previous knowledge of Aristotle, Sir J. Stewart, and others, detract from the just fame of Mr. Malthus: he who follows out, clears, and explains a truth deserves the honour of the discovery.

Two hundred and ninety-one pages contain the history of the wars and conquests of Kublai Khan and of Tamerlane, mostly related in a style not unlike that of the contents of chapters, as par exemple.

'Genghis takes Campion, the capital of Tangut, and the countries of Crequir and Cuchin. He vanquishes the Merkites, by the river Irtish: he reduces the Kergis under his dominion.

'Genghis gives his daughter in marriage to the khan of the Yughurs. He invades China, entering by the great gate in the wall, and comes to action with the King, who loses thirty thousand men; the Emperor loses a great many officers, and more soldiers than the Chinese. He makes peace, and obtains Cubcou Catune, the King's daughter, in marriage. Returns to Caracorum with the Princess, a tribute of gold, silk, and five hundred young persons of each sex. Altan, King of China, leaves the government to his son, and retires to Nankingpp. 19, 20.

Our author proceeds to notice the Greek and Roman wars in which elephants were employed, then treats of Roman amphitheatres as they exist throughout Europe, and of the sports and combats exhibited in them, and the remains of elephants and wild beasts found in France, Italy, and other countries. Next, in more than seventy pages, he sketches the history of Britain under the Romans, and notices the remains of elephants and wild beasts in England, Ireland, and Scotland, describes the living Asiatic and African elephants, the walrus, and narwal, and concludes with reflections on the rapid changes which the surface of the earth undergoes from floods, earthquakes, and other causes, and the erroneous opinions which have prevailed respecting giants, mammoths, extinct species of quadrupeds, and spiral tusks.

Such are the contents of Mr. Ranking's volume. We shall now proceed to offer some remarks on a few of them.

One of our author's distinguishing faults is a propensity to introduce matter that has nothing in the world to do with his subject. Thus we have a paragraph, in the introduction, about the Black Prince and the famous battle of Crecy, merely for the sake of saying how much Tamerlane would have honoured the hero who slew ninety thousand men in one battle, a multitude which Mr. Ranking, who is fond of large numbers, prefers to the thirty-six thousand of Hume, on the authority of Mezeray, who, he informs us in a note, was 6 historiographer of France, with a pension of four thousand livres,' a circumstance that doubtless augmented the diligence and fidelity of the writer! Mr. Ranking is also not sufficiently careful in estimating the worth of his authorities. We find Ferdoussee the poet ranked as high as the gravest historians; and there is an undue deference paid to Mr. Dow, whose

History of Hindoostan is, we believe, not rated very highly by those best qualified to judge.

We will freely admit that our author has, in his first two hundred and seventy pages, established the fact of the extensive dominion of the Tartar Khans; that they conquered some of the elephant countries, and possessed great numbers of those animals; and that they carried on wars in Siberia, where they probably had some elephants, according to a passage from Dow, which Mr. Ranking thinks of infinite importance for establishing the fact of their being able to exist in high latitudes. Still we think but little has been done towards accounting for the great quantity of fossil-remains in that country.

Every page we read we wish most earnestly that Mr. Ranking had taken a few lessons in the art of writing and of logic; for he is perpetually presenting us with something totally irrelevant to the object of the work, or with some instance of bad reasoning; and we flounder along through descriptions of capitals no longer existing, bloody wars for a white elephant, heroism of the Indian ladies, marches of Hannibal and Asdrubal over the Alps, wars in Britain, &c. till we are tired, and almost forget what the book is about. Occasionally, however, our sense of seeing is gratified by a picture of Tamerlane, or a plate representing Kublai in a chariot drawn by elephants, a plan of the battle of Zama, and impressions of the coins and medals of the ancient British kings, or of the Romans in Britain, for what purpose introduced it is needless to ask.

After a chapter on amphitheatres, telling when they were and when they might have been, we are told, we know not on what authority, that the passion for amphitheatrical diversions was so general, that scarcely any camp or military station was without them, and that every savage animal that could be procured in the forests of Asia and Africa was brought to be hunted. Another piece of information rather new to us is the following:

The chariots of the Romans were drawn by elephants: they had sometimes two, and sometimes four; and frequently, when they had towers upon their backs, they at the same time drew one of those little chariots which were used for racing in the circus. These towers they generally put upon the backs of single elephants, both for warfare and travelling, as they do at this day in Persia and India.

