had seen previous to his visit. At the mouth of the Orinoco, where its milk-white waters bedim the bright blue of the Atlantic, its width is less than that of the river Plate or the Amazons. Its length is only 1120 geographical miles; but at the distance of 560 miles from its mouth, its breadth, when full, is 17,265 English feet, or nearly 35 miles; and the height to which it here rises above its lowest level is from 30 to 36 feet. After pursuing a westerly and then a northerly course, it runs again to the east, so that its mouth is nearly in the same meridian as its source! Near the mouths of the Sodomoni and the Guapo stands the grand and picturesque mountain of Duida, and among the cocoa groves to the east of it are found trees of the Bertholletia excelsa, the most vigorous and gigantic of the productions of the tropical world. From this region the Indians obtain the materials for the long blow-pipes out of which they discharge their arrows. The plant, from which they obtain tubes about eighteen feet long, from knot to knot, is a grass, a species of the arundinaria, which grows to the height of thirty or forty feet, though its thickness is scarcely half an inch in diameter. Between the third and fourth degrees of latitude, Humboldt observed in the Atabapo, the Temi, the Tuamini, and the Guainia, the "enigmatical phenomenon of the so-called black-water." The color of these rivers is a coffee-brown, which, in the shade of the palm groves, passes into ink-black, though in transparent vessels the water has a golden yellow color. This black color of the water is ascribed by our author to its holding in solution carburetted hydrogen, " to the luxuriance of the tropical vegetation, and to the quantity of plants and herbs upon the ground over which the rivers flow." The ink-blackness mentioned by Humboldt, arises, as he states, from the groves of palm when reflected from the aqueous surface, a phenomenon which we have frequently seen even under a more remarkable aspect in the lakes which exist in the Grampian range near the banks of the Spey. When these lakes, seen from above, reflect from their unruffled surface only the purple flanks of the hills covered with heath or with pine, the light which reaches the eye is exceedingly faint, and almost inappreciable, not only from the darkness of its tint, but from the smallness of its angle of incidence npon the reflecting surface. Under these circumstances, the lake literally is as black as ink; but if the slightest breeze forms a ripple on a portion of its surface, the inclined faces of the tiny waves reflect the light of the sky or of the clouds, and the portion of the lake thus disturbed has the appearance of milk, so that the sheet of water seems to be formed of ink and of mouth of the Guaviare and Atabapo grows the noblest of the palms, "the Piriguao," whose smooth and polished trunk, about sixty-five feet high, is adorned with the most delicate flag-like foliage, and bears large and beautiful fruit like peaches, which, when prepared in a variety of ways, affords a nutricious and farinaceous food to the natives. At the junction of the Meta, there rises from the middle of a mighty whirlpool an isolated cliff, called the Rock of Patience, as voyagers sometimes require two days to pass it; and opposite the Indian mission of Carichano, the eye of the traveller is riveted on an abrupt rock, ElMogote de Cocnyza, a cube with vertically precipitous sides, above 200 feet high, and carrying on its surface forests of trees of rich and varied foliage. Like a Cyclopean monument in its simple grandeur, this central mass rises high above the tops of the surrounding palms, marking the deep azure of the sky, with its sharp and rugged outlines, and uplifting " its summit high in air, a forest above the forest." In the lower parts of the river near the sea, great natural rafts, consisting of trees torn from the banks by the swelling of the river, are encountered by the boatmen, whose canoes are often wrecked by striking against them in the dark. These rafts, which are covered like meadows with flowering water plants, remind the traveller of the floating gardens of the Mexican lakes. As the Orinoco imparts a black color to the reddish white granite which it has washed for a thousand years, the existence of similar black hollows, at heights of nearly 200 feet above the present bed of the river, indicates the fact, "that the streams whose magnitude now excites our astonishment, are only the feeble remains of the immense masses of water that belonged to an earlier age of the world." The very natives of Guiana called the attention of our author to the traces of the former height of the waters. On a grassy plain, near Uruana, stands an isolated granite rock, upon which are engraven, at a height of more than eighty feet, figures of the sun and moon, and of many animals, particularly crocodiles and boas, arranged almost in