algebra. In like manner, by arithmetic you can tell the properties of particular numbers; as, for instance, that the number 348 is divided by 3 exactly, so as to leave nothing over: but algebra teaches us that it is only one of an infinite variety of numbers, all divisible by 3, and any one of which you can tell the moment you see it; for they all have the remarkable property, that if you add together the figures they consist of, the sum total is divisible by 3. You can easily perceive this in any one case, as in the number mentioned, for 3 added to 4 and that to 8 make 15, which is plainly divisible by 3; and if you divide 348 by 3, you find the quotient to be 116, and nothing over. But this does not at all prove that any other number, the sum of whose figures is divisible by 3, will itself also be found divisible by 3, as 741; for you must actually perform the division here, and in every other case, before you can know that it leaves nothing over. Algebra, on the contrary, both enables you to discover such general properties, and to prove them in all their generality.*

"By means of this science, and its various applications, the most extraordinary calculations may be performed. We shall give, as an example, the method of Logarithms, which proceeds upon this principle. Take a set of numbers going on by equal differences; that is to say, the third being as much greater than the second, as the second is greater than the first: thus, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and so on, in which the common difference is 1; then take another set of numbers, such that each is equal to twice or three times the one before it, or any number of times the one before it; thus, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128; write this second set of numbers under the first, or side by side, so that the numbers shall stand opposite to one another thus:

you will find, that if you add together any two of the upper or first set, and go to the number opposite their sum, in the lower or second set, you will have in this last set the number arising from multiplying together the numbers of the lower set corresponding to the number added together. Thus, add 2 to 4, you have 6 in the upper set, opposite to which in the lower set is 64, and multiplying the numbers 4 and 16 opposite to 2 and 4, the product is 64. In like manner, if you substract the upper numbers, and look for the lower numbers opposite to their difference, you obtain the quotient of the lower numbers opposite the number subtracted. Thus, take 4 from 6 and 2 remains, opposite to which you have in the lower line 4; and if you divide 64, the number opposite to 6, by 16, the number opposite to 4, the quotient is 4. The upper set are called the logarithms of the lower set, which are called natural numbers: and tables may, with a little trouble, be constructed, giving the logarithms of all numbers from 1 to 10,000

Another class of numbers divisible by 3 is discovered in like manner by algebra. Every number of 3 places, the figures (or digits) composing which are in arithmetical progression, (or rise above each other by equal differences,) is divisible by 3: as, 125, 789, 357, 159, and so on. The same is true of numbers of any amount of places, provided they are composed of 3, 6, 9, &c. numbers rising above each other by equal differences, as 289, 299, 309, or 148, 214, 280, 346, or 307142085345648276198756, which number of 24 places is divisible by 3, being composed of 6 numbers in a series whose common difference is 1137.

and more; so that, instead of multiplying or dividing one number by another, you have only to add or subtract their logarithms, and then you at once find the product or the quotient in the tables. These are made applicable to numbers far higher than any actually in them, by a very simple process; so that you may at once perceive the prodigious saving of time and labour which is thus made. If you had, for instance, to multiply 7,543,283 by itself, and that product again by the original number, you would have to multiply a number of seven places of figures by an equally large number, and then a number of 14 places of figures by one of seven places, till at last you had a product of 21 places of figures-a very tedious operation; but working by logarithms, you would only have to take three times the logarithm of the original number, and that gives the logarithm of the last product of 21 places of figures, without any further multiplication. So much for the time and trouble saved, which is still greater in questions of divisions; but by means of logarithms many questions can be worked, and of the most important kind, which no time or labour would otherwise enable us to solve."-P. 10.

Some of the physical facts mentioned in the next passage, with which we mean to conclude, are, we believe, questioned by modern inquirers; and there are even sceptics who doubt whether Sir Everard Home's fame rests on a solid foundation. But as the object is not to convey precise information as to the latest advances of science, but to give an idea of the kind of objects which science brings to view, the merit of the passage is not on that account the less.

"It may be recollected, that when the air is exhausted or sucked out of any vessel, there is no longer the force necessary to resist the pressure of the air on the outside; and the sides of the vessel are therefore pressed inwards with violence: a flat glass would thus be broken, unless it were very thick; a round one, having the strength of an arch, would resist better; but any soft substance, as leather or skin, would be crushed or squeezed together at once. If the air was only sucked out slowly, the squeezing would be gradual, or, if it were only half sucked out, the skin would only be partly squeezed together. This is the very process by which Bees reach the fine dust and juices of hollow flowers, like the honeysuckle, and some kinds of long fox-glove, which are too narrow for them to enter. They fill up the mouth of the flower with their bodies, and suck out the air, or at least a large part of it; this makes the soft sides of the flower close, and squeezes the dust and juice towards the insect as well as a hand could do, if applied to the outside.

