IN

THE EARTH.

IGNEOUS ACTION IN THE

No. II.

Continuing this subject under the same guidance, that led us through a short note in our number for April, we will now endeavour to examine to what extent supplies of inflammable or gaseous materials have been supplied by the earth In chapter V. "Circle of Light," we are told, "No sooner had the dry land appeared than it had a duty to perform. Year by year, season by season, through a long succession of ages, the grass withered away and grew again; the herb shed its seed, and that sprung up again; the tree gave its fruit and shed its leaf, which grew again in the coming year." Accustomed, as we are, to seed time and harvest, to the trim neatness of our gardens, to the careful gathering of our hay, the economical fagoting of our forests, we can scarcely picture to ourselves the wildness, the waste, and destruction, which ran through nature before man and his wants appeared on the scene. We may mourn over the desolation of a deserted garden, and pity the farmer whose fields are overrun with weeds, but the poppies and the briars give us no idea of the utter wildness and luxuriance of nature's growth. We might suffer our minds to run riot on the subject, but still the most fertile imagination would be far short of the vast the incomprehensible abundance. What has become of all this? is a question hard to answer. It is not our intention to go fully into the subject, our space would not permit it, and we must glean from science such explanations as we can find. Page tells us, "At the mouths or in the estuaries of all existing rivers, there have been accumulating, since sea and land received their present configuration, deposits of mud, sand, gravel, and vegetable debris." " Large expanses of low alluvial land known as deltas" are formed from these collections. Our geologists have endeavoured to count the time occupied in forming these deltas, and Page tells us that a space occupying "13,600 square miles" must have occupied "67,000 years," while a certain portion of the Mississippi valley alone must have occupied 33,500 more years; and then he tells us that the total time or 100,500 years must be insignificant in a geological point of view. Well may he say this if the theory of the water formation of the earth is the true one, and well might any geologist hesitate to give a limit to the time occupied in the growth of the great American continent from the upper sources to the mouth of the Mississippi, a distance of many thousand miles.

Our philosophers, however, give us vistas of time through which it is hard to see our way. Dr. Hooker, in his inaugural address to the British Association at Norwich in 1868, talked of the age of the world as 600,000,000 of years, and others have assigned to the habitable globe

an age far exceeding this period. Here then we have, on the best authority, a duration of this earth, and a continued working of its laws for a period, into which we cannot look without wonder and awe.

We will now give from Page an example of the working of the law of river accumulations. In the year 1816, a raft of miscellaneous floating matter collected by the Mississippi and its tributaries from the natural waifs and strays on the banks measured "10 miles in length, 220 yards wide, and 8 feet deep." This raft may have been exceptionably large, but enough remains to give us an idea of a yearly supply of vegetable matter from one river for one year out of the many millions of years during which materials from the earth have been washed down to the sea. It would not serve our purpose to enter into calculations how much matter is yearly sent upon the ocean from the St. Lawrence, the Amazon, the Niger, or the Indus, or to think of the varieties of matter subject to these laws; it is sufficient here to know, that, as Page tells us, every river that runs into lake or sea carries down mixtures of all sorts; some are lodged at its mouth, and form the deltas; some are carried out to the ocean, and floating on its currents, are wafted by its winds or are driven beneath the surface by the waves and tides to their destination. Where does it, and where did it all go to? Here is another question, which it would be impossible to answer, but if we can trace one portion of it and discover the condition of that ocean-drifted matter, we believe that we open up a clue not only to the general receptacles of such materials, but to the causes of igneous action within the earth. To enable us to trace the water-carriage of olden days we do not necessarily look to the ocean currents of the present time; there are other and unmistakable guide-posts for that purpose, the little sand ripple upon the seashore, or the sand hills a little more inland, will serve our purpose. These formations have one side abrupt and one sloping; in geological language it is called "crag and tail," and this rule is carried out through all land formations; wherever we see a mountainous range, or low hills with one side sloping and the other abrupt, we know that the water at one time washed over that locality, either by its natural current or by the force of the wind, and carried the light materials on the top of the mound on and on till they made the tail. The great example we have of this system is the wonderful chain of mountains extending from Behring's straits to Terra del Fuego, where the prevailing currents of wind and water, coming from the Pacific Ocean, left the west face comparatively precipitous, and spread out on the

OUR PARIS CORRESPONDENT.

