idea of death had lost its novelty, and become quite familiar. Finding signals in vain, I now set up a cry or howl, such as I thought best calculated to carry to a distance, and, being favoured by the wind, it did, although at above a mile distance, reach the ears of some people on shore. At last I perceived a boat rowing towards me, which being very small and white bottomed, I had for some time taken for a fowl with a white breast; and I was taken off the barge by Captain Johnstone, after being ten hours on the water. I found myself at the village of La Chine, 21 miles below where the accident happened, and having been driven by the winding of the current a much greater distance. I received no other injury than bruised knees and breast, with a slight cold: the accident took some hold of my imagination, and for seven or eight succeeding nights, in my dreams, I was engaged in the dangers of the cascades, and surrounded by drowning men.

My escape was owing to a concurrence of fortunate circumstances, which appear almost providential. I happened to catch hold of various articles of support, and to exchange each article for another just at the right time. Nothing but the boom could have carried me down the Cascades without injury; and nothing but the barge could have saved me below them. I was also fortunate in having the whole day; had the accident happened one hour later, I should have arrived opposite the village of La Chine after dark, and of course, would have been destroyed in the rapids below, to which I was rapidly advaneing. The trunk which furnished me with provisions and a resting place above the water, I have every reason to think was necessary to save my life; without it I must have passed the whole time in the water, and been exhausted with cold and hunger. When the people on shore saw our boat take the wrong channel, they predicted our destruction: the floating luggage, by supporting us for a time, enabled them to make an exertion to save us; but as it was not supposed possible to survive the passage of the Cascades, no further exertions were thought of, nor indeed could they well have been made.

It was at this very place that General Ambert's brigade of 300 men,

coming to attack Canada, were lost; the French at Montreal received the first intelligence of the invasion, by the dead bodies floating past the town. The pilot who conducted their first batteaux committing the same error that we did, ran for the wrong channel, and the other batteaux following close, all were involved in the same destruction. The whole party with which I was, escaped; four left the barge at the cedar village, above the rapids, and went to Montreal by land; two more were saved by the canoe; the barges crew, all accustomed to labour, were lost; of the eight men who passed down the Cascades, none but myself escaped, or were seen again; nor indeed was it possible for any one without my extraordinary luck, and the aid of the barge, to which they must have been very close, to have escaped; the other men must have been drowned immediately on entering the Cascades. The trunks, &c. to which they adhered, and the heavy great coats which they had on, very probably helped to overwhelm them; but they must have gone at all events; swimming in such a current of broken stormy waves was impossible; still I think my knowing how to swim kept me more collected, and rendered me more willing to part with one article of support to gain a better, those who could not swim would naturally cling to whatever hold they first got, and of course, many had very bad ones. The captain passed me above the Cascades, on a sack of woollen clothes, which were doubtless soon saturated and sunk.

The trunk which I picked up, belonged to a young man from Upper Canada, who was one of those drowned; it contained clothes, and about L. 70 in gold, which was restored to his friends. My own trunk contained, besides clothes, about L. 200 in gold and bank notes. On my arrival at La Chine, I offered a reward of 100 dollars, which induced a Canadian to go in search of it. He found it, some days after, on the shore of an island on which it had been driven, and brought it to La Chine, where I happened to be at the time. I paid him his reward, and understood that above one-third of it was to be immediately applied to the purchase of a certain number of masses which he had vowed, in the event of success, previous to his setting out on the search.

