Appendix

Appendix

No. 1 (page 19, note). It may be said that the cases referred to in the note on p. 19--and indeed all cases of a supposed acclimation consisting in physiological changes--are instances of the origination of new varieties by natural selection, the hardier maize, tomato, and other vegetables of the North, being the progeny of seeds of individuals endowed, exceptionally, with greater power of resisting cold than belongs in general to the species which produced them. But, so far as the evidence of change of climate, from a difference in vegetable growth, is concerned, it is immaterial whether we adopt this view or maintain the older and more familiar doctrine of a local modification of character in the plants in question.

No. 2 (page 24, note). The adjectives of direction in -erly are not unfrequently used to indicate, in a loose way, the course of winds blowing from unspecified points between N.E. and S.E.; S.E. and S.W.; S.W. and N.W. or N.W. and N.E. If the employment of these words were understood to be limited to thus expressing a direction nearer to the cardinal point from whose name the adjective is taken than to any other cardinal point, they would be valuable elements of English meteorological nomenclature.

No. 3 (page 31). I find a confirmation of my observations on the habits of the beaver as a geographical agency, in a report of the proceedings of the British Association, in the London Athenaeum of October 8, 1864, p. 469. It is there stated that Viscount Milton and Dr. Cheadle, in an expedition across the Rocky Mountains by the Yellow Head, or Leather Pass, observed that "a great portion of the country to the east of the mountains" had been "completely changed in character by the agency of the beaver, which formerly existed here in enormous numbers. The shallow valleys were formerly traversed by rivers and chains of lakes which, dammed up along their course at numerous points, by the work of those animals, have become a series of marshes in various stages of consolidation. So complete has this change been, that hardly a stream is found for a distance of two hundred miles, with the exception of the large rivers. The animals have thus destroyed, by their own labors, the waters necessary to their own existence."

When the process of "consolidation" shall have been completed, and the forest reestablished upon the marshes, the water now diffused through them will be collected in the lower or more yielding portions, cut new channels for their flow, become running brooks, and thus restore the ancient aspect of the surface.

No. 4 (page 33, note). The lignivorous insects that attack living trees almost uniformly confine their ravages to trees already unsound or diseased in growth from the depredations of leaf-eaters, such as caterpillars and the like, or from other causes. The decay of the tree, therefore, is the cause not the consequence of the invasions of the borer. This subject has been discussed by Perris in the Annales de la Societe Entomologique de la France, for 1851 (?), and his conclusions are confirmed by the observations of Samanos, who quotes, at some length, the views of Perris. "Having, for fifteen years," says the latter author, "incessantly studied the habits of lignivorous insects in one of the best wooded regions of France, I have observed facts enough to feel myself warranted in expressing my conclusions, which are: that insects in general--I am not speaking of those which confine their voracity to the leaf--do not attack trees in sound health, and they assail those only whose normal conditions and functions have been by some cause impaired."

See, more fully, Samanos, Traite de la Culture du Pin Maritime, Paris, 1864, pp. 140-145.

No. 5 (page 34, note). Very interesting observations, on the agency of the squirrel and other small animals in planting and in destroying nuts and other seeds of trees, may be found in a paper on the Succession of Forests in Thoreau's Excursions, pp. 135 et seqq.

I once saw several quarts of beech-nuts taken from the winter quarters of a family of flying squirrels in a hollow tree. The kernels were neatly stripped of their shells and carefully stored in a dry cavity.

No. 6 (page 40, note). Schroeder van der Kolk, in Het Verschil tusschen den Psychischen Aanleg van het Dier en van den Mensch, cites from Burdach and other authorities many interesting facts respecting instincts lost, or newly developed and become hereditary, in the lower animals, and he quotes Aristotle and Pliny as evidence that the common quadrupeds and fowls of our fields and our poultry yards were much less perfectly domesticated in their times than long, long ages of servitude have now made them.

Perhaps the half-wild character ascribed by P. Laestadius and other Swedish writers to the reindeer of Lapland, may be in some degree due to the comparative shortness of the period during which he has been partially tamed. The domestic swine bred in the woods of Hungary and the buffaloes of Southern Italy are so wild and savage as to be very dangerous to all but their keepers. The former have relapsed into their original condition, the latter have not yet been reclaimed from it.

Among other instances of obliterated instincts, Schroeder van der Kolk states that in Holland, where, for centuries, the young of the cow has been usually taken from the dam at birth and fed by hand, calves, even if left with the mother, make no attempt to suck; while in England, where calves are not weaned until several weeks old, they resort to the udder as naturally as the young of wild quadrupeds.--Ziel en Ligchaam, p. 128, n.

No. 7 (page 60, first note). At Pie di Mulera, at the outlet of the Val Anzasca, near the principal hotel, is a vine measuring thirty-one inches in circumference. The door of the chapter-hall in the cloister of the church of San Giovanni, at Saluzzo, is of vine wood, and the boards of which the panels were made could not have been less than ten inches wide. Statues and other objects of considerable dimensions, of vine wood, are mentioned by ancient writers.

No. 8 (page 63, second note). Cartier, A. D. 1535-'6, mentions "vines, great melons, cucumbers, gourds [courges], pease, beans of various colors, but not like ours," as common among the Indians of the banks of the St. Lawrence.--Bref Recit, etc., reprint. Paris, 1863, pp. 13, a; 14, b; 20, b; 31, a.

No. 8 (page 65, second paragraph). It may be considered very highly probable, if not certain, that the undiscriminating herbalists of the sixteenth century must have overlooked many plants native to this island. An English botanist, in an hour's visit to Aden, discovered several species of plants on rocks always reported, even by scientific travellers, as absolutely barren. But after all, it appears to be well established that the original flora of St. Helena was extremely limited, though now counting hundreds of species.

No. 9 (page 66, first note). Although the vine genus is very catholic and cosmopolite in its habits, yet particular varieties are extremely fastidious and exclusive in their requirements as to soil and climate. The stocks of many celebrated vineyards lose their peculiar qualities by transplantation, and the most famous wines are capable of production only in certain well-defined, and for the most part narrow districts. The Ionian vine which bears the little stoneless grape known in commerce as the Zante currant, has resisted almost all efforts to naturalize it elsewhere, and is scarcely grown except in two or three of the Ionian islands and in a narrow territory on the northern shores of the Morea.

No. 10 (page 68, first note). In most of the countries of Southern Europe, sheep and beeves are wintered upon the plains, but driven in the summer to mountain pastures at many days' distance from the homesteads of their owners. They transport seeds in their coats in both directions, and hence Alpine plants often shoot up at the foot of the mountains, the grasses of the plain on the borders of the glaciers; but in both cases, they usually fail to propagate themselves by ripening their seed. This explains the scattered tufts of common clover, with pale and flaccid blossoms, which are sometimes seen at heights exceeding 7,000 feet above the sea.

No. 11 (page 73, last paragraph). The poisonous wild parsnip, which is very common in New England, is popularly believed to be identical with the garden parsnip, and differenced only by conditions of growth, a richer soil depriving it, it is said, of its noxious properties. Many wild medicinal plants, such as pennyroyal for example, are so much less aromatic and powerful, when cultivated in gardens, than when self-sown on meagre soils, as to be hardly fit for use.

No. 12 (page 74, second note). See in Thoreau's Excursions, an interesting description of the wild apple-trees of Massachusetts.

No. 13 (page 86, first paragraph). It is said at Courmayeur that a very few ibexes of a larger variety than those of the Cogne mountains, still linger about the Grande Jorasse.

No. 14 (page 92, first note). In Northern and Central Italy, one often sees hillocks crowned with grove-like plantations of small trees, much resembling large arbors. These serve to collect birds, which are entrapped in nets in great numbers. These plantations are called ragnaje, and the reader will find, in Bindi's edition of Davanzati, a very pleasant description of a ragnaja, though its authorship is not now ascribed to that eminent writer.

No. 15 (page 93, second note). The appearance of the dove-like grouse, Tetrao paradoxus, or Syrrhaptes Pallasii, in various parts of Europe, in 1859 and the following years, is a noticeable exception to the law of regularity which seems to govern the movements and determine the habitat of birds. The proper home of this bird is the steppes of Tartary, and it is not recorded to have been observed in Europe, or at least west of Russia, until the year abovementioned, when many flocks of twenty or thirty, and even a hundred individuals, were seen in Bohemia, Germany, Holland, Denmark, England, Ireland, and France. A considerable flock frequented the Frisian island of Borkum for more than five months. It was hoped they would breed and remain permanently in the island, but this expectation has been disappointed, and the steppe-grouse seems to have disappeared again altogether.

No. 16 (page 94, note). From an article by A. Esquiros, in the Revue des Deux Mondes for Sept. 1, 1864, entitled, La vie Anglaise, p. 119, it appears that such occurrences as that stated in the note are not unfrequent on the British coast.

No. 17 (page 100, first paragraph). I cannot learn that caprification is now practised in Italy, but it is still in use in Greece.

No. 18 (page 112, first note). The recent great multiplication of vipers in some parts of France, is a singular and startling fact.

Toussenel, quoting from official documents, states, that upon the offer of a reward of fifty centimes, or ten cents, a head, twelve thousand vipers were brought to the prefect of a single department, and that in 1859 fifteen hundred snakes and twenty quarts of snakes' eggs were found under a farm-house hearthstone. The granary, the stables, the roof, the very beds swarmed with serpents, and the family were obliged to abandon its habitation. Dr. Viaugrandmarais, of Nantes, reported to the prefect of his department more than two hundred recent cases of viper bites, twenty-four of which proved fatal.--Tristia, p. 176 et seqq.