The Romans were drawn by camels; and Pliny tells us that Mark Antony made use of lions. Heliogabalus did the same; and also of boars, stags, wild asses, bisontes, and oryges, a sort of animal with one horn, which Ptolemy, according to Athenæus, drew his carriage with.*

We certainly had no conception of such magnificence in the private life of the Romans.

Gratian, we are told from Gibbon, enclosed large parks in Gaul (one was at Paris), all of them plentifully stocked with wild beasts,

* Montfaucon, vol. iv. p. 125.'

where he hunted and slew them. After this period, these expensive amusements were probably discontinued as the Goths invaded the empire. And now what becomes of M. Cuvier's boasted discoveries in the Paris basin, and his classification? for the Romans slaughtered hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses, elephants, turtles, zebras, little dragons, (probably, thinks our author, the plesiosaurus,) hyænas, &c. &c.

Besides this list of animals, named by the Romans as having been exhibited, remains of others not noticed, as far as these researches go, have been found, the beaver, tapir, and mastodon (probably by the Romans called elephant); and they are known to have exhibited some animals, the bones of which have not been detected, as far as the writer's knowledge extends, the camelopard, zebra, ostrich, nor has there ever occurred in this research a single instance of the mention of camels' bones being found, of which there must be vast numbers in Siberia, and some in Europe: this is a very remarkable fact, and may account for many bones, which have puzzled those who found them, or have been supposed to belong to other large quadrupeds.' - pp. 334, 335.

That is, we are sure, a real poser for M. Cuvier, who has, in all probability, been palming camels and camelopard bones upon us for anoplotheria and palæotheria.

We were at first inclined to suppose that the works of Baron Cuvier were unknown to our author, but we soon discovered our mistake; for chapter the twelfth is devoted to accounting on the amphitheatrical hypothesis for the instances of fossil-remains adduced by that eminent naturalist. Thus; If, says Cuvier, ever there was a fossilelephant, which might be considered as one of Hannibal's, it is that found two miles from the Trebia, and nine above Plaisance; but as if to contradict these conjectures, the head of a rhinoceros was found near it. Ah, but says Mr. Ranking, there was an amphitheatre at Placentia, and that the largest in Italy. The nine miles, we see, go for nothing. The inmates of the Exeter Change are not, we apprehend, sent as far as Richmond for inhumation.

At Bologna elephants' remains. True, but Bologna was a colony, and a municipium, and therefore had probably an amphitheatre.

In Tuscany hippopotamus' and rhinoceros' bone, mixed. Florence was built by Sylla, and must have had an amphitheatre; so also must Pisa.

All the fossil-bones in Italy, Spain, and France, are accounted for by wars and amphitheatres; but the German examples are a little harder to manage. We shall give one instance of the mode of treating these cases.

At Osterode, a skeleton, with two bones of a rhinoceros. Near Steigerthal, (Hohenstein), four grinders (also an under jaw of a hyena, and, at the distance of a league, some bones of a rhinoceros). Between Halle (in Saxony) and Querfurt, many elephants' bones, some of which were found in a quarry of hard stone, apparently in a cleft (" fente"). At Cassel, and several places in Hesse, elephants' bones: at Soders

hausen, elephants' bones much calcined. At Potsdam, elephants' bones: near Magdeburg, elephants' bones.

In Bohemia, some elephants' bones in several places.

Note. Marcus Aurelius waged war in person for about three years together against many nations who had confederated. The Emperor in person, and the principal officers, marched at the head of the troops: this war was very obstinate, and many of the nobility were killed.* p. 346.

No Roman army, it would seem, ever marched without its corps dramatique of elephants, hippopotami, hyænas, and other performers of the same nature, just as the French troops under the great Saxe always had a corps of comedians attached. As to historians saying nothing about this military regulation, it gives our theorist very little concern; the matter was so common, that no one would ever have dreamt of recording it.

