pepper are qualified, and even thought to be much better, from passing through the body of a toucan.

Bees were not originally natives of New England. The first planters never saw any: but the English having introduced them to Boston, in 1670, they were carried over the Alleghany mountains by a violent hurricane :-hence their propagation on the western part of that continent; where they have multiplied beyond all power of calculation. There There is no data to prove, that bees are known in the South Sea Islands; but in Hammock, one of the Philippines, the chief subject for barter is bees' wax. Bees were introduced to New South Wales in 1809. Two hives were taken from England; but the bees were suffocated by the melting of the wax, in crossing the Line. Captain Wallis afterwards introduced four more hives in 1822, and the last time I heard of them, they were healthy and increasing. They were introduced into Cuba by some families, who, after the peace of Versailles, went from St. Augustine's, only since 1784: and yet in 1792, the settlers exported not less than 20,000 arrobs of wax. In 1796, there were 212 barrels of honey and 1854 arrobs of white wax exported from the Havannah a to Buenos Ayres.

a

In June 1728 a large flock of butterflies appeared in the Canton de Vaud, flying from north to south. The column was from 10 to 12 feet broad, and very thick. Their flight was low, rapid, and equal. They did not rest on the flowers; but continued their flight. Their species was the belle-dame or thistle butterfly, the caterpillars of which never live in company.

We must not forget the emigrations of the locust. Their numbers and extents of flight are prodigious. Mr. Moor records a flight in India which extended 500 miles;

"Bees are domesticated in few parts of Asia. Those of the Indian Archipelago hoard but little honey: owing to the multitudes of flowers at almost all seasons of the year. But they make a great deal of wax, which the merchants export to China and Bengal. The Morea exports 14,000 ocques every year. (An ocque is three pounds two ounces French.)

and Mr. Barrow describes one in Africa, which occupied an area of 2,000 miles 2.

The yellow butterfly, and the little black and white butterfly, came from China: the black species from the West Indies. About thirty-five years since, too, a mealy insect was introduced from America, which proved, for a time, extremely destructive to apple-trees. It propagated with great rapidity—but by the skill and industry of our gardeners, it is now almost eradicated. In March, 1819, also, there appeared near Sydney, in New South Wales, a vast number of fullgrown caterpillars in one night during the rains. Most of them, however, disappeared on the next day; though no one could form the least probable conjecture, whence they came, or whither they went.

In some parts of Italy is seen the Menelaus butterfly of Surinam; and in others the cerulean serpent of the Indies. The tortoise of the Antilles is occasionally found on the shores of the Hebrides; and the whale-tailed manati of the Aleutian Islands are not only known in Kamschatka, whither they are driven by storms, but in New Holland and Mindanao.

There are thousands of lizards among the ruins of Balbec; and though there are no venomous insects in the Madeiras, myriads of those reptiles are seen of a clear day, basking in the sun. These animals were, no doubt, in those islands previous to their separation from the African continent.

Insects and shell-fish there are, which emigrate with the plants, on which they feed, and whence they have their being.

Several species of the lepas cling to bamboo canes, and float to vast distances: when their shells are open, they look like full-blown flowers. The spotted toad-fish", which keeps

a In August 1748, many swarms of this insect were seen flying in different parts of London. They were supposed to have come from Poland and Hungary, where flights of these insects had done great injury. They soon disappeared. b Lophius histrio."

among sea-weeds at the bottom of the water, has, no doubt, also wandered in this manner from China to the Brazils, where it is almost equally abundant.

Pearls are discovered in several seas; and, being found in the shell of an oyster, no one has yet been able to explain the manner, in which it is formed. The following circumstance may, however, one day perhaps lead to some probable conjecture, in respect to it. At Sydneya a party, while at supper, on opening an oyster, beheld a fish of about two inches, curled up, in the bed of the late inhabitant of the shell. It sprang upon the table, and was preserved alive several hours. This fish, which was found to be cartilaginous, had, no doubt, destroyed the oyster. When placed between the sun and the eye it appeared perfectly transparent; and the body had stripes of brown and yellow, forming altogether a very beautiful little animal. That this fish, residing in a foreign shell, might, had the oyster been able to destroy it, instead of the fish destroying the oyster, have become a pearl, by some secret operation of Nature, is not probable; but that some aqueous animal may intrude itself into the shell, and there crystallize, is not impossible. And here we may stop to observe some peculiarities of Nature in respect to fishes.

