mental farm at Roville are not only useful to the pupils, but to agriculturists in general.

M. Huzzard, the son, has communicated a manuscript treatise on the breeding of horses.

M. Warden has sent to the Academy some most interesting facts concerning the advancement of the Cherokee nation. Encouraged by the government of the United States, guided by Anabaptist and Moravian missionaries, instructed by the example of white men married to Cherokee women, they have made the most surprising progress during the last twenty years. Their villages consist of commodious dwellings, several of which have from twenty to forty well-cultivated acres attached to them. They have flour and sawing mills, they weave their own broad cloth, they export their cattle and maize, and receive sugar, coffee, and other commodities in return. One hundred thousand acres of land have been devoted to the expenses of public education, their schools are frequented by more than 500 children, who all read, write, and speak English, and one of whom has invented an alphabet of 96 characters, by means of which the pupils correspond among themselves in their own language. The nation has adopted a constitution; the present population consists of 15,000 souls, divided among sixty villages, and their movable property is estimated at half a million of dollars.

The Partie Mathematique of the Analyse, &c., has been supplied by Baron Fourrier, also secretary to the Academy; but as the readers of natural history are not likely to feel interested in it, I have now but a few words to add, and those on subjects connected with natural philosophy.

M. Ampére has presented two papers to the Academy, containing a theorem for the propagation of light in the middle of crystals, in forming which he has continued the researches of M. Fresnel, though he pursues rather a different method of deduction.

M. Chevreul has also sent a memoir to the Academy, which bears the following title: "The Optical Influence which Two Coloured Objects have upon each other, when seen simultaneously, and the Necessity of considering this Influence in Dyeing, in order to judge of Colours, their Solidity being abstracted." M. Chevreul has established this general fact; that two objects differently coloured, and in juxta-position, constantly undergo a modification of colour which arises from their vicinity. If one is lighter than the other, the first will become still lighter, and the latter darker. M. Chevreul has, by experiment, fixed the reciprocal modifications undergone by the seven primitive colours, and black and white. He has

M.

tried to find the law of these modifications, and arrived at this remarkable result. "When two colours, A and B, are seen simultaneously, the complementary colour of B is added to A, and the complementary colour of A is added to B." The colours appear quite different, and besides, as white appears more brilliant, and a light colour becomes lighter, when seen simultaneously with a dark colour, which in such a case itself acquires intensity, it results, that the contrast takes place in the colour, and in that which dyers call depth of tone. Chevreul remarks, that in explanations which several natural philosophers have given of accidental colours, two very different cases have not been sufficiently distinguished. The first is that in which the eye, for instance, having long looked at a little square of red paper, placed on a white ground, suddenly moves to a part of the white ground. It then sees a little green square, which is the complementary colour of red. We can very well conceive, with M. S. Scherffer, in this case, how that part of the retina, on which the image of the red square is painted, being fatigued with this sensation, ceases to look at it, and still seeing the white, that part of the retina fatigued with the red must receive a much stronger impression of the complementary colour of the red, and thus must see a green square. But in a case where M. Chevreul has studied accidental colours, there are two equal zones, contiguous, and differently coloured, which are seen simultaneously, and the complement of one of the colours acts, not on that part of the retina which sees this colour, but on the part which sees the other colour. The learned author intends to return to the study of these phenomena, to the consideration of which he has been led by accident.

M. Fourrier read a memoir, entitled "Experimental Researches on the Conducting Faculties of Thin Bodies exposed to the action of Heat, and a description of a new Thermomete of Contact."

The literary undertaking of the Baron de Ferussac, which has now existed for five years, is still continued, and, by being in general circulation throughout France, greatly contributes to the endeavours which are constantly making towards the perfection of science. The object of this work is to publish "A Universal Bulletin of Science and Useful Arts;" and the different subjects contained in it are indicated by the following titles:

Mathematical, Astronomical, Physical and Chemical Sciences. Geology and Natural Sciences. Medical Science, Anatomy, and Physiology. Agriculture and Economy.

Technological and Constructive Science. Geographical History, Antiquities, and Philology. Military I am, Sir, &c.

Science.
Sciences.

London, September, 1829.

S. BOWDICH.

ART. II. Some Account of the Life, Genius, and Personal Habits of the late Thomas Bewick, the celebrated Artist and Engraver on Wood. By his Friend JOHN F. M. DOVASTON, Esq. A.M., of Westfelton, near Shrewsbury.

(Continued from p. 319.)

"He-in a general honest thought,

Sir,

And common good to all, made one of them.
His life was gentle, and the elements

So mix'd in him, that NATURE might stand up,
And say to all the world- This was a man!"

SHAKSPEARE.

WITH pleasure I resume the brief and broken narrative of my friend Bewick; yet not without considerable diffidence in my own power to make it interesting to all; being well aware it will be read by many, not feeling my own keen relish for his productions; and by many more not having, like me, enjoyed the blessings of his friendship.