But

Some years ago we were all very much interested by Professor Buckland's account of the immense quantity of fossil-remains found in a cavern at Kirkdale, and we acquiesced very willingly in the idea of our island having been in former ages the abode of hyænas, elephants, tigers, and other animals no longer to be found in it. there was no necessity for believing any such thing. Kirkdale is but twenty-three miles from York, which was the Roman capital of Britain for above three hundred years, and the head-quarters of the Roman empire for above three years.' And in Spartian's life of Severus we read, that when he was in Egypt he was much pleased with his voyage, because of the singular strangeness of the animals and places which he saw. Therefore, nothing is more probable than that he possessed hippopotami, rhinoceroses, crocodiles, and hyænas, all of which are natives of Egypt, and have been found at Kirkdale and Whitby in a fossil-state.'

What a glorious appearance Severus must have made with his cortège of wild beasts, and what splendid shows Eboracum must have enjoyed in those days, before which the York races and festival shrink into insignificance. At all events, Professor Buckland's fine theory is completely overturned.

At Walton, five miles from Harwich, bones of the elephant, stag, &c. have been found. - Harwich is the port leading to the Roman colony of Camelodunum, where Claudius encamped with three legions, replies Mr. Ranking. Our readers will learn with surprise, a few lines farther, that this visit of Claudius, which is supposed to have contributed so much to the introduction of the hyæna and elephant bones into Britain, lasted but sixteen days, and that it is not probable that there were exhibitions during that short period. Yet we are frequently referred to this expedition of Claudius, who together with Severus, that was so fond of strange wild beasts, and Julius Cæsar, who, Polyænus tells us, though the celebrated commentator says nothing of it himself, employed an elephant against the Britons, are represented as the chief suppliers of the country with fossilremains.

In Dublin, in 1681, an elephant was accidentally burnt to death. Any remains, therefore, found in Ireland need give us no great concern. At Magherry, near Belturbet, in the county of Cavan, four fossil-grinders of an elephant were found. It is not improbable,' says our author, that these teeth may have belonged to an exhibited elephant, nor is it impossible that they should be of Roman origin. Ptolemy has given a better map of Ireland than of Scotland; and the Romans had garrisons and settlements on the coast of Britain opposite to Ireland for upwards of three hundred years.' We may therefore infer, that the Politos and Howes of those days, who were attached to the Roman legions, used occasionally to make trips over to the polished region opposite, and exhibit these strange beasts to the nobility and gentry, who crowded to its rich and flourishing cities and towns!

The fossil-remains in Scotland are satisfactorily accounted for by the remark, that Forfarshire was the scene of Agricola's fame; that the forts of Agricola and the rampart of Antoninus were on the very road on which some of these remains were found; that as they were garrisoned for a number of years, it is fair to presume they were supplied, like other Roman stations, with the usual amusements; and that the mention of such trivial circumstances as wild beasts accompanying the camps and armies was beneath the dignity of such historians as have been preserved to the present day. It is not at all improbable, it is added, that some animals may have been exhibited in Caledonia, for the entertainment, we suppose, of the Attacotti, those epicures, who, our author informs us from St. Jerom, were so fond of rump-steaks cut from the shepherdesses' buttocks.

Our readers are, we suppose, now perfectly well able to account for all the bones found in Europe: they belonged to animals that were either slain in the amphitheatres, one of which was, though historians say nothing of it, attached to every Roman camp, or they were killed or died in wars, or they were exhibited for the profit of their owners, to the natives of Ireland, Scotland, Germany, and other such polished regions. The immense quantities found in Russia and Siberia are accounted for much in the same way, with the aid, however, of the morse, which we find has been imposed upon Pallas and Cuvier for an elephant. We shall just give one instance.

The greatest quantity is found on the islands between the mouths of the Lena and Indigerska. The nearest island is thirty-six leagues in length. The whole island (it has often been repeated) is formed of mammoths' bones, with horns and skulls of buffaloes, or some animal which resembles them, and some rhinoceroses' horns. Another island, five leagues farther, and twelve leagues long, furnishes the same bones and teeth. Cuvier, 151. According to Pallas, there is scarcely a river, from the Don to the Tschutskoi Nos, in the banks of which the bones are not abundant. And the two islands at the mouth of the Indigerska seem entirely composed of these bones, and those of the elk, rhinoceros, and other large quadrupeds. - Rees's Addenda. "Mammoth."