Ir has been frequently remarked, that the study of natural history, when considered generally, is one of the most amusing and instructive which ever engaged the attention of mankind, but that the detail with which it is now encumbered and overgrown, tends, in a great degree, to annihilate the pleasure which might otherwise be derived from its pursuit. To the professed naturalist the most severe and unadorned parts of the science may, no doubt, be equally alluring with those more general views which form the chief sources of pleasure to the ordinary observer, and he may be more truly convinced, that, without the necessary toil of the one, we would not reap the enjoyment resulting from the other. It is as true, however, that a too exclusive devotion to the technicalities of any science usually tends to circumscribe the sphere of our ideas, as that an indulgence in hasty generalization, without due knowledge and consideration of established facts, induces the extremes of ignorance and confusion. Had the most eager speculators in geology been the most accomplished mineralogists, there would have been a less degree of absurdity in certain hypotheses, and had Werner produced a work as eloquent and ably written as the illustrations of the Huttonian theory, it is probable that the antagonists of his doctrines would have suffered a diminution even greater than that which they have lately experienced. A combination of beauty and accuracy is still one of the desiderata among the works of natural history, and what is rather unfortunate, there seems to exist at present an increasing inability -to comprehend the existence of the former, with an equal want of power to exemplify that of the latter.

How few of the zoologists of the present day appear to look upon nature with the eye of real wisdom! In almost every sentiment which is uttered, one may trace the want of general knowledge, and of an enlighten'ed understanding, and on opening most works on the subject, the first idea which presents itself is generally that of a prying inquisitive countenance, with its nose within two inches of some unfortunate specimen. There 1 VOL. IV.

must assuredly exist some essential difference between the sentiments which guide the conduct of most of the present naturalists, and those which animated the labours of the men whose works now form the great landmarks of science; and when we reflect on the glorious intelligence of Buffon, the searching and unrepulsed acuteness of Linnæus, or the persevering and enlightened enthusiasm of the hoary Huber, we shall feel little inclined to congratulate ourselves on the change. It was something more than vanity and the desire of imme diate praise, that prompted the first of these men to master almost every branch of human knowledge, that induced the second to support his sinking spirits among the cheerless and wintry solitudes of Lapland, or that shed celestial light on the labours of the last when his eyes were dark and sightless.

It is certainly much to be lamented that so little attention should be paid to the more general relations of so beautiful a science as natural history. Among these there are none more in teresting than the connection which subsists between zoology and the art of poetry; and our object in the present coinmunication is to call the reader's attention to a few of those fine passages in the works of the great poets, which derive their chief beauty from their characteristic accuracy of description, and their consistency with established fact. In this exposition we shall be guided by Mr Aikin's elegant essay on the application of poetry to natural history, of the observations contained in which we shall make frequent use, combining with these such additional illustrations as may occur. And here it may be remarked that, although we are of opinion that the more close and accurate the adaptation of the facts of natural' history is to poetry the better, yet a distinction must always be drawn between those beautiful fables which have been for so long a period consecrated to the service of the poet, and those prosaic misrepresentations of truth which a confused understanding is apt to confound with the etherial flights of imagination. Thus we shall always consider as sacred the song of the dying swan, the nest of the peace ful halcyon, the tears of the crocodile, the bleeding breast of the bird of the

desert, and the life, death, and resurrection of the phoenix, even though the cold hand of zoological criticism should oblige us to confess that the voice of the swan is harsh and unmusical, that the halcyon itself, being a nonentity, never builds a nest, that the crocodile sheds no tears, that the pelican feeds her young in the ordinary manner, and that the whole existence of the phoenix is a fable. Nor shall we feel inclined to object to such descriptions of imaginary creatures Gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire," as remind us of that passage in Milton, commencing,

66

As when a gryphon through the wilderness, With winged course, o'er hill or moory dale,

Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth
Has from his wakeful custody purloined
The guarded gold.

It is the false representation of more familiar objects, whose real properties equally admit of poetical embellishment, that we chiefly protest against.

Dr Aikin has remarked, that every part of natural history does not seem equally capable of affording poetical imagery. The vegetable creation, delightful as it is to the senses, and extensive in utility, yields comparatively few materials to the poet, whose art is principally defective in representing those qualities in which it excels-colour, scent, and taste. The mineral kingdom is still more sterile, and unaccommodated to description. The animal race, who, in common with their human lord and head, have almost universally somewhat of moral and intellectual character; whose motions, habitations, and pursuits, are so infinitely and curiously varied, and whose connection with inan arises to a sort of companionship and mutual attachment, seem, on these accounts, peculiarly adapted to the purposes of poetry. Separately considered, they afford matter for pleasing and even sublime speculation; in the rural landscape they give animation to the objects around them, and, viewed in comparison with human kind, they suggest amusing and instructive lessons. That part of natural history termed zoology, the Doctor observes, has, therefore, almost solely furnished the subjects of his pages. To shew, by examples drawn from those poets who have eminently ucceeded in de

scriptions of animal nature, that this source has actually been productive of beauties of the most striking kind; and to point out from the writers in natural history some new objects which might have improved the poetry of past, or may adorn that of future composers, is the object of the greater part of his essay.

