colonists who have settled in the valleys on the eastern slopes of the Peruvian Andes. There is a German colony on the Pozuza, near the fort on the Mazru, which is the nearest navigable point to Lima, on a tributary of the Amazon. The French colonists are on the Chanchamaza, which is nearer to Lima, but at a greater distance from a navigable point. There are also some Italian colonists. These small nuclei of future thriving communities are planted so as to command the principal routes leading to the navigable rivers which will render the Amazon valley hereafter a network of fluvial highways of commerce.

DR. ANDREAS, Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology at the University of Kiel, is about to start for Persepolis (via Russia) in order to copy Cuneiform and Pahlavi inscriptions to be found in that part of Persia. He will meet Dr. Stolze, the photographer of the Prussian astronomical expedition, at Ispahan, who will assist him by taking photographs of the monuments as well as of the inscriptions. The Prussian Government and the Academy of Berlin fixed 10,000 thalers for this expedition, a sum which certainly cannot suffice if Dr. Andreas, as we hope, tries to make excavations and also to investigate difficult geographical questions, such as the situation of the famous town Istakhar, the birthplace of the Arabic geographer Istakhri.

THE United States Topographical and Geographical Survey of the Colorado Valley have brought home a striking series of photographs of rock scenery. The precipices which wall in the

Colorado river and its tributaries extend for hundreds of miles, in many places bearing comparison with the stupendous mountain-wall of the Jungfrau as seen from Mürren. Like much of Mexico, the table-land of Colorado is not traversed by wide and gently shelving river valleys, but is gashed by huge rifts or cañons, with rocky sides so steep that a stone may often be flung to fall clear thousands of feet into the roaring stream below. The walls of Grand Cañon, at one place here photographed, are over 6,000 feet high, only receding in rough steps from the perpendicular. A desolate stretch of rock and river, with the remains of two or three abandoned boats, is where the explorers, after a boat-journey of 1,000 miles through a series of cañons, came upon the traces of another party whose fate we are left to conjecture. Few regions of the earth can surpass this land of cañons for wild grandeur and horrible desolation. The scanty tribes of natives are of the usual North American type in complexion, and make a well-shaped and bold-featured race, with the somewhat sullen expression which belongs to a life of much privation and solitude. Their portraits taken on this expedition are of remarkable excellence, and copies should be procured for ethnological collections. The set of photographs is published by J. F. Jarvis, 479 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington.

THE Boston Independent gives the following results attained by the American Palestine Exploration Society during the present year:—

"An expedition conducted this last summer by Professor J. A. Paine, of this Society, appears to have produced larger results in the identification of Bible sites than any other since Dr. Robinson's first journey through Palestine. With as small a party as possible, comprising only an interpreter, a cook, and three muleteers, and avoiding with the utmost care all display, Professor Paine spent nine weeks going forward and backward over the whole land of Gilead, a region almost utterly unvisited by previous travellers, examining every point of any possible archaeological interest. It was not an easy trip nor a safe one, and more than once was the explorer's life in imminent danger from the Arabs, who were quite unfriendly; but the numerous places of interest to be searched for made it worth while to run considerable risk of life.

who had cut down the trees for the purpose of distilling from the wood in the form of a tar the resin which exudes in great abundance from it. He found This tar or resin is used as a salve or ointment, mainly remains of the kilns that were used for this purpose.

for cattle, and is with little doubt the Balm of Gilead. Ashteroth-Karnaim, or Ashteroth of the two peaks, where the Rephaim dwelt in the time of Chedorlaomer, is identified on the eastern border of Gilead with extensive ruins of immense basaltic blocks on a double ridge called El Birah, in front of which lies the plain of Asherah, as that portion of the Zerqa bottom is called. In the vicinity of Mount Gilead, Mizpeh of Jephthah and Mizpeh of Gilead, Pella (Bellila), and Dathema, or Dium (Dahama) may be added.