No. 19 (page 121, first note). The Beduins are little given to the chase, and seldom make war on the game birds and quadrupeds of the desert. Hence the wild animals of Arabia are less timid than those of Europe. On one occasion, when I was encamped during a sand storm of some violence in Arabia Petraea, a wild pigeon took refuge in one of our tents which had not been blown down, and remained quietly perched on a boy in the midst of four or five persons, until the storm was over, and then took his departure, insalutato hospite.

No. 20 (page 122). It is possible that time may modify the habits of the fresh water fish of the North American States, and accommodate them to the now physical conditions of their native waters. Hence it may be hoped that nature, even unaided by art, will do something toward restoring the ancient plenty of our lakes and rivers. The decrease of our fresh water fish cannot be ascribed alone to exhaustion by fishing, for in the waters of the valleys and flanks of the Alps, which have been inhabited and fished ten times as long by a denser population, fish are still very abundant, and they thrive and multiply under circumstances where no American species could live at all. On the southern slope of those mountains, trout are caught in great numbers, in the swift streams which rush from the glaciers, and where the water is of icy coldness, and so turbid with particles of fine-ground rock, that you cannot see an inch below the surface. The glacier streams of Switzerland, however, are less abundant in fish.

No. 21 (page 131, note). Vaupell, though agreeing with other writers as to the injury done to the forest by most domestic animals--which he illustrates in an interesting way in his posthumous work, The Danish Woods--thinks, nevertheless, that at the season when the mast is falling swine are rather useful than otherwise to forests of beech and oak, by treading into the ground and thus sowing beechnuts and acorns, and by destroying moles and mice.--De Danske Skore, p. 12.

No. 22 (page 135, note). The able authors of Humphreys and Abbot's most valuable Report on the Physics and Hydraulics of the Mississippi, conclude that the delta of that river began its encroachments on the Gulf of Mexico not more than 4,400 years ago, before which period they suppose the Mississippi to have been "a comparatively clear stream," conveying very little sediment to the sea. The present rate of advance of the delta is 262 feet a year, and there are reasons for thinking that the amount of deposit has long been approximately constant.--Report, pp. 435, 436.

The change in the character of the river must, if this opinion is well founded, be due to some geological revolution, or at least convulsion, and the hypothesis of the former existence of one or more great lakes in its upper valley, whose bottoms are occupied by the present prairie region, has been suggested. The shores of these supposed lakes have not, I believe, been traced, or even detected, and we cannot admit the truth of this hypothesis without supposing changes much more extensive than the mere bursting of the barrier which confined the waters.

No. 23 (page 143, note). See on this subject a paper by J. Jamin, in the Revue des Deux Mondes for Sept. 15, 1864; and, on the effects of human industry on the atmosphere, an article in Aus der Natur, vol. 29, 1864, pp. 443, 449, 465 et seqq.

No. 24 (page 159, second paragraph). All evergreens, even the broad-leaved trees, resist frosts of extraordinary severity better than the deciduous trees of the same climates. Is not this because the vital processes of trees of persistent foliage are less interrupted during winter than those of trees which annually shed their leaves, and therefore more organic heat is developed?

No. 25 (page 191, first paragraph). In discussing the influence of mountains on precipitation, meteorologists have generally treated the popular belief, that mountains "attract" to them clouds floating within a certain distance from them, as an ignorant prejudice, and they ascribe the appearance of clouds about high peaks solely to the condensation of the humidity of the air carried by atmospheric currents up the slopes of the mountain to a colder temperature. But if mountains do not really draw clouds and invisible vapors to them, they are an exception to the universal law of attraction. The attraction of the small Mount Shehallien was found sufficient to deflect from the perpendicular, by a measurable quantity, a plummet weighing but a few ounces. Why, then, should not greater masses attract to them volumes of vapor weighing hundreds of tons, and floating freely in the atmosphere within moderate distances of the mountains?

No. 26 (page 198, note). Elisee Redus ascribes the diminution of the ponds which border the dunes of Gascony to the absorption of their water by the trees which have been planted upon the sands.--Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 Aug., 1863, p. 694.

No. 27 (page 219, note). The waste of wood in European carpentry was formerly enormous, the beams of houses being both larger and more numerous than permanence or stability required. In examining the construction of the houses occupied by the eighty families which inhabit the village of Faucigny, in Savoy, in 1834, the forest inspector found that fifty thousand trees had been employed in building them. The builders "seemed," says Hudry-Menos, "to have tried to solve the problem of piling upon the walls the largest quantity of timber possible without crushing them."--Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 June, 1864, p. 601.

No. 28 (page 231, note). In a remarkable pamphlet, to which I shall have occasion to refer more than once hereafter, entitled Avant-projet pour la creation d'un sol fertile a la surface des Landes de Gascogne, Duponchel argues with much force, that the fertilizing properties of river-slime are generally due much more to its mineral than to its vegetable constituents.

No. 29 (page 265, note). Even the denser silicious stones are penetrable by fluids and the coloring matter they contain, to such an extent that agates and other forms of silex may be artificially stained through their substance. This art was known to and practised by the ancient lapidaries, and it has been revived in recent times.

No. 30 (page 268). There is good reason for thinking that many of the earth and rock slides in the Alps occurred at an earlier period than the origin of the forest vegetation which, in later ages, covered the flanks of those mountains. See Bericht ueber die Untersuchung der Schweizerischen Hochgebirgswaldungen. 1862. P. 61.

Where more recent slides have been again clothed with woods, the trees, shrubs, and smaller plants which spontaneously grow upon them are usually of different species from those observed upon soil displaced at remote periods. This difference is so marked that the site of a slide can often be recognized at a great distance by the general color of the foliage of its vegetation.

No. 31 (page 286, note). It should have been observed that the venomous principle of poisonous mushrooms is not decomposed and rendered innocent by the process described in the note. It is merely extracted by the acidulated or saline water employed for soaking the plants, and care should be taken that this water be thrown away out of the reach of mischief.

No. 32 (page 293, note). Gaudry estimates the ties employed in the railways of France at thirty millions, to supply which not less than two millions of large trees have been felled. These ties have been, upon the average, at least once renewed, and hence we must double the number of ties and of trees required to furnish them.--Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 July, 1863, p. 425.

No. 33 (page 294, second paragraph of note). After all, the present consumption of wood and timber for fuel and other domestic and rural purposes, in many parts of Europe, seems incredibly small to an American. In rural Switzerland, the whole supply of firewood, fuel for small smitheries, dairies, breweries, brick and lime kilns, distilleries, fences, furniture, tools, and even house building--exclusive of the small quantity derived from the trimmings of fruit trees, grape vines and hedges, and from decayed fences and buildings--does not exceed an average of two hundred and thirty cubic feet, or less than two cords, a year per household. The average consumption of wood in New England for domestic fuel alone, is from five to ten times as much as Swiss families require for all the uses above enumerated. But the existing habitations of Switzerland are sufficient for a population which increases but slowly, and in the peasants' houses but a single room is usually heated. See Bericht ueber die Untersuchung der Schweiz. Hochgebirgswaldungen, pp. 85-89.

No. 34 (page 304). Among more recent manuals may be mentioned: Les Etudes de Maitre Pierre. Paris, 1864. 12mo; BAZELAIRE, Traite de Reboisement. 2d edition, Paris, 1864; and, in Italian, SIEMONI, Manuale teorico-pratico d'arte Forestale. Firenze, 1864. 8vo. A very important work has lately been published in France by Viscount de Courval, which is known to me only by a German translation published at Berlin, in 1864, under the title, Das Aufaesten der Waldbaeume. The principal feature of De Courval's very successful system of sylviculture, is a mode of trimming which compels the tree to develop the stem by reducing the lateral ramification. Beginning with young trees, the buds are rubbed off from the stems, and superfluous lateral shoots are pruned down to the trunk. When large trees are taken in hand, branches which can be spared, and whose removal is necessary to obtain a proper length of stem, are very smoothly cut off quite close to the trunk, and the exposed surface is immediately brushed over with mineral-coal tar. When thus treated, it is said that the healing of the wound is perfect, and without any decay of the tree.

No. 35 (page 313). The most gorgeous autumnal coloring I have observed in the vegetation of Europe, has been in the valleys of the Durance and its tributaries in Dauphiny. I must admit that neither in variety nor in purity and brilliancy of tint, does this coloring fall much, if at all, short of that of the New England woods. But there is this difference: in Dauphiny, it is only in small shrubs that this rich painting is seen, while in North America the foliage of large trees is dyed in full splendor. Hence the American woodland has fewer broken lights and more of what painters call breadth of coloring. Besides this, the arrangement of the leafage in large globular or conical masses, affords a wider scale of light and shade, thus aiding now the gradation, now the contrast of tints, and gives the American October landscape a softer and more harmonious tone than marks the humble shrubbery of the forest hill-sides of Dauphiny.

Thoreau--who was not, like some very celebrated landscape critics of the present day, an outside spectator of the action and products of natural forces, but, in the old religious sense, an observer of organic nature, living, more than almost any other descriptive writer, among and with her children--has a very eloquent paper on the "Autumnal Tints" of the New England landscape.--See his Excursions, pp. 215 et seqq.

Few men have personally noticed so many facts in natural history accessible to unscientific observation as Thoreau, and yet he had never seen that very common and striking spectacle, the phosphorescence of decaying wood, until, in the latter years of his life, it caught his attention in a bivouac in the forests of Maine. He seems to have been more excited by this phenomenon than by any other described in his works. It must be a capacious eye that takes in all the visible facts in the history of the most familiar natural object.--The Maine Woods, p. 184.

"The luminous appearance of bodies projected against the sky adjacent to the rising" or setting sun, so well described in Professor Necker's Letter to Sir David Brewster, is, as Tyndall observes, "hardly ever seen by either guides or travellers, though it would seem, prima facie, that it must be of frequent occurrence." See TYNDALL, Glaciers of the Alps. Part I. Second ascent of Mont Blanc.

