[32] Mr. Murray mentions, on the authority of the Rev. Dr. Robinson, of the Observatory at Armagh, that a rough diamond with a red tint, and valued by Mr. Rundell at twenty guineas, was found in Ireland, many years since, in the bed of a brook flowing through the county of Fermanagh.
[33] The use of malachite in ornamental work is very extensive in Russia. Thus, to the Great Exhibition of 1851 were sent a pair of folding-doors veneered with malachite, 13 feet high, valued at 6000l.; malachite cases and pedestals from 1500l. to 3000l. a-piece, malachite tables 400l., and chairs 150l. each.
[34] Longfellow has written some pleasing lines on “The Fiftieth Birthday of M. Agassiz. May 28, 1857,” appended to “The Courtship of Miles Standish,” 1858.
[35] The sloth only deserves its name when it is obliged to attempt to proceed along the ground; when it has any thing which it can lay hold of it is agile enough.
[36] Dr. A. Thomson has communicated to Jameson’s Journal, No. 112, a Description of the Caves in the North Island, with some general observations on this genus of birds. He concludes them to have been indolent, dull, and stupid; to have lived chiefly on vegetable food in mountain fastnesses and secluded caverns.
In the picture-gallery at Drayton Manor, the seat of Sir Robert Peel, hangs a portrait of Professor Owen, and in his hand is depicted the tibia of a Moa.
[37] According to the law of correlation, so much insisted on by Cuvier, a superior character implies the existence of its inferiors, and that too in definite proportions and constant connections; so that we need only the assurance of one character, to be able to reconstruct the whole animal. The triumph of this system is seen in the reconstruction of extinct animals, as in the above case of the Dinornis, accomplished by Professor Owen.
[38] Not only at London, but at Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Turin. St. Petersburg, and almost every other capital in Europe; at Liege, Caen, Montpellier, Toulouse, and several other large towns,—wherever, in fact, there are not great local obstacles,—the tendency of the wealthier inhabitants to group themselves to the west is as strongly marked as in the British metropolis. At Pompeii, and other ancient towns, the same thing maybe noticed; and where the local configuration of the town necessitates an increase in a different direction, the moment the obstacle ceases houses spread towards the west.
[39] By far the most complete set of experiments on the Radiation of Heat from the Earth’s Surface at Night which have been published since Dr. Wells’s Memoir On Dew, are those of Mr. Glaisher, F.R.S., Philos. Trans. for 1847.
[40] The author is largely indebted for the illustrations in this new field of research to Lieutenant Maury’s valuable work, The Physical Geography of the Sea. Sixth edition. Harper, New York; Low, Son, and Co., London.