Chrysolite Aser Beryl Jasper These were compared to the twelve celestial signs, bright as lamps, and polished in their works like ivory and shining like sapphires. 1. Of the Sardine, derived of Adam (Odem) signifying ruddy or red, of a blood colour, also of Sardis, a chief city in Asia where such stones were found. The name of Reuben was engraved on this stone, to foreshew the warlike state of that tribe which frontiered upon the enemy, and in Saul's days conquered the Hagarims, and went armed before their brethren at the conquest of Canaan. 2. Of the Topaz. From the Greek Topazion and the Hebrew word transposed Topad, or Topaz. It was a precious stone found in Ethiopia, called by Pliny (b. 37) of a "glorious green colour" and by Strabo, of a "golden colour." On this stone Simeon's name was engraved to shew there was little glory till Ezekiah's days, when the Simeonites smote the remnant of Amalek. Of Zelpha, Leah's Maid. Of Rachel. Joseph Benjamin the flesh. The name of Zabulon was graven on this stone, with the addition of these words of direction, as write plainly on them the names of the three tribes, Judah, Issachar, Zabulon. The two latter are often set down with the four former patriarchs, to keep Leah's off spring together. Of a 3. The Smaragd, or Emerald. Of a most goodly and glorious green,' that the eye is delighted and refreshed but never filled by looking on it: and as there are many kinds of Emeralds, so some glitter like the sun, whose chariot is therefore feigned by poets to shine with clear Smaragds. On this stone Levi was engraved to foreshew Levi's glory, who should teach Jacob God's judgments and Israel his law. . 4. The Chalcedony shines like a star, but of purple hue; and the carbuncle, to which it belongs, has the name of fire, like which it shines. On this stone was Judah's name engraved; and his glory was foreshewn by Caleb, Othoniel, David and Solomon, and, above all, in Christ, who came of this tribe. 5. Sapphire. It is very goodly stone, transparent, very hard, of blue orsky colour, and used, therefore, in heavenly visions. On this stone the name of Issachar was engraved. 5. Sardonyx. A compound of Sardine and Onyx, derived from smiting, or bearing strokes. According to Pliny, it is mixed, of a white and ruddy hue, shining like the rail of a man's hand set in 7. Hyacinth, or Jacinth. bright purple colour. Upon it Dan was graven. In Hebrew it is named Leshem, and a city of that name afterwards fell unto the tribe of Dan, as the stone portended. Hence Leshem was called Dan. Signifying 6 a 8. The Crysoprase. golden green.' In Greek, however, it is the Agate, the best of which are green with a golden list. Naphtali's name was graven on this stone. Hence Rachel's maid's two sons are linked together. 9. The Amethyst. A stone of a wan purple hue and ruddy; so, it being a warlike sign, Gad was graven on it, whose wars were prophesied and his victories foretokened. Here again the third row of stones was intimated,-write plainly on them the names of the three tribes, Dan, Naphtali and Gad. a 10. The Chrysolite. Signifying golden stone,' for the glorious colour of it, a golden sea green and shining. The Hebrew name is Tarshish, also the name of the ocean sea,' therefore called of the sea colour' by the Chaldees.Aser was graven on this stone, who dwell near the sea with his brethren. 11. The Beryl. Joseph was graven on this stone; and on two of these stones all the tribes were written. The Beryl is of a sky colour, but waterish. Job calls it precious; and in Joseph, Joshua, Deborah, Gideon, Jephtha and Abdon, the Judges of Israel, the glory of the Beryl shewed itself. 6 12. The Jasper. A stone of great worth and glory, of which are many hues, some green, azure, airy, parti-coloured, spotted like panthers, from pantere,' and says the Chaldee, Benjamin was graven on Apantor.' This last stone for the youngest Benjamin is the foundation of the celestial Jerusalem. The glory of Jasper shone in his tribe when Solomon's It is certain that for a long time the use of paper was not known, whence men were wont to write sometimes upon the inward rindes of trees, called in Latin libri, (so that to this day we call our books libri, because in old times they were made of those rindes of trees.) Sometimes they did write in great leaves made of that rush papirus, growing in Egypt, from which we have derived our English word paper, and the Latin word papyrus, now signifying writing paper. The manner how they sealed their letters was thus:-They did bind another table unto that where the inditement was, with some strong thread, sealing the knot of thread with wax, whence Cicero saith Linum inscidimus,' that is, we opened the letter. The word Pistrinum, signifying in English a hand-mill, a word frequent in comical authors; it much resembled our Bridewell, or place of correction, being called pistrinum a pizendo, from pounding, for the Romans did pound their corn in a mortar, calling the place pistrinum, and because of the great pains that men did suffer, as likewise the strict discipline used towards servants thus punished, for their necks were thrust into a certain wooden engine