Judging from my own observation, however, I should much doubt whether this brilliant phenomenon can be so often seen in perfection as would be expected; for I have frequently sought it in vain at the foot of the Alps, under conditions apparently otherwise identical with those where, in the elevated Alpine valleys, it shows itself in the greatest splendor.

No. 36 (page 314). European poets, whose knowledge of the date palm is not founded on personal observation, often describe its trunk as not only slender, but particularly straight. Nothing can be farther from the truth. When the Orientals compare the form of a beautiful girl to the stem of the palm, they do not represent it as rigidly straight, but on the contrary as made up of graceful curves, which seem less like permanent outlines than like flowing motion. In a palm grove, the trunks, so far from standing planted upright like the candles of a chandelier, bend in a vast variety of curves, now leaning towards, now diverging from, now crossing, each other, and among a hundred you will hardly see two whose axes are parallel.

No. 37 (page 316, first note). Charles Martin ascribes the power of reproduction by shoots from the stump to the cedar of Mount Atlas, which appears to be identical with the cedar of Lebanon.--Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 July, 1864, p. 315.

No. 38 (page 332). In an interesting article on recent internal improvements in England, in the London Quarterly Review for January, 1858, it is related that in a single rock cutting on the Liverpool and Manchester railway, 480,000 cubic yards of stone were removed; that the earth excavated and removed in the construction of English railways up to that date, amounted to a hundred and fifty million cubic yards, and that at the Round Down Cliff, near Dover, a single blast of nineteen thousand pounds of powder blew down a thousand million tons of chalk, and covered fifteen acres of land with the fragments.

No. 39 (page 339). According to Reventlov, whose work is one of the best sources of information on the subject of diking-in tide-washed flats, Salicornia herbacea appears as soon as the flat is raised high enough to be dry for three hours at ordinary ebb tide, or, in other words, where the ordinary flood covers it to a depth of not more than two feet. At a flood depth of one foot, the Salicornia dies and is succeeded by various sand plants. These are followed by Poa distans and Poa maritima as the ground is raised by further deposits, and these plants finally by common grasses. The Salicornia is preceded by confervae, growing in deeper water, which spread over the bottom, and when covered by a fresh deposit of slime reappear above it, and thus vegetable and alluvial strata alternate until the flat is raised sufficiently high for the growth of Salicornia.--Om Marskdannelsen paa Vestkysten af Hertugdoemmet Slesvig, pp. 7, 8.

No. 40 (page 348, note). The drijftil employed for the ring dike of the Lake of Haarlem, was in part cut in sections fifty feet long by six or seven wide, and these were navigated like rafts to the spot where they were sunk to form the dike.--EMILE DE LAVELEYE, Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 Sept., 1863, p. 285.

No. 41 (page 352, last paragraph). See on the influence of the improvements in question on tidal and other marine currents, Staring, De Bodem van Nederland, I. p. 279.

Although the dikes of the Netherlands and the adjacent states have protected a considerable extent of coast from the encroachments of the sea, and have won a large tract of cultivable land from the dominion of the waters, it has been questioned whether a different method of accomplishing these objects might not have been adopted with advantage. It has been suggested that a system of inland dikes and canals, upon the principle of those which, as will be seen in a subsequent part of the chapter on the waters, have been so successfully employed in the Val di Chiana and in Egypt, might have elevated the low grounds above the ocean tides, by spreading over them the sediment brought down by the Rhine, the Maes, and the Scheld. If this process had been introduced in the Middle Ages and constantly pursued to our times, the superficial and coast geography, as well as the hydrography of the countries in question, would undoubtedly have presented an aspect very different from their present condition; and by combining the process with a system of maritime dikes, which would have been necessary, both to resist the advance of the sea and to retain the slime deposited by river overflows, it is possible that the territory of those states would have been as extensive as it now is, and, at the same time, more elevated by several feet. But it must be borne in mind that we do not know the proportions in which the marine deposits that form the polders have been derived from materials brought down by these rivers or from other more remote sources. Much of the river slime has no doubt been transported by marine currents quite beyond the reach of returning streams, and it is uncertain how far this loss has been balanced by earth washed by the sea from distant shores and let fall on the coasts of the Netherlands and other neighboring countries.

We know little or nothing of the quantity of solid matter brought down by the rivers of Western Europe in early ages, but, as the banks of those rivers are now generally better secured against wash and abrasion than in former centuries, the sediment transported by them must be less than at periods nearer the removal of the primitive forests of their valleys. Kloeden states the quantity of sedimentary matter now annually brought down by the Rhine at Bonn to be sufficient only to cover a square English mile to the depth of a little more than a foot.--Erdkunde, I. p. 384.

No. 42 (page 358, first paragraph). Meteorological observations have been regularly recorded at Zwanenburg, near the north end of the Lake of Haarlem, for more than a century, and since 1845 a similar register has been kept at the Helder, forty or fifty miles farther north. In comparing these two series of observations, it is found that about the end of the year 1852, when the drawing off of the waters of the Lake of Haarlem was completed, and the preceding summer had dried the grounds laid bare so as greatly to reduce the evaporable surface, a change took place in the relative temperature of the two stations. Taking the mean of every successive period of five days from 1845 to 1852, the temperature at Zwanenburg was thirty-three hundredths of a centigrade degree lower than at the Helder. Since the end of 1852, the thermometer at Zwanenburg has stood, from the 11th of April to the 20th of September inclusive, twenty-two hundredths of a degree higher than at the Helder, but from the 14th of October to the 17th of March, it has averaged one-tenth of a degree lower than its mean between the same dates before 1853.

There is no reasonable doubt that these differences are due to the draining of the lake. There has been less refrigeration from evaporation in summer, and the ground has absorbed more solar heat at the same period, while in the winter it has radiated more warmth then when it was covered with water. Doubtless the quantity of humidity contained in the atmosphere has also been affected by the same cause, but observations do not appear to have been made on that point. See KRECKE, Het Klimaat van Nederland, II. 64.

No. 43 (page 358, note). In the course of the present year (1864), there have been several land slips on the borders of the Lake of Como, and in one instance the grounds of a villa lying upon the margin of the water suffered a considerable displacement. If the lake should be lowered to any considerable extent, in pursuance of the plan mentioned in the note on page 358, there is ground to fear that the steep shores of the lake might, at some points, be deprived of a lateral pressure requisite to their stability, and slide into the water as on the Lake of Lungern. See p. 356.

No. 44 (page 369, last paragraph but one of note). In like manner, while the box, the cedar, the fir, the oak, the pine, "beams," and "timber," are very frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, not one of these words is found in the New, except the case of the "beam in the eye," in the parable in Matthew and Luke.

No. 45 (page 375, note). In all probability, the real change effected by human art in the superficial geography of Egypt, is the conversion of pools and marshes into dry land, by a system of transverse dikes, which compelled the flood water to deposit its sediment on the banks of the river instead of carrying it to the sea. The colmate of modern Italy were thus anticipated in ancient Egypt.

No. 46 (page 378). We have seen in Appendix, No. 42, ante, that the mean temperature of a station on the borders of the Lake of Haarlem--a sheet of water formerly covering sixty-two and a half square English miles--for the period between the 11th of April and the 20th of September, had been raised not less than a degree of Fahrenheit by the draining of that lake; or, to state the case more precisely, that the formation of the lake, which was a consequence of man's improvidence, had reduced the temperature one degree F. below the natural standard. The artificially irrigated lands of France, Piedmont, and Lombardy, taken together, are fifty times as extensive as the Lake of Haarlem, and they are situated in climates where evaporation is vastly more rapid than in the Netherlands. They must therefore, no doubt, affect the local climate to a far greater extent than has been observed in connection with the draining of the lake in question. I do not know that special observations have been made with a view to measure the climatic effects of irrigation, but in the summer I have often found the morning temperature, when the difference would naturally be least perceptible, on the watered plains of Piedmont, nine miles south of Turin, several degrees lower than that recorded at an observatory in the city.

No. 47 (page 391, note). The Roman aqueduct known as the Pont du Gard, near Nismes, was built, in all probability, nineteen centuries ago. The bed of the river Gardon, a rather swift stream, which flows beneath it, can have suffered but a slight depression since the piers of the aqueduct were founded.

No. 48 (page 393, first note). Duponchel makes the following remarkable statement: "The river Herault rises in a granitic region, but soon reaches calcareous formations, which it traverses for more than sixty kilometres, rolling through deep and precipitous ravines, into which the torrents are constantly discharging enormous masses of pebbles belonging to the hardest rocks of the Jurassian period. These debris, continually renewed, compose, even below the exit of the gorge where the river enters into a regular channel cut in a tertiary deposit, broad beaches, prodigious accumulations of rolled pebbles, extending several kilometres down the stream, but they diminish in size and weight so rapidly that above the mouth of the river, which is at a distance of thirty or thirty-five kilometres from the gorge, every trace of calcareous matter has disappeared from the sands of the bottom, which are exclusively silicious."--Avant-projet pour la creation d'un sol fertile, etc., p. 20.

No. 49 (page 404, first paragraph of second note). The length of the lower course of the Po having been considerably increased by the filling up of the Adriatic with its deposits, the velocity of the current ought, prima facie, to have been diminished and its bed raised in proportion. There are grounds for believing that this has happened in the case of the Nile, and one reason why the same effect has not been more sensibly perceptible in the Po is, that the confinement of the current by continuous embankments gives it a high-water velocity sufficient to sweep out deposits let fall at lower stages and slower movements of the water. Torrential streams tend first to excavate, then to raise, their beds. No general law on this point can be stated in relation to the middle and lower course of rivers. The conditions which determine the question of the depression or elevation of a river bed are too multifarious, variable, and complex to be subjected to formulae, and they can scarcely even be enumerated. See, however, note on p. 431.

