dained the restraint of snuff-boxes. He Friends, a fine example of nature's gentlecarried his snuff loose in one of the pockets men, refined in speech and life, as SO of his capacious waistcoat, whence he readily extracted frequent pinches of his favourite stimulant. The result was that his garments constantly exhibited vertical lines of snuff streaming down from the pocket in which the supply was stored. I have now before me a letter which exhibits, in some degree, the constant tendency of Smith's mind to wander back to his own early labours. The document is a testimonial which he had given to a young man who was seeking a scientific appointment. Its first few words are devoted to its special object of recommending the young candidate; but this is soon abandoned, when he launches off into his wonted line of thought : "I have been long enough in the field to sce what retards the progress of science. Those difficulties which mistified (sic) the dawn of my discoveries and hung over me as a cloud, now so happily surmounted by my nephew, I foresaw as the work of a new generation, and therefore I trained him at an early age to the task of arrangement and illustration, and obviously by his early acquirement of the language of science, he must have been gratified to find as soon as he had learnt his Latin there was a use for it, and that with him it would never be a dead language. Just so, I conceive, it may be with the young man you have engaged." frequently are the members of the religious body to which he belonged. He was not a practical man of science, but intensely alive to its importance, and devoted much of his leisure to promote its progress; in this he was aided by other men whose social position and aims were very similar to his own. | As indicated by the previous extract from Professor Phillips's work, my father's collections were transferred to the new society, and he was appointed the first curator of its museum. These collections, and the small one bequeathed to the town by Hinderwell, the historian, constituted the only specimens which the young institution at first possessed; but the necessities of the society gave a new and powerful stimulus to local investigation. Our lives were now spent in an almost unbroken succession of field explorations. At one time, gun in hand, we worked at the ornithology of the district. The sunny days of summer and autumn saw us ranging, net in hand, among the woods of Raincliff and Hackness or over the moorlands of Seamer and Whitby in search of their insect treasures. Then, again, the whole line of coast from Burlington Bay to Skinningrave was worked over time after time, digging out the fossils for which it is so famous. Now extracting Sponges from the Chalk of Flamborough Head; now plunging ankle-deep in the blue mud of the Speeton clay; lying on our backs by the hour detaching specimens from beneath the Oolitic ledges of None of the other men who actively pro- Filey Brig, or gathering rich stores of ammoted the establishment of the Scarborough monites from the alum-shales of Whitby and Philosophical Society did much to advance the Peak. Our days followed each other science by their personal investigations. in rapid succession, and found us in the There was Mr. John Dunn, the first secretary of the society, a surgeon full of active energy and scientific enthusiasm, but who had not enjoyed the preliminary training essential to a scientific explorer. Another valuable member was the amiable and benevolent Dr. Murray, who commenced his scientific career chiefly as a mineralogist, but who, after he took up his residence in Scarborough, directed his attention to its fossils, of which he made a small but very select collection, and which still remains in the town. Then there was Isaac Stickney, a draper by trade, belonging to the Society of We have here that union of contemplation of the past with sound practical sense applicable to the present, which was so characteristic a feature of the father of English geology. enjoyment of a bright and happy life, such as can only be known by those who have a healthy work to do, and who set themselves vigorously to do it. Cur midday meal, most frequently consisting of a little bread and a few hard-boiled eggs, eaten by the side of some gurgling spring, was eaten with a relish never felt by those who dine (?) in gilded halls when the clock indicates the approach of bedtime. In a word, it was a life rich in everything tending to give health to the body and vigour to the mind-a life which belongs emphatically to the field naturalist, and to but few besides. THE STORY OF THE ISLES OF THE SEA, TOLD BY THE FOWLS OF THE AIR. IN By H. B. TRISTRAM, LL.D., F.R.S., CANON OF DURHAM. PART I. N the days when Admiralty charts were unknown, when the southern seas were unmapped, when the adventurous Spaniard and the bold buccaneer knew nothing of a wide berth in mid-ocean, where the middle watch may slumber through their time a thou sand miles from land-in the days when the charts of the Spaniard were studded with cautious "Look out here," when some keeneyed steersman had spied what might be a rock, or more possibly the back of some great Biscayan whale (long since, alas! by the greed of whalers, utterly exterminated from the ocean)-the adventurous navigators between Africa and the Indies had sometimes picked up in mid-ocean a strangely-shaped double cocoa-nut of huge size, a sort of vegetable Siamese twin. None knew whence it came, and it was imagined to be a product of the sea, and so named "Coco de mer." On the principle of " Omne ignotum pro magnifico" it was believed to possess mysterious medicinal virtues, and fetched enormous prices in India. At length, in 1742, the mystery was solved. A French ship of war from Mauritius visited a group of islands which had been discovered by the Portuguese two hundred and fifty years before, but had never been colonised; and there was discovered the palm which produced the coco de mer, growing in profusion on some of the