called Paussio cape, lest haply, in time of grinding, they might eat of the meal; hence grew a custom among them that when a servant had offended his master, he would menace him in this manner, In pistrinum te dedam,' I will cast thee into Bridewell. There was a punishment to be condemned to metal worke. Upian makes the difference between these two phrases Damnari in metalum, et Damnari in opus metalli,' to be thus: that the first sort did weare heavier and greater fetters than the last. (To be continued) MR. A. AGLIO'S MEXICAN WHEN we say, that Mr. Augustine Aglio is known, or ought to be better known, to the public, as the artist who executed the justly admired altar piece, ceiling, &c. in the Catholic Chapel, Moorfields, and that he has produced numerous paintings, consecutively, which are evidences of his studious ability and un doubted genius, we only prepare our readers for a treat in another department of art, which is the result of five or six years unremitted labour,-three of which Mr. A. spent in the investigation of the principal European libraries, and in copying every document connected with the object of his inquiry which they contained. In obtaining access to those materials, he had often to contend with great difficulties, and in some instances the obstacles opposed to his researches seemed insurmountable. We allude to the " Mexican Antiquities," which are, like stars in the firmament, pregnant with intelligence and of superlative interest, inasmuch as they are, by analogy, connected with ancient history, and convey a complete chronological and astrological analysis of the "Collection of Mendoza," preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. The Codex Telleriano Remensis in the Royal Library at Paris. The Mexican MSS. of the Library of the Vatican. Fac-simile of a series of Mexican hieroglyphical paintings, also in the Vatican. Fac-simile of ditto, in the Borgian Museum at the College of the Propaganda in Rome. Fac-simile of ditto, in the Royal Library at Dresden. Fac-simile of ditto, in the Imperial Library at Vienna. Specimens of Mexican Sculpture, and the Monuments of New Spain, consisting of 125 drawings, with appropriate descriptions, made by M. Dupaix, at the express command of the King of Spain. To these are added, fac-similes of all the hieroglyphics, and copies of all the MSS. which are to be found in the principal libraries in Europe, accompanied by an English translation, with copious notes and extracts. To delineate these illuminati at length, would require more acumen than the best of us can be supposed to possess. By observing ad interim, however, that the time for the publication of these "Antiquities" is approaching, in the compass of seven volumes, imperial folio, when the literary world will obtain access to one of the most elaborate and splendid works that has ever appeared on the subject of Mexico,-the people of which are not so ignorant as many Englishmen may consider them to be. (To be continued in our next.) Those who cannot cope with you in argument frequently load you with abuse; as boys get from their antagonists, if unable to fight them, and then make up for their weakness or cowardice by pelting them with mud. MOSAIC GEOLOGY. BY J. F. PENNIE, ESQ. Continued from page 361. THE same is implied in the words of Peter, "The world which then was, perished." One would suppose that any person of common understanding must know that its inhabitants are meant by the world, a mode of speech used to the present day; for the globe itself, however ruined, desolated, or changed, according to Peter's opinion, did not perish. The Psalmist may also well say," He sendeth forth his waters and they destroy the earth;" such inundations frequently taking place in various parts of our globe. In the 7th verse of the 6th chapter of Genesis, we read, "And the Lord said I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them." Not a word of destroying the earth, as well as the creatures belonging to it. Besides, if it can in any passage whatever be shown that the word destroyed refers as well to the earth as to its inhabitants, it must have been completely fulfilled in the destruction of the works of man, and the partial injuries done to the earth by the flood, without the antideluvian ocean being turned out of its ancient resting-place; to accomplish which Penn asserts that either its original bed was elevated by subterraneous fires, or the old land depressed and broken up to form a basin for the present sea-he cannot exactly tell us which. But not one word is there in the Bible to favour such a wild hypothesis, although this gentleman claims for himself the exclusive title of THE MOSAIC GEOLOGIST! He moreover asserts that this complete change of the bed of the ocean fully accounts, not only for those beds and rocks of shells found on land far remote from any sea, but also for the coal-fields found resting on the cemented fragments of beccia, or primitive rocks, which he says were formed from the first beds of seaweed which grew in the antideluvian ocean, and continued to be formed and covered alternately till the deluge. But we shall