No. 50 (page 406, first paragraph). The system proposed in the text is substantially the Egyptian method, the Nile dikes having been constructed rather to retain than to exclude the water. The waters of rivers which flow down planes of gentle inclination, deposit in their inundations the largest proportion of their sediment as soon as, by overflowing their banks, they escape from the swift current of the channel, and consequently the immediate banks of such rivers become higher than the grounds lying farther from the stream. In the "intervals," or "bottoms," of the great North American rivers, the alluvial banks are elevated and dry, the flats more remote from the river lower and swampy. This is generally observable in Egypt, though less so than in the valley of the Mississippi, where, below Cape Girardeau, the alluvial banks constitute natural glacis descending as you recede from the river, at an average of seven feet in the first mile.--HUMPHREYS AND ABBOT'S Report, pp. 96, 97.

The Egyptian crossdikes, by retaining the water of the inundations, compel it to let fall its remaining slime, and hence the elevation of the remoter land goes on at a rate not very much slower than that of the immediate banks. Probably transverse embankments would produce the same effect in the Mississippi valley. In the great floods of this river, it is observed that, at a certain distance from the channel, the bottoms, though lower than the banks, are flooded to a less depth. See cross sections in Plate IV. of Humphreys and Abbot's Report. This apparently anomalous fact is due, I suppose, to the greater swiftness of the current of the overflowing water in the low grounds, which are often drained through the channels of rivers whose beds lie at a lower level than that of the Mississippi, or by the bayous which are so characteristic a feature of the geography of that valley. A judicious use of dikes would probably convert the swamps of the lower Mississippi valley into a region like Egypt.

No. 51 (second note). The mean discharge of the Mississippi is 675,000 cubic feet per second, and, accordingly, that river contributes to the sea about eleven times as much water as the Po, and more than sis and a half times as much as the Nile. The discharge of the Mississippi is estimated at one-fourth of the precipitation in its basin, certainly a very large proportion, when we consider the rapidity of evaporation in many parts of the basin, and the probable loss by infiltration.--HUMPHREYS AND ABBOT'S Report, p. 93.

No. 52 (page 423, first paragraph). Artificially directed currents of water have been advantageously used in civil engineering for displacing and transporting large quantities of earth, and there is no doubt that this agency might be profitably employed to a far greater extent than has yet been attempted. Some of the hydraulic works in California for washing down masses of auriferous earth are on a scale stupenduous enough to produce really important topographical changes.

No. 53 (page 435, first note). I have lately been informed by a resident of the Ionian Islands, who is familiar with this phenomenon, that the sea flows uninterruptedly into the sub-insular cavities, at all stages of the tide.

No. 54 (page 438, note). It is observed in Cornwall that deep mines are freer from water in artificially well-drained, than in undrained agricultural districts.--ESQUIROS, Revue des Deux Mondes, Nov. 15, 1863, p. 430.

No. 55 (page 441). See, on the Artesian wells of the Sahara, and especially on the throwing up of living fish by them, an article entitled, Le Sahara, etc., by Charles Martins, in the Revue des Deux Mondes for August 1, 1864, pp. 618, 619.

No. 56 (page 444, first note). From the article in the Rev. des Deux Mondes, referred to in the preceding note, it appears that the wells discovered by Ayme were truly artesian. They were bored in rock, and provided at the outlet with a pear-shaped valve of stone, by which the orifice could be closed or opened at pleasure.

No. 57 (page 447, second note). Hull ingeniously suggests that, besides other changes, fine sand intermixed with or deposited above a coarser stratum, as well as the minute particles resulting from the disintegration of the latter, may be carried by rain in the case of dunes, or by the ordinary action of sea water in that of subaqueous sandbanks, down through the interstices in the coarser layer, and thus the relative position of fine sand and gravel may be more or less changed.--Oorsprong der Hollandsche Duinen, p. 103.

No. 58 (page 479). It appears from Laurent, that marine shells, of extant species, are found in the sands of the Sahara, far from the sea, and even at considerable depths below the surface.--Memoires sur le Sahara Oriental, p. 62.

This observation has been confirmed by late travellers, and is an important link in the chain of evidence which tends to prove that the upheaval of the Libyan desert is of comparatively recent date.

No. 59 (p. 480). "At New Quay [in England] the dune sands are converted to stone by an oxyde of iron held in solution by the water which pervades them. This stone, which is formed, so to speak, under our eye, has been found solid enough to be employed for building."--ESQUIROS, L'Angleterre et la vie Anglaise, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 March, 1864, pp. 44, 45.

No. 60 (page 496, first paragraph). In Ditmarsh, the breaking of the surface by the man[oe]uvering of a corps of cavalry let loose a sand-drift which did serious injury before it was subdued.--KOHL, Inseln u. Marschen. etc., III. p. 282.

Similar cases have occurred in Eastern Massachusetts, from equally slight causes.--See THOREAU, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, pp. 151-208.

No. 61 (page 497, last note). A more probable explanation of the fact stated in the note is suggested by Elisee Reclus, in an article entitled, Le Littoral de la France, in the Revue des Deux Mondes for Sept. 1, 1864, pp. 193, 194. This able writer believes such pools to be the remains of ancient maritime bays, which have been cut off from the ocean by gradually accumulated sand banks raised by the waves and winds to the character of dunes.

No. 62 (page 506, note). The statement in the note is confirmed by Olmsted: "There is not a sufficient demand for rosin, except of the first qualities, to make it worth transporting from the inland distilleries; it is ordinarily, therefore, conducted off to a little distance, in a wooden trough, and allowed to flow from it to waste upon the ground. At the first distillery I visited, which had been in operation but one year, there lay a congealed pool of rosin, estimated to contain over three thousand barrels."--A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, 1863, p. 345.

No. 63 (page 507). In an article on the dunes of Europe, in Vol. 29 (1864) of Aus der Natur, p. 590, the dunes are estimated to cover, on the islands and coasts of Schleswig Holstein, in Northwest Germany, Denmark, Holland, and France, one hundred and eighty-one German, or nearly four thousand English square miles; in Scotland, about ten German, or two hundred and ten English miles; in Ireland, twenty German, or four hundred and twenty English miles; and in England, one hundred and twenty German, or more than twenty-five hundred English miles.

No. 64 (page 512, last paragraph). For a brilliant account of the improvement of the Landes, see Edmond About, Le Progres, Chap, VII.

In the memoir referred to in Appendix, No. 48, ante, Duponchel proposes the construction of artificial torrents to grind calcareous rock to slime by rolling and attrition in its bed, and, at the same time, the washing down of an argillaceous deposit which is to be mixed with the calcareous slime and distributed over the Landes by watercourses constructed for the purpose. By this means, he supposes that a highly fertile soil could be formed on the surface, which would also be so raised by the process as to admit of freer drainage. That nothing may be wanting to recommend this project, Duponchel suggests that, as some of the rivers of Western France are auriferous, it is probable that gold enough may be collected from the washings to reduce the cost of the operations materially.

No. 65 (page 528, first paragraph). The opening of a channel across Cape Cod would have, though perhaps to a smaller extent, the same effects in interchanging the animal life of the southern and northern shores of the isthmus, as in the case of the Suez canal; for although the breadth of Cape Cod does not anywhere exceed twenty miles, and is in some places reduced to one, it appears from the official reports on the Natural History of Massachusetts, that the population of the opposite waters differs widely in species.

Not having the original documents at hand, I quote an extract from the Report on the Invertebrate Animals of Mass., given by Thoreau, Excursions, p. 69: "The distribution of the marine shells is well worthy of notice as a geological fact. Cape Cod, the right arm of the Commonwealth, reaches out into the ocean some fifty or sixty miles. It is nowhere many miles wide; but this narrow point of land has hitherto proved a barrier to the migration of many species of mollusca. Several genera and numerous species, which are separated by the intervention of only a few miles of land, are effectually prevented from mingling by the Cape, and do not pass from one side to the other * * * * Of the one hundred and ninety-seven marine species, eighty-three do not pass to the south shore, and fifty are not found on the north shore of the Cape."

Probably the distribution of the species of mollusks is affected by unknown local conditions, and therefore an open canal across the Cape might not make every species that inhabits the waters on one side common to those of the other; but there can be no doubt that there would be a considerable migration in both directions.

The fact stated in the report may suggest an important caution in drawing conclusions upon the relative age of formations from the character of their fossils. Had a geological movement or movements upheaved to different levels the bottoms of waters thus separated by a narrow isthmus, and dislocated the connection between those bottoms, naturalists, in after ages, reasoning from the character of the fossil faunas, might have assigned them to different, and perhaps very widely distant, periods.

No. 66 (page 548, first paragraph). To the geological effects of the thickening of the earth's crust in the Bay of Bengal, are to be added those of thinning it on the highlands where the Ganges rises. The same action may, as a learned friend suggests to me, even have a cosmical influence. The great rivers of the earth, taken as a whole, transport sediment from the polar regions in an equatorial direction, and hence tend to increase the equatorial diameter, and at the same time, by their inequality of action, to a continual displacement of the centre of gravity, of the earth. The motion of the globe and of all bodies affected by its attraction, is modified by every change of its form, and in this case we are not authorized to say that such effects are in any way compensated.

INDEX

Abbeys of St. Germain and St. Denis, revenues of, 6.

Adirondack forest, 235; lakes of, 357.

Ailanthus glandulosa, 515.

Akaba, gulf of, infiltration of fresh water in, 440.

Albano, lake of, artificial lowering of, 353.

Algeria, deserts of, artesian wells in, 443; sand dunes of, 463; consolidated dunes, 480.

Alpaca, South American, 83.

Amazon, Indians of, 11.

Ameland, island of, 499.

America, North, primitive physical condition of, 27, 43; forests of, 28; possibility of noting its physical changes, 52; by scientific observation, 53; forest trees of, 274; sand dunes of, 469; proposed changes in hydrography of, 532.