"The Jabbok River Professor Paine fails to identify, as other writers have done, with the Zerqa, as there is nothing in the region to correspond with Mahanaim, Betonim, and Penuel. He, therefore, was compelled to identify it with the Wady Yabis, about thirteen miles further north. On a tributary of the Yabis, in its upper portion, was found a ruin, Mahana, corresponding in name and position to Mahanaim. Tishbi, the home of Elijah, appears to be Listib, overhung by a monastery, which bears the name of Mar Ilyas, St. Elijah. An old Roman road from Mahana goes north-westward to the only ford of the Yabis along the way taken by Jacob after Laban Esau. A short distance across the ford Kefr-Abil must be the Penuel that Jacob reached at sunrise, after wrestling with the angel. The Seir of the nar

had left him and when he went to meet his brother

rative, to which Jacob sent to find Esau, can hardly be Mount Seir, and may have been in the vicinity of the ruin Khirbet Sîr, within sight of Penuel. We might also mention that Tabbaqat Fahil (Robinson's suggested Pella) is probably Succoth; Qurqama is Karkor; Mahathah is Abel Meholah; Taibeh is Debir; Tuba is Tabbah; that Shabeh is Shaveh or the King's Dale; and that Afena is Rafena of the Decapolis. Among the places identified south of Gilead may be mentioned Jaazer (Yajuz) and Jogbehah (Jubaihah). Including sites mentioned in the Bible, the Apocrypha, and Josephus, about forty places in all have been identified more or less certainly, making a brilliant contribution to sacred archaeology."

CAPTAIN GIACOMO MERELLO, of the Genoa Rubattino Company, has recently published a pamphlet in which he expounds at length the details of a new route from Bombay to Aden during the south-west monsoon months. Instead of following the course to the south, laid down in Taylor's chart of the Arabian Sea, Merello turned his vessel's head northward, and by tacking got within 100 miles of the Arabian Coast, from whence he made direct for Aden and arrived thither in ten days' time. This he claims as a great discovery, inasmuch as it is only 45 miles longer than the direct line, whereas the southern route is 485 miles longer. But as a matter of fact, the route adverted to has been known and often followed during the last fifteen years by the Peninsular and Oriental Company's steamers. It is not invariably adhered to, however, as the greater force of the monsoon in those more northern latitudes means a larger consumption of coal, more wear and tear to the vessel, and slower progress. Were these points more fully considered in Captain Merello's pamphlet, the advantages of his route would not appear so striking.

GUIDO CORA'S Cosmos contains an important map of Makran, and the frontier between Persia and Baluchistan, compiled from a recent map by Major St. John and the Admiralty chart. The surveys of Majors St. John and Lovett are embodied, as well as the routes of Sir F. Goldsmid and Mr. Blanford; and as this is the first time that the geographical results of these officers' labours have been thus presented to the public, the map will be looked upon with interest. The article written to accompany the map will appear in the next number of Signor Cora's periodical.

THE Russian expedition which is about to explore Western China has reached Shanghai, via Kiachta and Peking, after procuring the necessary passports at the latter place. The party consists

of Captain Sosnovsky, of the General Staff, Captain Matoosovsky, a doctor, a photographer, three Cossacks, and two interpreters. They were to they will proceed in native boats up the river leave at once by steamer for Hankow, whence

Han in a westerly direction.

PARIS LETTER.

Paris: Dec. 25, 1874.

I should not be giving a faithful review of the literary movement in Paris if I passed over in silence the publication of Christmas books. The new year is of considerable importance in literary life in France. Some of our first publishers await its advent to issue works which combine high intrinsic value with typographical splendour and magnificent illustrations. I mentioned in my last letter Jules Quicherat's History of Costume (Hachette). The same house has just published a volume entitled The India of the Rajahs, by M. L. Rousselet, which is distinguished not only by the admirable drawings accompanying the text, but also by the text itself, a tale of travel full of life and talent. Among M. Firmin Didot's publications, M. P. Lacroix (bibliophile Jacob) adds a volume to the splendid series in which he is bringing before us the manners of ancient France. This volume, entitled The Eighteenth Century, Institutions, Manners, Customs, is a continuation of the books on Military and Religious Life in the Middle Ages and at the Period of the Renaissance, on Manners, Customs, and Costumes of the Middle Ages, and The Arts in the Middle Ages. These works place before the reader's eyes by means of chromolithography and engraving, reproductions of a multitude of ancient objects, miniatures, monuments of every kind, sculptures, and paintings; while the explanatory text is the work of a man whose learning, though undeniably great, is yet unfortunately unsound. His numerous writings all bear the traces of a certain haste and of a negligence more to be regretted in historical investigations than in any other sphere. Besides, instead of giving his books that character of impartiality which might so easily have been preserved, he has preferred to earn a cheap success from the Catholic public by flattering their prejudices with apologies as misplaced as they are inconclusive with regard to the least justifiable sides of the Middle Ages, especially the Inquisition and religious persecutions generally.