refer to this subject hereafter. As a proof that the earth itself was not destroyed, we shall appeal first to the Bible, on which Mr. Penn so vauntingly rests his theory; and there we read in the 8th chapter of Genesis that "the waters returned FROM OFF THE EARTH CONtinually." Again we find that when Noah had waited yet another seven days, he again sent forth the dove," and the dove came in to him in the evening, and lo, in her mouth an olive leaf PLUCKED OFF. So Noah knew that the waters were abated FROM OFF THE EARTH. These texts alone, as they stand, without any comment, utterly confute Mr. Penn's grand theory. He says that the primitive earth was destroyed, that it perished, and Moses positively asserts, that the waters continually receded and abated from off the earth. Yet Mr. Penn, whimsically enough, we think, claims the title of MOSAIC GEOLOGIST. 66 We would ask Mr. Penn where the dove found the olive branch which she carried back to Noah? Not floating withered on the water certainly, for in such a state it would have been no token to Noah that the waters were abated from off the earth. No, it seems that she PLUCKED IT OFF. ." From what?-why from an olive-tree we should imagine. And pray, Mr. Penn, be so kind as to inform us where this olive-tree grew, or rather where was it growing and standing at the very time the dove plucked off one of its branches? On the antideluvian earth, or in the slimy bottom of the old antideluvian ocean? Why, not even Mr. Penn himself, we can hardly think, could venture to tell us that olives grew in antideluvian times at the bottom of the sea! The consequence then is, that this Mosaic Geologist's theory expires with the sentence, that the olive-tree from which the dove PLUCKED a branch or leaf, stood on the same spot it did previous to the Deluge. How this said olive-tree held firm by the roots amid the rush and roar of the Universal Deluge, and kept its leaves green for six months under water, we leave botanists to explain. Further,-If it had been on the bed of the ancient ocean that the inhabitants of the ark, after quitting it, took up their abode, how could the herbacious animals have existed?-could they possibly have fed on the ooze, slime, and sea-weed, of the departed ocean. Perhaps Mr. Penn would tell us they existed, till the grass grew, on stinking fish, such as were not nimble enough to escape with the ocean when it took its flight into the other hemisphere, or were boiled to death by the "subterraneous fires." We also find that Noah planted a vineyard shortly after his quitting the ark. Where did he find the vine-trees? among the sea-weeds growing in the mud of the old ocean? And whence came, good Mr. Penn, the trees of the forests, and all the numberless species of fruit trees, herbs, and flowers, that adorn the present earth? Were their seeds lying two thousand years in the muddy depths of the old sea, ready to sprout up when the waters had taken to their heels and ran away, or did Noah and his sons dive like Indian pearl gatherers, to the bottom of the new ocean, among the late forests and valleys, and bring up all the trees and herbs with which the deluvian earth at present is stocked? Either the one or the other of these alternatives must have been the fact, or Mr. Penn's theory must be utterly false; for we read of no new creation in Moses of trees and herbs yielding seed after their kind, subsequent to the Deluge. Let any one picture to himself for a moment the new and beautiful world Mr. Penn usliers Noah and his family into, after their quitting the ark. Nothing around them but one eternal, interminable desart of mud, with naked mountains and ghastly rocks, plains of sand, valleys of sea shells, stones, and putrefying weeds, unrelieved by a single tree, or flower, or blade of glass. The imagination of man, in its wildest flight, cannot paint half the dreary horrors of such a frightful scene! But this is not all; Moses positively annihilates this silly hypothesis at one blow in the following words: "And a river went out of Eden, to water the garden; and from thence it was parted and became four heads. "The name of the first is Pison; that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. "And the name of the second river is Gihon; the same is that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. "And the name of the third river is Hiddekel; that is it which goeth towards the east of Assyria; and the fourth river is Euphrates." Here we find the sacred writer not only enumerates the rivers that flowed out of Eden, but tells us their names, which were well known in his time, and also those of the distant countries which they encompassed-countries that exist to the present hour in the maps of Asia and Africa. Now Mr. Penn seems to have known that these names were a deathblow to his theory, and tumbled him at once from his usurped throne of MOSAIC GEOLOGY, and therefore, as he could not leap over them in his progress to that self-raised seat, he boldly kicks them out of his way, and with amazing effrontery declares they are a false gloss, an interpolation which has surreptitiously crept into the text! This he presumes