so pay, and be delighted to have such a splendid city for your money. That is what the Minister of State told us in a long discourse. The Préfet himself, before the senate, used almost the same language; and the law on the finances of the city was declared promulgated, whether we like it or not. The discussion was altogether a comedy, as everyone knows. Our Minister of Public Instruction presented a bill for the increase of pension for old schoolmasters, thinking that ten pounds a year, after thirty or forty years of labour, would not be too much. A vote of the Corps Legistatif has rejected it; but in revenge has voted a yearly annuity of 20,000 francs to the widow of Monsieur Troplong, late President of the Senate-for her services to the country no doubt. The Emperor also wishes to give 250 francs a-year to all the old soldiers still living that fought under Napoleon I., or under the first Republic, at the hundredth anniversary of the birthday of his glorious uncle. That no one can be against, methinks. Poor old soldiers, who have risked their life and shed their blood for their country, cannot be too well recompensed in their days of decrepitude.

de Boulogne was very brilliant. Their majestics | ing Paris, but it is spent and cannot be helped; were there, as usual, and seemed in excellent health and spirits. The Queen of Spain and her rivals for the crown of Spain, the Duke and Duchess of Madrid, occupied seats not far from the imperial pavilion. One of the Emperor's equerries informed his majesty of the presence of the fallen sovereign. Napoleon went immediately and, offering her his arm, led her to the Empress, with whom she remained the rest of the time. Apropos of Queen Isabella, they say that she wished to put her son under the care of the Jesuits in Paris for his education, but that that cunning body politely refused to accept the charge, all assuring the Queen of their appreciation of the honour she accorded them, but, in the interest of her own cause, such a measure would not be politic in the present state of things; so the Prince was placed at the college Stanislas.-But to return to the races. At the end, when the elite filed off home in their carriages, there was a perfect hue and cry raised among the populace on foot at the sight of the increased luxury of hair displayed. Des véritables crinières! ("Horses' manes and tails hanging out of the carriages!") they exclaimed. The exaggerated size of the dresses behind excited also great merriment amongst the ignorant crowd with their uncultivated taste.

This month has been rich in dinners and balls, at which two lions have been feted-the Indian Prince and Monsieur Frère-Orban, sent by the King of Belgium to calm our irritation in the late quarrel with that kingdom. The Indian Prince's arrival was announced with great pomp by our journalists, who are generally fond of dazzling our eyes with a display of riches in words. This prince was to bring with him all the treasures of Hindostan, and he has left us without being able to pay his tailor's bill-between four and five thousand pounds. He and his suite were so dirty in their habits that the servants at the Grand Hotel, where they lodged, were obliged to cover the furniture and carpets with sheets to protect them from Oriental contamination. The explanations of Monsieur Frère-Orban have made us consent not to annex Belgium to France this time; but let them beware of offending us again!

Rumours of war with Prussia again flatter the lovers of war, in spite of Monsieur Rouher's assurance that we are on friendly terms with all. The Camp de Chalons was only to receive one series of regiments this year, but later tidings affirm that there is to be a second, and it is asked why certain martial exercises are still going on near the frontiers. The quarrelsome would fain see us in arms, and persist in declaring that Napoleon is only waiting for an occasion; but one is getting used to their hopes every spring on that question.

Our Corps Legislatif is getting through its labours as quickly as it can; the great battle fought against our Préfet, Monsieur Haussmann, is over, and Monsieur Haussmann remains Préfet. He has spent too much money in beautify

Why the schoolmasters did not find grace before the Corps Legislatif, no one can understand, -without it be to please the clergy, who are ever hostile to all layman education, and educators, and to Monsieur Durny in particularespecially when one thinks that at the Hotel de Ville, alone, money is found to pay two thousand clerks and persons employed, half of them to do nothing, something like as in Dickens's Circumlocution Office.

Universal Suffrage will soon give another specimen of its benefit to mankind, amongst the ignorant French peasants in the coming elec tions. The préfets and sous-préfets are full of promises to their rural electors, if they will but promise to vote for the government candidate. A favourite curé (vicar) died the other day in a village in Normandy his parishioners buried him in the churchyard, although against the law, that burying place being closed. The souspréfet ordered the body to be removed, but consented to shut his eyes if the parishioners would promise to vote for the official candidate, which they did. The bribery going on is as bad as it ever was in England: join to that the influence of the Roman Catholic priests, who, in many villages, do not scruple to exhort their parishioners in the church as for whom they are to vote, so that the opposition has no chance whatever in coping with such force. It is only in the towns that they predominate; and, it has been so cleverly divided by the existing government, that the rural votes quite annihilate the town ones, there being no distinct borough or city members as in England.

