printed by Watts, was issued in 1739, containing fourteen more plays than appeared in the previous edition, and before each of the new comedies was a picture by the well-known Boucher. The work was dedicated to the Prince and Princess of Wales. Various other translations followed, though sometimes only of special plays, down to the year 1771. Samuel Foote executed translations of two or three plays.

For ourselves, we regard the attempt to translate Molière into English as absolutely vain and hopeless. The exquisite purity and terseness of his language have never been approached by any French writer of modern times, and to transport these qualities into a foreign tongue is not possible. M. Van Laun is therefore rather to be pitied for having embarked in so hopeless an undertaking than blamed for failing in it: but it would require a much more perfect command of the English language at its best periods, than he possesses, to enable him to present a single scene respectably.

Of the genius of the great dramatist himself nothing requires to be said. He commands, like a great classic, the admiration of all cultivated men in all nations and in all time. To many a man of letters he is a bosom friend, and there is no writer of his country who has received so profound a recognition in Germany and England. The pinnacle to which he has attained belongs only to the very few master-minds of the universe. We heartily welcome all the researches and revelations concerning him with which his devoted admirers in France have presented us; and it is to be hoped that the enthusiasm which has recently been rekindled for the name of Molière will result in further valuable and notable discoveries.

ART. III.--1. New Zealand Forests. Speech of the Hon. J. VOGEL, delivered in the House of Representatives on the 14th July, 1874. Printed by Authority. Wellington: 1874 2. Papers relating to State Forests, their Conservation, Planting, Management, &c. Presented to both Houses of the General Assembly, by command of His Excellency. Wellington: 1874.

3. Reports on the Paris Universal Exhibition, 1867; viz. Report on Seeds and Saplings of Forest Trees. By Dr. HOOKER. Report on the Products of Forest Cultivation. By P. L. SIMMONDS, Esq. Report on Timber and Forest Produce. By T. W. WEBBER, Esq. Report on Products of Useful Insects. By M. A. MURRAY.

4. Reports on the Vienna Universal Exhibition of 1873; viz. Report on the Collection of Imports of Raw Material. By Professor ARCHER, F.R.S.E., &c.

5. Tables of the Results of a Series of Experiments on the Strength of British, Colonial, and other Woods. By Captain FOWKE, R.E. London: 1867.

6. Rapport fait au nom de la Commission de Révision des Services administratifs sur la réunion du service des forêts au Ministère de l'Agriculture et du Commerce. Par M. le Vicomte de BONALD, Membre de l'Assemblée Nationale. (Séance du 25 Novembre, 1872.)

TH

HERE is no department of literature to which the residents in a great city can turn with more certainty of mental refreshment than that which deals with the numerous subjects that are comprehended under the name of Forestry. The change of scene and of emotion thus to be attained is perhaps more complete than that furnished by any other study. History, politics, religion, bring back the mind to the very subjects of daily discussion or anxiety from which it is wished to escape. Dramatic and epic poetry, however the perusal of the immortal lines of the lofty, grave tragedians' may carry back the fancy to the simple habits of the heroic ages, yet hinge on the very emotions of the mind which are the motives of the life which surrounds us. It is not everyone who finds refreshment in abstract science, nor is it always the case that even the scientific man can find rest in mere change of the details of his toil. Voyage and travel, when graphic and pictorial, may give dioramic glances at distant and interesting scenes; but it is very rare that the traveller adds to his special qualifications that descrip

tive power which carries the reader along with the wanderings of the author. At the best such a diversion of thought can only be compared to that short holiday, on moor or trout stream, to return from which the dated ticket is already in the pocket of the sportsman. Works of fiction, even if written by the pen of a master, are so brief in the interest they excite, and so apt to be read with the substitution of real for imaginary personages and incidents, as often to fatigue, almost as much as to refresh, the mind. And then, whether in poetry, description, or imaginative fiction, how often does it occur that one can light upon a book that is at once fresh and good?

The subject of Forestry, on the other hand, is so comprehensive, and so closely allied to what most charms the imagination, the aesthetic faculties, and the cultivated intelligence, that even the humblest contributions to our knowledge of the subject possess a special charm. To the poetic fancy the very word Forest recalls the scene of some legendary drama. Pan is not yet dead. A dreamy languor, such as that which the cool shade of lofty trees causes to the senses, steals over the mind with the thoughts of the green canopy spread by the young leaves of the beech, the solemn shadow of the pine woods, the dark and scented obscurity of the orange grove. The limitation of the visible horizon which is caused by forest scenery, whether in dense unbroken masses, as in the pine woods that skirt the Bay of Biscay, or in broken glades, as in some of the forests and forest-like parks of England, gives a sensation of repose. The fairy folk keep their last hold on our fancy, and the ruder gnomes of our German kinsmen yet hold their own against the schoolmaster and the needle-gun, under the shade of ancient trees.

