these corpuscles, there exists in all space but one sole atom belonging to sensible substances. This atom, occupying one of those sensible points, at which corpuscles arrive from every side, will be struck by them on every part, and of course will remain sensibly immoveable. Now, if a second atom should come afterwards to exist at a sensible proximity to the other, it is evident that each of these will protect the other from the shocks of those corpuscles which strike it on the outer surface. The atoms, therefore, will receive fewer shocks on the surface they present to each other, and, consequently, they will be impelled toward each other by the sum of the exterior shocks which are not compensated by interior ones. Thus already the idea of attraction vanishes before an idea simply mechanical. It has been discovered, that the velocity with which bodies move towards each other increases in an inverse ratio of the squares of their distances; and this law will be found perfectly conformable to the proportion of corpuscles intercepted at different distances in the system of Mr. le Sage.

"The second law of gravity, that bodies attract each other in the ratio of their mass, appears at first sight incompatible with the system of Mr. le Sage: but on a closer examination it will be found otherwise. If a second atom be placed by the side of one of the former, the single one will keep off from this as many corpuscles as it did from the other; whence they will both move towards it with the same force as the first atom did. But this atom will keep off as many corpuscles from the single one as its fellow does; whence the single atom will move, in a line intermediate to one drawn from the centre to the centre of each, with double the force it had before. This force will incontestibly be increased exactly in proportion to the number of atoms placed side by side.

"It will seem a specious objection, no doubt, that in any given mass many of its component atoms will be in one line, and, consequently, on this system can act but as one. Yet this objection will vanish, if we allow the porosity of bodies to be such, as Mr. le Sage has demonstrated it may be, that in a globe as large as the sun, the atoms placed about its centre are

struck by these corpuscles sensibly as much as those on its surface; so that the quantity of corpuscles stopped in these vast bodies (whence their gravitation towards each other arises) may bear so small a proportion to that of the corpuscles which traverse it, that the same quantity arrives sensibly to each of its component atoms, wherever situated; and thus gravity may be so nearly in the ratio of masses, that astronomy has not yet been able to discover a want of accuracy, certainly attributable to a defect of this law.

"This part of the system of Mr. le Sage supposes, it is true, degrees of littleness and velocity of these corpuscles and of the porosity of bodies, with such an extent of space, as to startle the imagination; but our ideas of magnitude, of velocity, and of time, have nothing absolute; and as to space, far from being able to assign its limits, we conceive the whole universe, as far as we have any knowledge of it, however immense it appear to our imagination, to be but a single point in it.'

AVARICE, AN ARABIAN ANECDOTE. THERE dwelt at Izra a young nobleman, named Miravan, who was blessed with health, wit, beauty, and a sufficient competency of the good things of this world, which for some years he enjoyed with uninterrupted satisfaction; till one day walking among the tombs of his ancestors, he observed upon one of them the following inscription, almost erased by time:

"In this tomb is a greater treasure than "Croesus ever possessed."

Inflamed immediately with the lust of avarice, he caused the ponderous and marble jaws (as Shakspeare calls them) of his ancestors' sepulchre to be opened; when, entering in with rapturous expectations of finding treasures, he was struck speechless on beholding nothing but a heap of bones, dust, and putrefaction, with this inscription:—

"Here would have dwelt eternal repose,' "a treasure Croesus never possessed, which "thou hast driven hence, being excited, by an "insatiable love of gold, to disturb the sacred "remains of thy progenitors. Had not thy "reason been deluded by a false fancy, she "would have told thee that the grave contains "nothing but dust and ashes."

ful, He can do it; good, He will do it. Justice, mercy, truth, or faithfulness, are not distinct attributes, but denominations given to His power and wisdom, in their various operations on different occasions, in reference to His creatures.

of age, with a very white skin, sitting in an erect posture, having, from somewhat about the middle, its body quite above the water; and directly under the water there was a large brown substance, on which it seemed to float. The wind being perfectly calm, and the water quite clear, he could see distinctly, when the creature moved, that this substance was part of it. From the bottom there went down a tail much resembling that of a

DISSERTATION ON THE MERMAID.

(Concluded from col. 714.)

THE last account I shall quote is from a review of Mrs. Morgan's Tour;" the leaf which is in my possession I tore from the volume to which it belongs several years since; I am not therefore able to refer to the title more distinctly. I believe, however, that I had it from the Monthly Review of the date 1795 or 1796, p. 163.