rows or lines. The natives believe that these figures were carved when their fathers' boats were only a little lower than the drawings. The cataracts, or Raudal of Maypures, are not, like the falls of Niagara, formed by the descent of a mass of water through a great height, nor are they narrow gorges through which the river rushes with accelerated velocity. They consist of a countless number of little cascades, succeeding each other like steps, sometimes extending across the entire bed of the river, and sometimes in a river milk in immiscible proximity. The slight coffee-500 feet wide, leaving only an open channel of brown color of some of our own streams, is obvi- twenty feet. When the steps are but two or three ously occasioned by the peaty soil over which they flow. The phenomenon exhibited on the banks of this remarkable river (the Orinoco) cannot fail to command the admiration of the traveller. Near the feet high, the natives can descend the falls, remaining in the canoe. When the steps are high, and stretch across the stream, the boat is landed and dragged along the bank by branches of trees placed under it as rollers. In descending from the village of Maypures to the Rock of Manimi in the bed of the river, a wonderful prospect opens to the traveller's view. A foaming surface, four miles in length, presents itself at once to the eye. Iron-black masses of rocks, resembling ruins and battlemented towers, rise frowning from the waters. Rocks and islands are adorned with the luxuriant vegetation of the tropical forest; a perpetual mist hovers over the waters, and the summits of the lofty palms pierce through the cloud of spray and vapor. When the rays of the glowing evening sun are refracted in these humid exhalations, a magic optical effect begins. Colored bows shine, vanish, and reäppear; and the ethereal image is swayed to and fro by the breath of the sportive breeze. During the long rainy season the streaming waters bring down islands of vegetable mould, and thus the naked rocks are studded with bright flower-beds, adorned with melastomas and droseras, and with small silver-leaved mimosas and ferns. These spots recall to the recollection of the European those blocks of granite decked with flowers which rise solitary amid the glaciers of Savoy, and are called, by the dwellers in the Alps, " jardins," or "courtils." In the blue distance the eye rests on the mountain chain of Cunavami, a long extended ridge, which terminates abruptly in a truncated cone. We saw the latter glowing at sunset as if in roseate flames. This appearance returns daily. No one has ever been near the mountain to detect the precise cause of this brightness, which may perhaps proceed from a reflecting surface produced by the decomposition of tale or mica slate. - Vol. i., pp. 224, 225. The Raudal of Atures is, like that of the Maypures, a cluster of islands, between which the river forces its way for ten or twelve thousand yards, a forest of palms rising from the middle of its foaming waters. Near the southern entrance of this cataract, and on the right bank of the river, stands the celebrated Cave of Ataruipe. It consists of a cavity or vaulted roof, formed by a far overhanging cliff," and is the vault or cemetery of an extinct nation. * * * quite similar to those which cover the walls of the Leaving this interesting cave at nightfall, and carrying along with him several skulls, and an entire skeleton, our author could not avoid tracing a melancholy contrast between the extinct race, whose mouldering relics he bore, with the ever new life which springs from the bosom of the earth: Countless insects poured their red phosphoric light on the herb-covered ground, which glowed with living fire, as if the starry canopy of heaven had sunk down upon the turf. Climbing bignonias, fragrant vanillas, and yellow flowering banis terias adorned the entrance of the cave, and the summits of the palms rustled above the graves. Thus perish the generations of men! Thus do the name and the traces of nations fade and disappear! Yet when one blossom of man's intellect withers-when in the storms of time the memorials of his art moulder and decay-an ever new life springs forth from the bosom of the earth; maternal nature unfolds unceasingly her germs, her flowers, and her fruits; regardless though man, with his passions and his crimes, treads under foot her ripening harvests.