ART. XXIV.-The Local Historian's Table-Book. By M. A. RICHARDSON. THE "Table-Book of Remarkable Occurrences, Historical Facts, Traditions, Legendary and Descriptive Ballads, &c., connected with the Counties of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northumberland, and Durham," is published in Monthly Parts, of which a considerable number has appeared. A work of this kind, of course, will particularly interest the natives and inhabitants of the districts which it embraces. But these localities are wonderfully abundant of chronological, antiquarian, and biographical facts; while the traditions, the legends, and the ballads belonging to the Border counties, are not less curious and characteristic than they are manifold. To the general reader, therefore, the publication must be very acceptable. It is written and conducted by one who is manifestly minutely informed with regard to the Northern parts of England, and also an enthusiast in the work he has here undertaken. This Table-Book must be an excellent guide to strangers and summer tourists. It contains many pictorial illustrations. ART. XXV.-Brande's Dictionary of General Knowledge, Part VIII. THERE are inequalities in this Dictionary, as must ever be expected in a work where it is undertaken to treat of a vast variety of subjects. The compiler and condenser will have his pet themes; nor will he be on all occasions sufficiently well informed to confer character and infuse original knowledge, But we must say that, in so far as we have gone into any of the articles before us, this dictionary is one of the most satisfactory and generally useful books of the kind that have come under our observation. An immense quantity of matter is crowded into a small space; but certainly the result is objectionable, in so far as people whose sight has become dimmed are concerned. ART. XXVI.—The Chain Rule. By C. L. SCHONBERG. A VERY simple and useful manual of brief Commercial Arithmetic. It is not known but by few how easy it is to obtain a correct solution of the most complicated questions which arithmetic and the practical affairs of life offer for adjustment. There are problems belonging to proportion and involution that seem to defy any short, clear, and precise method of calculation. But examine the Chain Rule, and adopt its system, and any one will accomplish with perfect exactness what he before perhaps deemed impossible but by an expert Accountant. ART. XXVII.-History of Poland and Russia. By Miss CORNer. ONE of a series of works compiled for schools, and done with much more care in regard to amount of events and pertinency of observation than we find in the majority of abridgments for the young. The style of the book, however, is not always so correct and neat as we could have wished. The manner is inferior to the matter. ART. XVIII.-Poems. By THOMAS MILLER. THE Basket-maker seems to forget us, but we do not forget him. The proofs are at hand; for we shall quote from his "Summer Morning," and it will tell its own tale. Nerve, sweetness, and what is fully as essential, truth, natural and commanding, belong to this and many of his other writings. Yea, it is good and pleasant to travel with the author of “A Day in the Woods," "Rural Sketches," and many other genial works. Says Thomas Miller,— "Morning again breaks through the mines of heaven, Had bared their armed heads in lowly gratitude." Charles Swain is peculiarly sweet and elegant; but certainly no man ever went beyond Thomas Miller in real Claude-like painting of English scenery and home-felt sympathies. He is the Burns of England in this respect. He is rural without rusticity; natural without roughness. Hear him : "The leavesdrop, drop,' and dot the crisped stream So quick, each circles wears the first away; The "water-flags," &c. Thomas, you have been taught by nature, that is, truth; you have angled, no doubt. You are a child of fresh nature. THE MONTHLY REVIEW. FEBRUARY, 1842. ART. I.-1. Interesting Facts connected with the Animal Kingdom; with some Remarks on the Unity of our Species. By J. CH. HALL, M.D. Whittaker. 2. Crania Americana. By S. G. MORTON, M.D. Philadelphia. DR. HALL'S volume contains "the substance of a course of lectures on the animal kingdom, delivered at many of the scientific institutions of the metropolis." Following the classification of Cuvier, he gives a brief view of the chain of animated nature, from plant-animals to man; the greater part of the work being devoted to the consideration of the varieties of the human race, and the arguments as well as the conclusions being all strenuously in favour of the unity of our species, in opposition to sceptics and visionaries when they maintain that a plurality exist, that both the red and the black man, are specifically divided not only from the white, but from each other. The manner of treatment and the nature of the facts adduced are such as are best suited to popular audiences, the author having studiously sought out whatever suggestions and illustrations he deemed would not only be most interesting, but most indicative of the breadth, the variety, the richness, and the importance of the domain designated Natural History. Comparative anatomy is an instructive and also an engaging study, the elements of which may be taught divested of all such technicalities as throw difficulties or dryness in the path of the general reader, as is demonstrated by Dr. Hall. Still, in preparing his Lectures for the press, we think he might have avoided some repetitions, and so combined or dovetailed certain facts and doctrines as would have told still more forcibly in the course of private perusal. As it is, his book is attractive, often impressive, and, upon the whole, valuable. His tone is earnest, serious, zealous, and religious; while his style is not more flowery, nor his sentiments more fervid than the object which he had in view by his teachings required, viz. to unfold, as well as to direct the student how to unfold for himself, many of the wonders and of the sublime truths contained in the