Sawn into posts, it upholds the islander's dwelling; converted into charcoal, it cooks his food; and supported on blocks of stone, rails in his lands. He impels his canoe through the water with a paddle of the wood, and goes to battle with clubs and spears of the same hard material. MELVILLE," Adventures in the South Seas."

ANIMALS OF SOUTH AMERICA.

The fauna of South America is characterized by multiplicity in the lower rather than by excellence in the higher forms. It is specially the continent of insects: the variety of the species, the number of the individuals, their ubiquity and their pertinacity, give them an unusual importance. Among them the fire-flies are conspicuous for the bril liancy of their glow; mosquitoes and gnats for their venomous voracity; locusts for their wholesale devastations; and white ants for their minor depredations. Reptiles are almost equally numerous and troublesome; frogs and toads attain enormous dimensions; rattle-snakes and boa-constrictors infest the forests, and caymans the rivers. In birds, South America possesses peculiar species and even genera. The condor soars to the amazing height of 22,000 feet among the Andes, and occasionally descends to the sea-level, its usual residence being between 10,000 and 15,000 feet.

BEVAN, "Student's Modern Geography."

OUR BODIES ARE STOVES.

Now, we do not intend to say that any one can light a cigar, or boil an egg, or even ignite a lucifer-match at these human hearths. Still, we repeat, these bodies of ours are stoves-fire-places-furnaces, if these terms can be applied to any apparatus for the express production of heat. And is not heat produced in the human body by the union of oxygen with carbon, just the same as by the

burning of wood in an open fire-place? and does not this union take place in the capillaries of the blood-vessels ?

But granting that our bodies are veritable stoves, the reader will desire to know where we procure our fuel. Fortunately, our coal and fire-wood are stored up in a very interesting form. They are laid before us in the shape of bread and butter, puddings, and pies; rashers of bacon for the labourer, and haunches of venison or turtle-soup for the epicure. Instead of being brought up in scuttles, they are presented in tureens, dishes, or tumblers, or all of them, in pleasant succession.

Dr. GEO. WILSON.

EXTINCTION OF POWERS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

How many niceties, delicacies, subtleties of language, we, speakers of the English tongue, in the course of centuries have got rid of; how bare (whether too bare is another question) we have stripped ourselves; what simplicity for better or for worse reigns in the present English, as compared with the old Anglo-Saxon. That had six declensions, our present English but one; that had three genders, English, if we except one or two words, has none; that formed the genitive in a variety of ways, we only in one; and the same fact meets us, wherever we compare the grammars of the two languages. At the same time, it can scarcely be repeated too often, that in the estimate of the gain or loss thereupon ensuing, we must by no means put certainly to loss everything which the language has dismissed, any more than everything to gain which it has acquired. It is no real wealth in a language to have needless and superfluous forms. They are often an embarrassment and an encumbrance to it rather than a help. The Finnish language has fourteen cases. Without pretending to know exactly what it is able to effect, I yet feel confident that it cannot effect more, nor indeed so much, with its fourteen as the Greek is able to do with its five.

TRENCH, "English Past and Present."

CAREFUL COMPOSITION A NECESSARY PREPARATION FOR GOOD SPEAKING.

Lord Campbell coincides with the advice given by Lord Brougham to the students at Glasgow, that careful and accurate writing is a necessary preparation of good speaking. The art of composition is the same, whether the tongue or the pen afford the means of expression, and sentences should be formed, slowly and carefully, on paper," said Lord Campbell, "before we trust ourselves to form them under the excitement and the urgency of a public speech."

Lord Mansfield devoted himself to oratory at college; and most valuable is the testimony borne by Lord Campbell, in his "Lives of the Chancellors," to the fact that oratorical skill is not merely a gift of nature, but depends greatly on study and careful practice. Mansfield read systematically all that had been written on public speaking, and made himself familiar with all the ancient orators. Cicero was his chief favourite, and he used to declare that he had translated and retranslated every single extant oration. He likewise diligently practised original composition, both in Latin and English; "knowing," says Lord Campbell," that there is no other method by which correctness and condensation in extempore speaking can be acquired."

PYCROFT, "Ways and Words of Men of Letters."

THE BILLS OF BIRDS.

In birds this organ (the mouth) assumes a new character; but, in both, wonderfully adapted to the wants and uses of a distinct mode of existence. We have no longer the fleshy lips, the teeth of enamelled bone; but we have in the place of these two parts and to perform the office of both, a hard substance of the same nature with that which composes the nails, claws, and hoofs of quad

rupeds, cut out into proper shapes, and mechanically suited to the actions which are wanted. The sharp edge and tempered point of the sparrow's bill picks almost every kind of seed from its concealment in the plant; and not only so, but hulls the grain, breaks and shatters the coats of the seeds, in order to get at the kernel. The hooked beak of the hawk tribe separates the flesh from the bones of the animals which it feeds upon, almost with the cleanness and precision of a dissector's knife. The butcher bird transfixes its prey upon the spike of a thorn, whilst it picks its bone.

In some birds of this class we have the cross-bill, that is, both the upper and lower bill hooked, and their tips crossing. The spoon-bill enables the goose to graze, to collect its food from the bottom of pools, or to seek it amidst the soft or liquid substances with which it is mixed. The long tapering bill of the snipe and woodcock penetrates still deeper into moist earth, which is the bed in which the food of that species is lodged. This is exactly the instrument which the animal wanted. It did not want strength in its bill, which was inconsistent with the slender form of the animal's neck, as well as unnecessary for the kind of aliment upon which it subsists; but it wanted length to reach its object.

If the old lady is a widow and lives alone, the manners of her condition and time of life are so much the more apparent. She generally dresses in plain silks, that make a gentle rustling as she moves about the silence of her room; and she wears a nice cap with a lace and border, that comes under the chin. In a placket at her side is an old enamelled watch, unless it is locked up in a drawer of her toilet, for fear of accidents.... She wears

pockets, and uses them well too; in the one is her handkerchief, and any heavier matter that is not likely to come out with it, such as the change of a sixpence; in the other is a miscellaneous assortment, consisting of a pocket-book, a bunch of keys, a needle-case, a spectaclecase, crumbs of biscuit, a nutmeg and grater, a smelling bottle, and, according to the season, an orange or apple, which after many days she draws out to give to some little child that has well behaved itself.

II.

She generally occupies two rooms, in the neatest condition possible. In the chamber is a bed with a white coverlet, and with curtains of a pastoral pattern, consisting alternately of large plants and shepherds and shepherdesses. On the mantel-piece are more shepherds and shepherdesses, all in coloured ware; the man, perhaps, in a pink jacket, and knots of ribbons at his knees and shoes, holding his crook lightly in one hand, and with the other at his breast, turning his toes out, and looking tenderly at the shepherdess; the woman holding a crook also, and modestly returning his look, with a gipsy hat jerked up behind, a very slender waist, and her petticoat pulled up through the pocket-holes, in order to show the trimness of her ancles. The toilet is ancient, carved

at the edges, and tied about with a snow-white drapery of muslin. Beside it are various boxes, mostly japan, and a set of drawers containing ribbons and laces of various kinds; linen smelling of lavender, of the flowers of which there is always dust in the corners; a heap of pocketbooks for a series of years; and pieces of dress long gone by. LEIGH HUNT, "The Indicator."

THE ANCIENT BRITONS.

The inhabitants of the southern and south-eastern districts, nearest to the continent, and most in the way of foreign intercourse, were in advance of the rest of the