He is what I remember Tom (Assheton) Smith some five-and-twenty years ago. I can only add my regret at this being my last day with this pack; for this season, at all events; but— "Venit summa dies, et ineluctabile tempus." MONTHLY MEMORABILIA. PIGEON-SHOOTING.-A match for twenty sovereigns, at twenty-one birds each, twenty-one yards rise, came off on Thursday, the 16th ult., between R. Toomer, Esq. of Fairfield, Isle of Wight, and R. Missing, Esq. of Twyford, near Winchester, at the residence of the former gentleman; which was decided in favour of Mr. Toomer, by one bird only, as will be seen by the score, each killing eighteen birds out of twenty Ties at three birds each:-Missing, 101. Toomer, 111. The birds were supplied by Clayard, who furnishes the Red House, and were all good. On Saturday, the 4th ult., came off, at Eaglisham, the much-talkedof Champion Coursing Match, between Lord Eglinton's celebrated dog, Waterloo, and Mr. Bruce Jardine's Carron, for 200 sovs. a side, the best of three courses. The crowd was 66 prodigious;" there they swarmed, Hielandmen and Glasgie "bodies," as if another Tournament was "agait." The affair intrinsically was a very interesting one; Waterloo proving victorious, having won two runs out of the three. A bitch fox, heavy in cub, was, during the last month, run down and cut in two by an engine attached to one of the trains on the Birmingham and Derby Railway. A new safety-guard for a gun, for which Mr. Lang, the celebrated gun-maker of the Haymarket, has recently taken out a patent, has been shewn to us, and certainly ranks among the most admirable inventions of modern times. It is extremely simple, and can be applied to any gun, at a trifling expense. It bolts the lock when down on the nipple, and at half, and at full cock; and requires nothing to be done when the gun is to be discharged, as it relieves itself by the mere pressure applied to the guard at the moment of firing. Simple in operation, and of easy reach to every one, we hope to see this clever and most useful invention adopted by all classes of trigger-men. Is it necessary to allude to the melancholy catastrophes that would have been avoided by such a preventive? To such of our readers as take interest in the general matériel of sporting, we strongly recommend, should occasion be afforded, a visit to Lang's establishment. He has very many improvements in the various appliances of the sportsman; and is, withal, a person of great intelligence, and practical knowledge in the details of the majority of field sports. LITERATURE AND THE FINE ARTS. THE BOOK OF ARCHERY. By George Agar Hansard, Gwent Bowman; author of "Trout and Salmon Fishing in Wales." London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, Paternoster-row. 1840. AMONG the many changes which the march of improvement has effected, during the present century, in this country, in the literary department, none is more striking than the signal progress made in the character of sporting works: whether we regard the matter treated of, or the manner of their getting up, our sporting literature has assumed a position of no equivocal importance in the republic of letters. Men, eminent in talent and station, seeing how closely the interests of a country, so emphatically rural as England, are linked with a taste for manly exercises and recreations, have entered, with a fitting earnestness, into the subject of our popular pastimes, and adorned it with their pens and pencils. In the list of these true patriots, though last, assuredly not least, is the author of the very elegant volume now before us. Whether examined in reference to the learned research and taste displayed by its author, the perfection of its exquisite engravings, the accuracy of its antique and classic outline illustrations, or the admirable style in which, as a whole, it has been put before the public, "The Book of Archery" must win unanimous admiration for all who took part in its production;-unanimous admiration and patronage from all capable of appreciating the value of talent and taste combined in a work at once interesting, instructive, and national. THE CANADIAN NATURALIST; a series of Conversations on the Natural History of Lower Canada. By P. H. Gosse. Illustrated by Forty-four Engravings. London: John Van Voorst, 1, Pater noster-row. 1840. If the rising generation learn not "to look through nature up to nature's God," very surely will it deserve to be branded as stiffnecked and perverse. Among the best signs of the improving taste of the day, is the great progress made in the character of our lighter literature, and the very general popularity of those authors who, discarding the masquerade of romance, don the more natural and becoming costume which unites the graver robe of the closet with the gay and graceful mantle of the saloon. Whether to these belongs the credit of forming a more healthy taste in the great body of general readers, or whether they formed their model to suit that which they saw was already founded on a solid favour, we are not less their debtors, from whom we derive that goodly harvest of the press, our tomes of blendid instruction and entertainment. Many and beautiful as these works are, where shall we find a class more sublime in their aim, or more excellent in their end, than the volumes on Natural History, of which the present day is so prolific? They come to us in a succession suited to all classes and tastes, from the highly scientific such as the splendid work on Quadrupeds, which we shall have to notice presently to the unpretending gossiping treatise now before us. Mr. Gosse, who is a relation of the celebrated naturalist, Professor Bell, has turned to excellent account his residence in Lower Canada. He has given us a very instructive and pleasing account of the animal productions of a portion of our dominions to which public attention has been lately much directed; composed, as he tells us, "in the far-off wilds of the West, where systems, books, and museums are almost unknown." His "Canadian Naturalist's Calendar," as he says it may be called, is written in the form of a dialogue between a father and his son, and contains, amid a mass of most useful information, some anecdotes as novel as they are singular. For instance, the subjoined tale of a popular pastime among the otters has something by no means commonplace about it. "Some years ago, I was travelling on foot in Newfoundland, from St. Mary's, on the southern coast, to Trinity Bay. It was in the month of January, and there was a considerable depth of snow upon the ground. The old furrier, who acted as my guide, shewed me many otter slides.' These were always on the steep sloping banks of a pond or stream, where the water remained unfrozen. They were as smooth and slippery as glass, caused by the otters sliding on them in play, in the following manner: several of these animals seek a suitable place, and then each, in succession, lying flat on his belly, at the top of the bank, slides swiftly down over the snow, and plunges into the water. The others follow, while he crawls up the bank at some distance, and, running round to the sliding-place, takes his turn