Besides these works, whose object is to make ancient France known to us by pictorial illustrations, M. Firmin Didot had undertaken the publication of a series of texts of the literary masterpieces of the Middle Ages. He had entrusted it to M. Léon Gautier, Professor at the Ecole des Chartes, known by his history of epic poetry in France, entitled Les Epopées de la France, and by his edition of the Chanson de Roland. M. Gautier is, if not one of the men who know our Middle Ages the best, at least one of those who love them most. He studies them with the zeal of an ardent historian, and admires them with the fervour of an earnest Catholic. This somewhat artless admiration imparts a warmth to his style which communicates itself to his readers, and supports him under the considerable labour involved in his threefold occupation as professor, journalist, and literary historian. We expected from him for the present year a Chrestomathy of French Literature in the Middle Ages, which was to form the third volume of the "Collection of Masterpieces of the Middle Ages." The two first volumes contained the Chronicles of Villehardouin and Joinville, restored M. Natalis de Wailly, published in a critical text, for the first time to their authentic form by high value. After M. Gautier's Chrestomathy, for and accompanied by an introduction and notes of which he had already collected mountains of texts, and to which he was to add a Glossary of Old French, a history of miniature-painting and writing, &c., &c., we were promised a selection of mediaeval dramas, an edition of Comines by

M. P. Viollet, and several other historical or poetical works. But, unfortunately, M. Gautier has had a difficulty with his publisher, and this great and interesting enterprise has for the present collapsed. Let us hope that the collapse is only temporary, and that this attempt to spread through the mass of cultivated men the most remarkable literary works of the Middle Ages will be soon resumed.

M. Firmin has taken Christian antiquities as well as the Middle Ages for the subject of his publications.

Dom Guéranger, a Benedictine monk of the Abbey of Solesmes, one of the few members of the regular clergy who have preserved the traditions of the learned monks of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and who is better versed than any other Frenchman in the knowledge of ancient liturgies, has published, under the title of Saint Cecilia and Roman Society in the First Two Centuries, a kind of summary of the works of M. de Rossi on Christian Rome in the primitive times. This year a member of the militant Catholic press, and the most violent of all, M. L. Veuillot, has been commissioned to write a kind of history of Christianity, entitled Jésus Christ, and accompanied by a study on Christian Art by M. E. Cartier. But though M. Veuillot is one of the most remarkable polemists ever produced by the French press, though he deserves to be called a great writer in this class of literature, though his name has been sometimes mentioned as one of those worthy of figuring among the Forty Immortals of the French Academy-unfortunately he loses almost all his good qualities when he has no one to attack or to abuse. His Jésus Christ will add nothing to his reputation, nor the labours of M. Cartier on Christian Art to our knowledge.

In short, this season appears less rich in remarkable Christmas books than the last. But the most noteworthy point is the more and more clearly marked taste of the public for serious books. Even amusement tries to be instructive, as proved by the charming books comprised in Hetzel's "Library of Education and Recreation -among others, the novels and romances of Jules Vernes, Erckmann-Chatrian, Lucien Biart, Stahl (a pseudonym of M. Hetzel himself); as proved also by the "Library of Marvels " published under the superintendence of M. Charton by Messrs. Hachette, in which we have the history of all arts, all sciences, and all industries.

Another of these gift-books combining instruction and amusement has just been published by M. Charles Blanc, the well-known director of the great publication on the History of Painters, and Director of Fine Arts under the presidency of M. Thiers. M. Charles Blanc had already given us a Grammar of the Arts of Design, which is one of the few good books on this delicate matter. He has just applied his principles to a very limited but very piquant subject-Art in Women's Dress and Ornament (Raynouard). M. Charles Blanc will doubtless be accused of pedantry and presumption; it will be found that he treats very gravely of these trifling matters, and it will certainly be said that any Parisian lady has a better knowledge of the subject in her own frivolous head than the whole venerable tribunal sitting at the Academy of Fine Arts. True; yet M. Charles Blanc's book is full of subtle observations and useful advice, at once lofty in tone and practical in bearing, on the cut and the lines of the dress, and the harmony of its colours; and those who have constant opportunities of seeing the costumes, and especially the hats, of the ladies of Paris, will find it by no means superfluous to invite them to "bring art to bear upon their dresses and their ornaments." M. Charles Blanc, too, is a writer of talent, though he has not the ample and nervous style of his brother Louis Blanc; and he would have filled to perfection the post of Secretary to the Academy of Fine Arts, from which he was excluded by reasons political, rather than literary or artistic.