Animal life, sympathy of ruder races with, 39; instinct, fallibility of, 40; hostility of civilized man to inferior forms of, 121.

Animals, wild, action of on vegetation, 78.

Aphis, the European, 104.

Apennines, effects of felling the woods on, 150, 152.

Appian way, the, 542.

Aqueducts, geographical and climatic effects of, 358.

Arabia Petraea, surface drainage of, 440; sandstone of, 452; sands and petrified wood of, 455; wadies of, 538.

Aragua, valley of, Venezuela, 202.

Ararat, Mt., phenomenon of vegetation on, 287.

Ardeche, l', department of, 152; destruction of forests in, 389.

-- river and basin, floods of, 386; supply of water to the Rhone, 388, 398; violence of inundations of, 388; damage done by, 390; effect on river beds, 391; force of its affluents, 392.

Argostoli, Cephalonia, millstreams of, 434.

Armenia, ancient irrigation of, 366.

Arno, the river, deposits of, 414; upper course of in the Val di Chiana, 417, 420.

Artesian wells, their sources, 441; usual objects, 442; occasional effects, 442; employment in the Algerian desert, 443; by the French Government, 444; success and probable results of, 445; known to the ancients, 443; depth of, 444.

Arundo arenaria, 501.

Ascension, island of, 205.

Auk, the wingless, extirpation of, 95.

Australia a field of physical observation, 51.

Avalanches, Alpine, various causes of, 266; by felling trees, 270.

Azoff, sea of, proposed changes, 531.

Babinet, plan for artificial springs, by, 448.

Baikal Lake, the fish of, 117.

Baltic Sea, sand dunes of, 467.

Barcelonette, valley of, former fertility, 243; present degradation of, 244.

Bavaria, scarcity of fuel in, 299.

Bear, the mythical character of, 40.

Beaver, the, agency in forming bogs, 31; cause of its increased numbers, 84.

Bee, the honey, products of, 105; introduction in United States, 106.

Belgium, effect of plantations in, 152; Campine of, 513.

Ben Gasi, district of, rock formation in, 537.

Bergamo, change of climate in the valley of, 151.

Bibliographical list of authorities, vii.

Birch tree (black and yellow), produce of, 171.

Birds, number of, in United States, 86; the turkey, dove, pigeon, 87; as sowers and consumers of seeds, 87; as destroyers of insects, 89; injurious extirpation of, 90; wanton destruction of, 92; weakness of, 93; instinct of migratory, 94; extinction of species, 95; commercial value of, 97; introduction of species, 98.

Bison, the American, 78; number and migrations of, 81, 83; domesticated, 135.

Blackbird, the proscription of, 91.

Bogs, formation and nomenclature of, 29-32; of New England, 29; repositories of fuel, 30.

Bremontier, system of dune plantations of, 503; a benefactor to his race, 515.

Breton, Cap, dune vineyards of, 508.

Busbequius' letters, 64.

Camel, the, transfer and migrations of, 83; injurious to vegetation, 132.

Campine of Belgium, 513.

Canada thistle, the, 68.

Canals, geographic and climatic effects of, 359; injurious effects of Tuscan, 359; projected, Suez, 519; Isthmus of Darien, 522; to the Dead Sea, 524; maritime, in Greece, 526; Saros, 527; Cape Cod, 528; the Don and the Volga, 531; Lake Erie and the Genesee, 532; Lake Michigan and the Mississippi, 533.

Cape Cod, sand dunes of, 487; legislative protection of, 502; vegetation of, 503; projected canal through, 528.

Cappercailzie, the, extinction of, in Britain, 96.

Carniola, caves of, 434.

Caspian Sea, proposed changes in its basin, 531.

Catania, lava streams of, 544.

Catavothra of Greece, 536.

Cevennes, effects of clearing the, 153.

Champlain, lake, dates of its congelation, 163.

Cherbourg, breakwater of, 46, 332.

Chiana, Val di, description and character of, 417-420; plans for its restoration, 420; artificial drainage of, attempted, 421; successfully executed, 423.

Clergy, mediaeval, their character, 282.

Climatic change, discussions of, 9; how tested, 20; causes producing, in New England, Africa, Arabia Petraea, 20-22; man's action on, difficult to ascertain, 51; deterioration, 71.

Coal mines, combustion of, 546.

Coal, sea, early use of, for fuel, 222; increased use of, in Paris, 295.

Coast line, change of, from natural causes, 331; subject to human guidance, 332.

Cochineal insect transferred to Spain, 105.

Cochituate Aqueduct, Boston, 103.

Col Isoard, valley of, devastated, 242.

Commerce, modern, on what dependent, 60.

Como, lake of, proposed lowering of, 358.

Constance, lake of, 534.

Cork-oak tree, yield of, 311.

Corporations, social and political, influence of, 54.

Cosmical influences, 13.

Cotton, early cultivation of, 61; can be raised by white labor, 381.

Crawley Sparrow Club, 90.

Currents, sea, strength of, 456; in the Bosphorus, 457.

Cuyahoga river, 208.

Cypress tree, its beauty, 314.

Darien, Isthmus of, proposed canal across, 522; conjectural effects of, 523.

Dead Sea, projected canals to, 524; possible results of, 525.

Deer, numbers of, in United States; 82; tame, injurious to trees, 130.

Denmark, peat mosses of, 22; dunes of, 497; extent and movement of, 498; legislative protection of, 501, 504.

Desert, the, richness of local color, 445; mirage in, 446.

Des Plaines river, 533.

Despotism a cause of physical decay, 5.

Dikes, recovery of land by, in the Netherlands, 335; early usage and immense extent of, 336; encouraged by the Spaniards, 337; details of their construction and effect on the land gained, 340-345; in Egypt, 413.

Dinornis, or moa, recent extirpation of, in New Zealand, 95.

Dodo, the, extirpation of, 95.

Domestic animals, action of, on vegetation, 79; origin and transfer of, 82; injurious to the forest growth, 130.

Don river, proposed diversion of, 531.

Draining a geographical element, 360; superficial, its necessity in forest lands, 363; effect on temperature, 364; underground, ib.; extensive use of, in England, 362; affects the atmosphere, 364; disturbs the equilibrium of river supply, 365; by boring, 362; in France, &c., 362; Paris, 363.

Drance, Switzerland, glacier lake of, 403.

Dry land and water, relative extent of, 178.

Dwight, Dr., Travels in the United States, characterized, 52.

Earth, fertile, below the rock, 537; transported to cover rocky surfaces, 537.

Earthquakes, effects of, 542; causes and possible prevention of, 543; of Lisbon, 544.

Earthworm, utility of, in agriculture, 100; multiplication of, in New England, 101.

Egypt, catacombs, 70; papyrus or water lily, 70; poisonous snakes of, 112; supposed increase of rain in, 190; productiveness of, 230; necessity and extent of irrigation in, 368, 373; cultivated soil of, 372, 374; population of, 374; amount of water used for irrigation, 380; saline deposits, 382; artificial river courses of, 402; cultivated area of, 412; sands of, 458; their prevalence and extent, 459; source of, 461; action on the Delta and cultivated land, 462; effect of the diversion of the Nile on, 529; refuse heaps near Cairo, 541.

Eland, the, preserved in Prussia, 86.

Elm, the Washington, Cambridge, 146.

Elsineur, artificial formation in harbor of, 539.

England, forest economy of, 221; large extent of ornamental plantations, 222; Forests of, described by Caesar, 222; private enterprise in sylviculture, 292; sand dunes of, 507.

Enguerrand de Coucy, cruelty of, 281.

Erie Canal, the, influence on the fauna and flora of its region, 116; lake, depth and level of, 532; proposed canal from, 532.

Espy's theories of artificial rain, 547.

Etna, volcanic lava and dust, 131.

Euphrates, sand plains in the valley of, 511.

Eye, cultivation of the, 11; control of the limbs by, 12; trained by the study of physical geography, 12.

Feudalism, pernicious influence of, 6.

Fir tree, the, its products, 311.

Fire weed, in burnt forests of the United States, 287.

Fish, destruction of, by man, 112, 114, 120, 122; voracity of, 114; introduction and breeding of foreign, 116; naturalization of, 117; inferiority of the artificially fattened, 121.

Fish, shell, extensive remains of, in United States, 117; of Indian origin, 128.

Fish ponds of Catholic countries, 426.

Fontainebleau, forest of, 34, 130; poaching in, 284; its renovation, 316; soil of, 513.

Food, ancient arts of preservation of, 18.

Forest, the, influence of, on the humidity of air, 162; do. of earth, 165; as organic, 166; balance of conflicting influences in, 176; influence on temperature, 178; on precipitation, 181, 196; in South America, 184; the Canary Islands and Asia Minor, 185; Peru, 188; Palestine, Southern France, Scotland and Egypt, 189; influence of, on humidity of soil, 196; on springs, 197; in Venezuela, 202; New Granada, 204; Switzerland and France, 205, 208; United States, 207; in winter, 210; general consequences of its destruction, 214; on the earth, springs, rivers, 215; literature of, in France, 217; Germany, 218; Italy, 218; England, 221; influence of, on inundations, 223; in North America, 225; disputed effects of, in Europe, 228; principal causes of its destruction, 270; in British America, 271; in Europe, 279; royal forests, 280; effects of the Revolution on, in France, 284; utility of, for the preservation of smaller plants, 286, 290; do. of birds, 291; economic utility of, and necessity for its restoration, 292; extent of, in Europe, 296; proportion in different countries of, 300; of the United States and Canada, 300; economy of, 303; management of, in France, 304; European forests, all of artificial growth, 305; artificial and natural, their respective advantages, 307; American do., their peculiar characteristics, 313; economic action of cattle on, 325; duty of preserving, 327; average revenue from, 327; regulated by laws in France, 395. See Trees, Woods.