-Vol. i., p. 231. We counted (says our author) about 600 well preserved skeletons, placed in as many baskets, woven from the stalks of palm leaves. These baskets, which the Indians call mapires, are shaped The third aspect of nature to which Baron like square sacks, differing in size according to the Humboldt directs our attention is the Nocturnal age of the deceased. Even new-born children had Life of Animals in the Primeval Forest. The each its own mapire. The skeletons are so perfect, that not a bone or a joint is wanting. The bones wooded region which lies between 8° of north had been prepared in three different ways; some and 19° of south latitude is one connected forest bleached, some colored red with onoto, the pigment having an area twelve times greater than that of of the bixa orellana, and some like mummies, closely Germany. This vast surface is watered by sysenveloped in sweet-smelling resin and plantain tems of rivers, whose tributaries sometimes exleaves. The Indians assured us that the custom had been to bury the fresh corpses for some months in damp earth, which gradually consumed the flesh; they were then dug up, and any remaining flesh scraped away with sharp stones. This the Indians said was still the practice of several tribes in Guiana. Besides the mapires, or baskets, we found urns of half-burnt clay, which appeared to contain the bones of entire families. The larger of these urns were about three feet high, and nearly six feet long, of a pleasing oval form, and greenish color, having handles shaped like snakes and crocodiles, and meandering or labyrinthine ornaments round the upper margin. These ornaments are So ceed in the abundance of their waters the Rhine On the sandy bank of the Rio Apure, closely bordering upon the impenetrable forest, our author and his party bivouacked, as usual, under the open sky, surrounded by fires to keep off the prowling jaguars. Their hammocks were susspended on the oars of their boat, driven vertically into the ground, and the deep stillness which prevailed was broken only from time to time by the blowing of the fresh-water dolphins. Soon after eleven o'clock, however, such a disturbance began to be heard in the adjoining forest that sleep became impossible during the rest of the night. The wild cries of animals appeared to rage throughout the forest. Among the many voices which resounded together, the Indians could only All The sun was in the zenith, and the flood of light which he poured down upon the river, and which flashed sparkling back, owing to a slight rippling movement of the waters, rendered still more sensible the red haze which veiled the distance. the naked rocks and boulders around were covered with a countless number of large thick scaled iguanas, gecko-lizards, and variously spotted salamanders. Motionless, with uplifted heads and open mouths, they appeared to inhale the burning air with ecstasy. At such times the larger animals seek shelter in the recesses of the forest, and the birds hide themselves under the thick foliage of the trees, or in the clefts of the rocks; but if, under this apparent entire stillness of nature, we listen for the faintest tones which an attentive ear can seize, we shall perceive an all-pervading rustling recognize those which, after short pauses in the sound, a humming and fluttering of insects close general uproar, were first heard singly. There to the ground and in the lower strata of the was the monotonous howling of the alouates, (the atmosphere. Everything announces a world of howling monkeys,) the plaintive, soft, and almost organic activity and life. In every bush-in flute-like tones of the small sapajous, the snarling the cracked bark of the trees in the earth, grumblings of the striped nocturnal monkey, (the undermined by hymenopterous insects, life stirs nictipithicus trivirgatus, which I was the first to audibly. It is, as it were, one of the many describe,) the interrupted cries of the great tiger, voices of nature, heard only by the sensitive the cuguar, or maneless American lion, the pec- and reverent ear of her true votaries. Vol. i., cary, the sloth, and a host of parrots, parraquas, p. 272. and other pheasant-like birds. When the tigers came near the edge of the forest, our dog, which had before barked incessantly, came howling to seek refuge under our hammocks. Sometimes the cry of the tiger was heard to proceed from amidst The second volume of the "Aspects of Nature" commences with an instructive section "On the Physiognomy of Plants," which our author prefaces with some highly interesting observathe high branches of a tree, and was then always tions on the universal profusion with which life accompanied by the plaintive piping of the monkeys is everywhere distributed. The information who were seeking to escape from the unwonted which is here conveyed to us has a high value at pursuit. If we ask the Indians why this incessant all times, but a very peculiar one at present, noise and disturbance takes place on particular when a great degree of probability attaches to the nights, they answer with a smile, that "the animals are rejoicing in the bright moonlight, and opinion that organic atoms floating in our atmoskeeping the feast of the full moon." To me it phere are the cause of that dreadful pestilence appeared that the scene had originated in some which is now ravaging our land. In the dense accidental combat, that the disturbance had spread