M. Charles Clément has just published a book of the greatest interest on Léopold Robert, his Life and Works; a complete and excellent monograph, written with talent and feeling, worthy of those which he has before given us on Géricault and Prudhon. M. Clément makes us esteem and love the unhappy artist, whose talent in execution always remained so inferior to his ideal conception, and who at last found existence a burden too heavy to bear. There is this bond of union between the three painters whose life M. Clément has written and whose work he has analysed that all three were unfortunate, that all three had an original and personal idea, and that all three in their short and painful lives were able to express but very imperfectly this ideal which was in them. There is yet a fourth, who in certain respects may be placed beside them-Gleyre, who died suddenly last year; a great artist too, whose works are far from rendering fully his noble aspirations. M. Clément has inherited drawings by him, the most interesting portion, perhaps, of what he has left, and that which gives us the most complete revelation of him, and he is preparing to raise in honour of his friend a monument like those which he has devoted to Léopold Robert, to Prudhon, and to Géricault.

I will only add, in conclusion, that English works hold a prominent place among French Christmas books, particularly tales of travel, such as those of Wyville Thomson, Stanley, and Whymper. G. MONOD.

EXPLORATION IN PARAGUAY.
Asuncion: Nov. 24, 1874.

It would take too long to tell you of the months of revolution, changes of government and vexatious delays of the Mañana system which ultimately broke up our commission. We found Paraguay ruined and bankrupt, degraded materially and morally to an extent which can hardly be believed. It was not until after the Brazilians, who now virtually rule the country, had interfered to save the remnant of the Paraguayans from themselves, that it was possible to go beyond the dilapidated streets of Asuncion. The policy of Brazil seems to be to maintain Paraguay in a nominal independence, using the country as a buffer between the Empire and the Argentine Republic; but at the same time it is accumulating over it a load of debts and obligations from which Paraguay will never be able to shake itself free, and the garrison of 3,000 or 4,000 men in Asuncion is amply sufficient to ensure that the country will never again think differently from Brazil.

Giving up hope of the promised assistance from the Government, but very unwilling to return without seeing something of the country, I made a rapid journey with one companion southwards across the Tebicuari, the largest interior river of Paraguay, and down into the deserted lowlands of the Missiones, round the wide forests and wider marshes, reaching the Paraná at Encarnacion, and crossing the great river to the Correntine village of Ytapua. The massive barnlike churches, empty college squares and rows of doorless houses of the old Jesuit foundations alone remain to indicate the former prosperity of this part of Paraguay; all the less substantial farmhouses of the times immediately preceding the great war have fallen from decay-their sites only being marked by orange groves yellow with ripe unplucked fruit. In a few mud ranchos, often a league or two apart, some old women (for there is scarcely a man left in this part of the country) drag out a miserable existence, living on oranges and mandioca. The whole of the country south of the Tebicuari, with the exception of about fifty square miles, which belong to our countryman Dr. Stuart, and another smaller property, is government land; the central portion between Asuncion and Villa Rica, on the other hand, is almost all privately owned. Of the southern tract, about one-fourth, at a rough guess, is

covered with dense low-lying forest, another fourth with unprofitable marsh, and the remaining half is under coarse grass pasture, almost too rank for cattle.

Returning to Asuncion, we found that the Boundary Commission, which has been employed for the past two years in marking out and surveying the new line of demarcation between Brazil and Paraguay, had returned for fresh supplies, and was about to start for a final campaign in the Cordilleras. As this afforded an opportunity of seeing a portion of the country which could not be easily reached otherwise, I applied for and obtained permission to accompany the expedition.

The Commission consists of three or four Brazilian officers with about forty men, and a Paraguayan section-a captain with ten boy soldiers. The Brazilians have done all the work and provide the stores, the Paraguayans look on at a respectful distance and sign their names when required. The boundary line decided by treaty follows the river Apa from its mouth in the Paraguay to its source, and thence the summit of the Cordillera to the great waterfall of the Paraná, the Salto Guayrá, or Siete Quedas of the Brazilians. By far the most laborious work of the Commission was in cutting a path of forty leagues in length through the forests south of the basin of the river Igatimi to the great Salto, precisely on the water-parting. This path, though only wide enough to allow laden mules to pass, required six months in cutting, and during this time the Commission suffered much from continual rains, losing many animals, since the only food to be found for them in the forest was the succulent topmost leaves of the palms. The boundary is marked by six columns placed at important points along the line from the mouth of the Apa to where one of the high islands in the middle of the Paraná fall is considered a sufficient natural mark for its termination. The work of surveying the boundary and of placing the outer marks had been accomplished in former expeditions of the Commission; all that remained to be done in this one was to build the three central columns.