Forests of North America, balance of geographical elements in, 27; agency of quadrupeds and insects in, 32; injury to, by insects, 33; meteorological importance of, 139.

Forest laws, mediaeval, character of, 217; do. Jewish, 217; severity of, in France and England, 280; under Louis IX., 281; of America, created by circumstances, 302.

France, forest literature and economy of, 217; legislation on forests, 233;

-- Southeastern, former physical state of, 237; altered condition of, 239; royal forests of, and forest laws, 280; extent of, in, 296; ancient lakes of, 357; inundations of 1856 in, 393; remedies against inundations in, 395; sand dunes of Western, 485; encroachments of the sea on, 494.

French peasantry, described by La Bruyere, 6; do. Arthur Young, 7; of Chambord, 283.

Friesland, sand dunes of, 489.

Fucinus Lake (Lago di Celano), drainage of, by the Romans, 354; moderns, 355.

Game Laws, effect on the numbers of birds in France, 91; in England and Italy, 92; severity of, in France, 283; unable to stop poaching, 284.

Ganges, valley of the, 548.

Gascony, coast sands of, 453; dunes of, 496; extent and advance of, 497; fixing and reclaiming of, 504; Landes of, 511; their reclamation, 512.

Geological influences, 13.

Geographers, new school of, 8.

Geographical influence of changes produced by man, 352.

Geography, modern, improved form of, 57.

German Ocean, sands of, 454, 457.

Germany, extent of forests in, 299.

Glacier lakes in Switzerland, 403.

Goat, the Cashmere or Thibet, 83.

Gold fish, the migration from China, 116.

Goldau, Switzerland, destruction of, 268.

Grape disease, its economic effect in France, Italy, Sicily, 72.

Grasshopper, the rapid increase in America, 291.

Gravedigger beetle, the, 107.

Greece, proposed maritime canals in, through the Corinthian Isthmus, 526; Mount Athos, 527; subterranean waters of, 536.

Gulls, sea, habits of, 98.

Gulf stream, the, 523.

Gunpowder chiefly used for industrial purposes, 335.

Haarlem Lake, origin and extent of, 346, 347; reasons for draining it, 348; means employed, 349; successful results, 350.

Hauran, the productions of, its soil, 74.

Heilbronn, springs at, 207.

Herring fishery, produce of, 120.

Hessian fly, introduction of in the United States, 104.

Honey bee, the wild, New England, legal usage, 302.

Humid air, movement of, 183.

Hunter in New England, exploits of, 82.

Ibex, the Alpine, 86.

India, saline efflorescence of its soil, 382; natural connection of rivers in, 401.

Insects, injurious to vegetable life, 33; utility of, 99; agency in the fertilization of orchids, 102; mass of their exuviae in South America, 102; introduction of injurious species, 104, 106; ravages of, 105; tenacity of life in, 106; the carnivorous, useful to man, 107; destruction of, by fish, 108; abundance of, in Northern Europe, 108; destruction of, by birds, 109; do. quadrupeds, 110; do. reptiles, 110; do not multiply in the forest, 291; confine themselves to dead trees, 322.

Inundations, influence of the forest on, 223; of the German Ocean, 334; means for obviating, 384; of 1856 in France, 393; remedies against, 395; legislative regulation of the woodlands in France for prevention of, 396; proposed basins of reception, 398; do. in Peru and Spain, 400; Rozet's plan for diminishing, 406.

Irrigation, remote date of in ancient nations, 366; among Mexicans and Peruvians, 366; its necessity in hot climates, 367; in Europe, 367; in Palestine, 368; in Idumaea, 370; Egypt, 371, 373; quantity of water so applied, 376, 377; extent of lands irrigated, 396; effects of, 378; on river supply, 380; on human health, 381; saline deposits from, in India and Egypt, 382; effect of, on vegetable crops, 378; on the soil, 379; economic evils of, 379.

Islands, floating, in Holland and South America, 349, 351.

Ijssel river, Holland, 535.

Italy, effects of the denudation of its forests, 220; political condition adverse to their preservation, 219; beauty of its winter scenery, 314; extent of irrigation in, 368; atmospheric phenomena of Northern, 368.

Jupiter, satellites of, visible to the eye, 12.

Jutland, effects of felling the woods in, 150; destruction of forests in, 279; encroachments of the sea on, 491.

Kander river, Switzerland, artificial course of, 403.

Karst, the subterranean waters of, 536.

Kjoekkenmoeddinger in Denmark, 16; their extent, 540.

Kohl, J. G., "the Herodotus of modern Europe," 340; on dune sand, 475.

Labruguiere, commune of, 208.

Laestadius, account of the Swedish Laplanders, 96.

Lakes, draining of, by steam hydraulic engines, 346; natural process of filling up by aquatic vegetation, 349; lowering of, in ancient and modern times, 353; in Italy, 354; in Switzerland, 356; inconvenient consequences of, 356; mountain, their disappearance, 357.

Landscape beauty, insensibility of the ancients to, 2; of the oasis and the desert, 445.

Lava currents, diversion of their course, 544; from Vesuvius, phenomena of, 545; heat emitted by, 545.

Life, balance of animal and vegetable, 103.

Liimfjord, the, irruption of the sea into, 491; aquatic vegetation of, 492; original state of, 519.

Lion, an inhabitant of Europe, 85.

Lisbon, earthquake of, 544.

Locust, the, does not multiply in woods, 296; tree and insect, 32.

Lombardy, statistics of irrigation in, 376.

Louis IX., of France, clemency of, 282.

Lower Alps, department of, ravages of torrents in, 246.

Lumber trade of Quebec, 271; of United States, 1850-'60, 301.

Lungern, lake of, lowering of, 356.

Madagascar, gigantic bird of, 96; the ai-ai of, 110.

Madder, early cultivation of, in Europe, 20.

Madeira, named from its forests, 129.

Maize, early cultivation of, law of its acclimation, 19; native country of, 73.

Malta, transported soil of, 538; salt works at, 540.

Man, reaction of, on nature, 8; insufficiency of data, 9; geographical influence of, 13; physical revolutions wrought by, 14; unpremeditated results of conscious action, 15; ancient relics of, in old geological formations, 16; mechanical effects of, on the earth's surface, 25; destructiveness of, 35; in animal life and inorganic nature, 36-39; character of his action compared with that of brutes, 42; subversive of the balance of nature, 43; sometimes exercised for good, 44; present limits to, 45; transfer of vegetable life by, 59; remains of, 76; contemporary with the mammoth, 77; agency in the extermination of birds, 96; do. introduction of species, 98; increase of insect life, 104; introduction of new forms of do. by, 105; destruction of fish by, 112, 120, 122; extirpation of aquatic animals by, 119; possible control of minute organisms, 125; his first physical conquest, 135; his action on land and the waters, 330; possible geographical changes by, 517; incidental effects of his action, 539; illimitable and ever enduring do., 548.

Maremme of Tuscany, ancient and mediaeval state of, 425; extent of, 427; inhabitants, 428; improvement of, 429; sedimentary deposits of, 425, 430.

Marine isthmuses, cutting of, 517; its difficulties, 518; sometimes done by nature, 519.

Marmato in Popayan, 205.

Marshes, climatic effects of draining, 358; insalubrity of mixture of fresh and salt water in, 417.

Mechanic arts, illustration of their mutual interdependence, 307.

Medanos of the South American desert, 482.

Mediterranean Sea, tides of, 425; sand dunes of, 467; poor in organic life, 520.

Mella, the river, Italy, 248.

Meteorology, uncertainty and late rise of, 16, 22; varying nomenclature of, 23; precipitation and evaporation, 24.

Michigan, lake, sand dunes of, 467; originally wooded, 487; proposed diversion of its waters, 532.

Mining excavations, effects of, 545.

Minute organisms, their offices, 123; universal diffusion and products of, 124, 127; possible control of their agency by man, 125; the coral insect, 125; the diatomaceae, 126.

Miramichi, great fire of, 28.

Mistral in France, 153.

Mississippi river, "cut offs" and their effect, 415; precipitation in the valley of, 436; projected canal to, 533.

Mountain slides, their cause, 265, 268; their frequency in the Alps, 267.

Mountainous countries, their liability to physical degradation, 50.

Monte Testaccio, Rome, 541.

Moose deer, the American, rapid multiplication of, 130.

Mushrooms, poisonous, how to render harmless, 286.

Natural forces, accumulation of, 46; resistance to, 542.

Nature, man's reaction on, 8; observation of, 10; stability of, 27, 34; restoration of disturbed harmonies of, 35; nothing small in, 548.

Naturalists, enthusiasm of, 99.

Netherlands, ancient inundations of, 334; recovery of land by diking, 334; the practice derived from the Romans, 335; extent of land gained from the sea, 336; do. lost by incursions of do., 337; character of lands gained, 338; natural process of recovery, 339; grandeur of the dike system of, 340; method of their construction in, 341; modes of protection, 343; various uses of, 343; effect on the level of the land, 344; drainage of do., 345; primitive condition of, 351; effects on the social, moral, and economic interests of the people of, 351; sand dunes of, 486; encroachments of the sea on, 494; artificial dunes in, 499; protection of dunes in, 500; removal of do., 509.

Nile, the river, valley of, 374; its ancient state, 375; inundations of, 385; water delivery of, 387; artificial mouths of, 402; consequences of diking, 410, 413; richness of its deposits, 411; extent of do., 412; mud banks caused by its deposits, 433; sand dunes at its mouths, 468; conduits for irrigation, 521; proposed diversion of, 528; not impossible, 529; effects of, 530; ceramic banks of, 541.

Northmen in New England, 60.

Nubians, Nile boats of the, 17.

Numbers, the frequent error in too definite statements of, 260; oriental and Italian usage of, 261.

Oak, the English, early uses in the arts, 223; "openings" of North America, 136.