"We may remember this pressure or weight of the atmosphere as shown by the barometer, the sucking-pump, and the air-pump. Its weight is near 15 pounds on every square inch, so that if we could entirely squeeze out the air between our two hands, they would cling together with a force equal to the pressure of double this weight, because the air would press upon both hands; and if we could contrive to suck or squeeze out the air between one hand and the wall, the hand would stick fast to the wall, being pressed on it with the weight of above two hundred weight, that is, near 15 pounds on every square inch of the hand. Now, by a late most curious discovery of Sir

Everard Home, the distinguished anatomist, it is found that this is the very process by which Flies and other insects of a similar description are enabled to walk up perpendicular surfaces, however smooth, as the sides of walls and panes of glass in windows, and to walk as easily along the ceiling of a room with their bodies downwards and their feet over head. Their feet, when examined by a microscope, are found to have flat skins or flaps, like the feet of web-footed animals, as ducks and geese; and they have towards the back part or heel, but inside the skin or flap, two very small toes, so connected with the flap as to draw it close down upon the glass or wall the fly walks on, and to squeeze out the air completely, so that there is a vacuum made between the foot and the glass or wall. The consequence of this is, that the air presses the foot on the wall with a very considerable force compared to the weight of the fly; for if its feet are to its body in the same proportion as ours are to our bodies, since we could support by a single hand on the ceiling of the room (provided it made a vacuum) more than our whole weight, namely, a weight of fifteen stone, the fly can easily move on four feet in the same manner by help of the vacuum made under its feet. It has likewise been found that some of the larger sea animals are by the same construction, only upon a greater scale, enabled to climb the perpendicular and smooth surfaces of the ice hills among which they live. Some kinds of lizard have the same power of climbing, and of creeping with their bodies downwards along the ceiling of a room; and the means by which they are enabled to do so are the same. In the large feet of these animals, the contrivance is easily observed, of the two tocs or tightners, by which the skin of the foot is pinned down, and the air excluded in the act of walking or climbing; but it is the very same, only upon a larger scale, with the mechanism of a fly's or a butterfly's foot; and both operations, the elimbing of the sea-horse on the ice, and the creeping of the fly on the window or the ceiling, are performed exactly by the same power, the weight of the atmosphere, which causes the quicksilver to stand in the weather-glass, the wind to whistle through a key-hole, and the piston to descend in a steam-engine.

"The lightness of imflammable gas is well known. When bladders, of any size, are filled with it, they rise upwards, and float in the air. Now, it is a most curious fact, that the fine dust, by means of which plants are impregnated one by the other, is composed of very small globules, filled with this gas-in a word, of small air balloons. These globules thus float from the male plant through the air, and striking against the females, are detained by a glue prepared on purpose to stop them, which no sooner moistens the globules than they explode, and their substance remains, the gas flying off which enabled them to float. A provision of a very simple kind is also made to prevent the male and female blossoms of the same plant from breeding together, this being found to hurt the breed of vegetables, just as breeding in and in does the breed of animals. It is contrived that the dust shall be shed-by the male blossom before the female is ready to be affected by it, so that the impregnation must be performed by the dust of some other plant, and in this way the breed be crossed. The light gas

with which the globules are filled is most essential to this operation, as it conveys them to great distances. A plantation of yew trees has been known in this way, to impregnate another several hundred yards off."-p. 33.

One thing should have been perhaps more clearly brought to view in this excellent treatise, viz. that it is not intended as an introductory discourse to the moral and intellectual sciences, for which there is to be a separate introduction. We hope the society will not shrink from the parts of its task which regards the branches of knowledge, from any desire to please those who, do what it will, so it do good, will hate it. The obscurantists will, at all events, bestow their animosity on the society; we hope the society, in its turn, will not shrink from meriting it.

SERVIAN POPULAR POETRY.*

MR. BOWRING, in speaking of a stanza of one of his translations, says, that "I shall be accused of decorating this ;" and to show the injustice of such a charge, he forthwith quotes the original, which commences thus:

Ako bi te u pjesma pjevala
Pjisma ide od usta do usta
&c. &c.