A

We left Asuncion three months ago, going up the river by steamer to Concepcion. The most considerable village of Northern Paraguay, with about 600 inhabitants, it is the reputed great seat of export for the northern yerbales; the trade, however, seems to be almost at a standstill. few hides of the maté tea, indeed, are piled beside the ruinous custom house, but they appear to enjoy undisturbed repose, waiting, perhaps, for the complete recovery of the old canoe, which is chronically being mended on the river bank beside them. From Concepcion north-eastward to the Apa, the country may be described as a succession of wide open camps, separated by low wooded ridges, each grass plain having a stream flowing westward in its lowest central level, along the banks of which strips of wood extend; but the trees are disappointingly small and matted together by underwood and trailing creepers. The most considerable river crossed was the Aquidaban, rapid throughout its course, rising and falling almost suddenly after rain. The Apa was reached at the pass marked by the fire-blackened posts of the old military station of Bellavista, and a short way above this the two chief head-streams of the river unite: the one coming from the north-east is, according to the Paraguayans, the true Apa, and it bears this name; but the other, the Estrella, flowing from south-east, was judged by the Brazilian surveyors to bring a greater quantity of water to the river, and as it has about the same length as the north-eastern tributary, it was decided by them to be the true source of the river, and consequently the boundary. This decision, which adds a few hundred square miles more to Matto Grosso, naturally gave rise to opposition and protest on the part of Paraguay, but the objections were overruled. At the mouth of the Estrella a boundary mark was accordingly built.

From this point our way, along the only track which has yet been opened, led through the southern border of Matto Grosso, across the minor northern tributaries of the Apa to its source in the Cordillera, over undulating and beautiful country, with rather more grass than wood. The name Cordillera is altogether misapplied to the heights which separate the waters flowing to the Paraguay river on the one side, and to the Paraná on the other in the north of the country, for they are evidently a continuation of the great Brazilian table land; between Concepcion and the central Apa the rise is very gradual, and there is no appreciable ascent until about midway between Bellavista and the source of the Apa, where a steep slope of a few hundred feet leads up to the undulating top of the plateau. The highest part of all does not much exceed 2,000 feet above the sea. On the other hand, the water-parting is most distinetly marked and uniform. In the space between the sources of the Apa and Estrella it is a grassy ridge, from half a mile to a mile in breadth, descending very gently to right and left. The sources occur at short intervals, each having its marsh, forming a crescent of rich green, half circling a rounded head of woods, which follow down its banks and mark its course away into the distance.

To the geologist, perhaps the most interesting feature of this part of the country would be found in the pebble beds, which are seen in every

section from that of the river bank of Concepcion, right up to the summits of the table land; on the water-parting ridge they lie in great mounds.

Another boundary column was built at the source of the Estrella, but under the greatest difficulties, for the northerly and southerly currents of air seemed to have chosen this spot as their battle-field, contending in furious thunderstorms. One of these storms, more violent than usual, threw down the first mark as soon as it was built, and a second had scarcely been completed when a tormenta, accompanied with large hailstones, coming on at night, levelled our tents and made the column a heap also. For us, however, the rain was far preferable to fair weather; for as soon as it ceased we were beset with clouds of little stinging flies, bred in the marshes of the double line of sources. Each one in biting left a blood-blister on the hand or face; the horses and mules, tortured to madness by them, would break from their halters and run off in any direction to be free of the plague. This pest of flies afterwards became so bad that the hands and face swelled up from the irritation of their bites, and on fair days nothing could be done but to pray for sunset, since at that time they retired, giving way to the almost welcome ping of the ordinary mosquito.

Not far from the Estrella source is the Brazilian military colony of the Upper Dourado (tributary of the Paraná), a solitary little village of mud ranchos, where a comandante spends an exiled life with thirty negro soldiers. Though it has been established for some years, the colony is without cultivation of any sort.

Our next move was southward to an open space on the water-parting, called the Potrero de Julio, where the sources of the river Ipané flowing westward, and of the Amambaya eastward, divide, the latter river giving its name to the heights. Here the final boundary column was placed. A few leagues south of this, the forest path, which was cut by the Commission to the Great Salto of the Paraná, begins, and the Paraguayan leader was good enough to act as guide for me to the entrance of it.

We found it with some difficulty, for camp fires and new growth had already altered the aspect of the edge of the forest. The narrow path was also much obstructed by the rapidly growing vines and by trees fallen across it. For the first time in this journey the timber was really fine, tall massive trunks rising from the underwood. Our farthest point in the picado was an old encampment of the

Commissioners, where they had been met in the first journey by the so-called general of the Canguá Indians, who had come in the name of his chief with forty chosen bowmen to know the intentions of the Commission and why they were cutting paths which might admit enemies to their solitudes.