"Henry Reynolds, of Penny hold, in the parish of Castle Martin, in the county of Pembroke, a simple farmer, and esteemed by all who knew him to be a truth-telling man, declares the following most extraordinary story to be an absolute fact, and is willing, in order to satisfy such as will not take his bare word for it, to swear to the truth of the same. He says he went one morning to the cliffs that bound his own lands, and form a bay near Linny-stack. From the eastern end of the same he saw, as he thought, a person bathing very near the western end, but appearing, from almost the middle up, above water. He, knowing the water to be deep in that place, was surprised at it, and went along the cliffs quite to the western end, to see what it was. As he got towards it, it appeared to him like a person sitting in a tub. At last he got within ten or twelve yards of it, and found it then to be a creature much resembling a youth of sixteen or eighteen years

water was straight, but in shallow water it would turn it on one side. The tail was continually moving in a circular manner. The form of its body and arms was entirely human, but its arms and hands seemed rather short and thick in proportion to its body. The form of the head and all the features of the face were human also ; but the nose rose high between its eyes, was pretty long, and seemed to terminate very sharp. Its head was white, like its body, without hair; but from its forehead there arose a brownish substance of three or four fingers' breadth, which turned up over its head and went down over its back, and reached quite into the water. This substance did not at all resemble hair, but was thin, flat, and compact, not much unlike a ribbon. It did not adhere to the back part of its head or neck or back, for the creature lifted it up from its neck, and washed under it. It washed frequently under its arms and about its body. It swam about the bay, and particularly round a little rock which Reynolds was within ten or twelve yards of. He staid about an hour looking at it. It was so near him, that he could perceive its motion through the water was very rapid; and that when it turned, it put one hand into the water and moved itself round very quickly. It never dipped under the water all the time he was looking at it. It looked attentively at him and the cliffs, and seemed to take great notice of the birds flying over its head. Its looks were wild and fierce; but it made no noise, nor did it grin, or any way distort its face. When he left it, it was above an hundred yards from him; and when he returned with some others to look at it, it was gone. This account was taken down by Doctor George P, at Prickerston, from the man's own mouth, in pre

sence of many people, about the latter end of December, 1782."

It must be confessed that we have here a large body of evidence bearing strongly on the point; and though it may be admitted that in some of the instances we cannot recognize the fair Ligea with her golden comb,

"Wherewith she sits on diamond rocks, Sleeking her soft alluring locks;" and though we may allow that some of these descriptions refer to animals widely differing from others, yet still the conclusion seems to be unavoidable, that a creature has been seen bearing the likeness such as popular belief usually ascribes to the mermaid. When we consider that several animals were for a considerable period of time believed to exist only on the authority of one or two observers, and that the existence of some was for a time strongly doubted or absolutely denied, and yet that they have since become well known to naturalists, it seems strange that the learned world should continue to manifest such decided scepticism on the subject of that which is the object of our present inquiry. Perhaps, however, the observations I shall presently bave to advance may tend to mitigate the force of this censure; for if it should appear that the existence of such a creature be acknowledged, though under another name, the difference will be brought within a small compass, or vanish altogether.

ཛྫཱ ༄ ༔ Much of the difficulty which has lain in the way of conviction has been caused by the confused and inadequate manner in which the first naturalists represented the objects which fell within the sphere of their observation. Even when they had recourse to the pencil, it is scarcely possible to conceive a greater dissimilarity than there is between many of their plates and the objects intended to be represented by them. If any one should entertain doubts on this head, I would refer him, first, to the figure in Gesner, as copied from Olaus, of the Narwal, (Monodon Monoceros,) and then to a plate of the same creature copied from nature, in. Scoresby's "Arctic Regions." I feel quite assured that the person who drew the former had never seen more of the creature he was engaged in representing than the tusk, which in the plate is delineated as projecting from the frontal bone, af

ter the manner of the heraldic unicorn. What to make of that creature, a figure of which, under the name of an Indian serpent, though found in Italy in an old wall, the celebrated philosopher Cardan sent to Gesner, I can scarcely say. An imposition is strongly to be suspected, similar to some we shall presently have to consider. In this case Cardan was probably the dupe. It is well known to have been a frequent occurrence in those days, when a love of the marvellous was a prevailing passion in naturalists, that creatures were made to assume figures very different from those that properly belonged to them, in order to excite the wonder of the vulgar.

At p. 158, Gesner has the figure of a species of cyclopterus, (sucker,) the drawing of which was sent to him by a learned friend, but which himself suspected to have been very unlike nature. It was distorted by considerably elevating the back, which in this fish is naturally high, in order to render the shape more hideous'; whilst another figure, representing one of (most probably) the same species, or at least a congener, is as preposterously sketched out to an extreme length. He has given the likeness of an exsiccated ray or skate, in which the hinder part of the body is trimmed into the form of a serpent, the pectoral fins cut into the form of wings, and elevated as in the attitude of flying, the mouth made terminal, and the head moulded into something very different from what it is naturally.

Creatures thus artificially distorted were frequently part of the furniture of the shop of an apothecary: these

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ill-shaped fishes" are mentioned by Shakspeare in his description of an apothecary, in the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. When so great a disposition was shewn to convert common natural objects into monsters, we should not be surprised at discovering in them a desire to magnify that which in itself was somewhat extraordinary: thus we are informed by Olaus, that a lobster, twelve feet long, was taken out of the stomach of a marine animal which he compares to a rhinoceros, but of which it is not easy to imagine the real nature. Fortunately, the large or lower part of the claw of this monstrous lobster is engraved of its natural size; from whence we are able to conclude, that if indeed the creature