again, to perform the same evolutions as before. The wetness running from their bodies freezes on the surface of the slide, and so the snow becomes a smooth glitter of ice. This sport, I was assured, is frequently continued with the greatest eagerness, and with every demonstration of delight, for hours together." As a specimen of Transatlantic poetry, we copy from Mr. Gosse's book, Bryant's "Stanzas to a Waterfowl," a composition as replete with genius as genuine and unaffected sensibility. All day thy wings have fanned, At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere; And soon that toil shall end: Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, Thou'rt gone-the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form: yet, on my heart, And shall not soon depart. He, who from zone to zone Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, A NATURAL HISTORY OF QUADRUPEDS AND OTHER MAMMIFEROUS ANIMALS; comprising a Description of the class Mammalia, including the principal varieties of the Human Race. By William Charles Linnæus Martin, F. L. S. Parts II. and III. London : Whitehead and Co., 76, Fleet-street. In our March Number we had occasion to announce the appearance of this work, and to speak most favourably of the style of finished excellence in which it was brought out. We have now before us the means of forming a judgment of its claims in a higher character, and the opinion at which they enable us to arrive, is one of most unqualified approval. Having, in the two first Parts, considered, with great care and skill, the natural properties-the nervous and osseous systems of Mammalia,—in the third, Mr. Martin enters upon the most deeply interesting inquiry within the whole range of natural philosophy. The question of the unity and permanence of SPECIES, is one, indeed, whose concern is not limited to the naturalist, but that addresses itself, with still greater force, to those engaged in researches beyond the things of this world. In the space permitted to the literary notices of a periodical, almost an allusion to so grave a proposition is prohibited. Still we cannot avoid briefly touching upon a passage in Mr. Martin's chapter on "Species, Hybrids, and Varieties," because it involves one hypothesis infinitely affecting the truth of Mosaic history. In his observations upon the varieties of the human race, he says "It may be observed, that no natural causes, with which we are acquainted, appear to be capable of producing distinct races. With respect to the Negro, for example (a term which has ignorantly been applied, indiscriminately, to the whole of the black natives of Africa, as if they were all one people), it has been asserted, and taken for granted, that their form and colour have resulted from the heat to which they have been exposed, generation after generation, which, with other minor agents, has blackened their skin, thickened their lips, crisped their hair, and elongated the jaws and the heel: but these, if the true causes, would operate in like manner in like circumstances. What the Negroes are now, they were 3000 years ago. The period in which the change took place, eludes investigation: nor can it be traced to the influence of climate or soil. An European, exposed to the fervid rays of the intertopics, will, indeed, become swarthy, tanned, and sunburnt, but not changed into a Negro. No people, within the records of history, have been changed into a race of Negroes. While, however, the Negro retains his fixed and distinguishing characters, he is not only surrounded by the descendants of European colonists, retaining theirs, but by African tribes, not Negroes, differing in tint of skin, physiognomy, hair, and general contour. . . . . The question, then, arises, whether their origin is to be attributed to that tendency to variation of form, which obtains, more or less, throughout the animal kingdom, resulting from circumstances which elude our scrutiny, or, whether they are aboriginal, and, in this sense, a distinct race? . . . . . One thing is clear, that no external or physical causes, with which physiologists are acquainted, can change a nation of the Celtic, or the Teutonic race, into the Negro, the Papuan, or Alfourou. Formed for the regions they inhabit, and not by them, the true circumstances of their primordial rise are lost in the night of unrecorded ages." Nothing can be more candid, nothing, indeed, more reverent, than the spirit in which Mr. Martin treats his subject; while it cannot but be seen, that he leans not to the theory which assigns to the whole human race but one root. If we accept the Mosaic records, we are bound to believe that, in Asia, mankind had its origin from two individuals, alike in species, and differing alone in sex. Here is a statement, no proof of which, it is true, can be adduced; but whose veracity becomes every day more manifest, from the light which science is continually throwing upon the history of the earth. That the creation of man occurred about the period to which it is attributed in the book of Genesis, is a fact established by all the researches of geologists. To those practical philosophers we owe the knowledge that we are now in the midst of a fourth succession of land animals: that, after the age of reptiles, the age of palæotheria, the age of mammoths, and that of mastodons, came the age of the human species. Into the causes of those great catastrophes by which the world was devastated, it is not here necessary to inquire; it is enough for our present purpose, that not a single bone of our own species has been found in the primary, secondary, or tertiary deposits; and that it is alone in those formed since the commencement of this age, that bones have been discovered, in a fossil state, which belong to the human family. Thus corroborated in one essential fact, it is not merely because they have not been made equally evident to us, that we should question other portions of the Mosiac history. Let us, then, examine the doubts that are urged as to the unity of the human race. "No people, within the records of history, have been changed into a race of Negroes." History, unquestionably, helps us to no such events; but is it thereby proved that no such physical revolution could be effected by the operations of climate in centuries of ages? So far from it, we have, in one quarter of the earth,-unfortunately, that of which we possess infinitely the least knowledge, a succession of links, leading from races that closely resemble the natives of Europe, up to the perfectly developed Negro. "The inhabitants of the northern coasts of Africa differ but little from Europeans, in colour and form: but the difference gradually becomes more striking as we approach the equator; the colour darkens, the hair becomes more woolly, the profile undergoes a remarkable change, and man, at last, becomes altogether a Negro. Beyond the equator, the figure and swarthy colour are again lost in successive gradations. The Caffres and Hottentots seem to have, from what we know of them, much of the Negro nature, without being completely Negroes." Thus writes Heeran; and, adopting his inference, we construct our Negro out of us, |