None of the ancient poets have more skilfully applied their zoological knowledge than Virgil, and among the most interesting and philosophical parts of the Georgies, are those lines in the 1st Book, relating to the Prognostics of changes in the weather, which may be derived from the animal creation. How much of vivacity and beauty is contained in the following passages:

Cum medio celeres revolant ex æquore mergi,

Clamoremque ferunt ad litora, cumque marinæ,

In sicco ludunt Fulicæ : notasque paludes Deserit, atque altamsupra volat ardea nu

bem.

Cum, positis novus exuviis, nitidusque juventa,

Volvitur, aut catulos tectis aut ova relin. quens,

Arduus ad solem, et linguis micat ore trisulcis.

The fourth Georgic contains the history of the Bee, and many particulars are there narrated which have been since amply confirmed by the observations of naturalists. The respect and adoration paid by the subject bees to their king, (more correctly called queen by the moderns,) so well described by Virgil, received some additional touches of beauty from the pen of Pliny. When the king goes abroad, he observes, the swarm not only crowd around him with awe and admiration, but conceal him from sight, cerni non patitur. Each wishes to be near him in his duty. Whenever he alights, there the whole encamp, "Se quæque proximam illi cupit esse, et in officio conspici gaudet. Ubicunque ille consedit, ibi cunctarum cåstra fuit."

We are now to adduce some more familiar examples of this beautiful combination. In Milton, who possessed beyond all men the vision and the faculty divine," and whose fairy creations produce what Southey so well calls "that dreaminess of soul," during which we may imagine ourselves in another and more blissful region, and holding converse with brighter and more godlike intelligences, there is at the same time such a freshness, accuracy, and individuality of beauty, that his most imagina

It is, however, the beauty and excellence of images drawn from the animal kingdom which we are at present more anxious to illustrate. we could do by a thousand references to the works of our majestic poct, but our narrow limits force us to rest satisfied with a very circumscribed number. We almost imagine that we have been witnesses to the almighty work of creation on perusing the suc ceeding passage:

Forthwith the sounds and seas, each creek

train

Adorns him, colour'd with the florid hue
Of rainbows and starry eyes.

Besides affording such valuable additions to the pleasure derived from simple description, images of natural history are capable of the most striking application to poetry as figures of comparison. The heroes of Homer are frequently likened in valour, fierceness, and other attributes, to the lion, the horse, the wolf, the boar, and the eagle, and the passages in which these, and similar illustrations occur, are among the finest and most universally admired of his writings. Whoever will take the trouble of instituting a comparison between the original and the translation, by Pope,

Haud secus Eridani stagnis, ripâve

Caystri

Innatat albus olor, pronoque immobile corpus

Dat fluvio, et pedibus tacitas eremigat

undas.

SILIUS ITALICUS.

To

Now, as Dr Aikin has remarked, there are several imperfections in the translation which injure both its spirit and correctness. The second line is not only entirely expletive, but contains an inaccurate idea. slaughter bred" can only be applied, with propriety, to an animal of prey; whereas the boar never attacks other creatures, except in defence of itself feebled by an unmeaning pleonasm. or its young. The fourth line is enIn the seventh, the whole application of the sense and the simile of the author is perverted, by representing the animal as already engaged with its foes, instead of remaining in a posture to receive their attack. The last line

is quite unwarranted by the original; and although the translation is thus protracted to an unusual length, a circumstance of importance in the description, that of the boar's whetting his tusks, is entirely omitted. Again,