Again, for the artist an unbounded field of delight is afforded by the forest. Not only are shadowy vistas the special haunt of the landscape painter, but every form of floral beauty finds its home in the green wood. In our own woods, the delicacy and varied form of the foliage is the chief charm, a charm which is absent in the more gorgeous and massive beauty of the tropical woods, as it is in the gloomy awe of the northern pine growth. The flowers of our forest trees are chiefly catkins, or flowers without coloured petals. They are very graceful in their brief life, but they do not light up the green gloom with the star-like brightness of the flowers of the tropical forests. In the South of France the Catalpa hangs out a delicate white drapery on its lofty boughs, to which our Flora can offer no parallel, although we may point to the snowy sheets of blossom which cover the stunted forms of the May-thorn. But in the damp

warmth which is so pestilent to the white man, not only does the vigorous vegetation of the tropical forests shoot up in spires of giant growth, but the crimson, and white, and many-coloured flowers that are borne by the trees themselves, are paled and dwarfed by the extraordinary beauty, and weird and unimaginable forms, assumed by the flowers of the lianas, climbing plants, and especially of the epiphitic orchids. Nature may be almost described as attempting, in these plants, to pass from the vegetable to the animal kingdom at a bound. Scorning the earth, living like birds on the branches of the trees from which they hang down their long, scented petals, mocking the forms of the insects, without aid from whose industry some genera of orchideous plants are unable to perpetuate their species, these glories of the tropical woods seem to claim a higher rank in creation than that of terrestrial flowers.

It is not, however, in a pictorial sense alone, or even chiefly, that we speak of the charm of the study of forest life. Nor is it, on the other hand, because of those economical considerations which we shall have occasion to show to be so important. It is rather because, in his influence on forest vegetation, either as a destroyer or as a restorer, man can produce a more marked, visible, widespread, and permanent change on the planet he inhabits than he can effect in any other manner. In his influence on forests, man becomes a fellow-worker with Nature herself. He can thus wield, and often has unconsciously wielded, the wand of her irresistible power. There is nothing with regard to which we are accustomed to think that we are so utterly helpless, so entirely unable to apply any remedy but that of patient endurance, as the weather. But we learn from the study of Forestry, that however impotent may be the wish to draw a cloud over the face of the sun, or to dispel a thick veil of mist that envelopes the traveller like a sheet, if we look to the moment alone, it is altogether within our power, with the aid of a little time, to change the climate of a country. Patient toil, directed by that skill which is part of the heritage of the forester, can produce shaded springs in a dry land, and water brooks in the desert. Angry impetuosity, ignorantly aiming at undue gain or hot revenge, may convert, and in many places has converted, land famous for abundant fertility into arid waste. The ruthless exterminator of forests modifies not only the productive character, but the climatic condition, of wide ranges of country. Had we the power of depicting the aspect of the earth, as it must have been apparent, age after age, to any observer on the nearest planet, we should recognise at one time the presence of a greenish lustre, such as that

which is supposed to denote the presence of large forests in Mars, and at another time the prevalence of a paler shimmer, like that which is reflected from the waterless cinders left by the volcanoes of the moon.

As this power of the secular modification of climate is that attribute of the craft of the forester which most readily fires the imagination, so must the means of exerting that power be regarded as an ultimate outcome of his toil. It is that which finally represents the value of his work. The details which it is necessary to master, before we come even within sight of that goal, are numerous and important. If we watch the requirements of the forester as they occur one by one, we shall find that we omit but few of the elements of a polite education. It will be, we hope, both interesting and instructive to glance at those requirements, and to see what steps are being taken, in our own colonies and dependencies, as well as in other parts of the world, to train a body of men who shall be, both theoretically and practically, adepts in forest lore.

The area over which the experience of the skilled forester extends is very wide, whether regarded according to its geographical range, or according to its physiological extent. From the high-water line of our tidal seas-from the lower level at which the scrub of the Ghor is washed by the rapid torrent of the Jordan, 1,200 feet below the surface level of the Mediterranean-to the lower line of perpetual snow on lofty mountain ranges, each orographic province, or zone of vertical ascent, has its appropriate Flora. The forester must be acquainted, not with timber trees alone, but with at least as much of the organic world as is connected, whether in a friendly or in a hostile mode, with their growth and welfare. As to actual trees, the range in size extends from the minute form of the Alpine Willow, which we have picked on the summit of Skiddaw, of less than three inches in height, to the lofty column of the majestic Wellingtonia, which towers, in the Giant Yosemite Valley, to an altitude of 350 feet. A height of 200 feet is attained by the Umbrella Pines of Italy. In Sclavonia the Sapin (Abies pectinata) attains an ordinary height of 275 feet. The Eucalyptus Amygdalina is described by Dr. Mueller as attaining on the banks of the Yarra River, in Victoria, the height of 420 feet in many instances. The Californian Big Tree is said to measure 96 feet in girth. In length of life and rapidity of growth the diversity is no less marked. A Pinus sylvestris, from Finland, 70 feet in height and 72 inches in girth, has been found to register the passage of 518 seasons by its concentric rings. The venerable Yews that