uninhabited islands, named thenceforward the Seychelles, though now confined to one of the smaller isles of the group, Ile de Práslin, and to another insignificant rock. So soon as the prosaic and terrestrial source of the coco was known, its value fell, and it became a worthless curiosity. But how happened it, that while most of the species of palm have a vast distribution, ranging like the date-palm, over continents, or encircling the greater part of the tropical old world, like the cocoa-nut; a species so unique and different from all others should be found on two little islets of this isolated group, and there of the world alone? The reply to this simple question embraces theories and speculations which carry us back to remote geological epochs, and involve the origin and disappearance of continents, and the formation of all the islands of the Indian Ocean. The group, of which the Seychelles forms an outlying part, consists of Mauritius, the most important of them all, seventy miles to the south-west of which is Réunion, or Bourbon, while some hundreds of miles eastward rises Rodriguez, and the Seychelles lie far to the north of the others. Almost in the same parallel of latitude, eight hundred miles further east, is the Chagos group, politically a dependency of Mauritius, and most probably having also a physical connection, what little is known of their plants indicating an affinity rather with Mauritian than with Indian forms. Unfortunately, no naturalist has yet reported on the Chagos. We know only that its inhabitants, French creoles and negroes from Mauritius, have very generally supplanted the indigenous trees by the cultivated palm, and that the "Bois mapan," or great rose-tree, which grows to the height of two hundred feet, appears to be allied to some of the peculiar families of the Mauritian forests. Vast coral reefs encircle the archipelago, the basis of which has been reasonably assumed, though not yet proved, to be of volcanic origin. The geological character of the other islands is well known. They are wholly composed of trap, basalt, and other volcanic rocks, with the exception of Seychelles, the constituent of which is granite. Beyond the very recent formation of alluvial vegetable deposit and sand on the coral reefs which encircle all these islands except Réunion, there is no trace anywhere of sedimentary rocks or deposits of any kind. Such a geological formation might lead us to expect that the plants and animals would be those which had sprung from some stray seeds floated from the nearest continent, and from the storm-driven stragglers, who, borne by the gales, had at length reached a haven of refuge. Such are the indigenous inhabitants of the Bermudas, which, eight hundred miles from the land, possess not a single peculiar bird or plant. All have either been carried from the opposite coast of Virginia, or floated up from the south on the gulf-stream, which passes these islands. But in the case of the Mascarene Islands, as this Mauritian group has been called, we are arrested by the phenomenon that, geologically modern as might be islands of volcanic origin, there is here neither plant, bird, land-shell, or insect, common to the nearest continent of Africa, nor to the more distant Indian regions on the other side. Every aboriginal is an original peculiar and unmistakable; and in the case of birds, the greater portion of the denizens being incapable of flight, could never have crossed from other lands. Mammalian quadrupeds were entirely absent, a circumstance which might have been expected, and would have gone to prove that the islands were modern, and had been accidentally peopled from the continents, had the bird and plant forms been similar to the continental ones; but which, in this case of a peculiar fauna and flora, makes for a very different conclusion, and seems to hint that we are in the face of forms of life far older than those of the continents, and carrying us back to an epoch anterior to the existence not only of man, but of his immediate predecessors in the occupation of the earth," cattle and creep-| ing thing, and beast of the earth after his kind;" in short, to that period when, according to the sketch given to us in Genesis i., the pause at the end of the fifth day occurred, "winged fowl after his kind" had been created, and were the highest types of animal life yet produced. as we shall find on a detailed survey, there was a strong affinity and resemblance between the bird types of each island. Utterly distinct from all others in the world, there was a cousinship between the dodo, the solitaire, the geant, the great water-hen of each island, which seems to indicate pretty clearly a common origin for the whole-some generalised parent form which, by lapse of ages and differing conditions, had become stereotyped into the species of each island. Let us, in order to support these con¦ clusions, examine in detail what we know of the birds of each of the group. The Seychelles, as the most northern portion of the group, may be taken first. Of the natural history of these islands when first discovered, and ere man had introduced the very questionable satellites of civilisation, we know nothing, for the gigantic "coco de mer" does not seem to have attracted settlers, and the archipelago lies too far out of the ordinary route of Indian traders to be often touched at for supplies. Of the several hundred rocks and islets which compose the group, only about a dozen are inhabited, and the small population of under eight thousand is chiefly concentrated in the principal island, that of Mahé, seventeen miles long by five || wide, and with a bold mountain backbone three thousand feet high. It is not here that the "coco-de-mer" is found, though probably it once existed, but has been cut down and supplanted by the palms of cultivation. It is now confined to the small islet of Praslin and When we examine in detail the charac- another rock, "Curieuse," and from the report teristics of the larger birds