I would fain have gone forward to the Great Salto, but it was impossible without a considerable escort and full supplies, neither of which could be had. Great things are told of this second Niagara, of the sound of its volumes of water heard at four leagues distance, and of the clouds of spray and magnificent rainbows amidst which it rolls into the deep narrow gorge below. The Indians fear to approach the fall, considering it the very gate of the infernal regions.

Our return track from the Potrero de Julio towards Concepcion was of peculiar interest, for it followed the very line of Lopez' last march from his camp at Panadero to that in the wilds of Cerro Cora, where he was killed four years ago. The track tells too plainly of the miseries which accompanied this final retreat of his army, for all along it at little intervals lie the unburied and

undisturbed skeletons of men who had lain down to die of weariness and starvation almost within along the path has its heap of bones beneath it, sight of one another. Every little shade-tree weathered saddle lying beside. After some dissometimes with the rusty gun or sword, or tance the track descends the edge of the plateau, passing through the great Yerbal of Chiriguelo, which is said to yield the finest maté, but has never been worked on account of its remote position. A fine forest succeeds on the lower slope, and from this one emerges suddenly into the splendid amphitheatre of Cerro Cora, wild and beautiful in the extreme. The cerros forming it are detached portions of the high land encircling a lateral valley of the Aquidaban, through which the arroyo of Chiriguelo flows; they have been worn by some geological forces into the most fantastic shapes, cones and cliffs and castellated towers. stone, the hills are densely covered up the sides, Excepting on their precipitous sides of red sandover the tops, and saddles between them with rich dark forest, while lighter groves of feathery palms extend round the undulations below, leaving

grassy

were of medium height, the women rather short, with dark yellow-brown skin and black hair falling over the brow and long behind. The face is oval and beardless, with high cheek-bones, the eyes almond-shaped and turned up at the outer angles, the mouth strongly curved downwardsaltogether very Mongolian in type but for the nose, which is large and has a decidedly Roman bridge. A spike of an amber-like substance, two or three inches in length, with a cross head, is pushed through a slit in the lower lip of the men. Their language is the ordinary Guarani, but without the great intermixture of Spanish words used in the more civilised parts of the country. Though they carry formidable bows or iron-shod spears, yet they are by all accounts a very mild and inoffensive tribe, keeping closely to their forests, and taking pains to conceal their dwellings.

We made hurried night and day marches to reach the lower pass of the Aquidaban before the rain, which threatened, should fall to swell the river. As it was we passed the ford in a thunder storm, and next day the river had risen to such an extent that the expedition was cut in two by it, the carts coming in the rear being unable to pass the torrent till the week after.

Arrived again at Concepcion, I hoped to go back overland to Asuncion, but we learnt that Pedro, the chief village of the department south the whole country between this place and San Lengua tribe, who have taken advantage of the of this one, is overrun by Chaco Indians, of the weakness of the country to cross over the river to its more habitable side. Ninety-six families are

by their invaders, and for the present all communication between the northern towns is closed.

said to have been driven inland from their homes

KEITH JOHNSTON.

SELECTED BOOKS.
General Literature and Art.
LEGGE, A. O. Pius IX. The Story of his life to the Restoration
in 1850. With glimpses of the National Movement in Italy.
Chapman & Hall. 32s.

LEGGE, J. The Life and Works of Mencius. Trübner.
LESSING'S Laocoon. Translated, with preface and notes, by the
Right Hon. R. J. Phillimore. Macmillan. 12s.
PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, as originally published by John Bunyan.
Being a facsimile reproduction of the first edition. Elliot
Stock. 7s. 6d.

VIOLLET-LE-DUC. Histoire d'une forteresse. Paris: Hetzel. 9 fr.

History.

BLACKBURNE, E. Life of the Right Hon. Francis Blackburne, late Lord Chancellor of Ireland. Macmillan. 12s.

méridionale. 4 vol. Paris: Aubry. 8 fr. 50 c. CAMPBELL, A. G. La Vita di Fra Paolo Sarpi. Torino: Loescher.

