indeed, in very small quantity in one or two places, where its metallic state appears to be due to organic matter or some other reducing agent.

Its association with nickel has been relied on as a characteristic of meteoric iron, but perhaps too implicitly; for though they are always united in bonâ fide aërolites, yet we believe many a pig and slag from our iron furnaces would be found alloyed with a minute percentage of nickel. One peculiar characteristic, however, is what are termed the Widmanstättian figures-markings on the iron, which we can best compare to the interlacing strands of a canebottomed chair, only less regular. Not every mass of aërial iron exhibits these; but they are beautifully displayed by some of those in the British Museum, especially by one from Lenarto in Hungary, and a small piece from Seneca Falls, New York. In the same collection may be seen among others fragments of the stones already described as having fallen at Ensisheim and Benares, as well as specimens of the showers at Sienna, Laigle, and Weston.

But whence come these stones and metallic masses? Is the air their birth-place, or do they visit us from afar? Are they bits of the moon, or the sun, or some dismembered planet? What is the fiery globe from which they have appeared to rain? The discussion of these questions we must defer to another number, when we hope to say something about fiery meteors and shooting stars, with which it is often supposed that they are closely connected.

J. H. G.

THE DOG.

(Canis familiaris, L.)

THERE is great diversity of standard in matters of taste. In China, a well-roasted pup, of any variety of the very variable Canis familiaris, is a dainty dish. In London the greatest exquisite delights in the taste of a half-cooked. woodcock, but would scruple to eat a lady's lapdog, even though descended, by indubitable pedigree, from a genuine "liver-and-tan" spaniel, that followed King Charles the Second in his strolls through St. James's Park; and which was given to her ladyship's ancestress on a day recorded, perhaps, in the diary of Mr. Samuel Pepys. Again, in the country of the Esquimaux, who has not read in the intensely interesting narratives of the Moravian missionaries, how the dogs of the "Innuit,”—of "the men," as they call themselves are, in winter, indispensable to their very existence? Parry, Lyon, Franklin, Richardson, Ross, Rae, Penny, Sutherland, Inglefield, and Kane have told us, what excellent "carriage "-pullers these hardy children of the snow become from early infancy; and how the more they work, like the wives of savages in Australia, the more they are kicked. Passing over the dogs of the Indian tribes of North America and the gaunt race in Patagonia, the reader may remember that the Roman youth, like the young Briton, had, in the days of Horace, his outer marks was, that he loved to have a dog, or a whole pack beside him," gaudet canibus." This attachment to the dog is given us "from above," and is one of the many "good gifts" which proceed from Him, who made man and dog

one

"familiar," as the apt specific name of Linnæus denominates the latter. One of our greatly-gifted poets, in a cynical mood, could write an epitaph on a favourite Newfoundlander, and end it with the dismal lines on his views of "earthly friends,-"

"He never knew but one,-and here he lies."

Our genial and home-loving Cowper has made his dog Beau classical. We must beg our readers to refresh their memories, by looking into the Olney bard's exquisite story,

"My spaniel, prettiest of his race,

And high in pedigree,"

and they will find that that story of "The Dog and the Water-lily" was "no fable," and that Beau really understood his master's wish when he fetched him a water-lily out of "Ouse's silent tide." How graceful are the last two stanzas of that sweet little poem:

"Charm'd with the sight, 'The world,' I cried,

Shall hear of this thy deed:

My dog shall mortify the pride

Of man's superior breed.

But chief myself I will enjoin,
Awake at duty's call,

To show a love as prompt as thine

To Him who gives me all.'"'*

*It may interest the reader, who does not dive deep into literary curiosities, to refer to the original edition of Hayley's " Cowper" (4to. 1803, vol. i. p. 314), where the poet, in a letter to Samuel Rose, Esq., written at Weston, August 18, 1788, alludes to his having "composed a spick and span new piece called The Dog and the Water Lily;'" and in his next letter, September 11, he sent this piece to his excellent friend, the London barrister. Visitors to Olney and Weston, who have gone over the poet's walks, cannot but have their love for the gentle and afflicted Cowper most deeply intensified.-See Miller's "First Impressions."

That the world might know the very "mark and figure"

of this spaniel,

the late able

illustrator of so

many topographical works

(Mr. James

Storer), published in his "Rural Walks of Cowper" a figure of Beau,

from the stuffed

skin in the possession of Cowper's kinsman, the Rev. Dr. Johnson.

We could linger over a prized octavo volume, published in Edinburgh in 1787; the first poem of this, "The Twa Dogs, a Tale," occupies some thirteen pages, written with that "rare felicity" so common to the Bard of Scotland. We mention it, because of the peculiar happiness with which, the collie, or Scottish shepherd-dog, is described in lines that Sir Edwin Landseer alone has equalled on canvass, or his brother Thomas with the graver:

"He was a gash an' faithfu' tyke

As ever lap a sheugh or dyke.
His honest, sonsie, bawsn't* face,
Ay gat him friends in ilka place.
His breast was white, his touzie back
Weel clad wi' coat of glossy black;
His gaucie tail, wi' upward curl,
Hung owre his hurdies wi' a swirl."

That's the shepherd-dog, as we have heard him described

"Bawsn't," having a white stripe down the face.-Glossary to Burns's Poems.

from a specimen, which was the friend and follower of a valued one, who, when a boy ('tis sixty years ago), frisked with the dog, over one of the many ferny haughs that margin the lovely Tweed above and below Peebles. It is the collie we have seen, on one of the sheep-farms of Lanarkshire, obey its young master by a word or two, as unintelligible to us as Japanese. But to the Culter "Luath," to hear was to obey; and in a quarter of an hour a flock of sheep, which had been feeding on a hill-side half a mile off, were brought back, driven by this faithful "bit doggie." We wonder not that shepherds love their dogs. Why, even the New Smithfield cattle-drovers, who drive sheep along the streets of London on a Monday or Friday, never even require to urge their faithful partners. Well may the gifted authoress of "The Dream" address "the faithful guardian,”—

"Oh, tried and trusted! thou whose love

Ne'er changes nor forsakes,

Thou proof, how perfect God hath stamp'd
The meanest thing he makes;

Thou, whom no snare entraps to serve,
No art is used to tame,

(Train'd, like ourselves, thy path to know,

By words of love and blame ;)
Friend! who beside the cottage door,

Or in the rich man's hall,

With steadfast faith still answerest

The one familiar call;

Well by poor hearth and lordly home

Thy couchant form may rest,

And Prince and Peasant trust thee still,

To guard what they love best."

HON. MRS. NORTON, The Dream, &c. p. 192.

No ordinary-sized volume, much less a short article, could give a tithe of the true anecdotes of members of the dog race. Mere references to their biography would take up a volume of Bibliography itself; just as their forms, and