of these islands, of Professor Percival Wright, of Dublin, who we shall find that they were such as could visited the islands as a botanist, it seems not, for any lengthened period, have co- probable that, unless active measures of proexisted with any of the carnivorous or om-tection be speedily taken, the "coco-denivorous mammalia, large or small. Not only incapable of flight, but without much speed, often unwieldy and unprovided with any weapons, either of offence or defence, their fate must have been at the very outset what it very soon was when man and his satellites began to trespass on their preserves. Here, then, natural history comes to the aid of geology, and, in the case of these volcanic islets, helps us to form some idea of their antiquity and origin, where no fossil or palæontological remnant can be found to yield a conjectural date. If creation has been progressive, as Scripture and science combine to teach us, these strange birds must have been formed or developed and specialised into existent types, either antecedently to or without the presence of any mammalian forms except bats. Further, mer" will soon be as extinct as the beautiful ebony-tree of St. Helena. But as we are not proposing to enter at further length into | the botanical peculiarities of the Mascarene Islands, we need only add that the indigenous flora generally, wherever it has not been exterminated by introduced plants, is peculiar, but evincing strong relationship with the botany of the more southern islands of Mauritius, &c. The geological formation is peculiar, for while all the other Mascarene Islands are trap, basalt, or of later volcanic formation, the Seychelles alone are granite, abundantly supplied with water from the perennial rivulets that trickle down the central ridge. A broad fringe of growing coral encircles the whole. This lonely granite ridge, standing in the centre of the Indian Ocean, is almost unique, and is, with the single exception of the still more isolated peaks of St. Paul's and Amsterdam, the only instance of a granite mountain rising apparently out of a great oceanic area of depression. Whether we incline to the theory of an old continent Occupying the present area of the Indian Ocean, or support the view that the great ocean basins have always, since the earth assumed its present consistency, been more or less the same, facing the great granite backbones which form central continental ridges; Seychelles must claim a vast geological antiquity, quite equal to, more probably superior to, that of any of the other Mascarene Islands. Of gigantic birds formerly existing here, we know nothing; but no search has been made for caves or other deposits which might yield ornithic remains, and it is quite possible that many of the indigenous birds may have been exterminated after its first discovery and before its settlement by the French, which only took place in A.D. 1742. As a dependency of Mauritius it fell to the share of England at the conclusion of the great French war, and its human population has been recently largely increased by the landing of several cargoes of rescued African slaves, taken by our cruisers from Arab dhows. This increase is not likely to increase the number of the native bird population, which already are succumbing year by year to the introduction of other species from India or Africa, and seem incapable of maintaining themselves in the face of their continental brothers. Still there | remain, or rather linger on in scanty numbers, twelve native species of land birds known to us, and of these all are peculiar to the Seychelles alone, but all have a relationship, more or less close, to species existing in the other islands. The same may be said of the land shells, which are all, so far as we know, as peculiar as the birds and plants, very numerous in species, but unmistakably resembling the Mauritian and, though in a much more distant degree, the Madagascar forms. At first sight it is difficult to realise the fact that when man first touched this little rock of a few miles in extent, every living and growing thing on them was distinct from every other in the whole world. What, then, are the affinities of these birds? The twelve species, we may classify under eleven genera, or nine different sub-families, or larger classes of bird life. Two of these are Indian, but not African forms (Copsychus and Hypsipetes), while one (Foudia) is African, but not Indian. Some of the others, as the white-eyes (Zosterops), of which there are two species in Seychelles, are spread over the whole of the tropical old world. The whiteeyes of various species extend from South Africa to India, South Japan, the Indian Islands, and New Zealand. The Paradise Flycatcher (Tchitrea) is represented by various species both in India and Africa, and by a special one here. The little sunbird (Nectarinia), though the most obscurely plumaged of these generally brilliant little bird gems, has relations both in Africa and the east. So too have the parrots, while the kestrels and the turtle-doves are of worldwide distribution. One thing may generally be remarked of the Seychelles birds, viz., that their powers of flight are feebler than those of the continental species which they represent. A similar well-known peculiarity, amounting almost to inability of flight, occurs in the waterhen peculiar to the island of Tristan d'Acunha. The shortness of wing is no doubt an absolute advantage to these isolated birds, for greater powers might have involved greater dangers. Mr. Wollaston has shown, in his charming and ingenious work on the coleopterous insects or beetles of Madeira, that in these little creatures a similar incapacity for flight has probably been the chief means of their preservation-that by a natural process all those individuals who had powers of vigorous flight were gradually thinned out by being induced to try their powers too far, or by being carried out by gales when they had left the land, while the heavier and less lively