and lower strata of our atmosphere we are accusto other animals, and that the noise was thus more tomed to observe the general prevalence of life, and more increased. The jaguar pursues the pec- and travellers inform us that even on the polar caries and tapirs, and these pressing against each ice the air is resonant with the cries and songs other in their flight break through the interwoven of birds and with the hum of insect life. In the tree-like shrubs which impede their escape; the apes on the tops of the trees, frightened by the upper and more ethereal regions, 18,000 feet crash, join their cries to those of the larger ani- above the sea, Humboldt and Bonpland found mals; the tribes of birds who build their nests in butterflies and other winged insects which were communities are aroused, and thus the whole ani- involuntarily carried upwards by ascending curmal world is thrown into a state of commotion.rents of air; and the same creatures are carried Longer experience taught us that it is not always by storms from the land to great distances at sea. the celebration of the brightness of the moon which breaks the repose of the woods. We witnessed the saine occurrence repeatedly, and found that the voices were loudest during violent falls of rain, or when the flashing lightning, accompanied with loud peals of thunder, illuminated the deep recesses of the forest. Vol. i., pp. 270, 271. Scenes like these form a striking contrast with the deathlike stillness which prevails within the tropics " during the noontide hours of a day of more than usual heat." At the remarkable "Narrows" of Baraguan, where the Orinoco forces itself through a pass 5690 feet wide, our author had occasion to spend a day, when the thermometer in the shade was so high as 122° of Fahrenheit. There was not a breath of air to stir the fine dustlike sand, and under the influence of the mirage the outlines of every distant object had wave-like undulations. CCXCIII. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXIII. 38 M. Boussingault, when ascending the Silla of Caraccas, saw whitish shining bodies rise from the valley to the summit of the Silla, 5755 feet high, and then sink down to the neighboring seacoast. This phenomenon continued for an hour, and the white bodies, though considered at first to have been small birds, turned out to be agglomerations of straws or blades of grass, belonging to the genus vilfa tenacissima, which abounds in the Caraccas and Cumana. Creatures still more wonderful are detected in the atmosphere by the aid of the microscope-minute animalculæ, (the rotifera and Brachione,) motionless and apparently dead, lifted up by the winds in multitudes from the surface of evaporating waters, and carried about by atmospheric currents till the descending dews restore them to the earth, "dissolving the film or envelope which incloses their transparent rotating bodies, and probably by means of the oxygen which all water contains, breathing new irritability into their dormant organs."* The celebrated Prussian naturalist, M. Ehrenberg, has discovered, by microscopic observations, that the dust or yellow sand which falls like rain on the Atlantic, near the Cape de Verde Islands, and is sometimes transported to Italy, and even the middle of Europe, consists of a multitude of silicious shelled microscopic animals. "Perhaps," says Humboldt, many of them float for years in the upper strata of the atmosphere, until they are brought down by vertical currents, or in accompaniment with the superior current of the trade-winds, still susceptible of revivification, and multiplying their species by spontaneous division, in conformity with the particular laws of their organization." But besides creatures fully formed, (continues Humboldt,) the atmosphere contains innumerable germs of future life, such as the eggs of insects and the seeds of plants; the latter provided with light hairy and feathery appendages, by means of which they are wafted through the air during long autumnal wanderings. Even the fertilizing dust or pollen from the anthers of the male flowers, in spaces in which the sexes are separated, is carried over land and sea by winds and by the agency of winged insects to the solitary female plant on other shores. Thus, wherever the glance of the inquirer into nature penetrates, he sees the continual dis *** the horizon, shedding through the perfumed air their soft and planetary lustre; while bright furrows of flashing light marked the track of the dolphins through the midst of the foaming waves. Not only the ocean but also the waters of our marshes hide from us an innumerable multitude of strange forms. The naked eye can with difficulty distinguish the Cyclidias, the Euglenes, and the host of Naiads, divisible by branches like the Lemna cr Duckweed, of which they seek the shade. Other creatures inhabit receptacles where the light cannot penetrate, and an atmosphere variously composed, but differing from that which we breathe: such are the spotted ascaris which lives beneath the skin of the earthworm, the Leucoptera, of a bright silvery color, in the interior of the shore Naiad, and a Pentastoma which inhabits the large pulmonary cells of the rattlesnake of the tropics. There are animalculæ in the blood of frogs and of salmon; and even, according to Nordmann, in the fluids of the eyes of fishes, and in the gills of the bleak.