to assert on his bare ipse dixit, without a single fact to prove it. For what he says respecting a gloss of the last clause of the third, and the whole of the fourth verse in the fifth chapter of John, appearing in a marginal note by a different hand in the Greek Codex Ephreim, if correct, goes not one step in support of his rash assertion respecting the text of Moses, which is merely conjectural. But it is evident as the sun at noon day, that had not these names of rivers and countries, which are to be found at the present day, stood like impassable barriers in his way, such a conjecture had never entered his sapient head. According to his method, a man has but to broach a theory, however fanciful and improbable, and when he finds himself flatly contradicted by some ancient established author, instantly to declare such contradictions to be merely glosses and interpolations, a mighty easy way of getting over every difficulty. This gentleman also attempts, as we have seen, to confirm his theory, supposing or rather asserting, that our coal-beds have been all produced from vast fields of sea-plants alternately covered with sandstone and lime-stone rocks. If such were the case, how comes it to pass that not only in the coal, but in the rocks accompanying it, there are found the remains and impressions of ferns, reeds, and bamboos, corresponding with nothing that has yet been found in the sea? While a still stronger proof can be produced that coals are not formed of marine plants by the surturbrand, which Dr. Henderson found in Iceland, in four different strata, mingled with others of lava, basalt, tuffa, and indurated clay. "The fourth or uppermost stratum consists of what the Icelanders call steinbrand or coal, from which it only differs," says the doctor," in the absence of the gloss. The two lowest of these strata exhibit the most perfect specimens of mineralised wood, free from all foreign admixture, and of a jet black. The numerous knots, roots, &c., and the annual circles, remove every doubt of the vegetable origin of this curious substance. The only changes it has undergone are induration and compression, having been impregnated with bitumenous sap, and flattened by the enormous weight of the superincumbent rocks." To be continued. The Naturalist. TRAITS IN THE HABITS OF THE WEASEL. By W. Selkirkshire. THE following story is told in Selkirk shire A group of haymakers, while busy at their work on Chapelhope meadow, at the upper end of St. Mary's Loch (or rather of the Loch of the Lowes, which is separated from it by a narrow neck of land), saw an eagle rising above the steep mountains that enclose the narrow valley. The eagle himself was, indeed, no unusual sight; but there is something so imposing and majestic in the flight of this noble bird, while he soars upwards in spiral circles, that it fascinates the attention of most people. But the spectators were soon aware of something peculiar in the flight of the bird they were observing. He used his wings violently, and the strokes were often repeated, as if he had been alarmed and hurried by unusual agitation; and they noticed, at the same time, that he wheeled in circles that seemed constantly decreasing, while his ascent was proportionally rapid. The now idle haymakers drew together in close consultation on the singular case, and continued to keep their eyes on the seemingly distressed eagle, until he was nearly out of sight, rising still higher and higher into the air. In a short while, however, they were all convinced that he was again seeking the earth, evidently not as he ascended, in spiral curves; it was like something falling, and with great rapidity. But, as he approached the ground, they clearly saw he was tumbling in his fall like a shot bird; the convulsive fluttering of his powerful wings stopping the descent but very little, until he fell at a small distance from the men and boys of the party, who had naturally run forward, highly excited by the strange Occurrence. A large black-tailed weasel or stoat ran from the body as they came near, turned with the usual nonchalance and impudence of the tribe, stood up upon its hind legs, crossed its fore paws over its nose, and surveyed its enemies for a moment or two (as they often do when no dog is near), and bounded into a saugh bush. The king of the air was dead; and, what was more surprising, he was covered with his own blood; and, upon further examination, they found his throat cut, and the stoat has been suspected as the regicide unto this day.' This singular story I always looked upon as too good to be true, until lately a friend mentioned the following fact that came under his own observation :-A light snow. covered the ground, and he, having walked out to an adjoining hill to meet with one of his shepherds, fell in with the track of one of these weasles, which is easily to be distinguished from that of the smaller species, by the larger footprint and length of the spring, among the snow. He followed the track for some time, for his. amusement, along the side of the hill, until he came to the marks where a pair of grouse had been sitting, when he lost; |