stay-at-homes escaped these dangers. So we find in Seychelles a peculiar turtledove (Turtur rostratus), while one or two species suffice for the requirements of the whole old world continent from Ireland to Japan; and our familiar turtle-dove of the south of England, and the graceful Egyptian dove in a warmer latitude, range over the greater part of three continents. Yet Seychelles must have its own dove, and it is not a bird that could ever have got away from its home. Heavy in body, short in wings, its constitution forbids distant travelling; while the size of its bill, from which it gains its specific Latin name, suggests that some peculiar fruits or plants have rendered a bill stronger than ordinary to be of advantage to the turtledove of the Seychelles. Another of its most interesting birds is the Seychelles kestrel-hawk, with the exception of the little Indian "Hierax," the smallest hawk in the world. Here, again, we find one kestrel ranging from Ireland to Japan, from the North Cape to Cape Comorin; our wellknown "wind-hover," not to the exclusion of, but side by side with, various other species; but one graceful dwarf is the sole raptorial bird of Seychelles, being rather smaller than a thrush, and quite incapable of striking terror even into the timid heart of an English gamekeeper trembling for his pheasants. Beetles, no doubt, are its prey, just as mice and caterpillars are the ordinary food of the much-persecuted English kestrel. Further, we may note, that not only Seychelles, but Mauritius and Madagascar, have still their own peculiar kestrel, and we have reason to believe that the same privilege was once claimed by Rodriguez and Réunion. But the most peculiar and interesting of all the existing Seychelles birds is a pigeon, now we fear on the verge of extinction (Erythræna pulcherrima), which tells more plainly than anything else the very close affinities of this island with the other Mascarenes and with Madagascar. It is a pigeon of most peculiar type, such as is found nowhere else in the world, with the body, wings, and tail of a rich metallic blue-purple, the neck a peculiar ashgrey, and the crest red. In Comoro we find another of precisely similar arrangement of colour, but without the red head. In Madagascar we have another, also without the red head, but with a red tail. There was once another in Mauritius, but for nearly a century the only remains of it have been the specimens in the British Museum and in Paris, which had, with the body and neck of the others, the red crest of Seychelles, and the red tail of Madagascar. There were also, we know, others like pigeons in Réunion and Rodriguez; but these have gone and left no trace beyond their mention by the earlier voyagers. There are still the parrots lingering in very small numbers in these islands, and they, too, quaint and peculiar, have, or rather had, their representatives in the other islands, but specifically distinct. If such be the gleanings of Seychelles, what might have been its harvest of knowledge had some careful observer noted and preserved its birds when the first buccaneer watered and revictualled by its mountain streamis? Other islands have also their tale of birds to tell, written more or less legibly on the ever-wasting sands of time. To the south of Mauritius ninety miles, there towers out of mid-ocean a black mass with a lofty crest, the island of Réunion. Unlike its sister island, it has rarely changed its allegiance, but often its name. Discovered in A D. 1545 by the adventurous Portuguese, it was first known as Mascaregnas, and subsequently as England's Forest, Bourbon, Napoleon, and now, perhaps not finally, as Réunion. It is wholly volcanic in its structure, one mass of black basalt and trap, with an active volcano on one side, some seven thousand feet high, still pouring forth streams of lava, and an extinct one, Piton des neiges, ten thousand three hundred feet high. Round this central cone is a broad belt of dreary desolation, treeless and verdureless. The decomposed volcanic surface affords a rich fringe of cultivated soil round the whole coast, once dense forest, but now carefully tilled for sugar and other tropical produce. Unlike any of its sister islands, Réunion has no coral belt encircling it, and possesses not a single secure harbour, its best being but an open roadstead. This absence of coral may probably be accounted for by the abruptness with which the rock rises from its ocean bed, which has never afforded any base sufficiently near the surface as a foundation for the labours of the coral polyps. These little builders can never work except at a certain depth below the surface, and consequently, as has been frequently ascertained in the South Pacific, where the land gradually rises or sinks, they extend their operations outwards or inwards, according to circumstances, forming in this manner central islands, rings, atolls, or reefs, as the case may be. Caves and peat mosses have afforded in the other islands rich harvests of bone remains to the explorer, but in Réunion no one has yet found either a bog or a vestige of a cave. The cultivated soil is level, and extends to the edge of the desert centre, which has been so overflowed with continuous lava streams, and so shattered and pounded by incessant earthquakes, that all its constituents have been shaken and packed together into a loose but close mass of shivered rock. Thus uninviting to the navigator, Mascaregnas remained unclaimed by any European power, until in A.D. 1642 the French took possession of it and settled it under the name of Bourbon. We know enough of it from the accounts of the ancient voyagers, to learn that it, too, had its giant bird inhabitants, uncouth, helpless, harmless, and wingless as the others, and all of them, so far as we can ascertain, distinct specifically from their neighbours. But of all its primæval birdlords, not a bone remains to us, and only a few casual hints as to their habits and appearance. The early French settlers seem to |