The accounts of Lopez's death are very varied. His admirers-for there are still some Paraguayans who half worship this little Nero-make him ride out from his tent alone when surprised, bidding his followers save themselves, and fall, after killing a dozen or so of his enemies and refusing quarter, with a magnificent speech about his country's liberty and his own pleasure in dying for it, on his lips. The more common story represents him shuffling off the scene on foot, making for a path which led to one of the cerros, but only to be caught and spitted through by a Brazilian lance, dying thus without saying anything pleasant to remember or repeat. A wooden cross was originally set up over his grave, but this has now disappeared, and a bush, like other bushes dotted about, was pointed out to me as being over the place. Cerro Cora is said to be a chief stronghold of the Canguá Indians; we met only one party of them. They came down to the track to barter wax in cakes for farina and tobacco. The men

Physical Science and Philosophy. COYTEUX, F. Etudes sur la physiologie. Paris: Masson. HUNT, T. S. Chemical and Geological Essays. Trübner. NORDPOLARFAHRT, die zweite deutsche, in den Jahren 18691870 unter Führung d. Kapitän Karl Koldewey. 2. Bd. Wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse. 2. Abth. Leipzig: Brockhaus. 6 Thl.

STEIN, H. v. Sieben Bücher zur Geschichte d. Platonismus. 3. u. letzter Thl. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht. 2 Thl. WYLD, R. S. The Physics and Philosophy of the Senses. King.

Philology.

FICK, A. Die griechischen Personennamen nach ihrer Bildung erklärt. Göttingen: Vanderhoeck und Ruprecht. 2 Thl. GUBERNATIS, A. de. Letture sopra la Mitologia Vedica. Milano: Brigola. 4 fr.

OUDEMANS, A. C. Bijdrage to den middel- en oudnederlandsch Woordenboek. 5. Deel. 0.-R. Leipzig: Weigel. 4 Thl. 12 Ngr.

CORRESPONDENCE.

M. HALÉVY AND THE ACCADIAN LANGUAGE.

Oxford: Dec. 23, 1875.

I hardly think that Assyrian scholars will care to answer M. Halévy's last paradox as anticipated in Saturday's ACADEMY. It is impossible to carry on an argument where there is no common basis upon which to build it; and just as the astronomer would consider it a waste of time seriously to combat the arguments of a resuscitated Ptolemaean, or the Sanskritist to oppose the theory that Sanskrit was a language invented to deceive European students, so the Assyriologue has some

no obscurity about Mr. Darwin's views on this matter? Or the one who, writing in July, 1874, accuses him of having at first disguised his views? Settle it between yourselves. If it were necessary for me to give an opinion on so delicate a matter, assuredly I could have no ground for hesitation. For, on becoming acquainted with Mr. Darwin's views in 1858, I set myself to enquire, much more seriously than I had done before, whether the hiatus between man and apes, indicated by the Cuvierian classification, and insisted upon by his followers, to the great satisfaction of the opponents of the doctrine of Evolution, really had an existence in nature. I came to the conclusion that it had none; I stated the grounds of these conclusions to those who attended my lectures in 1859-60; a battle, which was somewhat notorious in its day, took place at the meeting of the British Association at Oxford in 1860, and turned upon Mr. Darwin's views of the evolution of man; while, in 1863, I summed up the then state of the question in a little book, entitled Man's Place in Nature, which did its work in several languages beside my own, and is now out of print and gone to the limbo of forgotten things: which is its proper place, now that Mr. Darwin has had leisure to state his own views more fully, though not more distinctly, than in the Origin of Species, in the Descent of Man.

Mr. Darwin reticent about his views respecting the origin of man! Why, for years after the publication of the Origin of Species, one could not go to a dinner-party without hearing of them; and whether you took up the last number of Punch, or the last sermon, the chances were ten to one there was some allusion to the "missing link."

Under these circumstances, the high moral tone assumed by the Quarterly Reviewer -him of 1874, I mean-is truly edifying. Joseph Surface could not have done better. Unless I err, he is good enough to include me among the members of that school whose speculations are to bring back among us the gross profligacy of Imperial Rome. This may be doubtful. But what is not doubtful is the fact that misrepresentation and falsification are the favourite weapons of Jesuitical Rome; that anonymous slander is practice and not mere speculation; and that it is a practice, the natural culmination of which is not the profligacy of a Nero or of a Commodus, but the secret poisonings of the Papal Borgias.

