried under mud and earth; these toads met with a similar fate, and were inclosed in their stony prisons until they were released from them by accident. They were obliged to repose in them some thousand years in a state of sleep, having no other means in their power, otherwise they would have had a like fate with millions of fishes and terrestrial animals, which perished and became petrified.

But it may be said, that these toads might have been inclosed in stone at a later period, as these animals are fond of creeping into holes and cavities of the earth in order to sleep the winter. Even the toads which were found inclosed alive in a tree must have come there in this manner. It is also known, that in limestone quarries, new rocks, as calc-tuff, &c., are formed during a comparatively short period of time, and that these animals might, perhaps, have been inclosed through these means. But if insects of a former world could be preserved in amber, and mammoths in their full flesh in ice, a toad of the primeval world could well exist alive in stone, until the present world, as it is very tenacieus of life, and has the advantage of being able to pass a long time without nourishment, in a state of torpor or sleep. The fact is still a problem which naturalists or zoologists will alone be capable of solving; and which would be effected by anatomising one of those fossil toads with the view of ascertaining

if it is an animal of the present or of the former world. The white colour, which the English toad had, leads us to suppose it as probable that it did not belong to our world, provided the length of time and the want of air and nourishment had not changed its natural colour and bleached its body. In the mean time, if such an animal can exist for years in an old tree, or even in a stone, it is also capable of being preserved in a stony prison thousands of years, because, being asleep and in so confined a situation, no exhalation takes place from it, and, therefore, there is no occasion to replace the lost animal juices by various nourishment. Wonderful phenomenon! The toad, this ugly and much despised animal, was of all others the only one capable of undergoing this experiment of nature, and, thereby, of viewing a second time the light of the world. All others, the most noble and beautiful creatures, even man himself, had it not in his power to live to see such a blessing. Man, with his fellow creatures, could only pass into the new world in a petrified state, the insects of a former world could only be preserved from complete ruin in amber, and the mammoth be partially preserved in ice, but the toad was capable, on account of its tenacious powers of life, and its peculiar nature, to pass from the old world into the new one in a living state, and by these means to be snatched from destruction. It has seen two worlds, having been an inhabitant of the old as well as the new one. It has twice trodden the theatre of the world!

How many useful considerations does the discovery not give rise to! How many weighty truths may not be traced from it!

These toads, therefore, furnish us with a fresh proof of a former world. For, if they do not belong to our world, but are different from the present animals of the same species, which, however, must be more decisively proved than at present, it is clear that there have been formerly other animals in the world than our own. Should they prove to be a new species, we shall have discovered a new race of animals of a former world, and thus add one more to those already known. It were only necessary that Cuvier should discover er examine such a toad found in stone,

and perhaps one more would be immediately added to the number of primeval animals discovered by him.

But the circumstance gives rise to other considerations; if the philosopher takes pleasure in endeavouring to penetrate the depths of futurity, and in exploring the future fate of our world, and of his fellow-creatures: it cannot be less agreeable and instructive to him to investigate the past, and to read the former fate of our present earthly inhabitants by the remains of a former world. Such an inquiry makes us acquainted with numerous interesting facts, and we shall now present our readers with a few of these.

We fancy ourselves standing in the subterraneous caverns of a great limestone mine, and admiring the immense masses of rock, with its different layers and strata. On nearer inspection, we find that these masses of limestone teem with millions of shell-fish, and other remains of a former world, which must have ceased to exist thousands of years ago; that we are even standing on a former bottom of the ocean, and are surrounded by millions of marine animals, and other productions of the sea. On searching, we soon find a cornu ammonis, whose species is now extinct in the world; then a nautilus, now a gryphite, or a turbinite, or a pectinite, &c. &c. In these we discover beings which have a similitude to our present inhabitants of the ocean, but are differently constructed. Here we discover a petrified fucus, and remark in it the branch of a former marine plant. There we notice the remains of an encrinite, or lily stone, and discover them to have been formerly marine animals of a remarkable nature. Here, we even find a tooth, and recognise it to have belonged to an unknown animal of the former world, or of a fish whose race has been destroyed in a great revolution of the earth. There we discover a thigh-bone lying under the ruins of the former world, and immediately pronounce it to be part of a palaotherium. We cannot help expressing the most earnest wish to be better acquainted with this world of plants and animals for ever past away. We often, in imagination, fancy to ourselves the delight we would experience could we have seen the former world, with its various productions, in their natural and living state, in order to compare them with their present terrestrial cre

ation! but this is a wish which cannot be gratified. We are only capable of judging, from the scanty remain, of the numerous productions of that early period, of their existence and properties. If the earth is to be again inundated with water, and its inhabitants destroyed and again repeopled, the inhabitants of the new world will form nearly the same conception of the animals and vegetables of the present world as we form of those of the world which has preceded the present. But the ideas thus formed will be very imperfect. But do not let us make too hasty conclusions! On finding a piece of amber, we discover in it an insect of the former world, in all its natural beauty and form, as it has lived and breathed. At another time, in break

ing a rock in pieces, in order to examine its correspondent parts, and to ascertain if it contains any marine organic remains-and behold! our wish of beholding animals of the former world alive in their natural form, is now accomplished. A living creature of the former period of the earth, a toad, which has withstood the decay of thousands of years, springs out of its prison, in which it has been secured against every injury. It awakes from its slumber, on beholding the renewed light which beams around it, and of whose beneficial influence it has been so long deprived, in order to convince us of the reality of a former world, and then, after a short second existence, falls into an eternal sleep.

Such are the geological speculations of J. G. J. Ballenstedt, rector of Pabsdorf, in the duchy of Brunswick. They are infinitely more amusing than the mineralogical visions offered to the imaginations of philosophers, by our Geolo gical Societies and Mineralogical Travellers.-EDITOR.

ELEMENTS OF A PLAN FOR THE LIQUIDATION OF THE NATIONAL DEBT, &c.

BY RICHARD HEATHFIELD.

THE extent of the public debt of Great Britain, and the impossibility of discharging it, have long since become proverbial-" One might as well talk of paying off the national debt," is a common expression to denote the visionary character of any scheme. Nevertheless, any plausible plan for its liquidation ought to be examined with a degree of attention and deliberation corresponding, in some measure, the magnitude and importance of the object which it is intended to accomplish. The rapid accumulation of the public debt, and the little prospect of its ever being discharged by any of the means which have, as yet, been resorted to for that purpose, is matter of serious reflection, and has engaged the attention of politicians and financiers, at different periods in the progress of the accumulation. Although ultimate ruin has frequently been predicted from its progressive increase and the principle on which it was contracted, no attempt has been made to pay it off by any other means than economy

*

in time of peace, and the tardy, if effective, operation of the sinking fund. Reason might have predicted, and experience has shewn, that when a state is reduced to the necessity of borrowing to carry on a war, or still more, if reduced to the necessity of funding, a very few years must accumulate a debt which the greatest frugality during a long period of peace will be inadequate to discharge. The recent history of Great Britain furnishes the most convincing proofs of the truth of this remark. In the year 1722, the national debt amounted to something more than 55 millions. In 1739 it was reduced below 47 millions, being a decrease of 8 millions during seventeen years of profound peace. In 1739 the Spanish war commenced, and it lasted till 1748, by which time the debt had increased to £78,293,312, being an increase of upwards of 31 millions in nine years. It thus appears, that a war of nine years added about four times as much to the national debt as a continued space of 17

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