Ohio, mounds of, 18; remains of a primitive people in, 135, 138; apple trees of, 22.

Old World, former populousness of, 4; physical decay of, 3; present desolation of, 5; its causes, 5; ancient climate of, 19; physical restoration of, 47.

Olive tree, the wild, 74; importance of, 312.

Orange tree known to the ancients, 64; the wild, 74.

Orchids, fertilization of, by insects, 102.

Organic life embraced in modern geography, 57; its geological agency, 75; geographical importance of, 7; bones and relics of, human and animal, 76.

Ostrich, the, diminution of its numbers, 97.

Ottaquechee river, Vermont, transporting power of, 253.

Otter, the American, voracity of, 120.

Oxen, agricultural uses of, in United States, 80.

Oyster, the, transplantation of, 118.

Palestine, ancient terrace culture and irrigation of, 369; disastrous effects of its neglect, 370.

Palissy, Bernard, character of, 218; plan for artificial springs, 447.

Paragrandini of Lombardy, 141.

Paramelle, the Abbe, on fountains, 437.

Peat beds, accidental burning of, 546; -- mosses of Denmark, 32.

Pecora, river of the Maremma, its deposits, 425.

Peru, ancient progress in the arts, 366; basins of reception in, 400.

Petra, in Idumaea, ancient irrigation at, 370.

Phosphorescence of the sea unknown to the ancients, 114.

Physical decay of the earth's surface, 3; its causes, 5; arrest of, in new countries, 48; forms and formations predisposing to, 49.

Physical geography, study of recommended, 12; restoration of the earth, 8; importance and possibility of, 26; of disturbed harmonies, 35; of the Old World, 47.

Pine, the American, former ordinary dimensions of, 275; how affected by the accidents of its growth, 306; the maritime, on dune sands in France, 506; the pitch, hardihood of, 273; umbrella, the, most elegant of trees, 309, 313; the white, rapidity of its growth, 274.

Pinus cembra of Switzerland, 309.

Pisciculture, its valuable results, 118.

Plants, cultivated, uncertain identity of ancient and modern, 19; do. of wild and domestic species, 73; changes of habit by domestication, 19; geographical influence of, 58; foreign, grown in United States, 61; American, grown in Europe, 63; modes of introduction, 64; accidental do., 66; power of accommodation of, 65; how affected by transfer, 68; tenacity of life in wild species, 69; extirpation of, 70; domestic origin of, 72; species employed for protection of sand dunes, 500.

Pliny, the elder, theory of springs, 198, 216.

Po, river, ancient state of its basin, 255; modern changes, 256; its floods, tributaries, and deposits, 256-261, 405; embankments of, 385, 404; sediment of, 410; age and consequences of its embankments, 411; mean delivery of, 412; salti of, 415.

Poland, sand plains of, 514.

Poplar, the Lombardy, 68; characterized, 313.

Potato, native country of, 73.

Prairies, conjectural origin of, 134.

Provence, physical structure of, 237; ancient state of, 238; destructive action of torrents on, 236; Alps of, 245.

Prussia, sand dunes of, 485; drifting of, 498; measures for reclaiming of, 505.

Quadrupeds, number in United States, 79; extirpation of, 84.

Quebec, high tides of, 271; lumber trade of, 272.

Railways, scientific uses of, 53.

Rain water, its absorption and infiltration, 438, 439; economizing its precipitation, 449.

Ravenna, cathedral of, 60; pine woods of, 150.

Red Sea, richness of, in organic life, 320; diversion of the Nile to, its effects, 530.

Reindeer, the, 83.

Reservoirs, geographic and climatic effects of, 258.

Reventlov's organization of dune economy in Denmark, 504; a benefactor to his race, 515.

Rhine, river, proposed diversion of, 533.

Rice, cultivation of, 381.

Rivers, transporting power of, 252; in Vermont, 253; their origin, 262; injury to their banks by lumbermen, 277; conditions of their rise and fall, 278; mutual action of rivers and valleys, 408; effect of obstructions in, 409; subterranean course of, 409; confluences of, effect on the current below, 424; sediment of, its extent, 547.

River beds, natural change of, 401; artificial do. in Egypt, 402; Italy and Switzerland, 403.

River deposits, 408; of the Nile, 410; the Po, 411; the Tuscan rivers, 414.

River embankments, 384; their use, 404; disadvantages, 405; transverse do., superiority of, 406; effects of, 409.

River mouths, obstructions of, 430; by sand banks, 431; accelerated by man's influence, 432; effect of tidal movements, 432.

Robin, the American, voracity of, 88.

Rock generally permeable by water, 265.

Roman empire, natural advantages of its territory, 1; increased by intelligent labor, 2; physical decay of, 3; present desolation, 4; caused by its despotism and oppression, 5.

Rozet's plan for diminishing inundations, 406.

Rude tribes, continuity of arts among, 17; commerce of, 18; relations to organic life, 39; and to nature, 41.

Russia, diminution of forests in, 298; effects of, on rivers and lakes, 299; sand drifts of the steppes of, 514; attempts to reclaim them, 515.

Sacramento City, California, effect of river dike at, 405.

Sand, its composition and origin, 452; action of rivers, 453; ancient deposits of, 454, 456; amount of, carried to the Mediterranean, 455; of Egypt, 458, 461; movement of, by the wind, 459; drifts of, from the sea, 461; dangers of accumulation of, 463; two forms of deposit, 463; drifting of dune, 495.

Sand banks, aquatic, 468; movement of, 469; connect themselves with the coast, 490.

Sand dunes, how formed, 464; utilization of, 465; inland, of the South American desert, 482; their peculiarities, 483; age, character, and permanence of, 484; naturally wooded, 486; not noticed by ancient writers, 487; management of, 488; coast, sources of supply, 465; law of their formation, 466, 471, 483; of the Mediterranean, 467; of Lake Michigan, 467; of the Nile mouths, 468; of America, 469; of Western Europe, 470; literature of, 471; height of, 472; humidity of, 473; of Cape Cod, 487; character of their sand, 474, 481; concretion within, 476; interior structure of, 477; general form of, 478; geological importance of, 479; composition of sandstone, 481; as barriers against the sea, 489; in Western Europe, 490; extent of, 507; of Gascony, 496; of Denmark, 497; of Prussia, 497; artificial formation of, in Holland, 499; protection of, 500; by vegetation, 501; trees adapted to, 505; removal of, 509.

Sand-dune vineyard of Cap Breton, 508.

Sand plains, mode of deposit, 464; constituent parts, 464; inland, of Europe, 509; landes of Gascony, 511; Belgium, 513; Eastern Europe, 513; advantages of reclaiming, 515; private and public enterprise, 516.

Sand springs, 511.

Sandal wood extirpated in Juan Fernandez, 130.

Saros, projected canal of, 527.

Sawmills, action of their machinery more rapid by night, 278.

Schelk, the extirpation of, 85.

Schleswig-Holstein, encroachments of the sea on, 493.

Scientific observation, practical lessons of, 54-56.

Sea, the, exclusion of, by dikes, in Lincolnshire, 333; encroachments of, 490; coast, 491; the Liimfjord, 491; Schleswig-Holstein, 493; Holland, 494; France, 494.

Sea cow, Steller's, extirpation of, 119.

Seal, the, in Lake Champlain, 117; voracity of, 120.

Seeds, vitality of, as preserved by the forest, 287, 289.

Seine river, ancient level of, 214; affluents of, 435.

Ship building of the middle ages, Venice and Genoa, 218.

Siberia, ice ravine in, 158.

Sicily, stone weapons found in, 18; sulphur mines of, 72; olive oil crop of, 312.

Silkworm, introduction in South America, 105.

Sinai, Mt., rain torrent at, 441; production of sand in peninsula of, 454; garden of monastery at, 537.

Snakes, destructive to insects, 110; tenacity of species, 111; number of, in Palestine and Egypt, 111.

Snow, action of the woods on, 211; experiments on, 212.

Soils, amount of thermoscopic action on various, 144; mechanical effects of shaking in the Netherlands, 344; effect of frost on, in United States, 344.

Solar heat, economic employment of, 47.

Solitary, the, extirpation of, 95.

Sound, transmission of, in still air, 165.

Springs, artificial, proposed by Palissy, 447; by Babinet, 448.

Spain, neglect of forest culture in, 279.

Squirrel, the, destructiveness of, in forests, 34; of Boston, 121.

St. Helena, flora of, 65; destruction of its forests, 130.

Staffordshire, phenomena of vegetation in, 288.

Starlings, habits of, in Piedmont, 111.

Stork, the, geographical range of, 93; anecdote of a, 99.

Subterranean waters, their origin, 434; sources of supply, 435; reservoirs and currents of, 438; diffusion of, in the soil, 439; importance, 440; of the Karst, 535; of Greece, 536.

Suez canal, the, danger from sand drifts, 461; effect on the Mediterranean and Red Sea basins, 520.

Sugar cane, culture of, 62.

Sugar-maple tree, produce of, 169.

Summer dikes of Holland, 342.

Sunflowers, effect of plantations of, 154.

Swallow, the, popular superstitions respecting, 418.

Switzerland, ancient lacustrine habitations of, 16, 70, 83.

Sylt Island, sand dunes of, 474; encroachments of the sea on, 493.

Sylviculture, best manuals of practice of, 304; when and how profitable, 305; its methods, 315; the taillis treatment, 315; the futaie do., 317; beneficial effects of irrigation, 319; exclusion of animals, 321; removal of leaves, &c., 322; topping and trimming, 324.

Taguataga Lake, Chili, 355.

Tea plant, the, cultivated in America, 62.

Temperature, general law of, 52.

Teredo, the general diffusion of, 107.

Termite, or white ant, ravages of, 107.

Teverone, cascade of, Tivoli, 402.