-Vol. ii., pp. 5-7. It is impossible to peruse this interesting extract without noticing its connection with the remarkable discovery recently made by Dr. Brittan, that in the discharges from cholera patients there are found minute cellular bodies, having the aspect and character of fungi; that the same bodies exist in the air and water of infected districts; and that they are never found in persons or places where the pestilence does not prevail. These bodies vary from the five hundredth to the ten thousandth of semination of life either fully formed or in the germ. an inch in diameter; the smallest occurring in the We do not yet know where life is most air, the larger in the vomit, and the largest in the abundant-whether on continents or in the unfath- dejections of the patient. Admitting, what yet omed depths of the ocean. Through the excellent work of Ehrenberg, we have seen the sphere of organic life extend, and its horizon widen before our eyes, both in the tropical parts of the ocean, and in the fixed or floating masses of ice of the Antarctic seas. Silicious shelled polygastrica, and even coscinodiscæ with their green ovaries, have been found alive enveloped in masses of ice only twelve degrees from the pole; the small black glacier flea and Podurellæ inhabit the narrow tubular holes examined by Agassiz, in the Swiss glaciers. Ehrenberg has shown that on several microscopic infusoria others live as parasites; and that, in the Gallionellæ, such is their prodigious power of development, or capability of division, that in the space of four days an animalcule invisible to the naked eye can form two cubic feet of the Bilin polishing slate! In the sca, gelatinous worms, living or dead, shine like stars, and by their phosphoric light change the surface of the wide ocean into a sea of fire. Ineffaceable is the impression made on my mind by the calm nights of the torrid zone on the waters of the Pacific. I still see the dark azure of the firmament, the constellation of the ship near the zenith, and that of the cross declining towards requires a more extensive induction to prove it, that these bodies are always found in cholera localities, and never elsewhere, it still remains to be proved that they are the cause of cholera. Various facts, however, have been long known, which render such an opinion highly probable. The Ergot, the Spermoedia Clarus, for example, a fungus which is found abundantly in rye, is a poison which exercises a peculiar action in contracting the uterus. When it composes a considerable portion of rye bread, it produces one of the most terrific diseases to which man is subject. The ergot is produced within the seeds of various grasses, such as Secale Agrostis, Dactylis, Festuca, Elymus, &c.; and is rather supposed to be a diseased condition of the grasses, than a distinct fungus. But however this may be, its effects upon the human frame are terrible. Nausea and vomiting are followed by numbness in the extremities, which, after being wasted with excruciating pains, eventually fall off at the joints, withering and becoming black and hard as if they were charred. This disease, called the Dry Gangrene, has been at different periods epidemic in Sologne, a tract of wet, clayey land lying between the Loire and Cher. The fingers, or toes, or feet, or legs, or even the thighs, drop off at the joints. According to Duhamel, it destroyed nineteen out of twenty of the persons infected; and, strange to after the rest of the family, and in a slighter de-air we breathe, and the water we drink, with life * By means of a drop of water Fontana revived a rotitera which had been two years dried and motionless. Baker resuscitated paste eels which Needham had given him in 1744. Doyere has recently shown by experiment that rotiferæ come to life, or pass from a motionless state to a state of motion, after having been exposed to temperatures of from 11° to 113° of Fahr. Payen has shown that the sporules of a minute fungus, (oidium aurantiacum,) which deposits a ruddy feathery coating on a crumb of bread are not deprived of their power of germination by an exposure of half an hour to a temperature of from 183° to 207° of Fahr., before being strewed on fresh and perfectly unspoiled dough. * The Sphacelia segetum of Klotzsch, and the Farinaria Poæ of Sowerby. It is called Ergot, from its resemblance to a cock's spur. say, the sufferer in one case survived, though his thighs fell off at the