I remember that when, in 1862, I showed the proofs of Man's Place in Nature to a cautious and sagacious friend of mine-an expert in such matters-he had nothing to say against my arguments, but much to urge against the prudence of publishing them. Doubtless he foresaw that an unscrupulous critic, sheltered by his anonymity, might charge me with advocating the "bestiality of man," and with, thereby, endeavouring to loosen those moral bonds which hold society together. It seemed to me, however, that a man of science has no raison d'être at all, unless he is willing to face much greater risks than these for the sake of that which he believes to be true; and, further, that to a man of science such risks do not count for much-that they are by no means so serious as they are to a man of letters, for ex

ample. Happily, the reputation and real success of a votary of the physical sciences are now wholly independent of the periodicals which are pleased to call themselves "influential organs of public opinion." The only opinion he need care about, if he care for any-and he is all the wiser and happier if he care for none is that of about a dozen men : two or three in these islands, as many in America, and half-adozen on the Continent. If these think well of his work, his reputation is secure from all the attacks of all the able editors of all the "influential organs" put together. So that I do not suppose that Mr. Darwin, troubles himself much about this charge of dishonest reticence, which would be so ludicrous if it were not so shameful to its author; and I have thought it worth while to expose its foolish falsity merely in the interests of the honour of English journalism, in the hope of putting a stop to such malpractices, by calling the attention of the public to the most conspicuous lapse from that honour which has happened within my recollection.

The book, the title of which heads this article, Haeckel's Anthropogenie, is remarkable in many ways: not least as a milestone, indicating the progress of the application of the theory of Evolution to Man, since Darwin set us all thinking afresh upon that subject.

The position I took up, in 1863, was a very guarded one, as the state of knowledge at that time demanded. All I had to say came to this If there is reason to believe that the lower animals have come to be what they are, by a process of gradual modification; then, there is nothing in the structure of man to warrant us in denying that he may have come into existence by the gradual modification of a mammal of ape-like organisation. And of the many criticisms with which my little book has been favoured here and abroad, I have met with none which, in the slightest degree, shakes that position.

Professor Haeckel stoops at much higher game. His theme is "Anthropogeny "the tracing of the actual pedigree of man-from its protoplasmic root, sodden in the mud of sees which existed before the oldest of the fossiliferous rocks were deposited, in those inconceivably ancient days, which for this earth, at any rate, were the real "juventus mundi," to its climax and perfection-say in an anonymous critic of strict orthodoxy and high moral tone.

It need hardly be said, that in dealing with such a problem as this, science rapidly passes beyond the bounds of positively verifiable fact, and enters those of more or less justifiable speculation. But there are very few scientific problems, even of those which have been, and are being, most successfully solved, which have been, or can be, approached in any other way.

no reasonable doubt, but it is an unverifiable hypothesis. I may be as sure as I can be of anything, that I had a thought yesterday morning, which I took care neither to utter, nor to write down, but my conviction is an utterly unverifiable hypothesis. So that unverified, and even unverifiable, hypotheses may be great aids to the progress of knowledge-may have a right to be believed with a high degree of assurance. And, therefore, even if it be admitted that the evolution hypothesis is, in great measure, beyond the reach of verification, it by no means follows that it is not true, still less that it is not of the utmost value and importance.

There is evidence which is perfectly satisfactory to competent judges, that we have already learned the actual historical process by which one existing species-the horsecame into existence during the Tertiary epoch. The evidence, based on the analogy of known developmental facts, that a three-toed Hipparion form which lived in the Miocene epoch, gave rise, by suppression of the phalanges of its rudimental toes and some other slight modifications, to the apparently onetoed later Tertiary horse, is as satisfactory to my mind as the evidence, based on the analogy of known structural facts, which leads me to have no doubt that the said extinct Hipparion had a simple stomach and a certain kind of heart. If those so-called "Baconian principles," which everybody talks about and nobody dreams of putting into practice, forbid us to draw the one conclusion, they forbid us to draw the other.

The alternative hypotheses are two: either the Deity manifested his power on this earth, in the course of the Miocene epoch, by making the two primitive ancestors of all the horses out of inorganic matter; or something more unlike a horse than a Hipparion changed into one. The latter hypothesis is gratuitous and absurd. The former is not in itself absurd; but unless the early chapters of Genesis mean something contrary to what they appear to mean (and one never knows what exegetic ingenuity may make of the "original Hebrew "), it is shockingly heretical, and I hasten to disown it; lest by some such secret connexion as bound Goodwin Sands with Tenterden steeple, it should land me in the cruelties of Caligula, and lead me to violate the precepts of the sagest of physicians, by indulging in Heliogabalian gluttony.

that these animals have been produced by a similar method, why may not the hypothesis that they have so arisen, take its rank among the probable conclusions of science? Even though it must, in candour, be admitted that, as we cannot live back into the Tertiary epoch and see what went on at that time, the hypothesis must always remain, in the strictest sense of the word, unverifiable.