b

In the Lake Fakonie (Japan), which is surrounded by mountains, and was formed by an earthquake, are the salmon and the herring of the Baltic. In what manner could they possibly come there? In a stream, which empties itself into the Nile in the Aloa country, is a fish without scales. It is not seen in the Nile; and yet a species of it is found in Asia Minor. The Caspian is insulated, as it were, in the bosom of a vast continent, and yet fishes are common to that sea and the Mediterranean. Seals, also, are in great numbers; and sturgeons are so plentiful, that they sell for 1,760,405 rubles every year.

a

Sydney Gazette, 1817.

b Stroemings.-Kæmpfer. c Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia, p. 498, 4to.

THE PEOPLING OF ISLANDS.

HAVING, in former chapters, endeavoured to explain in what manner islands are formed; and after what method they become green with vegetation, and enlivened with animals, it remains to show in what probable manner, they become peopled with the human race.

That America was peopled from Africa, there is scarcely one argument for inducing the belief. No similarity is there in colour, language, manners, customs, or religion; by which a single proof of a common origin may be traced. Nor is there even an association, on which we might build a conjecture, that, prior to the age of Columbus, any intercourse subsisted between them by the means of navigation.

That America was peopled from Asia, on the north-west, there are so many reasons, arising out of a great variety of evidence, strengthened by the fact, that in one point the two continents are separated by a distance of only thirty-nine miles, that the problem may be said almost certainly to be solved. In fact, the continents are so contiguous, that hares, elks, roebucks, foxes, wolves, and bears, belong as well to North America as to Northern Asia.

Whence, and in what manner, the Pacific Islands became inhabited, is a question much more complicated and difficult. Their very existence was unknown to European research, a long time after the discoveries of Columbus, Vespucius, Magellan, and other navigators. They were equally unknown to Western America, and to Eastern Asia: and, with the exception of those islands, which are disposed in clusters, they were equally unknown to each other.

One object of modern inquiry has been to discover a northeast, a north-west, or a Polar passage to Cathay and while the Russians were making efforts in the North Pacific, the

a

Duponceau says, however, that some resemblances do exist between the language of the American Indians and that of the people of Congo.

English and French, steering through the vast bosom of the Southern Ocean, gave to the knowledge of Europe, Asia, and America, new manners, new customs, new religions, and even new creations; both in the animal and vegetable kingdoms.

Semi-barbarous nations mingle so many fables with their traditions, that it is difficult, and indeed frequently impossible, to separate the one from the other. But barbarians have not even traditions, on which to build the structure of hypothesis. The inquirer into the origin of nations can, therefore, only reason from the best evidence that analogy affords. In the present instance these evidences are few; but they are striking and lead to the probable conclusion, that most of the islanders, in the Pacific, sprang from one original stock.

:

What the Tartars still continue to do by land, the natives of the islands on the South Asian coasts were accustomed to do by sea. They voyaged from one island to another; and settled in those, they found the most agreeable and the best provided. The chief points of resemblance among these islanders may be reduced to the knowledge, which many of them traditionally possessed, of the use of iron to the circumstance, that the natives of Maugeca, and of the Caroline islands, although distant 1,500 leagues, saluted strangers in the same manner, viz. by taking the hand and joining noses: to the similarity, observable in their features and complexions; to the coincidence of many of their manners and opinions; to the shapes of their musical instruments; and, above all, to the harmony, which subsists between their respective languages b.

a Stæhlin's Disc. of New North Archipelago, p. 25. The Biajus of Borneo * live in covered boats, and subsist by the art of fishing; float from one island to another with the variations of the monsoons, and thereby enjoy perpetual

summer.

b In respect to the New Zealanders, some have imagined, that they sprang from Assyria or Egypt. "The god Pan," says Mr. Kendall to Dr. Waugh,

* Leyden on the Literature of the Indo-Chinese Nations.