GEOGRAPHY, ANTIQUITIES, AND STATISTICS. oil 



he said he hoped for great results from the investigations now 

 undertaken in our own country, and believed that marks of the 

 reindeer would yet be found in the Carolinas. 



AN EXTINCT RACE. 



One of the most remarkable races that ever inhabited the earth 

 is now extinct. They were known as the Guanches, and were 

 the aborigines of the Canary Islands. In the sixteenth century, 

 pestilence, slavery, and the cruelty of the Spaniards succeeded 

 in totally exterminating them. They are described as having been 

 of large stature, but of a singularly mild and gentle nature. 

 Their food consisted of barley, wheat, and goat's milk, and their 

 agriculture was of the rudest kind. They had a religion which 

 taught them of a future state of rewards and punishments after 

 death, and of good and evil spirits. They regarded the volcano 

 of Teneriffe as a punishment for the bad. The bodies of their 

 dead were carefully embalmed and deposited in catacombs, which 

 still continue to be an object of curiosity to those who visit the 

 islands. Their marriage rites were very solemn, and before en- 

 gaging in them the brides were fattened on milk. At the present 

 day these strange people are totally extinct. 



ASSYRIAN ANTIQUITIES. 



Sir Henry Rawlinson has recently succeeded in uniting and 

 thus completing two separate portions of an Assyrian record cov- 

 ering 243 years of the empire, one of which is the year of the 

 computed eclipse of the sun, 763 B. C. This event is distinctly 

 noted in a record at a date varying not over 40 years from Arch- 

 bishop Usher's chronology. The genuineness and authenticity of 

 the record, the accuracy of the reading and translation, and the 

 correctness of the chronology computed from the Hebrew Scrip- 

 tures, are all established by their coincidence with a fact demon- 

 strated by modern astronomy. The record was upon two sepa- 

 rate blocks in the British Museum, the one containing the names 

 and the other the dates, and not hitherto supposed to have any con- 

 nection with each other. We have now but few chapters in the 

 history of ancient nations written out so authentically and accu- 

 rately as that of Assyria at this period, from the time of Benhadad 

 and Ahab nearly to Josiah. 



CATS AND CIVILIZATION. 



Dr. Rolleston, of Oxford, one of the most eminent physiologists 

 of the day, tells us in the first number of the new series of the 

 " Journal of Anatomy and Physiology," that the cat, though do- 

 mesticated in Egypt, was never tamed by the Romans, who used 

 the white-breasted marten (Musiela foina) for the same sort of 

 purposes, mousing and rat-devouring, for which we use the cat. 

 Egypt, indeed, had made the cat her own, and something more, 

 for she mingled mysticism with her regard. But Rome, who ex- 

 tended her rule so far and wide over barbarians of Scythia and 