This we imagine is a tolerably safe appeal. We honestly confess that, for all we know of the matter, ako bi te u pjesma may be all a hoax. The Servian language and Servian literature are things that may be said to have been almost wholly unheard of here, until the appearance of a late article in the Westminster Review, and a still later one in the Quarterly, entitled Servian Minstrelsy. "The Popular Poetry of the Servians" at length reveals its character in the most agreeable manner. We think this the most valuable and the most delightful of the anthologies, which the industry and the talent of Mr. Bowring has imported into his pative language.

Before we go farther, we will however answer a question, which it is not improbable may be asked in some of the remoter districts of the country, where the "Use of the Globes" is less actively taught than at Hackney and in the immediate neighbourhood of the metropolis. The Servians-the Servians-who are the Servians? If a geographer were to run over in the vulgar ear of an untutored Englishman, the names of Bulgaria, Croatia, Servia, Bosnia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia, we are not placing the general knowledge of our reading public too low, in saying, that but very indistinct notions of their position or history would occur to his mind. The Illyrian provinces are, and have been always, the obscurest part of Europe. The countries whose names we have mentioned may be generally designated as Slavonianthe four last more particularly as Servian. They are said to have planted themselves along the Sava and the Danube, down to the Black Sea, about the middle of the seventh century. Their carlier history is scarcely known, and the subsequent portion is not the most luminous

*Servian Popular Poetry, translated by John Bowring. London. 12mo. Baldwin & Co.

part of European annals. The Servians in the first instance appear to have been alternately subject to, and at war with, the Greeks; their contests with Hungary were likewise frequently occurring; but the fall of Constantinople, their country became the scene of the perpetual struggles between the Turks and the Hungarians. It was of course oppressed with every species of misery; the territory became at length almost wholly Turkish, and multitudes of the inhabitants emigrated to Hungary, or joined the Austrian armies. During the last century it was shuffled backwards and forwards between the Austrians and the Porte, according to the cession of treaties, and after the way of sovereigns with people. At length, about the beginning of this century, Servia was made a province subject to Austria, and is now governed by a knes, or prince, whose name is Milosh Obrenowich. There are besides four provinces, or governments, containing about a million of Servians, subjected to Turkish authority.

As respects the history and character of the language called Servian, we cannot do better than give Mr. Bowring's own sketch of it, from an introduction prefixed to his translation.

The various idioms of the Slavonian language may, without exception, be traced up to one single stem, the old or church Slavonic. From this one source, two great streams flow forth; the northern, comprehending the Bohemian, Polish, and Russian ; and the southern, composed of the Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Servian tongues. The latter branches were much less extensively employed than the former. About a million and a half of men speak the Hungarian; not more than half a million the Bulgarian, which in Macedonia has been superseded by the Romaic, the Albanian, and the Turkish while the Servian idiom, the most cultivated, the most interesting, and the most widely spread of all the southern Slavonian dialects, is the language of about five millions, of whom about two millions are Mahommedans.*

The vicinity of Greece and Italy modified and mellowed the language of Servia, which is, in fact, the Russian hellenized, deprived of its harshness and consonant terminations, and softened down into a perfect instrument for poetry and music. Of the descendants from the ancient Slavonic, it is more closely allied to the Russian and Windish idioms, than to the Bohemian or Polish. Vuk Karadjich divides it into three distinct dialects, the Herzegovinian, or that spoken in Bosnia, Montenegro, Dalmatia, and Croatia; the Sirmian, which is used in Sirmia and Slavonia; and the Rescian. No doubt the Servian language has been considerably influenced by the Turkish, but though it has been enriched by oriental words, it has not adopted an oriental construction. Schaffarik, in describing the different Slavonic tongues, says, fancifully but truly, that "Servian song resembles the tune of the violin; Old Slavonian, that of the organ; Polish, that of the guitar. The Old Slavonian in its psalms, sounds like the loud rush of the mountain stream; the Polish, like the bubbling and sparkling of a fountain; and the Servian like the quiet murmuring of a streamlet in the valley."

The stores of Servian literature are neither rich nor ancient. The first Servian literary record is the Rodoslov of Daniel, Bishop of Servia, which is a chronicle of the reigns of the four Servian kings, his contemporaries (from 1272 to 1336). Two or three other books of a similar kind exist, as well as some legislative enactments. No work, however, of much interest occurs, till the end of the seventeenth century; when George Brankovich, the last of the Servian despots, wrote a history of Servia, bringing it down to the time of Leopold I. This history was written in confinement at Eger, in Bohemia, where he was kept a state-prisoner by the Austrians after they had deposed him.

* Grimm's Introduction to Vuk's Servian Grammar, p. x.

Adelung, who has only given a fragment of the Servian language in his Mithridates, calls the Servian and Bosnian dialects "the clearest and purest of all the Illyrian tongues."