The financial world was thrown into great commotion the other day by the arrest of Mon. sieur Taillefer, cashier in the Union Assurance Office. A man considered to be of the greatest probity, and for thirty-seven years he had been

robbing the company with impunity. One million, a pretty little château, which Louis XIII. used five hundred thousand francs, have been taken! to inhabit, when Enghien had the honour to It is said that he has been supporting the possess royalty in former days. It is close to Etendard, a newspaper, with eight hundred the Princess Matilde's summer abode, so that thousand francs of the purloined money, so that the two cousins might "live and love together" Monsieur Pic, the proprietor of that paper, is for a few weeks, if such be their taste. also in prison! They suppose that the rest has A very curious occurrence is the lethargy of a been lost in speculations, as Monsieur Taillefer man, who has just breathed his last at the has not squandered it in luxurious living. On hospital of Bicêtre : he fell asleep last September, the contrary: the simplicity of his life prevented and has never awoke but once since, and that suspicion. At every instant, now, some fresh was the day before he died; when he opened robber of thousands turns up. his eyes and pronounced several words in Italian, which no one near him could understand. The doctors fed him during his sleep with chocolate broth and old wine, which was introduced into him through an instrument up his nose; and, strange to say, he did not die of his lethargy, but of inflammation on the chest.

The velocipedes have just been forbidden on the public roads, as a nuisance, to the great dissatisfaction of the young gentlemen, who delight in showing off their skill in this fashionable exercise; and who, not contented with going on them seated, were occasionally seen standing on their heads on their vehicle! An engineer at Grenoble has invented a way to turn a man into stone. I do not care about it, do you? A dead man will do. You take the body and plunge it into a liquid which he has invented, you then rub it all over with a cement, of which he alone knows the preparation. You then bury your man. Forty or fifty years after, you have only to dig him up, and you find him turned into stone, perfectly fit to be used as a column in an ancestral hall for coming generations. The engineer does not say whether he has tried the experiment.

Report says that the Empress and Prince Imperial are going, during the Summer, to the inauguration of something at the Isthmus of Suez; and that the Viceroy is having a splendid residence prepared for them. They also say that her Majesty Eugénie intends spend ing some time at the village d' Enghien, near Paris; for the hot baths there. The poor, dear lady scarcely knows where to go for a change, I dare say. It is truly hard to be reduced to such an extremity; to have no where new to go to for the Summer, which proves that no one is truly happy in this world. At Enghien there is

Have you ever heard of the Count Scarampi? Some memoirs just published of the Princess Borghèse relate that this young man, rich and handsome, condemned himself to perpetual silence, because, through some indiscretion in his youth, he had caused a duel in which one of his dearest friends was killed. The Count had never pronounced a word since, on any occasion (for ten years), not even when alone in his room. He used frequently to play Tennis with the Prince Borghèse, but no attempt whatever could ever make him utter a word. He wrote his orders every morning, and nothing seemed to move him in the least. At the "restaurant" Dufour, where he used to take his meals, the waiter gave him the "carte," and with the point of his knife he showed what he wished to have served him. Those who knew him had a kind of veneration for him. Few I fancy could follow his example, not even men, much more ladies.

A tempting advertisement in a paper: "The death of Dr. B-- leaves an opening to a young doctor in a rich and unhealthy country, with a splendid practice.”—Au revoir,

S. A.

BY

LEAVES FOR THE LITTLE ONES.

WHAT HAPPENED.

GRACE GREENWOOD.

It was on a tranquil summer evening, just like many that had preceded it, that the Widow Anderson sat at her wheel, spinning flax, just as she had sat on many a summer, autumn, winter and spring evening. All was still; flowers and insects seemed dropping asleep; little birds peeped drowsily in their nests, and the whole world seemed as quiet and steady-going as the old clock in the corner-when something happened!

But this is not the good, old-fashioned, regular way of beginning a story. I will start again.

In a little post-town, among the highlands of Scotland, far away from any great city, there lived, a few years ago, a woman much respected and well-beloved, though of lowly birth and humble fortunes-one Mrs. Jean Anderson. She had been left a widow, with one son, the youngest and last of several promising children. She was poor, and her industry and economy were taxed to the utmost, to keep herself and her son, who was a fine, clever lad, and to give him the education he ardently desired. At the

early age of sixteen, Malcom Anderson resolved | softly to herself was still sweet, and there was to seek his fortune in the wide world, and be- on her cheek the same lovely peach-bloom of came a sailor. He made several voyages to twenty years ago. India and China, and always, like the good boy he was, brought home some useful present to his mother, to whom he gave also a large portion of his earnings.