I left myself happily seated in the alehouse, on the 1st of October, 1823, between my lamented and my living friends, Bewick and Bowman: and what with the wit of one, and the science of the other, I paid little attention to the iron tongue of the neighbouring steeple of St. Nicholas, whether he told the long and loud "hour o' night's black arch the keystane,” or the wee bit ane ayont it. The fine old fellow, this jolly old Cock o' the North, as I facetiously called him, would persist in seeing us to our hotel, where we renewed our libations even to "sangs and clatter." Very early in the morning he kindly came again with his great cudgel to our chambers; and removed us to his neat and hospitable residence amid the fields and gardens above Gateshead, on the opposite bank of the Tyne. Here we brokefast with his family, consisting then of his good old dame (who died February 1. 1826, aged 72), one son, and three daughters. He now conducted us amid the curiosities of Newcastle, public buildings, pictures, and libraries; and, what is more to my present sketch, his own workshops. Here we saw his manner of producing his beautiful art; and his nests of almost numberless drawers, each

filled with one layer of finished blocks, with their faces upward, on many of whose maiden lineaments, fresh and sharp from the graver, the ink-ball had never been pressed. They are all cut on box-wood, which is procured from abroad of as large circumference as possible, at a great expense, and is paid for by weight. This is sawn across, at right angles to the cylindrical growth of the tree (I mean as a cucumber is sliced), in pieces, when finished, exactly the thickness of the height of the metallic types, with which the blocks are afterwards incorporated in the pressman's form, or iron frame. One surface of this block is made extremely smooth, on which is traced in black and white lines, the figure or design; the white is then cut out, and the black left. Though this was the method he took with his pupils, of whom he had constantly a numerous succession, he had early acquired so ready a facility himself, that simply with the graver on little, and often no, outline, he worked the design on the blank block at once. His tools, many of his own contrivance and making, were various in sizes and sorts. Some, broad gouges for wide excavation; some narrow, for fine white lines; and some many-pointed for parallels, which, either straight or wavy, he cut with rapidity, by catching the first tooth of the tool in the last stroke, which guided it equidistant with the former. He spoke with great approbation of the graphic talents of his late brother John; and repeatedly said, that, had he lived, he might have attained to greater eminence than himself. When they both began, the art was almost lost, and totally neglected; but has, through his hands and ingenuity, been almost, as it were, re-invented, and brought to its present high pitch of perfection: and many of the most celebrated wood-engravers have been his pupils. Here he gave us his opinion of the old method of cross-hatching, a style not now used, or even known, and, he said, useless; as every effect may be produced by parallel lines, broader or narrower, at greater or less distances; and in the lighter parts, by a little sinking of the surface of the block. The latter is one of his own inventions, and by it a judicious pressman can produce every gradation of shade from very black to nearly white; between which he preferred those of intermediate strength, being decidedly against a black impression. He thought the old engravers effected the cross-hatching, either by covering the block or metal plate with wax, through which the lines were cut, and an acid then applied to eat into the surface; or by the use of cross or double blocks, requiring two impres sions to produce a single figure. Numberless specimens of this cross-hatching may be found in the great old edition of

Fox's Book of Martyrs, where it is often widely and wantonly thrown away, even where not required; a proof, that it must have been executed without much art or labour: in honest old Gerard's valuable Herbal: in that of Parkinson: and in Felix Valgrise's beautiful folio edition of Matthiolus's Commentaries on Dioscorides, Venice, 1583: and many other ancient books in my collection. Mr. Bewick's own Horsetraveller in a Storm, where he shows black and white rain, is a specimen of the use of two blocks. A person acquainted only with the common method would be at a loss to conceive how the union of the absolutely opposite styles of engraving, on copper and wood, could be effected. The black diagonal lines, particularly those on the foreground, constitute its great curiosity as a wood-cut. In many of his tail-pieces, he has given imitations of etching, and cross-hatching; but these are all worked in the usual manner, the surface of the wood being picked out, with infinite labour and surprising skill, from between the lines. He very seldom engraved from any other copy than nature, having the bird (always alive if possible), or other subject, before him, and sketching the outline on the block, filling up the foregrounds, landscapes, and light foliage of trees, at once with the tool, without being previously pencilled. It was curious to observe his economy of box-wood; the pieces being circular, he divided them according to the size of his design, so as to lose little or none; and should there be a flaw, or decayed spot, he contrived to bring that into a part of the drawing that was to be left white, and so cut out. He said, blocks, in durability of lines, incalculably outlasted engravings on copper, which wear very much in cleaning, for every impression, with chalk; but editions of wood-blocks must be very remote indeed before they show any feebleness. In early life he had cut a vignette for the Newcastle newspaper; and this year it had been calculated that more than nine hundred thousand impressions had been worked off; yet is the block still in use, and not perceptibly impaired. A faint impression therefore, is by no means to be attributed to the wearing out of the block but to the feebler pull of the press man; and this may be proved by observing that when any one is remarkably black or light, all that are pulled off that same form, partake of a similar degree of strength or faintness. I have now in my library a copy, though, I am sorry to say, spoiled with my having written the margins all over with ornithological observations, of the very first edition of the Birds, in which many of the impressions are far feebler than the corresponding ones in the very last edition; and in the same edition the same blocks vary in all shades. Let not collectors,