Timber, general superiority of cultivated, 305; slow decay of, in forest, 322.

Tobacco an American plant, 68; introduction in Hungary, 67.

Tocat, Asia Minor, oak woods of, 186.

Tomato, the, introduction to New England, 19.

Torricelli, successful plan for draining the Val di Chiana, 421.

Torrents, destructive action of, 231; means of prevention, 233; ravages of, in Southeastern France, 237; Provence, 239; Upper Alps, 240; Lower Alps, 246; action of, in elevating the beds of mainland streams, 249; in excavating ravines, 250; transporting power of, 251; signs of, extinguished, 263; crushing force of, 392.

Trees, as organisms, specific temperature of, 156; moisture given out by, 158; total influence on temperature, 159; absorption of water by, 166; flow of sap, 169; absorption of moisture by foliage of, 172; exhalation of do., 174; consequent refrigeration, 175; amount of ligneous products of, 173; protection against avalanches afforded by, 269; power of resisting the action of fire, 273; American forest trees, 274; their dimensions, 275; change in relative proportions of height and diameter, 276; comparative longevity of, 277; European and American compared, 308; species more numerous in America, 309; Spenser's catalogue of, 308; interchange of European and American species, 310; species of Southern Europe and their extent, 312; natural order of succession in, 323. See Forest, Woods.

Trieste, proposed supply of water to, 536.

Trout, the American, 115, 117, 121.

Tuscany, rivers of, their deposits, 414; physical restoration in, 416; improvements in Val di Chiana, 417; do. in the Maremma, 424.

Tyrolese rivers, elevation of their beds, 249.

Ubate, lakes of, New Granada, 204.

Undulation of water, 456.

United States, foreign plants grown in, 61; weight of annual harvest in, 62; number of quadrupeds in, 79; of birds, 86; effect of felling woods on its climate, 180; forests of, 300; instability of life in, 328.

Upper Alps, department of, ravages of torrents in, 240.

Urus, or auerochs, domesticated by man, 83; extirpation of, 85.

Val de Lys, evidence of glacier action in, 252.

Vegetable life, transfer by man's action, 59.

Velino, cascade of, Tivoli, 402.

Vesuvius, vegetation on, 131; eruption of February, 1851, 544.

Volcanic action, resistance to, 544; matter, vegetation in, 131.

Volga river, proposed diversion of, 531.

Walcheren, formation of the island, 340.

Wallenstadt, lake of, 534.

Walnut tree, consumption of, for gun stocks, 296; oil yielded by, 310.

Ward's cases for plants, 175.

Waste products, utilization of, 37.

Weeds common to Old and New World, 66; extirpated in China, &c., 71.

Whale, the, food of, 113; destruction of, 114.

Whale fishery, date of its commencement unknown, 112; in the middle ages, 112; American, 113.

Wheat, its asserted origin, 73; introduction to America, 74.

Wild animals, number of, 84.

Wild organisms, vegetable and animal, tenacity of life in, 69.

Willow, the weeping, introduction in Europe, 64.

Wolf, increase of the, 84; prevalence in forests of France, 296.

Wolf Spring, Soubey, 206.

Wood, increased demand for, 293; ship building, railroads, &c., 294; market price of, 294; replaced by iron in the arts, 295; means of increasing its durability, 295; how affected by rapid growth, 306; facilities for working, 307.

Woods, habitable earth originally covered by, 128; conditions of their propagation, 131; destructive agency of man and domestic animals, 132; do not furnish food for man, 133; first removal of, 134; burning of, 136; in Sweden and France, 137; effect on the soil, 138; destruction of, its effect, 139; electrical influence of, 140; chemical influence of, 142; influence on temperature, 143; absorbing and emitting surface of, 144; in summer and winter, 147; dead products of, 148; as a shelter, 149; in France, 149, 151; New England, 149; Italy and Jutland, 150; as a protection against malaria, 154; tend to mitigate extremes of temperature, 155. See Forest, Trees.

Wood mosses and fungi, absorbent of moisture, 168.

Woodpecker, the, destroyer of insects, 109.

Yak, or Tartary ox, the, 83.

Yew tree, geographical range of, 70.

Zeeland, province, formation of, 339.

Zostera marina, 492.

Zuiderzee, proposed drainage of, 534; means of, and geographical results, 535.

THE END.

* * * * *

FORSYTH'S "CICERO."

A New Life of Cicero.

BY WILLIAM FORSYTH, M. A., Q. C.

With Twenty Illustrations. 2 vols. crown octavo. Printed on tinted and laid paper. Price, $5.00.

The object of this work is to exhibit Cicero not merely as a Statesman and an Orator, but as he was at home in the relations of private life, as a Husband, a Father, a Brother, and a Friend. His letters are full of interesting details, which enable us to form a vivid idea of how the old Romans lived 2,000 years ago; and the Biography embraces not only a History of Events, as momentous as any in the annals of the world, but a large amount of Anecdote and Gossip, which amused the generation that witnessed the downfall of the Republic.

The London Athenaeuem says: "Mr. Forsyth has rightly aimed to set before us a portrait of Cicero in the modern style of biography, carefully gleaning from his extensive correspondence all those little traits of character and habit which marked his private and domestic life. These volumes form a very acceptable addition to the classic library. The style is that of a scholar and a man of taste."

From the Saturday Review:--"Mr. Forsyth has discreetly told his story, evenly and pleasantly supplied it with apt illustrations from modern law, eloquence, and history, and brought Cicero as near to the present time as the differences of age and manners warrant. * * * These volumes we heartily recommend as both a useful and agreeable guide to the writings and character of one who was next in intellectual and political rank to the foremost man of all the world, at a period when there were many to dispute with him the triple crown of forensic, philosophic, and political composition."

"A scholar without pedantry, and a Christian without cant, Mr. Forsyth seems to have seized with praiseworthy tact the precise attitude which it behoves a biographer to take when narrating the life, the personal life, of Cicero. Mr. Forsyth produces what we venture to say will become one of the classics of English biographical literature, and will be welcomed by readers of all ages and both sexes, of all professions and of no profession at all."--London Quarterly.

"This book is a valuable contribution to our Standard Literature. It is a work which will aid our progress towards the truth; it lifts a corner of the veil which has hung over the scenes and actors of times so full of ferment, and allows us to catch a glimpse of the stage upon which the great drama was played."--North American Review.

Copies sent by mail, post paid, on receipt of price.

LORD DERBY'S "HOMER."

The Iliad of Homer.

RENDERED INTO ENGLISH BLANK VERSE BY EDWARD, EARL OF DERBY.

From the fifth London Edition.

Two volumes, royal octavo, on tinted paper. Price $7.50 per vol.

Extracts from Notices and Reviews from the English Quarterlies, &c.

"The merits of Lord Derby's translation may be summed up in one word: "it is eminently attractive; it is instinct with life; it may be read with fervent interest; it is immeasurably nearer than Pope to the text of the original. * * * We think that Lord Derby's translation will not only be read, but read over and over again. * * * Lord Derby has given to England a version far more closely allied to the original, and superior to any that has yet been attempted in the blank verse of our language."--Edinburgh Review, January 1865.

"As often as we return from even the best of them (other translations) to the translation before us, we find ourselves in a purer atmosphere of taste. We find more spirit, more tact in avoiding either trivial or conceited phrases, and altogether a presence of merits, and an absence of defects which continues, as we read, to lengthen more and more the distance between Lord Derby and the foremost of his competitors."--London Quarterly Review, January, 1865.

"While the versification of Lord Derby is such as Pope himself would have admired, his Iliad is in all other essentials superior to that of his great rival. For the rest, if Pope is dethroned what remains? * * * It is the Iliad we would place in the hands of English readers as the truest counterpart of the original, the nearest existing approach to a reproduction of that original's matchless feature."--Saturday Review.

"Among those curiosities of literature which are also its treasures, Lord Derby's translation of Homer must occupy a very conspicuous place. * * * Lord Derby's work is, on the whole, more remarkable for the constancy of its excellence and the high level which it maintains throughout, than for its special bursts of eloquence. It is uniformly worthy of itself and its author."--The Reader.

"Whatever may be the ultimate fate of this poem--whether it take sufficient hold of the public mind to satisfy that demand for a translation of Homer which we have alluded to, and thus become a permanent classic of the language, or whether it give place to the still more perfect production of some yet unknown poet--it must equally be considered a splendid performance; and for the present we have no hesitation in saying that it is by far the best representation of Homer's Iliad in the English language."

AMERICAN NOTICES.

The Publishers Circular says:--At the advanced age of sixty-five, the Earl of Derby, leader of the Tory party in England, has published a translation of Homer, in blank verse. Nearly all the London critics unite in declaring, with The Times, "that it is by far the best representation of Homer's 'Iliad' in the English language." His purpose was to produce a translation, and not a paraphrase--fairly and honestly giving the sense of every passage and of every line. Without doubt the greatest of all living British orators, he has now shown high poetic power as well as great scholarship.

From the New York World:--"The reader of English, who seeks to know what Homer really was, and in what fashion he thought and felt and wrote, will owe to Lord Derby his first honest opportunity of doing so. The Earl's translation is devoid alike of pretension and of prettiness. It is animated in movement, simple and representative to phraseology, breezy in atmosphere, if we may so speak, and pervaded by a refinement of taste which is as far removed from daintiness or effeminacy as can well be imagined."

Copies sent by mail, post paid, on receipt of price.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:

1. Passages in italics are surrounded by underscores.

2. The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations.

3. Certain words use "oe" ligature in the original, indicated by [oe] and [OE].

4. The letters with macron are represented within square braces with an equals sign preceding it. For example, letter a with macron is indicated by [=a].

5. In this text version, some of the references to appendix notes within footnotes were incorrect which have been corrected. Also, errors found in page references within Appendix have been corrected.