hips! But it is not merely in rye that this poison is generated. When wheat, rice, or any other grain is prematurely cut down, or has become mouldy or musty from age, or from the place where it has been stored;-or when it has been mixed with the seeds of poisonous plants, such as the Raphanus Raphanistrum, and the Lolium temulentum, the most excruciating diseases have been occasioned by its use. But the most remarkable case on record of the frightful effects of damaged grain, poisoned no doubt by some deleterious fungus, is recorded in the Philosophical Transactions, for 1762,* by Dr. Charlton Wollaston, and by the Reverend Mr. Bones, minister of the parish. John Downing a poor laboring man, who lived at Wattisham, near Stowmarket, in Suffolk, had fed his family, a wife and six children, on what is called clog-wheat, or laid wheat, which had been gathered and thrashed separately. The pickle was discolored, and smaller than that of the sound wheat. On Sunday morning, the 10th of January, the eldest girl complained of a violent pain in the calf of her left leg. In the evening, another girl felt the same pain. On Monday, the mother and another child; and on Tuesday, all the rest, except the father, were similarly affected. The sufferers shrieked with pain. In a few days the legs turned black and mortified. The mortified parts separated from the sound part, in most of them, two inches below the knee; in some lower, and in one child, at the ancle. Three lost both legs and one child both feet. The following was the state of their legs on the 13th April : An effect equally strange has been observed in America, on men and animals when fed on maize that has been overrun with parasitic fungi. Deer, dogs, apes, and parrots were intoxicated by it. Fowls laid eggs without shells. Swine cast their bristles, while in man it occasioned only baldness and loosening of the teeth. In the passage which we have quoted from Humboldt, we see the process by which deleterious elements of a microscopic kind, and even those of a large size, are raised in the atmosphere and distributed over the globe by currents in the lower and upper regions of the air ;-but these and other elements equally deleterious may be lifted up or even torn from the surface of the earth, by processes not generally referred to. When electricity passes from one body to another, it carries off the matter of the first body in an extreme state of subdivision, and deposits it upon the other ;-and when, in the ascending stroke, lightning passes from the earth into the atmosphere, it carries up into the air the imponderable elements of the metalliferous rocks and ground from which it issued. Iron, sulphur, and carbon, have been actually transported by lightning, and deposited on the surfaces which were struck by it; and when we consider the prevalence of electricity at every season and in every clime, and its constant transmission from the crust of the earth into the superincumbent atmosphere, we can see no difficulty in understanding how the elements of all metallic bodies may be diffused through the air, and distributed, according to laws of which we know nothing, by the magnetic or other currents which surround the earth. Inorganic matter, too, in a minute state of subdivision, is thrown off from the hardest bodies by friction, by change of temperature, and by ordinary combustion, as well as in volcanic action; so that there are powerful causes constantly at work, the tendency of which is to pollute the gree, the pain being confined to the two fingers of his right hand, which turned blackish, and were withered for some time, but are now better; and he has in some degree recovered the use of them." During this calamity, the family were in other respects in good health. They ate heartily, and slept well, and were free from fever. "One poor boy, in particular, looked as healthy and florid as possible; and was sitting on the bed quite jolly, drumming with his stumps!" "I have always been used," says Dr. Wollaston, in concluding his extrordinary narrative, "to read Lucan's description of the effects of the bite of the little serpent Seps as fabulous, or at least * Vol. lii., part ii., pp. 523, 521. ingredients that, when accumulated and combined by particular causes, may prove injurious to health, and be destructive of animal and vegetable life. Although the characteristic physiognomy of different parts of the earth's surface depends on a great variety of external phenomena, yet our author is justly of opinion that the principal impression made upon the traveller, is by the magnitude and constant presence of vegetable forms. Animals, from their smaller size and their repeated absence from the eye, form but a small part of a landscape, while trees, from their greater size and their occurrence in extended groups, fill the eye with a living mass of vegetation. Their great age, too, combined with their magnitude, |