book of nature. VOL. I. (1842.) NO. II. N "Crania Americana," by the Professor of Anatomy in the medical department of Pennsylvania College at Philadelphia, is a work of extraordinary value and interest, the result of great learning and ability, as well as of elaborate research. As its title in full announces, it contains "A Comparative View of the Skulls of various Aboriginal Nations of North and South America; to which is prefixed An Essay on the Varieties of the Human Species, illustrated by seventy-eight plates and a coloured map." The work was published a considerable time ago, and forms one of the great authorities to which Dr. Hall has recourse, the Transatlantic Professor's Comparative View, as well as the prefixed Essay,-the whole conducted with philosophic calmness and candour, with the most manifest desire to arrive at the truth, unswayed by theory or prepossession,-being calculated to convince every inquirer, even upon scientific ground, and by the evidences drawn from nature, that whatever may be the varieties of the great human family, nevertheless that they all constitute but one genus and one species. Both of our doctors are very open to phrenological arguments; and certainly, whatever may be said of the metaphysical reasonings of the school, or whatever may be the incredulity of many regarding the promised social and moral benefits of the science, yet in the walks of physiology its disciples and supporters have unquestionably distinguished themselves. We therefore hold that they are worthy of a patient and a confiding hearing when they muster facts and arguments concerning the unity of our species, drawn in the course of examinations of skulls, brains, nerves, &c. Following the example of Dr. Hall, who has with due acknowledgments freely availed himself of whatever suggestions and illustrations suited his purpose in the writings of preceding naturalists, we now look into his pages for samples of interesting facts connected with the animal kingdom. Take first the development of insects as exemplified in the history of moths and butterflies: The butterfly deposits a small egg not larger than a grain of mustardseed. This gives birth to a caterpillar, having the external appearance and mechanical structure of a worm (moved by no less than four hundred muscles), with this difference, viz. containing in its interior the rudiments of the future insect, concealed however from view by a great number of membraneous coverings which are one after the other thrown off. While wearing this disguise the insect is termed larva, a name derived from the Latin; larva signifying a mask. Another change now takes place; the whole of the coverings of the body being cast off, the insect next assumes the form of a pupa, or chrysalis, being covered by a shroud, presenting no appearance of external members, and retaining but feeble indications of life. In this condition it remains some time longer, perfecting in secret the development of its organs; until the period arrives, when, emerging from its prison, bursting the fetters with which it was bound, the worm has become furnished with wings, which enable it to rank among the gay inhabitants of the air, and with rapidity to soar onward from flower to flower, to waft itself from place to place, to visit new scenes of pleasure and delight. Illustrative of the uniformity of the operations of nature, Dr. Hall aptly quotes a beautiful paragraph from a modern writer. We give fragments of it: "The lark now carols the same song, and in the same key, as when Adam first turned his enraptured ear to catch the moral. The owl first hooted in B flat, and it still loves the key, and it screams through no other octaves. In the same key has ever ticked the death-watch; while all the three noted chirps of the cricket have ever been in B since Tubal Cain first heard them in his smithy, or the Israelites in their ash ovens." "The tulip in its first bloom in Noah's garden, emitted heat, four and a half degrees above the atmosphere, as it does at the present day." "Corals have ever grown edgeways in the ocean stream. Eight millions two hundred and eighty thousand animalculæ could as well live in a drop of water in the days of Seth as now. Flying insects had on their coats of mail in the days of Japhet, over which they have ever waved plumes of more gaudy feathers than the peacock ever dropped." "There was iron enough in the blood of the first fortytwo men to make a ploughshare, as there is to-day, from whatever country you collect them. The lungs of Abel contained a coil of vital matter one hundred and fifty-nine feet square, as mine; and the first inspiration of Adam consumed seventeen cubic inches of air, as do those of every adult reader." Although illustrations clothed in language of the kind now quoted, which is also intended to be instructive in regard to particular subjects in natural history and physics, do in some of the cases proceed upon assumptions as to climate and as to creatures, that may hardly be consistent with the sobriety and strictness of science, yet unquestionably it is proper and necessary to investigate physiologically the minutest principles and parts of living and organized bodies. As Dr. Hall eloquently observes, the examination of things of the most trifling import apparently, often leads to the most important results." "They are like the marks in the forests by which an Indian detects the presence of friends or foes. A broken stick, a torn leaf, a flattened blade of grass, are signs many would pass over unnoticed; but to the practised eye of a denizen of the woods they are alike certain and expressive, the key to the alphabet, by which he reads the book of nature. And so in ascending each succeeding step of the ladder of existence new relations are comprehended between facts, which before appeared confused and isolated; new objects for things that at one time appeared destitute of utility; new reasons for appreciating the wisdom of a Creator whose goodness is best discovered in studying his works, and whose |